Thanks so much to everyone who participated an commented during the Natural Perfumers Guild Joy in January blogging event.

The winners of One Seed’s Freedom and Frangipani ml perfumes (chosen randomly from daily contributors) are:

Hemla

Einsof

Sandi L

We will be emailing you in the next few days for your address so we an send you your gift.

Hoping everyone is feeling much more cheery after 3 days of laughter and happy thoughts! Now back to my sunshiny holiday on South Australia’s Limestone Coast (Im sure I’m the luckiest girl in the world!)’

x

It’s been so lovely hearing all of your thoughts and stories about how you improve your mood during the winter season.

For my final Joy in January post, ill leave you with a quote I read this week that has really warmed my heart: “Keep your face to the sunshine and you will not see the shadows” (Helen Keller)

May your winter be just a little warmer this time around. xxx

As part of the Joy in January project, we are offering a 5ml vial of both our Frangipani and Freedom eau de parfums each day. To be in the draw, just post a comment or your story in response to this, or any of the other blogs participating (listed below). Don’t forget to include you email and name if you want a chance to win.

http://perfumebynature.blogspot.com

http://anyasgarden.blogspot.com

http://www.providenceperfume.com/blogs/news

http://www.matriarch.biz/blog.html

http://www.dameclemence.blogspot.com

http://bellyflowers.blogspot.com

http://www.roseenbos.com/category/blog

http://www.joannebassett.com/natural_perfumes

http://sororiaorganics.blogspot.com/

http://www.aromaticsinternational.com/blog

http://oneseedperfumes.wordpress.com

http://ellenoire.blogspot.com/

http://www.stephanieknaturals.com/blog/

http://www.aromatherapycontessa.com

A few years ago, I heard about Seasonal Affective Disorder (commonly known as SAD) during a time when I myself, seemed to be experiencing symptoms of mild depression with no known cause. My search for answers and a possible solution lead me to discover that SAD is more than just an excuse not to get out of bed on a cold morning.

At the risk of sounding like I am qualified to give you any clinical information, I feel that I need to very briefly establish what SAD actually is, according to the now well-accepted medical theories:

SAD has similar symptoms to depression, except that it tends to occur with seasonal variations. Winter SAD is most common. Those with SAD usually have the following symptoms: appetite change (either craving carbohydrates and sweets, or loss of appetite), lethargy, insomnia, anxiety, and avoiding social interaction.

Research suggests that a lack of light is mainly to blame, which then causes upsets to the body’s bio-rhythm and causes chemical imbalances to occur.

If you’ve ever felt apathetic and blue in winter, but energised in summer, you may have SAD.

Treatment for SAD varies from light therapy to iodised air, medication, vitamin D. But, as you know, I am a perfumer, not a doctor, so my three-day prescription will include happy thoughts, aromatherapy and laughter. And all the side effects of my treatment are positive!

Living in Australia, our winters tend to be very short (around 3 months, and still including plenty of sunshine), so I don’t profess to know what its like to live in an extended period of cold or darkness. But I have had SAD several times in the past, and still have a tendency to feel those symptoms coming on during the darker part of winter.

For me, SAD seemed to lift once I shifted my perspective. I didn’t want winter to beat me into a lonesome corner where life would be all but taken away from me for a period of time. Life is too short to be hibernating for that long. So I began to draw up a list of things to love about winter, and here it is:

• Spending more time than may be necessary in huge tracksuit pants
• No-one can see my expanding waistline
• Hot cocoa with marshmallows
• Wooly coats
• Hugging other people wearing big fluffy coats
• Long soaks in the tub
• No sunburn
• Early nights
• Move nights on the couch
• Warm fires and heaters blazing
• Listening to the rain on the roof

The list of things to love about summer may be way longer, but for everything there is appointed a season, and, if there was no winter, there would also be nothing to love about summer.

Yes, I am sitting here in an air-conditioned office while its sweltering outside, but I am thinking of you, my northern hemisphere friends, and sending you my sunshine. x

As part of the Joy in January project, we are offering a 5ml vial of both our Frangipani and Freedom eau de parfums each day. To be in the draw, just post a comment or your story in response to this, or any of the other blogs participating (listed below). Dont forget to include you email and name if you want a chance to win.

http://perfumebynature.blogspot.com

http://anyasgarden.blogspot.com

http://www.providenceperfume.com/blogs/news

http://www.matriarch.biz/blog.html

http://www.dameclemence.blogspot.com

http://bellyflowers.blogspot.com

http://www.roseenbos.com/category/blog

http://www.joannebassett.com/natural_perfumes

http://sororiaorganics.blogspot.com/

http://www.aromaticsinternational.com/blog

http://oneseedperfumes.wordpress.com

http://ellenoire.blogspot.com/

http://www.stephanieknaturals.com/blog/

http://www.aromatherapycontessa.com

Apologies for my extended absence from the blogging stratosphere. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to write about -more that there is so much going on I haven’t made the time to sit and write about it!

But if you are missing me, don’t fret…I’ll be back in less than 24 hours….

Tomorrow begins the Natural Perfumers Guild Joy in January Project. Running over 3 days (January 16-18), nearly a dozen bloggers involved in the natural perfumery industry will be sharing our thoughts about Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), and hoping to bring joy to those suffering depression symptoms during the northern winter. And, better yet, we will all be offering daily giveaways to those who offer comments or their own stories during the event. 

Of course, I will be writing from my office desk in sunny South Australia, where the weather will be a cozy 34 degrees Celsius, with no SAD to be seen just yet!

I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow!

If you could bottle your most precious memories, what would that fragrance smell like?

Image from blogs.sundaymercury.net

For each of us, it would be so different, yet many of those individual aromas would be the same. Like the smell of cookies baking in the oven, your mothers best perfume she only wore on special occasions, or your grandfathers tobacco pipe. Even the smell of your baby’s skin.

image: goldengirlbakery.blogspot.com

Cindy from blog wineonlips.com relates this memory of a genuine shoe repair store:

” …The smell… that incomparable smell of melted neoprene coupled with worn leather whisked me right back home to Chile. Every breath reminded me of grandpa’s work room where I would sit and watch him move around hoping desperately he’d give me a useful chore to do. But I only wanteonly if it would really help and not because I was a kid! I hated to be given busy work. Ha! I just remembered that! ”

Memories triggered involuntarily by our senses were first researched by the French writer Marcel Proust. Now we are all aware that certain sights, tastes, and particular smells can at times flood our psyche with uninvited thoughts and memories.

image: winonlips.com

The human ability to connect scent and emotions is so powerful and so beautiful, enabling us to reconnect with our past and even experience again, for just a few moments, those times again.

In the development of our Devotion perfume, we interviewed dozens of Australian women to discover the aromas that most reconnected them with their childhood, and  set about creating a perfume that captured some of these treasured scent memories. Topping the list were sweet spices and vanilla, rose petals, baby powder and vintage fragrances linked to their mother or grandmother. And from this Devotion was born.

Devotion is a warm, velvety gourmand fragrance. Its heart is an old-world classic floral, featuring iris, rose and geranium, like our mothers and grandmothers used to wear. The head notes are reminiscent of a warm kitchen, filled with sweet spices such as cardamom and black pepper, with a tinge of citrus, and the base is a restful vanilla and amber with accents of dark cacao.

One Seed's devotion eau de parfum

Devotion is a fragrance of a bygone era; a powdery floral like the fine perfumes of the past, as well as a modern gourmand that captures the sweetness of childhood.

We are thrilled to announce that devotion is featured in this month’s Peppermint Magazine and Australian Womens’ Weekly. *smiley face!*

HOW TO BUY IT

Devotion is available now is 50ml eau de parfum (RRP $97.00), 5ml purse spray (RRP $17.95) and 150ml Organic Double Cream (RRP $42.00)

One Seed products are available from selected boutique stores all over Australia or from our website (www.oneseedcompany.com). For details, please call 1300 747 725.

Sorry to all of you who clicked this link because you thought it was a satire, or a humorous send-up of those of us who love to shop. It’s not. I’m serious. About shopping. And about life. And about how my everyday choices impact the world.

So sit closer as we are reminded….

1. Buy local. Buying local is a preference to buy locally produced goods and services rather than those produced by corporatised institutions (ie the big guys). Buying local doesn’t mean racing down to your local 711 for bread and milk, but is related to the distance between food producers and consumers. Meaning your food has travelled as little as possible to get to you.

The best way to do this is to grow it yourself, buy from local farmers or farmers ,markets or at least buy from small suppliers who focus on buying this way. You’ll be supporting your local economy as well as saving on fuel emissions from those who carry the food.

2. Buy Organic. Mots of use try to buy organic where we can, which is evidenced by the fact that the organic food industry is growing at around 30% per annum. Did you know that conventional food contain on average half the nutritional benefits of their organic counterparts?  The average conventional fruit is exposed to at least 20 pesticides, so not only are you benefiting your body, but you are also saving the environment from tonnes of unnecessary pollutants.

3. Buy fairtrade. Fairtrade is a trading partnership that focuses on sustainable development for poorer producers by providing better trading conditions, raising awareness of their situation, and campaigning [www.stokefairtrade.org.uk]. Currently commodities being fairly traded include coffee, tea, cocoa, honey, bananas, mangoes, orange juice and sugar. Look for products with an official Fairtrade logo, which verifies their compliance with the international standards. If you start with coffee and chocolate, you’ll be making a big impact already. (For more info, visit http://www.fta.org.au/ )

4. Buy direct from the artisan. There are so many beautiful products being created by local artisans these days, from cakes and jams, to clothing, jewellery and perfume (giving myself an obvious plug here). Do you really need to buy them from a department store? You can find these artisans and their wares at markets, pop-up shops, online stores, and even from the latest wave of retailers that showcase artisans. The best ones we’ve found are Etsy, Labels to Love, Blue Caravan and Made It. When you make a purchase from these sites, you deal directly with the creator, and they receive at least 80% of the purchase price. Avoid “the big guys” that markup by 100-1000 percent!

5. Don’t buy from “the big guys”. Unless absolutely necessary. Of course, you can’t avoid them entirely, but, where possible, buy from small independent stores, markets, artisans directly, or those who support the “little guys”. Why avoid the big guys? Because they have their hands in too many pies, because they control too much of our economy, because their mark-ups are often humongous, because they screw down the little guys, because they don’t focus on the things that really matter.

6. Support small independent businesses. They are usually focused on the things that really matter. See all of the above points.

7. Make it Yourself. I’m not kidding. Trust me, your mum wasn’t just being nice when she told you she loved your handmade gifts the best. Everyone with a heart appreciates the time and effort that goes into your homemade biscuits, or jam, fruit basket, or voucher for a back rub.

8. Buy from op-shops, eBay (used) or auction. Some of the most beautiful and best quality items are those produced years ago. So scour your local second-hand stores, auction houses or even eBay for something unique and beautiful.

9. Don’t buy it unless its needed or wanted.  Let’s face it, does uncle Bob really need a huge box of chocolates? I’m not suggesting you stick with socks and jocks, but put some thought into your gift-giving, and don’t just buy because you have to buy something. Think outside the square. Maybe Uncle Bob actually needs his lawns mowed. He’ll appreciate your thought and you’ll feel good about it (and you’ll save some money!).

10. Make a donation. Not everyone will love the idea, but for those who will, instead of buying a gift they many not want or need, make a donation to a cause you know they support. One Seed supports Australia Hope International  who have gift cards for purchase on their website. You can buy everything from a toothbrush & soap ($5) to a 2-roomed house  ($5000) for those affected by AIDS, war or poverty in Uganda or Congo.

How do you plan to make a difference to your world when you shop next time? I’d love to hear about it…

I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t love the scent of frangipani, have you? One of my all-time favourite flowers, frangipani never disappoints with its delicate, etherial aroma, capturing hints of apricot and citrus notes among the clear floral scent.

Ahhhhh…it feels like summer just thinking about them! (Just for the record, as I sit here writing, it is 34 degrees celsius outside – a warm spring day in Adelaide!).

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Some Frangipani Research (PS please don’t switch off now…hold for an exciting announcement shortly)

Frangipani was the name of an Italian perfume used to scent gloves in the 16th century and named after its creator, the Marquis Frangipani. When the frangipani flower (Plumeria rubra) was discovered, its natural perfume reminded people of the scented gloves, and so the flower was called frangipani. The genus name, Plumeria, commemorates Charles Plumier, a seventeenth century French botanist.

Native to Central America, Mexico and Venezuela, this deciduous tree grows from 5-8m tall (15-24′). The leaves are dark green and shiny, and have a prominent midrib. Like all plumeria, the stems and leaves contain a white, milky sap. There are at least four distinct forms of this species: acutifolia – white flowers with yellow centres (the ones that grow in my neighbourhood); lutea – yellow flowers sometimes flushed; pink rubra – deep pink flowers with yellow centres; and tricolor – white flowers with yellow centres and a red or pink tips.

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I am lucky enough to live in a neighbourhood surrounded by frangipani trees, and I love to bring home a fistful most days when they are in bloom. (FYI – did you know that frangipani releases more of their scent at night?). I love frangipani so much that I would even consider a second wedding (to the same marvelous man, of course) just to carry a posy of them down the aisle, and have my hair adorned like a tropical goddess.

It will now come as no surprise to you that I have been working on a frangipani fragrance for the past 12 months. After several people begging to know where to buy it, I thought it may be time to send it to market.

So it is with great pleasure that we announce the launch of:

One Seed Frangipani eau de parfum.

A quintessential frangipani fragrance capturing the sweet nectar of frangipani blossoms, delicately supported by melodious fruit, floral & musk tones.

Top notes: orange blossom, bergamot, clementine, champaca

Heart notes: frangipani, honey, rose, gardenia, apricot, jasmine, sea buckthorn

Base notes: Australian sandalwood, ambrette seed, benzoin, blackcurrant

Our Frangipani fragrance is clearly one for the floral-lovers. However, I was surprised to discover my husband dousing himself in it two mornings in a row! He loves it too! And on his skin it takes on a distinctive masculine tone! So don’t shy away if you aren’t into girly florals. This is not what I would call a girly fragrance, but rather a striking summer floral.

And if you love a long-lasting scent, this is a keeper. Longevity is excellent (around 8+hours), and sillage is good but not overpowering.

To celebrate the release of Frangipani, we are giving you the chance to win a limited edition 50ml bottle (valued at $107).

Simply make any purchase from our online store of $20 or more (excluding shipping) until December 19th, and you will automatically go in the draw. The winner will be announced on Christmas Eve.

To purchase now or visit our website, click here: (and don’t forget you can buy samples of any of our fragrances for just $4 each including shipping!)

Do you have a love affair with frangipani too? I’d love to hear about it.

It’s a question I get asked all the time…”What are you working on at the moment?” What better way to let you in to the inner workings of One Seed than to answer this question every now and then….So step inside my studio with me now…

Disclaimer: this may not be me at my perfume organ

At any given time, I am usually working on two or three fragrances  - usually two that have been in the works for several months and need tweaking, and one or two that I have started but are still in the development stage. Plus several more that exist in the dark corners of my mind.

As you may recall, I have begun the creative process with a delightful sarsaparilla extract. But, being nearly at the start of an Australian summer, I have also been inspired to work on a staunchly summer fragrance, particularly focusing on citrus.

As most natural perfume lovers will know, there do not exist many citrus natural perfumes mainly due to the fleeting nature of the fragrances involved, and also the phototoxicity of many citrus oils. Here is where I intend to fill a gap. So watch this space for a (hopefully) release date of mid 2012.

There are several other projects in the pipeline also, but, alas, some things must remain a secret. I want us to stay newlyweds for a long, long time….

You would assume a perfumer might be right brain dominant, yes? Well I have news for you…But first lets start at the beginning….

I have always wanted to learn to draw well. I’ve dabbled over the years in a bit of painting and drawing (recently its been more of the finger painting kind!), but I’ve never taken the time to learn. I guess I always assumed you’re either an artist or you’renot. I’m not. (Well not a visual artist, anyway). But with age I’ve embraced my lack of skills as an opportunity to develop, and so I have signed up for a drawing class.

Last week was my first lesson. I was looking forward to shocking everyone by myhidden-and-suddenly-released talents, but, alas, the only person surprised was me.

(Now, I need to clear something up here – I’m not at all vain or proud; just the person that always assumes I’m going to win the lottery (always shocked when I don’t), be the surprise fastest in the fun-run, be discovered by a talent agent, start modern dance classes at 40 years old, and be asked to go on an Australian tour; lets just say I have no shortage of aspirations, dream, goals, and I always suspect there’s more to me, and everyone, than we realise ourselves).

So back to art class…

I am sitting in front of an easel being taught how to draw a cube which is sitting on apedestal in front of the class. Too easy, I assumed, and didn’t pay super-close attention to the instructions, because, of course, I know how to draw a cube. So 30 minutes into a 2-hour class I sat back in my chair and thought, “I’m done. Now what?” And this was the result:

I thought it was fine until the instructor made her rounds, and pointed out all my mistakes. And suddenly I realised I had failed to engage in the creative process; rather, I had used the limited knowledge I already had and gone ahead without considering new information and details. Embarassing. But a great lesson. And so, another 45 minutes and several erased lines later (who knew it could take over an hour to draw a cube!), I ended up with:

Ok, it’s no Mona Lisa, but its a whole lot better than my first effort. And more importantly, it got me thinking in a whole different way.

We’ve all heard of left-brain vs right-brain theory, but I don’t know much about it really. So I did some research (left brain) which I really enjoyed (right brain). I enjoy many right-brain activities, not the least of which is perfumery, as well as creative writing, singing, cooking, shopping (*smiley face*) and others. I assumed I was more right-brained because I tend to prefer more creative pursuits. But then I took a left-brain vs right-brain test . Apparently I am 60% left-brained! Does that mean I’m less creative than I thought? Let’s be specific; this was my report card:

“In addition to being known as left-brained, you are also known as a critical thinker who uses logic and sense to collect . You are able to retain this information through the use of numbers, words, and symbols. You usually only see parts of the “whole” picture, but this is what guides you step-by-step in a logical manner to your conclusion. Concise words, numerical and written formulas and technological systems are often forms of expression for you. Some occupations usually held by a left-brained person include a lab scientist, banker, judge”

What! A judge or a banker! But I make fragrance for a living!

So here’s what I discovered about left-brain vs right brain: being creative or artistic doesn’t mean you know how to draw or play an instrument. Being creative is a way of thinking, a way of viewing the world. Conversely, just because you are left-brain dominant, doesn’t mean you aren’t creative. It’s just that you (and I) see the world in a more analytical, sequential, detailed way, rather than a feeling, intuitive way.

By the way, smell, for the most part, aggravates the limbic system and the right side of our brain,  which is associated with memory of events, times, places and emotions. It is subjective, and looks at the whole, not at parts of certain things. Which is why we also need our left brain to help us smell;  to recognise and rationalise things .We use it for meaning, analysing, understanding, knowledge and language. The left hemisphere helps us describe in words what we are smelling and connecting with in our right brain.

As perfume-lovers or creators our right hemisphere provides us with rough information such as  ”floral”, “earthy”, “fruity”. The left side of our brain will look break it down to specific parts, such as “jasmine” or “mint”.

So, good news – I am not yet a visual artist, nor will I be named The Honourable Judge Liz Cook any time soon. Or… maybe I could do both…?