kettu

I got this because I'm going through my Saturn Return, so I figured it would help me better understand what Saturn means for me at this time in my life. Alas, it did not work out. I thought when I ordered it, "Even if it doesn't smell good, I'll keep it and use it." Ha! That's before I realised what vetiver does on my skin. Oh holy Saturn! Why vetiver?!! This yellow/ruddy brown scent, while starting out with earthy, myrrhish tones, went very soon to vetiver madness and stayed on my skin that way for over a day. Why do all the hideous scents stay forever? Ugh. So no, I CAN'T keep you, Saturn. It will make me hate you and I don't want to do that.

I was with Miss Lynx when she sniffed theshapeshifter's bottle. One thing's for certain: the scent provokes a strong reaction from anyone who smells it. It was one of the oddest scents I've ever smelled and I had to keep smelling it because I couldn't figure it out. It was off-putting and captivating at the same time. It's very evocative of slightly tarnished brass. I had a brass coin bank when I was younger and the scent would rub off onto my hands after holding it. It's intriguing in a repulsive kind of way. I think if my anxieties were less controlled than they currently are, I would definitely get a bottle of this. I didn't try any on, so I can't say what it smelled like mingled with my body chemistry, but I certainly wouldn't have objections to doing so.

Anoint red, orange, and yellow candles with this blend and light throughout the home to banish ill-fortune, eliminate poverty and want, and infuse the atmosphere with hope and happiness. Miss Lynx got this for me for my birthday last month and I must say it works Really Damn Well! For the past two weeks, my sweet little kitty has been in the hospital hooked up to IV fluids and being syringe-fed. She had developped fatty liver disease. She is home now (as of today) and seems to be doing much better now, despite the biopsy and the addition of a stomach tube for feeding. It's been a very emotionally trying time. I found that whenever I wore Bastet's Laughter, I would feel more light-hearted when I visited her and more able to focus on giving healing energy and much-needed love to my kitty, rather than being bogged down with financial worries and worries about whether my little Miko would ever get better. It helped me concentrate on the good and the positive and it brightened my day considerably. Also, as a scent in and of itself, it works surprisingly well on my skin! Extra bonus. Bubblegum Lotus high note (which makes me giddy every time I smell it) that fades into a complex assortment of scents that is really difficult for me to sort out. What is left on my skin hours and hours later is a beautiful, faint sweetness that vaguely resembles tonka. Thumbs up on both counts. Yay!

Bliss is... bliss. It is a single note of chocolate yumminess wafting up from my wrists making my brain go "Wheee!!!!!" No mold or dust or any badness here. Just pure chocolate. Like I smooshed a warmed Hershey bar against my skin and let it dry right there. Super chokky goodness. *bounce bounce bounce* It's giving me a sugar high just by smelling it!

Got this from wolfgrrl/roostersgrrl. Thank you! Opened the imp and was overtaken by a massive scent orgasm. PP2 is a thing of beauty. I tried it on later in the evening, a little bit before bed. The pumpkin note died fairly quickly, which is both good and bad. I wish it would fade, but not entirely die. Like Kitara Rayne said, it came back a little later, so all was not lost. I luvs me some pumpkin! The cocoa, hazelnut, and walnut were spectacularly good. Warm, decadent, and soothing to my soul, I could NOT stop smelling my wrists! I woke up in the middle of the night, several hours after drifting off, took a sniff of my wrists and drifted back into hazelnut heaven. It was still there after I finally got out of bed 13 hours or so after I initially put it on. (um... I was catching up on sleep. Yeah.) Definitely a long-lasting scent on me. I've tried all but PP1 and this one is my absolute favourite. So Very Amazing. I am muchly tempted to track down a 5ml of it.

Capricious and mercurial (er...): Lavender and cinnamon toy with my senses in a playful sort of way. It's purple and red and silver all at once and each taking its turn. Crazy, man. Lavender and cinnamon should not smell good together. It makes my brain hurt so badly. Ow. I got this from wolfgrrl/roostersgrrl on a total hunch. My sun and mercury® are both in virgo, ruled by mercury. We have an odd relationship, this planet and I. And now I have Beth's vision of what it smells like. So.Very.Good.

There is something very familiar about this scent, but I cannot seem to place it. It's like cedar mated with cooked hotdogs in a forest and you tried unsuccessfully to bury the abomination in damp earth. My nose keeps thinking it would enjoy the patchouli if the vetivert would just stop what it was doing for a minute and hide in the other room. It's not evil incarnate, but it's certainly not a keeper.

Morocco is my most favourite carnation scent. And I almost swear that Tushnamatay has a bit of carnation in it, too, but I can't say for sure, since none of the notes are listed. It's got a similarly smooth, warm (almost pink, but not quite) spiciness that Morocco has. Hrm... now I'm tempted to try Alice (my nose detests honey in the imp) and Brisingamen (amber usually goes to powder). I've been eyeing Bow and Crown of Conquest and I have both Bathsheba and Maiden on my wishlist. I adore carnation. It's such a subtle, comforting floral on me.

Let me begin by saying that is is one of the most beautiful scents I've had the pleasure of trying and wearing. I was hoping beyond all hope that the Lab would include this as a freebie in my and MissLynx's coming order. We got that order yesterday and lo, there was a Tushnamatay frimp! It was meant to be. Now for the fun part: trying to figure out what's in it! On me, Tushnamatay starts with a floral high note. My guess is champa, but I'm honestly not certain. When that dies down, there is a beautiful blend of sandalwood, carnation, saffron, tonka, and faint chiuri bark (teeny hint of woodsy soft buttery warmth). Those are my hypothesized ingredients. No matter what the actual ingredients are, they blend so beautifully well, and I am so very in love with this scent! Thank you, Beth! Tushnamatay is superb!

lemon and fig lemon disappears, fig moves to the background tea comes forth: light and tannic fig moves in again: earthy sweet and then it begins to disappear. All this after about 10 minutes. There's a hint of scent left, but not much at all. I don't think this is going to work for me. *pout*

This is mostly iris, which is somewhat disappointing. It's not a BAD iris, not overpoweringly so. It's softened by the other notes, but it's still so dominant as to not be able to detect what those other notes are without reading the lab description. Phooey. {into the swaps}

scent on contact: ALMOND EXTRACT, which dries down to almond. Of course. And then there's the jasmine. Oh, jasmine, you evil thing you. You big scent bully. I am kettu of the jasmine hand. wait! There's more! ... jasmine and... urine? ladies and gentlemen, I have jasmine-soaked urinal scent on my hand. You should be so lucky. {into the swaps}

I just got this today! YAY! Thank you to LJer, earthdotprime! This one morphs so OMG fast for me! It blew through about 4 different notes in the first minute or so on my wrists. Initial blast of pumpkin, then woody blend, then pungent green ivy, then spicy galangal, finally settling in for a blend of all four with spicy green at the fore. I keep getting visions of an ivy-covered, tudor-style cottage at the edge of a green wood with a walnut grove nearby and spiced pumpkin custard cooling on a window sill in mid-September when evidence of autumn is just beginning to show itself. I think I'm more in love with this vision than I am with the scent that evokes it, but I still enjoy it. PP4 still the favourite; PP5 not too far behind, and definitely a keeper. Still need to try PP2.

This one I had high hopes for. I really enjoyed #4 and grew to like the initial blast of pumpkin that dies down almost immediately; however, with #3 it doesn't seem to die. It holds on for dear life and wages fierce battle with the pomegranate. Sweet and tart fighting to the death on my wrists. I'd rather have Sweetarts in my mouth. This will go to someone who will appreciate it more than me.

I was gifted with a 5ml of Phantom Queen in early December and I guess I never got around to reviewing it. Oh My Goddess, is this beautiful! I want to bathe in it! So foresty. Cathedral forest with the scent of green growth permeating everything. Absolutely lovely. This is now tied with Whippoorwill for my most favouritest scent ever. It didn't really evoke the Morríghan for me, but it's still freaking gorgeous.

I tried this earlier today and got... almost nothing. It's too light to make much of an impact on my nose. It reminded me of St. Germain in its unremarkability. Very, very light.

This is pomegranate love! So crisp and clean and uplifting! I have a tenuous relationship with fruit scents, but this one worked out very very well. Such an excellent scent! Definitely a keeper.

Herbal bug repellant. Very reminiscent of citronella's bitter pungence. I have no idea why this didn't work on me. Maybe it was the thyme? Also, it was a bit too masculine. Gonna try it on several of our male friends before sending it to the swaps. Hopefully it will work for one of them.

I really really wanted to like this one. I love incense. I love resins. The frankincense killed it, though. My skin loves myrrh, but add frankincense anywhere into the mix and everything goes south to some powdery incense hell. I guess I wasn't penitent enough?? *pout*

In the vial, this smelled so lovely. On my skin, the frankincense made it all bad: yucky incense powder. No violet; no cinnamon. All powder. Very disappointing. I tried this and Penitence on the same day and thus realised that my skin does not like frankincense. Argh. I do! Why does my skin need to be so contrary?! Poo.

Vanilla = DOOM On me, this scent is VANILLA with a teeeeeeeeny bit of sassafrass and cedar. The vanilla gave me a headache. I washed my hands three times in a concerted effort to remove the offending odor, but it's still there. Weakened, but hanging on for dear life. I know now to stay well away from vanilla scents for they are evil on my skin. Phooey. I wonder what Tombstone smells like on someone who can do vanilla scents... I also wonder what Tombstone would smell like without the vanilla. :\

For use when working with the many Gods of Sleep, Dreams, and Nightmares. It started out with the lavender, as these things usually do (sleeping things, that is), and then it morphed into something else. From lavender, it went a bit herby. Kind of deep green but not pungent. Soothing. And from there (about 15-20 minutes later), it was deep green spice with a teeny hint of lavender and a teeny hint of something vaguely citrus. Smelled absolutely wonderful. I put some on my wrists, temples, under my nose, and on my upper arm (I sleep with my arm draped across my face). I slept quite soundly, only waking once. 8 hours and feeling very well-rested. There is still a hint of soothing spice on my wrists nearly 10 hours later. Definitely a keeper and definitely need to upgrade from an imp to a 5ml. Now I want to try all the other Somnium blends!

When I first smelled the imp, I thought, "Oh, my, no. This is not good. This is totally not what I was expecting!" *pout* It smelled hideously floral and I had to wash off the teeny little bit that I got on my fingers. It was so very bright and loud and brash. I didn't understand at all! And I got to thinking... this Really doesn't sound right. So I smelled it again today and it smells totally different. It was only a few days ago that it smelled awful! And then I realised that I was on antibiotics when I first smelled it and my sense of smell was completely horked. I mean terribly bad. Penny Dreadful, which is one of my favourite scents, suddenly smelled like cat piss. Ew! So, yes, Shroud. Shroud is a light, dry floral with woodsy undertones. There is a vague soapy element that unfortunately makes me feel like I'm snorting soap bubbles. While it's not the hideousness that I smelled early last week, it's a bit more floral and soapy on my skin than I would like. Off to the swaps it goes.

I've been feeling adventurous lately, trying things that have notes I know probably won't work. In this case, strawberries. Fruits amp like nothing else on me. With orange, it's a good thing because it picks me up. With cherries or berries, I usually smell like a popsicle or lollipop. Lemon goes lemon drop, but fig is beautiful because it's sweet *and* earthy. Some work; some don't. So now we try strawberry. Er, I mean Maenad. Wet on: pungent green strawberry -- like I'd been chewing on the leaves and stem of an unripe strawberry. Dry on: it's all strawberry. I'm wearing smooshed strawberries. This is good for future reference, if ever I end up playing Strawberry Shortcake with my nieces or end up at a summer picnic. But really, it's not a me-scent. Great, if ever I want to smell like nothing but strawberries, but I don't really foresee that happening. This goes back to Lynxie's side of the stash.

A festive, dazzling blend, layered in mystery and intrigue. Patchouli, ambergris, carnation and orange blossom. My nose is SO confused! The different notes are all vying for attention, but not in a dissonant sort of way. I feel like I'm being spun around a dance floor and I'm getting dizzy with all the different directions I'm being pulled. The orange blossom made itself very apparent at first, and I thought, "Wow, this is such a fun scent!" And then the patchouli came out and it got all dark and mysterious. I've no clue what ambergris actually smells like, but there's a non-carnation element that pulls every once in a while, so that's likely it. The carnation spices everything very smoothly. Right now, it's playing the earthy, patchouli note. I really don't know what to make of it! I like it, for sure, but I don't know how much! Weird. ***Final thoughts*** The patchouli became the dominant note and I smelled it on my arm even after my shower. I decided to let this one stay with Lynx, as I feel she will appreciate it more in the long run.