You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'soivohle perfumes' tag.
Just a quick stop over to update the blog. It has been our busiest holiday season yet. And on top of that so many wonderful reviews and mentions of our perfumes. This past week Mark Behnke from Fragrantica wrote a wonderfully inspiring review of Oudh Lacquer, and Michelyn Camen for Fashion Tribes writes a moving tribute to grandmothers by way of our Writing Lyrical Poetry Perfume, which was inspired by my own grandmothers. There are at least three more things that I know of in the works. So thank you to everyone who has thought enough about us and our perfumes to take the time to write about them.
I have had some news on our inquiry about renting space in the city. I have the option to take a regular monthly space with a year lease, or I can through the art center rent a space just for their monthly opening. It would be akin to a trunk show. Setting up on a Thursday and being open to the public on the following Friday and Saturday. I am thinking of doing this first to see what the energy is like, and to take note of the attendance. It has been so long since I attended one of those events and even longer (17 years) since I had my art studio in that building. Wow how time does fly. The owners are also making a ground floor shopping mall, with storefronts built to order. I am not sure what the rules are on this. But would assume they require business hours, which would require me hiring someone to run it. Or to be there myself. My time is limited as is, so driving down to the city every day is out of the question. Am going to go take a look at all of the space options after the first of the year. If we go with the one time deal (to start). I am thinking April would be a good month to start. More later….
Flying off the shelves. Almost literally. I was up late boxing perfumes, and am running low on so many things. I have set up to start batching out perfumes, but will not have anything ready (if we run out now) until after the holidays. Most of the low stock items are in the Studio and Moderne Collections. I had made double batches of the most popular Natural scents and the newer ones were triple batched to start with. Crazy, I was going to make some soaps, but never found the time. I will make soap after the holidays. And allow myself more time next year to prepare. Seems like three months isn’t enough.
Peace & Blessings ZZ……
We are continuing this week with our free shipping on orders over 50.00 and free shipping plus 10% off on orders over 100.00.
Don’t forget to check out the on sale perfumes. They are marked down by 20%.
SOIVOHLE.COM SHOPPING CART – Was informed early this am that there was a glitch with our shopping cart. When checking out it is now mandatory to choose an option in the US SALES TAX BOX. Ohio shoppers choose your state, everyone else choose the top option No State or Provence. This is a new thing, and we have no control over it. So if there is a problem or questions email for assistance. Thank You…
GIFT BOXING AND WRAPPING – We will box and wrap your items and ship them to your party at no additional charge. Our gift box options are the standard white box in the photo, with white parchment style wrap paper, and black satin or grosgrain ribbon. We have sizes large enough to include bath products such as tub teas, bath salts, or our all organic gourmet drinking teas. Mix and match is fine, just tell us what you need and we will make it happen.
What a week, the sale has been keeping us very busy, and at the same time trying to create some inventory. This is always the problem, keeping up with the demand. I am going to have to set up to make samples, which is an all day job. Plus continuing to bottle and box. Love Speaks Primeval dropped this week, and for the first time we are selling more bottles than samples in the online shop. Usually people will purchase samples first. Not with this one. A lot of die hard vintage style chypre lovers out there. I am wearing it today. And I must admit, I smell goooood…… And for those who might be thinking it is too green, it isn’t. The balance of the actual chypre accord pairs nicely with the florals and other grounding notes. It is completely genderless on my skin.
Sneak Peek: I received an pdf file of the upcoming article on Oud featuring Oudh Lacquer for AYN Magazine. It is absolutely gorgeous. I am not sure when the magazine comes out, but have asked for permission to share the article. Wow do those folks do great work!
Monographs – I recently wrote a monograph of Grand Canyon for The Scented Salamander Blog. After receiving several positive responses to the piece, I have decided to add Monographs of all the scents in the line. Or at least the ones that have a back story. I will work on these as I have the time, but eventually plan to add a section at soivohle.com, to showcase them. Some of the stories are very interesting, as I did a lot of research for them, as it related to the perfume that was being created. It isn’t going to come about over night but is on my list of things to do.
Satellite Location – I am no where near where I need to be to open the boutique next week, and I have been thinking about renting a space in one of the big artist studio buildings in the city. Years ago I had a studio in the Pendleton Art Center, and am seriously considering renting a space. I have a few friends who have their art studios out away from the city as I do, and may be able to get a couple of people to share the space. The center has open house (gallery hop) every final friday and saturday of the month. It is well attended. Eight floors of studios. I would only use the space for the end of month openings, networking and retail sales. Sharing with a couple of painters would leave me some floor space to set up a counter/ display case for perfumes. It would be a great alternative to having a retail location in the city. Less expensive and I wouldn’t have to hire a staff… I would still take appointments for custom work at my home studio as I do now. But not have the boutique.
That’s all I have for now, getting back to making up samples, my least favorite thing to do.
Peace & Blessings ZZ……..
SOIVOHLE HOLIDAY SALE
NOVEMBER 16TH THRU 21ST
10% OFF EVERYTHING IN THE ONLINE STORE,WITH COUPON CODE PERFUME
This is in addition to our everyday savings that include
free shipping on orders over 50.00
free shipping plus 10% off on orders over 100.00
HAPPY SHOPPING
Soivohle online: www.soivohle.com
Bringing in some of the plant’s today, before the cold gets them. Continuing to move things down to my new space. Not to mention trying to remember where I am putting them. Had all of the Cologne Suite’ perfumes in a big box (packaged singles and samplers) and could not find them. Kept going back over and over, until poof! there they were right in front of me, and the box was marked too… Still organizing the studio/boutique for the holidays.
Area News – The girls at Cincy Chic are hosting a fall showcase (fashion show) on Nov. 7 at the Phoenix. We were invited, but at too late notice. sounds like fun. Maybe next time. Saturdays are our big day during holiday hours and we will be in full swing on the 7th.
Also of note: Oudh Lacquer will be featured in an article on Ouds in a middle eastern magazine. I am hoping to get a copy sent to us. Just to have it would be awesome. Aside from newstand fare, have never seen an arabic language magazine. So looking to expand my horizons.
Reviews: Having a hard time keeping up with it all. Scent Hive, Nathan Branch (two posts), Perfume Posse, Fashion Tribes, Uptown Social (uptown magazine) and Specktra.net have all written positive reviews of Oudh Lacquer. Perfume Posse also featured a very cool review of Bottleneck Blues. Thank You! everyone for your support.
Everyday this week has been a late night packing orders and boxing perfumes. Trying to get a few things boxed ahead for the holiday rush, as well as bottling up some of the new oils. Which is what is on the agenda for later today. Also the new Soivohle’ natural parfum: Love Speaks Primeval, will make it’s debut soon. I ran out of bottles last night so it is out to storage to bring in a box of mini parfum bottles. I will also be bottling JoJo and Sunset Rider parfum. Since adding the Grand Canyon in parfum back to the collection we have almost sold out, so batching that as well. I had not worn Grand Canyon in such a long time, I poured myself a small bottle and have been wearing it at night. Like March from Perfume Posse wrote in a story last year, it is a perfect scent for wearing to bed at night.
Our new brand has a dragonfly theme, and I have been looking for a mini charm, so far no luck. There are lots of them available but none that I really like. I have also looked at some perfume bottles with dragonfly designs, but still nothing is popping. Will keep looking. The parfums in the collection will be available in a roll on, but at the same time I would like to be able to offer a slightly more concentrated version of each scent in a nice flacon. Will keep searching… (notice I spelled it flacon instead of falcon) I misspell that word more often than anything else I think, and spell check doesn’t catch it, and if I am too lazy to double check, well you know how it goes. People send me emails all the time pointing out spelling mistakes, so here’s to all of you proof readers out there. Me and my dyslexic fingers thank you for your time and diligence.
Off to work now, have a dinner meeting later so will cram in as much work as possible before heading out. Have a great weekend and stay warm all you folks in the cooler regions.
Peace & Blessings ZZ…..
Sounds like something out of the bubbly pit, but for Soivohle’ it is a rose perfume.I created this scent back in the spring, thinking that I would release it late summer. The formula is one from many years ago, with a few updates. Another in the one of a kind, limited edition realm, where the carrier is comprised of floral tinctures. In this case it is Phlox (the tall garden variety) Grape Hyacinth, a citrus and spice tincture and apple. On its own it is quite sweet, and adds depth to the overall fragrance. I can detect the apple in the opening as well as the heart. A nice natural apple, that plays a supporting rather than domineering role in the parfum. Overall it is Rose dominant. A Floral Chypre/Oriental Type. In plain alcohol it is a completely different scent. People have remarked in the past about the change in line up of our perfumes, and this is true to some degree. There have been a few limited production scents that are no longer available, and with this new scent as well as the Oudh Lacquer, the carrier is a unique formulation unto itself. With the Oudh lacquer it can be duplicated, and will be at some point, but due to the difference in the agarwoods themselves, a slight variation is to be expected. With this new Rose scent, the carrier depends on future years production of the live flowers, and the tincture and or enfleurage from those flowers. I could just make all of the perfumes in plain alcohol and be done with it, but this is not what makes it interesting. There has to be something artistic, unpredictable, nebulous and fleeting in the process, and with the natural parfums, I am able to express to the fullest this desire and ideal.
I am waiting until next year to release a Gardenia scent in the natural collection. It is set into a mock orange tincture. My mock orange has not been the best in the last few years, possibly due to our dry conditions. We had tons of rain this year, so I am hopeful that next spring the mock orange will be overflowing with blossoms and at that point I intend to make as much of the enfleurage as possible. I have said before and it bears repeating. I have no idea why this is not commercially available. They are so easy to grow and when they produce, are abundant in fragrant blossoms. They carrier fat overflows with the scent of the flowers.
Also, in repeating. The Jasmine heavy scents will be back. They have not been discontinued. These include JoJo, Sunset Rider, Quan Yin and Yin Hao. I will not be changing the Jasmine percentages in the natural collection, but will be using a variety of different jasmines. I will rework the modern collection jasmine accords. This will probably be the case as well for Writing Lyrical Poetry. It is one thing to comply with industry guidelines, and another to totally strip a perfume of its soul. My intention is to be true to the integrity of the perfumes, and at the same time, make a few non invasive changes. I made it pretty clear when we had the sale back in the spring that many of our scents would be getting a makeover and that some would not be coming back at all. To date the only scent not coming back is Allegory. We are not stocking many of the oil perfumes, yet they can be special ordered. Our new brand which will debut in a sneak peek in a few weeks are all oil parfums. The entire line will be alcohol free products. Oil and solid parfums, room sprays and related products. All of our perfumes, minus the limited editions, can be special ordered. People special order things all the time.
We are in the middle of expanding my work space in the basement, which when finished will be completely closed off and directly adjacent to the lab, which is a separate room. As such the temporary set up for packing and shipping is in the studio, and is a total mess of boxes, packaging materials etc.I have my fingers crossed that we will have everything finished by mid October, so that we can be open for the holidays. Not sure if we will be doing an open house party this year. With Mr. Z running for public office, and all of his other obligations, it is a mad house, and I am taking it one day at a time. Again…Fingers crossed…
Peace & Blessings, ZZ…….
Our fall newsletter went out on Monday with our new offerings. All of which are now available on the soivohle.com website. We will make a formal announcement later, but for now at least our customers and interested folk have our news. Included are our natural Oud scent Oudh Lacquer, this is the scent that was going to be launched last fall but due to so many other things going on, I opted to wait a year, which didn’t seem all that long since it took a year just to make the carrier tincture for it. The name is somewhat of an homage to my father who was a custom car designer and painter. I remember many times going to the shop with him and just about falling over from the lacquer fumes. Back in the day when they would paint a car and then, build up thin layers of clear lacquer to give the appearance of great depth. Not to mention that signature lacquer shine. I had named the scent before I ever started working on it. Having an idea in mind, thinking of my own 1977 Black Corvette and the glorious shine and sensuality of it all. I loved that car. I have never met a sexy car that I didn’t like, but that’s another story for another day. We have had excellent feedback on the Oudh Lacquer, as well as the Bottleneck Blues, a tonk fortified scent. Lots of tonka love out there. The Bottleneck story is out there, but I had never really discussed the back story on Oudh Lacquer. Last night before going to bed I applied the Oudh Lacquer to the back of my hand and a light layer of Bottleneck Blues over it. Wow! Talk about base note overload, but in a really good way…
I had planned on releasing one more natural parfum this year, and may still do so. It is a touch more girlie than the last few scents. A mix of oriental, floral and chypre. Set into the tincture carrier that I made from Mock Orange Enflourage and Grape Hyacinth. Flower batches dating back to 2003 through 2006. From my own gardens. I have an abundance of true Mock Orange, as it grows all along our back fence line. The last two years have not produced a very good yield of flowers, but I am always hoping for a good year. Next time I will triple my production or more, maybe enough to sell some of the pomade. We will see. It is a lot softer than Orange Blossom with hints of sweet linden. lilac and lily of the valley. Very floral, which works wonders in this new composition that I have created. I am surprised that a mock orange absolute is not available. It would be very inexpensive to make, since the flowers give up an abundance of essence, and the plants themselves grow to the size of small trees. In the right climate it could be a gold mine.
Now that I have a few things under control, I am going to focus on our new brand for awhile. All alcohol free. Our first offerings will be oil perfumes and lip/body balms. I am still undecided about the bottle for the oil perfume. Roll on or regular bottle with screw top. The roll-ons seem a bit more casual, I don’t know, will decide later. I am still looking at sample bottles, and have not made any kind of decision.
That’s it for new stuff. I am going to go for a walk, and enjoy a bit of this beautiful day. Then back to work later.
Peace & Blessings ZZ………
I posted this on facebook last week, but didn’t get very far otherwise. things have been busy around here. Not just work but family, cats and reorganizing my brain to accommodate my newly expanded lab space. Or I should say work space outside my lab. I hope to have enough shelf space when it is all finished. T o increase inventory of packaged product, and move my packaging area downstairs and out of the boutique. and…Hopefully by the time I open for the holidays in late October early November, the new space will be finished and things moving along much smoother. But back to Ezra. I keep getting emails about the perfume, and it is now available on the website under Moderne Collection – Special Projects. It is a 4ml parfum. I will make note of it when I send out the newsletter later this month. I have been waiting so as to include the new Oudh Lacquer and Bottleneck Blues. I hope to be able to start boxing these by weeks end. I am also starting to bottle some of the perfumes for the new brand. I know I have been a bit vague in talking about this. Mainly because we have had some issues with part of the name. This however is being worked out. If you go to our website www.lizzornperfumes.com and click on brands, you will see a link to the new website. Everything in this line will be plant based and alcohol free with the first launch a series of oil parfums. Some of these are existing formulas that people will be familiar with and others are new. The newsletter will have a link to a sneak peek and limited time pre-buy, the site will launch officially after the first of the year. On the home front, Things are getting crazy around here. Mr. Z is running for a seat on our Village council, as well as accepting the grand pooh-bah position in his lodge. Of course he is on his own with all that, but eventually it spills over, so I am pacing myself. Due to all of the press and recognition this past year he is also expanding his garlic crop. I am happy that he will be planting my beloved Nootka Rose again. And speaking of garlic I am going to make pizza blanco today, a white pizza with butter roasted garlic and cheese, yum. With a big fresh salad. And a few trips around the block on the treadmill 
Peace & Blessings ZZ…
In the next weeks I will be making some changes to the natural perfumes collection. When we launched the first collection they were all parfums. The eau de’ perfumes came later, and as a result some of the scents where we offer both, will be scaled back to the parfum only. This is directly due to sales. The parfums in some scents out sell the EDP’s by quite a margin. So instead of tying up resources in the edp’s they will be discontinued. The ones that I know of for sure are Grand Canyon, Sinti and Misetu. Once the current stock is sold out, we will only offer the parfum in these scents. I can’t say why the edp’s are not doing as well. Perhaps it has something to do with the staying power of naturals. Maybe the parfums last longer and therefore are more desirable for this reason.
I have also begun work on a new series of parfums that will be part of the Moderne Collection. They will be mostly natural, but still rich with high end aromatics. Parfum formulations are really my favorite. This is where the art can really be distinctive for an artist. I know it is that way for me. Each note like the stroke of a paint brush or the strum of a chord. Wildly coming together like a little sparkle of harmonious bliss.
Peace & Blessings ZZ……
By the time Arliss Howard and Debra Winger set their ambition to a film adaptation of Larry Browns collection of short stories “Big Bad Love” I was already a fan. Mr. Z turned me on to Larry Brown and together we read all of his books. This is saying a lot for someone (me) who doesn’t read a lot of fiction. Heck I don’t even like fiction. I had my fill of it in my younger days, and much prefer reading poetry, philosophy and non fiction. The closest I get to fiction these days is in the reading of plays. I almost love reading them more than watching them. We read Larry Brown back in the 90’s when his stuff was fairly new, and he was an up and comer. He died in 2004 from a heart attack, he was 53.
Larry Brown was a regular guy, from Mississippi. Lived in and around the same area his whole life. A fireman turned writer, with a keen sense of atmosphere. Not unlike Caldwell’s Tobacco Road. Browns layers of dirt, sweat, humidity and grift fall out of the pages and onto whoever is reading it. Like the dark damp rivers edge at midnight, there is an uneasiness in the air, and in the breath. You feel it, you ponder it, you become it.
I was not all that impressed when I first heard about the Big Bad love film project, yet I did have hope. I knew that if anyone could do justice to the work it would be someone like Arliss Howard,. A jigsaw puzzle of short story shorts, pieced together, with remnants of Browns tortured soul. However, in looking back I have to say the thing that brought it home for me was the soundtrack. Arliss Howards wife Debra Winger had a lot to do with the soundtrack. To me it would have been pure joy working on such a project. Comprised almost entirely of Delta Blues, the soundtrack is a who’s who of later day giants. People like RL Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, T- Model Ford, Robert Belfour and Kenny Brown. The kind of music that when you got your hands on an old recording, listening to it was like going to church. It was spiritual and it was deep. You knew that those folks felt the music to the pit of their soul, and there was no way that wasn’t going to rub off on you. That’s what you knew for sure.
So as I sit here now I guess I have some folks to thank for my current state of affairs. And for keeping me centered and my eye on the prize. I could just as easily done a series of paintings to document my love affair with the blues, but somehow after having the actual perfume, complete and wafting through the air I could not imagine it being in any medium other than scent. Scent so captures things in a way that nothing else can. From Big Bad Love, Larry Brown and Arliss Howard. To Son House, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. This crazy story takes yet another turn. The thing that I am feeling now is that it doesn’t have to end. I would like to do a whole series of scents based on the blues. I am not sure how it will go, but I know that it will be fun, inspiring and right up my alley.
Peace & Blessings ZZ……..
