Shollin

First sniff: The Ace of Cups is wet and faintly citrusy… it smells a little bit like cherry 7Up. Wearing: Cherry, cherry, cherry. Very bright and playful. There’s something a bit darker and more solid underneath, maybe a touch of wood, but mostly it smells like I spilled a jar of maraschino juice all over myself. I'm a bit tempted to try layering this with Vice or Bliss to see if I can get a chocolate-covered cherry scent.

First sniff: Bright incense with an ornate tracing of flowers above. Wearing: For some reason Seraphim smells very fruity on my skin, like grapes or berries. I’d think sacramental wine, but it’s not an alcohol scent, just ripe red fruit (though come to think of it, it does smell a bit like port, which the church I grew up in uses at Communion…) After a few minutes it turns sharper and makes me want to sneeze.

First sniff: Hymn is a lot more sweet-white-flowery than I expected – I figured the many incenses would be predominant. There’s a sharpness around the outside, as if the flowers are floating in a cut-crystal bowl with zigzaggy edges. Wearing: There’s definitely a dryness under the flowers – it’s not the flowers that are dried out, but their environment. A fresh white bouquet in a bright sunlit room full of old vestments and dusty prayer books.

I'm not sure if the scent was the culprit, but the first time I wore Strength (from the tarot oils) I kept nodding off at work... a bit TOO calming, perhaps. I find The Apothecary and Alice very soothing in quite different ways. Rosalind is another possibility - it's very calm and quiet.

First sniff: Wow. Cedarwood dipped in vanilla, big skies and wide-open plains with the wind blowing ripples in the yellow grass. Wearing: Tombstone is beautifully warm, and really interesting. The vanilla is primary, and there’s a definite woodiness underneath, like vanilla condensed into the consistency of molasses and poured slooooooowly into a cedar chest. There’s a sharpness to the cedar that gets up my nose a bit if I sniff my wrist directly, but the aura is that gorgeous thick gooey vanilla with not a hint of sugar. The texture of this scent reminds me of that amazing brandy-butter sauce they pour over one of the desserts at Applebee’s… thick but flowy and almost sticky but not quite. (Dang – now I really want a skillet blondie. ) It seems pretty unisex, but I have a feeling that if a man wore this scent he’d be sex on horseback. (Or maybe I’m just thinking of Viggo. )

First sniff: Harlot really does smell like wet roses, and there’s a hint of something else I can’t pin down, something a bit brighter. It boggles me that I’ve sniffed so many rose scents and they’re all different. Wearing: There have been only two rose scents that were too strongly rosey for me – Black Rose and now this one. I’m trying to put my finger on the difference between them, ‘cause I know there is one, but at the moment it’s just screaming ROSE! in my ear and I can’t smell anything else. This one is more aggressively, arrogantly rosey, with BIG thorns. Black Rose is a bit more reserved. After a few minutes on I can smell the cinnamon lurking about underneath, reining the rose in a bit – and I forget until I smell something like this what REAL cinnamon smells like, because anytime I see cinnamon in something I expect it to smell like one of those spicy red jawbreakers (Red Hots, I think). But this is REAL cinnamon, like someone grabbed a curl of cinnamon bark and a fine-mesh grater and grated the spice directly over an enormous RED rose. Interestingly, this is the only one of the 10 Love Potions I’ve tried so far that I really haven’t gotten along with. For rose fans, it's a must-try... the cinnamon adds an interesting lighter note, but it's still just too rosey for me (though Rapture and Othello are slowly bringing me around from the rabidly anti-rose crowd).

First sniff: I’ve never read the Story, but O strikes me as being wistful almost to the point of sadness, and I can’t figure out why. The scent itself is very smooth and golden, and I suspect it’s the amber that restrains it from being too foody or too sweet. Wearing: Very warm, quiet and gently smoky. After an hour or so it developed an odd overtone… almost a mustiness, which didn’t suit me at all (betting that's the amber again, I can't wear Aureus either). It was quite nice in the early stages. I swapped for another imp of this scent after deciding I didn't give it a fair chance the first time: Trying again: Goes on golden and glorious, definite honey. It’s quite a bit sweeter than I remember. Actually, the wet stage reminds me of Lush’s B Never honey shower gel. This stayed wonderful on me all night – I must have been having wonky chemistry when I tried it on before. Another scent to test my guy's reaction. Testing my guy's reaction: Oh my. I'll leave it at that. Well, no, not quite. O is only the second scent he's ever requested I wear - the original Siren is still his first love, but he's very VERY fond of O.

First sniff: There’s something in Alice, in the vial, that smells a bit “off” to my nose. I’ve never been a huge fan of the scent of milk, so maybe that’s it. The overtones are more fruit than floral. Wearing: It’s the aftertaste of this that smells slightly weird – just when you stop inhaling but there’s still a scent. It does smell a bit like some sort of milk soap I used a long time ago. Over that I smell a slightly sharp-edged flower – I’m guessing that’s carnation – and the fruit seems to be gone, or at least toned down. The weird aftertaste disappears very quickly, fortunately, and the overall effect is quite sweet, with a nice powdery spice to it. It’s morphed into something I really, really like, an unconventional sort of soothing like a kitten sleeping in your lap. I wasn't expecting to like this one based on the weird milky scent, but it turned subtly gorgeous as it dried. An older man in the post office kept glancing in my direction, and considering I went out with the Chin Zit of Doom and no makeup in a ratty old T-shirt and Birkenstocks, I gotta think it was the way I smelled rather than the way I looked... The closest I can come to "what this smells like" in its final form is a less sweet version of Burt's Bees buttermilk bath.

I haven't tried it on yet, but Tombstone smells a bit like cedarwood dipped in vanilla. Very intriguing. Also, Dragon's Heart went a bit vanilla-y on me, and that one is all warmth and musk and just all-around gorgeous. Siren is mostly ginger, but if you like that, it's a really gorgeous bakery scent with a definite vanilla undertone. Carnivale was nice at first and then the amber went weird on me - my skin doesn't get along with resins (though apparently it's OK with dragon's blood...) It struck me as much more of a berry scent than a vanilla, but would probably match your warm-sweet-spicy tastes. And Snake Oil is awesome, of course.

First sniff: Dragon's Heart is very red and wicked, with a spicy bite. I’m betting it will be very slinky on me – there’s something in it that reminds me of Ravenous. Wearing: Ooh. I LIKE. If this is a dragon, it’s a mysterious, sinuous Eastern dragon with dark red scales, not the barbaric dinosaurish sort that show up in movies and are generally bent on destroying everything they lay eyes on. My brain wants to define this as spicy, because it’s very warm, but it’s not really spice. If I sniff my wrist directly there’s a lighter round scent that hovers just this side of sweetness… almost vanilla but not quite.

First sniff: Wicked is a very cool, ethereal scent – more than cool, almost to the point of chilly but not quite biting. I know it’s jasmine, but I don’t smell that bright sweetness jasmine usually has – this is much darker, very shadowy. It reminds me a lot of the evil queen from Snow White – that regal, haughty beauty as she sweeps out of the hall with her long cape billowing behind. Wearing: Reminiscent of Twilight, but a very cool version, and darker. The drydown is almost exactly the wet green stage of Twilight, which I madly adore, and it lasts for ages – I can still smell it clearly more than 12-13 hours after applying. I suspect I’ll be wearing this one a lot once I get through all my imps.

I was blaming computer gremlins. Glad we're back! Hey, while I'm thinking about it - I have my profile set to e-mail me when I get a PM, and it hasn't been. Any idea how I or you or someone can make it work right?

So far my favourite orange scents are Ravenous and Carnal (Ravenous is sex in a bottle on me, Carnal's a bit more reserved). Lolita is also a bit orangey, but not as pronounced as those two. Phantasm is beautiful soft lemon, if you're looking for other kinds of citrus, and The Star (tarot oil) has a lemon-lime feel to it but is mostly coconut on top. Phantasm is my favourite lemony scent - it's a very soft misty lemon, not at all cleanery. Baobhan Sith is a new scent that reminds me of a grapefruit version of Phantasm. There's a bit of bite to it at first, but it softens nicely.

Good on y'all for digging out from that mess. Must go look at links now! And I'm really hoping my stuff gets here today because I'm going out of town tomorrow to visit a recent convert and I want to take her some new stuff to sniff! (edit: No such luck, unfortunately - but the friend in question has a lot of scents I haven't smelled yet, so I get my fix tomorrow. And my package WILL be here when I get back on Tuesday, yes it will, it musst, preciousss...)

I've never gotten anything from the USPS about any of my orders - is this a new thing just for reshipments, or is it supposed to happen every time? Just curious. I can't believe all the insanity the bloody post office is putting y'all through. As if having the Evil Flu of Doom for weeks wasn't enough.

*schnoogle* New stuff... mmmmmm.

First sniff: Endymion is the absolute smell, taste and texture of a perfectly ripe not-too-soft pear. Really gorgeous. Wearing: I can smell soft flowers immediately under the blanket of pear, a hint of rose and something else that makes it not just rosey. The aura is more flowers than pear, but it’s still definite pear if I sniff my wrist directly. Very pretty, even the rosey bits, and I’m not a rose person. After a few minutes it goes sweeter and I get the same sneezey feeling as with Old New Orleans. The pear disappears very fast once it dries – I wish it hung around more, it’s what makes this one unique.

Maybe we could unpin this and remove the PLEASE READ, as it's no longer an issue?

I'm on the other side of the country, annoyingly, but I'm here if you need me.

Hi Brian! And more for Beth. Hope you can get everything sorted out without too many more headaches.

Can I nitpick just a little? There should be a "u" in "menstrual."

I use a Q-Tip (cotton swab) for my Spooky bottle when I'm trying not to slather it on too much - I just dip the very end in and brush it over the spots I want. I'm not sure how well it would work for what you're looking for, but it's a thought.

Welcome back... if that's not an utterly ridiculous thing to say given the circumstances. So sorry everything's blown up in your face.

Beth! *pounce* Sorry to hear about Ted's game and injuries. Hope y'all are having fun otherwise!

Is it possible to tailor the forum "titles" (like wench/rogue, lady/gentleman) so the appropriate one shows up when you pick your gender? I really like having my font/color set automatically. Woohoo!