starfish327

in the imp: i get the vetiver, the musk and something woody. wet: civet actually sometimes reads to me as chocolate, and this is actually foody on me wet (or it was today at least). it reminds me of walnut fudge). dry: this is much more incensy than foody dry. i get the really dirty civet (love me some civet!) and the smoke. it's this gorgeous dirty black musk type scent on my skin. it is however a very heavy dark musk blend, with a really good throw. i barely applied any and i still got throw a good four hours after i applied it (which is extremely rare on my skin). i also wouldn't wear this much in summer but now that it's starting to want to cool down i can see myself wearing this one.

in the imp: chai spiced black tea....hmm? really? this remains to be seen. wet: yep. chai spiced black tea, sweetened, but no milk. dry: pretty much the same, and it dries down in long dry down to the slightly plasticy note that honey turns on me sometimes. the only downside is that it disappears rather fast- i applied this an hour and a half ago and it's gone already, and all i did was lay down for a nap. i've been looking for a solid spiced blend that i can layer, and i think that this is the closest that i've gotten so far. this smells like a stash chai spiced black tea bg right after you open it.

...death apparently likes a good curry. pass.

this starts out sweet candied powdery vanilla-rose, and then turns to pineapple, but i didn't place the pineapple note until reading the reviews. it's a very pretty, laid back type of scent. i could see putting this on a kid, or a pre-teen without a problem. it's very gentle, and honestly it's a better rose on my skin (maybe because it's not actually rose?). i do like it, however, i don't ever see myself wearing it. this may actually be the opposite of sexy to me, though it's also not the fault of the blend. this smells like what i think the stereotypical victorian would smell like- feminine, pretty, but ultimately safe. i studied victorian through jazz age sexuality as an undergrad and this conjures up ideas of covered piano legs and corsets. it's very pretty for what it is, but again, i'm not sure i would actually wear it.

in the imp:...nothing. nada. zip. i might as well be sniffing rubbing alcohol. wet:...still nothing. huh. dry: okay, this is better. this actually reminds me slightly of the coil, though the coil was much more floral on me. it's faintly fruity, faintly citrusy, faintly herbal, and slightly sharp. it's quite nice actually. i think what i'm interpreting as citrus is the white musk- if i sniff heavily i can get the skin-sour note i get from some white musks, but the rest of the blend is keeping it in check. there's definitely an ozone note in here, and it's definitely an electric style ozone. it's quite nice actually. i'm not sure about throw but it's rather faint to me.

this may be a fairly straightforward question, but do you get a cns with a paypal order? my bottle of samhain was the first order that i've made where i went paypal directly and not CnS. i mean, i would image you would but i'm not sure.

in the imp: yep boozy chocolate. wet: chocolate and whiskey, though it's not really overpoweringly boozy either. i would probably be comfortable wearing this to work if i applied it early enough in the day. it does smell like fudge dry: nutty chocolate, and faintly smoky, but the smoke could be coming from the last blend i tested as well. i think i prefer the coconut and ginger truffle (which also does not have a booze note which gives it a leg up because i'm not comfortable wearing booze notes to work), but i like this is a lot more than when i first got it.

well i guess this is what happens when the forest decides to rise up against you... in the imp: woody grapes: wet: that sweet koolaidy grape note i love so much in bordello and smoke. i'm not sure i like this combination. if the smoke were more assertive maybe, right now it just reminds me of grapes and stale cigerettes. dry:....somone left the grapes to rot on the vines in the sun. think i'll pass.

in the imp: i'm not sure what i was thinking of, but this is a lot less floral than what i was expecting. this is quite nice actually- it's musky floral, almost perfumy, i'd almost say mature? it's the type of thing i can myself wearing to a dress up type of event if that makes sense wet: more musky floral, almost herbal-sharp but not quite. i'm assuming that i'm reading the neroli now that i have the note list in front of me. dry: dark musk and florals, but it's a lot more balanced than wet. i actually like this one a lot.

i really want to like the caterpillar, but i'm not sure he wants to like me back. i'm constantly hunting for spicy/incense blends, they're my current obsession. the caterpillar comes close. in the imp: smells similar to a lot of the incense blends that i have in my collection- slightly woody and spicy. touch of sweetness. wet: nice. heavy sweet incense. in fact it smells like the new age shop in the mall. i can live with this even if people in my social circle would laugh at me. dry:...crap. this went to perfume: nothing but sweet florals. to be fair this is the first jasmine heavy blend that i can wear, which is making me wonder if it's the jasmine i even have problems with. same with the carnation. though it may just be balanced out with the other notes. but it also seems to be an indecisive caterpillar because he can't make up his mind and periodically i amp the patch and vetiver again. i think that i'm going to keep this one for another full wearing and see what happens, because i have a feeling that this is more an issue of disconnect with what i thought it would smell like more than not liking how it smells.

hi! i'm determined to make that whole comm smell good. i actually enabled like three people last night with the 'weenies... on topic: i think that lucy, kissed will go on my iso list, and i've been meaning to try zombi anyway. i have an imp of godfather death in my test bag already (i think).

a comment in a review got me thinking. i amp rose to 11, as in, think bathroom cleaner. most rose blends don't work on me (though i can wear blends like bien loin d'ici). however, most of the time what gets me isn't so much that i amp rose so much as it is that they're way too feminine and girly. i'm not a light, pretty, floral type person- i sort of need to smell like death (i heart the gore shock) and burning not tea parties in the garden. so are there blends that run towards at least the androgynous if not masculine?

very sweet and sort of grainy. reminds me of a graham cracker. the pumpkin in this one is more buttery than normal. i think i like the nutty one with walnut better than this one, but this one is nice.

in the bottle: very sweet, caramelly but not burnt. it's definitely the same family as sugar skull but not as...fruity or burnt- this is white sugar where sugar skull started out life as brown sugar. wet: this actually reminds me of coffee more than kettle corn. it reminds me of a caramel macchiato though the years of working as a barista may have me biased. dry: yep this is still more coffee sweet than candy sweet. i get the impression of corn more than the actual smell of corn. i wish i had tested this earlier, it's lovely. it actually reminds me a lot of sleipnir for some reason, maybe the sweetness and the grain.

oh goblin ilu so much... sweet coconut that's not candy sweet except at first application. there's a deep vanilla-tobacco feel to it as well, which must be the patch though i would be shocked if there wasn't tobacco in this. it's like eating mounds bars in a tobacco shop. damn this is gorgeous. win win win. and i don't even know where this imp showed up from lol. the bpal gods must like me today.

woody, earthy rose. the rose behaves better than in a lot of blends, but wooden doll strikes me as being too feminine and tame for my tastes. it's nice if not a little mundane.

a very sweet slightly woody rose. i don't get much wood from this blend, but it's not going soapy or overpoweringly rose on my chemistry either. that's a rarity, though this is still definitely a rose blend more than a pumpkin blend. i'll try layering it with either a spice or pumpkin to see if i can pull more pumpkin from it.

in the imp: brown and sugary. reminds me of sugar skull. wet: the lab's pumpkin note, almond coffee syrup, and a sweetness that i'm going to assume is the brown musk- i've never worn a blend that uses brown musk dry: slightly pumpkiny, the same brown sugar note, and honey. very warm without spice. i really like this one but i wish there was a touch of spice to this.

cxl (141) previously reviewed as fruity in the imp: sweet and fruity wet: musky and candy sweet dry: musky, rasberry, and orange- reminds me of akuma with musk

actually quite pretty- slightly spicy, pale brown type scent, very me. it's dirty, as in dirt like, but not muddy the way that some of the dirt blends have gone on my skin. it reminds me faintly of root beer (which i like). it reminds me of laudanum without the scent memories that blend gave me.

in the imp: leather and something so green it's coming across as medicinal and astringent wet: WHOAAAAA. this has the best leather note i've smelled, but it also has the worst mint/herbal quality of any green that i've had had go wrong on me- leather and sharpie, or paint thinner dry: it alternates between leather...and nothing, then green nastiness...then nothing, and then leather and green nastiness...and nothing. i really wanted this one to work too. this may be my biggest bpal disappointment yet.

i didn't realize that this has rose, or i put on my wishlist before i knew that rose and i are sworn enemies. but i love vetiver and leather, so i'll give it a shot. in the imp: vetiver and...something. i'm guessing the rose. but the vetiver is much stronger (though i normally detect it in much higher amounts when it's in a blend, so that's not saying much). wet: vetiver blast, then it backs down and becomes smoky rose. i can live with this- it's st. john's eve without the incense. dry: oh no. it's going sort of smoky plastic- though what i'm registering as plastic is actually the leather note, and it's actually a nice leather note. i'm just used to smelling it in blends where it's not this dominant on my skin. it's actually a fairly simple blend on me once it dries, and i actually wish i got more of the cinnamon or the rose just to balance out the leather and vetiver. i'm going to keep the imp for layering purposes but i'm not sure that i'm going to seek another one out when it's gone either. i like leather and vetiver but it's not complex enough to wear on its own.

in the imp: pink florals, very very floral, something sweet behind it. very young, though also precociously young. innocent though not particularly naive either. wet: pink florals. it's not as painful on my skin as florals normally are though. still very young and not really my style. dry: the florals have gone white, and straight into soap. florals are normally hit or miss, with majority being miss, on my skin so i'm not entirely surprised either. if it weren't so young i may have been tempted to keep it to try layering it under some darker blends but it's too girlish (not girly) to me to want to keep it- it's just not a good match for my personality.

in the imp: i had skimmed the reviews for this scent so i knew to expect lighter than what i had initially thought it would be, but this is MUCH lighter and cleaner that what i had thought. wet: all i'm getting is resins. this is still very clean. dry: it morphs between very clean almost soapy resins and spice. i think what i'm associating with soap is the floral aspect. impressions: um i guess hades is a lot less goth than what he thinks he is? because this not what i was expecting at all. i'm running into the same problem that i did with faunalia, except that i'll keep this one- i wanted something much darker and animalistic, and got what smells like some of the stuff my decidedly not animalistic guy friends wear. my first impression, though this smells nothing like old spice, are those old spice commercials where the guy is riding the horse and telling people that their boyfriends can smell like him. i'm going to try to layer this one to see if i can pull some of the spice out of it.

snow bunny is the only snow scent that i've found so far that i can actually wear. it's very cold, but it's also very sweet. in the imp and wet there's a hint of something fruity- a darker berry that borders on fig (but stays firmly on the berry end however), but the fruit fades and i can see where the pine references come from dry. it does have that impression that i get from some snows of bath products but it's not overpowering. i like snow bunny enough to keep my imp and the novelty of having a snow blend i can wear without pain makes me want to find a partial bottle but at the same time i'm going to wait to see if it gets released again so that the people who actually love the blend can access it.