sophia_helix

Yich. Lemon tea. Smells like Severin and Embalming Fluid. I don't like the citrus in this at all. This also smells exactly like this cheap little girl's "Belle" perfume I got at Disneyland years ago. Swap for me.

Blast. In the bottle, yummy caramelized sugar with a hint of booze and fruits, as promised. On the skin, it rapidly sweetens up....into....a dupe of Samhain? OK, Samhain is my favorite scent, but I'm starting to seriously wonder how it's SUPPOSED to smell, if this resembles it. There's lot of sweetness, and some apple, and damn. I guess Samhain on me must just be sugar and apples, no leaves or patchouli or anything. Now I feel like a dork. Back to Sugar Skull, it's got a bit of burnt-sugar scent that distinguishes it from Samhain, but only if I'm looking for it. This is so weird. I guess I'll swap it, since I don't really need two versions of the same scent (and I've stockpiled Samhain), but I am still feeling very confused.

This year's version seems to have more sugar and molasses and less ginger and spices than last year's. That's fine -- I've got an imp of Shub and a bottle of Three Witches if I want spicy. This is just delicious and sweet, like my arm is a cookie, and very long-lasting. Still does that amazing "dough in the bottle, baked cookie on your arm" thing, and I appear to be one of the few people who really wants to wear this, instead of burning it! I like smelling yummy, what can I say.

In the Bottle: Wow. Straight-up mint, a little alcoholic. Reminds me almost of mouthwash. :/ Wet: Oh, man, a fantastic, sinus-clearing peppermint! I'm in the middle of an allergy attack and this is still getting through. Yum yum. I'm a huge mint fan. Drydown: Twenty minutes in, the mint has really faded, and this is starting to have a warning edge of manly cologne. Oh dear... And half an hour later, almost zero mint. There was a brief burst of bitter plastic, and now this is almost a dead ringer for Black Opal, like someone else said. Very vanilla musky. Unfortunately, I dislike both Black Opal and BPAL's vanilla (I know, I'm a freak), and this reminds me of sniffing a little girl's doll. Creepy. Wahh. Guess I'll have to try Nuclear Winter in my quest for the perfect mint scent, or get a 10ml of Tarot: The Star to replace my imp. This actually does remind me of The Star in that it's both creamy and minty, but while The Star made me want to eat my arm off, this...does not.

Yikes. My decant of uncertain age must be a rose-amber batch. There's only the faintest whiff of cinnamon and nutmeg, and I wish they would come out more, but this is the type of amber that on me turns into that yucky-diaper smell. (I really wish I knew how to pinpoint when that would happen -- Florence is fine, Brisingamen is evil. What gives?) It's also giving me a bit of a headache. It gets spicier and more pleasant as it dries, but that bad amber note is always lurking, so, away with this imp. ADDED June 17: This is the second imp of Baghdad I've had. I swapped the first to someone who was looking for "rosy" Baghdad, and now that I've had the other kind, there's a marked difference. This one is spicy and delicious, with barely even a hint of rose. I'm getting all the nutmeg, amber and saffron my heart could wish for instead. The throw isn't great, but I will certainly try to hunt down more of the spicy variety. I wonder if the difference is in the blending or the aging?

Honeyed lilies, dry lotus root and fae flowers. In the bottle: Quite sweet. A whiff of honey. Wet: Still sweet, although it's sort of...musty now. Probably the dry lotus root. Drydown: This stayed far too musty and fussy as it dried down, very old-lady perfume. I wanted it to open up and be yummy sunshiney lilies and honey, but it kept smelling like dried flowers kept in a dusty room. Guess I'll stick to Tiger Lily for my honey lilies fix -- I should've known better than to cheat on my old favorite.

In the bottle: Bubblegum sweet, with a hint of mint. Reminds me of Tarot: The Fool Wet: Oof. Sweetness amping up. Drydown: I get straight pear from this, a very artificial note. It's cloyingly sweet, and not for me.

In the bottle: Sweet and a little astringent. Like...coconut and lavender, maybe tea? Wet: Oh, heady and lovely. There's definitely coconut and a little vanilla, and that bright, herbal note. I hope this lasts, because I detect some citrus and that's often a deal-breaker for me. Drydown: Well, on drydown I realize that somehow I've mistaken mint for lavender, because up it comes. It's getting sweeter, too, and the citrus is starting to fade from well-blended to non-existent. Eventually, this turns into a much, much better version of Spooky, less burnt and a more toned-down mint. It's a sweet mint, almost chocolate, and the herbal astringency is gone. I really liked that wet stage, so it's too bad, but smelling like chocolate-coconut-mint cookies is almost as good, even if I definitely don't get "The Star" from this. Love it, though, and will ponder a bottle, mmm.

In the bottle: Oh, yuck. There is a seriously gross top-note in here. I don't even want to sniff more to find any other notes. Wet: Yuuuck. The note is stronger. I can't bring it near my nose. "Vomit-like," as someone said above, is right. I might wash this off... Drydown: But I didn't, I read the reviews and waited like everyone said to, and the note went away in a minute. Thank god. Now there's a lovely spice coming up, cardamom I'm sure (it does smell a bit like chai, and I know cardamom is in chai), over a base of a smoothy, earthy patchouli (not hippie-stank). Except...ouch. Oh, damn, OUCH. Burning burning red tingling ouch. I've never been allergic to an oil before, and this really hurts! I'm sure it's the cardamom, although I didn't have this reaction to Whipporwill. It's probably because I just got out of a hot shower and all my pores are open. Eventually the burning pain fades, although I've still got a pink patch on my poor wrist. Now...mm. This smells exactly like Cost-Plus World Market, one of my favorite stores. The "foody-spice over imported furniture" smell is very comforting. My family always shops there for Christmas, and this actually does feel like a holiday scent. If this had been Rat King instead of Alone, I wouldn't be surprised. No flowers or fruits, however. There's a rising sweetness now, a hint of gardenia, which is taking the edge off the spicy wood, and it's eventually joined by a very faint whiff of mandarin. It's all very subtle and close to my skin, so I really have to smell myself. I can imagine this would be lovely applied to several points all over my body, so it was a soft cloud...but I can't imagine going through the initial allergic-burning again. It also gives me a bit of a headache. I'll give it another try, maybe in my hair or as a room scent.

In the bottle: Sweet peach on top, with a layer of patchouli and musk beneath. Wet: Same as in the bottle, except both the sweet top note and the musky bottom note are intensified. If there's amber in here, it's so well-blended I can't tell. Drydown: I could definitely tell there were separate layers in here at the beginning of drydown. The golden peach of Tamora, the biting trickle of patchouli, the musk/amber as the solid body. Eventually they all came together again to become something very smooth and well-blended... Except I'm just not crazy about it. I like patchouli a lot, but I associate it with burning in an incense-holder and listening to Sgt. Pepper when I was thirteen and going through my mystical-hippie phase. The pretty peach on top feels odd, like one of those incense sticks that's just way too sweet and fruity and seems to miss the point of being incense. And then the musk adds a very perfume-like touch. I know there's someone out there this would fit well; it's just too too earth-mother for me. I feel like I should be a big woman in my fifties with a big laugh, lots of skirts and bangles, wearing this in my ample cleavage. On that woman, this would be perfect.

Like Mi-Go, only minus the pepper and plus something I suspect is civet. I want to like it, because there are yummy juicy fruits in here, but it's also kind of sour and gross, and I like Mi-Go better.

In the bottle: Sweet, a hint of very green fruit. Wet: Almonds, and...coconut? Honey? (I didn't know the notes in this until after I put it on, so I'm glad I could pick these out at least.) Yum yum! Drydown: The milky sweetness of almond and coconut fades after a minute, and then there's a dusty smell (sandalwood, I'm guessing), and then a very strong, pungent greenery scent, like crushed leaves. It's interesting, but I hope the sweet milky almond/coconut comes back again. Five minutes later, the sharpness of the greenery retreats a little, and now I'm getting fig, along with a rush of honey. This scent is a morpher. Finally, it's settled down into a balance of the elements -- creamy almond/coconut (I can tell it's toasted!), figgy fruitness, a hint of dusty sandalwood and green leaves behind, and the honey sweetening everything. Because my skin makes everything sweet, this is getting just a little too sweet, but it's really pleasant and tropical. I can definitely see myself wearing this a lot.

In the bottle: Kind of fruity, but not sweet. Wet: SOAP. With blackcurrant. Oh, ugh, this is turning my stomach... Drydown: The reviews on this were so good that I grimly perservered through drydown with this oil, even though it was really making me sick to my stomach. The blackcurrant was soapy and medicinal, and the ozone/musk/lavender combination just dragged it down in a stuffy antique store way. Overall, this really made me think of something trying to be sweet that isn't really, like that awful bite of medicine through the sweet flavoring of cough syrup. It also reminded me a lot of Nyarlathotep, another scent I didn't like, probably because of the salty ozone. I like almost all the ingredients of this blend separately, but in combination...blech. One of the few oils I've hated.

Spicy amber. It was threatening to go powdery on me for a bit (amber's been doing that to me lately), so I'll have to give it another spin, but on the whole, very nice. Some of the warm grassiness of Coyote sneaks in there too, and the spices are really welcome to lift up what could otherwise be a rather too-sweet amber scent. This one's pretty complex, and I'll be interested to see how it shapes up with subsequent wearings.

In the bottle: Lovely, bracing pine. Wet: Still clean pine! I love it when it's this astringent. Drydown: Blast. The pine dies pretty quickly. No eucalyptus. Some sickly orange, and that fades too. Thirty minutes later it's totally nondescript. Looks like I'll have to stick with Dublin and Nocnitsa for my pine fix, for now.

Oh, how I wanted to love this! I'm an October baby and I couldn't resist an opal scent. But it went from sweetly sophisticated to cloying sugar-vanilla in a few minutes. I did get a few flashes of that "mineral" scent everyone else was talking about, but it just ended up making it smell like vanilla salt-water taffy. Which, hey, might be your thing. But this was too fake-sweet for me.

I figured this would be my favorite Patch scent, and I actually really hate it. The buttery pumpkin mixed with the heavy spices is cloying and makes me sick. No apples, nuts, or anything else tempers it -- just spicy richness.

Of the first three Patch blends I've tried, this is my favorite to wear. The overwhelming butteriness of the pumpkin is cut by the tart fruit, and it's a really nice, even blend. Lasting power on this set is excellent.

I liked this at first -- it was fresh and interesting and pleasant -- but then it started turning into lemon-tea, then into an almost exact dupe of Embalming Fluid. And I don't like Embalming Fluid. However, if you do -- this is the scent for you.

Soap. As bad as a violet scent, even. No cucumber, no peony...just a soapy, cloying average perfume. WAH! I was so looking forward to this one.

I'll have to try this again, I think. I wasn't crazy about the smell (a cloying, herbal lavendar), but I've been having terrible insomnia lately. It didn't seem to shorten the time it takes me to fall asleep (maybe 45 minutes instead of the usual hour), but then I wasn't able to smell it too well because I'm still getting over a cold. Oneiroi knocked me right out, and I almost might rather have the weird dreams it gave me just so I could sleep.

An imp from the wonderful Shelldoo... This was quite lovely. A strong, sharp, juicy pine at first, smelling exactly like walking through a forest of Christmas trees. I got a hint of citrus or florals as it dried down -- not berries, though -- but for once my skin didn't make this too sweet. I was worried it would become too similar to Dublin, but that very true pine-scent stayed. Long-lasting, too! I could still smell it this morning. I would buy this in a heartbeat if it had become available, wah.

An imp of the pre-resurrection blend from Shelldoo -- thanks! Wet, this was a perfectly even blend of cinnamon and clove, deliciously similar to baking spices. The clove faded as it dried, and the cinnamon grew stronger. It's a very rich, powerful scent, long-lasting with excellent throw. I compare it a bit to Shub or Gingerbread Poppet,also quite spicy on me, but minus the ginger and with the bite of pepper. I might like to temper it with something a little sweeter and more creamy (I hear Antique Lace is good for layering...), but by itself it's pretty kick-ass. I feel tough!

This was very interesting. I had to give it two tries to make up my mind. My favorite smell in the entire world is dry grass on a summer night, and for a heart-stopping moment Coyote smelled just like that. Then the sweet grassiness faded down into a more musky scent, still sweet, so I had to get over the disappointment. On the second wearing, though, I really liked it. It's a wonderful "skin" scent, with the sweetness of grass and musk, like what I imagine a Sioux's clothing would smell like. I'll certainly use up my imp, and maybe look into a bottle eventually.

In the bottle: Very sweet fruity, like strawberry candy. Wet: OK, this is making me smile. Now there's mint with the strawberry candy. It's very pretty and exuberant, and very remiscent of the Fool in my tarot deck Drydown: For the first twenty minutes, it was like strawberry bubblegum mixed with mint bubblegum, with maybe some herbs in the background (anise, probably) -- cute, although maybe not for me. Unfortunately, it soon turned plastic and became little girl's lip gloss, which definitely crosses the "cute" line for me. Think I'll stick to Strawberry Moon and layer it with mint if I want the initial smell of The Fool.