Shollin

First sniff: Deep. Warm. Powerful. And entirely swoon-inducing. Holy cats this is good stuff.

 

Wearing: Dragon’s Musk makes me smell really damn good. I’ll have to wear and compare, but I think… I might like this even better than my top-three staple Dragon’s Heart. I was sniffing my wrist all night during a crazy day at work and this just made me smile every time. It’s so, so me.

First sniff: Ooh. Green, green, green and brightly cold.

 

Wearing: Don’t know if my guy will consent to guinea-pig a scent named after the Night Hag, but Nocnitsa is exactly the sort of evergreen that smells great on him.

First sniff: Wet mint and sugar. I’ll have to wear this one again on Derby Day!

 

Wearing: Juke Joint is quite a bit warmer on my skin. It’s not boozey, which is a relief – just very sweet and very minty. Good stuff. It got more and more sultry-warm as the evening went on.

First sniff: Who knew Discord could smell so innocent? Eris is obviously up to something, but she’s trying to distract me by smelling like one of the Shakespeare girls, all flowery with a hint of melon.

 

Wearing: When wet on my skin this is pure honeydew. Wonderful. And in the drydown, now she starts to show her teeth – just a hint of sharp spice, still hiding behind the facade of sweetness. This definitely isn’t the Goth-chick Discord of the very silly Hercules TV series – she’s a lot more subtle than that.

First sniff: The Living Flame smells fruity to me – sweet red berries with a hint of something deeper and the barest brushing of soft petals. It’s not an aggressive red; it’s a softer red, like red tulips or those gorgeous coral-coloured azalea blossoms.

 

Wearing: Fantastically warm and sweet, deepening to soft furry musk. This is just wonderful.

First sniff: Sweet aquatic flowers. Big ones.

 

Wearing: Desdemona is very pretty, very sweet-floral, and ultimately, probably too girly for me.

First sniff: Brimstone smells like… burning herbs. “Peppermint smoke” was my first thought – that’s not quite right, but it does smell like the smoke from burning dried herbs.

 

Wearing: It’s just an odd scent – lighter than Djinn, but along the same lines.

Thanks to Sheila for the decant!

 

First sniff: All Saints’ is much lighter than I expected, and very aquatic.

 

Wearing: The resin comes out more on my skin, but it smells more like spice than like incense. This is an intriguing scent. It kept shifting throughout the day, ending in a wonderfully warm enveloping resin. Very, very nice.

Thanks to Eoywin for the decant!

 

First sniff: Oh. My. Gods. Butter, booze and spice. Nutmeg, especially. All wrapped up in warm cosiness.

 

Wearing: Warm and enveloping and comforting. This is a happy scent, and I needed a happy scent the day I wore it.

Oisin is pronounced oh-SHEEN. It's Gaelic.

Thanks to gingersnapp for the decant!

 

First sniff: I have never met a rose scent that made my mouth water… until now. Just taking the tape off the imp cap released a burst of deliciously lush rose-petal satin. Rose Red smells like walking through my grandmother’s back yard in the sun between her beds of rosebushes… and for possibly the first time I’m getting a tactile impression from a scent (usually if I have a weird other-sense thing I get a colour or an image)… smelling this scent makes me think of touching rose petals, that perfect soft smoothness that nothing manmade can match.

 

Wearing: I was hesitant about trying RR because generally roses are Not Me, but… holy wow. This is utter rose perfection.

First sniff: Fenris Wolf is deep, dark, blood-red in both colour and scent.

 

Wearing: It’s so powerful in the vial that I was expecting to be knocked over by the aura when I put it on, and fortunately that isn’t the case. This reminds me of my beloved Dragon’s Heart. It’s not as warm, but it has the same fierce confidence.

First sniff: A round, full dark-floral with just enough sweetness and an undertone of resin.

 

Wearing: Now this is odd. When I put Crossroads on, I get almond. Nope – make that ALMOND! It’s very strongly sweet-almondy, with the dark flowers underneath. The almond died down pretty quickly as it dried, and over the course of the night, it became a lovely resinous dark floral.

First sniff: It’s tart, it’s juicy, it’s loud, it’s RED – Akuma is BERRY, hear it roar!

 

Wearing: Tart juicy red berries bouncing hyperactively off my skin. There’s not a hint of sugar to sweeten them, and no trace of an earthier scent to hold them back – this is just a fruitbasket orgy.

First sniff: Coyote is a very dry, subtle, beige sort of scent.

 

Wearing: Beige is really the only adjective I can find. It doesn’t smell dusty, but it reminds me of dust, or of sand blowing off bare rock. It’s rather bleak. BUT… after an hour or so (this is a very slow-blooming scent), it’s decided to be warm, and ever so slightly sweet, and wonderfully soft, and at this stage it’s even better than Haunted. I kept wondering during Spanish class who was wearing vanilla hand lotion, and I think I was smelling the aura of my Coyote.

First sniff: Oh. Oh, my. White Rabbit smells amazing in the vial. It’s warm, and deep, and comforting, pure black tea with the barest hint that someone waved a lemon in the direction of the vial.

 

Wearing: I haven’t yet met a tea scent that I didn’t love. This scent is much calmer than his namesake – I can’t picture him hopping around gasping “I’m late! I’m late!” He’s sitting by the fire slowly enjoying his tea with nary a glance at his pocketwatch… he’ll get there someday, and the Queen can bloody well wait.

First sniff: Holy patchouli, Batman! And something cooler and green-tingly above, like mint or pine.

 

Wearing: Another one I’ll have to try on my guy… strong evergreen juniper with the happy earthy patchouli underneath. Omen is quite a bit warmer than I expected, especially considering the juniper – evergreens usually smell like crunchy snow on my skin, but this is a lot more relaxed. Sadly, it turned into green baby powder over the course of the evening.

First sniff: Perfect rain-washed air – not the scent of a storm approaching, but the wonderful clean watery scent that lingers around the trees and the grass after a soft spring rain.

Wearing: I’m just in love with all of Beth’s storm scents… Tempest was the first to win my heart, but they’re all just wonderful. I really do need to sit down and sniff through them one of these days, because I’m sure I don’t need to keep every single one, but they’re just lovely and Storm Moon is no exception. There does seem to be a deeper note in this one that isn't present in the others.

Thanks to clover for the decant!

 

First sniff: Oh, this is wonderful. Mistletoe is the very essence of Christmas evergreen.

 

Wearing: I’m actually glad it isn’t warm and sunny today because this scent would be too wintry. It reminds me a bit of Skadi in that there seems to be a hint of berry-fruit under the green (poisonous mistletoe berries? hmmm…) but it’s even greener, without being at all sharp.

First sniff: Very sharp citrus melange with a cold-minty undertone.

 

Wearing: Finally, an astrology oil I really, really like – and it’s my beloved’s sun sign (he’s a solstice baby, just barely a Gemini). Veeeeery interesting. The mint is much more pronounced on my skin, and the lemon is asserting itself above the other citrus, so I smell a bit like lemon-mint tea. This is very good stuff.

First sniff: Whoa. This really does smell like dirty apricots.

 

Wearing: Depraved is decidedly freaky. I get juicy apricots and think “whee, happy scent,” and then the patchouli creeps up around it and drags it down into the dirt. Patchouli generally works pretty well on me, but this is such a clash I’m not sure I can wear it.

First sniff: In the vial, Cancer smells like apples and mint to me.

 

Wearing: And on my skin it suddenly morphs into the listed ingredients… rose and lemon, with a softer flower in the background that must be lilac, and the apple and mint are gone entirely. It was pretty much straight rose after a while, and not quite me.

I’ve been wanting to try Haunted for donkey’s years, and it always got pushed out of my order by shiny new things that caught my eye… plus I was never quite sure the black musk would work on me… and then I got an unexpected imp in a swap (thanks, clover!).

 

First sniff: Oh, it’s pretty. In a very unusual way. It hints at spice without ever quite getting there, and the scent-colour is a tingly greenish-bronze. It’s a lot fresher and lighter than I expected.

 

Wearing: There’s a breath of citrus somewhere in here. Haunted doesn’t strike me as a sad scent at all, or a spooky one, but it’s beautifully mysterious and was perfect for surviving the end of my twelve-day week.

First sniff: Peace smells a bit like lavender soap, with a hint of astringent weirdness around the edges.

 

Wearing: It’s just an odd scent. I can’t really pin anything down except the astringency, and it doesn’t quite work on me.

Thanks to clover for the decant!

 

First sniff: Sweet almond – or cherry – over a deeper woody note.

 

Wearing: It turns from bright to spicy on my skin. And now that it’s drying I understand the comparisons to Samhain. This is so amazingly not a springtime scent – it makes me want to crunch through fallen leaves with a chill in the air. Which is rather amusing, because Lughnasadh around here is the dog days of summer… but it’s very much a harvest scent.