flyby

First off, if amber normally goes powdery or sour on you, this may be worth testing anyway.

I don't get much of the vanilla specifically, I think it's more just smoothing the blend out, but the amber and oud blend amazingly. I agree with posters who compared this to Implacable Beautiful Tyrant hair gloss, and I will add another comparison to House of Unquenchable Fire atmo, because on my (weird) skin it's almost a dead ringer.

It may be that the vanilla in combination with certain other notes is causing your reaction? I have a similar thing; mine is with patchouli or other herbal notes, which smell medicinal and gross to me, and in combination with sweet vanillas they become nearly nausea-inducing. It's the combination of 'sickly sweet' and 'medicinal/funky' that gets me. I experience this with Snake Oil definitely (sweet vanilla and patchouli is the culprit there), and IIRC Samhain definitely has the patch and herbal thing going on, though I don't know about sweet notes.

Since you say Red Rose and possibly Obatala worked for you, you might try and see what your experiences are with ruling out vanilla/foody notes for the moment and trying more floral and aquatic blends, maybe with resins/incense, non-sweet fruits/nuts*, and possibly woods and paler musks?

*Obatala has coconut and milk but in a more 'fresh' way than foody, and definitely not sweet.

Off the top of my head, some GCs that might be worth trying (or at least, they're light-years away from the sickly-gross thing for me) if you've not already:

Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat - very fresh juicy melon

Aizen-Myoo - fresh citrus and florals with a hint of tea

Forbidden Fruit - flowers and fresh fruit

Generally speaking, though, you certainly aren't alone, and skin and nose chemistry can be simultaneously the bane of your life and the best thing ever, when you find a note that does amazing things on you. The sale and swap sections here are excellent places to pick up cheap lots of imps, or exchange stuff you know you don't like for better options.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat, Detestable Putrescence (ice cream!), and SB4 which smells exactly like a glass of limoncello and lemonade over ice.

I got a decant of this because of the ginger, even though accepted wisdom is that flybys amp honey to single-note proportions.

Accepted wisdom is over there, flying out the window.

Wet, I get a very 'white' honey-sugar scent that starts spreading itself all over the place like a slow, languorous strip-tease. Ginger and redcurrant start out trying to do drunken high-kicks but very quickly stumble into the background and collapse in a giggling heap. Meanwhile, the honey and sugar cane are gettin' it on. Hoo boy. It gets deeper and dirtier, for a 'fuck yeah do me' value of dirty that has the honey and sugar cane rolling around on silk sheets, creating a thick, sweet muskiness that's safely on the sexy side of BO. Just before it dries, the ginger sobers up enough to pitch a little scandalised fit, but the tide of Sheer Fucking Hot is too much for her.

In conclusion, holy shit I am loving what this does on my skin. And I am going to have to revisit a whole swathe of honey scents.

Does anyone have pics of the Our Lady series?

OMG. Wine Gums. Do want.

ETA: 2012 version

...I'm kind of thinking Gingerbread Poppet for tomorrow, possibly layered with Haloes or Halloween: Las Vegas.

I'm still wanting to do this, I've just been mired in work. I think since it's already December, month of postal chaos, I would make it a more general 'New Beginnings' theme, with a deadline in January (maybe 27th for the first full moon of the year, that feels like nice symbolism).

Current list of theme items for swap:

-remembrance (closure on 2012)

-purification/cleansing

-light

-luck

-happiness

and maybe one 'intangible' as well, which could be the gifter doing a ritual for the recipient, lighting a candle for them, donating to charity in their name (karma!), etc.

I'll try to put a post/questionnaire together for submission tomorrow. Is anyone interested in helping to run it?

I have been contemplating doing something like a ritual items swap, possibly focused around the New Year since 1, that's my major ritual of the year anyway, and 2, it really seems like lots of people have had a not-great year in 2012. I think it would be great to send someone 'good fortune, packaged' - items chosen to fit into their traditions, gifted along with your best wishes for a good 2013. I was thinking of maybe stipulating items representing purification, light, luck, and harmony, with a fifth 'wildcard' item based on the recipient's dearest wish (so, if my recipient really wanted to graduate college next year, I might send them some TAL Concentration). Would be inclusive of any and all religious orientations!

IDK, would anyone else be interested?

I got a decant of this because previous Beaver Moons haven't been win on me - and now I need to track down a bottle. In the vial it's very cheesecake - with my eyes shut I would think I was sniffing at a plate of the stuff, seriously. As it goes on, the apple starts to come out, warm and spicy, and the cheesecakiness dials back a bit so it's just a creamy background. And it stays like that - for a while. Because once I stop noticing it, something magical happens. After an hour or so on my skin it turns into THE most amazing warm, sweet, creamy, slightly foody vanilla. There's still a hint of apple close to the skin, but I'm typing at my desk right now with this on my wrists and the throw I'm getting is pure vanilla yum. I want to cry; so rarely do I find a vanilla that's <i>actually</i> vanilla on me.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat is a very fresh (and not too sweet) melon scent on me.

If any of the Lilith blends work well on you, I think they'd be ideal as a lot of motherly love went into creating them.

This is way too late for Halloween now ( ) but I had an idea for a Trick-or-Treat (Trick-AND-Treat!) imp swap type thing where everyone would send and receive 2 (small!) packages - you'd send a Treat of imps/decants from their wishlist to one person, and a Trick of random imps/decants to another person. I think it'd take a bit of work to match up people's wishlists and available imps lists, and I'm not sure how it fits into the swap fairy rules, but I thought it sounded kind of fun. I also thought about including other items/presents with the imps, in which case there would probably be a low dollar limit like $5 or $10 max per package.

Huh. This is a bit of a strange one; wet in the vial, my initial impression was sour milk and a hint of fruit, which wasn't promising. Ditto wet on skin; the fruitiness comes out a bit more, and so do the spices, but even as it's drying down, if I hold my hand up to my nose I get spoiled spiced milk with a little sweet fruit. The strange part comes on the dry stage, because I'm getting whiffs of coffee (or latte, anyway - you know what a Starbucks smells like right after they've made a bunch of rush orders and maybe scalded some milk a little? Yeah, that) from out of nowhere while I'm sitting here typing, but if I lift my wrist to my nose I don't get that latte smell at all, just the same spoiled milk. Definitely not a keeper for me, but it's interesting!

2012 vintage

Wet, I get red apple with a tiny hint of mulling spices*.

Wet on skin, the spices start to bloom, followed by the apples, and the cranberry is doing what it always does on me and turning to Refreshers (fizzy) candy, which... actually adds a nice rounded depth to it. Drying down, much the same; it's a faintly spicy apple blend lightened by candy-y cranberry. My main point of comparison is Autumn Cider, and this is definitely a lighter/paler apple blend with less of the warmth I associate with AC.

*An American might say 'cider spices'. I am English and from the West Country, and I do not think that word means what you think it means. Mulling is for wine; my cider is sharp and cool and most definitely alcoholic. My cider will kick your teeth in and walk off with your wallet.

Wet, I get moss with something quite fresh hovering in the foreground.

Wet on skin, it's mossy and green with a little woody grounding; if there's raspberry it's very far in the background and overall it's almost herbal.

Drying down, it's turning into pretty much a single-note moss with a lot of throw. Not for me.

Provisos for this review are that I amp honey to all hell and gone, and also red musk to some extent.

Wet, I get red musk and... red musk. And some more red musk.

Wet on skin, the honey starts to come to the fore, combining with the red musk - and yet there's also definitely a 'background red musk' thing going on, hmm. There are hints of the other notes, the patchouli isn't coming out strong at all but giving some depth I think, and there's hints of woodiness as well.

Dry, this is very much honey and red musk on me, almost a honey musk or a sweetened red musk. I think I could wear this, unlike other honey notes, because the red musk is tempering it and making it less of a single too-sweet note, but I'll probably have to death-match it against the other red musk blends I have to see if I really need a bottle.

Wet in the vial, this is a pale, ashy sort of scent with a quiet and distant feel to it. Unfortunately the moment it touched skin it turned to soap on me and while 30min later the soapy top note is fading to let some warm woodiness through, it doesn't look like this is going to be a winner for me.

2012 vintage.

Wet, I get glace fruits and a sudden scent-memory of tutti frutti ice cream. I haven't had tutti frutti ice cream in over 20 years, but I want some now, because this is that exact mixed glace fruits scent.

Wet on skin, the fruits sort of bloom, and within seconds this is turning really fizzy and effervescent! Whoa. It is drying down into sherbet lemons. And other sherbet fruit sweets. Tutti frutti sherbets!

Conclusions: 1) This pretty much stays at the tutto frutti sherbets stage, although some of the sharpness of the sherbet eases after a while. 2) Sherbet doesn't look like a word any more. 3) I need to go buy ice cream and candy.

2012 vintage

Wet, I get distant resins with a hint of dry leaves.

Wet on skin, the resins open up and deepen with the leaves underneath, and a faint sense of something floral in the top. As it dries, hints of foodiness come out to play.

Dry, this is still a resin-y blend on me, but with hints of smoke and leaves and wine-y foodiness rounding it out. A keeper, but probably not bottle-worthy on me.

In the vial the banana dominates with pineapple also noticeable. Wet on skin I get a hint of musk and mint, hardly any honey (a relief since it doesn't tend to work for me), and that banana-pineapple combo is turning thick and almost creamy, kind of reminiscent of a really awesome, sophisticated milkshake. Middling to decent throw, although it fades quite quickly.

That's 3/3 Fraggles I've tried that are going to be definite bottle purchases.

In the vial and wet on skin, this is predominantly a bright-berry sort of scent, fruity and sweet with a faint bite of pepper. As it dries, I get a hint of pink musk coming through, and the cranberry is starting to turn to fizzy Refreshers candy (oh, my skin chemistry) but not obnoxiously so. Sticks fairly close to the skin, little to no throw, and it seems like it's going to fade pretty fast.

At first, this is predominantly a bright fruity scent that miraculously does not go sickly sour on me. The citrus isn't at all sharp as I'd been expecting; it's softened by the vanilla cream which starts to come out more as it dries. After a few hours it's dried down to a soft creamy skin scent with only a hint of the fruit. Another Fraggle I am going to have to buy.

I had a reasonable expectation that this would work on me, and it did, but in the complete opposite way than I was expecting.

In the vial and wet, this is quite a dark fruity chocolate, very much the fig and the chocolate at the forefront and without much vanilla at all.

As it dries, the quince starts to come forward, and on me it ends up very much a quince blend with the fig and chocolate giving it a sort of delicious rounded depth and just a hint of vanilla over the top. Unlike many fruit blends which can go sickly-sweet or boozy on me, this does neither; it's sweet but with a little tartness behind, amazingly well-blended and rounded.

Not much throw (what there is, is that hint of fruity vanilla) but holy hell am I huffing my wrist. Must buy all the bottles.

In bottle and wet on skin, this smells EXACTLY like apple Nutri-Grain bars, or those apple filled biscuits (google tells me the US version would be like apple Fig Newtons). Seriously uncanny and kind of off-putting, but the pastry-ness fades off a lot on drydown and after 15 minutes I'm getting a warm spiced apple scent with the ginger hiding among the other spices. I'm going to have to deathmatch this with Autumn Cider to see if I need a bottle.