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Snake Oil does not like me, though aged Snake Oil is vaguely more palatable than brand new. However, Boomslang is amazing! The other Snake Pit scents have all pretty much worked on me, but I do like Boomslang the best. Lilith Victoria is also a winner.

Beautiful honey-incense with just a touch of summer greens underneath. If I could, I would totally roll around in this scent! It's certainly much lighter than the L'Estate Atmospheric Spray that I use. I would almost say that it was like L'Estate's younger cousin. It seems good for those hot, summer days when you just want a bit of a golden summer scent.

I'd certainly invest in 10mls of Velvet, Dorian, Schrodinger's Cat, and Antique Lace.

Vanilla Puff Powder Dusting Powder smells like Antique Lace! It's awesome!

My favorite Gaiman scents are: Mama-ji (Spices, cardamom, nutmeg, and flowers.) The Ifrit (Desert sand, red musk, blackened ginger, dragon's blood resin, black pepper, cinnamon, and tobacco.) Ligur (Dry olibanum, black moss, soggy ti, khus, and opoponax.) I can't deal with aquatics and fruit, so that cuts out a lot of the Gaiman scents for me. But I love the above scents. The Ifrit is the only bottle that I've bought without getting a tester first and it was exactly as I imagined it.

It's not like chocolate amber at all. Gelt is more dry and less perfumy. On me, it's very similar, though less sweet. I like Gelt a lot more, but I still love my Chocolate Amber lotion.

I've been having the problem of not only lingering scents (that don't mix well with each other) and dryness on my wrists. I've tried scrubbing and using citrus washes to little effect. But then I used Lush's Ultra Bland Cleanser and it takes the scent away and moisturizes! My wrists are happy campers again!

This is from an imp I got at the Dark Delicacies trunk show on 11/30/08. In the Imp: Not what I expected considering I can see the cocoa absolute sinking down to the bottom of the vial. The top note is not cocoa, but a nutty, woodsy smell with an undertone of sweetness. It reminds me of lightly candied walnuts. Initial Wet: Yep, definitely nutty. In fact, it smells just like Pumpkin Patch 2 from 2005 if you take out the pumpkin. It has a warm note to it too, maybe caramel, but not a sticky sweet caramel. Initial Dry: Warm and dry. There's an herbalish note to the blend that I can't put my nose on... it could be patchouli, but not overwhelming-incense-patchouli. The cocoa note still doesn't leap out at me, but it's certainly there. Drier Dry: It dries down to a woodsy caramel with an undertone of cocoa. The throw is a dry woodsy, almost dried-grassy, smell. I love almost all of the Lab's cocoa/chocolate blends and this is not one of the exceptions. I love that this one is drier than other foody scents. It reminds me more of dry cocoa powder than a hot chocolate. It's also not overly sweet, and though I love sweet scents, I'm very charmed by this one's subtlety.

It's not Halloween anymore, but I will be playing the role of The Ice Queen later this month. I will be outdoors, so I'm looking for something that has a lot of throw. Snow/ice/aquatic scents usually don't work on me, and I don't have any on hand, so I was thinking of Nocnitsa because a pine forest always makes me think of cold mountaintops. I'm looking for a scent that evokes coldness or harshness. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I'm wondering about Schrodinger's Cat. I just got a bottle and have never had an imp or bottle before. I dipped my toothpick into the bottle, swirled it around a bit and then pulled it out... it had this sticky orange stuff all over it. It smelled like citrus, so I was thinking maybe it was an absolute, but the description has no citrus absolutes in it. I tried to scrape as much off the toothpick as possible (so as to keep the scent mixture) and now there's just this goo in the neck of the bottle. What is this stuff? (The scent seems just as the reviews say it should be, so it hasn't affected the blend.)

This is such a deliciously complicated blend of scents that morph each time I sniff my wrists, it's hard to pin them down. (I'm not even sure what hay absolute smells like ) In the Imp: Astringent and smoky. I can detect some sweetness and jasmine. Initial Wet: Strangely, both I and the hubby swear it smells like violet soap. Violet soap with some sandalwood and vanilla and a hint of jasmine. It remains astringent until it dries. Initial Dry: The vanilla and amber tobacco really come out. It reminds me of Red Lantern, but with sweet florals, jasmine most prominently. The florals keep dying down as it dries further. Drier Dry: Vanilla sweet with resin and spice. The faint undercurrent of roses and jasmine adds a different type of sweetness to the blend, though very subtle. The overall effect is dark, almost musky, but softened with sweetness. Overall, I really, really like this blend (it gets points for the hubby liking it once it dries down). I was leery of the leather as that tends to go sour on me, but even with several applications throughout the day, I couldn't pick out any hint of leather or its going bad.

Crushed Smooch + Knave of Hearts FTW! I smell like berries, but not overwhelmingly sweet or candy-like.

It could be the tonka--it has a spicy, vanilla meets clove and cinnamon like scent. Now I want to go home and sniff my imp of A Bold Bluff

Smut, Mme. Moriarty, Velvet, and Gingerbread Poppet have gotten me the most unsolicited compliments. I'm usually the type who demands that people (who know of my BPAL obsession) smell me. Mme. Moriarty is a favorite of several of the ladies I work with. I think mainly because it's the one with the most throw on me. Oddly, my straight guy friends love Smut, while my gay guy friends like Velvet.

According to the interwebs, "the [Holi powder] colors are traditionally made of Neem, Kumkum, Haldi, Bilva, and other medicinal herbs prescribed by Āyurvedic doctors". Neem is a lovely woody-herbal scent that they use in soap a lot in India. I've used neem soap and you can probably get it at a health food type store. Kumkum and Haldi are made from tumeric, that spicy powder in the ginger family that turns curries yellow. Bilva seems to be a tree used in Āyurvedic and other alternative medicine, but I can't find anything on what it smells like. Off hand, I think the best recommendation I can make is Mama-Ji (spices, cardamom, nutmeg, and flowers).