Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (BPAL) Anniversary : 15th Anniversary (2017) Limited Edition Perfume Oil (Limited)
On our second anniversary, the Lab moved from the Far Land of Spare Oom (gratuitous C.S. Lewis reference) to its first real “location” in Atwater Village. It was small, it was weird, and we all shared one space, but it was home.
In 2004, our real unreal home,bpal.org, was founded by slythwitch, and later that year, shrieking violet took over the helm. Bpal.org has been the source of so much love and joy in my life since its inception, and because of .org, my family – bound by love and spirit – expanded to include some of the finest human beings I have ever known. The community that grew from .org is incomparable, both on the internet and in the so-called “real” world; it is a safe haven of wise, witty, kind, compassionate souls, and without it and without the people that I met through it, my life would be so much darker.
2004 also heralded our first press mention (thank you, Bust Magazine!), our first Chaos Theory series, and the first Lunacies. Our first Blue Moon came out in July of 2004, launching the Lunacies that we’ve been doing ever since. Red Moon was our official first Lunacy blend, followed Harvest Moon, Hunter Moon, and a bajillion other Lunacies over the next eleven years!
(Ok, maybe not a bajillion, but I’m not in the mood to do the math!)
Prior to September of 2004, we dressed our Imps a bit differently. We wrapped synthetic bull sinew around the vials and used handwritten parchment labels. Honestly, it looked amazing, but it was an incredibly time consuming process, and left me with a couple of imp-related battle scars. As of autumn, we switched to the paper labels you see tody.
Our first activism scents also debuted in 2004: Cerberus (Animal Assistance League of Orange County), Chiroptera (Bat Conservation International), Corazon (Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land), Oisin (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund), and Thunderbird (the Adopt-a-Native-Elder Program), kicking off over a decade of fundraising, advocacy, and charity work.
In 2004, Antique Lace first appeared and we introduced our first forum-only blend (Formula 54!). And on December 21, 2004, Dorian – a hymn to my love for Ted – went live.
A memory of Antique Lace, Formula 54’s pink pepper, and a splash of Dorian’s white tea and lavender fougere.
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