Ahania

I've got SAD, too, so if you hear back from Beth please post what she says! I've been wearing Et Lux Fuit and a lot, which is from last year but it pops up on ebay pretty often, and doesn't sell for that much more than the lab price. Sol Invictus is another good cheery one for me, keep your eyes out for that as well.

Two requests in a row for sandalwood and vanilla, and no one ahead of me to suggest Mouse's Long and Sad Tale! I haven't smelled the Wild Oats scent but the notes sound Mousey to me. DBS, how citrusy is Mariella Burani? And if it is citrusy, which would you say is dominant? If you like orangey, you may try to hunt down some Sol Invictus in the swaps/sales threads. It's a warm, rich orange scent.

This oil is such a cheery scent that when I first sniffed my bottle, it gave me the giggles! It smells just like the air at a carnival when they're making pink cotton candy- fruity, probably strawberry but not obviously so, and that light-as-air spun sugar scent. BPAL strawberry usually goes plasticky on me, but this doesn't at all.

Here's a thread for Lolita Lempicka recs.

This might sound crazy (OK, it sounds crazy) but I found the throw from Lyonesse to be very similar to Selkie, even though when I sniff the bottle or my wrist they're completely different. I think it's the sea moss taking over. In any case, I'm not complaining.

Oh, she beat me to it! But I would add that if you get a new imp and don't like it, let it sit around a few months and try it again. Aging it really mellows the sandalwood, which is kind of sharp when it's new.

I think III is much lighter than V, which I hadn't expected at all. V is very rich and much stronger. I barely notice the pumpkin in III, though.

I haven't smelled it, but have you looked at the reviews for Cairo? They're pretty helpful, and we've got several pages.

Wet, I get a hint of vanilla and a warm blend of ginger and mandarin. It has a similar feel to Mr. Nancy even though the notes are all different. As it starts to dry, the sweetness fades and the opium and tobacco come to the forefront, making this a complex and intriguing scent. After it's on about five minutes, though, everything except the tobacco goes away, and it gets soapy. It's hard to accept that anything with notes like this one, which is pretty much an Ahania shopping list, would go so bad on me. I'm going to wait a week or so and try again in the hopes my chemistry will change and this will become what I had dreamed of.

I like Cathode when I have a cold. It's minty for my head, but has some cozy moss, as well.

I love amber, saffron, clove, and camellias, so I had to order a bottle of this. And it smelled exactly like dead leaves, mostly dry but with a few hints of decay. No saffron at all. I didn't notice much morphing besides the scent getting drier. It's kind of intriguing to sniff in the bottle, but not enough to keep it. It definitely smells like walking in the woods in October at night, which I love to do, but apparently I don't love to smell like it.

This smelled exactly the way Life Savers Butter Rum candies taste. I'm not a fan of those at all and was tempted to wash, but kept thinking, hey, it's Grog! I have to love grog, right? I kept hoping it would morph, but it stayed exactly the same as it faded. I like rum scents, but the rum in here smelled very artificial to me, and it made me kind of queasy. Off to swaps.

I don't think I can say enough good things about this. It starts out with juicy pear- more like baked pear than fresh, you know how it goes sweeter and mellower with cooking, that's what this does. The vanilla is lovely and warm, and it's strong without beating you over the head with itself. The pear does fade pretty quickly, and I miss it but the lingering vanilla is too pretty to mind too much.

I was so excited to be getting this, and it just isn't meant to be. In the bottle, it's all lovely dark fruity goodness. On, it turns into cough syrup. Not the good cough syrup where they put in enough flavor to hide the medicine taste so you'll keep buying their brand, either. No, just the store-brand where the flavor is sort of half-assed, because they know you only bought it because you're standing in the store dying and want to get home. You know it doesn't work when I hope for the patchouli to get stronger and take over. The coffin, on the other hand, is absolutely gorgeous, so I'm still glad I bought the set.

Amazon: thanks to the marvelous cordia, I was reminded how to make a link to my amazon wishlist! Yay! Widdersuds: Yeah, this is a huge list, but so many sound good! Besides, this way, if you decided to order me something from them, you'll be sure of finding something that you want to smell for yourself. Bubble bath, shower gel, bath salts, soap bars, deoderant, solid perfume... they all sound good. (Just not the emu oil, please.) Alegria Amaretto Tiramisu Apple Cobbler Delight Arabian Spice Asian Plum Bartlett & Basil Beyond Paradise Bermuda Sands Black Amber And Lavender Black Orchid And White Lily Blackberry Blueberry Blood Orange Buttercream and Snickerdoodle Basil Lime Black Currant Rose Bermuda Triangle Black Cherry Black Magic Black Currant Cannoli di Albicocca Caravan Spice Cashmeran Carmelized Pralines Carrot Cake Cranberry Dark Chocolate Solstice (Godiva Type) Fig Gingerlily Got Milk? Grannies Pumpkin Cookies Guinefyr's Tryst Hawaiian Black Heavenly Blue Lotus Jade Mayan Gold Moonlight Musk Nile Queen Night Spirit™ Pineapple Kiawe Pumpkin Harvest Stormwatch Snow Queen™ Turkish Mocha Tahitian Gardenia (Tiare) Anubis Hathor Nefertum Renenutet Sekhmet Thoth Anubis- Eternal Version Villainess: Contrary Crushed Decadence Embargo Jade Krakatoa Shanghaied Silk and Cyanide

See, I think of Port-Au-Prince as a pirate scent too, but I have no idea if that's based in reality or just cause it's so sexy.

I love War- it's headed for my bottle list. It's a warmer scent than I'm thinking of, though (wanting a cold scent but not liking mint doesn't help things). I think what I really want is for Beth to start doing custom blends again. That would solve all my problems in life and I would start getting straight A's and win the lottery and lose 20 pounds without trying.

Since the Diesel has carnation, I wouldn't let the lavender rule out Villain- I don't think it's that strong in there, and I think both carnation and lavender are nice kind of spicy-florals for men. (Yup, I am fully prepared to be trouted for comparing the two.) Maybe War, for ginger? I really fell for it as soon as I tried it, and I think it would be nice on a fella.

I was so hopeful for this one, mainly because of the label art. Sadly, it was not meant to be. Wet, it's a strong, sharp floral. As it dries, I hoped the sharpness would calm down, and it did... but it turned into sweet spicy bubblegum. It stayed that way for quite a while while I tried to decided whether or not I liked it, but then it up and turned to soap, and bubblegum soap, at that, so it decided for me. As sorry as I am for Karen that it didn't work for her, if she hadn't said something about detergent I would have wondered if I even had the right stuff in my imp, since it went so different on me than apparently everyone else. Sniff. It sounded so pretty.

Oh, that's what sunflowers smell like! I noticed this note in Et Lux Fuit but couldn't place it. It starts out oddly sweet and green. As it dries, the floral takes over, with some greeness lingering, but not sweet anymore. The drydown goes kind of harsh on me, still floral but kind of acrid.

I want the ultimate mean scent. Something that says, "I will kill you as soon as look at you." So far Les Fleurs du Mal is the closest for me. Whip and Wanda are out because of the leather, Marquise de Merteuil is more elegant than I want, and I can't remember why I didn't like Vicomte de Valmonte, but I know that didn't work either.

I almost passed this one up because of the cedar, but everything else sounded so good, I decided to go for it, and I'm certainly glad I did. I never got any cedar from it at all. For Christmas last year I got a bag of lavender cream Earl Grey tea which is pure heaven, and this smells so much like that tea, plus caramel. The lavender stays fairly dominant on me the whole time I wear it, but it doesn't overpower the creamy caramel goodness. I don't smell any fruit or other flowers at all. I really, really like it a lot.

Wet: depression and soggy, decaying herbs Dry: somber, with a hint of fruitiness and dirt but mainly an astringent wet mildewy floral. Sniffing it on my wrist is giving me a bitter taste in my mouth, which has never happened to me before. I'm glad there's lots of people who love theirs, because mine is off to swap.

Well, she's a nice, respectable girl, so I'm sure she wears Underpants. Not like today's teen hussies. ETA: I'm sorry. That was completely useless. I just couldn't help myself.

...and I love it so. In the imp and wet, it smelled almost exactly like Siren- that same sharp nasty ginger. Once it was on and dry, though, it turned gorgeous. The ginger stays dominant, but the honeysuckle pops up and evens it out. There isn't enough for me to smell it and go, "yup, that's honeysuckle," just a nice sweet floral. I usually don't care for red musk, since it tends to take over on me, but it stays put in a nice supporting role here. Even without vanilla, it reminds me a lot of Siren except less sweet.