Spider

One of the most luscious gifts I got for my birthday was an Experience. Like those balloon flights/rally car races etc...mine was a perfume masterclass. It's only taken me 3 months to organise it. Clearly I'm on the ball.

I have always wanted to create my own perfume, a process full of witch's brew ingredients, words like Labdanum, Olibanum, Styrax, Ambergris, Benzoin, Myrrh, Chypre, all dripping with alchemical romance! I never want to see a real and graceless perfume lab. It has to be a magical place with curious alembics, sacks of herbs and spices, pots of incence and resin, glass jars full of mandragora and nightshade berries.

Alas, the class was not quite up to that level. It was a smello-session, 18 blended scents which you could blend and waft in combination on little sticks. The blends were generic to some degree, i.e floral, ozone, spicy, woody, where I would have preferred individual ingredients like rose or cedar, plus, excepting vanilla, it had no gourmand mixes, which is crazy when so many modern perfumes use coffee, chocolate etc. Still, 18 blends was more than enough for two hours.

Loved it but needed more time and drove the lady running the thing mad. 'Are you like this about everything?' She asked. I was dead honest with her and reassured her that yes, I really am this tiresome. In the end I created Spider, a strong cinnamon/clove perfume with musk and vamilla and cedar underneath. Though it's rather nice for winter, I want something creepier and a bit darker. More musky twiddling needed, so time to buy individual oils and mix them.

In the meantime, for the marketing campaign currently running in Debbiefantasy, I need a round bottle with a crystal spider stopper and a dramatic demi-goth model wearing nothing but purple eyeshadow, evening glovesnboots and a single spider on her neck. Hairy arachnids need not apply.