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I updated the sample discovery set flyer that goes on top of the white cardboard box, with a golden ribbon around it: getting there….

page 1 & 4 (front and back).
Click on here for picture in larger size image.
page 2 & 3 (inside)

Click on here for picture in larger size image.

For the time being, this sample discovery set  is not intended to become a product that we sell regularly from Zurich, Switzerland. (see 2 cm rule of the Swiss postal service). But it will make an excellent goody, present, PR etc. set.

I think I will get the English version printed after my vacation.

Until then: Time to read in “Beyond Beauty”, a shiny, glossy print product that landed in my letterbox, for free, larger than a news paper, featuring a special on perfumes….discovering sentences such as ” How -over and over again- do we win over consumers in search of the motional shock that will mark their encounter with the fragrance of their life?   How is the osmosis between a formula and the skin made accessible to the greatest number of people? ”

Cool.

Nothing exciting happening these pre-holiday days. Waiting for the sunblocker with SPF 50 being on sales, which happens never!, and buying a bicycle helmet. Not that I really thought I need one. I can’t remember me falling down or crashing with my bike since I was about 6…but the W.-factor insisted.

I spent my weekend wondering about the fact that the older you get, meaning the longer you have lived, meaning the more you can look back and say: Yep, I’ve had a good share of it! , or: the smaller the share is getting that is waiting for you,

the more you become worried about what is left.

Well, maybe it will turn again once you reach your 80-ies. Bottom line: I was asked to get a helmet for our biking holidays and got one. In red. To fit with my sneakers.  It felt great, running with the bike downtown, with the red shiny helmet, I went downhill faster than ever, not worrying about what share is left….
Picture: A yellow flower with little beagle, blooming in Zurich these days, uploaded by Andy

So this was fun and educative. Never before were the samples of my anniversary gone so fast! Faster than last year. And faster than at the last give-away thing (those who want to see the happy easter rabbit hopping around on the website again…click here).

Messages to learn: Next time I have to make it more complicated and make a quiz or so. And I am getting known in Far East it seems. There are some samples on their way to Japan, Korea (south), Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan.

And the US. Lots go of them on their way to the US! Most of them are on their way already, as I shipped 90 this morning, visiting the post office, making my woman in yellow sweat, and ultimately breaking the ATM (postomat it is called in Switzerland) with my old postcard. Well, to be honest, the stupid thing had troubles, refusing to take my card, and it got completely blocked with it after my intervention because I peeled off some stuff….after my visit, the post office had 90 samples to ship and an ATM to be fixed by a mechanic. And I have to order a new card.

Fragrant greetings to you all.

the samples…

the envelops, 90 of them, in paper bags, standing in the corridor ready to be carried to the post office…

ALL 100 SAMPLES ARE GONE!
THANK YOU TO ALL WHO PARTICIPATED.

AND SORRY TO ALL WHO CAME TO LATE. PLEASE CHECK IN AGAIN WHEN WE CELEBRATE 4 YEARS PERFUMERY BLOGGING.

SENDING YOU ALL FRAGRANT GREETINGS.
===========================

Well… almost! In a week I am celebrating 3 years of perfumery blogging, but I will be on a 3 day hiking trip then. Thus, we celebrate today!

Thank you all for your reading, your participation, your comments, your shared passion, your following my work. I appreciate a lot!
Time to give a little bit something back! Enjoy!

Samples for you
In celebration of this anniversary I give 100 samples away, first come first served. Just fill out the form and you will get a 2 ml sample by mail.
The sample
The sample is a pre-sniff of the upcoming Vetiver fragrance. The fragrance still has no name. It is a fragrance built around vetiver from Java, with fresh grapefruit, lots of black pepper and green clary notes in the head. Lily of the valley contrasts the dark vetiver and crisp Cedar wood, leading over to a soft ambergris base with hints of Tonka beans and cistus. I will launch it October 2008.
Shipment
Your sample is shipped within a couple of days, by Swiss Priority Mail at no cost to you, without bothering you later with follow-up mails.
And now?
Follow this link to the form, fill out the form, press the submit button once, wait until the form is emptied and then you are in.

Please participate just ones. If the form does not show, please be patient. Then the website server is at its limits ;-)
Thank you.

I am working on a translation of the folded flyer (A5->A6) going on top of the sample discovery set.

So here I am, realizing that the general structure underlying German and English is not the same. In German we can easily say “Duftende Welten entdecken” but in English “scented worlds discover” does not work. So I have to change the content a little bit. I want to keep the flyer visusal structure: Word, word, (flower picture) verb and a little bit of text.

Thus, a first draft goes like:

Page 1: Evocative perfumes seduce
Discover the fragrant world of Andy Tauer’s perfumes.
_____________________

page 2: Creative compositions enchant
Andy Tauer creates fragrances with loving care.
He is an independent Swiss perfumer and creates perfumes without compromise. The result are truly unique fragrant pictures.
_____________________

page 3: Precious essences bewitch
Perfumes, created in the best tradition of perfumery.
Exclusive essences and fragrant concentrates unite for your pleasure in extraordinary perfumes.

______________________

Page 4: Exclusive perfumes charm
All fragrances are made in Switzerland, where we pour and pack them by hand.
Enjoy these luxurious fragrances.
______________________

fragrant discovery set, as uploaded on Medieval art&vie

Finally, the eagerly awaited, long promised, finally delivered Sambac Jasmine absolute sample landed on my desk. Or better: On the dining table. Where it sends out immense, unheard of clouds of … white jasmine flowers with a sweet powdery line complementing an indole line that is incredibly present. Greetings from Janus. Where white beauty and black magic meet.

What is striking is the green line in the scent, if approached from a distance. It reminds me somewhat in a geranium concrete that I got the other day and that still needs more thorough examination. Sniffing the orange coloured absolute of Jasmine Sambac directly, undiluted from a strip, however, it is heavy, intense, almost suffocating white floral notes with heavy indole lines. If you do not know what indoles smell like: Think feces. Sorry, can’t help it.

So you start wondering. Thus, you return and return to this scent, repelled and at the same time fascinated. Nature has placed this wonderful white scent on a background that makes you think in many things but not flowers. Except if you are an insect, I guess.

Highlights this weekend: More samples, football, and….
Reclaiming land in Hoengg, right in front of where my basil gets eaten over night by greedy snails, whereby a Big Thicket feeling with all its sentimental memories pops up. A few meter square that’s all we could successfully get back, out of the claws of ivy and other green growth monsters.  Other highlights….
Thinking and discussing new envelops for sample shipments with Pascal, shop owner of Medieval art&vie in Zurich, after a fairy tale meeting at the local post office….yep: Regular readers of this blog know what follows next:  Comments about the Swiss postal services. The last time I was there, standing in front of the yellow dragon’s wide open mouth, ready to feed it with lots and lots of shiny Swiss Francs, because my envelop was again touching the 2 cm limit in thickness that makes the price triple, there was a postal  fairy behind the desk.

And she opened her dark beautiful hair, danced with her little yellow magic wand that she used to measure the thickness of my envelops (yes they do..every envelop!), and whispered in my ear that this time she will make an exception. I dare not think about her motives. Maybe it was because she saw me on TV and I fit the category celebrity….

Anyhow: Although having met my fairy , we get really tired of worrying about this 2 cm limits, especially the poor shop owner of Medieval art&vie in Zurich who has to go there every day. And before we are all ready to move the business to a place with better postal service (ideas anyone?), I started looking for another envelop. And believe it or not, this very day Pascal got a sample of the perfect envelop in his mail. It must be the yellow fairy’s magic.

rose bud in June, uploaded by Andy

OK, the first 320 samples are done and sit for while in the perfume chamber that used to be a guest room years ago.

More samples are to follow before I leave the banks of river Limmat, take the TGV and my bike, and make a small step for mankind but a giant leap for my work-life balance: I will travel to the Bretagne and spend two weeks on my bike. Ha!
This will happen mid July. Until then I am stocking up… happy bottle pouring follows next.

Fragrant greetings to you!
picture: Giant leaps …

No deeper insights today, just a “memento flaconi”, in a sense therapeutic for the blogger. I learned yesterday that blogging can be regarded as therapeutic act, helping you to keep mentally sane. Something like that in a nutshell.
So here’s a picture of my desk, reminding me that besides all this writing (I am working on an interview these days) there is a bottle life out there. You can see the bottles pouring in from the right. By the way: The picture shows you the nice part of the desk, there where there is free space for a mouse.

Ah yes…there where there is free space in my head it makes plans right now: Stocking up plans, travel plans (US West coast, October), more sample drawing plans, PR plans, more travel plans, …

Yesterday, our neighbour’s boy was brave enough to bring cookies and ask for our attention. He was bored and we were there, sitting on the balcony, right before moving on and doing serious perfumery business. So we played the lion who hunts the elk (elk from IKEA, lion is cuddly but of uncertain origin) and the elk had to hide about 100 times in our old suitcase (see strawberry picture of yesterday) and later the rabbit joined the elk and both chased the lion and then the lion had to hide in the suitcase.

Natural habitats of these animals did not matter.

But before playing the lion endlessly I learned how important classification for children seems to be. We discussed bees and flies. And differences there. …So we all discovered:  There are biting animals (like lions) , there are stingy animals (bees et al), there are scissors animals (lobster etc.) and so on. This list goes on, and left me thinking “patterns” and how we are all desperately trying to put our world into a raster that should help us cope with a world full of unknowns. In a sense we are all in desperate search for patterns everywhere.
This is one reason why we are grateful for hints on notes in fragrances, a raster to start discovering the unknown, even if the notes are not  always helpful. Cystal fresia anyone?
Soon we ended up discussing on our balcony what a scorpion is, stingy animal or scissor animal?