myoubi

GOJIRA! indeed

This reminds me a lot of Ice Queen -- there must be at least one common ingredient, surely, because they both have a very cold, hard-edged tone to them. like little_galaxie, I also think this smells like a very high-end conventional fragrance. SCENT: This starts out reminding me strongly of Ice Queen. It's very grapefruity, but it almost reminds me of white musk for some reason -- both fragrances have a brittleness and a hardness to them. As it settles, the grapefruit dissolves and lets the mandarin warm the scent a little bit. This is a floral, but not an obvious one -- I don't get the orchid sweetness or the gentle mellowness I associate with rose. I don't know what lemon bark smells like, but judging from the chilly nature of the scent, it may be that that I am smelling. Then, after 10 minutes it changes again: the freezing citrus backs off just a touch, opening the gates just slightly for a mellow orchid mandarin. TONE: This is not a nice happy perfume. It's not friendly. It's not agressive. The Queen is cold and high and hard and incredibly aloof. It's also a demanding fragrance -- it's not something I'd just put on unthinkingly. This is one I'd wear if I was shopping in the most expensive district in town and didn't want anyone to bother me: it carries with it a sense of entitlement and hauteur. VERDICT: Oh, I already have too many icy chilly scents. Why do I need another? But I really like the Queen, I do. I may get tired of her eventually, but right now she fills a niche well.

I just had a nap -- an unintentional nap -- and dreamt that Vic came back, was around, said hi. I dreamt that we hung out for a while (I think Vanessa brought her over) and that it was kind of awkward but that she actually explained why she'd disappeared. Why is my subconscious throwing /that/ at me while I sleep? weird.

So far I have made $120 from sales Unfortunately I did sell a half-bottle of my beloved La Fee Verte... but considering I have the equivalent of 6 5mL's (between partials and decants) and considering that I have never even gone through an imp, I think it's okay. I wore LFV today and was reminded of why I love it the way I do I keep getting whiffs of this glorious sweet lightly-herbal creaminess before realising that it's coming from my cleavage Unless something comes up, the $$ from my sales will be saved for updates.. the coming update, and then the Blue Moon update. I'm going to need at least two bottles of Blue Moon if it's anything like hte last formulation, which sounds /right/ up my alley h_f is gallivanting around London, going to parties and getting drunk on cheap whisky (shame! go for the expensive stuff.) I am jealous, abit, but mostly I wish she was back here because I miss her! Oh yeah, and I found some Unseelie. One decant, but that should be fine. No matter how lovely it is, I'm sure it won't be enough to displace my favourites and so I won't need more.

and bought some partial (very, very partial) bottles at better-than-reasonable prices, but those cost $10 which is what I made off of one decant of Spooky so that's no big deal So far I've made $56, and I hope to make a little more. All of it is going towards the update on the 13th. I'll probably ship it to Amy's address, and as such I might even combine orders with her -- she wants a 5mL of Kyoto and an imp pack! Yessss, another enablee, although I suspect this is more out of indulgence for me than true obsession. Either way, it spreads the love. You can't get much for $56, especially considering shipping... but Mom will be wiring some money into my account to buy Sheila a scent locket [she saw mine and was /instantly/ taken with it] and so I'll just ask her for a couple of dollars extra to round out my shipping costs -- shouldn't be too hard. The update is probably going to be full of shinies, at least that's what's buzzing and bumbling on the fora... and given Beth's hints, the slow boil seems warranted There's not much I'm craving right now, other than 5mL's of The Hermit and Brisingamen, but those can be laid aside if the 13th offers up some particularly tasty morsels. Oh, and I'm on Zoloft again! Yaaay! And Amy might (/might/) be coming down for the 28th of April :(

I'm excited about MB: biggerCritters, and I'm contemplating purchasing a critter just to get the bottle with the Speshul label. I'm doing this mostly because I had horrible nightmares last night. I can't remember most of them but what I can remember was horrible -- my worst fears, oozing out of my subconscious to get me. Not monsters or the supernatural... being abandoned by the people I care about, and knowing I deserved it. I'm so glad I'm awake. It wasn't a good night. [small]I dreamed, among other things, that Hannah didn't care about me any more... that was horrible. Some of the taint of that is still sitting in my mind.[/small]

**smacks head** D'oh! I'm such an idiot :/ I should have searched before I posted a new topic.. mods, go ahead and smack me.

Ice Queen = "Destroy Everything You Touch" (Ladtron)

My girlfriend smokes clove cigarettes, and the scent of clove reminds me of her. Since we're long-distance, I'd like to find a clove scent to put on and curl up in for when I miss her... and I'd prefer it was a BPAL scent, because my fanatical obsession has begun to enable her. I've tried March Hare, and it smells sticky and thick and after a while turns to spoilt jam -- not a nice clove at all. I also have a bottle of the Ecstasy of Passion, but the clove doesn't come out particularly strongly on me (I wish it did ). Anyone have any suggestions for the truest clove scent they know?

and so you know what I did? I went upstairs, put my wrist to my bottle of Shub, and upended the thing. Then I proceeded to smear the resulting puddle of lemonginger goodness all over my forearms, my neck, my temples and the extra got rubbed onto my hips. That is the first time I have /ever/ upended a bottle onto my skin -- I almost alllways take from the cap, and not more than one little droplet. I smell like ginger. The whole HOUSE smells like ginger. and you know what? I totally do not care. It is just /that bad/ of a day. Now I'm going to drink some tea and watch House MD until I run out of episodes. House's snarkitude will make everything better (if that man wore BPAL, he would wear Shub. I know it).

Shubshubshubshub shubshubshubshub love.... After sniffing this once at a Meet-n-Sniff I knew it had to be mine. After making do with an imp for weeks, my bottle finally arrived! Scent: In the bottle this is a predominantly lemony ginger blend, dark and fresh and rooty. On my skin the citrus burns off in a matter of seconds, leaving me swathed in a comforting haze of ginger and something earthy or resiny beneath it. This isn't a sweet wimpy ginger like in Gingerbread Poppet -- although it retains just a little of the Poppet's natural sweet foodiness, I wouldn't call this a foody blend unless your grandma's ginger cake was very low on sugar and high on zing. After a couple of hours the major gingeriness cools, leaving dark cream resins with a little rub of dark ginger. I don't smell incense per se at any point, but there's definately _some_thing underlying the scent that just doesn't come up and smack you in the nose. Tone: Warm and comforting, this one has throw. It wafts, and although the drydown is much more subtle than the initial half-hour, this isn't one I forsee having to reapply frequently. It's a backbone blend, and fills the niche of cuddle-by-the-fire-comfort-scent that I thought would be Misk U's job. I wouldn't really call it sexy, but I can see how some people might find it an angrier blend. Verdict: Especially in wintertime or on rainy days (like today!)

as a trillion other reviewers have said, this one smells like... cinnamon. Not sugary in the slightest, it smells like the earthy woody powdery spicy smell of a broken cinnamon stick. Gorgeous, and nothing at all like how we've come to expect "cinnamon" to smell/taste. So glad I got to try this one.

Preconceived notions: It's musk. It will hate me. I just know it. White musk is pleasant but often too harsh on me, and red musk, while so lovely to sniff, can only occasionally be coaxed into behaving the same way on my skin. I grabbed this because I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. Scent: in the imp, it's beautiful. It's not an I-am-animal-sweat-from-/sex/ smell like a lot of darker musks go on me, although it's definately a dark scent... this is almost too velvety and spicy to be a musk. It could be a perfume in itself. As it dries the spiciness comes out more, and it sweetens, developing almost a powderiness after half an hour that reminds me of the way amber goes on my skin (except a touch sweeter, maybe not in a good way). Tone: It's the best part of Snake Oil but without the Snake Oil, velvet-soft and sensual and sexy without the screeching scentedness that Snake Oil has. Don't get me wrong, it took me a while but I've definately come around to SO -- but if this was available in bottle form it'd replace my year-old Snake Oil in a heartbeat. This is definately in SO and probably in Snake Charmer as well, and I wish it was in more blends; it's a very distinctive spicy musk that slinks and smells exotic, but in its SN form doesn't scream perfume! Verdict: it's beautiful! Really, it's gorgeous. And if I had a bottle, I'd want to wear it every day in winter and surround myself with it -- in fact, if I could buy bottles of this stuff, I might just ditch most of my collection and wear it every day. But I don't have a bottle, I have an imp, and that's where things get tetchy, because if I love and cherish an imp too much I never end up wearing it. So unfortunately, this one may just be too gorgeous for me to keep around. But it is /stunning/. Heartily reccomended to people who love musk and hate musk, and who love Snake Oil and hate Snake Oil. *for the record, this is a note that becomes more prominent in aged SO than fresh SO, to my nose, so if you like this musk bear that in mind

a little OT, but when I saw 'Bridal Perfume' in the subject line I instantly thought: Havisham! srsly, I'm saving up an imp of that to wear on /my/ wedding day, should it ever come... On a more serious note, I vote Morocco. It has an almost Antique Lace feel to it, without the absolute sweetness and femininity of AL -- it's a little more grounded, has a little something extra.

Apparently The Girl loves Hope. I usually wear MB: Closet around her (she likes that on me too ) but yesterday it was warm, so I reached for Hope... she wouldn't stop sniffing and nibbling at my neck all night. I'm sooo glad I have a 5mL coming! My standard I-want-attention scent is (oddly) Monster Bait: Closet. It has never failed yet...

...and normally I don't care who spends money on what. But lately I've been noticing a trend in some parts of BPAL fandom -- prices are on the rise, in a huge way. This always happens to a certain extent between updates, but I've seen a couple of bottles go for amounts that really make me raise my eyebrows, if only because I can't compete with that kind of cash. I throw around a lot of money -- aside from Starbuck's, my BPAL collection is basically the only thing I spend my spare cash /on/ -- but I can't compete with some of this, and it's making me blue. Storyville -- $140 for a full 5mL Queen of Spades -- $113 for a 60% full 5mL these are just two that I remember off the top of my head. I feel very lucky to have managed a swap for an imp of Storyville, and so I'm content; I just hope that this increase in prices isn't going to continue and become 'normal'. I have enough of a problem keeping cash as it is... this'll either make me totally broke, or make me break my habit.

Yeah, so I just bought a partial of Mabon and a 10mL of Lex Talionis on ebay. In my defence, the prices were all right given the content (Mabon was a little expensive, I probably should've actually read the auction info...) Lex is a gift for Ian, because I feel a little guilty about realising that I'm keeping "his" bottle of Schwarzer. (He'd better like Lex, because he's got a damn huge bottle coming.) Mabon I just wanted to try, but not enough to actively hunt down an imp.. then this half-full bottle appeared in front of me, and I leapt. I'll wait until all the bottles I have coming are here, sniff through them all, live with them for a bit, then do a massive destashing. I think I'll email Jocosa about Ice Queen... I'm thrilled to have gotten to try as much as I have, and there are one or two bottles I still have my eye on (most notably some Havisham up on Ebay) but once all this has been gone through I think I'll stick to a small stash of fragrances. Still want to try Black Moon, but other than that... eh.

I've held off reviewing DD because even though it's one of my favourite scents, I can't pick out notes in it and it's hard to describe :/ But it's so beautiful that I had to write something here. TONE: Exactly what the name suggests -- dark but delicate. It's a ladylike blend, a bottled version of the blonde-haired dame in a forties film noir. Unique in that, while it has so many rich components and such a dark tone, it nontheless isn't at all a /heavy/ blend. I've never smelled anything like it, and it's purrr-fect for me. NOTES: The orchid comes on strong for a while, and what must be the devil's trumpet accord -- some unnamed floral diluting the high sweetness of the orchid. My mother smells something vaguely cocoa-esque, which I think is the coconut. After a few hours, it dries into this amazing resinous scent warmed by the fruit gums. Still, it escapes being heavy! VERDICT: I love this blend. Hunted down seven decants and then a bottle, and they all mine. Orchid is usually too sweet for me (Queen Mab) but now i'm curious to try Black Moon.

I couldn't sleep last night, so I rifled through my imp box trying to find an appropriately soporific blend. Dove's Heart was the closest I had -- soothing an unquiet mind in order to get some friggin' shut-eye. I applied it to my wrists and temples, and within ten minutes was sleeping like a baby I couldn't identify specific notes in this one (I'm bad with the voodoo blends generally) but there's something about it that reminds me vaguely of Come to Me -- a light herbal aquatic-ness that I actually really like. Dove's Heart is a bit too lavender-y for me to want to wear it as a scent, but it's not unpleasant to smell. On the whole it's a sweet smell, but with an herbal bitterness somewhere in there -- it's light, with relatively good throw and decent staying power, and dries down on me to a sweet powder skin scent that was still on my wrists when I awoke this morning. SO glad I had an imp of this lying around!

I don't like having a lot of bottles sitting around not getting any affection. I also don't like not having bottles of stuff I know I /do/ love -- like tarot: The Hermit, and Brisingamen, and Perversion. I do like being identifiable by scent, so here's the short list of what's staying, what needs to come in and what I know eventually has to go: STAYING Havisham La Fee Verte [signature... when it's not that time of the month] Snow Bunny [dance/saturdays/special-but-not-Going-Out stuff] Shub-Niggurath [winter comfort scent] Perversion --> NEED BOTTLE [Jon] Brisingamen --> NEED BOTTLE [work/professional scent] Tarot: The Hermit --> NEED BOTTLE [studying/focus/divination/introspection scent] Monster Bait: Closet [come-smex-me scent -- could use another bottle] Dark Delicacies GOING The Ecstasy of Passion The Ecstasy of True Love Spooky Snow White Skadi Ice Queen Trick #2 Devil's Night 05 [ach! How I wish I wore this more! it's beautiful... I just don't reach for it much :/] Bitter Moon Pink Moon 2005 Buck Moon Milk Moon Beaver Moon Stardust 05 Spanked Snowblind Cinnamon SN Siberian Musk SN EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED Vieux Carre Bruja Ingenue Brides of Dracula Gypsy Queen MUST TRY Black Moon -- even though it's the same niche as Dark Delicacies, which I looove too much to ever give up Storyville -- I have a weird feeling I'd like it. Yes, even though I've tried it. don't ask me why, I just go with my little hunches... Boomslang -- what can I say, i'm hopeful! MUST BUY Tarot: The Hermit/Brisingamen/Perversion Blue Moon Cancer astrological blend April Fool's blend, whatever it is

It's funny: Ice Queen, the scent that spawned my love affair with BPAL's snowy/icy blends, is actually the one of them I like least now. I still enjoy it, don't get me wrong. It's beautiful, but it's just a little too sharp/hard for me: the white musks are just slightly too prominent, it's just -- well, "too hard" is the only way I can describe it. I have low hopes for Skadi, because it seems that Skadi is Ice Queen but slightly /harder/. Guh. I'm avoiding Frost Moon (eucalyptus smells like armpit funk on me) and Cold Moon/Snow Moon just don't seem worth hunting down. I've tried Ice Queen, Snow White, Snow Bunny, Snow Angel, and Havisham, and I have a bottle of Skadi coming my way. Of those, Snow White I have realised must go -- while she's lovely, she's just too sweet for me, and there's something slightly too aquatic about the scent for me to be comfortable. Part of it is the coconut, but there's this strange milky non-sugar sweetness to it that (while it's nice) I find ultimatel off-putting. and there's no sense in sitting on two bottles of something so sought-after if I'm not gonna love them. Weirdly, I like Snow Bunny much better than I like Snow White -- the Bunny has all of the good things about Snow White, combined with some of the powdersugar perk of Snow Angel. Honestly, while I like Snow Angel (especially on the drydown) I think I might like Snow Bunny better! But Shhh, don't speak loudly of my sacrilege. Havisham is, of course, achingly beautiful: a strange-yet-classic frosty aquatic rose, not a scent to wear every day but a scent to cherish. I'm almost glad I have so little of it -- peversely, it'll stop me taking it for granted, something I feel like I do with my GC loves Perversion and Brisingamen. (Incidentally, I need to learn to stop reviewing scents the first time I wear them: I'm usually too enraptured by their loveliness to step back and see how they /compare/ to things I already like/dislike. Thus my reviews all tend to be gushy, even though I only like some of what I've got.)

My ammo boxes came today. I have four 50-count green ammo boxes and I'm trying to decide how to sort my imps into them... one box is reserved for intent blends (voodoo, celestials, tarot, sephiroth [if I ever get any], panacea, and of course TAL) and one box is reserved for favourites/multiple imps, but I'm not sure what to do with the rest of them. Oh well... I'll figure it out Also, the imp-to-bottle ratio sucks. five imps (admittedly, 2 were partially empty so really about 4.5 imps) make up about 3/4 of a bottle. 4.5 imps = 0.75 bottles, so we're looking at 6 imps to the bottle. Some decanters say they get 7 imps to the bottle. ((glum)) Oh well... at least I have the equivalent of two bottles of DD. Orchid-scented deliciousness, apply here.

m'akay, here's how the next order is shaping up: Milk Moon April Fool's Blend [$35] The Ghost [$50] Tarot: The Hermit [$76.50] April 1, I can/not/ wait for you to get here... I'll ignore Rose Moon, so I should be safe next month (:S) but my beginning-of-June order is gonna start like this: 2xBlue Moon [$35] Brisingamen [$50] oh yeah, and I totally caved. Got a partial bottle of Black Moon. :/

Snow Bunny = teh SEX. I may need another partial bottle to make up one full bottle. I like it better than I like Snow White... it reminds me a lot of Snow Angel, actually, which is a good Now I'm just trying to convince myself /not/ to try Black Moon... even though I'm pretty sure I'll like it, Dark Delicacies fits in the same niche, and I already have a bottle and 7 (yes, seven) decants of that one coming. Mouse's Long and Sad Tale is okay. It dries down to a pleasant sweet vanilla-amber-sandalwood that reminds me a bit of Underpants, only cuter and nicer. I may keep the bottle. RUNNING TO h_f's PLACE!

I cautiously like MLST. PRECONCEPTIONS: I wasn't sure about at first -- based on the note list alone, I thought it would be too cutesy and sweet for me. But someone had a bottle up for sale, and she had other stuff I wanted, so I just bought it and figured what the hell. IN THE BOTTLE: it doesn't smell terribly pleasant -- it's heavy on the vanilla, but it's an odd thin sharp vanilla. Maybe that's the sweet pea. WET AND DRYING: it smelled better -- if I had to identify it I'd say it was a vanilla sweet pea blend. The amber started coming out after about ten minutes, which is good since I like amber, but it doesn't amp hugely on my skin, which is odd. At this stage, and for the next hour, it's almost a straight vanilla-amber made floral by the addition of the twining sweet pea. pleasant, but not a huge amount of throw, and a little too sweet for me... DRY: After about an hour, though, the sandalwood starts coming through. Mmmm. With the warmth of the sandalwood to ground it, and once the sweet pea has stopped twining around everything with its cloying sweetness, this turns into a lovely vanilla-amber-sandalwood scent that is stopped from being thick and too warm by the /hint/ of greeny-sweet floral. It's very pleasant, and I like smelling it. BOTTOM LINE: I do like it. I'll have to live with it for a bit to see if I'll really use it, and it is a bit gentle for me, but it's not something I'm aching to heave out of my box. Reccomended for those who like the sweet and gentle scents; it's everthing it promises to be, if you can get past the phase of choking sweetsweetsweet pea-vanilla.