Introduction

[Guest guest]

Hi!

I'm Greyson Stoehr. I've been playing with blending

my own perfumes off and on for the past 20 years or

so, but I've gotten more serious about it the past

couple of years. I've just set up my stillroom and

I'm blending oils under the name Manna Oils.

One of the reasons I was so " off and on " was because

with the advent (and onslaught) of all those

artificial fragrances around the late 1980's/early

1990's, I suddenly found most perfumes sent me into

fits of asthmatic agony. In the early 80's I had

purchased a couple of beginner's blending kits (that

still came with animal by-products like ambergris,

casetoreum, musk, etc.) and mostly just had fun

alongside my actual fascination with more traditional

perfumes like My Sin, Arpege, Joy, etc. Basically, I

went from wearing perfume all the time to mostly

wearing none at all. The whole perfume market had

become toxic to me.

In 2005 I stumbled over Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and

their (then) all-natural perfumery. I could suddenly

both wear and enjoy perfumes again, and this

retriggered my interest in blending things on my

own--but with the emphasis on all-natural. I'm not

sure that BPAL is still all-natural, because something

changed in 2006 and I've been having allergic

reactions to most of their 'reformulations' and new

blends, but as I don't know for certain, consider that

" my possible opinion " and not a fact. But once I

could wear perfumes again, I did not want to go back

to NOT wearing them, so I began searching out other

etaillers who do all-natural perfumery.

This year is when I began to mix my own, partially

because I find perfumes with about 20 different notes

as overwhelming as I do modern cuisine that has about

13 different taste 'notes' drizzled through a

dish--it's too much for me. I prefer rather plainer

stuff; I believe both my nose and my palate are more

sensitive than in general, and as I have that

'synethesia' (sp?) condition where my five senses

cross over all the time (e.g., I see colours when I

smell or taste things; colours have taste, etc.), I

think that's a contributing factor to my love of less

complex blends.

I would consider myself " a somewhat educated

beginner " .

I hope to join your group and to share information

with all of you!

Greyson

PS to Mods: Your 'prompter' email to new members has

a hyperlink to post to that sends our intros to

moderators only:

" Hello

Thank you for applying to join Natural Perfumery!

We'd like to know a little bit about you and what

drew you to the art

of natural perfumery. We ask all applicants to

write a personal

statement to -owner

telling us a little bit about yourself and your

qualifications, whether you're a newbie or a

seasoned perfumer. "

You might want to give it the Groups posting address

instead. And Anya, your Inbox is full and can't

accept more emails! *grins*