lady_pandora

Check out the Diabolus section in particular. First one that comes to my mind is Djinn. Soooo smoky. Al-Shairan is nice. And I really like Lilith too (that one's in Excolo).

This starts out with what smells like lemon to me. Apparently, my nose can't tell lemon and citron apart. I guess they both have a lot of limonene. I never used to be a lemon fan, but the last few months, I've been liking it much better. (Thank you, Seven Herbs Charm!). And it was warm out when I tested Whitechapel, so yay, cool lemony blend! So far so good. And then the musk just went so, so wrong on me. I'm used to amping white musk or having it go powdery, but not this. It cycles between smelling like regular musk, smelling like Play-Doh, and smelling like sweat. Not B.O., exactly, but definitely sweat, like when someone has just been for a run. Maybe chasing victims through the streets of London! A tip of the hat to Beth for, indeed, creating a perfume that has a "corrupted core." I can't wear it, but I get it.

Yep, Scarecrow--if your chemistry is like mine, you'll have to get through an initial weird nailpolish phase, but on the other side there is dry hay. I'll also mention the Lion, oddly--it's one of the few ambery ones that strikes me as dry.

Spicy rose for the first few minutes, and then it settles down into a tea-dominant scent and stays there. Tea in the forefront, a little spicy, and then all the other notes are well-blended and just seem to form an indistinct aura of "sweet" that hangs around underneath the tea. I wish I got more rose and honey out of this, but I'm glad the cream doesn't show up to wreck things. I could swear I feel cooler, in the temperature sense, the moment I get a whiff of this. It's very fresh and clean on me. The real test, I think, will be how much I reach for it when the weather gets really hot.

Has anybody else gotten Voodoo lately, and is it different from how it's supposed to be? I got this tobacco/boozy thing that doesn't seem to relate to anybody else's review of it. I was thinking it was just death notes morphing weirdly on me, but this morning I'm wondering if I got something else instead, like maybe Perversion? I've never smelled either before (Perversion never, Voodoo not till last night), so I can't actually make a comparison.

A midnight scent, evoking images of flickering golden firelight reflecting off the sheen of glistening skin and the jerking shadows of bodies suffused with spiritual ecstasy. A deep, powerful, resonant blend of myrrh, patchouli, vetiver, lime, vanilla, pine, almond and clove. I guess I used up my soda-scent allotment the other night with Antikythera Mechanism, because I don't get that at all from Voodoo. This was fruit and patchouli in the imp, but changed as soon as I put it on. I wasn't looking at the notes at first, and I was sure I smelled tobacco smoke and rum. Ah, we're making an offering to Papa Legba, I thought. But apparently neither of these things is supposed to be in the blend. I smelled them nonetheless. A slight morph then, and then...an episode of Scent Memory Theatre! So my grandfather, RIP, used to own a barbershop. This was an old skool barbershop where there was pretty much just one haircut on the "menu" and where Grandpa would chain-smoke, and probably sneak booze he wasn't supposed to be drinking, and of course you had the scent of men's grooming products wafting around. That's what this smells like on me: stale smoke and booze and aftershave. I washed it off after about an hour, because it didn't really change, it just faded from Strong Grandpa's Barbershop to Somewhat Fainter Grandpa's Barbershop. I guess my theory is true: I can wear vetiver, and I can wear patchouli, but not in the same oil. As a perfume, Voodoo is a fail on me, but I feel compelled to keep it around. Who knows, maybe I'll need to make an offering to Papa Legba sometime, or use it in some ancestor work. I do already have an oil that smells like my grandmother (Psyche); I don't wear that one either, but I like having it around.

Charisma has a quieter effect on me than it does on some others, I think, but nonetheless I'm going to find this oil very useful. I feel like it increases my poise, helps me remember my manners*, makes me more graceful so I don't send my food ricocheting across the table while trying to cut it, and helps me keep from saying inane things that I'll lie awake at night criticizing myself for. Actually, I'm not sure whether it keeps me from saying anything inane or if it keeps me from obsessing about it, but either way, that's a darn good thing. It has fit in well with both party energy and work-luncheon energy, so I think it responds to my intent and the general mood around me. The SCENT, wow. I am having to lecture myself that "well, I can always use more charisma" is not an excuse to wear Charisma every single day. I wouldn't want to, like, get desensitized to it anyway, if that's a thing. But this smells great. It starts with a scent like an older shampoo, maybe like classic VO5, which I always liked, and then a mixture of amber and honey comes out and is just warm and golden and glorious. Eventually it dries down to sweet and powdery, and I think I'm catching an occasional whiff of heliotrope, which is a note that never fails to make me happy. Amber and honey were some of my original favorite notes, and I've wandered afield from them a bit, and this is making me want to wear things in that family more often again. *My poise and manners icon is Phedre no Delaunay. When in doubt, I ask myself, what would a fictional courtesan/spy do? Edit, 4/26/15. I've now worn it two more times: once for a work event, once for a night out at the pub. Once again, at work, it gave me some extra poise. It did feel like there was kind of a snap-back late that night; I was uncommonly tired and at a loss for words, like I'd used up all my energy during the event. This could be either my magical or mundane energy, hard to say. I then wore it for a night at the pub, and got complimented all night on my dress, once again didn't say anything I kicked myself about later, got hit on by a stranger, got lots of attention from the boyfriend, and overall just had a great time. I didn't even do the full application that time as I was in a hurry--I just dabbed some on my heart chakra and also put on some Alma Venus (the two blend well) and went. This stuff is great; I need a big bottle, because I don't want to ever have to go to a party without it. And even just scentwise it would crack my Top Ten.

For personal-quirk reasons, I don't really like to smell like tobacco, and so I hadn't tried Antikythera Mechanism until now, when I received it as a frimp. I'm a big believer in trying ALL THE FRIMPS, so here we go! Antikythera starts out incredibly sweet, and makes me think of nothing so much as a flat soda. It's a vintage soda, to be sure--it's like something a Victorian pharmacist would hawk for its dubious medicinal properties, but is probably just full of booze, opium, and coke. It smells a little like root beer and a little like Dr. Pepper and a lot like anise. It definitely makes me think Age of Steam, but not necessarily in the way the Lab planned! At the one-hour mark, I can start to pick out wood and tobacco. It's kind of like a scent version of an optical illusion at this stage. If I go looking for the anise soda, I smell that, and if I go looking for wood and tobacco, I get that. At two hours, the soda quality has mostly gone away and it's wood/tobacco/vanilla from there on out. I am not a tobacco fan in general, as I mentioned, but this one could sell me on the note. It's really nice. It's like a Victorian gentleman's study. It stays that way from there on out. Then, the morning after, it's still hanging around a little, in a light, almost soapy form. It smells like woody hippie soap, very nice. This is really nice, and I think I'll keep the imp; I'll use it for costuming, I'm sure, even if I don't reach for it often otherwise, and I'm also curious how it will age.

I definitely get the alcohol/nail polish note, especially at first. Scarecrow starts out mostly nail polish and a little bit of grass, morphing at about 10 minutes into hay with a little bit of nail polish. By 40 minutes, on me, it's almost all hay, but there's still a bit of nail polish, and my thought is that this scent smells flammable. At the one-hour mark, the nail polish is gone but the hay has taken on a definite scorched quality, and from there on out, it doesn't morph much. I don't think I'll really want to smell like this very often, but it's quite a scent experience and might be just the thing for certain seasonal moods. Hanging on to the imp for now.

Fairy Thorn starts out a lovely, ethereal floral, though I can't name all the floral notes I'm smelling. I'd say a white floral (likely tuberose), plus something green and damp and misty (maybe moss?) that's kind of tea-ish and reminds me of Empyreal Mist, plus a white sandalwood note that's kind of piercing to my nose (there may also be some light musk lurking in this impression)--I guess that's the thorn! The white floral fades and leaves me with a combo of the green and the sandalwood. This is really nice, though I'm not getting some of the notes I was hoping for. Sadly, after about two hours, it's about 80% sandalwood, and it's just too much of that. So I'm hoping it'll mellow with age, or else I'll wear it for occasions where I only need the scent to work for a short period of time (like a ritual). Plum and vanilla, where art thou? ETA: After a few months' aging, this mellows down to what I think will be a keeper. The skin scent is still a little sharp, but not as much as it was, and the throw is just gorgeous and is the ethereal floral/green combo I described earlier.

In the bottle, this smells like dark chocolate with medicinal lavender; once it hits my skin, it starts out with something like lemon cookies! Then it morphs, keeping an essential cookie-ness while also smelling kind of medicinal and also kind of vegetabley, like pickles or green peppers or something, maybe. This stage is actually kind of gross on me, and I wouldn't pick it as a perfume, but when combined with the concept, there's something evocative about it. It's like you went to the witch's cottage for her magic dream cookies, and she put all the herbs and magic plants in the mix but tried to cover the pungency with the cookie's sweetness, and it didn't completely work but you eat it anyway because you want those magic dreams. Eventually it morphs again into kind of a murky mixture of the heavier ingredients, though I can't pick out individual notes at that stage, and then it morphs yet again and the lemon is once again dominant. It reminds me a lot of the lemon note from Seven Herbs Charm, but with an earthiness underneath that's probably patchouli, rather than the doll-heads vanilla I got from Seven Herbs. So anyway, this one's really weird! The vegetable phase will probably keep me from ever wearing it just to smell nice, but I can live with all the other phases, and it's also evocative of the concept. I'll update if I have dream experiences with it. I did have vivid dreams last night, but it's too early to ascribe them to Thirteen--it was largely faded by then, and I was all slathered up with Midnight Mass when I went to bed.

Mmm, lovely headshop nag champa with a light haze of orange flower to lighten it up. This is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, and it's a nice calming scent that I think could be worn for meditation. If I end up going through my decant of Visions of Autumn IV, this would be a good GC substitute.

I've been irrationally scared of the dirt scents. But when a frimp of Zombi arrived, and when another forumite mentioned it as refreshing and springy, I decided to give it a shot. It starts out a sour rose for the first minute or two. I say sour rose, but I don't mean that in a bad way; I'm just trying (badly) to express that it's less sweet than, say, Roses, Pearls, and Diamonds, which I'd been wearing earlier in the day. The dirt note comes in quickly to complement it. The dirt is kind of an undertone; if you weren't looking for it, you might just think it was a rose scent. As the hours go by, the rose mellows out to a softer rose, and the dirt stays. How do they get perfume to smell like dirt? It's a nice dirt, too; the overall effect is like being in a rose garden with the soil moist and fertile, or based on the name, I suppose it could be funeral flowers at a fresh grave. It made me feel grounded and ready for spring.

This starts out a sweet, minty rose, and gradually a creamy coconut note rises up to join it. The white musk behaves, thankfully--sometimes I amp it too much--and I only get slight wafts of it, and only from my neck and not my wrists. Several hours in, the coconut smells a little beeswaxy to me, which is not a problem at all. The rose eventually fades out, leaving behind just the waxy coconut to linger on my skin. This doesn't have much throw on me, but is a sweet, springy scent that makes me feel happy. It might be an eventual bottle if I end up reaching for it often.

I've now tested Strawberry Sufganiyot twice, with the same results. At first, it's wet juicy strawberry syrup or jam. This intensely "wet" aspect fades quickly on me, which is a bit of a bummer because that's the part that really reminds me of the jelly in a donut. It morphs into the bake-y scent of the donut and a more dried strawberry. The thing it reminds me most of is the strawberries and cream oatmeal I loved as a kid. So it's really nostalgic! I just wish my skin weren't flattening/drying out that strawberry note. There are occasional hints of the wetter strawberry, of the burnt scent I sometimes get from gourmand blends, and maybe the tiniest, subtlest bit of cinnamon? I feel like it might be in there, providing some extra "flavor" to the donut. This is nice, and again it's really nostalgic, but I don't think it reaches its full potential on my particular skin. Quite possibly a keeper anyway though.

When I first tried Blessing of Isis, I thought I smelled orange in the first few seconds, though I've never smelled it in that oil since. Now I'm inclined to think that was mostly power of suggestion from reading other reviews, because Radiance of Ra is what Blessing of Isis would smell like if it did have orange. Right out of the vial you get a bright, exuberant burst of orange, and then gradually it evolves and reveals a very similar base as that in BoI: warm, spicy, seems to be patchouli/sandalwood/maybe frankincense/maybe musk and I don't know what else. It's both happy and earthy. I can't comment much on the results yet, as I've mostly used it for, well, situations so big that an oil really couldn't make them go away, so the effect I was looking for was mostly of the "just a little lift to help me/them through this" variety. So it's hard to quantify its effect. Will add more as I continue to use it.

Maybe Laughter of Loki from the Ragnarok LEs? "Serpentine green musk with fiery red ginger, sweet basil, alder leaf, white patchouli, cistus, and mistletoe." ETA: Can't find a good GC so far, but maybe Dawn: Cernunnos (Terebinth pine, basil, green sandalwood, fig leaf, armoise, lemon balm, cypress, myrrh, black cedar, and juniper) or Cathode (Ambergris, Spanish Moss, oakmoss and three electric mints)? Death on a Pale Horse (empty white musk and mint seeped with solemn lavender, doleful patchouli and vetiver, scythe-sharp yuzu and lime, with geranium bourbon, white sandalwood and calla lily) comes to mind. I'm probably not a good recommender, as this was actually awful on me, but I think it might be in line with what he likes. He also might try an imp of Orc (Field grey courgette musk, roughly cured leather, and vetiver). It doesn't have the lighter notes he wants, but I mention it specifically because a few people got cucumber from the courgette/zucchini in this. I, um, didn't like this one either! I think your co-worker is my antimatter.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thought Midnight Mass! For me, Mage is Midnight Mass, but burnt. I get that beautiful rich church incense blend, but something is adding sort of a burnt wood or woodsmoke note to the mix. But other than that smoky edge to it, it's so much like Midnight Mass for most of its weartime. One other difference is that I'm noticing the fruity dragon's blood lingering on my arm the next day rather than the kind of musky trace that MM leaves behind. It's close enough that I don't think I'd ever wear it unless I was out of Midnight Mass itself--I like MM better. But I think it's probably worth keeping around in case I do run out of MM before Yules come back.

Water of Notre Dame starts out with a watery floral I don't recognize, along with possibly some lily, and morphs into a rose. It's kind of soapy, and I think it should be! I feel really cleansed wearing this. I don't think it'll be an everyday scent for me, but it's pleasant and I'll definitely keep it for its magical properties. And I definitely appreciate an aquatic that's not an ozone. ETA: In subsequent wears, I've noticed an effervescent citrus note in the first few minutes. ETA 2: Apparently, something in this irritates both my skin and my BF's allergies. Ritual use only, I guess.

For the first ten minutes, Alice's Evidence doesn't quite hang together. There's a dusty note coming from somewhere, and the scent has sort of an "aftertaste" that's verging on being cloying. But! After ten minutes, it calms down, starts playing nice, and doesn't morph much from there. It's boozy spicy plum to my nose. Like a plum cider. It's really pretty, though a little potpourri-y, and I think its destiny might be in my oil burner. It reminds me a bit of Autumn Cider in vibe, if not in actual notes, and that turned out to be a really nice room scent. Definitely one for fall.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to get around to trying Hollywood Babylon. It has scads of notes I like, so why not? Who knows. Well, finally I purchased an imp of it and gave it a shot. This starts out with a bright red cough syrup scent, which mellows quickly into a more normal strawberry/cherry combo. Lurking in the background was an incensey blend that, I swear to God, the first thing I thought was "That smells like BPAL!" Well, duh, right? But it just kind of smelled like archetypal BPAL, the way it was sort of incensey and sort of sweet and sort of earthy all at the same time. And then I realized it's because it does smell kind of like Snake Oil. During these early stages, it also reminds me some of White Witch, which makes sense as they both have amber, vanilla, red musk, and a red fruit. The fruit fades quickly, leaving mostly a Snake Oil clone without a lot of throw or oomph. It may get stronger as it ages--in fact, it probably will. I never get heliotrope from it, sadly; that's a note I really like and was hoping for here. So far, I don't dislike Hollywood Babylon at all, but it's a lot like both SO and White Witch without quite being as good as either.

The sweet sweet peach and a bit of papaya make Mare Nectaris remind me of fruity scents from my teen years, but the musk is absolutely amazing here and keeps it from going too youthful for my taste. It's gorgeous, golden just like the description, and I'd swear it was a white sandalwood if I hadn't read the note list. I think I want to wear this when summer comes.

Looking through the Lupers, Alma Venus was the one that caught my eye the most from a notes perspective, and so I bought a blind bottle. I.Was.Not.Wrong. I love this. Alma Venus starts out with a quick burst of sweet blood orange and amber. This is the same duo that kicks off Haunted Palace, and you all know I love Haunted Palace and talk about it way too much, so this is a good start. It doesn't stay that way for long, but that's OK, I didn't need a clone, and I like the other stages too. The next stage stars the orange flower. This teams up with the amber (the fruity-orange is pretty much gone) to create an impression that's a little baby-powdery, but with a little extra kick of indole that keeps it from being too innocent. Sexy baby powder? Maybe. It eventually settles, on me, into a beeswax-dominant scent. On my wrists it's a close sibling of Lights of Men's Lives. On my neck there's more orange blossom left, giving me lovely wafts of that throughout the day along with the beeswax. I can't pick out all the notes, maybe because some of them have a similar note in the blend that they might be "singing in unison" with. Like, neroli might be hiding behind the blood orange at the beginning, and honey might be helping boost the beeswax in the end, without really coming to the fore by themselves. Or maybe I just amp beeswax a ton, though I don't mind! Like VioletChaos, I get no cedar at all. And now with the analytical thing over with--I'm getting an amazing emotional reaction from this oil. It's sexy, but feels like an effortless sexy, more silk nightgown and less corset-and-fishnets. A comfortable sexy. And at the same time it makes me feel so comforted and loved and cherished. It's exactly what I might expect of Venus's mother aspect.

Wet, this is a mix of boozy bread and herbs. The beer note reminds me a lot of Mari Lwyd throughout. As it dries, it keeps being bready herby beer, and a fruit note starts to emerge. At about the 2-hour mark, it smells a little burnt or toasted for a while, and then turns to a soft bready cloud. This is really close to the progression of Mari Lwyd on me, so I'm concluding that I amp beer and turn it really bready. If you like Mari Lwyd, try Beer from the Marsh Woman's Brewery, and vice versa. The supporting notes are really different, but the beer makes them cousins.

I agree with others that this is a grounded kind of determination, not a wired kind. Very Capricorn. This is the determination to plod ahead with something you're not excited about. It won't make you excited about it, but you'll get it done. I got a giant pile of prep work done for a department meeting while wearing this--more than we had time to cover in the meeting. I did get occasionally distracted by the usual internet culprits, but it was a lot easier to tear my attention back away from them and refocus. The scent is mainly vetiver to me, but it's agreeable enough that I think there's a "silent partner" mellowing it out a bit. It's not as softened as the vetiver in Sloth, but then you wouldn't want your determination to be as soft as your sloth. I suspect there's a resin in here, but one that doesn't have a scent as strong as myrrh, maybe an amber. I applied only a tiny bit--an imp-wand drop on one palm and then rubbed them together. I'd be curious to see if a larger amount might make me even more efficient, but the scent might get overpowering if I put on too much more of it.