Shollin

First sniff: Unexpected! I was expecting a cold scent, a piney ice-and-snow scent, but Cold Moon is very floral and happy.

Wearing: This isn’t aquatic on me at all – just softly sweet florals with a hint of winter berry. Very pretty.

First sniff: I LOVE the little witches’ hat on the label. Hexennacht is a warm pine, a sweet pine, with a breath of cold that’s more like an unexpected breeze than like snow, and a wisp of woodsmoke.

Wearing: Yes, I definitely understand the comparisons to Samhain. This has more woodiness to it, and it’s not as warm, but the overall feel is very similar.

Bless you, blackrayne, for the decant!

First sniff: Hmm. Interesting. Blue Moon is soft and watery – there’s a hint of mint, and I’m pretty sure I smell the cucumber, but overall it’s hard to get an impression.

Wearing: This is really beautiful on me. It’s light, airy, floaty… all the notes have blended together so I can’t pick out any of them. So very pretty.

First sniff: Thunderbird is somehow different from all the other aquatics/stormy-sea scents I’ve smelled. It’s the same sort of ozone marine fresh scent, but there’s a presence to it that’s unique. It’s somehow… important.

Wearing: Fresh, clean, stormy and deep.

First sniff: Oh. This scent shimmers. It glistens, it twinkles, it dances in the morning dew. It’s a faint rainbow glimpsed through waterfall mist. In the vial, Oisin is purely bard, with no warrior in sight. Cushlamachree, this is wonderful.

Wearing: It’s more masculine, more rugged, on my skin, but still sparkling and light. I could not stop sniffing myself all day at work.

Thanks to blackrayne for the decant... and I LOVE the little bat label she put on it.

First sniff: Night flowers, yes… soft and gently sweet, just barely brushed by a breeze.

Wearing: Chiroptera is all flowers in the vial, but on my skin it’s soft lemon and green herbs, and there's a lovely roundness to it.

Thanks to darkling for the decant!

First sniff: I’ve never smelled hollyberry juice, but it certainly makes sense that it would smell like this. There’s no question that Yuletide is a Christmas scent – bright red and cheery and ever so slightly spicy.

Wearing: So utterly Christmas. Yuletide is the red of Christmas where Skadi and Mistletoe are the green.

First sniff: Fruity brains! A very wet fruitiness, almost gummi-scented.

Wearing: Mi-Go is a different sort of fruit than I’m used to. It’s more restrained than berry, definitely not citrus, not too sweet – it’s soft and subtle. I like muchly.

First sniff: Lemon and herbs… herbs of many colours, rather than the predominant green I’m used to from herbal scents. This is the first non-pine scent I’ve immediately thought would smell great on my guy.

Wearing: Rosemary, most definitely. Rosemary and lemon, and a jumble of other herbs.

First sniff: Havisham is a bit of an old-lady, powdery-flower scent, but it’s so powerfully sad.

Wearing: A very pale, gentle floral. I have a single-note imp of blue lilac, and that seems to be the main thing I’m smelling here – along with some rose and maybe some weeping lilies. This might just be because I know the story behind the scent, but Havisham strikes me as desperately sad. It isn’t really my kind of floral, either, and that coupled with the emotional overtone makes this one I won’t wear often.

First sniff: Whoa. Holy cow. Open one of those big bags of potting soil – the dark, rich, moist kind that almost looks edible (or maybe that’s just me) – and stick your sniffer down in it, and that’s Graveyard Dirt.

Wearing: Potting soil. Absolutely potting soil. And so incredibly not me. Very cool though.

Thanks to Eoywin for the decant!

First sniff: I. Love. This. Scent. And I could not begin to tell you what it smells like beyond cocoa splashed with rum. There’s so much going on here.

Wearing: Deep cocoa with a hint of spice and a drizzle of alcohol – rum or red wine. It’s ever so slightly smoky, deep and complex, and I really, really like it.

Thanks to scourgeotheseas for the decant!

First sniff: I don’t know why, but I was expecting a De Sade clone. Dead Man’s Hand is much lighter and softer. It reminds me of a stable, not a biker bar.

Wearing: Yup, this is the leather scent I need to try on my guy. De Sade was too cold, but this… this has promise. I could also see putting it in the oil burner to make my apartment smell like a stable – not the sweaty horse smell, not the hay or the sawdust or the stalls, but the scent of the tackroom, of the saddles and bridles, that soft, smooth, dusty-coloured leather. I don’t think it’s something I can get away with wearing, but I do like it quite a bit – I used to ride when I was younger and the tackroom scent is very nostalgic for me.

Chaos Theory XCVIII, from blackrayne:

First sniff: Oh, how very interesting. Lime, maybe? And lotus? It’s a watery-sweet that reminds me of lotus, but there’s also something fruity here.

Wearing: This Chaos Theory is very soft, subtle and pretty. It’s decidedly feminine. I can’t figure it out, but I like it.

Previously reviewed by andrabell and blackrayne.

First sniff: Sweet floral with a hint of green wood.

Wearing: IRIS! Irises growing wild in faerie circles in the sun at the edge of the forest. They’re probably my favourite flower to look at, but on my skin they go all powdery.

First sniff: Warm and golden, with just a hint of sweetness. Brisingamen is what The Lion would be if the spices were replaced with sweet. There’s a bit of an edge to it, too – it’s not all smooth polished amber.

Wearing: Yup, I like. It blossomed slowly over the course of the evening into a wonderful warm golden aura.

First sniff: Aha – that’s what smells so strange. Paperwhite narcissus has a very odd nonfloral scent, almost earthy, and it’s definitely dominating this imp.

Wearing: Languor is much more floral on my skin, a laid-back, lazy floral. Something in here reminds me of jasmine, though I know it’s not – lilies, maybe. Yup, definitely floralicious… but not quite my kind of floral.

2005

First sniff: Oh, happy smoldery scent. When I smell Beltane, I think of flowers, grass and herbs crushed under entwined bodies. It’s not screamingly floral – it’s not a big scent, or a loud one – it’s the sort of scent that would cling close to the skin and invite someone to lean in closer for a good sniff.

Wearing: Mmmm. Flowers and skin and life. It faded pretty quickly, but this is one to slather.

ADDED 11/21/06:

2006

First sniff: Very fresh and green! Cucumber melon grass? It’s wonderfully bright.

Wearing: Spring in a bottle. This makes me miss flowers. It’s bright, bright green and yellow, fresh and sweet and airy and delightful.

First sniff: Oh HELL yeah. Why on earth didn’t I order this sooner? It’s been on my wishlist for ages. Ahem. It’s white tea and ginger, plain and simple… but a grillion times better than the B&BW handsoap I used to have in my bathroom (and I LOVED that soap).

Wearing: I don’t know what makes ginger work so damn well on me, but it SO does. The tea gives it a freshness that makes it more than just a spice scent. Ah, Kumiho… you were worth the wait.

First sniff: Wow. This is a big chaotic mishmash of spices and figs? and almonds? and herbs and flowers, but mostly spices – I definitely smell cinnamon. It’s a loud bazaar where every hawker is trying to get your attention to buy something fragrant.

Wearing: On my skin, Silk Road stages a very sudden explosion of flowers that quickly subsides into spice again. Cinnamon is still the dominant note. Followed by… carnation? Eh? It reminds me quite a bit of Queen of Sheba, but less almondy. Queen of Sheba didn’t quite do it for me, and… this really doesn’t either, unfortunately.

First sniff: Frozen lime and lavender.

Wearing: Oh so very lavender. Wonderful dark-purple lavender lavender lavender. With just a little bit of citrus, and just a little bit of powderiness.

I slept like a rock - well, until my resident fatcat started begging for breakfast - and Quietude had faded by morning. Looks like Somnus has some competition in the knock-my-hiney-out category.

Bless you, OriginalWacky, for this decant. I'll preface this review by saying I have had an incredibly crappy day. One of those days where every single thing in your entire life just irritates the living hell out of you for absolutely no reason. I was seriously considering taking a mental health day from work because I just didn't think I could deal with it. And then I grabbed my brand-new little implet of Corazon, which arrived in the mail just this afternoon.

First sniff: Golden-red warmth with a touch of sharp-edged fruit.

Wearing: Corazon is perfectly lovely, and exactly what I needed today. It’s fruity-fresh and calming, with just enough herbal greenness. I’m sitting at my desk with nose glued to wrist, slowly remembering that I’m human.

This really did give me exactly the lift I needed to face the world again. We loves it, preciousss.

First sniff: It’s “that Greek honey note” again… it appeared in Athens and Delphi, and here it is in Hetairae. There’s something sweetly powdery dusted over the surface – powdery flower petals or something similar.

Wearing: I’m suddenly craving baklava. This is honeyrific, warm and sweet but not cloying. I think, though, that overall I prefer Athens, and Hetairae is very similar to my nose.

ETA: Ahem. To my nose, Hetairae is very similar to Athens. It isn't anything like my nose.

First sniff: Leanan Sidhe is a bit floral, mostly herby with an aquatic tinge. It’s very pretty, and very ethereal.

Wearing: It’s more floral on my skin, a very sweet floral like honeysuckle. After it dries a bit more it shifts from honeysuckle to honey and flushed skin, and it’s definitely growing on me… actually, it’s more like it’s seducing me. I’d dismissed this one as a girlie floral – pretty, but not me – and then a half-hour later it sneaks up and pounces me with otherworldly passion. Fan-bloody-tastic.

Sounds like Andra and Electra are my scent-twins on this one.

First sniff: It’s a sweet-white-flower orgy! Seems like if there’s jasmine anywhere in a scent, that’s all I can smell from the vial. Jasmine, jasmine, jasmine.

Wearing: It’s still pretty much pure jasmine in the wet stage. I’m waiting for the other stuff to kick in and tone it down a bit, because the rest of the notes sound amazingly wonderful. As it dries, I’m getting a hint of amber off my right wrist, but it’s still mostly jasmine.