Home for the Holidays: Home Fragrance Project

The holiday season means it’s cold outside and everyone is spending more time indoors, with the windows and doors closed. It’s time to feature beautiful natural scents to highlight the festive spirit.

The Natural Perfumers Guild members are dedicated to using 100% natural aromatics, and for this season, members of the Natural Perfumers Guild created ambient fragrance for the home and office, using incense, candles, room sprays and wax melts. Eight Guild perfumers and associates have independently created lovely ambient scent products to celebrate “Home for the Holidays” 2012.
 The natural scents work hand-in-hand with the idea of fragrant Christmas trees, boughs and wreaths fragrancing the homes and offices. The Guild members were matched up with eight scent bloggers, several of whom have never previously reviewed ambient fragrance products.

The rationale behind the idea makes sense, as it's supremely difficult to find natural-sourced products for home use. "We in the Guild thought this was a great challenge, and love the idea of being the first to introduce them to this scenting concept. Many homes are awash with synthetic room scents, from plug-ins to automatic spritzers. How lovely, we thought, to keep in the spirit of the holidays, when pine and cinnamon and frankincense, all natural aromatics, in addition to our creative takes on indoor fragrance, can be introduced!"

The scents in which Anya's Garden presents her home fragrance wax melts in are:
Outlaw Perfume (named after the challenge to the government regulations on perfume allergens back in 2010 the perfumer took) - Oakmoss, bergamot and lime! Believed to be the first oakmoss/chypre room fragrance
Lemon Vetiver - Lemon myrtle with its lemon candy/herbal scent pairs with woodsy vetiver
Bay Rum and Honey - Oh, honey, so yummy - like a tropical night, and surprisingly, a holiday scent, too.
Each scent variation is available in 6-8 pieces 3oz. hand-poured and costs 30$.

I was sent sample wax melts to try, presented in a lovely purple pouch, obviously hand-poured with love into cookie and candy "molds" that resemble fleur de lys (or small platypus feet, it all depends on your level of humor!) and as soon as I opened the sachet I was greeted by a delicious waft of assorted freshness and spiciness.

They're all good, but my favorite has to be Bay Rum and Honey. It has that aromatic spiciness with that clove-like tinge which I adore. The throw is very good and it avoids that pitfall that many "sensual" scents get trapped into: too much sweetness to the point of nausea (though it is sweet, but in a good way). If you're bringing this to the bedroom or the living-room while entertaining you won't have people thinking some random cable melted or that you forgot something sweet on the stove! It also has an outdoorsy nuance that is not common for this genre, Christmas-y, like pine or fir. It smells delicious!
Lemon Vetiver emphasizes the fresher, brighter and vivid aspects common on both materials. These two also have other, differently nuanced facets, aromatic for lemon myrtle (which should not be confused with either lemon the citrus or with myrtle, it is backhousia citriodora and it's technically a spice) and licorice for vetiver, which are not explored here. The Lemon Vetiver wax melts would be very popular for de-stuffying a room naturally, sort of actually opening the window; it's a head-clearing, alert scent that would go down very well for a working environment or a home office, it seems to bring on a dynamism and energy to it.
Outlaw Perfume is perhaps the most outdoorsy of them all, an oxymoron for fragrance intended for the home. Its mossy, green, even slightly soapy scent from some angles invites contemplation, novel reading in overcast days when the rain pits-pats on the window pane and a foreshadowing of the good, long walk into the woods that comes after everything is properly washed down after the storm...

Wax melts are a great value since they're also the ultimate recycleable fragrance product (you can stash the cooled melts in a closet or -as Anya suggests, but I haven't tried it personally- use as a polish on furniture).

Anya's Garden has offered us the option of a giveaway: To USA-based readers only, a Room Candy tin of the scent of their choice, plus a tea candle burner, a $40 value.
Enter a comment, saying what are you desires/concerns regarding home fragrance and you are eligible. Draw remains open till Sunday 4th midnight.

Products reviewed available at Anya's Garden site. There is a good value for money Starter Kit at 40$ which includes a 3oz. tin of wax melts, tea light burner (not sold separately) and one organic beeswax tea light.

Like mentioned above this is part of a greater project including natural perfumers (from Andrea Shanti to Elisa Pearlstine and Anita Casamento) and bloggers (for instance The passionate parfumista, Feminine Things and Perfume Critic) , so if you are really interested you can consult Anya McCoy's  blog page for reference and to see other links.