OK, cheesy title I know. But... we're back! We are officially married and had a fabulous honeymoon. My brain is still on St. Petersburg time, but I promised you all a Big Announcement, didn't I? So, here we go.

We're going to be changing our pricing structure in the coming weeks, hopefully in your benefit. I'm adding two new product sizes as well - 1 oz solid perfumes and 1 oz eau de parfum. Here's what the prices will look like with the update:

At any rate, these changes will be on the Etsy shop and site within the next few weeks (and fully finalized by July 10). And if you do order something before the change has been made, I'll happily refund you the difference, of course.

Next update: we'll talk about summertime! We're launching six new catalog fragrances and two limited edition fragrances, all of which I am terribly excited to show you, plus I have so many photos from Russia and our wedding to post.

As always, let me know if you have any questions, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

This image was on my tumblr this morning and it just made me intensely happy. I know, I'm a nerd. I thought you might enjoy a happy image before I give you some bad news, at any rate!

We will be closing shop orders a week earlier than expected because I am just insanely backed up between all of the amazing orders we continue to receive in response to our Spring launch, as well as a lot of things that I owe various members of the press. Not to mention, my stock is quickly dwindling! Yikes!

Please place any orders by May 7th in order to get them before we leave Seattle. Any other orders placed between May 7th and June 21 will not ship until early July.

Speaking of that tumblr, my friend Megan and I have a co-tumblog now at Owls Go, where we're exploring mori fashion - a Japanese trend that is similar to the boho trend in the states but with slightly funkier silhouettes, lots of really fun layers, and the cutest, fairy-like details you've ever seen. I tend to post mori finds on Etsy while she tends to post Japanese mori finds, though we've been collaborating on all fronts really. I just love this style.

_{P.S. Why yes, we did get in to Urban Craft Uprising. Yay!}

It's officially been three years since we started selling fragrances on Etsy. (Happy Etsyversary to us!) It's been a wild and crazy ride. A recap, shall we?

• 2007: we launched four fragrances, in a "dust" theme, because I was obsessed with Laura Veirs' song "Dream Dust". We were launching fragrances in 5ml amber apothecary bottles at the time, because, and I never admitted this, but I was a BPALer with no knowledge beyond the indie fragrance realm then.
• Late 2007: I came down with pneumonia and the shop closed until June 2008. It was a bad way to end a good year. I spent most of those six months reading perfumery blogs and books (and watching copious amounts of TV - and eating way too many hot dogs - while cooped up in Texas).
• 2008: I don't even know how many fragrances we launched; that seems like so long ago. But on Black Friday 2008, we were featured on Design Sponge's holiday gift guide. That was a 0_0 moment if there ever was one; Phil and I spent a good three weeks packing tiny little samples vials - we were selling 1ml vials at an introductory price of $1.50. It was a mess. Never go to Pike Place Market on Black Friday. I will never do that again.
• Early 2009: I was working part time as a designer, and trying to make it all work and failing quite miserably at it. Postal errors abound. This was not a fun time to be in business, but we got the issues all ironed out eventually.
• June 2009: I was supposed to go to an IFRA conference in NYC that got moved because of the swine flu scare. (Um, hi, I actually got swine flu once that year at a different conference, but y'know, thanks for ruining my plans.) So I spent a week in NYC smelling everything in sight and seeing old college friends.
• Late June 2009: The week I got back from NYC, the day I started a full time design job, I was a featured seller on Etsy and my world was turned upside down...again. I have a lot to be thankful for from that post, but I will also get on my featured seller soapbox if you let me. Since this is a list, we'll just say...thanks for all the fish. :)
• Late 2009, part a: Lots of press. We launched Eos, the world's first fragrance made with carbon neutral materials, with Blue Marble Energy, were featured in Bust's Dec/Jan issue, and were generally all over the place.
• Late 2009, part b: Lots of shows. And do we mean LOTS. OF. SHOWS. We launched head first into the holiday craft show season and did basically every one we could get in to, which was six. Or maybe eight. I can't remember; it was such a blur of truly awesome people and perfumers and soapers.
• This year: We've focused on formats and updating our image. It's 2010, after all. We have gorgeous new lotions and eau de parfum sprays and maybe a few other things in store this year.
• The future: Only time can tell! But we have so many exciting things in store. Besides a show & smell in April, a media event in NYC in May, and getting married in June... there's a lot to look forward to!

I can't tell you how much our success has been built around having an Etsy shop in addition to our website; the site itself has finally picked up and is about neck and neck in sales, but for so long we've relied on Etsy. It's the bulk of our business, and we have such loyal customers there, and can't imagine life without it.

So there you have it. A mushy recap from a misty-eyed perfumer over here.

Some other noteworthy things:

1. Spring is live on Etsy. Will come to the website shortly.
   
2. We will be closing for the month of June due to our wedding and honeymoon on June 5. Please get any orders in by May 15th to ensure delivery before we are bogged down in details. I would hate for you to miss out on something!

We had a tremendous time at the Vampire Masquerade Ball in Portland a couple of weeks ago. Besides the awesome sales we made, we met a lot of new friends, hung out with a veritable rockstar gathering of scent crafters including Haus of Gloi and Starborn Alchemy fames, and just had a merry old time in our finery. I wish I had gotten better pictures, but alas — the lighting doth sucketh.

These last couple of weeks have been kind of up and down over here; I had a cold last weekend which bumped my SakuraCon plans, and have been busy ever since prepping the shop for Spring! We've got four lovely new ladies joining us this quarter and I am excited to say that they're all gorgeous. Want a sneak peek? Of course you do:

• JESSIE: Soft and in a quiet sort of way: she has lovers half-a-score, always someone to adore, from the first train in the morning, till the last train out at night. The wafts off the pipe from a gentleman's hazlenut tobacco are mingled with flirtatious nuances of apricot and layered on a dusky base of rosewood.
• NELL: We met, 'twas in a crowded room somewhere as someone sings, in the ballroom I spied an angel wanting wings. She floated in a gay quadrille, mazurka'd, polka'd as well, but whirling in the waltz the darling, she tripp'd an' fell...

  A tea fit for any such party: gilded roses, a bouquet of carnations, and a black tea sweetened with milk, spiked with a smattering of cardamom, and a peach slice swimming where a lemon should be.



• LIZIE: A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment. - Jane Austen

  The scent of a proud and unapologetic Springtime: glistening tomato leaves on a bed of mossy earth, sticks of fresh rhubarb, and a bouquet of everlasting flowers and orange blossoms.



• MARY:
  As we walk'd down the meadow green,
  To view the flowers just springing,
  Down on a mossy bank we sat,
  Just as the lark was singing.
  Down on the primrose bank we lay,
  I am sure there was no one near us.
  And then I kissed the ruby lips
  Of my lovely Blue Ey'd Mary.

  Droves of daffodils, wildflowers and unkempt rose bushes, the lady's favorite tangerine tea, and a black cherry confection. This is a sumptuous afternoon of listening to the birds singing and sitting along the damp embankment as the rain begins to clear.

Much of my inspiration this year is coming from 18th century Scottish bawdry ballads, which I found and fell in love with in the last couple of seasons. Mrs. Hooligan makes several appearances among the ballads and seemed only fitting to be their marm.

I'm also busy at work on the remaining year's fragrances, so please drop us a line — or better yet, leave a comment! — if you have any requests. The website will be getting its seasonal facelift, a few collaborations are afoot, and a new retailer or two is coming on board in the next few weeks. So many exciting Sweet Anthem things, so stay tuned!

P.S. If you enjoy our Etsy shop, stop over for a Spring Cleaning sale! All domestic orders $20 and over receive free shipping!

Well, we are nearly on our way to Portland for the Vampire Masquerade Ball, even though there are still seemingly a thousand things to be done between now and noon tomorrow. And then noon tomorrow and Saturday (the least of which being a fitting with Sarah Seven, who is creating my wedding dress. Gosh. Where does time go? But here's a little taste of our new bottles, which some of you saw previewed on Twitter last week.

We also have really fun, new branded boxes for you to take them home in (though photos still forthcoming), which I am more pleased about than I can even begin to describe. They're all stacked up on my kitchen table right now and it looks like we're carting cakes to Portland rather than perfumes. So cute and stunning. At this point, it's hard to imagine that we started with humble apothecary bottles three years ago.

More ways we're celebrating our third anniversary as a perfumery: after many many many many many requests, you can now get full-scale bespoke services in our Etsy shop. This has been a long time coming, and since our design-your-own perfume production has been so successful, I decided there was no time like the present.

Sessions range from $100-150 depending on chosen size of your final product, and you get four samples based on your inspiration and ideas to choose from. And of course, your fragrance can be extended into solid perfumes, lotions, and candles and more when ready.

Lastly, I'm working on four new fragrances for Spring. I didn't think that I would launch any what with all the busy, but a wave of inspiration hit me this week and my nose won't let me keep things bottled up. So to speak. I'm excited about this amazing weather. And April on the horizon. And the longer hours of sunlight. Aren't you?

Enough rambling. See you next week!

I haven't decided yet if we're going to stick with the four-perfumes-per-quarter release thing this year or not, but in the meantime: have a new fragrance! Our limited edition Valentine's Day fragrance, called Amelia, was released in our Etsy shop over the weekend. This is the fabled icy-bergamot-of-death / tuberose-black-cherry concoction I was tweeting about last month. It is sultry, sexy, and sinful, but ethereal and musky with twinges of wood. To boot, $5 from every bottle of Amelia sold will go to the American Red Cross Haiti relief, and the first five bottles sold will come with a FREE Madeline cupcake fizzie made by our good friends at Dirty Laundry. Only 8 ounces of this aviatrix-inspired fragrance have been brewed and after that, it's gone!

In other new news, although this may not be news to most of you, I decided to update our packaging for 2010 with actual waterproof labels rather than the twine-hung tags we'd used in 2009. We've begun the update on our glass bottled fragrances and will figure out what to do with our solid perfumes + other potential offerings soon, but we've had some really great feedback so far about the update. Everything from "stunning!!!" via Twitter, to "they're both like a classical book cover and an event announcement" via our Facebook fan page, where I debuted the new product photography last night — which I'm pleased as punch to say I took myself.

Also notably, our full size (1/2 ounce bottles) now ship in 100% recycled brown jewelry boxes, tied with some custom silk screened ribbon that was handmade by Taylor Made Designs on Etsy.

That's enough for you to chew on momentarily; in the meantime, I want to know what you think about the new look.

Once in a former life, I was an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) developer. I helped companies move from the nether regions of Google to the top rank in their selected keywords, so I generally like to think that I know what I'm doing when it comes to SEO best practices and where to go to find the best SEO information on the web.

When I was an SEO, SEO Moz was basically my blog Bible. I'll admit, my site right now does not have the greatest SEO score — though I am on page one for my top keyword &mdash but since my fiance recently was hired at SEO Moz as a developer, I've taken more interest in it again.

(Disclaimer: I have not been in any way asked to write this or compensated for this blog post. These are my personal opinions.)

Enter Open Site Explorer, a new free tool from the SEO Moz crew to browse external links pointing at your site (or shop, in this case). For the next 48 hours, the pro version is free to evaluate, which is why I'm posting for the second time today. (I know, that's unusual.)

What's it good for, you ask? Well, it's good to find new sources of links for your brand, and good for finding out who's already talking about your brand. It is replacing the Yahoo! version of this tool, which Micrahoo (Microsoft merged with Yahoo!) will be doing away with sometime in the coming months.

Read on to see some screenshots and learn how to evaluate your Etsy shop using Open Site Explorer.

Apologies for not warning you of this sooner than yesterday, but we will be closed as of now through Monday morning, Jan 11th to play catch up and take inventory. We had a ton of sales over the break (thanks!) and I'll be trying to get as many as I can out by end of next week.

A shopper on Etsy recently asked me a question about our perfumes' longevity, or how long they last on the skin, and I gave a pretty lengthy answer that I thought might help some others out. So here you go! Here's my two scents cents about how to tell whether or not one of our perfumes (or any, for that matter), will last a long time on your skin:

While your personal chemistry does make a bit of a difference, here are some general things to know:

• our feminine perfumes are roughly 85% concentrated and our men's colognes are 40% concentrated, which is typically much higher than regular department stores. which means a little goes a long way.
• our foodie scents and resinous scents tend to last longer than some of our other citrus/floral scents.
• our perfumes are oil-based (vs. alcohol-based), which will usually help with the longevity factor.
• there's a handy new chart — more on some of our web redesign (sometime) soon — on our website shop with a category called "body". I consider this not only to be if the fragrance is light or heavy, but also a good indicator of how the throw and staying power is. If the fragrance has a body over 3, you're probably in for a long haul with that fragrance.

The best way to tell if they will last, of course, is to try a sample or two, and to try them more than once. Sometimes your mood, the alignment of the planets, and/or your hygiene can affect how they wear. The other sure-fire way to make a scent last is to layer it with a similarly-smelling body product, or using them as scented oil in the bath as well as a body fragranace. I've also heard spraying or dabbing some on a scarf or using a scent locket works better for some people.

Hopefully that answers some others' questions! I have a lot more news to post, but... I'm running out of time for this weekend already, and it's only just begun!

Love for Money Valentine by OwlyShadowPuppets

I'll admit, these purchasing dates are somewhat conservative and I apologize for not announcing them sooner, but I would rather be safe than sorry. Please place any orders by the following dates to ensure Valentine's Day delivery.

Domestic

• Custom Perfumes, Custom DIY Kits: Jan 25
• Catalog Perfumes: Feb 1

International

• Custom Perfumes, Custom DIY Kits: Jan 20
• Catalog Perfumes, Stock DIY Kits: Jan 25

As always, in the event that a perfume is delayed by the postal service, we can give you a printable Valentine to tide your sweet baboo over until the package arrives. We also recommend adding insurance on international orders since we cannot traditionally track these.

I hope that I am getting better about communicating reasons why our turnaround times are so steep; but slow perfume is slow. Beyond the curing issue, we also wrap and decant everything at the time it is ordered, which can sometimes include making packaging on the spot as well. It's just a time consuming process and I would rather be as meticulous about it as humanly possible (as I'm sure you'd rather, too!). Please know that your patience is definitely appreciated, and even rewarded!

Do drop us a line if you ever have any questions about when your fragrance might arrive.

It's that time of year again for New Year's resolutions. I'm not normally one to make personal goals that I can never attain, but I do believe that the only way to accomplish a task is to know what you want when you first begin. I decided to skip personal resolutions this year (my to do list is already long enough) and work on more business-related resolutions.

Please do not hesitate to provide any thoughts and feedback you might have about 2009 and its ongoings, and I will be sure to take everything to heart as I prepare for 2010. Hope everyone had a happy holiday! We are still on break until next week, so for now I leave you with my inspiration mood board for our 2010 resolutions.

10. Save more of everything.

The rest are after the jump. :)

"My biggest indie challenge is hitting the off button, setting limits for myself, or putting myself on a normal schedule. Most days I work from the time I get up till I go to bed. My idea of an extended vacation is fifteen minutes out by the pool in the evening with a cup of tea. But at the same time I am very low key. So I can't really complain. I am doing what makes me happy."

Liz Zorn, in a recent newsletter on the Indie Beauty Network

Liz also says in the article: "Our niche of hand poured small batch perfumes isn't quite so niche anymore."

Nose Words isn't so much of a new column in this blog as it might become an inspiration board. Things I need to remember, interesting stuff perfumers and perfume critics have to say, and ideals I agree with or would strive to adhere to. I read a lot, but barely write about it. Maybe this will at least get me back in the blogging habit. :)

It's been awhile since I blogged about anything really pertinent and it's mostly because blogging about my life right now might seem really dull. It's a lot of rinse, lather, and repeat. But I've been working hard to ramp up my productivity and really improve my customer service for the shop.

As everyone is well aware by now, I was floored with orders from the featured seller spotlight and had no idea before then what I could really handle. Now, well, I know what I didn't know before. I have identified a lot of problems with how I run my shop, post my listings, and have devised solutions for each.

Problem: Manually keeping track of order status is time consuming, wastes paper, and wastes energy.
Solution: I built a brand new Order Tracker where customers can now search the status of their order on their own when I am MIA, which I am bound to be with having a 40-hour a week day job on top of this. Using Mail Merge and Excel, I managed to swiftly import my sales data to my Movable Type interface right here on this site.

Problem: Custom sample packs are too hard to produce in a short amount of time.
Solution: Unfortunately, with the way that Etsy delivers its sales data, it's just too difficult to track buyer notes for more than ten orders at a time AND keep my turnaround time at a minimum of 14-21 days. So, to keep me sane, I will not be posting listings for custom sample packs in advance of purchase. I will only be listing pre-picked packs with plenty of variants involved. If you still prefer a custom pack, you must convo me for a sample pack to be created just for you.

Problem: Custom DIY kits are too time consuming to produce for the price offered.
Solution: Like sample packs, DIY kits will come pre-packed with essential and fragrance oils that I've chosen to represent a genre or category of perfume. Similarly, layering notes will be grouped in 4's and 8's in terms of octave in the olfactory scale or perfume genres. I'll have new add-ons for the kits where you can purchase an octave for a reduced price, or purchase solid perfume kit in lieu of a basic oil kit. Again, I'll try to list as many varieties as I can to cover all the smelly bases.

Problem: It takes too long for me to ship my larger items.
Solution: Unfortunately, perfume is a waiting game and I can't always brew ahead of time. I don't know what I'm going to need down the road. So I've broken up the perfumes into two groups: catalog and on demand.

• Catalog perfumes are, just that: items in our general catalog. We'll keep these on hand as often as we can and just won't list them if they're not in stock. If we're out, you can reserve a perfume for shipping when they're back in store at a date we'll communicate to you upon reservation made. Turnaround time: 14-21 days or TBD.
• On demand perfumes on the other hand, are brewed in smaller batches and might be listed in advance of their brewing. Their turnaround times will be longer because of their brew nature. No reservations are accepted for OD. On Demand perfumes will also include ALL custom work not already mentioned. Turnaround time: 21-36 days potentially.

Beyond these solutions, I've also detailed exactly what types of products we'll be listing when we reopen, but I'll have to save that story for another day. Please comment if you have any questions about the new solutions!

It was a really tough decision, but I've decided that I won't be vending at Urban Craft Uprising this summer. I apologize profusely for anyone who was looking forward to getting their sniff on, but I just don't have the stock (let alone the energy for a two-day crafting extravaganza) right now. Everything has been spoken for by outstanding featured seller spotlight orders, and every time I think I finally have enough stock of something, I run out. Good golly. I never expected this, at all.

That being said, I'm still hard at work cranking out packages and I have really appreciated everyone's patience. All of my customers and supporters have been fantastic and I cannot thank you enough. It is just me around here, but I did also have a little bit of help from my boyfriend, at least, helping me to tag and label and drag stuff to the post office, and keep me sane when things got a bit rough the last couple of weeks. So, we're getting there. I think I am down to the last 50 packages with only 25 orders remaining to produce. PHEW.

I have a couple of other things on my plate, too, which is kind of making for some interesting exercises in time management. I am hard at work on a DIY tutorial for Indie Fixx, one of my all time favorite blogs. Additionally, I have a few graphic projects, including a logo for an old bandmate of mine who is now the Director of Comedy at Breakthru Radio (how rad of a title is that?). And lastly, I'm attempting to streamline my processes further so that when massive rushes like this arise in the future (one can only hope?) I am much better prepared.

To that end, there will be some changes around here when we reopen in September (I am taking the ENTIRE MONTH OF AUGUST off of retail - yay!). I won't be removing any fragrances, but some will be sold in limited supply only. We'll have a few new formats, and I'd like to start doing more one-off, limited edition runs, and focus more on custom and DIY perfumery and events.

I'll have more details as I know them, of course, but that's the weather as it is now. Speaking of the weather, it is STIFLING in Seattle and the heat is making it difficult to melt wax properly. I'm hiding out in corporate America as long as I can afford to today.

This is just a drive-by type of post because I have oodles of other things to be doing (even other blog posts I ought to be writing), but I wanted to post a brief an update behind the scenes from the 48 hours as a featured seller on Etsy. I did a lot of research beforehand to other featured shops' successes during their live spots, analyzing what they sold and how many, but never imagined this. One user convo'd me to say, "Holy cow! You are on fire! This makes me afraid to be on the front page." Too true (it's a tarp?). Hopefully this post might help future featured sellers know what to expect.

Analytics
Google reports show that 6,800 unique visitors found their way to Sweet Anthem on Monday, while 5,100 found their way on Tuesday. Hits from the featured seller page or homepage count as direct, apparently, but I won't wax on that.

Other sources of traffic included Craft Cult, Etsy Snack (?), the etsy_finds email, and Facebook, and of course, Twitter - while users homepages include Yahoo!, Ravelry, and Flickr.

A visitor's overview for Monday looked like this:

• 7,260 Visits
  
• 6,815 Absolute Unique Visitors
  
• 27,082 Pageviews
  
• 3.73 Average Pageviews
  
• 00:02:34: Time on Site
  
• 40.23%: Bounce Rate
  
• 13.06%: New Visits
  
• 42% used Internet Explorer
  
• 39% used Firefox
  
• 13% used Camino
  
• 90% of visitors were English speakers (en-us or en-gb)
  
• French and German followed as next most popular

A traffic snapshot for Tuesday looked like this:

• 39.45%: Direct Traffic
  
• 39.61%: Referring Sites
  
• 14.37%: Search Engines

Conversations
I was lucky enough to have the day off on Tuesday and spent some time running errands. When I returned home from just a couple of hours I had ~180 new emails. Granted, most were orderbots & paypal receipts, but... yeesh. There are over 100 conversations between Monday and today, probably 50 unique threads. If you do a lot of custom work and it is received well, be prepared to type until your hand hurts.

Conversation topic breakdown

• 80% advice on custom or DIY perfume note choices
  
• 10% congratulations, chit-chat, check-ins, shout outs, high fives, etc.
  
• 5% address confirmations
  
• 3% wanting to know when I am getting married due to something I said in the last question... seriously. At least one user commented that I should just up and propose.
  
• 2% alchemy requests or requests for custom listings due to complexity

Sales numbers
I haven't done extensive mining on this yet, but I can tell you some basics.

• Total receipts: 137 (most with multiple items)
• Percentage custom orders overall: 10%
• Percentage international shipping: 30%
• Percentage WA state shipping (from U.S. shipping): 1%

Goals
It always helps me to set goals, so here are mine for the next few weeks. You'll notice I had to make some leeway on my Saturday-only shipping because of postal holidays and that I have an upcoming wedding to attend in Texas.

• Previously outstanding orders, July subscribers: tomorrow, July 3
  
• 1-25 + promised deadlines: tomorrow, July 3
  
• 26-50: out by Thursday, July 9
  
• 51-75: out by Saturday, July 18
  
• 76-137: out by Saturday, July 25
  
• Orders placed Tues Jun 30 and after: out starting July 25

Please note: if you are using this as a guide when to expect your order, the "26-50" numbers indicate the number in which the package was completed. While we try to place priority to date the item was ordered, we can't hold up other items that are already ready to go. Yours might be bumped to a different outgoing group depending on the product availability.

On the subject of turnaround times, the earliest I have promised most general orders not prior discussed with me are actually scheduled to go out Saturday, July 18 (14 days) and the latest I hope to be shipping the orders from Tuesday and after is Saturday, August 1. I am attempting to get ahead of the game with the above dates and keep trucking as much as I possibly can to reduce future turnaround times, but sometimes it doesn't always work out the way we plan.

However... that, ladies and gentleman, is what we call 'a wrap'. Time to get to work!

There's a lot more to any fragrance launch than meets the eye, and it's that "lot" of things that has been keeping me too occupied to blog lately. Apologies, as I know I've been meaning to post about some things, but it's just how it is.

We launch four perfumes every quarter and I'm beginning to wonder if I really am a masochist. Four fragrances. That's four bottles. So everything that ordinarily comes with a fragrance launch -- you know, brewing, decanting, bottling, listing, writing copy, spinning the theme, creating the artwork, gathering the packaging materials, testing, sniffing, resniffing, retesting, rebrewing, redoing sometimes some things entirely -- is multiplied by four. I can't even imagine how many hours of actual work it boils down to. Why yes, I guess I am psychotic. Thank you for noticing.

And it is not lost on me yet that I haven't actually worked on the final two perfumes for summer. I know it. I own it. I'll work it. But the fact is that two are still conceptual sketches. Two are complete (well...mostly...): Lori, a tea/jasmine combination that may or may not evolve further than that (and probably will...as is the reason for the previous qualifier...), and Elliott, the first of our men's fragrances, an oakmoss, labdanum, rain, and pine number that I'm particularly satisfied with. I should mention that Rare Device has the initial version of Lori on their shelves already because they are special.

I admittedly wrestled with the men's line, not wearing a lot of men's fragrances myself and not having dated anyone in awhile who does. I created quite a few before deciding Elliott finally, truly worked for me...and worked in a grand way. The others were all too powdery, too purple, or too...something. Angelica, ambergris, grapefruit, saffron things that were so very much not men's fragrances despite my insistence on throwing in a little black pepper. They were all bent on some sort of bluesy hues jazz number, and came on too powdery instead of smoky blue like I'd hoped. Too darn feminine, I suppose. So when Elliott was done and strong and brooding on bottom and yet somehow clean and crisp on top, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Victory, at last.

And that's not all that's been going on, either, because it's not like with four fragrances to launch that the daily wheels stop turning. For instance, last night, after completely cleaning out my closet and gathering five bags of clothes to donate, I made 65 solid perfumes for regular retail everyday orders. Sixty five 3ml solid perfumes in one sitting. That means of the containers I ordered last week, I am already low again. That means that business is great, which also means I don't slow down. I am even out of soy wax. That means the precarious dance of reordering supplies just in the nick of time continues. Occasionally, we get ahead, but it really is wonderful that we have so many local suppliers or we'd be truthfully screwed.

Other things are crazy as well. We have our photography quarterly update scheduled next week so the prop gathering has been relatively crazy (cue typewriter theme!). Signage making is in full gear. Some screen printing needs doing. Taggage needs to be assembled, checklists need to be made, and products need to be future-proofed. Other new lines are being developed. And we're still continuing to expand our stockists list, locally and afar.

So you might imagine that I'm insanely excited to be taking a couple of weeks off here shortly, as is our quarterly tradition. I'll be doing it early this quarter, which I realize sounds crazy but that's why I'm busting my butt right now to try and get ahead at all if possible. Directly following the Punk Rock Flea Market (more details on that soon), I'll be heading to New York for what should have been my four days of networking at the Perfume Expo America, which I won't be attending since they changed the conference dates just directly after I booked my flight. (Thanks for that. A brief grumble: if you cite swine flu as the excuse, it would be more prudent, in my opinion, to postpone the event until much further than three weeks later.) Besides, I know enough people in the city to have a good time without having to sit through 8 hours of industry lectures.

If I don't get a chance to post before then, see you smelly cats on the flip side! Our quarterly launch begins June 20th and will last throughout July.

I do actually have more fun things to post, including pictures from our fun-filled three-day weekend with my parents in town. But with all of the recent policy changes that I've made I thought it might be important to discuss them. I'm still working on populating our communication efforts with information about the changes, so please bear with me.

It's recently been two years since Sweet Anthem was resurrected as a perfumery and I've learned a lot, which is where a lot of these updates are coming from. I'm learning how to streamline my processes on the back end, learning what my time is worth, and learning how to make as few mistakes as possible. The first year of this business was slow to nonexistent (especially considering I closed shop for 6 months to recover from pneumonia), so when the Design*Sponge promotion hit last winter I was rather overwhelmed.

Since then, I've worked hard every day to make sure that 3-6 weeks turnaround time never happens again, without running myself into a wall. It is literally just me here, with the occasional help from my boyfriend, so having these better outlined will make all of our lives a little easier. Please read this post, and know that I will be working to update the other portions of this site and our Etsy shop as quickly as possible.

This is a really quick update as I'm soon off for day 2 with the out-of-towners (read: family), but I saw that Rare Device got our perfumes online fast! If you're in the San Francisco area, be sure to stop by to sniff in person. You can buy a few perfumes online, and we're sending them more of the 10ml solid perfumes as well.

We'll be adding them to the stockists page this weekend once the insanity (with the visitors) calms down. Up next on our stockists addition is a shop in Yuma, AZ called Floribelle and then we're (possibly) done expanding for a bit, though there are still some outstanding requests for samples that I need to get to. The rest of this weekend, though, is dedicated to the slew of custom perfumes we sold this week. Yowza.

In completely unrelated news, I had a fabulous day yesterday and took a ton of pictures, so expect some more blog posts, too. We're going on a cherry blossom scavenger today and I plan to take some perfumes along to get some springtime shots! We ate and ate and ate and ate yesterday (a meatball sub at Salumi and then crepes at 611), so I'm seriously done eating until oysters tonight, and ready to start my summertime walking routine.

First of all, thank you so much for a great spring cleaning sale! I am doing my best to move through things quickly and accurately, and definitely had more orders than I expected. This is a good problem, of course. :) So I'm hoping to have everything (sans the most recent custom orders) out the door by Friday.

That being said, there are going to be some changes online for spring quarter starting tomorrow, April 1. I apologize for not posting this sooner, but this has been a long debate and I feel like this is the appropriate direction for us. First, the good news...!

10ml Solid Perfumes

We'll be launching 10ml solid perfumes on the site tomorrow, and you'll be able to purchase them on the perfume shop the same way you have been purchasing additional sizes. They'll run at $15.

Pricing Changes

This is where all the deliberation has been, but it's time to streamline my prices so that it's a little more fair across all perfumes. We had not initially wanted to change 2008 perfume prices, but it's come to mind that with the rising cost of shipping for materials (we do still buy some from Oregon and Bellingham, WA that we can't find right here in the city) as well as the cost of materials themselves, we need to do something. All 5ml bottles will cost $15, 2ml travel size perfume samples will run at $3.50, and 3ml solid perfumes will cost $5. You can find budget-friendly collections to mix and match before jumping to a bigger size, and they'll stay at $12 (for four perfume oil samples) and $16 (for four solid perfume samples).

We hope you understand about our efforts to keep this an affordable, fun item to collect and share with your friends for both our customers and the company. Please do not hesitate to drop us a line if you have any questions about our policy changes!

Spring Cleaning Sale: Mar 27-29

$5 Bottles & Sample Packs

I've got several things to report, including a perfume review and a perfumer interview (more on the new series in a second), but first things first: Sweet Anthem will be taking its first quarterly break this season, starting tomorrow at 5pm. We'll reopen April 1, 2009, along with launching our next quarterly releases.

Trust me, this isn't actually a vacation. It's what you might call a working vacation. The two weeks prior to last season's perfume launches were sheer insanity (partially thanks to holidays sales, and a big thank you for that, I might add), and since we have not only an event but also custom clients and wholesale demands, I've decided that we should just make it a tradition that every two weeks before each quarterly release we'll take a bit of a "break". This will allow us to build our stock for next quarter, interface with some people locally that we need to catch up with, do some site maintenance as necessary to make room for new faces, and have a bit of breathing room. We'd like to continue offering preview collections as well, generally a month or a month and a half before the official release date, so we think this break will give those fortunate enough to catch a preview some time to mull our new scents over.

Also, we need to blog. I admit, I've been lazy, and busy, and lazy, and busy, but I have a perfume review coming as well as a new interview series! I have not yet named this series, but I have several independent perfumers that I will be sitting down with to discuss their perfumes, products, and philosophies, and think that this will be a really fun way to engage with some of my colleagues in the industry.

So, until then!

We've added one more additional shipping option since we lowered our shipping prices last night. You can now enjoy Standard shipping starting at just $3.00 (see full standard shipping table) for perfume purchases up to $25. Shipping and turnaround times are still 1-2 weeks on all perfume orders, and you still receive delivery confirmation which you can track in Paypal (for domestic orders). So what's the difference?

If you order Priority shipping, your package will be treated as such during our weekly shipping rounds. On occasions where stock is an issue, a Standard package might be deferred to the following shipping day where a Priority package might make its way out the door. Priority shipping is a form of insurance to get your package out the door in the next round possible.

If your perfume order isn't a time sensitive issue, then you can simply enjoy this super cheap shipping rate. Consider it our way of saying Happy Valentine's Day all year long! :)

Also, please note that even though we changed our perfume travel size prices, we kept our perfume collections prices the same. Please consider them when ordering to save your beauty budget!

We've been listening to comments about our shipping charges, so...we're lowering them! We realize that our shipping totals in our Paypal cart were old and as of now, unrealistic for perfume samples. Going forward, shipping is still calculated by your order subtotal, and will be:

From(USD)	To(USD)	Shipping Rate(USD)
0.01	25.00	5.50
25.01	50.00	8.50
50.01	100.00	12.00
100.01	150.00	16.00
150.01	and up	waived (please contact us first to be invoiced)

Domestic orders still receive free delivery confirmation since we use Paypal to ship our packages, and we're finally at a point that we can send information to our customers as soon as your item (domestic and international) has been shipped.

I've gone through and refunded the difference to recent perfume orders, where applicable, which have not been shipped yet. If you were charged $5.50 on your last purchase, that is still the correct base amount. I apologize that I cannot refund orders which have already been shipped: but, if you're a returning customer before today, please include your previous transaction ID # in the notes section as you checkout,  and I will include a free perfume sample or two in your package for the shipping charges you accrued in your last visit.

Fig. 1: New vials.

This is a head's up: we'll be upgrading our vial packaging sometime soon (probably early February) to 1/2 dram (4061-01) vials instead of the 1/32 oz perfume applicator vials. We heard you: the vials are hard to open, the applicators splash the precious drops everywhere, and quite frankly...we're tired of them. I've personally got callouses in places on my hands I didn't know I could get callouses (and I played drums in a punk rock band for most of my college career) just from capping vials.

Fig. 2.: New samplers (right) compared to old vials (left). My terrible photo.

This is actually good news for you. Now you'll get more: 1/2 dram is 2 ml of perfume, and they still meet TSA travel size requirements.

Perfume samplers will cost $2.50-$3.50 when the switch is made in early February. Please let us know what you think of the changes by leaving a comment!

A good rule of thumb to follow if you want a recipe for perfumed disaster: simply start by making a perfume based on or inspired by the movie/books Twilight. It's already a gag-me-with-a-spoon prospect in and of itself. The perfume, called Forbidden Fruit has notes of freesia and lavender (yawn) and is presented in an apple-shaped bottle (eye-roll, and can we say...trite much?), is, in and of itself, a trainwreck waiting to happen.

Now, take in to account that the gaudy apple-shaped flacon is suspiciously identical to the bottle design for Nina Ricci's Nina and, baby, you got yourself a stew goin'. That's right, Ricci's people are suing the makers of the Twilight perfume over patent infringements. Hm, guess who's going to win THAT one.

Who are these fine, upstanding citizens being subpoenaed to court? No reports seemed to mention, though the perfume went on sale at Hot Topic first. I'm currently trying to find the maker of the product, but I'd fall over laughing it was Hot Topic themselves.

(Also nevermind the fact that SJP is releasing the perfume Twilight just a few months after the movie's premier with no legal action taken by the producers of the film - though it is a completely different concept altogether and includes no notions of fruit-shaped bottles, forbidden or otherwise. Created by IFF, Parker's Twilight is released in a series of perfumes, including Dawn and Endless.)

When my last roommate moved out, I swore never to have one again. Since I'm finally able to make that work, I set up shop in my 2nd bedroom and it's been amazing. Initially, this was my bedroom, but now: it's a fantastic workspace. So here's a little tour of my studio!

(Above are my mascots, Errol and Jareth. Guess which is which. I got the owl at the same shop I bought the card catalog chest, and my boyfriend bought me the wind-up caterpillar for Christmas when we were at the market.)

I added a new item on the FAQ about when all you lovely sniffers can expect your order to be shipped. For reference, the times currently are:

• Placed on or before 11/25: Shipped by 12/6.
• Placed on 11/26 as a reservation: Shipped by 12/10.
• Placed on 11/26 as an order: Shipped within 3-4 weeks from payment receipt, depending on stock. Cannot guarantee Christmas delivery.
• Placed on 11/28 or after: Shipped within 4-6 weeks from payment receipt, depending on stock. Cannot guarantee Christmas delivery.

Other updates on shipping and turnaround times will be posted as stock is expanded.

I have turned the shopping cart back on just to save us all any headache of downtime. You can order as usual, just please know that you will not receive perfume solid freebies on these orders (apologies, but I am completely out!) and that you should expect a shipping date of 3-4 weeks from receipt of payment. I will do my best to get anything out as soon as I can.

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. Happy hoildays, everybody!

Hey folks, this is short notice but I'm going to take the catalog down during Thanksgiving week to work on filling the slew of pre-Holiday orders that are piling up. Absolutely everything is completely sold out, but if you would like to reserve your place in line for the next round of collection packs, you can do so by purchasing this item on Etsy. (I decided to just create one final listing for the 2nd round to alleviate the back and forth between myself and my customers.) These reservations are for collections that will ship by December 11, likely no earlier than, to hopefully reach folks in time for U.S. holidays. After these are gone, it'll be back to regular shipping on Tuesdays & Thursdays with a likely 2-3 week turnaround time in the coming months.

I want to say a major thank you to Design*Sponge for recommending my perfumes; it's been an exciting morning on my end and I will try to get everything out in the next couple of weeks (perfume solid freebies included).

Ordering will be back online sometime next week (after the elections - don't forget to come back and vote!). In the meantime, don't hesitate to contact me if you're interested in setting up a custom perfume session - I am always happy to discuss possibilities.

See you all Nov 30!

Between the site launch, family being in town, and my being sick (sinus infection...ugh), it's been a busy past couple of weeks. I sent out the first of the sample pack orders yesterday, and am glad to have that out of the way. Whoever says you can't teach an old dog new tricks has never launched web sites for a living really. While this is old hat by now, it's new to me to be launching my own e-commerce ventures and there are a few things, pre-launch, I wish I would have had implemented and a few things I wish I'd have remembered to check on. They are, in no order of importance, and not at all limited to: