Jenesis

W00tage! I have found the graphics card I want The XFX 8800GTS 320MB. The brand is XFX, a reputable brand, and as mentioned in this article on MadShrimps, the XFX 320MB 8800GTS gives the best "frames per penny" rate of the bunch of similar cards they tested. This means that I'm paying the best money/performance ratio for it, which can't be bad! It's also under £200 on Scan, which I should be able to afford at some point this year There is also another article on the same site, testing the 320MB and 640MB versions of the same card. To be honest, people, there isn't really that much difference at all, and certainly not £100-worth of difference. The 640MB can run at a few more frames per second (i.e. single-digit amounts more) on higher settings than the 320MB, and that's about it. The core clock speeds are the same and they overclock (if that's your thing) the same as well. Besides, very few games use more than 300MB of memory, let alone 600MB. I get the feeling this is just another attempt, and probably a successful one, judging by the sales, to appeal to the "mine is bigger than yours!" market of teenage computer nerds. Y'know, the kind who run their games on the highest possible resolution with 16x Anti-Aliasing because it makes them feel big and important.* Now, I'm not too fussed about AA above 4x (there's no discernible increase in image/texture quality above that), and I game at the most convenient resolution for my monitor. As said new monitor will be no bigger than 19", I think the 320MB will be fine. My current card, a 256MB laptop version of the 6800, manages to run most things pretty well. It can manage The Sims 2 on mostly high settings with a couple of mediums, and it can run Half-Life 2 with no problems. It's in games like Oblivion and F.E.A.R. that the age of the card begins to show. It just can't handle AA at all, and only by turning the physics and detail settings down to minimum can these two games be played at framerates of more than about 10fps**. However, it should be noted that Oblivion is notorious for being a very demanding game graphically: It was released last year, before the 8800 chips were developed for consumer use, and very few gamers were able to manage it on the higher settings. It also uses a complicated rendering/shadow engine that, again, is notorious for being very demanding. F.E.A.R. is also quite demanding, for the physics and texture detail, and both of these games are often used in benchmark tests such as in the articles above. Tomb Raider: Legend is another benchmarker, a rather newer game that actually runs quite well on older systems thanks to an options/setting set that's a bit more customisable. I could run the demo of that with no problems on the lower or medium settings. I think my processor may have something to add to this as well: It's a Centrino (Intel, uuuurgh) 1.8GHz single-core. Veeery slow and a bit clunky at times. It can't be bottlenecking the system, as the rest of the components are about the same standard, but it isn't helping. Thank the almighty that my new PC will be a dual-core! Having said that, I am quite attached to my laptop. I've had it nearly 2 years now, and for a laptop, it's done very well. When I bought it (or rather, when Daddy bought it for me ) it was the bees' knees, now it's a crap-but-still-above-par-for-a-laptop rig. It will do for work, the Internet and World of Warcraft, but for newer games I'll be using my new system. Watch this space for more rants, musings, thoughts and comparisons of hardware Oh, and a review of Windows Vista, coming soon! *I know, I used to date one. **Which is a pain in the behind because when played on a good rig, F.E.A.R. is a beautiful game.

Pending Orders ------------------------------------- None ------------------------------------- Past Orders ------------------------------------- 8th May 2009 5ml Strawberry Moon 5ml Velvet Nudie CnS: 15th May Received: 22nd May 18th November 2008 5ml Candy Phoenix 5ml Snake Charmer CnS: None (Was sent during USPS weirdness period) Received: Dec 20th 24th October 2008 (Trading Post) Clockwork Scent Locket Samhain Room Spray CnS: 4th November Received: 10th November 3rd September 2008 5ml Lilith Victoria 5ml Graveyard Dirt Resurrected 5ml Pumpkin II 5ml Pumpkin IV CnS: 20th September Received: 26th September 29th July 2008 (Trading Post) Explorer's Society Tee Imp Case: Witches Dancing on the Sabbath 2 Notepads Keychain: Triple Dagger Goblin Squirt: Dungeon CnS: August 13th Received: August 19th 29th July 2008 5ml Schwarzer Mond 5ml Inez 5ml Doc Constantine Imp Pack: 1 Antique Lace 2 Fae 3 Tweedledee 4 Nostrum Remedium 5 Stimulating Sassafras Strengthener 6 Eden CnS: 2nd August Received: 9th August 18th May 2008 5ml Hand of Glory 5ml The Illustrated Woman 5ml Pickled Imp CnS: 10th June Received: 17th June 22nd May 2008 (Lab eBay Auction) 5ml Geek CnS: May 24th Received: May 30th 22nd April 2008 5ml Rangoon Riptide 5ml The Antikythera Mechanism CnS: May 7th Received: May 13th 18th April 2008 (Trading Post) Dragon Moon tee Phoenix Steamworks tee Hell's Belle Claw Polish CnS: May 17th Received: May 22nd 17th April 2008 5ml Te Po 5ml Theodesius, the Ledgerman CnS: April 25th Received: May 1st 25th March 2008 5ml Tiki King 5ml Upa Upa 5ml March Hare CnS: April 20th Received: April 28th 15th February 2008 5ml Love's Philosophy 5ml Ebisu Making Love as Two Octopuses Look on 5ml Mme. Moriarty, Misfortune Teller 5ml Severin CnS: March Received: March 19th January 2008 5ml Khajuraho 08 5ml Luperci 08 5ml Smut 08 CnS: February Received: February 7th November 2007 5ml Samhain 2007 5ml Plunder CnS: November 30th Received: December 14th 25th October 2007 5ml Ivanushka 5ml Samhain 2007 5ml The Perilous Parlor 5ml Gingerbread Poppet 2007 5ml El Dia de Reyes 5ml Vampire Tears 5ml March Hare Imp pack #1 1. Schrodinger's Cat 2. Katharina 3. Event Horizon 4. Embalming Fluid 5. Iago 6. Sudha Segara Imp pack #2 1. Bastet 2. De Sade 3. Fire of Love 4. Goblin 5. Whip 6. Incubus CnS: November 14th Received: November 20th 30th October 2007 5ml Black Forest 5ml The Lurid Library 5ml The Snow Storm CnS: November 14th Received: November 19th 13th July 2007 5ml 13 5ml Eat Me CnS: July 28th Received: August 4th 11th June 2007 5ml March Hare 5ml Saw-Scaled Viper CnS: June 25th Received: July 3rd 10th May 2007 5ml Imp 5ml Brown Jenkins Imp: The Red Queen CnS: June 6th Received: June 13th 29th April 2007 5ml Monsterbait: Bloody Mary Imp Pack: 2 x Brown Jenkins 2 x Vice Imp Shub-Niggurath CnS: May 11th Received: May 21st -------------------------------------

This isn't turning into a blog so much as an extension of my BPAL database. Oh well! Layering Vice & Velvet/Candy Butcher I recently started experimenting with layering my BPAL. It started with Vice - I liked it, but it didn't really wow me, just a simple (if a little plasticy) cherry scent. After receiving Velvet and finding the same thing only with chocolate, I had the bright idea of layering them. The result? Sweet cherries rounded off by chocolate. The resultant blend can be a little too sweet sometimes, so I swap in The Candy Butcher (a slightly more bitter cocoa) for Velvet when that happens. With the Butcher and Vice I smell like a box of those hellishly expensive dark chocolate cherry liqueur chocolates. Yum yum! I'm also going to try it with Bloody Mary when I get home on the 26th. As that's a cherry scent too this could work quite well! I will post how that goes. Shub-Niggurath & Xanthe This one's a bit more tricky to pull off. While in theory the scents work very well together, the sweet fruit of Xanthe drawn to Earth by the herbal ginger of Shub, the two scents have such radically different strengths and throws that it took me a whole day of experimenting, and I'm still nervous about doing it! My basic finding was that ginger AMPS on me. A LOT. The people in the opposite block of flats could smell me when I wore Shub. So, I apply a tiny, tiny bit of Shub first - using an Imp wand or a toothpick or something - and rub that in. I let it sit for about 30 minutes or so, and then I apply Xanthe as liberally as I do when I wear just that. That's a dab from the cap on one wrist, rub wrists together, re-soak cap, a small dab on each side of the neck, and rub wrists on neck. Quite a lot for some scents, but just the right amount for the shy clown. After the Xanthe enters the drydown stage, the ginger of Shub comes back into play, and wowee! A gorgeous, fruity blend with spicy ginger in the background. The sweet sexiness of Xanthe with the uniqueness and individual spice of Shub. Just like me really As an aside, I have an Imp of Shub coming from the Lab in the Bloody Mary order. I might (since I have two bottles of Xanthe) try putting a custom Imp together of 1/4 Shub, 3/4 Xanthe and see what happens. Just a thought

Why oh why do I have this incredible inability to get out of bed before 1030? It's really messing my work/revision schedules up. I guess it's related to my insomnia but I don't know where that comes from either. Oh joy of joys. (And before you recommend Somnus, all that did was give me a migraine .) More Shipping Thoughts I've had some more thoughts on the postage price hikes. This will not stop me buying BPAL altogether, as some of the other UK people seem to be rather dramatically going towards, it will just make me a little more thoughtful with my orders. Here is my reasoning (done in bullet points 'cause I'm a scientist and I like things to be simple): - Postage before was $9-$11, or about £6. This was an AMAZINGLY low rate for a Priority box from the US. I've paid three times that for things from within the UK. - Postage now is $22-$25, or about £14. - This is indeed double, BUT it's only an extra £8. - I can live with that, especially in a "large" order... - ...Because for me, a large order is between 4 and 6 items. - Thus, if we make a theoretical order using four items from the current catalog and compare the new and old prices: ------------------------------- Old Postage 1 x 5ml [A Carnaval Diaboliqe] $20 1 x 5ml [A GC] $15 1 x 5ml [A GC] $15 Imp Set $19.50 Total: $69.50 Postage: $9 (four items) Total: $78.50 or about £40. New Postage Same order: $69.50 Postage: $22.00 Total: $91.50 or about £48. ------------------------------- Also, bear in mind that I've probably overestimated the pounds part, by assuming an exchange rate of $1.9 = £1.00. It's actually more like $1.999 or even $2.00 = £1 at the moment. Now, this is an extra £8 on the order. Assuming that I could afford the previous price alright, all I have to do to afford the new price is not go drinking for one week or stop buying coffee for a week or something. (Or even save up all my coppers!) Certainly doable, especially if (like I already mentioned) I only order when I have enough wants to justify an order, which would be once every few months at the most. Also, I don't order lunacies or really Limited Editions (i.e. not long-term LEs) so there's no problem there. For this particular order mentioned here, that is a larger order than I've ever made with the Lab, and I think it would take about 8 weeks to save for that by putting £6-7 a week away. So there we have it an objective, scientific analysis of the new shipping costs as related to BPAL buyers in the UK. By the way, I am a student, so I know how being poor feels besides, if you save up for your BPAL rather than just buy it on a whim, doesn't it smell sweeter? ETA: Another thought. BPAL is a luxury. Maybe this will make me think of it as such and not just another thing I bought off the Internet.

Ooh I applied for Hertfordshire I'm at Aberystwyth though. It's great for Astronomy as we have our own dome telescope (not as good as an observatory ), plus there's very little light pollution in the middle of bloody nowhere! Not to mention that Aber's main research is ironically solar studies; Aber was a major player in the STEREO satellite project, and they built some of Beagle II (not the bit that broke though! ). I haven't had any exams yet, no resits so far either, three exams total including this one tomorrow aww and I bet you did fine

Thank you I'm so organised it scares me sometimes! (Seriously, I have notebooks full of lists for everything ) Of course ordering is down to the individual, but yes I agree - maybe if I just want one bottle I'll go for a group order, but for 3-or-more item orders I'll do it myself. Plus I get to have the BPAL box in my front door ETA: to fellow Astrophysics student! My course is called Physics with Planetary and Space Physics. I have a Classical Physics exam tomorrow that I should really start revising for

Where to start..? Well, explaining the title for those who don't know would be a good idea! Yuggoth is the name given to the ninth planet (Pluto, to us) in the works of H.P. Lovecraft*. In some of his stories a race of monstrous alien beings from another solar system have a base in our own solar system on the ninth planet, as they call it, Yuggoth ...Not that Pluto is technically a planet anymore. While I do understand the reason for the reclassification (i.e. some asteroids are bigger than Pluto) it still tugs at my heartstrings a little. If Pluto had feelings (and indeed a personality and a brain etc.) it would be very upset. My Astronomy lecturer expressed the sentiment: "When I was young, Pluto was a planet!" Anyway, I guess introductions are in order! Hi there everyone, I'm Jenny and I've been a member of this forum since December of last year (06). I got into BPAL when I saw "BPAL" referred to on the Lush UK forums, had no idea what it was and Googled it, coming up with the Lab's pages! I was intrigued and placed a small order (Hell's Belle 5ml and a couple of Imps) before joining the forum. I began to buy on the For Sale forum to further my collection. I placed another Lab order in January and I've continued to be a BPAL addict since! Notes My first order of Hell's Belle has since dropped off my "Likes" list, as my tastes have changed somewhat. I (now) love foody scents, especially fruit. Florals and I really don't get on; they go straight to "old lady nasty cloying soap" on me, and citrus and I have declared all-out war. I cannot wear a citrus blend without either gagging or spending the whole day with a nagging feeling I should have my hands in a bowl of artificial-lemon-scent washing up water. As I do enough washing up already as a student, this is a bad thing. Layering I don't wear layered scents exclusively, but I do layer some of mine. As far as layering goes, I'll try anything once! My favourite layering is Vice with Velvet or The Candy Butcher - sweet cherries rounded by the dark cocoa. I also layer Shub and Xanthe sometimes. Thankfully, foody scents tend to layer well, and as 90% of my BPAL chest is foody stuff this works quite well for me! Favourites See my signature link or the link on the right for my current Top Ten, but suffice to say, I will crawl over hot coals for Imp, run through a lion's cage for Xanthe, and maybe suffer a small paper cut for Shub or Chimera. Well, I would, if I didn't already have bottles of them Thanks for reading this far, and keep watching for the updates of the BPAL-obsessed-physicist-gamer-violist-computer-geek! *It should also be pointed out that BPAL is soley and wholly responsible for my Lovecraft fandom. I looked up "Arkham" after seeing it on the BPAL site and the rest, as they say, is history!

Meh. Simple harmonic motion is SO BORING. And the word "simple" is a very inaccurate description. So I've come on here to rant about World of Warcraft and computers instead World of Warcraft I play World of Warcraft. I play it a lot, but it's not the only thing in my life. And no, I don't mind paying for the subscription because it's so good. I play in the Aggramar realm. I'm a gnome Warlock called Jenesis, currently level 37 (trying to level fast though), specialising in Demonology (I want a Felguard!). I was looking around the WoW-Europe site earlier and I found the High-Level Armour Sets - these have given me a new incentive to get to Level 70 and go do some instances! I particularly like the Felheart armour set, a Tier 1 Raid set that can be obtained from mobs in Molten Core. So when I get to Searing Gorge, off to Molten Core I go If any other BPALers are WoW (EU) players, whisper me and say hello! ETA: Molten Core is in Searing Gorge, not Outland. Oops Computers I can't wait to get home on the 26th. Why? Because I will be building my new computer after that I'm aiming to have all the components arrive at my house the following Monday so I can build it/test it/tweak it/swear at it when it doesn't work all that week. Not that any of you are at all interested in this, but check out the specs: Case - This is a sexy case Processor: AMD 64 X2 5200+ Dual-Core 2.6GHz Motherboard: MSI K9N nForce 590 SLI-Ready 8-Channel Audio with Creative Audigy soundcard OS: Vista Ultimate The other specs like hard drive (500GB SATA), memory (2GB at least) and things are all a bit more changeable and so not concrete yet. Total cost: About £900, or $1750. Not bad for a from-scratch dual-core system. A bit annoyed about the graphics card though; I can't afford a new 8800 yet (check out this sexy beast *dribble* ) so I'm using the boyfriend's old 6600 card until I can! He got an 8800 for his machine and gave the old card to me. So I'm gonna have this lightning fast rig bottlenecked by an almost outdated graphics card ETA: Must... resist... getting... credit... card... out... I WANT an 8800!

Today's Scent So today I got my bottle of Shub that I swapped with naughteblonde for my backup Gennivre bottle. On first sniff I thought "Oh no!" but on application it mellowed. It takes a while to mellow on me so I had to be patient, but it was worth it in the end: Lovely spicy ginger! This is going to be my "spicy" scent. I don't have any yet, Chimera is just barely spicy enough, and all my other blends are creamy-foody or light. So all in all good. And by the way: DON'T LAYER SHUB WITH CHIMERA. I tried it out of curiosity, and oh boy did I regret it. I was scrubbing my wrists for ten minutes after that gaffe Smelt like baby sick ETA: It does work well with Xanthe though! The uplifting fruitiness of the Clown is darkened and sweetened by the herbal ginger of Shub. Worth a try if you have both USPS Price Hike And so we move onto the main story of the day: The huge increase in International shipping prices by USPS. I started a thread about it myself here, but it's more expertly covered in this thread here. To US customers of BPAL that's not much, but for us UK citizens (and indeed Canada, Australia and the whole of Western Europe) it's crippling. [ETA: The threads have been split, the main one discussing the prices as directly related to BPAL and possible solutions is here. The other thread mentioned above is mainly discussing the hike in general.] The cost of shipping an order from the Lab to me is now $22.00, up from $9. That's over double the price. I don't know about you but this is seriously going to limit my orders. Good for my bank balance maybe, but not so good for the Lab, and definitely not good for new customers and newly enabled peeps. I really hope we can get a UK group order circle going. I don't order LEs much anyway (and certainly no Lunacies), but I definitely won't now. I can't justify spending $20-25 on a bottle and $20 for shipping of something that might not work on me. So my plan is to plan my orders way in advance - say 3 months before I order - and make it at least two or three (GC or long-term LE) bottles and some Imps or other things of equivalent value. That's the only way I can justify spending $20 on shipping, where before I was happy to order one 5ml and a couple of Imps. Such a shame

BPAL Reviews Whenever I review a scent, I'll post a link to my post in the review thread here. This is also partly for me so I can keep track of all my reviews 13 (July 2007) Aziraphale Black Pearl Bon Vivant Brown Jenkins The Candy Butcher Carnivale Creepy Crowley Death Adder Death of the Grave Digger Delousing Powder Dorian Eat Me Enraged Groundhog Musk Fire Pig Geek Gennivre Imp Kumiho Lampades Mania Monster Bait: Bloody Mary Monster Bait: Ventriloquist Dummy Obatala Odin The Red Queen Saw-Scaled Viper Shub-Niggurath Spooky Tanin'iver Tenochtitlan Two Monsters White Rabbit Xanthe

Bottle: A big WHOOF of ginger. Wet: A jar of ginger tied round with herbs. Drydown: Phew, that's better! A little more mellow, incensey-type ginger and herbs underneath. This is nothing like any of my other scents. Dry: Now this smells like ginger beer or ginger ale. A little too boozy for my taste - perhaps it could be layered with a chocolate scent (my cure-all for weird morphs ). Dry (after 10 mins): Thank goodness for that! The boozy/smokey note has gone away leaving pure ginger. Nice stuff. Final verdict: A very unique and unusual scent. Ginger, yes, herbs, yes, nice, yes. Signature scent? No. Rating: 4/5 I got two bottles of this (from two different sources). I'll keep one but the other one is almost definitely going up for sale in the near future! Keep an eye out for me

Can you get PayPal certificates? Or could you just send the giftee some money for their PayPal balance? I know that would only work if the enabler and the enablee had PayPal and used it to buy BPAL, but since I'm in the UK that's my only option for BPAL

I was a little late in ordering Bloody Mary and ordered it on the night of the 29th of April HOWEVER I got an email this afternoon saying it had shipped! So they've done the end of April orders at least 2 weeks, the fastest turnaround from the Lab I've got! It'll take about 10 days to get to me though

Bottle: WHOOF of bright sugars and lemony scent. Thoughts: Uh-oh. (I can't do citrus at all!) Wet: Chopped banana (I guess this is the guava?) covered in sugar. Drydown: Still the sugary banana/fruit milkshake, but the blossom, just enough to ground it, comes into play. Wow! Dry: Mmm, I can't stop sniffing my wrists! Surprisingly sexy fruit, rounded off with the sugar, and grounded by the apple blossom. If I had to pick an image it would be a pina colada (as someone earlier said), with bananas and fruit and sugar, with a few blossoms on the top. Dry (after 20 mins): This has gone more mellow and less bright than before (not a bad thing!). Still sexy and warm and sweet. A complex scent. Throw: I can smell it on my neck if I put more than a dab on, but I'm not walking in the middle of a cloud of scent when I wear this. Final verdict: Gorgeous sweet fruity scent grounded by the blossom. So glad I got two bottles of this! Rating: 4.5/5

Bottle: Smells exactly like Velvet - sharp, bitter cocoa with no other discernible notes. (My nose sucks ) Wet: A big WHOOF of chocolate! Again, dark, rich, slightly bitter chocolate, the kind you get in some posh chocolate boxes. Drydown: Where did that come from? A whiff of nail polish remover is assaulting my sinuses underneath the chocolate. No cream still. Dry: The nail polish remover has gone (thankfully!), going back to the bitter chocolate. Still no cream. Nice but not a very complex scent. Dry (after 20 mins): Getting more interesting. The sweet cream comes out to play a bit, balancing the bitterness. Still not outstanding, but since my skin is very very picky it's a keeper. Dry (after an hour): Wowee this is nice! After about 45 minutes this morphed to a gorgeous chocolate cream smell - like hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows on top (who wouldn't want to get a whiff of that every so often?). Still a little bit "basic" with not much else to it, but definitely a keeper, and can be gorgeous layered with other foody scents - I tried Vice (rich cherry liqueur chocolates) and Jack (an, um, "interesting" combination - nice but a bit weird!). I'll update this if/when I try layering with other things - for some reason Xanthe keeps popping to mind as a good layering one with this... Final Verdict: Mellow, warm hot chocolate scent after drydown. Could be showstopping with tactful layering. Lovely! 4/5 (By the way, when I was sitting in this for the review and letting it mellow, I was writing a Laboratory Report on Radiation Shielding . The Candy Butcher kept me company with lovely whiffs of a cup of hot cocoa with cream, keeping me all nice and warm and rather less bored/suicidal than I usually am when writing reports. Well done! Speaking of which, I'd better go and finish that... )

Bottle: No peach to me, just a musky, dark patchouli smell. Wet: Peach brandy with a musk undertone. Drydown: Sweet peaches (my skin loves fruit), still with the musky undertone. Dry: Yummy! A gorgeous, foodie, sweet peach, prevented from being overpoweringly cloying by the spices and the musk. I got this as a frimp from the Lab, and I am very, very impressed! Thanks BPAL! Final verdict: Yum yum yum! Gorgeous sweet peach with a wonderfully sexy, sensual, spicy undertone. The musk lightly lingers for hours - like the taste in your mouth after biting into a ripe, juicy peach*. 5/5 stars! ETA: I decided to go a little bolder with this and slathered it on. One word: WOWEE! I smelt like a peach pudding with cinnamon on top The boyf liked it too - first thing he said after hugging me was "Wow, you smell nice! I'm hungry now..." (...and he was ). Anyway, this is now my absolute favourite scent. I could bath in it. I could slather it. Imp loves meeee [/squeeful rant] *Damnit, I'm hungry now!

That's alright, we were all new once of course, you can dilute the blends using carrier oils (Jojoba, coconut etc) if you wish - I use a few drops of Chimera in Jojoba oil as a post-shower smoothie for my skin sometimes. But for simple perfume use, generally, no dilution needed See you around the forums, and glad to see another Brit

I managed to spill this one too... Bottle: Woah, sharp. I think there's vetiver in there somewhere. Wet: Chocolate? A complicated scent. I'm really not getting the "girl" vibe that most people get though. Drydown: Gets a little nicer, a nice blend of some kind of sweet/foody thing under a sharper overtone (vetiver, clove or pepper). Dry: Hasn't really changed from the drydown stage, and not really making me go "mmmm!". Off to the swap pile with you!

Do you mean essential oils or the BPAL perfumes? Because BPAL perfumes are safe to put on skin (obviously, they're perfume). Some people are sensitive to certain "notes" that appear, for example, I avoid carnation because it gives me a headache, but the perfumes themselves are fine for direct application to the skin. There is a thread here about reactions to oils/notes. As for essential oils, some can be applied to the skin directly, and some shouldn't be applied to skin (check the rest of this thread for opinions/details). However, although the Lab's perfumes are made from essential oils, they are made in such a way that they are safe for application to the skin. Hope this helps, and welcome

Bottle: Strangely, it smells like superglue. Wet: Still superglue. Drydown: Still superglue. I'm trying to smell other things, honest Dry: Nope, still strong, headachey glue. There's something in here which just doesn't like me. Sorry Beth

Bottle: Sticky, sweet, hellishly expensive dark cherry liqueur chocolates. Wet: The same sharpness that others have described, floating over aforementioned chocolate waft. Drydown: This is where Vice comes into its own (on me, anyway). A deliciously sweet cocoa smell, prevented from being overpowering by the dark cherry. I can smell it just sitting here and it was the tiniest of dabs from the wand - not much needed at all! Dry (early stages): Noooooo, talcum powder smell I guess that's the orange blossom - nearly all flowers go soapy/powdery on me. Not that this talcum powder is a bad smell, by any means, but I much preferred the sexy, cherry drydown. Dry (after 20 mins): Less powdery, but now it's acting very oddly. It keeps switching between Velvet-esque pure cocoa and some cherry-flavoured lip balm that I had when I was 10. The cherry bit is nice, but not really me - a little too girly and sweet. Unfortunately it also smells rather artificial and plastic on me. I'll keep the Imp, but I doubt I'll be getting a bottle. ETA (ages later): Just a thought, maybe this could be layered with something a little more bitter, like Phantom Calliope, to cut down the cloying smell while keeping the cherry?

Teggy, yes, skin on the head/face tends to be more sensitive because it is more exposed to the elements Adding my own 2 cents, I have reactions to heavy florals like rose, jasmine, honeysuckle and the like - they all give me an awful violent headache! I've never figured out why, but as 99% of all floral blends smell like soap on me anyway (sorry Beth ) I don't have to suffer much.

I'm looking for a Gennivre similarity too. Strangely, The Unicorn smelt kind of similar to Gennivre on me, as in it had the same "vibe" and feeling about it, but it's nowhere near as complex and meaningful as Gennivre on me. Suggestions?

From my BPAL database: Bottle: My enemy vetiver. Wet: I can smell the sweet vanilla now and the cherry. Sadly lacking in musk. Drydown: Ooh, much better! A musky scent, sweetened by vanilla and cherry. The vetiver prevents it being too cloying. Dry: The sweet cherry comes out even more. Yum! Now a gorgeous vanilla scent over musk. A real "wow" scent!

Bottle: An "average" scent. A pleasant blend, but nothing outstanding. Wet: Still a smoky blend, rather "everyday", no one individual note seems to stand out. Drydown: Aah, that's better! Woods work well on my skin and Danse Macabre is no exception. The woods go to the "base" of the scent with the sweet frankincense over the top. Dry: The hazelnut comes into play. A rich, earthy, woody base underneath sweet frankincense and glittering hazelnut. Throw: Hardly any, which is a shame, although I only tested it on the back of my hand. Would probably be better if applied more liberally and in more places. Verdict: This could be my signature "Earth" scent! It feels very cozy and warm.