Dance of the Spirits

Aurora in her liquid form has returned! The formula is the same thus there should be no to very little shifts in the fragrance of this botanical perfume. Unlike many of my other perfumes, Aurora is quite simple in her composition, with only seventeen individual essences and no accords/chords. One of the precious ingredients is a carnation absolute from France that is absolutely stunning and I am happy to say was instrumental in getting me to start making botanical perfumes. I adore the spicy floral scent of carnations.

On Saturday I asked Greg to pick me up some fresh carnation flowers for new photos. He brought back a bouquet of deliciously scented red blossoms which I used for multiple shots including the solid. I still have more to do. If you feel inspired please let me know which photos you like the best.

Since people are becoming more and more visual and less into reading specifics about a purchase, I took some photos with a ruler to indicate size of the vial containing 1 gram of fragrance. I used my Women Rulers of Science for the shots.

Almost all varieties of Aurora are now in the shop, including a bottle from the 2012 edition and in the new honey bee cases. The round flat tin will be added shortly.

The name Aurora was chosen for the sparkle quality of the fragrance which reminded me of the phenomena that occurs in the sky at the magnetic poles of the Earth, both in the north and south. The Cree refer to the aurora borealis as Dance of the Spirits, which works rather nicely with Greg's image and a botanical perfume created with grape spirits.

The illumination that accompanies this fragrance is a detail of an image by Greg titled Snow Faerie, featured in his 2009 Calendar Divine Nature. The image is available in his shop with a set of postcards and a fine art print.

More To Bee Features

To add some brightness and cheer to this rather dismal rainy day here in the woodland I have two reviews of To Bee to share. The first is over at the Eyeliner on a Cat blog and the second is at Now Smell This. The latter includes a review of Aurora.

Enjoy, please add your comments if you feel inspired. My gratitude to Carrie and Jessica who both purchased items from the shop and then wrote their reviews. Let's support writers who support and honor indie natural perfume, hooray!!

Bee Prosperity image by Greg Spalenka

Scent of the Day: AURORA

"The stars are putting on their glittering belts.
They throw around their shoulders cloaks that flash
Like a great shadow’s last embellishment."
~ Wallace Stevens

The scent for this day is Aurora liquid perfume. The mythological messenger God, who carried the dreams of Morpheus is associated with Wednesday. In keeping with this mercurial theme, it seemed appropriate to bring this news to you this Mercury day.

As my daughter and I walked to the car early this morning we noticed a heavy, floral fragrance in the crisp morning air. It literally stopped both of us in our tracks. The intoxicating bouquet was a combination of sweet greens with jasmine. The Jasminum polyanthum is in full aromatic display now and her warm, exotic fragrance fills the air.

Aurora is a floral perfume with threads of spice reminiscent of carnations. Heart notes include Jasmine as well as Rose and Ylang Ylang.

It's a very busy day here in the studio today, thus I leave you with Divina's inspired review of Aurora:

"What beautiful, twinkling magic has been weaved in this amazing, heart-moving fragrance? Because it is surely magic, or at the very least the magic of art and love, that make this fragrance evolve so stunningly on the skin, going through countless transformations that seduce the senses one after the other..."
Read the rest of the review at her blog following the link

Scent of the Day: AURORA

I've been working on the latest edition of Aurora. Last night I went to sleep saturated in her aroma and dreamt in the tone of floral. At 4am I was wide awake, go figure. I'm wondering if it had to do with the verdant Spring energy that is currently pulsing through the plant life here in the Santa Monica Mountains? Or, was it all those stress relieving essential oils in Aurora?

Today's agenda is full and includes, but, not limited to:

• A blog post about Coraline
• Bottling, filling orders and a trip to the Post Office
• Working on a few articles
• Working on GreenWitch, the Buenos Aires inspired perfume and the liquid of Cimbalom

Wishing you all a very verdant day!

Read more about Aurora at this link.

{ AURORA }

"Star bright, star light,

first star I see tonight,

I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish 

I wish tonight."

The solid perfume aspect of Aurora is ready. The fragrance originally came into this earthy manifestation as a liquid perfume. The notes of the creamy unguent are very close to the the perfume extrait/extract.

Here is a little snippet from a post here on our journal regarding Aurora:

"Although Lyra was released first, Aurora is the initial floral perfume I created. Back in the nineties I had sat down to recreate the aroma of carnations shortly following a Natural Perfumery class I had organized at the Bodhi Tree. Originally titled Experiment #2, Aurora has a spicy floral quality reminiscent of carnations."

The carnation quality is subtle and due to the combination of floral and spice. The main odor chemical in a fragrant Carnation flower is "eugenol", this component is found in high concentrations in the essential oil or absolute of clove.

Perhaps you have already noticed that each perfume has a color association as well as an illumination created by Maestro Gregorio. The color harmony for each perfume is chosen from our color palette. The challenge is matching the specific hue & tone in the corresponding painting, to the right crochet thread for the pouches and the wax sticks. Sometimes all this takes time to put together, it gets even more complex if  it is a new perfume that also requires a name.

The naming of a scent is a bit of a drag, very different from naming a painting. Although one can approximate a carnation type of aroma with just a few essences, our natural, botanical perfume contains over twenty. I added a bit of my precious carnation absolute from France just for Divina of the Fragrance Bouquet Blog, who in December wrote a lovely review of the liquid version of Aurora, here are a few of her words: 

"What beautiful, twinkling magic has been weaved in this amazing, heart-moving fragrance? Because it is surely magic, or at the very least the magic of art and love, that make this fragrance evolve so stunningly on the skin, going through countless transformations that seduce the senses one after the other..."

Read the rest of the review at her blog here.

The illustration we use to illuminate Aurora is a detail of Snow Faerie, an image by Greg, it is featured in his 2009 Calendar titled Divine Nature. See more of Greg's artwork at his website

Here is a site which offers carnation seeds, and this one. According to an acquaintance, I was told to hunt for the Mini spice and the Valentino mix since they contaie the most fragrance.

For the largest selection of Aurora, in all her guises, head on over to the website.

Aurora at Fragrance Bouquet

"What beautiful, twinkling magic has been weaved in this amazing, heart-moving fragrance? Because it is surely magic, or at the very least the magic of art and love,
that make this fragrance evolve so stunningly on the skin, going through countless transformations that seduce the senses one after the other
while its creator humbly proclaims it "simpler" than the creations that followed!"

That is just a morsel of the inspired prose by Divina on our botanical perfume Aurora. Hop, skip and follow this link to Divina's Fragrance Bouquet Blog for a delightful, insightful and artful review.

Aurora perfume extrait is available at my etsy shop in a variety of quantities from .25 gram and 1 gram vials to the 7gram bottle. The solid perfume version arrives in January.

Roxana Illuminated Perfume™

Natives & Flower Perfumes

The box with little sampler bottles arrived yesterday as I was formulating a new perfume. It was a super busy day. I poured Vespertina samples in the morning, pondered packaging with Martha while eating delicious croquettas, crossed hills and valleys for a few more native plants and finished up the second edition of both Aurora and Lyra.

Vespertina, Lyra and Aurora currently make up the triad of our floral perfumes. Many new ones are in the works and will be released as as Spirit guides me. Some of you have had little sampler previews enclosed with your packages.

Although Lyra was released first, Aurora is the initial floral perfume I created. Back in the nineties I had sat down to recreate the aroma of carnations shortly following a Natural Perfumery class I had organized at the Bodhi Tree. Originally titled Experiment #2, Aurora has a spicy floral quality reminiscent of carnations. I consider both these botanical perfumes much simpler than the ones which followed. In fact “Q”, Chaparral, Vera, Vespertina and Sierra have quite a number of chords which are specific to them. I suppose it would be easier to develop one wood chord that would be used in all of of my perfumes. Alas, that is not how my inner artist functions. By the way, I prefer to use the word chord, instead of the French accord. My first perfume teacher used that name and it stuck. In most perfume circles you will notice they use the French accord. To be honest, I never quite understood the concept of using a word in a different language than the one we speak in. Perhaps this is because my first language is not English.

This morning I will be putting the native Salvias I purchased at the Theodore Payne Foundation into the dirt. The dirt chord I have been working on smells too much of patchouli, so that one will need some tinkering. The Three Graces are beckoning me and the new perfume needs her final accessories.

Roxana Illuminated Perfume™
Greg Spalenka
Image at top and bottom ©Greg Spalenka, Carnation engraving placed on parchment by Roxana.

The Golden Compass: Trailer

Years back, on the recommendation of our English friend Jeremy, I picked up the book "The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman. It was one of a trilogy entitled "His Dark Materials". I have been reading books to my daughter Eve ever since she was a toddler. Thus, every night before bedtime, we would snuggle in my bed I would read aloud. We absolutely adored the first book and quickly ravished the second and third...as well as "Lyras Oxford". During this time, my beloved partner was in Texas working on a film. I mentioned to him how extra ordinary the books were and that he would be a perfect visual fit if the book was ever made into a film. Divine forces conspired and he found himself working on visual development for the Golden Compass right here in Los Angeles. We have been counting down the days for the release of the film. It looks like Philip Pullmans masterful story has been honored and interpreted well. What a relief! Fox really blew it with Eragon and The Dark is Rising. Kudos to Weitz and New Line for their great skill in translating a great novel to film media.
The perfume I created entitled Lyra was named after the heroine. Aurora and Amber also allude to the epic trilogy.
The Golden Compass Website