Kaowolfie

This was a gift from the Lab, and I'm so glad they gave it to me! I might need to buy a bottle of this. Right off the bat, it's MINT. It reminds me of the way I smell after one of my biannual hackings away at the mint in my side yard. It's a little strong, even with the tiny tiny dab I put on, but nice. After a few minutes the lavender pokes its head through, accompanied by a softening effect on the mint. It starts slowly (over the course of ten minutes) becoming a sweet mint smell, almost like mint leaves muddled together with a bit of sugar, with some bruised lavender on the side. It's a very calming scent, and I like it a lot. Unfortunately, my skin is eating it, the way it always eats herbal scents. :/ This would make a really nice bath scent.

This is the captured scent of a cold, moonless night, lost deep within the darkest wood. Haunting and desolate, this scent evokes images of fairy tale tragedy and half-remembered nightmares. Thick, viscous pine with ambergris, black musk, juniper and cypress. Hummina hummina! I'm so glad I'm seeing my fiance on Friday -- I want to -coat- him in this. On my skin, it starts off with all the notes being pretty distinct. I can smell the juniper, the pine, the amber and the musk, and there's a sharp green note I don't recognize that's likely the cypress. At this point, it smells the way I've always figured the forest primaevel ought to smell, if one were running through the underbrush with a wolf pack nearby, in the evening. (I'm, err, a bit caught on wolves.) As it settles down, the notes begin to meld into one another, and the amber starts to rise to the top. The amber becomes a honeyed warmth, with a tiny hint of vanilla to it, and a juniper/pine background. The musk has decided to amplify my skin's natural scent, so the end result is something like honeyed yummy amber woven through with juniper/pine, supported by sweet, sexy, musky skin. I really like this on me, but I think it's definitely something to give to my fiance to try, since I'm a bit more of a floral person.

Nyarly-dear (Don't ask. ) starts off as RAIN with a slight hint of frankincense, especially if I've accidentally put on too much. (Half a swipe of Nyarly is more than enough on my skin, apparently.) It's so gorgeous and wonderful. After a few minutes, it starts drying down into a wet, drizzly scent, with the frankincense coming more and more to the forefront -- this is about as dried down as it gets. It's a slightly ominous smell, but at the same time, I love it. It gives me my favorite parts about rainy days w/o the god-awful facial pain rainstorms give me, topped off with sweet, yummy frankincense. It does seem like an odd combo, but mmm. I need me a bottle.

Oh, no. :/ So I tried this on my arm, even though it's much too masculine for me, and it began to morph into this wonderful sexy man smell, which I loved... for about two minutes before my nose clogged and I started to have a /lot/ of trouble breathing. I think I must be allergic to orange blossom.

This smells so pretty in the vial -- a soft floral with a hint of spice, the kind of smell I would expect of a goddess of wisdom. Unfortunately, on me, it smells like some sort of inexpensive air freshener mixed with baby powder. :/ I had about thirty seconds of a lovely, gently spicy jasmine, but that appears to have vanished completely. I think the powder killed it. Oh, well. :/

In bottle: Cranberries and pine and a little snow. Pretty and spicy and v. v. v. Christmas-y. Initially on skin: Cranberries! The pine tempers, but it's mostly tart, slightly sweet, succulent cranberries. Ten minutes later: The cranberries are becoming a background note, while the cold pine takes the forefront. It really /does/ smell like snow, I feel like Christmas. Twenty minutes in: I smell like an amalgamation of snow, pine, and cranberries. Sixty minutes in: The scent suddenly got really faded and soft. I smell like a little bit of the outdoors lingering around you, after you've stomped snow off your boots. The cranberry is there, like someone was scenting the air with it. I normally don't like to give touchy feeling descriptions of scents, but that really is what this smells like. I like it a lot, but I'm not sure how much /I/ want to smell like it. I might take to using it to scent my room somehow -- I might have to get an oil burner. I do have to say, it's kind of nice to wear now that it's started POURING DOWN RAIN outside. (Yes, all the caps are necessary.) It's very much a "it's cold and miserable outside, but I'm inside where it's warm." scent. I almost smell a similarity between this and Niflheim. I think the snowy notes in Skadi are akin to the misty-gloomy notes in Niflheim -- the main differences are the different top notes.

I actually ordered this for my fiance, but I had to try it on myself, because I /love/ nag champa. In the vial, it's smokey nag champa and all sorts of wonderful. Did I mention I love nag champa? Initially on my skin, it's straight nag champa. Mmmm. However, the longer it sets, the more the other notes begin to come out. Five minutes in and it's nag champa and sandalwood, and then after about fifteen minutes the lavender starts to poke through. It's not an astringent lavender, but it's nice -- I think the smokiness of the other notes help mute the sharper parts of the lavender. This is really pretty, but I think it's too masculine for me to wear. It ought to smell fantastic on my fiance. ;D

In my vial, Oneiroi smells like lavender with a few other greenish herbs tossed in. As soon as it hits my skin, the lavender starts to soften and fade out, and a powdery scent starts coming to the forefront, which tends to herald the arrival of jasmine. After about five minutes, it's turned into an herbal jasmine. It's a fairly light jasmine, rather than an intolerably heavy one, but it's not something that I would want to wear out as perfume. I really don't know if this progresses any further on my skin, because I fell asleep fifteen minutes after putting it on.

Namaste doesn't do anything good on my skin. :/ When I first put it on, it's straight up cedar. A minute or so later and the lemongrass starts coming out, but even having only put on a few drops of this, it's very /very/ strong. Much too strong for my tastes. x.x After about five minutes, it becomes lemon, cedar, and jasmine, and it just seems to get louder and brasher as we go on. It kept turning more and more into something I didn't like, so I washed it off at this point. Unfortunately, despite me scrubbing my wrists repeatedly with soap and once with oil, I still ended up with a strong patchouli smell on my wrists from this. I guess I have my first thing to swap.