ephemera

In the bottle this smells very strongly of honey and patchouli. On my skin this Honey Like Whoa! The patchouli and clove hover below the honey note and warm it up and add dimnsion. Afte a while the patchouli fades and the honey is dancing the night away with the clove and ylang-ylang. This is a warm, homey yet sexy scent. Like the perfect 50's housewife you expect to find making a pot roast when you get home and instead she's wearing a merrywidow and making a tequila sunrise. Keeper!

This was a frimp from the lab. "Green" scents generally don't work on my skin, and sadly this was no exception. This turned soapy almost instantly.

In this imp this is a sweet, calm smell. It smells like sugared milk and honey. I put this on and at once smell the honey. Unlike the honey in Hetairae, this is more like a sweet blossom honey - paler, sweeter, thinner. A good honey to dribble on something warm. The milk is right there, taking the sweetness of the honey and keeping it from getting sicky-sweet. I don't smell grains, really, but I know there's more to this blend than the milk and honey. I just can't quite pinpoint it. Oh... almond! (I had to read other reviews to have light dawn on marble head.) That's interesting, usually I don't like almond scents but this... After the about a half hour this scent is strangely unchanged on me. This is a good thing, but unexpected considering how my skin usually eat up perfumes. Overall, I'm really liking this scent. I think it would be a good scent to wear when I need to be calm and relaxed.

In the bottle this is warm but not soft. I smell lots of wood and vanilla, and I think a bit of the tobacco. On my skin while it's wet the wood is very prominent, and the tobacco is adding a depth to this. It smells similar to some un-smoked tobacco that I've caught whiffs but much sweeter. During drydown, this has throw like whoa. The wood is gradually getting less prominent and the vanilla is stepping it up a notch, but I'm smelling something just a touch unpleasant. Not like a note gone wrong exactly, but... almost like an after-smell of something overly aggressive. This doesn't last very long though, and it's worthwhile to wait it out. It dries down to a soft, slightly powdery vanilla with the added tobacco and wood warmth. I really like this one, and I'm so glad it's a GC!

Oof. I wasn't sure about this scent when I picked it out for an imp, but the sandalwood and the tobacco caught my eye. Unfortunately, all this smells like on me is like someone singed lavender and then let it get wet (which I think may be the nag champa coming out). A decidedly unpleasant scent on my skin.

This starts off very spicy, like opening up a can of jumbled spices and shoving your nose in it and inhaling. After the initial coughing fit subsides though, you do it again. That is kind of what this smells like wet on my skin. The clove is very evident in this and takes the lead. The cinnamon bark is right behind it, while the rest of the scents muddle around in the underneath of it all and create a spicy, charming mess. The nutmeg and the sandalwood effectively mellow the spices out after a while. This strikes me as more of a masculine scent (and don't think I'm not attacking the husband with this imp wand when he gets home) but even on my skin it's pretty good, and the longer I wait the better this gets. This one might be a shared-bottle in my household.

In the bottle this scent is a little… bland. It smells pretty but it doesn't smell like "much". However, the notes are mostly notes that tend to do very nice things on me, so I'm definitely giving this a try. Right away on my skin this gets a mild sort of spice to it - the chrysanthemum coming out. The vanilla is very much a base note - not very prominent, but it blends the oils into a more cohesive whole rather than the jumble of scents I suspect this would be. The sandalwood and amber are adding a slight creaminess to the scent and it's turning into a lovely, mellow sort of feminine blend. Floral without smelling like flowers, if that makes any sense. I think this may be bottle-worthy. Edited: *pout* After a little over an hour this went 100% baby powder on me. Woe!

Oh hell, now I feel guilty because for YEARS now I have used CCNow to place the order and chose the PayPal feature. I'm about to place an order now, so I guess I should try to condense down to 300 characters and do it through them directly? I just don't like leaving that up to PayPal...

I think Ars Draconis scents have different labels too? (Also, I think the skull and crossbones is Jolly Roger, not Calico Jack-unless it's both?) Dragon's Milk does, at least. (God, how much do we all love Miss Twilight for having this Flickr photo stream??)

Never was a scent description more apt! In the vial this smells like I could drink it. I don't. Instead I apply it to my skin and start huffing. I… can't make up my mind if I like this. It smells precisely like boozy fruit punch on my skin - there's very little morphing going on even after an hour plus. I just can't quite decide if I want to smell like boozy fruit punch!

In the bottle this smells like lemon sugar water to my nose. Very sweet. Almost like lemon slushies. On my skin it remains much the same, only it does lighten up after a little while and becomes less sugar sweet and more pale lemon with a heavy peach overlay. The tea isn't making an appearance at all. Oddly, this does not make me think of snow at all. Rather, this puts me in mind of a very hot summer afternoon. Must be the slushie association! I'm glad I got to try this, and I'll probably break my decant out in the summertime, but this wouldn't be a bottle scent for me. (I am fairly certain this is the resurrected version, but my decant doesn't specify.)

I really loved the idea of this one. The patchouli and the spices - mm! In the bottle this is pretty good, showed a lot of promise. Unfortunately, my skin just sort of sucked it right up. It's not unpleasant on me at all, but it's also nothing very special. Another one for the swaps.

The notes for Miss Lupescu made me really hopeful for this blend, and in the imp it smelled like I might be right. After about 20 minutes though, this turned into a faintly powdery musky scent without much definition.

This is my namesake, I wanted to love it. (Beth did not create this for me, I should elaborate there.) But the lilies and the rose and the violet… this was all florals and those do lousy on my skin, sadly.

This was a frimp in my lastest Lab order for 13. I was hesitant on it, but figured I'd open it up and try it out. Unfortunately, I wouldn't even put this on my skin. The wet leather and the black musk combined made a really terrible smell to my nose. Not at all for me.

In the bottle this is almost too spicy, with the notes warring with each other like small factions. (The ginger is winning, but the nutmeg is putting up a valiant rearguard action and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a turnaround.) On my skin this gets milder. The cocoa seems to settle in as a base note, with the rest of the spices floating on top. Sometimes the ginger is prominent, sometimes the nutmeg is, sometimes it's other spices that I can't define. The throw is actually pretty good which isn't normal on my skin. (Apparently spices and chocolate are the ideal throw scents for me, as I'm seeing this more and more lately.) This isn't milk chocolate or even dark chocolate underneath. This is like straight cocoa, unsweetened. All in all, this is a delicious blend and I'm really glad I got a bottle. I have a feeling it will fade quickly on my skin, so I probably should carry this with me for frequent reapplications. Also, I think a lot of the other posters may be onto something. I bet this will age very well.

I'm devastated. I bought a bottle of this unsniffed because it sounded gorgeous and so very me. It smelled all right in the bottle, but I figured on my skin it would warm up and get sexy and warm and... it didn't. I wish I knew what it was doing this, but I'm going to glare at the pine pitch. This smells like cheap commercial perfume on me and even after hours it's not getting better. It's actually actively offensive on my skin. I'm going to try aging it and seeing if that helps any, because this has *such* possibilities, but for now it's not working on my skin even a little bit.

No kidding! One drop from a reducer cap on each wrist is enough?! My skin really absorbs it too.. because I do not have a cloud of scent following me around-- even though I kinda wish I did. During my period especially the scent is gone in like 1 hr. I reapply a few times through the day. Average amount for me to use at one go during morning application is probably 1/2 to 3/4 of an imp. Am I a bad person?? *lol* Not a bad person at all. I'd say I'm about in the same space as you. Not only has no one ever complained about a scent being too strong, but I almost never have anyone even mention a scent I'm wearing unless I shove a wrist under their nose. I wish my skin didn't absorb the scent like it does.

In my mouth, I do not want white chocolate. Send me milk chocolate or even dark chocolate every time. White chocolate is death to my tongue. On my skin? Not the same. This smelled like sweetened cream on my skin. The strawberries were tart and fresh smelling. Together on my skin after a while this was very, very sweet and fruity. My husband thinks it may be a little too sweet, but I find myself raising my wrist to sniff at this frequently. I'm a little afraid that I smell like a brand-new Strawberry Shortcake doll, but I may be able to live with that risk.

In the bottle this smells like too-dark chocolate with a slightly burned after-whiff. Immediately after application it had a similar scent on me, but happily as this dried down it got progressively sweeter. The caramel floated lazily up, but was saved from overt sicky sweetness by the pepper. The chocolate was nom-nom-y and my husband liked it quite a bit. All in all, I think I may want to get a bottle of this.

My skin burns through scents like nobody's business, so I will put my wrist over the bottle's opening and upend it, then from that put some in my cleavage and the other wrist, etc. I try to bring the scent with me for reapplication throughout the day as well, since in about 2 hours you won't smell it on me. I try to not bring imps with me though because lately I've been finding that a lot of them are leaking. I know that I'm "tainting" the oil, but I'm not in this for the re-sell so much as for the enjoyment, so I'm okay with it. The ones I do resell I generally haven't enjoyed, so I barely used them, so there's not much to worry about. Edited to add: Ooh! The lab will send wands? *ponders*

Lyonesse? Really? The way it works on your makes it sound like a phenomenal blend. *scampers off to check into it*

That's a pretty label on the Honey Moon. Mine is just the regular old label.

My bottle arrived yesterday and I had to try it out. (I do have to say that looking at the artwork it looks less like a phallus head and more like... well, something else... hee!) When it's first on me it smelled odd. Not bad odd, but indescribable odd. Kind of vanilla-y and flowery with a bit more freshness than I anticipated. There was a brief point while it was setting on my skin that it got unpleasant. Sort of a sharp musk. That passed very quickly though. I'm crap at picking notes out, but this blend is definitely complex. It smells sexy without being too forceful about it - it's a mature scent, the kind of scent that my husband thinks is really nice but that I don't know that I'd wear it if I were going on a first date with someone. It's a scent to entice someone you've made love with before, I think. I am really glad I got a bottle, in other words.

I like this scent. I like the lightness, the creaminess the fact that it's barely-there... the problem is that it's so barely-there that 10 minutes after I apply it I'm sniffing at my wrists quizzically wondering if I dreamed putting it on. I burn through scents in an hour or two anyway, almost all the time, but this is a record for my skin. I'm so tempted to buy a bottle of this because it smells good on, but wonder if I'd be wasting my money. Alternatively, I could then slather it on... Will have to mull on this one. End result: lovely, creamy, musky, sexy scent with no throw and no staying power.