"The body is a marvelous machine...a chemical laboratory, a power-house. Every movement, voluntary or involuntary, full of secrets and marvels!"

ponsuwan

Theodor Herzl

Well. I have been rather neglectful here lately. *dusts off blog* I do have a valid reason, and really I shouldn't be blogging here now, but I have a couple of things to tell you, so!

First of all, the reason I've been a bit quiet here and generally online is (to cut a very long and not very interesting story short) that I'm dealing with a recurring injury in my right arm. Initially it was diagnosed as repetitive strain injury and treated as such. As a result of this injury, I've always favoured my left arm for computer work/carrying, etc. As a result of that I now have the same problems in my left arm. At the moment it's really severe. We're talking cramps, pins and needles, aches, strains, the works. Waking up in the night with both arms completely numb. Stress headaches at work because the pain is so intense. Neck and back ache because my posture is going to hell as I try to sit comfortably at my work desk for seven hours a day. So I went to my GP to see if she could recommend anything for the pain.

Instead, she's sending me for blood tests.

Now, this injury/problem goes back about eight years, and in eight years not a single doctor has ever suggested it's the result of anything other than repetitive strain. This is the first time anyone has suggested an alternative cause. This lovely GP listened to me describe my symptoms and said, "it could be RSI. It could also be a neuropathic condition, a vitamin deficiency, or a thyroid problem. So let's test you for those and then discuss management depending on the results."

My goodness! I cannot tell you how amazing it feels to hear that your chronic pain might have a treatable cause! I'm so used to hearing, "we can't do anything, just try to avoid computer work," that I can't quite believe there's a possible alternative answer.

But in the mean time, I'm still in pain and I still have to do my day job. And I have a short story and a novel coming out in the next few weeks, so I'm going to be editing quite a lot in the near future /o\ In light of that, I'm trying to restrict my "non-essential" internet/computer time as much as possible, so I may be a little quiet on social media for a while. But I am about and I will answer any questions/emails/Etsy convos I get, so get in touch if you need to!

Now, second point of business. I did mention this briefly on Facebook earlier in the week, but for those who might have missed it: the supplier I used to buy my tobacco flower fragrance oil from no longer carries it, and I can't find a new supplier for it. Currently I use tobacco flower in Absinthe with Faust and Jazz Hands, and once my current stock runs out, I'll be temporarily discontinuing those two scents to re-work them. So if you like them as they are, buy now!

Third point of business. I'm going to be taking a week off from August 11th - August 15th. My sister-in-law is due to give birth sometime then and I want to be on hand to take a look at my first niece! In addition, I'll be working on loads of new stuff for the shop and a Secret Project that I hope to unveil towards the end of this year!

So that's me at the moment! Hopefully I'll get some answers from my GP soon and I can get back to more regular blogging and general internet use!

“Sweet, sweet burn of sun and summer wind, and you my friend, my new fun thing, my summer fling.”

Summer Fling - k.d lang

Gather round, dear readers, for I am going to tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a girl who worked in an office without windows. It was a dreary grey office in a dreary grey building, and all day long she filed dreary invoices and answered dreary phone calls. And the girl knew this was not the life for her, or for anyone. She knew, deep down in her bones, that the world was not dreary and grey. She knew the world was gentle sunshine and the whisper of salt winds through sand dunes. She knew the world was the scent of brine in the air and the sticky-sweet taste of candy floss melting on the tongue. She knew the world was the lights of the fairground at dusk, the music of the carousel and the rush of water on sand. 

So in her head, while she filed her invoices and answered her phone calls, she ran down to the ocean and pushed her bare toes in the wet sand. She picked up glistening seashells and watched crabs pick their way through tangles of seaweed. She watched gulls wheel over the waters, soaring off to places far away and dream-filled. She imagined mermaids and krakens and underwater cities bejewelled with coral and pearls. And she knew this was the life for her. So she wrote poems and stories and made perfumes, and she filled them all with the sea and its treasures. And she dreamed and she hoped and she waited. Because one day she was going to walk out of that dreary grey office and run down to the sea for real.

Seven|ElevenStudios

And I'm still waiting. It's been my life's dream to live by the sea. I love the British coastline - from the wild mountains and crashing grey waves of Northumberland to the long sandy stretches of Norfolk's beaches. The scents, the sounds, the scenery...it's just the most perfect combination for me. I love to sit and watch the ocean. I love walking along the shore barefoot, picking up seashells, trying (and failing) to skim stones. I love paddling in rock pools and finding strange fish and sea glass. I love sitting at the end of the pier, ice cream in hand, watching people come and go, inhaling the smells of sun tan lotion and frying donuts. That, for me, is the only thing to strive for. A life at the edge of the ocean.

All through my childhood, and still today, my grandparents have had a holiday home or caravan on the Norfolk coast. My summer memories are full of the fairground at Hunstanton - the safe scares of the ghost train, the stomach-churning thrill of the waltzer, the sticks of rock, and the endless flavours of ice cream. The cool haven of the sealife centre, filled with starfish and sharks. Tacky tourist gifts like sea lion keyrings and novelty sunhats. The long walk down the pier with the sea on one side and row after row of tiny, inviting gift shops offering everything from tumbled amethyst to bags of jelly beans.

When I go back there as an adult, I feel joyous and content, and I still want to do all the things I did there as a child. Splash in the waves, scoop up the starfish for just a brief moment, try that rum and raisin ice cream, collect those seashells. There's nowhere as magical as the seaside for me, nowhere I feel more at home. And one day, I will have my house by the sea.

In the mean time, I write stories about selkies and make perfumes filled with the scents of my childhood summers. I'm going to give you the ocean and the fairground, all that sugar-rich confectionery, all that briney tang and golden sunshine. I'm working on a collection of summer scents right now that are really helping lift that sense of dreary greyness that's sometimes so hard to see past. I hope, when they're released in the very near future, you'll get a glimpse of that magical seaside summer I love so much. And if you want to share your own summer memories - please do! Tell your own story :)

Chris Miles

"Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards...

...I got a full house and four people died." - Steven Wright.

When I decided I was going to open an Etsy shop I knew two things would hold me back: labels for my perfumes and photos for my products. Luckily I have a talented artist friend who took care of the former for me; unluckily the latter was all in my hands. And I'm not a photographer. Oh no. I spent hours trying to figure out how to make the most of my limited resources, hours reading advice forums for Etsy sellers. Props! No props! White backgrounds! Grain wood backgrounds! Clip art! Stock images! Nothing was right, though. None of the traditional ideas and tips worked for me, not just because my skills as a photographer/photo editor are limited, but because those styles of presentation didn't speak to me. I didn't feel like my personality and voice would shine through.

And then I had a brainwave: Aleister Crowley. Well, his Thoth Tarot deck, to be precise:

So let's go back a bit. I started reading Tarot cards when I was a first-year student at University in Liverpool. It was something I'd wanted to learn to do for...forever...but for various reasons I never had. But early on in my student days I found an amazing little indie bookshop that sold (along with various text books I needed) a small selection of Tarot decks. And there was me with my student loan and no sense of responsibility! I bought my first deck - the Tarot of a Moon Garden - and I taught myself to read the cards. 

Over the years I've done less and less Tarot reading, but more and more Tarot collecting. I just love how many different spins you can put on the traditional symbols - I've got everything from the Necronomicon Tarot to the Unicorn Tarot, and for the most part nowadays, they're all just gathered in a drawer under the snake tanks, hidden away from the world unless I feel a need to pull them out and admire them.

So, the Crowley Thoth Tarot! This was an early addition to my collection, both because of the unusual artwork and the historical context of the deck. Crowley's aim was to update the traditional Rider-Waite symbolism of the Tarot by incorporating imagery from science and philosophy, as well as his own personal take on the occult. He renamed many of the major arcana (Justice became Adjustment, Strength became Lust), as well as subtly adjusting the meanings of some of the minor arcana. The result is a very unique and often difficult to interpret deck, but if you're a student of the Tarot or the occult, it's worth picking up.

But none of that is why I jumped to the Crowley Thoth deck when I decided to use Tarot cards in my photos. My initial reasoning was much more mundane: they're big cards. Like, too big for me to ever get the hang of shuffling them elegantly. So that makes a great backdrop for my perfume bottles - a simple and straightforward solution for a very amateur photographer. The added bonus for me is that I really feel the use of the cards conveys that sense of "me" that I wanted. Tarot cards have been a big part of my life in one form or another for a decade now - it felt right to incorporate that love into a new one. I didn't want a homogeneous, big-brand look for my shop, either. Common Brimstone is a personal passion and I like it to have a personal touch. The cards help with that, I think.

Where I can, I've tried to use cards that can be symbolically linked to the perfume - the Death card with Grave Digger, for example - but otherwise I've chosen cards that evoke the same mood or feeling in me that the perfume does, as with Druid. When I started running out of Crowley Thoth cards that I felt were fitting, I dug back into my collection for some back-up decks. At the moment I'm slowly reworking all my photos, and the other "main" deck I'm using as backdrops now is the Tarot of the Secret Forest:

I love this deck! It manages to be both whimsical and slightly creepy, and whilst the artwork is in stark contrast to that of the Thoth deck, it has also turned out to lend itself surprisingly well to certain perfumes. This was a deck I bought purely for the art style, and like the Crowley Thoth, it subtly re-imagines the traditional Rider-Waite Tarot symbolism. I love a deck that puts a unique spin on Tarot reading - it forces you as a reader to focus harder and look deeper.

I've also got two more "backup decks" in hand for future photos - the Crystal Tarot and the Quantum Tarot. Now, the Crystal Tarot is just irresistible to me: the art work is elegant and beautiful, and it's lovely to read as well. You might recognise this image from my Lady of the Lake perfume - it's just a perfect fit!

The Quantum Tarot deck I could rave about all day (I won't, don't worry). I was a kid who hated science in school; I've grown up to be an adult (most of the time) who is fascinated by it. The Quantum Tarot is maybe the most unique deck in my collection, combining the principles of Tarot with the intricacies and mysteries of quantum physics, and throwing in some very stylish artwork as a bonus.

And if I burn through all four of these decks, you can keep an eye out for the dragon Tarot, the Sante Fe Tarot, the vampire Tarot, the Deviant Moon Tarot, the Dark Angels Tarot, and those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head...

I'll admit that I was terrified that my shoddy photos were going to kill my shop before it even got started, but I do actually get quite a lot of compliments on them, even the older, crappy ones. I can only assume this is down to Aleister Crowley.

"The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk."

Suat Eman

Dustin Hoffman

A quick glance through my collection of essential and fragrance oils will reveal I have a bit of a thing for coconut. There's regular coconut fragrance oil, black coconut, coconut ice, coconut milk, and coconut cream pie. I love coconut! What's not to love? It tastes great, it smells delicious, and coconut oil has about a million uses from cooking to make-up removal.

So when I found a supplier offering coconut CO2 I impulse-bought a bottle immediately without really bothering to read the material information. Hey, it's coconut! It's already perfect! Why inform yourself further? And let me tell you, it is pretty perfect. It has an amazing coconut flesh smell - bright, sweet, tropical, nutty, and fresh. Honestly, I love all my coconut oils, but the difference between a coconut fragrance oil and this stuff is light years. It smells good enough to eat.

There is one, tiny, problem with coconut CO2. It's solid at room temperature. The texture is buttery/fatty and although it will become liquid with some gentle heat, it re-solidifies back to a butter once it cools. So obviously this is not a material for perfume oils. Disappointing, but that's what solid perfumes are for, right?

Having recently stocked up on some great fragrance oils from the US that will lend themselves perfectly to bright, exotic perfumes, I'm brainstorming some ideas for more solids. I've got a particularly lovely puakenikeni oil that should be heavenly with coconut CO2. I'd love to know what scents you guys think coconut should be paired with too - this is the kind of material you really want to experiment and go crazy with! I can see it working with brazil nuts or pistachio, cherry or chocolate, marshmallow...maybe even some deep spices like clove. What do you reckon? What's your perfect coconut combination?

winnond

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

Sattva

Douglas Adams

This is a mish-mash post, so be prepared for rambling.

Firstly I just wanted to thank you all again for your support and purchases during last week's Earth Day Sale. With all your tweeting, Facebooking, Redditting and buying, I was able to donate £100 to International Wildlife Rescue, which is just awesome, so thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

Secondly, you might have noticed that I've put the shop in vacation mode today to catch up on orders. Some of these are orders placed last Tuesday, and the reason they are late going out is that I had a package of 5ml bottles stolen from outside my house last week :/ The delivery company and supplier have been great in helping me fix this problem, and I will have a new supply by tomorrow so I can catch up on these outstanding orders. I hate sending perfumes out late, but I'd rather have the shop closed for a few days to stop orders piling up that I can't send out on time. So that's why I'm currently closed! I'll be back on top by this Saturday and the shop will reopen asap. I'm sorry if you are waiting; please do get in touch with me if you have any questions.

So, with that straight, I thought it might be fun to chat a bit about what's coming up for Common Brimstone.

It's already been an amazing year and I'm really excited about what the rest of 2014 might hold. One thing I know it definitely holds is the next full moon fragrance - May's Flower Moon. I'm not giving away the notes, but if you're a fan of deep, velvety greens, you'll want to keep an eye out for this one.

I'm also nearly ready to start working on the next Raw Brimstone line (just waiting for one last essential oil to be delivered!), and if you're curious as to the theme for this one, take a look here. I've been brainstorming this for months and I can't wait to get started with the experimentation! My aim is to have the line ready to launch by August/September, and I'll be blogging more extensively about the theme and inspirations in the near future.

The other thing I'm going to be working on for the shop (time allowing!) is tidying up the photography. My phone camera isn't bad for a phone camera, but it is still just a phone camera, and some of my older photos are pretty awful. Hopefully I can give them a bit of a makeover over the coming months.

And outside of the shop, I just purchased myself a bottle of Di-Propylene Glycol. What's that, you ask? Well, it's a colourless, nearly odorless liquid used as a solvent in the beauty industry. Its solvent properties make it ideal for working with heavy resins and absolutes, as well as some CO2 extractions that won't blend in carrier oils. I use a lot of resins and absolutes in my work and I'm intrigued to see how they work in this material. At the moment this is all personal curiosity and self-education; I'm only interested in selling natural perfumes and Di-Propylene Glycol is not a natural product. But it should be fun to play with and I'm looking forward to sharing the results with you all (whether you want it or not).

Earth Day Flash Sale!

So something pretty spectacular happened in the shop this week. I had my 600th sale! Cue the fireworks:

foto76

This is ridiculous to me! Ridiculously exciting and just...ridiculous. I'm so grateful to everyone who's been along for the ride with me in the past fourteen months and has tweeted, blogged, reviewed, shared and talked about Common Brimstone and got me to this point. There is really nothing like discovering a passion and then being able to share it with people all over the world. It's inspiring and invigorating.

And I need to celebrate this somehow! So two things are happening next week that marked an ideal point for a celebration and a "thank you" to you all. April 22nd is my 31st birthday. It's also Earth Day. It's also going to be a flash sale day.

I'm offering 15% off all 5ml or 10ml oils in my regular catalogue and I'll be donating all the profits to International Wildlife Rescue. Their projects range from public education, working with other organisations to help stop animal cruelty and neglect, caring for dancing bears in India, to sterilising and vaccinating stray dogs and cats across the globe. I think it's a great cause to support and I'll be happy and proud to do so come Earth Day.

Ahead of the Earth Day Flash Sale, I'll be added five new perfumes to the shop, which will of course be included in the sale. I'm not telling you what they are, but keep an eye on Monday 21st for those!

Thanks again and here's to the next celebration!

"Here’s your sweet lavender, sixteen sprigs a penny...

franky242

...that you’ll find my ladies will smell as sweet as any." Lavender Sellers’s Cry, London England CA 1900

Welcome to another installment of my becoming-slightly-more-regular-blogs about some of the more unusual essential oils I'm using in my perfumes these days! Now, I know what you're thinking: lavender isn't weird or unusual. In fact, it's probably one of the most commonly used essential oils around. And rightly so; it's good for everything - insomnia, insect bites, minor burns, sunburn, menstrual cramps, anxiety...The list goes on. If there's one product I insist on having in the bathroom cabinet at home, it's a bottle of lavender essential oil.

So it's not unusual, right? It's not zanthoxylum or ruby gromwell (don't worry, I'll get to those). It's just lavender.

But there are so many different varieties of lavender, and when it comes to perfume-making, those variations can make a huge difference to a scent. I'm a long-time lavender lover so I've been slowly collecting different types of oil since I started this whole wacky perfume journey. So let me tell you a little about my current crop...

French Lavender

This is a Mediterranean variety with that classic herbaceous scent people tend to associate with lavender. To me, there's a briney tint to lavender and I notice that especially with this variant. I love that, because I love the sea and anything that reminds me of it makes me happy. But it makes me understand why some people don't like lavender - it's a strong, lingering scent and it's not as mellow or sweet as other floral oils. It is extremely versatile, blending well with everything from rose to clary sage (take Black Agnes as an example), and lending something different to every blend. If you visit my shop and see simply "lavender" listed in a perfume, I always mean French lavender.

Honey Lavender Absolute

Another French-origin material, but very different to your standard French lavender. Honey lavender absolute is produced from honey taken from hives planted near lavender fields, resulting in a syrupy honey absolute with a beautiful lavender tang. It's mellow, golden, and ever-so-slightly foodie. To me it's a pure autumnal scent and works perfectly with woodsy oils. This is one of those materials I just want to shove in everyone's faces and make them smell it, but the thick viscosity of the absolute means it's a little tricky to work with, which is probably the only reason there aren't a million honey lavender-based perfumes in the shop right now...There is September Bride, however, which showcases it perfectly, mixing it with gentle notes of hay and peach, amongst others. This is definitely an oil to convince doubters that lavender isn't just for old ladies.

Bulgarian Lavender

More floral and fresh than French lavender, this just feels like a luxury oil. Bulgaria is actually the world's biggest lavender producer - the climate and soil conditions just lend themselves perfectly to good growth for the plant. Like French lavender, Bulgarian lends itself to most perfume combinations you can imagine, and I've got a couple of works-in-progress that involve chocolate, apple blossom, and water, among other things. At the moment you can find it in Vespertine.

Sweetie Dalmation Lavender

This is a new one for me and, according to some sources, not a true lavender plant but a hybrid. It grows along the Dalmation coast and, "true" or not, it's beautiful! Lavender oils can have a slightly camphorous edge, which is definitely not present here. It's all uplifting, sunny, sweet and intense. I haven't got round to trying it in a perfume yet (that's how new it is to my), but I had to snap it up when it became available and I really think it will offer a different dimension to lavender-based blends, as it leans away from herbal. I can see it going really well with citrus oils, grapefruit especially.

I'm really just scratching the surface here too - there are numerous varieties of lavender essential oil available - Kashmir, Russian, English, Stoechas, spike...Personally I can't get enough of the stuff, so you can probably expect to see all these varieties appear in my perfume catalogue at some point. So no, it's not that weird, but it's definitely interesting and I hope, if you're not already a fan, you might be tempted to try some lavender perfumes in the future.

And if not, maybe some lavender chocolate truffles instead?

Evgeni Dinev