hespera4523

Leather Phoenix has arrived! I have been prowling around my mailbox like an angry cat waiting as soon as the CnS said it was on the truck for delivery, and practically snatched it out of my mailman's hands. Ran inside clutching box to my chest, muttering happily "Leatherphoenixleatherphoenixleatherphoenix..." like it was a Tourette's tic. Oh, sweet Zombie Jesus, is this nice. Enough to make me despair, since there are so few bottles. I could wear this all the time and not get tired of it. Once it settles down, of course. I did see the dark cloud at the bottom that separated out, but a few bottle acrobatics and it seemed to mesh back in. Onto the wrist! First off, patchouli and matcha go BOOM. "Fear us, for we are mighty!" Mmmkay... After a few minutes of flexing their muscles they step back, and leather begins a slow tango with rose while patchouli and matcha keep time. Resiny goodness begins to happen in the background. Oh thank you, fickle rose, for being a team player and not ruining this beautiful moment of togetherness for me. And of course, black leather. The kind that spanks. Purr. I will worship this wee bottle.

I love this. I loved the Traveler, with it's mud, wet stone, grass, and leather. This is the Traveler plus lemon candy and dragon's blood. My skin seems to love scents like this, they always get a lot of attention when I wear them. Most folk with untrained noses don't know what to compare it to, one of my coworkers who particularly loves it always says it smells like "really expensive soap, in a good way." I can handle that, because these types of scent always give me a charge, make me feel like am at the Renaissance Festival in fall and the scent of grass, mud, and leather just adds to the sense of place. A big time keeper.

WILF arrived two days ago, and after a day of sitting in a frigid Wisconsin mailbox she was not herself. (I say 'she' because I got the lovely lady werewolf on the label, leading to my roommate and I improvising a chorus of "Flyyyyyy lesbian wereeeeeeewolllllllllllf!" before debating whether she was in fact a girl wolf, since my roomie said she just looked like a really bishounen werewolf. I said I didn't think it mattered. ) Anyway now that she's warmed up, I get the Snake Oil comparisons, but honestly this reminds me much more of Smut than it does anything Snake Oil. But a Smut that does not turn into lovely musk mixed with grape Kool Aid on my skin which leads me to give it to my kid sister on whom it smells Fabulous and its just not fair ...whine....but this is delish. Deeply warm and musky, and definitely backup worthy.

Dee (one of my favorite GC's) has a nifty Monas Hieroglyphica on the label

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh...purr. Purr purr purr. This is the scent of a leatherworking booth at the Renaissance Festival, with a gorgeous man in leather pants stroking a freshly made flogger and smirking knowingly as the girls blush. I want to dribble this on the mantype and do unspeakable things to him.

First impression is of Frankincense. I loves me some Frankie in a big, big way, so am very pleased. Then from out of nowhere in comes Leather, heavy sexy dirty leather that overpowers everything, like an olfactory whack on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Before I can say, "Hey! What for you whack me onna nose with a rolled up newspaper?" the Leather settles down and just ... purrs. The kind of big-animal purr that makes the backs of your knees tingle, like when you show a certain kind of girl a leather flogger...ahem, getting off subject. Behind the Leather, Ginger Cream and Orris sidle in, peeping coyly behind their perfume veils like harem dancers to whirl with the Frankincense while Leather watches, lord of his domain. This scent, it dances. I loves it something fierce.

Oh sweet Zombie Jezus...the District art is gorgeous...

Woot, this is exactly what I was looking for in a thread tonight! Going out tomorrow with friends. One of my girls is going as a Fang-Banger from True Blood, complete with Fangtasia t-shirt, so I am bringing her my imps of Bite Me and Suck it, to see if they appeal to her. For my part, my costume is Rosie The Riveter, and I'm a little lost. I may just wear Snake Oil, since my mom always says that it smells like Emeraude which was around during ww2, but was really looking for something a bit more...evocative. Anyone got an opinion? I may just wear the current fave, Plastic Pink Flamingo, and make myself happy. Wark!

Death Adder came very close to ending up dumped into the 'Sell It/Swap It' box, to sit with the other redheaded stepchildren of my bpal collection (the fact that there is not much in this box has as much to do with the quality of Madame Beth's artwork as the fact that I am a bit of a hoarder). The fact is, I have issues with Vetiver. My skin chemistry amps it like whoa, and the vetiver becomes a complete attention whore to the point that you literally cannot smell anything but vaguely weedy, dry, pungent grassy weirdness. So that was what I smelled at first with Death Adder: vaguely weedy, dry, pungent grassy weirdness. This was not what I wanted. I wanted Death Adder bacause I wanted coconut-vanilla Snake Oil, thankyouverymuch. My thought was, I loves me some SO, I really loves me the Lab's black coconut note, and vanilla is always good on me. I'm not sure what an opopopowhatix is, but it can hang so long as it doesn't harsh my coconut-vanilla mellow. Vetiver, you can add a little bite, but otherwise try for once to sit quietly in the corner. When it was the Vetiver Show again, Death Adder went into the box. And stayed there about six months. Till I pulled it out and tried it again. And what a difference a few months makes! It is now exactly what I wanted, coconut vanilla goodness with the base of SO and just a wee bit of interest from the vetiver. Little 'v' vetiver, instead oF super big 'I am Lady Vee, beeyotch! Y'all better recognize!" So in six months, it went from total ew to total win. Don't give up!

On first sniff, Hellboy the perfume is overwhelming nice aftershave. Like well-dressed, natty, elderly Italian man aftershave. I am instantly eight years old again, sitting in the backseat of my grandfather's big, boxy 1980's sparkly-brown Crown Vic with my kid sister, with Grandpa driving the car-behemoth in a striped sports shirt and crisply ironed trousers. Him and Grandma are taking us to go get ice cream after Mass. He's listening to a tape of a crazy guy who whistles a lot and tells stories in between every song. His black cockapoo is on my lap, snoring... Wha? Oh, sorry. There was road construction on Memory Lane. Had to make a detour. Yeap, so once the Grandpa aftershave (and I mean that in a good way) begins to dissipate, I do smell clean cat fur underneath. Maybe a little cat spit. Like when you pick up a cat that has just been doing some intensive self-grooming and bury your face in their belly and motorboat just to annoy them. It smells like an annoyed, clean cat. I don't smell a lot in the way of candy wrappers, but there is something just a little smokey underneath that would indicate brimstone. So we have an annoyed, clean Grandpa cat with a bit of brimstone in his back pocket. Oddly, I think that I want very much to try this on Dr Boyfriend. I think that I will like this smell on him a lot more than on me. And I like it a lot on me. Sadly, it is way to butch for me to wear as a regular perfume. But on Dr Boyfriend it should be yummo.

First off, a word about me and my opinion of Rose as a note. That word is: "Ewwwwwwwwww." Anyway, when this came up all shiny and new, I had a long debate with myself about it. Eventually my love of Anne Boleyn, Thomas Wyatt, poetry, and all things Renaissance overcame my fear of the evil Doom Flower, so when it came time to get another bottle of Snake Oil for the cellar I snuck an imp of this into my order. Boy howdy, am I glad I did. Rose is an afterthought. A ghost. No real "knock you over the head with a large hammer made of silly putty and throw flowers in your face." Brown musk and amber, yummy yum yum yum. This is deliciously soft and sensual, like a beautiful velvet gown. Okay, it is powdery. I happen to like the powdery. I think that the powdery scents have a bad rap, and that there is an Anti-Powder Secret Society that is disseminating bad information about powdery scents...maybe working with the Illuminati. This is dry and soft and nothing like freshly washed baby butt or old lady powder. The moss and bark keep it from being so overly sweet. This got raves from the guys I wore it around and will be added to the big bottle box promptly.

(I decided that I had to find the song "Bungle in the Jungle" to listen to whilst writing this review. It seemed appropriate.) The tiger on the label of my decant is lookin' at me funny. Seems to follow me whichever way I move. So, into the perfume. I think we all have met Vetiver. And yes, we all know that in any quantity above a dribble, Vetiver is a complete attention whore and will not shut up. This is the kind of vetiver that knocks you down and steals your wallet, then buys your boyfriend a drink with your rent cash, before taking him back and screwing him on your bed, then giving him the clap which he then passes on to you before selling your stereo to buy Vetiver a designer purse. Yeah. Its like that. But like any good attention whore, Vetiver has about a fifteen minute attention span, during which time Licorice and Cinnamon finally decide its safe and begin to creep out, dragging a reluctant Satsuma with them. With a little prodding from her spicy sisters, Satsuma sits happily in the near-background, lending a bit of sweet-and-sour tang to what could otherwise be an entirely herbal, bitter mix. This one's going to have to grow on me. I like where it goes, but its like the mile-long line for Space Mountain at Disney in high summer: you have to decide if it is worth the wait or if you'd rather just find somewhere nice and cool to go have a smoothie. Everyone has to make that decision for themselves. Luckily I have a whole decant to play with before I make up my mind.

Mmmm, Tiki. Tiki, Tiki. Tik-tik-tiki. I used to have a wooden Tiki mug that came with me to SCA events. The story was that I had been looking for a mug and I saw one at the local thrift shop that was made of wood and therefore SCA appropriate, and I grabbed it without bothering to look at the front. I found out at home that my $2 wood mug had an evil Tiki face on it. He was christened, appropriately enough, Mr Tiki. And he became my drinking buddy till I had my birthday at our kingdom's big summer camping event, got completely hammered, and wound up losing him in the middle of a field. Rest in peace, Mr Tiki. You died the way you lived. What? Oh, sorry. Lost my place. This Tiki is Velvet, and not wood. In the bottle it smells like pineapple and coconut, or in other words does a damn fine impersonation of a pina colada. If you like pina coladas...getting caught in the raaaaaiiiiin... It smells pretty sugary for awhile, almost dying down in fact, and I'm beginning to think that this is another one of those perfumes that smells Teh Nom but my skin absorbs into nothingness. Not a flower to be found... So I've moved on to the other velvets (more on those later) and I keep getting a sniff of something miraculous. I know this smell. This smell was my smell in college. This smell is vanilla and gardenia mixing with just a bit of fruit and a little sumthin-sumthin extra to make it sing. Holy Jesus Harold Christ, its Gucci Rush on the drydown. Hallelujah. Yep. What I'm smelling is definitely that rich, heady combo of vanilla and gardenia. That was the scent that launched a thousand hookups. Well, okay not a thousand, but you get the idea. Boys liked it. I felt like sex on a stick wearing it. This is the first scent of this update that I will be multiple-bottling of, then piling the stash onto my bed and laying on it like a dragon on a pile of gold. Mine. Grrrr....

First off, a word about clowns. Clowns is scary. And this one is no exception. The picture....eeeeccch. *shudder* Beautifully done, as is all the artwork, but still, with the fluffy red hair and the slightly evil leer, he reminds me of Pennywise's drunken cousin. And that book gave me nightmares through most of junior high anyway. That said, on to the perfume. First sniff: Hello, booze. Mmmm...booze. Boozy booze booze. This is one hell of an alkie clown, no doubt about it. Nothing but whiskey right now, maybe I should take another sniff, just to be sure... Second sniff: Mmmm, now it smells a little like cotton candy and marshmallows. And booze. Lovely booshe...hic...ok, just one more... Third sniff: Thish ish gettin' better and better. Can't even schmell da boosh anymores...now is all fluffy cotton candy and red licorish whippies, with shom marshme...mars...mello...those white thingsh. And the clown is akshually kinda cute...oh, another schnif, mishter clown? Why, thankee... Fourth sniff: Whooo...I lurvesh me dis clown! *FLOMP* (Srsly. Clown is good. Love the clown. Boozy scents are my kinda thing, though.)

In theory, this should have worked on me. This should have been epic. I love mint, musk, caramel, even the sage which seems to have the unnerving tendency of turning into the scent of a freshly packed...ahem...water pipe every time it hits my skin. This had potential. And come on, let's face it...smelling like a rampaging sex demon? Should be ultimate win. Instead I get...vegetable. Momentarily, I am afraid that my nose may be on the fritz...but I smell it again, and it is still vegetable. I don't know which vegetable...but I am relatively certain it is an evil vegetable and means to do me harm. I'm a little afraid of the imp. I put it down and back away slowly. I look at the imp now and then like its an unexploded bomb. Somehow, the not knowing is worse. What vegetable is it? Whatever it is, half a bar of my precious Icon soap from Lush did not take the scent off. So I bury it in some Mme Moriarty and try to pretend it isn't there. So I retreat to the forums and do a bit of research. And the answer is so simple! I return to the living room and confront the imp that is sitting on the coffee table. I invoke its true name: "CELERY, begone! You have no power over me!" I don't know what I expected. The imp obviously does not vanish into a puff of smoke, turn inside out, or become a vortex of darkness that tries to suck my cat into the floor. But I feel better anyway, and make a mental note to hand this imp off to my friend Scott, who gets all the manly type scents that just don't work on me. But still...my victory is hollow. I wanted this to work, I loved the notes. Damn skin chemistry. Growl, growl, snarl, growl.