Urban Botanic

I had the most fun last Saturday!

I went over to Karlene Browning’s house, where she introduced me to Urban Botanic. Her daughter, McKenna Gordon, started the company when she was only twenty-three, and has built it up to the point to where there are now U.B. fragrance designers in nearly every state. That alone was enough to impress me, but then it just went on from there.

Urban Botanic uses pure scents that aren’t preserved with any kind of alcohol. Instead, they use silk amino acids, which I’d never heard of before. Then you put the scents into a base created from things like shea butter, coconut oil, and aloe vera. They’re all hypo-allergenic and natural.

I got to smell over sixty bottles of scent falling into six categories: woodsy, floral, fruity, spicy, leafy, and herby. I made a list of the ones that appealed to me, and then I got to play chemist for a little while. I took the two scents I liked the most (rose and lemon) and held them up to my nose at the same time, curious to see how they would smell together. It was fabulous! So I put a drop of each in a small cup. Yep, it smelled great. But I wanted to throw something else in there to perk it up even more. I put in a drop of lilac, and that was nice, but I wanted the rose and the lemon to be the main scent, with the lilac as an undertone. So I put in one more drop each of lemon and rose. Then to add a base note to the whole thing, I put in one drop of white musk. Voila! It was perfect! I had created a combination that spoke to me, individually. I now have a signature scent that’s all my own (I don’t know anyone else crazy enough to try lemon and rose together). I named the fragrance – are you ready for this – “Tristi.”

So then we took that formula (Rose, 2 drops. Lemon, 2 drops. Lilac, 1 drop. White musk, 1 drop) and multiplied it to get the right amount needed to make my own perfume. The spritz bottle was all ready – I just mixed the scents in the right amounts and then put them in the bottle. Again, with a voila!! “Tristi,” the designer fragrance worn only by Tristi, was born.

Karlene tells me her customers can sit and tweak their scents as much as they’d like until they find the combination that really works for them, and they’ll often make several that they just love.

Now, once you create your scent, you can put it in the following U.B. products:

Parfum spray -- $24.95
Lotion -- $14.95
Shower gel -- $12.50
Bubble bath -- $12.50

You can also buy kits of your favorite scents so you can play with them at home. You can go to a party and experiment with the fragrances as much as you like with no obligation, but if I were you I’d definitely get a product with your own scent! What’s the point of making it if you don’t get to wear it?

I confess I’m not much of a perfume wearer. Part of the turn-off has been that I haven’t been able to find a scent that really worked for me. That problem was solved on Saturday. Another turn-off is that a cheap perfume will lose its scent pretty quickly and ends up smelling like a tin can, and a high-quality perfume will cost $70 and more. That problem was also solved – my parfum spray bottle is two ounces! That’s going to last me a while, at a third the price of a high-end bottle that’s teeny-tiny.

Why don’t you head on over to the site and check it out. You can take a personality test to see which category you fall in. My test said I was a woodsy personality, and that’s true, but I didn’t care for any of the woodsy scents. It’s just a place to start, though – you’re not locked into one set of scents just because your personality leans one way or the other.

Now, because Karlene’s so cool, she’s giving a great special. If you click on this link and sign up for her Summer Special, which is that you have a party, do a one-on-one with Karlene, or come to an Open House, and mention Tristi (the person, not the designer fragrance which also bears my name) you can buy a parfum spray at full price, and then receive any other product for only $1.99. That’s a savings of up to $12.96. This Summer Special ends August 31, 2007.

If you don’t live in the Utah area, contact Karlene anyway. There are fragrance designers all over the country, and there might even be one near you. They offer their own specials and discounts, and I’m sure you’ll find one that works for you.

One of the great things about Urban Botanic is that while there is some overlap between Scentiments and U.B. (we both do lotion and sprays) we’re also different enough that we aren’t competing. (U.B. parfum spray is more of a perfume, while mine is an all-over body spritz. I do lip balm, bath salts, and facial care, which U.B. doesn’t do, but U.B. does shower gel and jetted tub-safe bubble bath, which I don’t.) We share many of the same goals – we want to offer the best quality, natural products we can.

So, swing on by, drop my name conspicuously, and go sniff some pretty smells. It’s just too dang much fun!