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ScentHive reviews Zohar Perfume + NEW Body Oil

"The luminosity of the top notes becomes a little hazy, the buzz of musky honey and the fuzzy legs of bees dance around the trees".

Thank you to Trish Vawter of Scent Hive for the lovely review of Zohar perfume + body oil. Even just reading her review transported me to my childhood's orchard and made me smile. 
 And, since you've asked -
Yes, we have a new body oil this spring!
I created it especially for my trip in San Francisco back in March and wasn't even thinking of selling it. But once I saw how excited Trish was about it, I decided to make it available to you too.
Hope you enjoy it!

Grin Body Oil

Green -  DSIR0201-g by Bahman Farzad
Green - DSIR0201-g, a photo by Bahman Farzad on Flickr.

Some products are inspired by unique materials, and others by unique people. The idea for Grin body oil came about when I had a lot of left over Boronia absolute from the large batch I've ordered from the distiller (or should I say extractor?). But it didn't manifest until a very special customer of mine, Melinda Huntley, asked for it. And so it is now for everybody to enjoy!

Grin body oil has all the goodness that my Song of Songs body oil has (squalane, avocado oil, tea seed oil, fractionated coconut oil, jojoba oil and vitamin E), but with Grin's elegant, cool, green floral scent. It has many precious absolutes: boronia, violet leaf, rose, jasmine form Egypt - which is why it is a bit more expensive than the rest - $35 for 15ml.

And one last note: depending on popularity, I'm considering bringing a larger size for the body oils, in a lovely glass bottle with a pump, 60ml. This will be of course more expensive than the 15ml, but will be much easier to get out of the bottle. It will be priced at about $85, for saving me the trouble of bottling and labeling 4 smaller bottles :-)

Would love to get feedback from you about this packaging, as any new packaging is a big investment (getting a big number of them is only part of the cost of new packaging - it also will require designing and printing new labels, photography for the website, etc.)

Grin Body Oil by Ayala Moriel
Grin Body Oil, a photo by Ayala Moriel on Flickr.

P.s. The picture is of my trial batch, which was at 2.4% - a little too high, so I reduced it to 2% which I think is just perfect... Also, the Indian jasmine I used in my trial batch was a little too indolic, so I replaced it with Egyptian jasmine, which is more sheer and less indolic.

By Ayala Moriel on 2011-06-04


It's sunny and warm in Vancouver (at long last!) and before I head down to Spanish Banks for my first seriously long swim of the year (hopefully!) and spend the rest of the day soaking up the late spring sun, I was determined to create a Grin scented body oil. The idea was long in the making, ever since I obtained a more substantial amount of the rare boronia absolute, which *almost* makes this luxury logical. Boronia is uber expensive, and including it in a body product is bordering on madness.

The formulation was pretty much done yesterday, but I didn't make it to the blending/experimenting stage last night. I've already decided on the base oil - incorporating silky and non greasy oils such as squalane, camellia, avocado and jojoba, which I did in Song of Songs. I was contemplating using argan oil in the base, but decided against it, thinking that for a spring scent that light, the base should be light as well. Argan is fast absorbing and beautiful on the skin, but it's very emollient and rich - and not quite what I thought suitable for this scent's texture.

The scent itself is a modification of Grin perfume, adopted for a skin formulation both concentration and ingredients wise. It's crisp and green, yet sweet, with jasmine, rose and boronia making up the most of the heart accord, and hints of woods, violet and galbanum round it off and add crispness as well as depth. All in all, it smells like a spring flower garden - lily of the valley, green leaves, violets and snowdrops. I have a patch of Grin body oil on my left arm, which makes my skin feel smooth to the touch and like a breath of spring to my nose. Can you see my smile?

Sugar, Oil, Salt...


Using pure and simple ingredients for making nourishing and uncompromising bath and body products. To avoid the whole notion of needing to use powerful synthetic preservative and emulsifiers, I've avoided using any water altogether in these products.

Instead, using light-weight yet moisturizing natural oils such as jojoba, virgin coconut, avocado, tea seed, rice bran and shea oils, I've concocted a simple line of body and bath products that I love using and wanted to share with you. Fractionated coconut oil helps to improve these nourishing oil and create an oil base that is fast absorbing and that leaves the skin silky and moisturized for more than a day, yet without clogging pores or feeling greasy at all.


Anointing oils, highly fragrant and act like a perfume for the entire body, leaving it moisturized and nourished but non greasy. I'm really excited about sharing these oils with you, I've been experimenting with a few types of oil bases (mixtures of various nourishing oils, along with the fractionated coconut oil to give it a non-greasy finish that is the natural equivalent of a "dry oil". Not all perfumes are suitable for body products. I chose the ones that incorporate beneficial oils to the skin. My personal favourite so far is Song of Songs, which stays on the skin the longest (24 hours later, when I bathe again, the warm water releases the scent yet again from my pores!). White Potion is more delicate and releases the scent better on the skin than from the bottle. The salycilates in the tuberose tend to get camouflaged in the oil bases and remain dormant. They won't wake up until they hit a warm living skin... The Tamya tropical oil is really fun. I am hoping to package it in a spray bottle rather than a pour-bottle. It really feels like a "dry oil" and the scent is very light and refreshing. Megumi is the newest addition. I created a vetiver base first (there was a gentlemen who kept requesting a vetiver body oil), and I felt it really needed a little extra something, which is the jasmine as in Megumi. The spiciness is due to the addition of ginger and cardamom, which are less irritating to the skin than the allspice in the perfume formula. It's a very warm, woody and sensual scent with a light jasmine tough that makes it feel more perfumey.


Sugar scrubs are my favourite way to exfoliate. A good sugar scrub should be easy to work on the skin and my personal preference is for scrubs that exfoliate as well as moisturize and nourish the skin. It saves that step of applying a moisturizer after bathing, which to me is a huge bonus as it saves time! Most of the sugar scrubs I like are quite messy in the bath tub, which although requires more frequent cleaning of your tub (which is never a bad idea), is a lot of fun in the process. Scrubs that in addition to the sugar have exfoliants such as ground nutshells or coffee beans are among my favourites... the sugar itself dissolves in the water. The ground nuts and shells should be large enough to not stubbornly stick to the surface of the tub.

I made my sugar scrubs with both white and brown sugar, and added exfoliants such as cacao nibs and ground coffee, in a carrier of vegetable glycerin and nourishing oils. after using them you don't need a moisturizer, and the skin is left exfoliated, soft and non greasy.


Bath salts, a pure way to unwind and cleanse the body from toxins. Although these are not by any means new products (I launched them on Mother's day 2009) - I just created a larger size packaging for my bath salts, and will change the collection a bit. The Lavender, Licorice & Vanilla bath salts are a very slow seller so I will likely discontinue them and will replace them with a Vetiver scented bath salts. I found some really neat bath salts that I'm excited to use - Ancient Canadian Sea Salt from Manitoba!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
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