Sandalore and hair growth

Amazingly it was four years ago that I posted about then new research demonstrating that the sandalwood odourant known as Sandalore (a brand name belonging to Givaudan) could have beneficial effects in wound healing.

Now, the press (among others the Independent, Inverse and the Daily Mail) report that this same material can stimulate hair growth.  The research was originally published in Nature Communications where you’ll find a more sober assessment of the evidence.

Sandalore is a perfume ingredient not a medecine

At Pell Wall we sell Sandalore in small quantities and I suspect many buyers may be tempted to experiment on themselves or others with the material: if you’re not familiar with perfumery ingredients you need to know that this isn’t something you should be rubbing on your head (or anywhere else) in pure form.

All perfumery ingredients need appropriate dilution before they are safe for that kind of use and a typical cosmetic product scented with sandalwood will contain only a very small amount of perfume - perhaps 1% - 5% - and only a small proportion of that would be Sandalore.

So if you do plan to self-medicate with an ingredient like this, please proceed with caution and be aware that you do so entirely at your own risk: Pell Wall does not sell this or any material as a medicine or for any use other than as an ingredient in a perfume blended and diluted by a competent person.

The Old Man

It’s been a while since I posted and I thought it was high time I did.  As this weekend is World Gin Day and, is a week before, Father’s Day; it seemed right to create a cocktail using gin and call it The Old Man.  So I did.

I might also subtitle this one A Tale of Two Gins because it requires two very different gins to get the effect.  [Writing that reminds me that earlier in the year, around the time the latest 007 movie was released, there was an excellent article entitled How to Make The Perfect Martini published in the Guardian.  I enjoyed the article, but, as a frequent martini drinker and all round gin-fan, I was stunned by the Dog that Didn’t Bark* in this particular article: at no point does the author discuss which gin - and as gin is by far the majority ingredient in any proper martini that seemed like quite an omission to me.]

Anyway, back to The Old Man:

• 50ml Audemus Pink Pepper Gin
• 50ml Pinksters Gin
• 2ml Chase Elderflower Liqueur 
• A sprig of fresh elderflowers to garnish

Shake over ice, pour into a frozen cocktail glass and garnish with the fresh elderflower - pink in this case to go with the theme - it comes from the purple leaved cultivar but the ordinary kind will give you the same lovely musky aroma over the drink.

Drink, enjoy and remember your Dad.

_____________________________
* A reference to the scene in the Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blase by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in which this exchange takes place:

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

In this context, used to indicate something important for its absence.

.

Perfume Making Workshops 30th April 1st May 2016 - London

Two workshops are planned:

How to Make Perfume & How to Make Better Perfume:

Advanced Skills for Perfumers:

Full details are on the Eventbrite Pages, but if you want to attend both please get in touch with me directly using enquiry@pellwall-perfumes.com as I can offer a discounted price for both.

A WondAroma Podcast

Happy New Year!

Episode 10 of the WondAroma podcast features the Pell Wall perfumer Chris Bartlett talking to Christine Daley of Perfumer Supply House about:

• how Pell Wall came about
• the process of composing a fragrance and 
• a handful of interesting ingredients including Geosmin, Green Tea Givco, Skatole, Theaspirane and Zenolide.

The audio quality starts off rather poor but gets markedly better from about 14 minutes in and continues to improve throughout.

Here are some other links to things we talk about that you might find handy:

http://www.bsp.org.uk/- The British Society of Perfumers

http://www.perfumers.org/ - American Society of Perfumers

http://www.amazon.com/The-Perfect-Scent-Perfume-Industry/dp/0312425775 - Chandler Burr's book about Jean Claude Ellena (perfumer at Hermes)

Anjin Reviews

Anjin by Pell Wall

I’ve been a subscriber to Le Mouchoir Parfumé for some time: the incisive, informed and most importantly short, reviews are just my cup of tea.  They are by no means always positive and don’t pull any punches however, so it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I opened the email that popped into my inbox on Sunday morning titled Anjin Review: have a look for yourself though and you’ll see why finished up smiling.

An earlier review from another blogger I enjoy, I Scent You a Day, made me smile too and it’s fascinating to see how differently the two reviewers reacted to the same fragrance - both finding things in it that I hadn’t considered myself.

Many thanks to both reviewers for their thoughts and the smiles :-)

Vanilla: the universal ingredient

Prosecco upgraded with Vanilla Cognac
Pell Wall style

Vanilla is one of the most useful ingredients in cooking, cocktails and perfumery.  Its story is quite well known, so I’m only going to touch on some of the less well-known aspects here.  My main purpose is to give details of a fine drink and a tincture that are easy to make at home.

So, first up, the drink: once upon a time, when I had more money and less sense I conducted a research project into the Champagne Cocktail - a hedonist’s research project rather than an academic one - I tried variations on the Champagne cocktail in every bar I could find that served one to try out the differences.  Much was learned and more was drunk ... including me from time to time.

Vanilla Cognac

Filtering the cognac
(while drinking coffee)

One of the things I discovered was a variation called the Vanilla Classic - sadly now both the bar where I found it and the key ingredient are gone.  That ingredient was Navan - a fantastic vanilla Cognac made by the same people who produce Grand Marnier.

So why am I telling you about a drink you can’t buy? Well, it inspired me to have a go at my own and I’d like to share the process with you:

Take one bottle of good (XO ideally) supermarket cognac and put in two pods of Ugandan Vanilla - leave it where you'll remember to shake it now and then for about four months.  Take out the pods, filter the cognac but reserve the pods (you’ll see why in a bit).

Almost done

Your Cognac should now be a beautiful mahogany colour and filled with complex vanilla flavours as well as all the richness of the fine brandy itself.  You can drink it just as it is, add sugar to make something that more closely resembles Navan but I think it works fantastically used to upgrade a glass of Prosecco - which has enough sweetness of its own to sustain the extra alcohol - drink and enjoy!

Vanilla Tincture

Don’t waste the beans after you’ve
made the vanilla cognac

Now back to those pods: it seems a shame to let them go to waste and one of the lesser-known facts about vanilla is that in perfumery the absolute (see this post for a definition of absolutes and other extracts) is normally used but it isn’t easy to work with, so for the small-scale perfumer a tincture is an alternative.

Here’s my technique for a tincture that’s a bit out of the ordinary:

Let the pods from your cognac-making dry out then chop them up, along with another fresh pod or two, weigh them all together and put the whole lot into nine times the weight of perfumers alcohol (so as to create a 10% Tincture), adding a shot or two of the cognac to the blend (I used about 50g).  Just as with the cognac, wait for at least four months shaking whenever you think of it but at least every few days.

Result: vanilla cognac you can drink plus a vanilla tincture that you can use in perfume making at about 7 times the quantity you would the pure absolute.  The cognac in the tincture gives it an extra complexity and also encourages more flavour out of the pods due to the water content - unlike many materials vanilla tinctures better in a lower strength alcohol 

Resist the temptation to drink the tincture though ...

Tolu Balsam

Tolu Balsam is a very useful natural fixative as well as a lovely base-note in its own right, but it isn’t the easiest of materials to handle.  It comes from the South American tree Myroxylon balsamum.  

It is used to fix materials such as juniper, petitgrain, spices and florals of many kinds and frequently forms a key component of oriental and chypre styles of perfume.

Rock-likc pure Tolu Balsam

Arctander describes it as: "a brown, orange-brown or dark yellowish brown mass, brittle when cold, and the fracture is glasslike or flintlike. Its odor is sweet-balsamic, cinnamic in type, faintly floral and with an undertone of vanillin.” and at normal UK temperatures it’s certainly rock-hard and behaves rather like a chunk of Brighton Rock when it’s broken.

Tolu and TEC form a strange, alien landscape

So to make it practical to handle it needs to be diluted in a suitable solvent - it’s often sold already diluted in this way though the dilution isn’t always declared nor the solvent named - I bought a pure Kg recently and diluted it ready for use in TEC (tri-ethyl citrate) in a process that turned out to be both quite involved and to produce some fun images, so I thought I’d write it up here.

Is that a creature emerging?

The first job was to get the Kg of rock-like Tolu Balsam soft enough to pour out of its container, which I did by sitting the container in a bain-marie and boiling the water beneath it: this took a few hours before the material was fully liquid.  Meanwhile a pre-weighed out amount of TEC was heated on my heater-stirrer with a stirring bar already in the bottom of it (if you don’t heat the solvent as well the tolu will go hard again as soon as it hits the cool liquid and takes much longer to go into solution).

The next step is to pour the hot, liquid tolu into the pre-warmed solvent (insulated gloves are called for for this step of course).  At this point we realised that there was a photo opportunity as the resulting non-yet-mixture looked like an alien landscape.  The tolu settled to the bottom of the solvent and the application of glass rods was necessary to get it to start dissolving as it was much too sticky for the automatic stirrer at that stage: as those went in it started to look like one of those scenes from the Alien series where the creatures start unfolding from the cave walls . . .

  This is all being done in a three litre glass beaker and as you can see in the later pictures the manual stirring took some time before we could leave the automatic stirrer to get on with the job on its own and the balsam tended to dry on the glass very quickly too.

The cling film you can see was to minimise loss of aromatic quality as this was all being done hot, although with such a high-boiling material and high-boiling solvent that isn’t a big concern.

A stirring start

Gloopy-looking stuff

Pasta possibly?

Eventually it reached the stage where it was liquid enough for the automatic stirrer to do its stuff and with the stirrer on a low setting it was left overnight to complete the mixing, kept at a constant 60 degrees centigrade by the integral heater.  By morning it was fully mixed to form a dark brown, consistent, mobile liquid and here you can see me concentrating hard as I pour it into a (slightly pre-warmed) 3Kg glass reagent bottle. The bottle is on the scale so that I can check the amount that’s gone into it for stock control purposes.

Perfect for Perfume: Tolu Balsam at 30% in TEC

We even captured a little video of that part of the process, which gives you a clear idea of the consistency once it’s finished:

A few chips and flakes were left over from the mixing process and these were put into a plastic jar  - the picture at the top of this post is of those, a few weeks later by which time they have merged together to form a single solid but uneven lump, much like that with which the whole process started.

Special Offer Ingredients

Clearance Bargain Ingredients - only one of each!

From time to time people order perfumery ingredients from me and, either because they say they are in a hurry or just because I’m trying to keep ahead of things, I make up the order before they pay . . . then sometimes they don’t pay, either because they changed their minds, ran out of money or perhaps because it was just a wind-up or a fantasy...

Me in declamation mode ;-)

Whatever the case I put the material aside to include in a future order but one way and another the storage shelf has become rather cluttered with these orphans, so I’ve decided it’s time to shift them, so here’s your chance to snag yourself a serious bargain:

• Azarbre, 10ml, sold
• Azarbre, 25ml, sold
• Camphene at 50% in IPM, 100ml, sold
• Cedarwood Atlas Supra, 100ml, sold
• Dihydro Ionone Beta, 10ml, sold
• Fixateur 505E, 100ml, sold
• Fixateur 505E, 100ml, £99 *New*
• Geosmin at 1% in DPG, 100ml, sold
• Hedione (original Firmenich), 1Kg, sold
• Hexalon / Tropical Ionone, 10ml, sold
• Hydrocinnamaldehyde, 25ml, sold
• Ionone alpha, 100ml, sold
• Iso E Super, 200ml, sold
• Iso E Super, 100ml, sold
• Methyl Diantilis, sold
• Musk Ketone at 10% in BB/ethanol, 1Kg, sold
• Myrcene, 5ml, free with anything else
• Nectarate, 100ml, sold
• Nutty Pyrazine, at 0.1% in IPM, 4ml, free with anything else
• Olibanum Resinoid (Frankincense resin) 30% in TEC, 500g £35 *New*
• Orris Givco 204, 500g sold 
• Rose Givco 217, 25ml, sold
• Rose Otto Persian, 30ml, sold
• Rum Acetal at 50% in DPG, 25ml, sold
• Traseolide, 500g £29 *New*
• Veramoss/Evernyl, 30g, sold
• Zenolide, 100ml, sold

Note that in each case what’s on offer is the specific size indicated: if you wanted another size they are all on the list (except Rum Acetal which I no-longer stock), but then you don’t get the benefit of the special clearance price.  Note 13/3/15: Just added Musk Ketone, pre-dissolved in benzyl benzoate and ethanol - a real bargain as it’s notoriously hard to get into solution - and another one I no-longer stock having changed over to IFF’s Musk Ketone Replacer.

UK Shipping on these is, as usual for ingredient sales, at the flat rate of £9.50 however many or few you buy.  If you’re anywhere else in the world, I’ll have to quote.

If you want to combine these with an order from the main lists that’s absolutely fine, but pay for these first or you might miss them while you’re browsing through the 300 other materials on offer!

Payments by PayPal or fast Bank Transfer please to secure them: Send an email to enquiry@pellwall-perfumes.com saying what you want and where you are.  I’ll process those in the order they arrive.

Order quickly to avoid disappointment!

Perfumery Ingredients at Pell Wall

The March issue of my Ingredients List is now online and the list now features some 300 materials, both natural and synthetic, with some very exciting new additions and a spectacular price reduction on one material thanks to some help from a friend in the US.

There are two versions of the list on the website and both can be downloaded or printed for easier reading as well as browsed directly on the site itself.  The first features descriptions of the odours and uses of the materials both from their manufacturers and from me.  I’m expanding this aspect all the time and there are new write-ups included since the last release in January.



But if you just want to compare prices with other ingredient suppliers you’ll appreciate the second list more - it’s just product names, CAS numbers and prices presented in tabular form:




Among the new additions you’ll find several new naturals such as labdanum absolute, orange flower absolute and violet leaf absolute - all among my favourite ingredients to use, though not cheap I’m afraid.

Speaking of cheap, that big reduction is for Centifolether - down from £52 for 100ml to just £22.  Also very good value is a new musk I’m offering for the first time that you don’t see about much called Zenolide: it’s a great material, as good as some of it’s better known brothers yet almost as cheap as Ethylene Brassylate so you can use it freely.  £17 for 100ml.

But if you want to find out what all the other new things are, you’ll just have to take a look at the lists :-)

The Quinolines

I thought it might be useful to do another in my occasional series of disambiguation posts about perfumery ingredients with easily confused names or equivalences.  This time I’m looking at a group of similar ingredients used to create an earthy, leather note in fragrances:

No quinolines in
Sticky Leather Sky

Isobutyl quinoline (CAS number 65442-31-1), of which there are several versions on the market all using that name and a version made by Givaudan called Pyralone and one made by Symrise called Isobutyl quinoline 54.

Butyl quinoline secondary - another Givaudan product name - designates a mixture of two isomers: CAS numbers 65442-31-1 and 67634-06-4, the second of which is 8-tert-butyl quinoline, which is not present in Pyralone.

Isobutyl quinoline (CAS number 68198-80-1) is another material produced by Symrise under the same name and, despite the name, is not equivalent with either of the Givaudan products.

Just as a matter of curiosity, I didn’t use any of the above materials to create the leather notes in Sticky Leather Sky: there are lots of alternative means of creating such notes, but that’s for another post.

Pell Wall: Best Discovery of 2014

Pretty in Pink by Pell Wall

As 2014 races to the finish line, I’m pleased to report that Pell Wall has featured as the Best Discovery of 2014 on the much respected Perfume Shrine blog by Elena Vosnaki, who has also just published a fantastic review of Pretty in Pink on the Fragrantica website: not only does she like the perfume, but she writes about it in the most entertaining possible way.

Beaver from Zoologist
Composed by Chris Bartlett

Speaking of Best Discoveries, ÇaFleureBon Editor in Chief Michelyn Camen has voted Zoologist Perfumes (featuring Beaver, created by the Pell Wall Perfumer) as her best discovery of 2014 in their Best of Scent 2014 Awards. And Speaking of Zoologist Perfumes, you can also read an interview of Chris Bartlett on their blog and a review by Steve Johnson of Beaver, also on ÇaFleureBon  in which we are reported to have achieved the impossible (an animalic scent he can wear without cringing).

Better still Beaver was awarded a Best Scent of 2014 award on the very last day of the year!

So, all-in-all not a bad end to 2014.  

My sincere thanks go to the reviewers and publishers responsible for these and my best wishes to everyone reading for a wonderful New Year and a happy and prosperous 2015.

Workshops - February 7th and 8th 2015 - London

Following on from my post last month, I’m now able to confirm dates and location for the workshops.

There are two workshops Introductory and Advanced - there are still places on the Introductory but only one place left on the Advanced:

Some ingredients for the Introductory Workshop

On Saturday 7th February I’ll be holding a repeat of the workshop last held in May 2014, which takes you from an introduction to the materials right through to making a bottle of your own perfume that you’ve designed yourself in the course of the day.  This workshop is suitable for people who have never made perfumes of any kind before but as there is a lot of practical work and individual tuition it is also suitable for those with some prior blending experience.  Arrival from 10am, starting promptly at 10.30 and concluding at 5.30.

Workshop Folder with integral calculator

The price is £155 per person, which includes light refreshments on arrival, mid-morning and mid-afternoon, lunch, six hours of tuition and practice, all the materials you need, a bottle of your own fragrance to take home, full documentation and a nice folder to keep all your formulas and notes in.

Introductory Workshop only £155

All the catering will be provided by the hotel (see below), which also offers free wifi in case you feel the need to check your email or send a tweet in the breaks.

On Sunday 8th February I’ll be holding an Advanced Workshop for those who have done a prior workshop or who otherwise already know all the essential techniques of blending and are familiar with the most common materials.  The price for the advanced workshop is £175 per person and in this one we’ll be doing two things:
In the first half we will look at a particular group of materials used in perfumery with a view to understanding them better.  Delegates will be able to vote their choice from:

• Musks - an exploration of musk ingredients, the differences between them in olfactory terms and how to use each to best effect.
• Ambers - an exploration of amber / ambergris ingredients, the differences between them in both olfactory terms and usage.
• Something else suggested by a delegate as long as I know about it in time to prepare materials and gain agreement from the rest of the group.
• Fixatives - an exploration of non-musk fixative ingredients, the differences between them in both olfactory terms and usage.

In the second half everyone will have the opportunity to either bring a blend they are working on that they’d like help improving, continue work on something started in the prior workshop or create something new.  I will be on hand to provide guidance throughout and, as the maximum number of people for this workshop is smaller, I’ll be able to spend more time with each person.  The full range of materials examined in the morning session will be available for you to practice within the afternoon.

As before you get to make up a bottle of your creation to keep, but with this one you can choose a 30ml bottle from the Pell Wall range to take home as well.

 Advanced Workshop only £175

Arrival from 10am, starting promptly at 10.30 and concluding at 5.30.

Everything you need is included and the workshop is fully catered by the hotel:

The location for both workshops is the St James’ Court Hotel on Buckingham Gate, which as they say in their literature, is a gemstone’s throw from Buckingham Palace.

Nearest tubes are St James’s Park (2 mins walk), Victoria (8mins walk) and Green Park (12 mins walk through the park and past the palace).

If you want to book both workshops you can still do so but the discounted rate is now sold out - sorry!

Zoologist Perfumes, Beaver

It’s common knowledge in the industry, but not so common elsewhere, that perfumes are frequently composed by perfumers who are not associated with the company that markets them.  Commonly those perfumers work for one of the big ingredients houses, perhaps under the guidance of a designer from the brand for which the perfume is being made, perhaps not.

Beaver from Zoologist Perfumes

I do this kind of work too, and it’s a significant aspect of the business of Pell Wall perfumes.  What’s rather unusual is for the house commissioning the work to publicise the perfumer behind it, but that’s exactly what Zoologist Perfumes of Canada have decided to do and I’m very proud to be associated with their brand.  The brief was a great one to work on, expressed as a single page mood board, it gave enough room for creativity yet made their intentions perfectly clear.

You can read a great review of Beaver, the fragrance I produced for Zoologist, on the Cafleurbon website where they are also running a competition for samples.

Furthermore you can read an interview with me, where I talk about the work as well as more generally on the Zoologist Perfumes Blog.

I can add, without any trace of bias, as it’s an aspect I had no hand in, that the bottles labels and packaging for this line are truly gorgeous.

Better still Beaver was awarded a Best Scent of 2014 award on the very last day of the year!

Perfume Making Workshop - Incense - London 31st January 2015

Just one place left on this workshop!

On Saturday 31st January I’m running another in my series of perfume making workshops, this one is in association with the Perfume Lovers London Meet-up Group and follows on from a talk I’m giving the previous Thursday on the use of incense notes in fragrance: you don’t have to be at the talk to do the workshop as here we’ll be focusing on making perfume, while the talk is about enjoying it.

The cost for the workshop is £150 and includes a vegetarian lunch and refreshments on the day:

An earlier perfume making workshop in London

Incense is almost certainly the oldest form of perfume and the burning of incense continues to be a significant part of the religious observance of a huge number of people around the world.  Whether for this reason or simply because it smells so attractive the incense note continues to enjoy popularity in modern, alcohol-based, perfumery too.

Over the course of the day we'll be investigating the use of a range of ingredients that contribute to the distinctive note of incense including frankincense; myrrh and other natural materials, as well as some of the synthetics that are used and the vital supporting role of some of the other materials involved.

By the end of the day you’ll have had an opportunity to build an alcohol-based fragrance of your own, featuring incense, and you get to take home a bottle of your finished creation.  If you’ve never made perfume before I’ll take you through the process step by step, but for those who are already familiar with these techniques you’ll be able to explore the incense materials and how they work together using the range of materials available.

Oh and in case you need an extra incentive, did you know there is a gin with an incense note too? We'll have some to taste, towards the end of the day.

The venue is a private house in Kew (near to Kew Gardens Underground).  Refreshments will be available from 9.30 and the workshop starts at 10am.

Pell Wall featured in Management Today

Chris Bartlett - Perfumer at Pell Wall

Pell Wall’s perfumer Chris Bartlett is featured in an article in Management Today: not an organ of the press most usually associated with perfumery and all the more worth readying for that.  Apparently we’re like punk rockers . . .

New Standard Packaging and luxury gift option

Art Deco Boxes for Pell Wall

I’m pleased to report that, just in time for Christmas, our new standard packaging is now in use: 30ml and 100ml bottles will be shipped in these elegant Art Deco style, glossy black boxes as standard from now on.

Luxury Gift Presentation

If you’re looking for something even more luxurious for a special gift, we are also offering almost all the range in a tall 100ml bottle, with a magnificent mahogany-finish box: it comes in a protective outer box and can be further gift-boxed free of charge if you order before 20th December.

Blood & Soil: a cocktail

And now for something completely different:

It’s an experiment I've been meaning to do for a while: a martini-style drink using a cocktail beetroot as garnish.  I wanted the liquid to be essentially clear, so that as you drink it, you could see the colour bleeding out of the beetroot.  At the same time the ingredients have to work with the earthy, sweet quality of the garnish, so that they fit together as a whole.

Here’s what I came up with:

Blood and Soil
A Cocktail for the Adventurous

First prepare the glass with half a very small baby beetroot, speared on a cocktail stick and placed so that the cut edge rests against the glass (for the sake of the photograph I used a glass at room temperature, but otherwise I’d prefer a frozen glass). It’s important that the beetroot hasn’t been marinated in loads of vinegar: either plain cooked or with minimal dressing - here I’ve used Waitrose lime zest infused baby beetroot.

To a shaker with 4 cubes of ice add:

• 2 shots of Chase Smoked Vodka
• 2 shots of Ophir gin
• 1/4 bar spoon of Yellow Chartreuse

Shake until thoroughly chilled, pour very gently into the glass and serve.

The picture here was taken about a minute after the pour and as you can see the root is already producing layers and swirls of colour.  By the time the cocktail was half consumed it was a uniform dark pink, at which point I ate the garnish: the whole thing worked very well and would make a great party talking point.

The smoked vodka compliments the spicy Ophir gin perfectly to give an earthy, almost savoury drink, while the small touch of Chartreuse is enough to add a herbal complexity and take the edge off the dryness: a good match with the sweetness of the beetroot.

Perfume Making Workshops for 2015

I’m planning to run another of my One Day Workshops aimed at taking you from an interest in perfume and blending, to making a wearable perfume yourself - the last one was at Les Senteurs - the next will be in February 2015, it will be on a Saturday and at a central London location.
 

Workshop at Les Senteurs

I know one or two people like to give these workshops as a Christmas gift, hence I’m advertising it now: full details to follow soon.

In addition though, I’d like to use this post to see if there is interest in a more advanced workshop the following day (therefore on a Sunday).  The idea would be to look at some more difficult aspects of perfumery than are covered in the basic workshop, perhaps by exploring a category of ingredients: musks or ambers for example, with a view to sorting out the differences between materials and when to use what.

It has also been suggested to me that some people would like the opportunity for something more like a masterclass where you bring along your own, part-finished work and we have a look together at how best to take it forward.

I’m open to either or both approaches depending on what people would find most useful: so if you’ve thoughts on these or other ideas of what would be interesting to you, please let me know here and I’ll put together something that suits most contributors.

Christmas Room Sprays

Christmas Room Spray by Pell Wall

After a little consultation on the Pell Wall Facebook page I’ve decided to make some of these Christmas Room sprays for sale.  It’s a strictly limited edition: only one batch will be made this year and it’s just enough to fill the remaining bottles I have of this style (now with gold sprays and lids as all the black ones have sold out):

Each bottle contains 100ml and they are £22 each

Richly scented with frankincense, myrrh, orange, tangerine, cinnamon and spice for that classic festive effect that everyone loves.


It’s an alcohol based spray so it will keep happily until next Christmas if you don’t use it all up this year but it’s not intended for use on the skin and mustn’t be sprayed near naked flames.

Christmas Room Scent
Gift Box by Pell Wall

If you want to give it as a gift I can also package one up in a large gift box (big enough to take a wine bottle) along with some pine-cone based potpourri in a matching scent for an extra fiver:

 £27 - Gift boxed

The box is strong, with a magnetic closure on the lid and heavy cord carrying handle so it can be re-used as well.

The Walking Dead

Just for fun, in honour of Hallowe’en I’m presenting a recipe for a variation of my Goth Martini, especially designed to bring a little horror into your evening celebrations (and will certainly horrify any tee-totalers in the party):

To make this one you need:

• Half a shot of Hapsburg Black Absinthe - if you’re feeling brave you could put a full shot in but as this stuff is 79% alcohol proceed with caution!
• 1 shot of Eristoff Black (a sweetish vodka based spirit flavoured with black berries)
• 4 shots of Blavod Vodka (unflavoured and actually a very dark green in colour on it’s own)

Shake over ice until a frost forms (Zombies are dead cold after all).  The combination makes a deep-black colour and is strong enough to wake the dead.

If you wanted you could add a black olive as a garnish, but personally I think it works better without.

Naturally the most sophisticated amongst you will want to drink this while wearing Artemis, the absinthe based fragrance from Pell Wall ;-)

Cheers!