Shollin

First sniff: Wow. Ice Queen is strong, and cold, and sunshine-on-snow bright. She’s not the withdrawn, aloof beauty I was expecting – she’s in-your-face and loud. She’s Phyllis Diller in ermine. Wearing: Cold grapefruit with a breath of flowers. Just lovely. It’s quite a bit more subtle on my skin, and very nice.

First sniff: There’s a hint of cherry-sweetness around the edges, but the core of Wildfire is strong, grounded woods. Wearing: It’s a wet red scent… I’m having trouble pinning anything down, but it reminds me quite a bit of Red Moon, with a touch of soft florals. I need to try it again, because it turned mostly to rose on my skin, but it's pretty.

First sniff: Holy hell. This really is leather. And not the smooth buttery armchair leather of Hellfire… De Sade is Gabriel Knight’s wind-beaten leather jacket. After he’s been out for a night on Bourbon Street. Wearing: Damn. This isn’t just leather-scented perfume… it makes my skin smell like leather, like I’ve been living in the saddle under too much sun. It clings very close – I was expecting to be blown away by an aura of cowhide, but it’s decidedly subtle. Until I sniff my wrist and it smells like… Gabriel. I really can’t shake the association. This is Tim Curry’s voice doing a N’Awlins drawl and the messy-haired but unreasonably hot guy in the computer game. It’s not a me scent, at all, and I can’t imagine my love in it either, but I’m tempted to keep it around just because it’s so freaking amazing.

Thanks to magikfanfic for the decant! First sniff: Very, very light. It hints at grapefruit and sea air, but if I try to concentrate on it directly it almost disappears – the way a faint star vanishes if you look straight at it. There’s something dark underneath, too. Wearing: Ah, definite grapefruit. Very chilly and fresh. It’s a lot stronger on me than it was in the vial, and I’m getting a lovely citrus aura.

First sniff: Grandmother of Ghosts is a lot lighter than I expected – it’s floaty and a bit dreamy, but still somehow menacing. Dry woodiness is the main thing I smell, and a little bit of pepper – the flowers and fruits are hiding. Wearing: For several hours, definitely dry woods, and I’d dismissed it as “interesting but not me” – but by the end of the evening it developed a very intriguing fruitiness. I’m not immediately in love, but it’s persuaded me to give it another chance.

First sniff: Ooh. This is prettier than I expected – very slightly sweet and very slightly lemony. Wearing: There’s a masculine edge to this scent, no doubt, but a very refined and proper one. It’s decidedly charming. Very subtle, but the aura is fabulous – I feel like I’m surrounded by a faint mist of sugar, and the vanilla shows up in warm rich flashes every so often. Dorian’s scent reminds me very much of the scrub from Prairieland Herbs that has vanilla, wheatgerm and honey – it’s a rich warm vanilla, with just a hint of brown sugar. Drying: Gawdamighty, it just keeps getting better – Dorian keeps sneaking up on me and surprising me with a teasing hint of warm vanilla, brushing by my nose and then disappearing again. I cannot wait to smell this on my guy. Beth, sweetie, you might not want to let your own Dorian out of the house wearing this... he'd be swarmed by hordes of women who wanted to lick him!

First sniff: Thanks to Theravada for the decant! That is definitely gingerbread. Thick, chewy, spicy gingerbread. I think it’s been in the oven just a little too long – the edges are ever so slightly burned, but it’s a good burned (I’m weird that way; I actually prefer my popcorn a tiny bit scorched and my cookies extra-brown around the edges). Wearing: I love food scents that don’t immediately make me hungry, and Gingerbread Poppet fits that description wonderfully. Maybe because I’ve never been a big fan of gingerbread (I prefer chocolate-chip cookies any day, preferably with nuts!) The wrist-scent is a bit too cinnamony, but the aura is warmly comforting-spicy and fabulous.

First sniff: Arachne is a light, sweet, floaty scent, faintly aquatic and golden. Wearing: Slightly minty at first. It goes through a brief soapy phase, but after it fades, this scent is a very nice faintly sweet golden glow. It doesn’t strike me as particularly herbal or floral; it’s more like amber. Interesting.

First sniff: Whisker-tingling furry almond over deeper musk. Wearing: Bastet is a gorgeous warm scent, lioness-gold, with an overtone of sweet almond. Fantastically beautiful. I got a lot of golden scents in this order; that wasn’t intentional, but the last four I’ve tried (Mantis, Arachne, Delphi and Bastet) give me almost exactly the same scent-colour.

First sniff: Thanks to sihaya09 for the decant! Frost Moon has a fantastic minty chill to it. I can’t for the life of me remember why I didn’t order this. Wearing: Clear and cold, very pale blue. An ice-princess scent. It went oddly floral over the course of the evening, but still beautiful.

First sniff: Strong, confident floral, edged with jasmine. Bathsheba has the same confident purple feeling I always associate with orchid… but here, apparently, it’s plum, and there’s no jasmine in sight. OK, nose, work with me here. It’s fruity-sweet, with a deeper base, but the overview is floral. Wearing: Oh, dear heavenly wow. I am in love. Sweet and soft and round and ripe and damn. My Yule order is kicking ass all around.

First sniff: Delphi is… very hard to parse. (Which, I suppose, is appropriate given the name… maybe I should sit over a steaming volcanic fissure and go into a prophetic fit to figure it out…) From the vial it’s mostly syrupy-sweet, but there’s an odd dry green note at the very center. Like a dried leaf dipped in honey. And after looking at the description… of course, it’s the same honeywine as in Old Athens, with a bay leaf tossed in. OK. That makes more sense. Wearing: Waaaaaaay sweet when first applied. The scent has a thickness to it – not quite gooey, but viscous – and I can taste it in the back of my throat. After drying for a couple of minutes, the wrist-scent develops a smokiness that’s very nice.

First sniff: A high, cool golden scent wrapped in slightly bitter citrus. Mantis has a bit of a mountain-air cleanness to it. Wearing: I wasn’t expecting Mantis to be this fresh, based on the description, but it’s really lovely. The golden note is bittersweet and very intriguing. It’s really growing on me – I can’t stop sniffing myself. By the end of the night it worked itself quite firmly onto my favourites list!

... A deep, rumbling scent, warm, soft and as cozy as a dog by a hearthfire, but with a fierce and feral soul: deep chocolate, deeper musks, with a dash of fig, bittersweet walnut, and the wild essences of juniper berry, cubeb and rum. First sniff: Hmm. Deep and dark, faintly chocolatey, and there’s the tiniest hint of cough syrup floating around the outside. Wearing: Why on earth does Cerberus smell Caribbean to me?! I suppose it’s the rum… but I keep getting flashes of being holed up in a dim hole-in-the-wall bar somewhere in the islands. And again, after I check the ingredients, I recognise fig as the strongest note, but somehow I can never pick it out when I don’t know it’s there. It didn’t grab me immediately, but it’s interesting enough that I need to try it again.

First sniff: Drool! Sugar cookies dusted with spice – it’s a less buttery scent than the drydown of Spooky, but just as warm and delicious. Wearing: Well, this is interesting – when wet on my skin it smells more like spiced oatmeal. While it was drying I didn’t think I liked Sugar Cookie as much as I expected to – it’s one of those odd scents, like Gluttony was on me, that has a delicious aura but the wrist-scent is different and not nearly as good – but by its final stage it’s thoroughly yummy everywhere I sniff.

First sniff: Wow. Glasya is smoldering dark, blood-red, and very powerful. It’s a warm, close darkness bearing the promise of warm, close activities. Wearing: UBERslinky. Purrrrrrrrrr. This is utter sensual confidence, knowing damn well you’re the sexiest thing he’s ever seen and taking your time about walking – no, prowling – back to bed so he can get a good look. Dragon’s blood and red musk – very good on me.

First sniff: Spice is most prominent in the vial, dusted over a red-resin base of dragon’s blood. I’m worried about the vetiver – it usually goes dark-green and funky on me. Here goes… crossing my fingers… Wearing: Well, so far, so good. Serpent’s Kiss reminds me of the Christmas-spiciness of Tintagel, without the leather undertone. And after about half an hour, the vetiver turns swampy. Meh.

First sniff: Holy sugar coma, Batman! Wow. Sugar Skull smells like the best part of Gluttony – that amazing thick, rich, gooey sweet. I quite literally had to wipe my mouth when I put the cap back on the vial. Wearing: Oh yeah. Rich, warm, caramel-gooey. I LOVE this.

I really need to give Katharina another try, because I put her on as I was dashing off to work, after washing with a scented bodywash AND putting a scented lotion on my legs – so she had a lot of competition today. First sniff: Juicy sticky fruit is definitely the forefront, but the orange blossom is a sharpness just behind. Wearing: I really, really liked this scent in its wet incarnation – bright orange fruit (though not oranges) with enough sharpness to be interesting. It went a bit weird as it dried, but I suspect that’s more a factor of clashing with all the other stuff I had on.

First sniff: Bubblegum-sweet and wet – yup, there’s lotus in this all right. I’m not getting gardenia at all, but there’s a hint of minty chill hanging around the edges. Wearing: It’s similar enough to Black Lotus (which I prefer) that I think I'll pass it along to someone who didn't get to try it before it went away.

First sniff: Clear and breezy, but with a deep shadow underneath. Wearing: There’s a deep green spice note under the freshness… unexpected. It turns weird very quickly. I’ve discovered vetiver isn’t something I really get along with.

First sniff: Very wet. Light, floaty, aquatic and sweet. Wearing: I simply love that this perfume bears the name of the most expensive Magic card ever printed. And, happily, I enjoy Black Lotus beyond its Magic connection – it’s dreamy and ethereal, not quite solid, and still very watery-sweet.

Beautiful, radiant daughter of Demeter... her loveliness was so exquisite that even Hell itself could not resist her. Pomegranate and rose. First sniff: Juicy and red! I have a pomegranate soap and Persephone is almost the same scent. The roses are very much an afterthought in the vial – I can just barely make them out underneath. Wearing: The rose takes more control as it hits my skin – rose and pomegranate are more evenly balanced now. I really enjoyed the juicy tartness under the flowers, but it faded quickly to just rose, and even that didn’t last too long. There are other rose scents I like better, so Persephone will be swapped.

First sniff: Yup – I can see this being a wolf scent. It’s deep and musky, with a tiny hint of sweetness. I’m guessing there’s dragon’s blood in here because of the colour. Wearing: I’ve always had an affinity for wolves (and dragons), and I’m very glad this scent seems to work on me. It’s dark, spicy, makes my nose itch a bit – but wonderfully straightforwardly warm, nothing sensual about it, the warmth of den and fur.

First sniff: Hmmm. I didn’t know it was possible for a scent to be woody and bright at the same time. Wearing: Lily of the valley pops out immediately, bright white flowers over the wooden base. It was nice enough – more floral than I expected – but didn’t really leave much of an impression, and there are so many scents I’m madly in love with that this one is going up for swap.