filigree_shadow

I see why people went gaga over this. It smells like Titania (one of my favorite GC scents) with gentle herbs. Nice and pretty, clean and fresh smelling. This smells like my BPAL imp box, actually. It's a lovely scent, but it smells like other BPALs to me. I wonder if I could get the same sort of scent by layering Titania with Black Moon... hm.

This is far too rosy for me. It smells basically just like roses, but it's that sort of sharp rosy scent that I don't really like that much. I'm usually not a big rose fan anyway, but sometimes I like them if they're creamy or dewy -- this isn't that kind of rose, though.

This smells cold and has that nose-tingling sort of minty scent to it. Definitely smells frosty, and a bit watery. Not my thing. I didn't like this one.

From the bottle sniff I thought I would like this -- it smells sweet and slightly floral in the bottle. However, on it smells very cold and has that nose-tingling property. That's just not for me. I like this one a bit better than Frost Moon, but not much better. I'm editing this to add the 2010 version: Weird menthol-y mint, like a spearmint or something. But not straight up mint. It's odd. Cold and like some sort of minty medicinal thing. I do not think I like the mint + fern combination. I liked the original version better.

An aquatic scent for sure -- it smells watery -- but it also has kind of a dryer sheets cleanness to it, too. Unfortunately it's a little bit sour on my skin for some reason and isn't the deep dark kind of aquatic scent that I like. It smells kind of green, like a floral green, too. Too sour for me.

This is strongly rain/aquatic scented. It smells to me like that's all there is. It smells clean, not salty at all. There's a crispness to it. Unfortunately it is much too strong for me. This is one of the ones that lasts and lasts... however I don't really like the scent enough to want to smell it for a long time.

Sugary sweet plums. I find this scent delightful. It reminds me a lot of Bordello without the booze and with some very light cool florals instead. It's super strong at first, but it becomes wispy pretty quickly. I think it would be a great scent to add to a lotion. I also have found that it is a very good pick-me-up when I'm feeling the winter blues. I'm wearing about half an imp right now, and it's lightening my spirits.

I'm glad I'm not the only one in favor of winter lights! I remember when I was little my dad used to grumble about the neighbors leaving their lights up after Christmas. I never understood why that was a problem -- there's nothing else pretty to look at in winter, so why not have lights up? I'm not talking Clark Griswold lights here, just some nice festive lights on the shrubs or something. I'm burning a tart that smells like cake and I'm listening to Weird Al. It's the best I can do under the circumstances.

Gardenia, tea rose, vanilla and jasmine. Hunh. I usually don't like jasmine, and gardenia is almost always a dealbreaker, but... um, actually this is pretty nice. It's sweet instead of being cloying. The sweetness seems like a fruity sweetness to me, and I have no idea what's causing that. It's pretty and feminine, and my husband likes it on me a lot. ETA: Edited to add description.

I like Umbra. I'm not a fan of cedar or scents with strong wood notes, usually -- Cathedral and Aureus were both too woodsy for me. But this cedar/patchouli combination with a little bit of cinnamon to give it a slightly spicy edge is much better for me. The vetiver in this is vetiver at its best: Just rumbling along at the very bottom of the scent giving it an interesting and earthy grounding. Although the cedarwood was a little too strong at first, it calms down on drying and this ends up being a very pleasant earthy patchouli scent. The cinnamon also gets stronger as the scent dries. Umbra is truly an example of the whole being more than the sum of its parts -- two notes I normally avoid are in this (cedarwood and cinnamon), and yet when they are in this blend I actually enjoy them. Very nice.

Those look like interesting books -- and I'm always happy to see people reading several books at one time. My husband reads one book start to finish then picks up the next one. I usually have two or three going, and I choose one depending on my mood.

None of the other Celestials worked on me, but this one does. It's a soft, pretty rose scent, exactly the sort of rose that I like (and I'm very picky about rose scents). My floral-note-identification skills are for crap, unfortunately, and rose is the only one I can pick out. All I can say is that it smells soft and gentle, calm and cool. It's almost creamy but not quite. This doesn't smell green or sharp, or like soap, or like anything bad on me. It smells really lovely. If I had a bottle of this oil I would definitely wear it.

This is an odd scent, in my opinion, and I don't find it especially comforting or relaxing. There's some sort of burnt rubber smell underneath something woodsy. It vaguely reminds me of when something's on fire that shouldn't be on fire, which has the opposite effect on me than what this oil is intended for. It makes me uneasy. I'm not having tremendous luck with the aromatherapy blends... perhaps I should try them in an oil warmer rather than on my skin.

When I first applied this, I thought it seemed like an apricot/ginger scent over the top of jasmine. Jasmine is not my favorite floral note, but I kinda like that spicy kick the white ginger gives it. It's intense when I put my nose right up next to my wrist, but if I just wave my arm in front of my face I like the scent. I can't decide whether I like this enough that I'd choose it over one of my favorites when I'm deciding what to wear for the day. To me, it smells like a standard perfume scent, and I prefer the more unusual ones. It does have a certain allure, though... I think I'll keep the imp around and see what happens.

Yow, this is amazingly floral on me. I mean, like, almost all flowers. I thought it would be lemony or musky, but all I'm getting is a very powdery heady floral scent. No creaminess or vanilla, either. I think I'll have to try this again later. I just got out of the bath and maybe my skin isn't its normal self right now.

Wow, this is strong! The lemon verbena is very prominent at first, but the green tea backing it up makes me like it more than I usually do. This is extremely bright (almost piercingly so) and strong. One little imp wand swipe on my arm, and now I'm sitting in a Phantasm cloud. I have to admit that I do like the scent, even though it's not something I would wear as a personal fragrance. (I prefer Embalming Fluid's lemon scent, and I like Kumiho better for a tea scent.) I'd like for my kitchen to smell like Phantasm -- it smells clean and happy.

The apple and black amber combination I smell when this is wet is great. It smells sweet and dark at the same time. But as it dries the herbs take over. I liked the apple/amber combination better than the green herbs, although they are pretty gentle and clean-smelling. A little bit of apple sticks around, but not enough for the scent to win me over.

I can't smell much incense over the moss/earth notes, but I can smell something floral. And the herbs. People who like those garden-like scents would probably like this. It reminds me a little bit of Jazz Funeral, but it's not humid like that one, it's drier. These types of scents hardly ever work for me -- adding herbs to a mossy scent was like the kiss of death. Poor Crossroads never stood a chance with me. The only part of the description that sounded good to me was the incense, and I can't really smell any.

Hmmm. I don't think myrtle likes me. I usually love ambers, but I'm not feeling the love here. This smells like kind of a bitter powder on me. There's something a little bit sharp about it, too. No, this definitely isn't going to work for me. But luckily there are plenty of other amber blends I like!

I have some trouble telling apart blends that have both cold/snowy notes and forest/woodsy notes. They all kind of smell the same to me. I guess my skin amps that cold note because pretty much all I smell is that nose-tingling coldness. I think maybe Black Forest is a little bit different because of the black musk and ambergis (it has a slightly powdery aspect to it), but it mostly just smells like coldness and pine trees. I'll see if my husband wants to try this... he has The Best Skin Chemistry in the World, and maybe this will smell good on him.

I like the chamomile in this a lot; it's really softening up the florals. Right at the very beginning it smelled soapy to me, but that went away in a few minutes. It reminds me of an elderly woman who still takes the time and energy to take care of herself, even when she can't move as easily as she used to, and even though sometimes she's in pain. She still takes her bath and dusts herself with powder that smells pretty and does her hair. This is a scent she would choose -- something soft, feminine, and lovely, something that perhaps reminds her of her youth. It's a wistful and nostalgic scent.

On my skin, this smells mainly like anise with a bit of lemon. It's very sweet and a little bit sour. It's also incredibly strong on me. I put on one little imp wand swipe, and it's all I've been able to smell for the past 30 minutes. Although this one doesn't work on me, I should mention that I like La Fee Verte a lot. I think that just the absinthe scent all on its own is a little too much for me.

I bet those areas will look great in the spring! I didn't plant a single bulb this fall... I spent some money on fancy-pants purple tulips last year and not a single one came up last spring. Grr. I probably should have dug up the bulbs and checked them but I was too irritated to bother with them.

The doctors think it will go away spontaneously in another six weeks? Is it an allergic reaction to something? An inflammation 4cm wide that lasts for 3 months seems like it would be something serious to me, which is why I'm concerned for you.

One of my favorite things to say is, "You never know how much stuff you have until you have to move." I always start the moving process with the best intentions of getting rid of things, but I give up and start throwing things in boxes. I also have a couple of poster tubes, but mine lean more toward the kind of posters I hung on my dorm wall. Because, yeah, I'm really going to need that Depeche Mode poster from 1987 with the corners ripped off. (I bet there is some 22 year-old out there somewhere who thinks Depeche Mode is the coolest band ever and would pay dearly for one of their early-ish posters.) (I can wish, right?) We're making some progress, though. So far we have two U-Haul boxes full just with books and DVDs. But we're starting to do that thing where we hold up a DVD we bought 3 years ago and never watched and say, "Ohhh, but I really did want to watch this one, maybe we should keep it for a while longer..." THAT's what got us into this pickle!