Blog Updates for Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute - now at Anya's Garden blog

We're consolidating all of the blog announcements for Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute at http://PerfumeClasses.com and the Natural Perfumers Guild http://naturalperfumers.com at Anya's Garden blog http://anyasgarden.blogspot.com

Please click on http://anyasgarden.blogspot.com Thank you

Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute: Now offering chat group for offline students, free aromatics kit, plus much more

Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute is the only perfumery course that allows offline students the chance to take part in daily chats with other students and the Instructor!  Anya has many years experience hosting lively perfumery chat groups and has extended this to her offline students. Nobody left out in the cold!

Earning a living as a perfume artist is the goal of every hobbyist, and it must start with well-made perfumes! This year has been a very rewarding one for me, and I have a higher income now than when I was working at a very well-paying corporate job.  It may take years to build up your hobby into a real career, but it can be done. Several of the perfumers who were in the two Guild projects this year have reported to me that they have had great sales as a result. The economy is definitely improving, and you may wish to gift yourself with an investment in your future as a perfumer by studying with me.

I have spent years mentoring folks in this group, and more recently, adding the students who are enrolled at http://PerfumeClasses.com into my circle, checking their assignments, giving feedback, and encouraging them.

Be sure to check out the entire site to fully appreciate what is offered.

Offline enrollment is a great value, and, if the student wishes, can be upgraded to online status at any time.

Certification in Basic Natural Perfumery is rewarded upon completion of the course.

Now through Dec. 31st, the first Aromatics kit is included free-of-charge to online students. http://perfumeclasses.com/enroll/signup.php

Natural Perfumers Guild members receive 10% off their tuition fee - see our current Discount page after you log in on the Guild site. http://naturalperfumers.com/apply/member.php

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute Director and Head Instructor posts list of articles

Director and Head Instructor Anya McCoy, natural perfumer of Anya's Garden, just published a list of articles she has authored on the subjects of natural perfumery, perfumery and book reviews since 2004. They are available for download from http://perfumeclasses.com/faculty.htm

McCoy, A. - Natural Perfumery:  A Fragrant Evolution (pub. Aromatic Sage.com)

McCoy, A. - Steve Earl - Position Paper: Defining Natural Perfumery (pub. self)

McCoy, A. - Robert Tisserand, Tony Burfield - IFRA/EU Boycott Primer (pub. self)

McCoy, A. - The Beauty of Botanicals Made Liquid: The Passion of Natural Perfumers (pub. Basenotes.net)

McCoy, A. - The Stages of Public Acceptance of Natural Perfumery (pub. Basenotes.net)

McCoy, A. - Book Review: What the Nose Knows (pub. Basenotes.net)

McCoy, A. - Book Review: The Essence of Perfume (pub. Basenotes.net)

McCoy, A. - Anya's Garden blog since 2006 - hundreds of short articles on perfumery

Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute: Offering Natural Isolates course

http://PerfumeClasses.com

Elise Pearlstine, PhD, is on board for the Natural Isolates course. The information that she and I are researching and the expanded outline we've developed for the course are incredibly educational. We have ancient books, modern books, a chemist as a consult, and lots of never-before-in-one-place information to share. The course will be offered in February 2011. 

Perfume podcasts now available on http://perfumeclasses.com

I just uploaded two podcasts to the
http://PerfumeClasses.com/ website for the enjoyment of the general
public. If you have any suggestions as to future public podcasts, let me
know. The students enjoy lengthy, informative podcasts as part of
their education at Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute, and I
...decided to make some new public-side podcasts for everyone. http://perfumeclasses.com/podcasts.htm

How do you choose a perfumery instructor?

I've rewritten some of the homepage for my online natural perfumery course at Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute, and I've added some Q & A about how to choose an instructor. Not many potential students knew who I was, or my credentials before I began teaching online in 2007, but I had some independently-reviewed perfumes to my credit, and five years of helping aspiring perfumers for free in the Yahoo group I host. I also had about 15 years of experience with a perfume line - Anya's Tropical Essences - and both private label and custom perfume creation.

I'll soon be admitting students year-round, due to the high demand for a place in the class. After I cut off the registration in February, more than a dozen students wrote in the week following that, and, at first I was going to begin a new semester in October 2010, but after speaking with other veteran online instructors, am going to allow the open admittance policy.

Here are some of the benefits of my online perfumery course:

• There are no prerequisites
• Study with an award-winning perfumer who has seven years experience mentoring perfumers
• Sign up at any time, start your studies immediately
• Take up to one year to complete your studies, and stay enrolled for one additional year
• Coursework based on the methods and techniques of French perfumery schools
• Have 24-hour access to the online course
• Study anywhere - even on vacation
• Network with students from around the world
• Have access to the website and chat group for one year after studies finish.
• Ask questions in the forum of the instructor and receive answers within 24 hours 
• Six professionally-designed and edited Modules, plus a Bonus Module
• Recorded lectures
• Online fun perfumery quizzes, hundreds of books and articles and more......

Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute Will Soon Have Year-Round Enrollment

The image is that of an old Frapper map of the students. I think Frapper is going to be gone within the year, and I'll miss it. It hasn't updated for a while, and while it was, it was fun to see where all the students of the Anya's Garden Natural Perfumery Institute were located all over the world. We have had four from Australia since this map appeared, one from Singapore, Germany, Kuwait...the list is truly international. I'm going to find a new way to map the students, "watch this space" as they say ;-)

About the course and the website - you know, when you build something from the ground up, with your own knowledge, your own creative ideas, and your own hours of dedication and hard work, it means so much. It's your baby, nobody else can claim it, you made it. It's very rewarding, very rewarding.

When I was prodded into teaching back in 2007, I put the coursework together as quickly as I could, to meet the student's demands. So I created a Primer, and it allowed the students to see the outline of what was going to be taught, but I was working every month to build the course content on the website behind the scenes. So the students had to combine the Primer's information with the more detailed, instructive information on the website, and I'm happy to say it went very well.

Two lovely students helped me edit it a bit at that time, and I'm forever grateful to them. Thanks Denise and Nancy! Now I have a consulting editor on a monthly retainer, and the resultant product is fabulous! I have a book deal in the works for the textbook, and so we're going in and editing it some more. I'm just happy to have someone to edit my dangling participles, correct my wandering tenses, and generally whip it all into shape. The fact that she's a dedicated natural perfumer and a bona fide technical writer (worked for Microsoft and Boeing) is just a fabulous gift to me. And the students.

The new website, on a different platform than the previous three courses, it a breeze to work with. I had a professional IT webmaster for the old Moodle site, and even then, there were lots of problems. Moodle is a dinosaur! The new platform is fast, easily customizable, and I have a pretty, pretty website for the students this time around - and from now on.

Imagine my surprise when over a dozen prospective students tried to enroll after the course began! Looking to the future, I'm reworking the site a bit so that students will be able to sign up at any time, year-round, and jump right into their studies. This is a great decision, and I hope to have the website tweaked for this within a month.

That's it for now, the February 2010 course is in session, there are 12 students instead of the 10 I originally planned for, and everything is moving smoothly. I have a medical doctor, a chemical engineer, a science teacher, several aromatherapists, a Marine in Kuwait, a massage therapist, and several business owners in the class. They're a wonderful group, and I love interacting with them - on a frequent, almost daily basis - in the private chat group.

I know that the art of natural perfumery will keep growing with such dedicated and passionate students in the mix, because they're the next generation, and that's very exciting.