lady_pandora

This is a morpher, on me. It starts out predominantly cinnamon with something a little lemony, which I think is an early stage of the frankincense. Then, it does kind of a two-part thing, where my first sniff of it smells like dusty cinnamon and wood but there's a "back end" that I smell a moment later, like an aftertaste, that's kind of a funky sweat smell. I think this is something the patchouli is doing. At this point I decided i didn't like it, but at about 45 minutes, I suddenly realized the throw was a GORGEOUS frankincense. The skin scent was still a little wonky, but a little later, finally got it together, with the cinnamon/wood predominant and the patch behaving better. So it seemed like a really nice incensy dry cinnamon scent, until it pulled one last morph and went to kind of a men's-cologne place that reminded me of what Voodoo did on me. After the first 45 minutes, I think this objectively smells good on me, if there's such a thing as objectively smelling good, but after a few hours it turns into something that just doesn't fit me personality-wise. I think it's "working" but not for me.

I amp the hell out of the red musk in this one. I smell just a touch of dragon's blood, too, and I think the resins may be hanging around in the background but I can't pick them out individually. The leather appears partway through the weartime and has kind of a smoky or burnt quality, to me. Unfortunately, I can't really tell this apart from Die Sunde, vom Tod Verfolgt on my skin, other than the leather note, and said leather note isn't quite agreeing with me, thus making Die Sunde the winner of the two. (Not only do I amp the musk in both, but they also share the supporting notes of amber and frankincense, though I can't really pick them out in either, and the orchid in Die Sunde even has a weird dragon's blood quality to it, on me.) So, since I already have a bottle of that, Zmey Gornych may be one for the swaps. I do like it, but I just amp the red musk too much for its individuality to come out.

I get both lavender and cinnamon in the vial and when it's wet, but it very quickly becomes just cinnamon. It's not hugely strong on me, but it's single-note and smells like I've been chewing Big Red. Hand of Hermes may be the first TAL I've tried that seems to work kind of...wonky. I do think it has an effect, and it's a very Hermes-y effect. but it's not precisely what my intent in buying it was. Simply put: Hand of Hermes makes people leave my office. I don't think it's that they're overpowered by the scent, either--like I said, it's not that strong on me scentwise, and it's not a scent that is offensive to most people, and no one has made any comments to the effect of "Hey lady_p, could you tone that down?" I had been wearing HoH because of communication issues in the office. I would say something, and it was like it was being put through babelfish ten times and then finally reaching the listener. I was hoping to straighten out the lines of communication so I could get my points across. But whenever I wear it, suddenly everybody decides to work from home, or go to the gym, etc. It does have the effect of eliminating miscommunication--because nobody's around to misunderstand me! And I can see Hermes in this effect. He's a god of the mind, and he's making people remember other things they want to do; he's a god of swift travel, and he's making people swiftly travel away. It's to the point that I've started using it that way on purpose if I want to work in silence or go home early (I can sometimes go home early on Fridays if everybody else leaves too).

For me, I haven't quit them per se--in fact, getting into BPAL has given me a greater appreciation for how "regular" perfume also evolves throughout a day--but I just have so much BPAL now that I forget to ever wear the other stuff!

I put this on, and shortly thereafter was thinking, "Wow, I love this!" And on the heels of that, "And it smells familiar!" And then it dawned on me that it smelled like Lights of Men's Lives. Apparently, I'm amping the vanilla and honey and turning into a LoML clone. Doesn't really change much either. So while I think this smells amazingly good on me, it's close enough that I don't need more of this--I now have 2 imps of Bard, a partial imp of Lights of Men's Lives, a full bottle of Lights of Men's Lives, and a bottle of Alma Venus, which also turns into LoML after a few hours on my skin. I'm probably set for a while.

This was a frimp from the Lab, and I didn't expect to like it. I figured it would either go straight dirt--like Zombi without the rose--or it would go manly aftershave. But this, folks, is why you always try the frimps! This is diiiivine. I can't make out every note I'm smelling here, but I smell mint, and pine, and general woodiness, and I can envision being in the "forest primeval" with trees so old I can't see the tops of them. I don't get dirt at all, just green green green, and while these notes sometimes go too dudely on me, here they are perfect and gender-neutral. It gives me the same feeling of primal peace that I get from smelling Midnight Mass, actually. I thought this was just a vibe thing, but then dabbed Midnight Mass in a different spot and huffed them in close succession, and I think they actually share a note, something in the wood family.

Thank you, what category is Spirits of the Dead? ETA: Thank you, Alder. I will try it out It's up at EBay right now!

I loves me some orange blossom. Jezebel mostly blends together really well on me and I can't really make out any of the notes on their own, most of the time, but I do like it and have a big bottle. Les Bijoux is a huge favorite of mine and has orange blossom. Some days I amp it more than others. I also like Hunger and Paramatman, and the OB is the best part (to me) of Tavern of Hell, which was too masculine overall for me, but ohhh that lovely note. The recent LE Alma Venus also has some lovely neroli and OB going on, and I also like the OB in Visions of Autumn IV. An older LE I love is Bijoux Y'ha-nthlei, which starts out with a nice neroli note.

The Lab's frimp psychics were accurate for me too! This was a scent I probably would never have gotten around to. For years, I avoided all vetiver, and even once I stopped avoiding it, it would never have occurred to me that these three notes could fit together. But they do. Oh, how they do. Each of them is kind of the best version of itself here. The honeysuckle smells like a blend of honey and jasmine. Like, I think this is what jasmine does on other people, people who don't power-amp it so that they can still smell the other notes. It sent me scrambling to google to see if honeysuckle had indole, and yep, it does. It's sweet and heady and I love it. The opium avoids the hairspray thing and instead does the powdery-incense thing. The vetiver lurks underneath, never taking over the blend, just giving it a little edge and some grounding. I can pick out each one individually, but it's like they're singing in perfect harmony. (Honeysuckle is a soprano diva, of course. Opium sings alto, and vetiver's a bass.) Between O's being out of stock and not working as well on my chemistry anymore, I've been wanting other honey and honey-like blends, and this is a really nice one, somehow managing to be complex while only having three things in it. And there's a weird synchronicity between the name and some stuff going on in my life. Plus, it makes me think of Anathema Device! I think this will probably be a bottle.

In ancient Rome, Venus Cloacina was the goddess of the . And that's precisely why I bought it. I decided recently that I wanted to start doing little rituals to her because of some recurring plumbing issues in my building, which my landlord has...not been very proactive in fixing when they crop up. I hemmed and hawed and then realized I was never going to get this kind of perfect synchronicity again, of someone actually making an oil named for this relatively obscure aspect. So, I basically bought this as a TAL, even though it's not meant as one. I've been using it on candles for the purpose. But I also tested it for scent, and it's lovely! Like ellocentipede, I'm reminded of Billie Holiday a bit; I could imagine her having smelled like this when she sang. It's a beautiful, lush, soft gardenia. I imagine it glowing a pale greenish white. It's a "damp" scent; the only other gardenia oil I've worn recently is TAL White Light, whose other notes give it a kind of dryness. Not here--the dew is still on this bloom. The supporting notes are well blended and don't really stick out as individual notes. It doesn't morph a ton, just gradually becomes fainter, though I think I smell a little more of the vanilla on the drydown. Pretty, ladylike, great for a hot summer night.

Check out the Diabolus section in particular. First one that comes to my mind is Djinn. Soooo smoky. Al-Shairan is nice. And I really like Lilith too (that one's in Excolo).

This starts out with what smells like lemon to me. Apparently, my nose can't tell lemon and citron apart. I guess they both have a lot of limonene. I never used to be a lemon fan, but the last few months, I've been liking it much better. (Thank you, Seven Herbs Charm!). And it was warm out when I tested Whitechapel, so yay, cool lemony blend! So far so good. And then the musk just went so, so wrong on me. I'm used to amping white musk or having it go powdery, but not this. It cycles between smelling like regular musk, smelling like Play-Doh, and smelling like sweat. Not B.O., exactly, but definitely sweat, like when someone has just been for a run. Maybe chasing victims through the streets of London! A tip of the hat to Beth for, indeed, creating a perfume that has a "corrupted core." I can't wear it, but I get it.

Yep, Scarecrow--if your chemistry is like mine, you'll have to get through an initial weird nailpolish phase, but on the other side there is dry hay. I'll also mention the Lion, oddly--it's one of the few ambery ones that strikes me as dry.

Spicy rose for the first few minutes, and then it settles down into a tea-dominant scent and stays there. Tea in the forefront, a little spicy, and then all the other notes are well-blended and just seem to form an indistinct aura of "sweet" that hangs around underneath the tea. I wish I got more rose and honey out of this, but I'm glad the cream doesn't show up to wreck things. I could swear I feel cooler, in the temperature sense, the moment I get a whiff of this. It's very fresh and clean on me. The real test, I think, will be how much I reach for it when the weather gets really hot.

Has anybody else gotten Voodoo lately, and is it different from how it's supposed to be? I got this tobacco/boozy thing that doesn't seem to relate to anybody else's review of it. I was thinking it was just death notes morphing weirdly on me, but this morning I'm wondering if I got something else instead, like maybe Perversion? I've never smelled either before (Perversion never, Voodoo not till last night), so I can't actually make a comparison.

A midnight scent, evoking images of flickering golden firelight reflecting off the sheen of glistening skin and the jerking shadows of bodies suffused with spiritual ecstasy. A deep, powerful, resonant blend of myrrh, patchouli, vetiver, lime, vanilla, pine, almond and clove. I guess I used up my soda-scent allotment the other night with Antikythera Mechanism, because I don't get that at all from Voodoo. This was fruit and patchouli in the imp, but changed as soon as I put it on. I wasn't looking at the notes at first, and I was sure I smelled tobacco smoke and rum. Ah, we're making an offering to Papa Legba, I thought. But apparently neither of these things is supposed to be in the blend. I smelled them nonetheless. A slight morph then, and then...an episode of Scent Memory Theatre! So my grandfather, RIP, used to own a barbershop. This was an old skool barbershop where there was pretty much just one haircut on the "menu" and where Grandpa would chain-smoke, and probably sneak booze he wasn't supposed to be drinking, and of course you had the scent of men's grooming products wafting around. That's what this smells like on me: stale smoke and booze and aftershave. I washed it off after about an hour, because it didn't really change, it just faded from Strong Grandpa's Barbershop to Somewhat Fainter Grandpa's Barbershop. I guess my theory is true: I can wear vetiver, and I can wear patchouli, but not in the same oil. As a perfume, Voodoo is a fail on me, but I feel compelled to keep it around. Who knows, maybe I'll need to make an offering to Papa Legba sometime, or use it in some ancestor work. I do already have an oil that smells like my grandmother (Psyche); I don't wear that one either, but I like having it around.

Charisma has a quieter effect on me than it does on some others, I think, but nonetheless I'm going to find this oil very useful. I feel like it increases my poise, helps me remember my manners*, makes me more graceful so I don't send my food ricocheting across the table while trying to cut it, and helps me keep from saying inane things that I'll lie awake at night criticizing myself for. Actually, I'm not sure whether it keeps me from saying anything inane or if it keeps me from obsessing about it, but either way, that's a darn good thing. It has fit in well with both party energy and work-luncheon energy, so I think it responds to my intent and the general mood around me. The SCENT, wow. I am having to lecture myself that "well, I can always use more charisma" is not an excuse to wear Charisma every single day. I wouldn't want to, like, get desensitized to it anyway, if that's a thing. But this smells great. It starts with a scent like an older shampoo, maybe like classic VO5, which I always liked, and then a mixture of amber and honey comes out and is just warm and golden and glorious. Eventually it dries down to sweet and powdery, and I think I'm catching an occasional whiff of heliotrope, which is a note that never fails to make me happy. Amber and honey were some of my original favorite notes, and I've wandered afield from them a bit, and this is making me want to wear things in that family more often again. *My poise and manners icon is Phedre no Delaunay. When in doubt, I ask myself, what would a fictional courtesan/spy do? Edit, 4/26/15. I've now worn it two more times: once for a work event, once for a night out at the pub. Once again, at work, it gave me some extra poise. It did feel like there was kind of a snap-back late that night; I was uncommonly tired and at a loss for words, like I'd used up all my energy during the event. This could be either my magical or mundane energy, hard to say. I then wore it for a night at the pub, and got complimented all night on my dress, once again didn't say anything I kicked myself about later, got hit on by a stranger, got lots of attention from the boyfriend, and overall just had a great time. I didn't even do the full application that time as I was in a hurry--I just dabbed some on my heart chakra and also put on some Alma Venus (the two blend well) and went. This stuff is great; I need a big bottle, because I don't want to ever have to go to a party without it. And even just scentwise it would crack my Top Ten.

For personal-quirk reasons, I don't really like to smell like tobacco, and so I hadn't tried Antikythera Mechanism until now, when I received it as a frimp. I'm a big believer in trying ALL THE FRIMPS, so here we go! Antikythera starts out incredibly sweet, and makes me think of nothing so much as a flat soda. It's a vintage soda, to be sure--it's like something a Victorian pharmacist would hawk for its dubious medicinal properties, but is probably just full of booze, opium, and coke. It smells a little like root beer and a little like Dr. Pepper and a lot like anise. It definitely makes me think Age of Steam, but not necessarily in the way the Lab planned! At the one-hour mark, I can start to pick out wood and tobacco. It's kind of like a scent version of an optical illusion at this stage. If I go looking for the anise soda, I smell that, and if I go looking for wood and tobacco, I get that. At two hours, the soda quality has mostly gone away and it's wood/tobacco/vanilla from there on out. I am not a tobacco fan in general, as I mentioned, but this one could sell me on the note. It's really nice. It's like a Victorian gentleman's study. It stays that way from there on out. Then, the morning after, it's still hanging around a little, in a light, almost soapy form. It smells like woody hippie soap, very nice. This is really nice, and I think I'll keep the imp; I'll use it for costuming, I'm sure, even if I don't reach for it often otherwise, and I'm also curious how it will age.

I definitely get the alcohol/nail polish note, especially at first. Scarecrow starts out mostly nail polish and a little bit of grass, morphing at about 10 minutes into hay with a little bit of nail polish. By 40 minutes, on me, it's almost all hay, but there's still a bit of nail polish, and my thought is that this scent smells flammable. At the one-hour mark, the nail polish is gone but the hay has taken on a definite scorched quality, and from there on out, it doesn't morph much. I don't think I'll really want to smell like this very often, but it's quite a scent experience and might be just the thing for certain seasonal moods. Hanging on to the imp for now.

Fairy Thorn starts out a lovely, ethereal floral, though I can't name all the floral notes I'm smelling. I'd say a white floral (likely tuberose), plus something green and damp and misty (maybe moss?) that's kind of tea-ish and reminds me of Empyreal Mist, plus a white sandalwood note that's kind of piercing to my nose (there may also be some light musk lurking in this impression)--I guess that's the thorn! The white floral fades and leaves me with a combo of the green and the sandalwood. This is really nice, though I'm not getting some of the notes I was hoping for. Sadly, after about two hours, it's about 80% sandalwood, and it's just too much of that. So I'm hoping it'll mellow with age, or else I'll wear it for occasions where I only need the scent to work for a short period of time (like a ritual). Plum and vanilla, where art thou? ETA: After a few months' aging, this mellows down to what I think will be a keeper. The skin scent is still a little sharp, but not as much as it was, and the throw is just gorgeous and is the ethereal floral/green combo I described earlier.

In the bottle, this smells like dark chocolate with medicinal lavender; once it hits my skin, it starts out with something like lemon cookies! Then it morphs, keeping an essential cookie-ness while also smelling kind of medicinal and also kind of vegetabley, like pickles or green peppers or something, maybe. This stage is actually kind of gross on me, and I wouldn't pick it as a perfume, but when combined with the concept, there's something evocative about it. It's like you went to the witch's cottage for her magic dream cookies, and she put all the herbs and magic plants in the mix but tried to cover the pungency with the cookie's sweetness, and it didn't completely work but you eat it anyway because you want those magic dreams. Eventually it morphs again into kind of a murky mixture of the heavier ingredients, though I can't pick out individual notes at that stage, and then it morphs yet again and the lemon is once again dominant. It reminds me a lot of the lemon note from Seven Herbs Charm, but with an earthiness underneath that's probably patchouli, rather than the doll-heads vanilla I got from Seven Herbs. So anyway, this one's really weird! The vegetable phase will probably keep me from ever wearing it just to smell nice, but I can live with all the other phases, and it's also evocative of the concept. I'll update if I have dream experiences with it. I did have vivid dreams last night, but it's too early to ascribe them to Thirteen--it was largely faded by then, and I was all slathered up with Midnight Mass when I went to bed.

Mmm, lovely headshop nag champa with a light haze of orange flower to lighten it up. This is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, and it's a nice calming scent that I think could be worn for meditation. If I end up going through my decant of Visions of Autumn IV, this would be a good GC substitute.

I've been irrationally scared of the dirt scents. But when a frimp of Zombi arrived, and when another forumite mentioned it as refreshing and springy, I decided to give it a shot. It starts out a sour rose for the first minute or two. I say sour rose, but I don't mean that in a bad way; I'm just trying (badly) to express that it's less sweet than, say, Roses, Pearls, and Diamonds, which I'd been wearing earlier in the day. The dirt note comes in quickly to complement it. The dirt is kind of an undertone; if you weren't looking for it, you might just think it was a rose scent. As the hours go by, the rose mellows out to a softer rose, and the dirt stays. How do they get perfume to smell like dirt? It's a nice dirt, too; the overall effect is like being in a rose garden with the soil moist and fertile, or based on the name, I suppose it could be funeral flowers at a fresh grave. It made me feel grounded and ready for spring.

This starts out a sweet, minty rose, and gradually a creamy coconut note rises up to join it. The white musk behaves, thankfully--sometimes I amp it too much--and I only get slight wafts of it, and only from my neck and not my wrists. Several hours in, the coconut smells a little beeswaxy to me, which is not a problem at all. The rose eventually fades out, leaving behind just the waxy coconut to linger on my skin. This doesn't have much throw on me, but is a sweet, springy scent that makes me feel happy. It might be an eventual bottle if I end up reaching for it often.

I've now tested Strawberry Sufganiyot twice, with the same results. At first, it's wet juicy strawberry syrup or jam. This intensely "wet" aspect fades quickly on me, which is a bit of a bummer because that's the part that really reminds me of the jelly in a donut. It morphs into the bake-y scent of the donut and a more dried strawberry. The thing it reminds me most of is the strawberries and cream oatmeal I loved as a kid. So it's really nostalgic! I just wish my skin weren't flattening/drying out that strawberry note. There are occasional hints of the wetter strawberry, of the burnt scent I sometimes get from gourmand blends, and maybe the tiniest, subtlest bit of cinnamon? I feel like it might be in there, providing some extra "flavor" to the donut. This is nice, and again it's really nostalgic, but I don't think it reaches its full potential on my particular skin. Quite possibly a keeper anyway though.