The picture of today to the left shows you a hand (mine) with 16 snippets of a 250 gr/m2 paper, from Fischer, called TATAMI natural, with 1.3x volume, coated, with a touch of an ebony color. I cut them to test how thick a pile of 16 cards made from this paper gets. I got samples of various papers, helping to decide which paper to use for the print of the novelette that is accompanying the Miriam fragrance (50 ml size). The novelette is written by Brian Pera and is a lovely 16 double side pages short story, date book like, opening various doors to the world of Miriam. I wanted the paper to fit the world that we are building with the flacon and the rest of the packaging. Thus, I wanted it to be thick, unshiny, slightly coated, and I want it in FSC quality, meaning: Produced in a sustainable manner.

The novelette goes into print today, hoping that I finish the layout of it in the next few hours. It will be one of many entry points into the world of this fragrance. Or the fragrance is the entry point into the world of Woman’s picture, the movies. Like the pentachords are a hand pointing to a new direction, the Tableau de Parfums are pointing into another direction and open up a new world for me. This is part of the fascination being a createur de parfums. One man, many parties. Or a touch more serious: Creativity comes always with change. When you meet a creator doing the same things again and again then chances are good that creativity is gone. Of course, not every party is for everybody. In this context: see Nathan Branch’s post on the upcoming Pentachords.

Another snippet of today: Having prepared and shipped a couple of large orders for retailers (uff!), I will squeeze my time lemon today in order to work a little bit on a couple of ideas. I still have not figured out whether I like the main line of the third fragrance in the Tableau de Parfums series. It is scheduled for September and it tortures me.

Other snippets of this week: I get quite often, on a regular basis, queries for free samples. I never answer them. But I read them, as they are snippets of what humanity offers and they are usually very nice and some are even a sort of standard query: Very eloquent and like a professional PR. In a sense more professional than a lot of PR news that I get because I run this blog.  Thus,  from “cancer in the family and we need a scent of hope, please send”,  to a simple “I cannot afford them” I get everything from everywhere. Yesterday, I got another one. It started with “Dear Madam” . And it ended with an address, without country information. Mission not accomplished.

Some new born bloggers do the same, too; asking for free samples to “expose my brand to their ever growing network of readers”. When I visited one of these bloggers asking for freebies the other day, I found only one post there, on Chanel Bleu.

On a sad note: My external hard disk was broken. I sent it off, hoping for warranty replacement. Actually, the disk was ok, but the USB connection just fell of. I plugged and unplugged this thing about 20 times, as I used the hard disk to store my backups. Thus, not really quality stuff. But the disk worked. It was a 2 Terabyte disk, holding the daily incremental backups of my digital life of about 2 weeks and was always close to full. Now, I got a 3 Terabyte disk and continue backing up my life there. I also back up snippets of my digital (business) life online, using a pay solution. What used to be books and paper and more paper is now bits and bytes and disks. In this sense, the novelette, printed on 16 cards, is actually quite retro. I never thought about it from this perspective.

I wish you a happy Friday.