"Slowly, silently, now the moon Walks the night in her silver shoon"

Silver - Walter de la Mare

Is it too early to be thinking about 2014? I always feel that once you hit September, the rest of the year is as good as done. Autumn rolls quickly into Winter and Winter lasts forever. Sure, there's Christmas, but Christmas is more about anticipation than anything else for me, and once Christmas Day is over everything feels a little sad and worn out. So between Halloween and Spring there seems to be this vast stretch of "blargh." And you've got to fill it with something, so it may as well be something creative and fantastical, right? Right.

So, early or not, I am thinking about 2014. And one of the first things I want to do in 2014 is release a line of essential oil/absolute only perfumes. I love the scope and craziness that fragrance oils gives me (gunpowder perfume, anyone?), but the challenge of working with just essential oils and absolutes is very alluring. Not that there's any less variety, certainly. I recently acquired a butter CO2 extract, for example - completely natural and completely ridiculous. But there's no denying I have to think harder with EO-only scents. Oh, I want make something that smells like cake? Put down that red velvet fragrance and step away from the buttercream!

Phiseksit

Right now I'm gathering ideas for the new line and I'm finding my attention being drawn in a very particular direction. Namely, skywards. All my ideas so far have been inspired by cosmic phenomena and heavenly bodies. Black holes, the Northern lights, solar flares, eclipses...They're all playing on my mind. Maybe it's because when you're thinking all-natural, it makes sense to take inspiration from Nature (sadly, red velvet cake is not a naturally-occurring phenomenon).

Whatever the reason, I think my first batch of all-naturals are going to be cosmically-inclined, and that's an excuse to look at pretty pictures of Saturn's moons and think up whimsical names like Black Hole Waltz and Enceladus. And of course, there's the mythological aspect of moon and planet names to throw in the inspiration bank.

What I'm most looking forward to with this range is taking some of my rarer and lesser-used oils and giving them a whirl. I have plans for a rose/mint blend that I have high hopes for. I have a few attars and absolutes that I've yet to try (not to mention a wishlist a mile long of new ones to buy...) and I'm looking forward to playing around and seeing what I can come up with. When I first started making perfumes, I only used essential oils and there are plenty of experiments (both successful and disastrous) that I'm eager to re-visit now I have more experience (I will make that patchouli-clary sage mix work, dammit).

At the moment I really am in the early stages of planning this range, but I do like the idea of themed ranges,

prozac1

exploring a variety of different subjects. If I'm happy with this first line (and if you guys are too!), you can look forward to all-natural perfumes inspired by mythical creatures, historical figures, and a whole host of other natural sources.

But for now, I'm sticking with space. Moonlight, red dwarfs, supernovas, and dark matter. Any excuse to watch Professor Brian Cox documentaries, basically *cough*