A fellow student, living in France, and I have agreed to exchange our experiments as a way to train our noses on more than just our own trials.

Hers was a wonderful idea and I’m so glad she suggested it for so many reasons: first off perfumery is such solitary work, sometimes you feel like you’re creating in a bubble. Feedback, especially in an online course such as this one, is so very important to the process because often times we just don’t have the necessary detachment or distance from our creations and we run the risk of becoming married to our art, whether it works or not.

It also gives me a bit of  thrill to know that someone other than the teacher will be sniffing, evaluating and judging my creations.  Yikes!  This heightens the awareness and raises the stakes, even though gradually and that’s really important since we don’t have a classroom environment.

And finally, it’s a great hands on way to experience the logistics of getting my perfumes into the hands of a perfume lover.  Believe me it is no simple task in today’s world!  I found out that my 1.75ml sample bottles are too small, they leak easily and the labels don’t stick to them properly. Damn! I am currently working on a solution for all of these issues. Truth is if I don’t face them now I’ll have to later when the risks are greater, so this is a great way to experiment — on so many levels.

Let’s hope our respective postal services co-operate!