American Maker 2013

The team over at Martha Stewart have a competition at the moment titled American Made Audience Choice Awards. Artisans entered the competition by selecting the category (food, craft, design, style, gardening, or technology) their work best fit into then filling out information and adding photos, some even entered videos.

I submitted myself into the Style category and am currently recruiting votes daily, find me here. People who sign in have the opportunity to cast six votes within a 24 hour period. Meaning if you vote at 10am on Tuesday, you can't vote again until 10am the next day. The six votes can go all to one person, hint-hint. Plus, every time you vote, you’re entered into a sweepstakes drawing for prizes from Martha Stewart and their sponsors.

Voting ends on September 13th, 2013. The six nominees with the most votes in each category will receive an American Made Gift Basket and be featured on the Martha Stewart website and on Sirius radio. From this group of finalists, the audience will choose our Grand Prize Winner. I'm not sure how many votes I'll need to win, at this point I am doing everything I can think of to get the word out. If you have any suggestions for me please e-mail me. (roxana illuminatedperfume com) There are some nominees that as of August 27th have over 6000 votes. Not quite sure how they managed that (cyber robots?) luckily votes don't seem to be the only determining factor.

If I am selected it would be a huge PR boast for my business, as you can imagine. The Martha Stewart audience is an ideal niche for Roxana Illuminated Perfume, specifically since I weave together elements of the artisanel movement (gardening, beekeeping, flavor) with an authentic handmade item that is very much about beauty and high craft.

To cast votes, here is what you do:
1. Register, create an account with an e-mail addy and password.
2. You have six votes to cast every twenty four hours.

I'm working on a daily newsletter that would prompt you to vote daily. If this is something you would like to subscribe to until September 13th send me an e-mail (roxanailluminatedperfumecom) and I will add you to the list.

At the site you can see some really nicely done videos of the winners from previous years and others they have chosen to highlight. Some of them really choke me up, like the one of Erika Allen of Growing Power, Inc.

LOVED this one for Shane Confectioners.

While on her site I came across a video of Aerin Lauder sharing How To Make Perfume. Aerin showcases natural raw materials and talks about them as if they are contained in the fragrance, even mentioning Indian jasmine. My guess, since this is big brand perfume company, the fragrance is composed by a perfume house that are using something they term Indian jasmine recreated with synthetics. There is also a video on Capturing Peony Scent where chemists analyze the aromatic components of a peony from Martha's garden using via head space technology, they then recreate the scent in a lab using synthetics.