filigree_shadow

Sugary sweet plums. I find this scent delightful. It reminds me a lot of Bordello without the booze and with some very light cool florals instead. It's super strong at first, but it becomes wispy pretty quickly. I think it would be a great scent to add to a lotion. I also have found that it is a very good pick-me-up when I'm feeling the winter blues. I'm wearing about half an imp right now, and it's lightening my spirits.

I'm glad I'm not the only one in favor of winter lights! I remember when I was little my dad used to grumble about the neighbors leaving their lights up after Christmas. I never understood why that was a problem -- there's nothing else pretty to look at in winter, so why not have lights up? I'm not talking Clark Griswold lights here, just some nice festive lights on the shrubs or something. I'm burning a tart that smells like cake and I'm listening to Weird Al. It's the best I can do under the circumstances.

Gardenia, tea rose, vanilla and jasmine. Hunh. I usually don't like jasmine, and gardenia is almost always a dealbreaker, but... um, actually this is pretty nice. It's sweet instead of being cloying. The sweetness seems like a fruity sweetness to me, and I have no idea what's causing that. It's pretty and feminine, and my husband likes it on me a lot. ETA: Edited to add description.

I like Umbra. I'm not a fan of cedar or scents with strong wood notes, usually -- Cathedral and Aureus were both too woodsy for me. But this cedar/patchouli combination with a little bit of cinnamon to give it a slightly spicy edge is much better for me. The vetiver in this is vetiver at its best: Just rumbling along at the very bottom of the scent giving it an interesting and earthy grounding. Although the cedarwood was a little too strong at first, it calms down on drying and this ends up being a very pleasant earthy patchouli scent. The cinnamon also gets stronger as the scent dries. Umbra is truly an example of the whole being more than the sum of its parts -- two notes I normally avoid are in this (cedarwood and cinnamon), and yet when they are in this blend I actually enjoy them. Very nice.

Those look like interesting books -- and I'm always happy to see people reading several books at one time. My husband reads one book start to finish then picks up the next one. I usually have two or three going, and I choose one depending on my mood.

None of the other Celestials worked on me, but this one does. It's a soft, pretty rose scent, exactly the sort of rose that I like (and I'm very picky about rose scents). My floral-note-identification skills are for crap, unfortunately, and rose is the only one I can pick out. All I can say is that it smells soft and gentle, calm and cool. It's almost creamy but not quite. This doesn't smell green or sharp, or like soap, or like anything bad on me. It smells really lovely. If I had a bottle of this oil I would definitely wear it.

This is an odd scent, in my opinion, and I don't find it especially comforting or relaxing. There's some sort of burnt rubber smell underneath something woodsy. It vaguely reminds me of when something's on fire that shouldn't be on fire, which has the opposite effect on me than what this oil is intended for. It makes me uneasy. I'm not having tremendous luck with the aromatherapy blends... perhaps I should try them in an oil warmer rather than on my skin.

When I first applied this, I thought it seemed like an apricot/ginger scent over the top of jasmine. Jasmine is not my favorite floral note, but I kinda like that spicy kick the white ginger gives it. It's intense when I put my nose right up next to my wrist, but if I just wave my arm in front of my face I like the scent. I can't decide whether I like this enough that I'd choose it over one of my favorites when I'm deciding what to wear for the day. To me, it smells like a standard perfume scent, and I prefer the more unusual ones. It does have a certain allure, though... I think I'll keep the imp around and see what happens.

Yow, this is amazingly floral on me. I mean, like, almost all flowers. I thought it would be lemony or musky, but all I'm getting is a very powdery heady floral scent. No creaminess or vanilla, either. I think I'll have to try this again later. I just got out of the bath and maybe my skin isn't its normal self right now.

Wow, this is strong! The lemon verbena is very prominent at first, but the green tea backing it up makes me like it more than I usually do. This is extremely bright (almost piercingly so) and strong. One little imp wand swipe on my arm, and now I'm sitting in a Phantasm cloud. I have to admit that I do like the scent, even though it's not something I would wear as a personal fragrance. (I prefer Embalming Fluid's lemon scent, and I like Kumiho better for a tea scent.) I'd like for my kitchen to smell like Phantasm -- it smells clean and happy.

The apple and black amber combination I smell when this is wet is great. It smells sweet and dark at the same time. But as it dries the herbs take over. I liked the apple/amber combination better than the green herbs, although they are pretty gentle and clean-smelling. A little bit of apple sticks around, but not enough for the scent to win me over.

I can't smell much incense over the moss/earth notes, but I can smell something floral. And the herbs. People who like those garden-like scents would probably like this. It reminds me a little bit of Jazz Funeral, but it's not humid like that one, it's drier. These types of scents hardly ever work for me -- adding herbs to a mossy scent was like the kiss of death. Poor Crossroads never stood a chance with me. The only part of the description that sounded good to me was the incense, and I can't really smell any.

Hmmm. I don't think myrtle likes me. I usually love ambers, but I'm not feeling the love here. This smells like kind of a bitter powder on me. There's something a little bit sharp about it, too. No, this definitely isn't going to work for me. But luckily there are plenty of other amber blends I like!

I have some trouble telling apart blends that have both cold/snowy notes and forest/woodsy notes. They all kind of smell the same to me. I guess my skin amps that cold note because pretty much all I smell is that nose-tingling coldness. I think maybe Black Forest is a little bit different because of the black musk and ambergis (it has a slightly powdery aspect to it), but it mostly just smells like coldness and pine trees. I'll see if my husband wants to try this... he has The Best Skin Chemistry in the World, and maybe this will smell good on him.

I like the chamomile in this a lot; it's really softening up the florals. Right at the very beginning it smelled soapy to me, but that went away in a few minutes. It reminds me of an elderly woman who still takes the time and energy to take care of herself, even when she can't move as easily as she used to, and even though sometimes she's in pain. She still takes her bath and dusts herself with powder that smells pretty and does her hair. This is a scent she would choose -- something soft, feminine, and lovely, something that perhaps reminds her of her youth. It's a wistful and nostalgic scent.

On my skin, this smells mainly like anise with a bit of lemon. It's very sweet and a little bit sour. It's also incredibly strong on me. I put on one little imp wand swipe, and it's all I've been able to smell for the past 30 minutes. Although this one doesn't work on me, I should mention that I like La Fee Verte a lot. I think that just the absinthe scent all on its own is a little too much for me.

I bet those areas will look great in the spring! I didn't plant a single bulb this fall... I spent some money on fancy-pants purple tulips last year and not a single one came up last spring. Grr. I probably should have dug up the bulbs and checked them but I was too irritated to bother with them.

The doctors think it will go away spontaneously in another six weeks? Is it an allergic reaction to something? An inflammation 4cm wide that lasts for 3 months seems like it would be something serious to me, which is why I'm concerned for you.

One of my favorite things to say is, "You never know how much stuff you have until you have to move." I always start the moving process with the best intentions of getting rid of things, but I give up and start throwing things in boxes. I also have a couple of poster tubes, but mine lean more toward the kind of posters I hung on my dorm wall. Because, yeah, I'm really going to need that Depeche Mode poster from 1987 with the corners ripped off. (I bet there is some 22 year-old out there somewhere who thinks Depeche Mode is the coolest band ever and would pay dearly for one of their early-ish posters.) (I can wish, right?) We're making some progress, though. So far we have two U-Haul boxes full just with books and DVDs. But we're starting to do that thing where we hold up a DVD we bought 3 years ago and never watched and say, "Ohhh, but I really did want to watch this one, maybe we should keep it for a while longer..." THAT's what got us into this pickle!

A very clean, crisp, fresh scent. The lemon is a little bit too stong for me right at first, but it calms down pretty rapidly. I like the green tea and aloe combination. The musk gives it a nice softness, kind of like a fuzziness. This is a very comforting scent, to me. It's funny, the first time I tried this scent was about 10 months ago, and I thought it was too lemony and swapped it away. After I tried F5 and like it, I thought I should give Embalming Fluid another shot. I'm glad I did.

In ancient India it was believed that a specific combination of flower petals, when strewn across a couple’s bed, would amplify desire and sexual pleasure. This blend is a blend of the same floral essences, refined into a gloriously sinful perfume blend. Frangipani, with rose, tuberose, and jasmine. Wow, that's a lot of flowers. It's a very heady floral at first, and then it starts to smell a bit smoky and spicy. I saw jasmine and rose in the notes list and I thought there was no way I'd like this... but... um, I kinda like it. It reminds me a bit of flowers that have been pressed in a book for a long time. My husband thinks this smells sexy. He likes it. I think I'll keep this imp around.

I'm a little behind the times here, but I've just read your blog entries. Your lists and the way you're doing decision-making based on recommendations sounds a LOT like what I did all last February and March. I mostly wanted something that would be sexy (that's normally why I wear perfume, to be honest), but I was pretty sure I liked woodsy scents too, and no florals. I am not a feminine woman. Not necessarily masculine, but... kind of androgynous. Florals aren't for me. I also have dry skin, so I've had to do the same tricks you're doing with lotions. I used a scent locket (until it broke!! ), and I put BPAL in my hair when I get out of the shower. Propaganda Bath sells an unscented lotion (the scent is called "Emporer's New Clothes") that is specifically intended to be used by people who want to add their own perfume oils to it. You might want to check that one out, if you're not allergic to any of the ingredients. When I first started trying BPAL, I was pretty sure I liked woodsy scents. Turned out I was thinking of sandalwood as what I liked, not notes like pine and cypress. What people on the forum were describing as woodsy wasn't want I had in mind. I also thought I wouldn't not like foody scents at all because I didn't see why anyone would want to smell like a cookie. But the Pumpkin Patch scents blew me away. I love those. I hope you have LOTS of fun trying all the oils from your imp packs, and even more fun as you eventually work your way through your lists.

In the imp: Light, clean floral. Wet: Same as the imp sniff. It smells a little bit cologney... no wait, I think that's my husband's Vicomte de Valmont wafting over from the other end of the couch. Hmmm, no, it's definitely coming from this one. It has that clean fresh almost aquatic smell that I usually associate with cologne, I think that's why it reminds me of a man's fragrance. Dry: This is only very lightly floral on my skin, and it's a good floral. Not the cloying heady kind, just light and floaty. Does sugar cane smell more reedy than plain sugar does? There's something here that makes me think of something reed-like that's growing in water. This is very pretty, it's the light sweet kind of floral that I like. Whatever it is making this smell kind of dewy is a nice touch, too. This will be great to wear in the spring. It smells fresh and clean -- it's one of the scents I like to describe by saying "It would be impossible to be in a bad mood if you're wearing this." (Kitsune-Tsuki is in that category too... I guess I like the Japanese-themed florals.)

In the imp: Caramel. Wet: Sweet caramel, but not really sweet like sugar, more like sweet like flower-sweet. Dry: Sweet and foody. A nice grounding to it, not like a completely caramel scent. It seems to be a little bit powdery on my skin for some reason. I'm having some trouble figuring out whether I like the scent or not. Wait, no, I take that back. I do like it. The part I'm not sure of is whether I would want to wear it as a perfume. I tend to like creamy foody scents rather than really sweet or sugary ones, and I think this one's a little too sugary for me.

In the imp: I can smell the vetiver in this even before I open the imp. Wet: Lots of vetiver, very dark and dank. I'm going to agree with a couple of previous reviewers -- there's something in this that reminds me of eucalyptus. Hmmm. This vetiver must be similar to the one that's in Saturnalia because they both kind of smell a little like band-aids to me. Some vetiver likes me a lot and some doesn't, and this is apparently one of the ones that doesn't. Dry: The strong vetiver wears off as the scent dries, and the rest of the scent is quite nice. It's dark, a little bit powdery, and kind of mysterious. My husband tried some of it on and likes it.