kjirstiben

Dust on your trousers, mud on your boots, and stars in your eyes: redwood, tonka bean, white sandalwood, lemon peel, patchouli, rosewood, coriander, and crushed mint. Tristran was, for me, a scent that was green with something sweet underneath in its initial application. Over the next hour or so, it became increasingly more green in scent--the coriander and mint combined to give me an almost geranium-leaf scent (which I rather liked), combined with the softer woods making the backdrop of the scent. After a while, the green goes dusty and hay-like, and only blends more smoothly with the woods in the background. There's still something smoothing it out, something sweet, almost like honey but not quite so distinct. It was very faint after a few hours, and hard to pinpoint what I was smelling, at that point. Tristran is a nice, outdoorsy, woodsy green scent that has a bright character to it. Woodsy without being dark, dusty without being arid. I keep getting the image of the Fool archetype... this is very appropriate to that sort of energy--innocence, brightness, starting on a journey all about fresh adventures.

Going on, Jazz Funeral smelled fruity to me, almost like bananas. (Odd, isn't it? I must have weird skin chemistry--that or a weird nose!) Along with the bananas, I smelled something spicy--was that cinnamon? Yes, it was! For an hour the cinnamon amped happily, until I swear I had a delectable feast of spiced banana bread on my wrists. Crazy! Then, after that hour, the cinnamon started to calm down. It began to smell clean... a scent I associate with bay rum and moss. Then a short interval of sour/sharp bitterness happened... And once again I could smell a little banana bread, in the drydown! Only now it was covered by a distinct scent of lilies. I don't know where they'd been hiding before this, but they eventually made themselves known in the final stages of the Jazz Funeral.

This goes on 100% rose, a sharp, almost dried-petal rose, and quickly amps up to being a piercing dried rose. After an hour, I still had a sharp (headache-inspiring, I feared), rose. At this point I thought there was no way I'd ever like this scent... it was one of the evil flowers on me. But at that point I started noticing some other notes emerging... some wood, and a sort of incensy backdrop. And then the screaming florals on top started calming down somewhat... After another hour, and long after that, I had a mild, sweet, rose and wood scent that was quite lovely. What a difference from the first hour!

When I first put this on, it smelled of honey and flowers. However, after that initial intoxicating whiff, it settled on my skin into being pure flowers. Oddly, further away, I'm getting a beeswax (which to me reads as "honey") throw, but up close all I can smell is the flowers. And then it started to do something that I can't quite put my finger on... the scent went kind of sour or stale on me. I haven't quite isolated what note it is that goes wonky like this with my skin chemistry, but I've had it happen a few times. I'm annoyed, because the at-a-distance scent of this oil is delightful--smoky, sweet beeswax--but every time I sniff my wrist I get sour-stale dead flowers. I'm going to try this again, because I love the overall impression. Just having trouble on the specifics!

Harvest Moon goes on herbal and smelling of the forest, with a fruit tone to it, but only subtly at first. It's cool, with a sense of juicyness. This scent is, and remains, fairly powerful. Quickly the fruit takes center stage and never leaves it... I keep thinking I'm smelling apples but I think it's a combination of the plum/grape/cherry scents. Very, very fruity, with a slight evergreen background. After hours of unstopping fruit, I finally looked up the description and could identify what I was smelling (the fruits), but also the fir with them. And when it made sense to my head, my nose started to like it better... weird how that works. Over all, a rich, fruity, sweet smell. Very similar in "flavor" to Samhain 2008 or Fearful Pleasure, to my nose, though the fruit blend lends a different character than the apple in either of the other two. Probably a little heavier and darker than I can wear regularly... I prefer my fruit scents light and barely-there. This is definitely there, in the middle of things, announcing its presence!

The Churchyard was, at first, lovely greenness... though immediately on my skin it developed a sharp soapiness (some green scents do this but usually if I ride 'em out they'll go away). As I thought, the soapy scent went away in a few minutes, and the rose emerged. Oh, and what a lovely rose it was, too! Fresh and draped over its green backdrop... Over the next hour or so, the rose quieted down more and more and started to work with the green. Really, really lovely. Unfortunately, after a few hours, all the distinctive notes in this went away and I was left with a certain scorched-grass smell that I get regularly as the end stages of green scents. Hmmm. All the beginning stages of this scent are beautiful... I am quite delighted. (Notes to self that rose is not, after all, one of the scary florals on my skin.)

Initially on, Manhattan is light and lemony, then there's a hint of the tea behind the lemon. A few minutes later, there's lemon, something sparkly that I read as "booze" but was probably grapefruit, and leather with tea, but all of this with a certain minty bite behind it all. For a while after that, the scent takes on an almost pine-like character, still spiked slightly with mint, and the citrus has definitely changed from lemon to grapefruit. Then, after a couple hours, the tone changed again, completely... it smells, of all things, like sun-dried laundry! Clean, freshly-laundered sheets left to dry in the sun... (not exactly what I associate with Manhattan, the place!) It's quite nice, though a very light scent that started to vanish after an hour.

Vice is truly all about chocolate-covered cherries! In the bottle, you smell the candy deliciousness, though initially on, a strange scent rises up and tries to throw all the chocolatey, cherry deliciousness awry... It seems almost as though the orange blossom is trying to rise up, only achieves soapiness, and then gives up in a huff and stalks away, because after a half-hour or so, this is pure vanilla-chocolate-cherry heaven. A lovely, pure chocolate treat (and here I was doubting that perfume could capture a truly chocolate scent!). Perhaps a little too foody for my own personal tastes, but a delightful experience nonetheless!

Ahhhh... a new scent to love with all my heart and soul! I'm so pleased! Lady Lilith went on sweet, a little milky-smelling, with a sort of "essence of flowers" hint at florals without actually turning into the rabid screamingness that florals usually turn into on me. It dries down as sweet, spiced flowers. (Again, GOOD flowers. Nice flowers. Flowers that smell good--amazing!) After an hour or so, this has turned into a soft, pale, vanilla scent. It's very faint (I could probably slather this scent without ill effects), but lovely. For the rest of the day, the scent was a soft, barely-there vanilla, but not a foody one. It is a very light-smelling scent, and gives a sense of milk or cream with it. Not only did this delight my heart, but it might also be the perfect bedtime scent... Hmmmm.

Kali started out strongly in the wine/grape mode. After a few minutes on my skin, however, it tempered and I started to smell spices. Unfortunately, along with the spices, a certain sour/musty smell emerged that I've smelled before in other scents (Jailbait and Eclipse are two examples), and flirted with the notion of ruining Kali entirely. But I stuck it out, and was rewarded by a magical reformulation of the scent... it was sweet wine and spices, and stayed that way for the rest of the day. Quite delightful.

Initially on, this is flowery and herbal with an earthy underlay. No, wait, maybe that's flowers and incense, not flowers and herbs. Drying, it becomes more and more pretty, sweeter, and pleasant. Then apple blossom takes over. This is (sadly) one of the florals that amps to high heavens on me, and for several hours I endure an apple blossom white-floral EXPLOSION while anything that I liked is relegated to a (very faint) background role. After the all-apple-blossom show, however, myrrh starts to show up, with a certain sweetness that tempers the sharpness of the floral I've been getting for several hours. Then... ahhh, then. Amber shows up and turns into its beautiful, gorgeous deliciousness. I love amber, and amber loves me. It's sweet and almost vanilla-like without being foody and... well. Just heavenly. Might almost be worth the Apple Blossom Party to get to this stage. Maybe.

Sigh. I did so want to be one of those cool people who enjoys one of the more controversial notes... Upon opening the imp, my immediate reaction was, "OK, yeah, I see why people object to civet." It really did smell like some sort of objectionable bodily fluid... So with a very light touch I applied it, just to see if it did some magic on my skin. On my skin, it was funny. Mothbally? Plasticky? Very animalistic--I was quickly glad that I barely applied it. After a while, it ended up smelling like either halitosis or perhaps the way that a house smells when old people have lived in it for decades without doing too much cleaning or opening the windows. Very stale. Very musty. Yuck. Though, after hours and hours, I smelled it (the scent was mostly gone), and I got a faded aftereffect of the musk. It smelled almost like honey... actually very nice!

Hunter Moon went on sweet, almost berry-like (that's how wine starts out on me!), then quickly became musky, and stayed musky throughout its lifecycle. On my skin, it was sweet and furry, but there is a deeper evergreen note lurking in the background, an emergent earthiness making its presence known. Over time, it becomes a powdery musk scent. , sliding down the scale to being just powdery toward the end of the day. A nice scent, though my skin wants to make musk very generic-baby-powder, I'm afraid. I loved the evergreen notes in this that were lurking in the background for the first few hours, though!

Going on, Ultraviolet is minty, like toothpaste, almost, but metallic... On my skin, it's more of an herbal scent, with a violety-minty throw, though close to the skin I get a bitter herbal/floral scent. Several hours after putting it on, I can barely smell a fresh, slightly mossy scent... except every now and then I get tantalizing whiffs of dewy violet which interrupt me as I try to place what I'm smelling... This is a really interesting scent, unusual and fun to wear as a change from the norm. I like it pretty well, but I'm going to have to try it again before I'm sure what I think of it.

Interesting scent. I was expecting (having lost the note description), something with smoke and booze and leather... but this was all about florals... with a little booze. Initially on, this was strongly pungent--maybe the ambergris?--and I definitely noted the lavender swirling around right at the beginning. (Oddly, I always can pick out lavender because my brother had a Mickey & Friends scratch & sniff book when we were little with a lavender-scented sticker at one point in it, and I always remember lavender scent because it makes me think of that book. Strange, how scent memory works.) After a few minutes, I'm getting a floral. Is it lily? It's not the screaming single-note that I always get from jasmine, but it's pretty darned strong, nonetheless... After an hour, it's starting to sweeten up. The floral is going from just this side of bitter to much sweeter, though I still catch some of that sense of "lily" that I got earlier. A few hours later, it ended up musky, and floral like dried petals. I think it was the ambergris that grounded this one so thoroughly, because I never guessed it had so much floral in it until I came around to review it! While this was not objectionable on my skin, I wasn't particularly enthralled by it, either. (Not being a huge fan of floral scents.) I think this will go on to find a loving home with my gardenia-adoring mother.

What a delicious surprise! It took me a while to get around to trying Schwarzer Mond, and when I did, it was a treat! It goes on very cola-like. I'm not sure I would have made the connection without reading the reviews, but I get it. I was cautious on applying, having happened across a discussion of its power and throw, but I liked this one so well that I probably could have slathered and enjoyed it. As it dries down, it just gets nicer. It's dark and brooding, but then a certain sweetness emerged... I had a momentary scare a couple hours in as a certain sour-stale scent started to show up, and then everything appeared to be fading away... Then an hour after that, it became delightful. It was soft and resiny, with a slight twinge of an underlying evergreen somewhere in the background. There was even a slight return of the cola scent. This is a keeper. This might even make it to the favorites list. What an amazing scent! It's spicy and sweet and dark, but manages all that without being too heavy. A winner.

Gaaaaaah. In another instance of "my skin chemistry amps jasmine", this immediately turned into hard-line, full-on JASMINE to the max and stayed that way for hours. Eventually it became jasmine with a backdrop of dead flower water and stale coffee grounds. Sigh. I loved the idea of this scent but jasmine and I don't work together well.

I think my experience with Peitho is fairly similar to a lot of others... First impression: Wow, this is flowery... hmmm, maybe too flowery... wait... (checks description) Oh, of course. hel-LO, jasmine! Like all jasmine seems to so far, this immediately turns into jasmine single note on me, and remains a happy, amping jasmine that makes my coworkers squint and flare their nostrils in my presence. However, a few hours in (when I've barricaded myself in my cube where my jasminey presence can't offend people), I notice something... is that sandalwood trying to peek through the jasmine? Possibly hand-in-hand with something spicy? A few hours after that, I really did have a nice blend of tolerable jasmine with spices, the warmth and sweetness of the bourbon vanilla, and some of the grounding of the woods. However, since it took hours of jasmine single-note to get to that stage, I think I will probably not be wearing Peitho often.

I've meant to try this for quite a while, and finally discovered the frimp this afternoon. Sudha Segara... a very lovely scent and one that will make--and has already made--me reconsider my position that ginger gives me headaches. Going on the skin, this is a lightweight, gingery, tart, green and subtle scent. I almost can't smell it at all. As it dries down, it vanishes even more (I apply a little more so that I can actually have something to review). This is a clean, light, sweet but tart scent. The ginger doesn't take over, smoothed as it is by the milk. (Or erased by the milk, as milk seems to do with my chemistry... this same vanishing act happened with me and Dana O'Shee, too.) I think I may keep this one around, though, as a scent for sleeping... these lightweight ones are really soothing for nighttime.

Going on, this scent was spicy, like cloves or cinnamon, almost. But once it was on me, it smelled... soapy? Not badly so, but herbal, mild, slightly citrusy (that would be the mandarin). It really did remind me of a high-end cleanser or shampoo. After an hour, it's very light, still has a certain soapiness again, not badly so, and it's a very refreshing, clean scent. Later, I can definitely smell the sandalwood, and I think it's the Lily of the Valley that's giving me the "soapy" impression. I never really did smell the vanilla at all. This is a subtle, lightweight, sophisticated scent. I will like it for those days when something sharper is not working for me. Quite appealing, actually!

Jabberwocky came whiffling through the tulgey wood... and was all pine and eucalyptus when it did! Initially on, this was crisp and pungent--all pine and eucalyptus. After a half hour or so, I could start to smell some orange in the mix. Unfortunately, the mix of notes reminded me of nothing so much as house-cleaning supplies (I even use orange-scented dishsoap at home!). The orange is a close-to-the skin scent... further away, it's all pine, only pine, truly pine... pine to the nth degree... But at two hours in, something starts to go sour on me. Oh, woe is me! What is this? A definite sour note emerges, mixed in with the still-dominant pine. I suspect that it could be the orange, though I'm not sure. How sad! I'll try this again and see if the sourness was a one-time-deal or not. It was fun, though, to try something out that was such a new combination of notes. I wonder if it would layer well?

The Bow and Crown of Conquest... ahhh, reading through the reviews here, now it all makes sense. I had missed (forgotten about?) the leather note in here and wondered what it was I was smelling... Initially on, this scent is very sweet--carnations and vanilla--but immediately the cedar starts to take over and it spends an hour smelling of freshly sharpened pencils (personally, I rather like this, but it can be a touch overwhelming just at first). Oddly, from farther away, it's all vanilla, but up close to my wrist I smell the cedar. This cedar/vanilla combination is reminding me a bit of Tombstone... But then, as it dries all the way down (by a couple hours in), what I get is a smooth musky scent--actually I think this is the leather--with a wood backdrop. There is still sweetness, but it's no longer a vanilla sweetness; it's more of a musky/sweet warmth. The scent stays with me throughout the day... even 14 hours after putting it on, it was a resiny, leathery, musky scent with a faint underlying woodiness. A smoother, more polished version of what is rough-hewn and rustic in Tombstone, I think... I like it quite well, though I'm going to need to figure out what moods this will suit...

Ahhh... I really do love Katrina. This is a pure, clear, sweet rose and honey scent, with its rough edges rounded out by cream. It goes on strongly and sweetly rose, and from that point on honey works a slow, steady progress to gain the upper hand, but never quite succeeds. This floral is one of a few that doesn't go sharp or sour on my skin... it's clear and lovely and dewy... the cream and honey notes add to it. This is a simple, lovely, and wearable fragrance that lasts a very long time, and (to my surprise) hovers near the top of my favorites list.

The Gladdener of All Hearts is a lovely, innocent, delightful scent. Initially on, there is a breath of strong lavender, but it quickly dies down and plays nice with all the other notes, creating a mix of sweet, herbal, floral powderyness that smells like nothing so much as "clean baby smell" (a very good smell, even to someone like me who's a teensy bit wary of babies). After an hour or so, one of the florals in this hovered on the edge of getting too sharp and/or overpowering... I still had the soft, powdered smell at a distance, but when I sniffed close to my wrist, I had some over-sharp floweryness. Perhaps the rose otto? I seem to have an on-and-off relationship with rose notes... The scent faded out true to its inital sweet, floral, herbal beauty, and was, all in all, a wonderful scent experience. Not quite perfect (that sharp/sour floral twinge I get isn't thrilling), but very, very close.

Samhain (2008 version) goes on as a sweet red apple scent, with a slight breath of honey. After I put it on (as I was walking in to work), I kept smelling delicious whiffs of apple around me. This is more of an "apple orchard at night with a bonfire nearby" sort of smell than the mulled cider of Fearful Pleasure. Over the next couple hours, Samhain developed a darker, deeper, woodsier note. It was almost too much for me... but lovely, just dark and a little heavy at times. However, by 4-5 hours in, the scent lightened up again, to an appley-spice scent, light and delicious and fruity without being foody. Overall, a perfect scent aptly named.