Last couple of weeks have been more than busy. And that means very little blogging for me, which I am very regretful about.

As far as writing goes, I've been busying myself with some writing (an ongoing project with Eden Botanicals), as well as a lengthy proposal writing as part of an application process to a prestigious event that I really want to participate in this coming winter.

And what has been taking the best part of my time are the shows and fairs. It seems that every weekend there is something happening and I have very little if any time at all to reflect and recollect my thoughts and share them with you here.

But what you're probably more interested to hear about is what I've been brewing in my little studio (pictured above, you finally get to see where I work and create all my sweet smelling stuff).

Well, I've been working on several custom perfumes, simultaneously. A higher than usual number of them this month, actually. Which is very exciting! Custom perfume creation is one of the most challenging, fun and rewarding parts of my work. And they are all turning quite interesting too. That's the part I like the most about custom scents - the ideas of scent combinations that I've never thought of before and probably never would have thought of either.

I've been also formulating scented body oils, which is something that I hope to add to the product line by the 2010 holiday season. The most successful of all is Song of Songs, which deserves a whole post on its own. I've been meddling with a few other scents but am not as happy with the results as I am with the Song of Songs body oil. In fact it is so fantastic that I've nearly used up my 50ml trial bottle (well, 15ml of it went to Laura to try as well!).

And I have a few other perfumes I'm working on for quite sometime (not that my collection needs any additions, mind you!). I usually tend to obsess with just one particular topic for a while, until I get it right. Right now though, I'm less focused than usual, and I have a few experiments going on simultaneously for a few months, which is rather confusing, to the point that unless I look at my notebook or my treasure box of "in progress" - I would really be having a hard time explaining to you what I'm up to!

A few of them have an osmanthus theme. It's a very tricky note and I am trying to explore ways of pushing it further to different directions, including the perfume I've been processing in my brain forever as a tribute to New Orleans.

Another note I'm trying to push to the max is clary sage. There is so much potential in clary sage that I only am now beginning to discover - amber and tea are the two interesting focal points that I'm exploring in this note.

Tobacco is another theme that has been going on for a while. I am working on a very specific tobacco scent that I really, really, really hope would turn out well. The concept is that of fruity narguilla (aka shisha or hooka) tobacco. Anything fruity is a challenge with all naturals, and those tobaccos are so artificially flavoured it's difficult to nail down something of that atmosphere. But more about this later. It really does deserve a post (or more) of its own, so you get to take a peek at what's happening behind the scenes with that one.

And aside from all these wonderful aromatic explorations, I've also am going back to school to study French! Which is so exciting. It seems that there are just not enough hours in the day to get everything I want done and learn everything that I want to learn.

It's time for bed now... However, I will be back more this coming week with more thoughtful insights into raw materials and my creative process turning them into perfumes.