starfish327

Screaming, high whiteness like psych horror was. Layered with a patchuli heavy blend the whiteness is cut down to a dull roar and I can start to get some of the darker notes nibbling at the edges.

Definately not a good blend on me.

in the imp-sharp. very sharp.

wet-wow. this is not what I was expecting at all. Sugared greenery. This is actually very nice. There doesn't seem to be the white musk that sneaks into a lot of green blends, and little to no florals. Whatever is making this sugary on my skin is also keeping it out of migraine territory.

Dry: Warning-this is the first day of my cycle so I want to retest this later and see if this is the problem. It keeps alternating between this gorgeous sugared woods and greenery scent with a hint of berry and bug repellant. It seems like the longer it's on the less bug repellent I'm getting and it's settling into gorgeous. I need to retest this when my hormones aren't at their most unbalanced because I'm going to put money on that being what's amping one of the herbs into Cutter repellant territory.

"One person said she wants to layer it with Gore-Shock as the perfect accent for her zombie chicken Halloween costume."

That would be me. I have that particular decant of tilt-a-hurl.

I can't believe I've never actually reviewed this decant.

I'm sort of infamous for my love of the weirder blends-I like Gore-shock.

This was one of the weirdest I've ever skin tested (and I skin test everything).

From memory, it started out a blast of vinegar. Which morphed into chocolate. Which turned into...sex. Not skin musk...it reeked like sex. It's definitely one of the Lupe style skin musks.

First it's all cookies, all the time. Which would be fine, it's behaving better than sugar cookie. It's a really realistic sugar cookie scent, not doughy or raw like a lot of the lab's pastry blends go on me. But then I get blasted with...butter. Ultrarealistic, fresh, butter. I don't want to smell like butter. Then it disappears completely, and then returns really faintly like the smell of incense smoke a long time after you burn some.

Whatever it morphs into later, as much as I like the cookie smell I don't want to smell like dairy and stale incense smoke.

I found a bunch of imps shoved in the back of a drawer that I've never tested-a bunch of them were still taped. This was one of them.

In the imp: musky rum. My nose is interpreting every musk as 'red' right now, but all I can tell is that it's not a dark musk.

Wet: Sweet rum. As in, rum with a little bit of that sweet musk and some vanilla. Honestly, I would like this if it stayed at wet.

Dry: Oh man. I'm going to need more of this. It tries to edge into plasticky, but I think that's where I'm in my cycle and the plastic wears off. The spices and the vetiver start coming forward, aggressively, and the rum starts swaggering around a bit. This isn't boozy rum.

I need more of this.

Spanked res is my don't f with me blend.

Blockbuster is a really effective antianxiety blend on me.

I would love a dollar store swap.

Watermelon Airheads. I used to sneak watermelon airheads when I was growing up during the summer. They sold them at the baseball games down the street for a quarter. Voice is a candy-sugar sweet melon all the way through. Occassionally I amp the woods and -sometimes- get a hint a floral but normally it's just straight up watermelon airheads. Right now I'm amping the woods in everything so it's slightly drier than when I normally wear it.

This is completey outside the range of what I normally wear and while I wouldn't want an entire bottle of it, sometimes it's nice to go back to the days I used to drench myself in cucumber melon lotion.

I really wanted to keep this one, but apparently it didn't want to like me as much as I wanted to like it.

In the imp: nothing. It hits my blind spot. It might as well be water.

Wet: very delicate, very gentle. I was expecting smoke, honestly. This is a very gentle, classic scent that reminds me of something from my past-but I can't put my finger on it. The thought that came to mind was 'important occassion blend'-like a job interview.

Dry: The same light, cologny frangrance and I'm starting to get some vanilla out of it. I like it, but it's a complete departure from my normal incense and darkness blends.

And...ten minutes later it's ivory soap.

Sad face.

I may have reviewed this one already, I'm not sure.

In the imp: I'm getting artifical peach and something reading as white musk.

On the skin: I swear there is white musk in this one. It's the sour dirtiness of white musk on my skin, the artifical peach, and something else vaguely 'fake' that I can't really place.

Dry: I didn't think it was that strong but my boyfriend commented that I was wearing something. It smells like stale peach jolly ranchers, and vaguely stale musk. It's not that bad, and it's a lot better thant the wet stage but it never moves beyond meh.

Off to the swaps.

Full confession: I wasn't expecting to like this one. At all.

In the imp: sweet (as in fruit sweet) red musk. It does feel very...fresh. I didn't know that red musk could come in fresh.

Wet: The strawberry leaf is reading as berries, but actual berries-sometimes the lab's strawberry note reads like hard candy on me. This is actually fruit. It smells like I'm canning. I don't get that much musk out of it, but white musk can do horrible things on my skin and red musk has turned a lot of blends that should have been phenomenal on my skin to meh. "Not much musk" in this case isn't a bad thing.

Dry: I do in fact like this one. I like it more and more the more I have it on. The red musk comes forward more but the fruit is keeping it in check. I can sense more than smell the white musk, and I think it's keeping it from being way, way too sweet.

I think this one is actually a keeper-which is actually a suprise. My department tends to lean towards fruit-sweet for perfume, and this one would work without being obvious.

In the imp: wine. White wine, actually. A sweet white wine. I guess I'm getting just the grapes.

Wet: this is a very bright, sweet blend. I was thinking white musk, the one white musk I can wear, and the florals in Vampire Tears. In fact, wet, this is Vampire Tears without the citrus notes.

Dry: The woods and herbs pulls this down from boozy into a light green blend. The Vampire Tears parallel is a lot lessened, which is good-because I want to keep this one but I don't want a box full of twin blends. This is on the strong side in regards to throw on me right now, and I'm not certain this is a 'winter' blend, but I can see liking this one a lot when it warms up and gets humid.

Burned fried rice, on my skin. I couldn't let it go to dry down, the smell was so strong. Oh, and plastic. Burned rice and plastic. I'm guessing this would be great on some people, but there's something with my chemistry that doesn't want to play nice with this one.

what a strange little blend. on skin, and close to skin throw, is singed woods. I like it, it reminds me of a much lighter Erich Zahn. Far throw is very sweet though, very, very sweet. Almost sugar sweet. The musks make this a very rich sugar, and it's very slightly green.

reading the note list i was guessing that this would fall somewhere between the coiled serpent and smut on my skin.

in the imp: a bright, sweet red musk. getting a lot of floral out of this one, but not of the i'm a pretty, pretty flower variety.

wet: yep. first blast is what i wanted smut to smell like. it's the berry sweet style red musk, but it's pretty dirty. it's not skin style dirty though, just a lot rougher and darker than what smut does on my skin. the head shoppy incense that the patch, champaca, and woods does on my skin is lurking in the background.

dry: honestly not a lot of throw. and there's nothing in here that i would call fiery with my skin chemistry. it is a nice blend, even if it does lurk on the backside of powdery-it's almost going amber on me so i'm guessing that this is a white style honey. honestly it even shifts towards spanked res in feel every so often. this one really doesn't want to settle with my chem right now. i'd actually like the incense to come back more, because right now it's still a dirtier style smut, but still not as dirty as what i would like it to be. i think i need to just accept that red musk is never going to be 'sexy' and will always be 'preppy' on my skin.

so strange. so nice. booze cherries in imp...cinnamon rum on the skin.

what's really weird is that other reviews are saying koolaid, and i'm the queen of amping koolaide which i normally love. i love the way this sounds...but it's more like samhain or harvest moon than tropical fruity drink. i almost want more fruity drink from this. actually it really reminds me of garden gnome.

It's a clear oil, and I was blasted with wood and herbs in the imp. That's promising.

On wet, it's a very dry blend on my skin. There's still a heavy herbal, teaky edge to it. I do feel regal wearing it, but this is not a 'traditional' feminine, princessy blend. This is going to sound weird but it reminds me of Queen Elizabeth or Mary, Queen of Scots- a take no shit queen.

Dry, I have to wonder if there is a white floral or white amber in this because it starts to go powdery. I think that this is a power blend on my chemistry rather than a perfume blend because I'm not sure how I feel about the actual scent, but it sort of makes me want to...strut. Not like I feel sexy but I feel...powerful.

oh this is nice. this is a bright sharp....powerful? citrus blend on my skin. i could have sworn that there was rose when first applied, but it settles down to an admittedly young but strong (though not overpowering) citrus. there's a slightly candied edge to it and the white floral feel that vampire tears has.

this actually reminds me a lot of vampire tears on my skin, enough so that i would be satisfied to use this as a gc equivilent. it reminds me a lot of crib girls too, just without the honey- so if you can't handle the honey in that one, this one may work.

i worked a little with freya today, and i really do feel like this is a good female/feminine energy blend if you're looking for something not traditionally feminine- namesake aside.

I don't normally make my bpal seasonal...but I'm longing for vampire tears right now.

i like this one, and it's one of the few air scents that i can wear. i could swear that there's leather in this though. i think it's the pine working with something else that's giving that impression. the incense in this is much closer to what i wanted midnight mass to smell like. there is something sour lurking underneath it but far, far down. my skin does seem to eat it but i don't think that's a bad thing for incense when i want to wear it to work.

i don't think that i've reviewed this one before.

sometimes blends have more an impression to me than a scent, if that make sense to anyone other than me. i can make out the white florals, with the woods and pines underneath. i don't really get orange off of this one. it doesn't really strike me as masculine, but it's not gender neutral or feminine either.

i kept thinking that it smelled like a church but that church wasn't really right either. then it hit me. this smells like a funeral parlor. it sort of makes my skin crawl. it's really, really unsettling. it's actually...freaking me out a bit.

this is really, really weird.

this. is. torture. king.

no. seriously. this is torture king minus the citrus with my chemistry.

i have finally found my holy grail GC. and i'm an idiot because it's been sitting in my imp box untested for 2 months.

amber and lavender, bordering on the medicinal. slighty powdery but not necessarily in a bad way.

i think the most unhelpful thing about this review is...i can sort of see...old scratch...smelling like this?

this one is so weird...i think that i like it though, it's very much in line with my personality.

in the imp and wet, i got a much higher, sweeter smell than i was initially expecting. my head went straight to cinnamon starbursts, if they were ever to make such a thing. On skin, it morphs into pastry, with jam. like a christmas cookie.

as it continues to dry the more earthy elements come forward. it becomes heavy on wood rot, leaves, and some sort of freshly cut wood. the scent associations i'm getting from it alternates between old church pews and camping...which makes very much sense in terms of my personal background.

i'm not certain i can pull off smelling like leaf rot and church pews but i do think it fits my mental image of the oak king. i think this will be effective as a ritual oil if nothing else.

dry and sweet and leathery. there's a hint of wood and something my nose is trying to tell me is fruity but that has to be a note interaction. the leather and the brown musk are keeping this from being too sharp and resiny in the way that sandlewood does on me sometimes. i get hints of clove but nothing really forward. i think that this is more what i wanted fledging raptor moon to be.