Our good friend Sweet Petula is having a studio sale this Saturday and graciously invited us along for custom perfumes! Stop in for great deals on soap, glass candles, jewelry, bath salts, fizzies, and fragrances! This is perfect for a little last-minute Valentine's day shopping, so come on in and get your love on! (Or something like that.)

We will have our full custom perfumery set up, along with our Madeline cupcake fizzies (as seen on today's edition of Poppytalk Handmade) and our latest limited edition fragrance, Amelia (plus all of our usual ladies in waiting). Yes, portions from Saturday's sale of Amelia 1/2 ounce bottles will still go to Haiti.

Hope to see you there, lovelies! Stay tuned tomorrow for an interview from Jeanee Duval (seriously, for real this time) and our weekly blogged edition.

Stop in from 11-5 pm at 208 S. Jackson St. in Seattle, WA.

Another reason we've been so quiet on the blogging front: our joint-label effort (called Eos) with local energy company Blue Marble Energy was released this week. Blue Marble Energy is the first biorefinery in the world to create petrol-free aroma chemicals, and we were on the scene to turn that into a carbon neutral fragrance.

Check out King 5's report here! Eos for Her contains neroli, sandalwood, green tea, and banana; while Eos for Him contains cognac, honeysuckle, white ginger, apricot, and candied fruits. The Eos line is presented in elegant, square glass bottles with silver metallic caps with roll-on applicators, and the silver-stamped tags were handmade by local jeweler Carolyn Buss.

You can buy a 1/2 ounce bottle of this limited edition fragrances directly at Blue Marble for just $30. Local folks can pick it up in time for the holidays — contact BME for details.

Last but not least, Eos was voted #2 on the top 5 bio-based gifts for the holidays at Bio Fuels Digest.

If you've been wondering where I've been, it's because we've been busy busy busy getting ready for our holiday shows and trying to fill the recent demand from early bird holiday gift shoppers.

We've been inundated with custom work and private label requests lately and I'm doing my best to keep the retail side turnaround time under two weeks, but it's a very structured process that doesn't leave much room for error as it is (and don't you know I'd love for every perfume that goes out the door to sit on my shelf for three weeks for me to monitor). I'm doing certainly better at multitasking this holiday season than last year this time, so I'm thankful for that, but I'd rather our turnaround be two weeks than me turning around haphazardly slapped together perfumes (and I'm sure you would too).

In the meantime, mark you calendars because we've got THREE big events coming up:

• Nov. 21 & 22 - Etsy Rain, 11am - 5pm
  The Intiman Theatre - 201 Mercer Street - Seattle, WA


• Nov. 27 & 28 - Indie Banditas, 10am - 5pm
  Woodward Middle School - Bainbridge Island, WA


• Nov. 29 - I <3 Indie Holidays, 11am - 6pm
  Lake Street Grill - Kirkland, WA

Also, our D.I.Y. kits will be featured in Bust Magazine for the Dec/Jan issue, and we've been working on gearing up for that press launch. We've got about 20 kit boxes ready to go to good homes, though a few are definitely already spoken for, and are working on more every day. Bust hits the stands 11/24, so be sure to pick one up! A major thank you goes to Jenn of Indie Fixx for posting my perfumery tutorial; it's generated a LOT of buzz and I really appreciate it!!

That's about it. More coming soon as events draw closer, but since I finally had a free moment in time I thought I ought to take advantage of it. Our Yule perfumes will be launching sometime soon, so I'll be back for that. Stay tuned!

It's been awhile since I posted (and I was doing so good, too), but I've been tremendously busy lately with all the goings-on. This weekend, which is particularly exciting, is our first Show & Smell of the Fall season! Please stop by Sweet Petula's in Pioneer Square this Friday & Saturday for a too sweet handmade trunk show featuring yours truly along with other local crafters Sweet Petula, My Little Sunshine, Haute Goat, and Gabriel's Aunt.

I won't be there in person on Friday because I am finishing up my current design contract this week (by the by, need a designer?), but on Saturday I will have one of my traveling organs with me to make custom perfumes on the spot (as well as custom DIY Kits). Both days, you'll be able to find a wide selection of our scents in both 1/4 oz and 1/3 oz sizes as well as our muchly-touted and instantly-popular Do It Yourself Perfumery Kits.

As if you needed one more reason to go, the first 20 visitors will get fantabulous goodie bags with free samples and products from each designer.

You can get more deets on our Facebook event or check out this lovely write-up in Seattle Metropolitan Magazine's style blog.

By the way, if you want to show more of your crafty pride this weekend, Handmade Nation is making its Seattle premiere at NW Film Forum Saturday and Sunday. A slew of us Etsy Rain-ers will be there, and it'll be the perfect way to round out your weekend of handmade goodness.

We've had so much fun with Etsy over the years and have loved every second on that little gem of a handmade-focused site. I personally have been a longtime lover of all things handmade and anything in the DIY movement for a very long time, so when I discovered it in 2006, I fell head over heels.

So I am super excited that today, my wee little shop is the featured seller. Read the full interview here, or after the jump in this blog post. I'm in pretty darn good company, too. Everybody from The Black Apple to one of my own cohorts in smelly crimes, Sweet Petula.

I don't like being a whiney blogger OR an ungrateful person. I want to preface this post by saying I highly value bloggers who take the time to review my perfumes or someway otherwise help promote my little brand. So this is by no means a gripe against those wonderful folk.

That being said, I wanted to bring to light something that has only ever sort of been a disclaimer (the very fine print) on this site and the Etsy Shop, and to add an addendum to that rule. Samples are not for resale. Nor (and here is the addendum) are they to be used for contest prizes without our prior consent.

Ordinarily, honestly, we're fine with giveaways and contests (though admittedly our current ones are merely in the works). We love passionate bloggers that want to give back to their readers. And to that end, we'd like to reward you with BIGGER products than samples to give away. Not to mention, making samples is tedious business and we like to slip the "extra" ones in our direct customers' packages or hand them out at shows. They're our version of social calling cards, and we like to know where they go and whose hands they end up in.

And so here's the sketchy and bitchy part that makes me sick to my stomach to have to even say: if we don't link to a giveaway from this very blog or on one of our Twitter accounts, we have not authorized the giveaway. We cannot be responsible for those goods being offered nor can we account for the veracity of the perfumes. And frankly, we don't appreciate our graphics being used without our permission or out of our branding guidelines. I personally work very diligently every day on our branding and am constantly updating graphics across the board - to see them used very poorly and out of scope isn't fair to the amount of time I put in and frankly makes me want to pull my hair out. Or theirs. As a friend of mine said, I should have final say in how my work gets used.

There. I ranted. More later if the story develops further.