announcing nocturne flora

Exactly one year ago, I was a jaded jewellery maker selling mediocre, cliché jewellery on Etsy. I decided that before I went mad, I needed something more authentic to fuel the creative flames, so I took a leap of faith and ordered a set of essential oils to try in July. The result was an opening line of four scents, including ‘White Poplar’, ‘Golden Lyre’, and ‘Huntress’, each inspired by Greek mythology, as well as a fourth called ‘Silent Woods’. My first sale of a pack of all four samples went to a woman in La Mirada, California. I was really nervous when I mailed them out to her, but the kind words she wrote back—“your fragrances are ethereal and they are just what I am looking for in a world that is too fast and too commercial”—gave me warmth, encouragement, and a sense of fulfilment I had so missed from running a jewellery store I didn’t love. Little did I know that even a year later, Andrea and I would remain dear friends.

A few weeks ago, we began a creative endeavour together as a partnership between my store and her upcoming emporium of hand-blended teas and dolls, The Kindly Owl. We have long shared a fascination with the deadly mandrake root and a series of novel-length emails later, we decided we would honour the beautifully misunderstood plant, and all its hauntingly beautiful friends, in a line of collaborative works called Nocturne Flora.

An established artist, Andrea has already drawn and sold numerous mandrake artworks and printed postcards. She has also created the prototypes to an amazing mandrake doll, ingeniously stuffed with a blend sleeping herbs. I contributed to the line, ‘Mandragora’, a bitingly venomous blend of patchouli, amber (from a plant-based accord), and petitgrain that is as smoky and intoxicating as its namesake. I’m also currently refining the fourth variant of a blend based on hemlock, the poison that purportedly killed Socrates.

Today, we reach the first milestone of our creative collaboration as we list our first items from Nocturne Flora to our stores.

I’m so grateful to Andrea for her continual warmth and encouragement, and my support network here in Sydney, including The Cat, my friends and my blog readers, for your patience and unconditional support in answering my tedious questions about whether 2ml or 3ml bottles of perfumes better strikes a chord in your soul. Crafting for love can sometimes take the backseat when you turn your hobbies into a business. Adamant of not turning into a jaded perfumer, I have focussed my energies with Faunfare on connecting with kindred spirits through trades and collaborations far more than I ever spend on listing products, promotion, and generating sales. And I have never felt happier with my work.

Andrea's art can be found at Little Big Head as well as her Etsy store.  She also blogs at Cider & Faun.