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New Online Workshop: Visual Tools for Perfume Design

New Online Workshop: Visual Tools for Perfume Design
Excited to announce a new, stand alone online workshop: Visual Tools for Perfume Design.
Using visualization and accessible techniques to assist perfume designers in their creative process and brief development. In this online event, we will discover how to utilize simple, everyday techniques and technologies such as phone photography, inspiration boards, journaling and more to help boost your creative process in the realm of olfactory arts.
During the workshop, Ayala will demonstrate through case studies, how she uses visual tools in her creative process of fragrance development, from inspiration and brief development, copy writing and marketing.
Participants will also experience some of these techniques through interactive exercises using simple, everyday materials and tools.
Date:
April 30th, 6:00-8:00pm Jerusalem Time (GMT+2)
Link to the Zoom classroom and list of materials and tools needed for the workshop will be emailed to you upon registration.

My Summer Scrapbook



Courtyard beauty: this is papyrus by the pond.

Summer is coming to an end in just about a day and a half... It's been a very sweet, yet short, summer. And I'm glad I was able to get some rest in preparation for the busiest season, commencing tomorrow, with my week-long intensive week about Orientals!

- This sign marks the site of daily pilgrimage: Sunset Beach...

Easter Lilies, blooming in summertime at the pond in my building's courtyard.


Summer squashes, leeks and mini artichokes at West End's Farmers' Market


Red Currants at West End Farmers' Market


Twisted carrot legs, sitting atop a carrot sandwich cookie (that's right - it's filled with cream cheese frosting!). In the background is a roobois chai tea, the perfect companion to carrot cakes OR cookies...
Angel's Trumpets: the full glory of their scent to be discovered only at dusk.

Continue reading more elaborate summer fragrances and flavours in this post.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Summary of Summer: Fragrances and Flavours


Just by the building that gives all the services possible to bathers of Sunset Beach, there grows this mysterious little tree, with the most intensely smelling flowers. They look a little like jasmine, but smell like honeysuckle. Their scent intensifies around sunset and after dark, and makes saying goodbye to the beach even harder every evening!


Here here: a less brighter image of the cafe at Sunset Beach. The closest swimming beach to my house, albeit probably not the cleanest... It's never too crowded, and always very peaceful - which is what I love most about it. I was able to not only contemplate on my Orcas perfume there, but also swim alongside a seal!

Red currants in the West End Farmers' Market: these actually taste awful, if you ask me. Kinda bland and sour with an unpleasant aftertaste. No wonder why the mostly cook them into jelly! Black currants, on the other hand, have a much stronger aroma, probably less agreeable, but I love them. Go figure...

Afternoon tea @ Noriko's: these are Yuzu Imo Yokan (these are jelly-like consistency sweets to accompany tea). She served them, of course, with the most flavourful Japanese green tea - it had no additives, yet had a peach or osmanthus-like character!

Noriko also gave us these miniature sour plum & shiso rice crackers, which are absolutely adorable...

Rosemary and two types of seaweed at Sunset Beach. There is a whole bush of rosemary there, and it is going to play a big role in a perfume I'm working on called Orcas, which I've been blogging about throughout this summer...


Just a bunch of (dead) crabs...


Zucchini flowers: my first time trying them this summer. One time I stuffed them with rice and baked them in olive oil. They turned out fantastically crisp and delicious.
Other time, I stuffed them with herbie soft cheese and sauteed them in olive oil, they did not hold their shape as well as with the rice, but were just as if not more yummy, and a very nice addition to a summer salad!

Angel's Trumpet: by night time, these trumpets are like a feast for your nose. All you need to do it place it in the trumpet and inhale the candy-like, heliotropin citrus and flowery perfume of this datura type of flower.
Hard to believe it belongs to the same family as tomato, pepper and eggplant!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Olfactory Quilt: Spring 2008 in Vancouver


Urban Daisies, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Spring is about to come to an end come June 21st. And since I usually prefer to spend my Springs in Israel, this might be my only chance to create this type of collage on SmellyBlog, capturing my impressions of Spring in sequence from March till June. Besides, I feel this Spring was the first one I actually “got” – just like an obscure and fleeting perfume that won’t easily let you discern it’s different notes. Being spoiled with Middle-Eastern Springs, that are all about a showy explosion of flowers – both colours and smells – the subtleties of a West Coast Spring have escaped me for years.

Spring in Vancouver always seem to arrive early, with the first brave tree blossom – plum and cherry. But it is the daffodils and the tulips that announce it more explicitly, encouraging kindergarten and schoolteachers to decorate their classrooms with yellow cutouts of certain floral shapes.

Daffodils
Daffodils have a scent that I am yet to be able to describe. It’s altogether clean and soapy and at the same time has that dirty indolic floral underlining it all. And tulips have no scent at all for all I can tell from a floral perspective – perhaps one can smell a green hint from the petals and the stingy odour of pollen.

Mysterious and invisible blossoms
It seems that here, the tinier the flower, the more fragrant it is. If the air is not completely washed out by air, you may detect an overall floral intoxication lingering in the air. Deemed urinal-smelling by some, to me this is very similar to the scent of wild narcissus from back home. However, this is happening at the very beginning of spring, when there are hardly any blossoms to be seen – definitely not narcissus. It took me 10 years to gun down the source of this olfactory pollution: privet blossom.

Magnificent Magnolias
Magnolia Highrise, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Magnolias are not just a Southern thing (although the porch pictured below may as well pass for one). There are trees in every shape, size and colour spread around the city, and I am very thankful for that. There are white magnolias, pink magnolias and even very dark red-wine magnolias. The most beautifully fragrant are the white and the pink (with some exceptions – each tree has it’s own unique scent it seems). The flowers are outrageously beautiful. Glorious really.

Magnolia, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.


Magnolia, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.


Cherry Blossoms

Cherry blossoms are the never-tiring cliché of spring just as much as almond blossoms are in Israel’s Tu BiShvat. With the strong influence of Japanese culture in Vancouver, there is in fact a (quite) Sakura festival happening in the city, the centre of which takes place on the weekend, under the cherry blossom boulevard of Burrard SkyTrain Station. I have missed this year’s festival but you could say I constantly celebrated with my own perfume tribute to the poem “In A Station of the Metro” which is my interpretation of this exact locale. With this and thanks to the whimsical hot-and-cold weather prolonging the season (freezing the flowers and than defrosting them, almost literally!) -it’s been certainly a Sakura spring for me in more ways than I can reveal in such a short paragraph.


Parallel Horizons and Vanishing Points, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Hyacinths and the 7 S's
Hyacinths hold a special place in the Persian New Year’s celebration. They are presented as an offering on the table with the 7 S’s (Haft Seen) – various objects (mostly living objects – such as fish and sprouted wheat) to bless the new year. Hyacinth symbolize life and beauty. Within closed quarters, these grape-like clusters of blue, pink or white flowers may be overbearing, but outdoors in the gardens on the typical chilly spring days, they are green, fresh and beautiful and positively intoxicating.


Hyacinth, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Tulips
In contrast to the fragrant hyacinths, these bulb flowers have no scent at all to write home about. Perhaps there is some greenness about them, but if there is any scent at all I suspect it comes from the pollen-covered stamens. Tulips of all shapes, colours and patterns take over the city for a short period of time, and if you are not careful you may get convinced that you are actually in the Netherlands during early April. This particular tulip in the photo looks like a flame, with its dark (nearly black) petals trimmed with gold.

Flaming Tulip, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Lily of the Valley
Come late April, and silver bell-like offerings of lily of the valley pop up in high end flower shops around the city. Although they could, you will rarely see them growing in gardens. This year I have made a point of filling my home with little bunches as long as I could find them. Needless to say, I did not regret it one bit!


Lily of the Valley, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Miscellaneous beautiful flowers, of now particular scent
The following is literally a collection of flowers that caught my eye and that have become iconic symbols of Vancouver’s spring for me. Bleeding hearts, with their drop-dead-gorgeous jewel-like designs; Irises, both yellow and purple, popping up in skunky marshes and ponds; poppies with their strange un-red colours or the cultivated gigantic vermillion awe-inspiring opiatic presence. And lastly, this strange passionflower-like climbing shrub that I discovered in the back garden and I have no idea what it is.


Bleeding Hearts, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.


Sun-washed Poppies, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Sort of a passionflower, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.


Iris, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Peach Scented Flowers
The identity of this bush/shrub is unknown to me and it bloosm with the most enchanting peach scent that reminds me of both lilac, osmanthus and of course - peach. If you know its identity, please do tell.

Peach Scented Flowers, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.


Rhododendrons and Lilacs
I’ve already raved about the beautiful rhododendron gardens of the city before and I could probably blog about them every day when they’re in bloom. Needless to say – I’m smitten with rhododendrons and the variety of colours, shapes and fragrances they add to this green & gray place I’m living in. The particular combination of rhododendron flower on a backdrop of lilac bush in full blossom is like adding a cherry on the top. Now, this is a perfume.

Rhododendron & Lilac, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Summer Just Around the Corner

Jasmine after the rain, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

You know summer is at the door when the peonies start to bloom and when you can smell the jasmine flowers in my balcony. I picked a little bunch of jasmines for a building-block photoshoot (the results of which I hope will be of much use in the not-so-far future on both my website and printed guides). Just three of these small blossoms were enough to perfume my entire bedroom. This was your daily-dose of an aphrodisiac.


Pink Penoies, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

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