melange
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Everything posted by melange
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This is another scent that is wonderfully evocative of its description, where I'll bring out the decant when I want that feeling but not so much otherwise. I see it as old wood bookcases with beeswax rubbed in years ago, long enough now that you can only sniff that old warmth when you're looking for it.
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Since this one had to be discontinued early, I'm relieved to not have fallen in love with it, though I like it quite a bit. I smell the pie, I smell the beer, the wood and what I can only assume is the resin, and it is a scent that seems to want dancing. The notes blend to develop a warm, spicy quality and when I move my nose from the "Autumn and Winter" spot on my hand to this one, it's like being outside and coming in to the hearth.
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This scent smells just like its description, to my nose, with a perfumey quality. While I don't think I'll want to smell like this often, and it's more lonely than I would want to use for an atmosphere scent, I'll bring my decant out at select times when I want to evoke its season.
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I'm a big fan of Harvest Moon from previous years, especially '05, so I had my fingers crossed for this one! Fresh on my skin, and for the first while thereafter, I get the balsam fir, cedar, juniper and their ilk. Later, they sit back and the fruits and spices come out. I applied it last night and woke up this morning with a pleasant whiff of pumpkin pie... in a way that wasn't super foody. I also applied it today and six hours later have a blended sense of subtle spices and autumn without any one note jumping out at me. There's no rotting edge or LILY on my skin, so I think I lucked out. Though there isn't quite as much throw as I'd like, that probably makes it more wearable for everyday. I like it a lot!
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Wet: Holy caraway, Batman! Let's give this one a little time to settle and hope that I don't regret doing two swipes from the decant. An hour or two later, I get almost nothing on the back of my left hand where I originally put the oil, but quite a bit on the back of my right hand. The other notes are filling in the scent beneath the dominant caraway. It's quite interesting, definitely warm and dry. However, perhaps because of the sharpness and perhaps because it still seems savory, it isn't a smell that attracts me beyond the thought of lunch.
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I got cologne while wet, too, and it was pretty flat, but then I let it be for a while and it settled into something much more interesting. This El Dorado, on my skin, is in the middle of a desert. There's a sort of mineral quality that reminds me of Black Opal (it's been a while since I smelled the latter, but I see in my notes that Festival of Anuket reminded me of Black Opal too, so that makes sense). I don't yet get the incense quite as much. Since this is so fresh from the Lab (it arrived yesterday), I'm going to have to let it settle and see what happens. My fingers are crossed!
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Mmm. It's just like the description, and the beeswax is amazing. After about an hour and a half, it's died down some so I'm not getting much throw at all, but it's still there close to the skin. If my nose gets too close, I get a little plastic, so obviously the key is to just wave my hand in front of my face a lot. It's also not as plastic as Snow White is on me, at least. I'm going to give this one some time to recover from being shipped and see how it does after that, since it's still really, really new. If it winds up settling and sticking around longer, it will be bottle time. What a great addition to the GC!
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Thanks for "The Twa Corbies," thekittenkat, I can only imagine how it would sound spoken by someone who could really do the accent instead of my just faking it from the spelling! Shivery, indeed. Raven Moon. That label artwork is amazing, even shrunk down the way it is. In the bottle, it's high-pitched like a tenor or maybe a baritone singing at the very top of his register. On the cuff of my shirt, it's a little nondescript. But on my skin, what makes Raven Moon different than any other scent is how it develops a sort of grittiness. It's like the crushed velvet that others mentioned, or coffee grounds (though it doesn't smell like coffee), or something else with a real grainy texture. Right now, the myrrh likes to eat everything, but I'm going to hoard my bottle because I can't wait to see how it ages.
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Bottle: grassy with flowers. When I apply it, it's green and grassy, very grassy, with flowers and a hint of the musk coming out during the drydown. The green grass sticks around for a while on my skin, which I like. About three hours along: this really is puppy fur. Not a stanky dog who just rolled in something, not cat fur, but... puppy. It tugs my nose down to it as if to say, sniff me, sniff me! Somehow, the side of my wrist gets closer to powdery while the top of my wrist has a little more puppy. I also love the label with the cute artwork with the "Pow!"
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In the bottle, I don't get any rose, just something distantly woodsy like the inside of an old drawer. What valentina said. It's a very sharp drydown. On me, the woods are strong and fresh-cut now, and it takes a few minutes for the rose to emerge. However, maybe ten minutes later on my skin, something about the bouquet makes it seem as though the rose somehow reddens and gets what I think of as a wine-y quality. There's nothing like that listed in the notes, of course, but the "resurrection" is really interesting to me. In the end, the scent stays a little too sharp to really be "me," but I'd like to see how this one ages and take it from there.
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Angeronalia is lovely and fruity-sweet when first applied to my skin, and with the citrus coming out in wafts. It soon becomes a pleasant, even cheerful floral with just a hint of citrus. Not only is the honey subtle, but the gardenia provides energy rather than overpowering the way it often does on my skin. Later on, the flowers diminish further and the citrus is almost gone, leaving a clean scent. I miss the early rush and might try a scent locket.
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Wet, Chanukkiyah is a foody hit that nearly knocks me over. When it's had a chance to relax on my skin, though, it's sweet, waxy, just a little smoky, like sniffing a burning candle without the sense of heat. I get a little more olive than I'd like, but the oilve oil note isn't amping as much as olive leaf does. It lasts for quite a while.
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'07 version: I don't know whether my skin is acting up or what, but tonight Sugar Skull's smelling like those candy bananas that I remember from trick-or-treating. A bag would have fake lemons, limes, cherries, grapes... and bananas, which were always my least favorite. It's like brown sugar with artificial banana. I remember trying the decant on before and thinking that it just smelled strongly sugary, and it does smell better before it hits my skin, but I still don't know what to think. ETA: the actual comments to myself from the previous try were: "Sugars... fruits... candies... candles?!"
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Another atmospheric scent from the Haunted House, on my skin the initial flow of wine/vinegar disappears almost instantly into just a hint of sweetness, as though the mortar were soaking it up. I'm also impressed by how the red clay softens the scent. As The Chilling Cellar dries further, it smells less stony and more floral (with possibly a hint of resin, which makes me think of DBR, although some might be amber too), and then a little more resin. I quite like it, but as perfumes of that type go, it's more muffled than I would wear "just because." My decant should do me for the atmosphere fix. ETA: I tried reapplying with a couple swipes this time, and that made the notes less muffled, though still somewhat blended. About twenty minutes later, my spouse-creature got a whiff, and he liked it quite a lot... so the decant might not be enough after all. Funny how that works!
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Initial reaction: "Yum...?" the original enjoyment trailing off questioningly. On my skin, Lurid Library is like its description but faded; unusually, the throw has more scent than up next to skin. Later on, when it's well dry, it's just faded. Freshening it helps, but then I get a cologne-tinged scent, and if I were to get another bottle along these lines, I'd get Aziraphale.
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I love how the cognac fumes out and then disappears into the brimstone, just flavoring it a little as the woods rise up to join it. In the end, it's very atmospheric and I enjoy the ride, although there are other wood scents that do better on my skin.
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While wet, Twisted Oak Tree smells exactly like its description. There's a rush of green and wood and ivy all over. When it recedes, I get more charred wood, followed by a cleaner greenness that reminds me of a very herbal, European soap I kept smelling and almost buying back about fifteen years ago... yet it's not soapy. Later on it gets more wood and perhaps a little resin, and in general it's very clean and shadowy-green. Perhaps it's the wood, but my skin gets along even better with the Twisted Oak Tree than with the Ghastly Garden.
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A shadowy shrine filled with forgotten toys, broken dolls. The altar: a collapsing trunk distended by a rotted wedding gown. The air of the room is dusty, laced with the scent of a child's perfume and the remnants of a dried, crumbling bridal bouquet: tea rose, violet, white sandalwood, French lavender, and Calla lily. My goodness, this is so, so dreamily beautiful. (I can't even name it, because it's not in the least a--cious for me.) The flowers balance each other so softly, and the comparison to TKO's little cousin—on the Antique Lace side of the family, possibly Regan's half-sister, unrelated to Hope and Faith—fits so well. Even as I type, every now and again, I get wafts of fragile flower-touched linen scent. This is wonderful, and I hadn't expected it to be. Thank goodness for decants! This needs to be a bottle.
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The Ghastly Garden is very strong, very heady, very sweet and green. On my skin, it gets greener and greener... and then the florals start creeping out again... and then it's a breath of herbal air. I enjoy morphers and find this one quite evocative. It had good throw but didn't last very long, but then, the decant was tested right out of the envelope and hadn't time to settle.
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Wet on my skin, it's juicy fresh-cut pears with a little vanilla. As it dries, the pears stay as a lingering sweetness and I can only pick them out when I know what I'm looking for, much like the vanilla musk mentioned earlier, which makes me think that a scent locket is called for. As to the dreaded plastic issue, it's nowhere near the plastic that Snow White was on me, but it still has a little whiff of plastic when I get my nose too close. It smells so good wet, though, and very nice at 3/4" of throw; I have this hopeful feeling that if it ages it will blend and fit together even better. So, if the budget allows, I'll get a bottle and let it age, but first I'll see what the other Haunted House decants do on me!
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Today it's Polyhymnia's lemon balm that is most prominent at first, but it's clear that there are other, less definable notes that support it. When first dry, the mix is somewhat more homogenous but pretty bland on my skin. With time, it warms up and stretches out, but I still can't smell it much: just enough to know that there's something good going on. Having said that, Polyhymnia also appears to be one of those scents that may all but vanish to my nose but be easily perceptible to other people, which makes me think I should try it again on my skin before deciding between scent locket and room scent.
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Attractive and refreshing, on me Bess is not a rose scent but a clean, spicy herbal perfume softened by roses and sweetened by grape. Bess fades rapidly on my skin into a barely-there herbal green blur; if it lasted longer, I would be tempted to bottle it.
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I really, really like how Erato smells wet. I get a strong sense of roses, and the ylang ylang and sweet pea make them smell intoxicating. As Erato dries, it's sweet, but the sweet pea is kept in check. The notes start blending, becoming fainter, the orris and stephanotis keeping the scent from becoming overpowering, while the myrrh supports it with warmth. At this stage its throw is feminine and soft, with a bit of soap in a good way, and smelling better than right up next to skin. However, it's that skin scent that shows up when Erato is dry, a soapy/powdery sweetness without much individuality. This imp should make a great room scent, provided I don't use it up by chasing down other people to see if it works better with their chemistry than my own.
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My skin and Blood Countess just don't suit. If they were on a blind date, they would look up from their menus and simultaneously confess to a case of the blahs. And then they would laugh a little in relief, no hard feelings, and go their separate ways without another thought about the other. In the imp, Blood Countess feels intoxicatingly alive and waiting, berries and plum with a juiciness I associate with apple. Wet on my skin, it manages to be juicy and yet dry at the same time. But when it dries, the "crumbling dead roses" take over, the barely-there lilac and others making it a moderately complex potpourri... complex, but still potpourri (or, with the opium, a burnt-out candle). The throw is a couple inches' worth, and it hangs on for quite a while but stays disappointingly flat. Hopefully as a room scent it will stay vibrant!
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After Misk U fought so horribly with my skin chemistry, I was nervous testing this scent. What a relief when it turned out to be, instead of a coffee-grounds headache, an amazingly warm, rich, milky cup of coffee! Four Aces has soft throw, lasts for a few hours, and I will cherish my single bottle.
