rellyjean

Dark, heavy, incensey. A bit medicinal. Sour. There's also the scent that a couple of other people have picked up which is vaguely band-aid-ish, like when you've left a band-aid on your skin for days and days and FINALLY peel it off. The way your skin smells then. Ravenous did the same thing to me, and Vixen was another no-go. (Dammit, I will find my perfect sexy citrus some day.) I wonder if orange blossom is what does that on me? Damn. Anyways. Swap pile for toi, Jezzie.

I had such high hopes for this. On me, the orange is sickly-sweet, but even that is drowned out by the OMG I JUST SPENT THE WEEKEND HANGING OUT WITH POT SMOKERS vibe. It's loud and pushy and strong. It's very earthy and hemp-ish and - well. Again. Like you spent the weekend hanging around some stoners. Not for me. To the swap pile it goes.

I'm not a rose fan. But then, BPAL is magic and has redeemed some other things that I wouldn't have thought I'd like, so I put a few rose scents on my short list hoping to see if they could convince me otherwise. Delirium is a light, sweet, lemony rose. Delicate and crisp. Enticing. I think if I were going to wear a rose perfume, it would be this one. The rose isn't overpowering the way it was for me with Eve - it's playful and exquisite. But. I'm still not liking rose. IF you're a rose fan at all, I highly recommend this. It's an awesome blend, balanced and delicate and subtle. But ultimately - not for me. And off to the swap pile it goes.

Amber, buttery, dark, warm, soft, sweet. Almonds. A twist of something I don't recognize. Checking the notes - the vanilla, how could I have missed that? It's underlying the amber and sweetening it up. I don't get any peaches from this, or even sandalwood, although sandalwood always plays nicely with my skin. Although this is the second scent I love with peaches I can't detect (Imp being the other). Maybe I love peaches when they're underlying a mix, but not when they're prominent? This is thick and warm - yummy. Delicious. And for me it lasted hours and hours.

OK, apparently my body chemistry is stranger than I knew. In the imp, this is apricots, with a hint of something darker underscoring it. Yummy, although a touch more abrasive than I was anticipating, but usually those settle down nicely on me. Once I touch it to my skin - a new scent comes out of nowhere. Very strong, and something I can't put into words. The closest I can get is -really sharp fresh grass clippings. There's a cluster of that surrounding a core of something high and solid that I can't get the sense of, because it's .... covered in grass clippings. I didn't leave this on long enough to see if it morphed into apricots, as the grass clippings were making my nose wrinkle. This goes in my swap pile, for someone who can get apricots or brandy out of it and not .... Eau de Lawnmower.

Oops, I forgot to tiptoe back in here, sorry. The database isn't finished yet - there are a couple of bugs to work out. It's still giving me runtime errors when it can't find what I'm looking for (in an endless loop, how I LOVE that) and the outgoing shipments aren't connecting properly to the incoming shipments, things like that. For anyone who asked: it's in Access, and it's got a searchable listing of all the scents. Each scent pulls up a form where you can input notes - I've been pulling them from the site itself, since I know sometimes forumites can guess notes in scents that don't have any listed, but those aren't official and might be off or whatever. There's also a form for outgoing/incoming shipments - who you're swapping with, a link to the swap page or eBay listing or what have you, date of contact, date of payment, date you received it, all the scents - and you _should_ be able to cross-reference the two for situations such as "I'm swapping my Swank for your Grandmother of Ghosts" but right now that's working oddly. You can specify how much you want a scent (on a scale of 3 -s to 3 +s - everything defaults to = ) and then set a cutoff for the wishlist query (show everything above 1+, or 2+?) - there's a query for Scents I Have, Scents Pending, and Scents Shipped Out as well. Er, at any rate - when it's finished I'll pop back in here and let everyone know, should be within a week or so I'm thinking, and then whoever wants copies can e-mail me and I'll send them. (Or is there somewhere online I can post it, or anything like that? I'm not sure how that works.)

In the imp: Peach, sparkly. On, wet: Oooooh! It's a sharp peach, and something's keeping it high and tangy. Not too sweet, nice and crisp. Drydown: There's - musk I think??? - coming out to play with me. Teasing a bit. Making it all a bit warmer and rounder. Oooookay, I checked the notes, and that's an apricot, not a peach. Oops. Hour or so in: Just as I was starting to think the apricot was too shrill on its own, the musk comes out in full force. I adore white musk. Later: White musk with the tang of the apricots hanging around. The musk is taking center stage. Lovely. Not one of my all-time favorites, and there's an odd patch where the apricot is too dominant, but it's gorgeous all the same.

IMP: Yum. Lots of citrus-y goodness, with a dry spicy woody tone under it. Sandalwood maybe? On: ooooooooh. Orange but a bit darker, sharper. Being centered and grounded by the - woodier notes. I suck at notes, sorry. Drydown: a bit of a "perfumey" edge starts peeping out. Just a tinge. Five minutes in: Orange, with a bit of - I hate to say spiciness, it's not the spiciness of, say, ginger or patchouli. But there's a grounded note to it which is exquisite, and makes the orange that much sweeter by comparison. Num num yummy mmmmmmmmm. Sweet and yet deep and I am so in love with this scent. Tangy and delicious. An hour in: ... Damn. It's getting too sweet. Where did the grounding bits go? All of them seem to have taken off, and the orange is fading, too. Shortly thereafter: a supersweet raspberry, almost candy-ish. I'm not a big fan of the raspberries by and of themselves. I might give this another try some time. Sigh. The first half-hour of this was phenomenal. If only.

I got this at the same time as Baobhan Sith (thanks, misfitroxy!!) and I expected to LOVE BS and like CC, but less. I got them reversed. In the imp: grapefruit, but with a darker tang. It's a little too sharp, and off-putting. I need to remember that those scents often end up gorgeous on me... On: OMG. OMG. OMG. This is so exquisite. It's got a lot of the same grapefruity-ness that Baobhan Sith had, but there's a darker spicier edge to it, which I adore. It's a bit warmer and deeper. Baobhan Sith had a touch of sweetness, and this is more sour, and richer. Wow. This is - sexy. Smoky, intriguing, and luring you in. There's a bit of smoke and edge to it. The name fits - it's enigmatic and mysterious. It's - is there pepper in this? I'm getting a similar sharpness to Kuang Shi and Grandmother of Ghosts, but - I suck at notes. *checks notes* Wow, am I awful at this. Sorry. The dark musk is probably what I'm smelling that anchors it so well. I'm not getting floral from this at all - or if I am, it's a dark, enticing floral, and not what I normally think of as floral. (I typically loathe florals.) I knew white musk loved my skin - it looks like dark musk does as well. Red currant!? I had thought red currant was a bad note for me, but - huh. Maybe it's not. This is the first blend I've had where the red currant didn't go high and too sharp and fakey, and where it didn't try to take over. I am so in love. The scent fades out quicker than I'd like, which in normal cases means "OK, I'll just slather it," but with the scent being discontinued and damn near impossible to find - not so much. As it fades, it leaves just the musk, with a hint of fruits, a hint of something almost floral. NUM. Still in love. And also amused by the fact that a lot of the scents I seem to love the most are usually marked as "too masculine" by other forumites. Heh. Anyone want a kidney for a 5 ml?

Imp: the tea overpowers the other notes in the blend, making it bitter and a touch dark. I was uncertain about trying it, and then remembered how different imp-to-skin can be. (Kuang Shi was too bitter in the imp as well, and it's an all-time favorite.) So .... Wet: Oh my! This is a very very high-toned grapefruit. A bit tingly but not sparkly. Almost a touch sugary, but only a touch. This is light and seductive and delicate and entrancing. Drydown: The grapefruit steps back a little. There's a clean greenish scent emerging. Fresh leaves. About 15-30 minutes in: Ooooooh. The cherry blossom comes out to play, light and high, peeking around the leaves. (Which is good, as I wasn't that fond of the leaves being center stage.) It teams up with the grapefruit for this sharp, tarty citrusy scent. A few hours in: Fading fast, which is a shame. But then I washed my hands shortly after putting it on, and I think I might have washed some of it off inadvertently, so that's not necessarily indicative of its staying power.

No grapefruit here, which is a shame, as I love grapefruit scents. In the imp, this was dark swampy bog waters. Something evil slithering underneath, rotting. On me, the rotting bits came out and started waving their dead limbs at me. Still no grapefruit. No lightness, no sparkly, just - something under the evil seawater is coming for my head. Which is a very cool effect, I have to say, and Lovecraftian like anything. Just - not something I want to smell like. At all. I had to go and wash this off before I'd given it time to settle in, even. It was chokingly strong. So maybe on drydown it would have morphed into something different, but I don't think I'm going to find out, as the brief experience I had with R'lyeh was disconcerting enough. I have such freaking weird body chemistry.

The aquatics here are beautiful. The scent is the ocean, in all its calming majesty. I visited the Pacific Ocean and was shocked and how different it smelled than the Atlantic, which always has an unpleasant sour note to me. The Pacific was crisp, and clean, and soothing. Sea of Glass smells to me as if someone bottled the Pacific ocean-drenched air and liquified it. Pure and sharp, ozone and salty air. It's reassuring and steady, and I'm still in awe at how the power and tranquility of the ocean fits into this little imp. Unfortunately, it's not something I'm likely to wear, and it's a bit too aquatic for my taste as a room scent. So I swapped it out, but with the highest of regards.

This is gorgeous - light, feminine, and floral, three things which I didn't think worked on me at all, and yet here they do. Juliet is standing at her balcony, wondering why Romeo has to be a Montague ... or lying in her tomb, awake and looking upon her newly dead husband. There's an edge of sweet melancholy here. (Parting is such sweet sorrow...) I don't get much of the pear, but I believe that's what's rounding out the edges of this and keeping it from being just another light floral tone. And the musk centers it down a bit. Florals are usually so bland on me, but this is exquisite. The scent is delicate and simple, but with a richness of tone underlying it. I'm not sure if it's going on my Bottle list, but I'm certain I'll use the imp.

The currant is sharp here - there's a high note that isn't quite cherry and is closer to cherry cough syrup. It starts light, with the rest of the blend woodsy and a touch fruity, but soon dominates the blend. After about a half hour, all I can smell is the semi-licorice-semi-cough-syrup thin high sharp note of the currant. There's a sharp undertone as well that's less pleasant. I don't know notes very well, so I can't say if the cherries are combining oddly with the currant, or if this is just how currant is and the cherries have been drowned out entirely. Either way, something isn't playing nicely with my skin. In the meantime, this imp is headed for the swap pile. Sorry about that, Your Majesty.

In the vial, this is delicious - the pomegranate, the scent of light vodka, almost, the alcoholic tinge to it all. Tart and crisp. On, this is still exquisite, but the scent is much stronger than I'd imagined, and I only applied lightly. As time passes, the pomegranate drowns out the vodka-martini fizzle sparkly edge. It's a high sharp citrus-y pomegranate, and it's delicious, but it's a bit too sharp and a bit too strong for me. It won't settle in - it insists on sitting up front and waving vigorously at me out the car window. It's a bit distracting and a little overpowering. The throw and the duration are wonderful, but this isn't for me. I tossed it into the Swap pile, but with a fond adieu and well wishes for its future.