pkwench

Neo-Tokyo Before I can even whiff it, I'm just tickled pink and excited. This is the one I most wanted to try in the imps that came. Vial: A very soft floral. Light and airy. *prays body chemestry does not turn it into a soapy flora* Wet: It smells white, subtle. A little mournful, but in that purely beautiful way. After 10: Floral, but not a soapy one. It's still very soft. I'm waiting for the ozone. WUHAHAH. After 20: A light floral still. Mostly cherry blossom, I think. There's a cool, fresh air to it, that I think must be the ozone. It smells very peaceful, a little lonely, a little mournful, but still very lovely. I dislike the way a lot of florals have turned on me, so this is quite nice. Beautiful! Edited to add that it gets more and more lovely with each passing minute. This one goes right on the big bottle list. *swoooooooon!*

Vial: It smells very dry and herbalesque-like herbs left hanging to dry. Wet: It's sweetened up now and has a sort scent that reminds me of sage lotion After 10: It smells exactly like a greenhouse right now. Which is no bad thing-I love that smell. There's a bit of a soapy tinge starting to peek in though, I hope it's temporary. After 20/30: Alas the soapyness. I really enjoyed the greenhouse aspect to it, but that darn soapy thing that my body can do to some scents ruined it. I'm hoping that it's transitional and that in an hour or so it'll fade.

Vial: Something candied and sweet. Rather syrupy, really. Wet: Very syrupy now, but with a strange whiff of ozone. After 10: It's cooler now, still sweet, but in a light, playful, and floral sort of way. It's getting a tad faint already though. After 20/30: It's very light now, but soft, fruity, and with a pale floral that's really quite lovely. I could 5ml this and be very happy!

Ave Maria Gratia Plena Vial: woody and floral - mostly floral Wet: A bit sweet, very floral with a musky twinge to it. After 10: White musk, white floral, floral, floral, and more floral. You know, it's really nice to sample scents like this. Not only does it give you a chance to find out what smells good on you and such, but it also helps, I think, to train a person on what their body chemistry does to certain scents and what scents they truly enjoy. And I'm learning that overtly floral ones are not my thing. I like them resiny or fruity. Knowledge is good. Let's see what this one does after a bit longer. After 20/30: The white musk is actually dominating the florals a bit now, which is good, but it's still not an outstanding or special scent on me. It is very pretty and feminine though and on the right person, I think this would be divine. I, however, am not that person.

Rosalind Vial: Green and floral. It reminds me of a perfume my mother used to wear. Which one I know not. Wet: Green and so soothing. It smells like a bamboo candle mixed with light florals and a touch of something sweet. After ten: A bit fruity now amongst all of the greenery and quite nice! After an hour: It's faded down to a very light, barely there scent, but I think if I put it on a little heavier that it'd stick longer. It's a light, dewy and green floral-very nice and not too strong in the floral tones. I'm going to put this on my 5ml list.

Vial: Wet and earthy. Is there some patchouli going on in here? Wet: Something sweet and bubblegummy kicked in the moment I put it on my skin. Interesting. After 10: Yowsa! It's powdery, but there's a big, swanky kick of pepper in it now too. White pepper, it seems like. It's invigorating. After 20: Still powder and pepper. It's somehow like having just stepped out of a bath so that you could dry off and put on a peppery body powder. It smells like powdery, peppery, clean skin. It's very nice and I think it's a gender neutral kind of smell. This would smell fabulous on the better half. I think I'll send it to him to see what he thinks. *G*

Vial: Green and soapy-agreed. Wet: Super!Soapy. After 10: Sweet, green, and very floral. After 20: Mostly floral and green. It's nice, but not really special on me. I think I'm too tired to be doing that. Or, the Titania was so nice that my nose is poopooing now in favor of it. LOL

Vial: It's very difficult for me to discern seperate notes when smelling this in the vial. This is due to 1-a mostly uneducated nose and 2-my brain shutting down every single thought other than "ooooh, niiiiice". It's fruity-almost reminiscent of a very, very cold apple juice, but very lightly fruity. Not overly sweet in the floral range yet at this point either. Wet: I can smell more of a musky scent now that it's on my hand and there's a bit more sweetness and more of a floral element emerging. But it's not a HI THERE! floral, so much as it is a soft one-tempered by the musk and fruity smells. My brain is still sighing in delight. After 10: This is beautiful. It's floral without being overtly floral-which is so nice because I've found that I don't really care for the strong variety in that regard. The fruit aspect of it blends in so well and so effortlessly. It's just a delight. There's a faint hint of earth beneath it as well that gives it a pleasing depth-that may be the musk rose, I suppose? I hope it's still nice after a bit longer because I am in LOVE. After 20: Okay, it's official. I am in LOVE. Next order I place, I am getting a bottle of Titania. It's just so LOVELY. It's the perfect romantic scent. And I love it because it's soft, femine, and floral, but with enough fruit and sweetness to really work on my skin and smell like something really, really special. It's the sort of scent that I would wear at my wedding. And, since that's next summer, it's nice to have found one that would be appropriate!

Vial: YUMMY. There's something orange-y/citrus in there, but there's a lot of deepening by multiple spice agents. Also, I have the sinus headache from the 7th level of hell (great for perfume sampling, but of course) and when I took a whiff from the vial, it receded for a moment. Sweet. Wet: Orange and spice. Along with something a little sweet. After 10: The warm spice is still there, but it's powdery now and has a floral tinge to it. After 20: A light floral scent with a fairly hefty powdery kick, and a remaining tinge of that initial orange/spice kick. Nice, but on me nothing really special. Actually, the more it dries, the more it smells like Cordelia does on me on the drydown. I think if it can be turned sweet, my chemistry will do it and I think if there's a hint of floral, my chemistry likewise turns it into a rocket and the predominate scent. Interesting. Edited to add: after about 45 minutes, and right before I showered, the resin perked up a bit and kicked the floral down. That made it much nicer for me.

Vial: Straight up lotus. Which is a pleasing and somehow hippy scent. Wet: Lotus and very sweet at that. Almost candied. It's bubblegum! After 10: It's still very sweet, but definately not as sweet or bubblegummy. The sandalwood is making it woody and I'm just starting to get a teasing whiff of amber's resin. The myrrh must be what's kicking the sweetness down a notch. After 20: There's a touch more resin now, but it's about the same-sweet lotus, tempered by a wee bit of sandalwood, darkend a bit by the myrrh, with the amber. It does smell like a hippy incense and "smoking accessories" shop, but that's no bad thing. Cloyingly sweet, but still darn nice.

Pain. Vial: Another minty one. Wet: Minty and woodsy. Something like bamboo? No, I guess not, but it's quite herbalesque. Drying: It smells like a altenate universe mint. After 10: Something more woody is emerging along with the mint and if I think about what I'm smelling and force the brain to ignore the mint, I can, yes, catch a whiff of lavender. All in all: Very nice, very clean, and very refreshing. But, like Calliope and Nine Mysteries, the minty smell is dominate and, consequently, on me they all smell very similar.

The Star: Vial: Very bright, lightly minty, and sweet. Wet: The same with strong candy overtones. Drying: A lot of lime, a lot of candy sweetness, and a touch of coconut and something else to give it a tropical, bright sort of zing to it. After 10: As someone mentioned, yes, this is like Bath and Bodyworks' Coconut Lime Verbena. Only it's MUCH more potent and drool-worthy. It's what Coconut Lime Verbena would want to grow up and be like. God, I like this. *sniffs self* After 25: Cannot stop smelling hand. Lovelovelovelovelove!

Baron Samedi Vial: The first sniff is a very potent and sweet almond. The second is the same, but I can detect something ... musty beneath it. Something old. Wet: Almondy and there's that dead note. *twitch* Drying: It's settling, the sweet is receding and the dead note is evolving into something musky and powdery. After 10: Spicey and boozy with a bit of something powdery going on. 25 Minutes: It smells like a red Christmas candle. I'm very glad that musty, dead smell faded out because this is quite nice now. One thing that I really like about this one is that it doesn't turn super sweet on me. That's a nice change! Much later: The musty smell came back up and tempered the Christmas candle smell. It smells more manly now and a little bit like pot. Sort of the hint that's left on your clothes when you've breezed through a pot smoke cloud-but haven't really had any yourself.

Overwhelmed and loving it. In the vial, all I could smell was a delicious salty, sweetness. But after I put it on and let it sit for a little bit, I was so overcome with deja`vu that my brain stopped even attempting to pull scents out and lay in them in a neat line. I have smelled something exactly like this before and, wherever and whatever it was, it made me happy. First I thought it was something that I wore, then I got a fat hit of lotus and thought that it was some kind of incense that I used to burn or smelled in one particular spot. Now, I have no idea. Could have been on me or on a stick, but deja`vu is all my brain will process right now. That and the sheer delight from this scent. It's clean, it's wet, it's fresh, and it's simply lovely.

In the vial: First thing I smell is the Dragon's Blood Resin. Consequently, I drool and decide that's the first Bpal oil to try. Wet: Dragon's blood with something underneath that does, to my amazement (and I don't know why it should amaze me, but it does), smell like leather. After 10 minutes: the cinnamon starts coming through and the spot where I applied the oil feels warm from beneath the skin, but, of course, isn't when I touch it. It's going fruity/cinnamony/with a tad of something lurking beneath it right now. It very much reminds me of the Brach's Cinnamon hard candy. I always found that candy strange because it did taste like cinnamon, but a buttery cinnamon. So, that's where I am now, buttery cinnamon fruit with something hidden. And that may be where it stays on me. But, it sure is delightful.

My first thought was that it smelled a lot like Calliope to me. And it still does on the dry down - very pepperminty and soothing with something green, notes of lavender. But where as Calliope goes a little pepperminty and floral on me, Nine Mysteries is peppermint and green. I think maybe I get a hint of juniper or something of the sort from it. And, on reflection, I think maybe the Nine Mysteries is more peppermint-y than Calliope. It's much hotter-candy cane or like a very hot, peppermint gum-than the other. But it's very soothing, very uplifting, and very, very happy. It's been a life-saver today when my whole day's been whipped around 180 and everything that I Thought I had planned had been flushed down the karmic crapper. LOL As an afterthought, I can catch a faint whiff of something on the cap that I think smells like anise.

In the vial I could smell what I assume was patchouli, but it wasn't enough to put me off - as patchouli generally does. Wet it had about the same smell, and then as it began to dry it got a bit spicey. Then the funk began. But, on me it was a short funk period. Maybe 5 minutes while my freaked out, hormone addled, PMS'd body chemistry attacked it and gave it a run through the Pkwench wringer. After that brief phase, it was incensey with a light streak of patchouli. What it really reminded me of was a stick of the anonymous black incense sticks in the run of the mill cheap incense multi-packs. Sometimes they call it opium, sometimes patchouli, sometimes midnight-this, that, or the other, but ever notice with that kind of stuff that all of the black insense smelled the same? Yeah, it had that smell and, though I abhore that kind of incense, it really wasn't bad at all. It smelled rather nice, in a spicey I-eat-wimps-for-breakfast kind of way. The final dry down was a strange, comforting, powdery, sweaty man smell. That's the only way I can describe it. It smelled spent. It smelled, if you will, like walking into a room where incense had been burning all night and where someone had been making love all night until they woke up dazed to find it morning with candles guttered, wax pooling on the dresser top, and the contents of a tub of powder shattered on the floor.

In the vial: Oh, holy peppermint! That give my sinuses a good clearing. Wet: Oh, holy peppermint! I know, we've been here before. As it starts to dry down, it goes through a strange medicinal phase that I wasn't sure that I cared for at all. But now that the mediciney feeling is fading, it's lavender and mint and reminds me very much of a migraine oil that I have and, thusly, is a very peaceful and calming scent for me. The verbena, btw, is just barely there adding a little zing to it all. Nummy. This would be a good scent for a day when I could use a hug.

On first sniff, I get a lot of lemon and lilac. And, when I put it on, that's what I smell like-lemon and lilac. Which, really, isn't all together unpleasing. Then it becomes, as someone else likened it to, an eldery woman's perfume. It must be the florals, because it has that "from another generation" sort of aroma. However, on me, it mellows down one more tone to a very, very light floral heightened by the musk. There's also a tiny bit of green tea left in it by that point. It's not all together unpleasing, really, and I find myself liking it more on the second round of testing it than I did the first. The more I warm up to it, the more it's "a timeless feminine scent" instead of "old lady perfume". Anyway, not an everyday scent for me, nor one that made me want to touch myself, but it's certainly very nice and ladylike. *G* ~Pkwench

It starts with something powdery and cherryish for me. Then it warms up, gets sultry, and I'm imbued with the desire to dance naked around the house like Madonna, call up the boy, and get lewd. It's definately a very saucy, warm, and sweet scent on me. It also makes me think many an impure thought, oh, saints preserve us.