this machine

This is very buttery pumpkin on me at first, with the light spiceyness in the background. It then dries down to a soft buttery pumpkin and the spice goes wild. It's a lovely smell, but i have an aversion to smelling like foody candles, which is exactly what this smells like to me. Like i bought a pumpkin spice candle and took a bath in the wax. A great smell, but not on my person.

I got my first "you smell great!" compliment yesterday (first bpal-related one, that is) when wearing titus. Yay! I was pleased. I can see how this is a masculine scent, which explains why i like it. Every time i see someone say "this one would be better on my boyfriend/husband/etc" i think oh, i bet i'd love it! It's fresh and clean without being soapy or sharp, and it lasted most of the day thankfully. Plus, i love the play itself too.

I got this as a lovely frimp. Unfortunatley it is definitely very powdery on me, and though i like most of the other notes i get out of this, the powder pushes it over the edge into smelling like a baby (or a 6th grader wearing luv's baby soft!).

I didn't expect to like this at all - i got it as part of a set of imps and it wasn't one that sounded appealing. I didn't know what snow and wind would smell like, and i'm generally not a floral fan. But i tried it of course and i can't believe how much i like it! It's creamy and incensy and doesn't smell floral on me at all. In fact, for some reason the primary element i smell (no idea what it is, other than creamy/incense) reminds me very much of calvin klein's obsession. Anyone else get that? In any case, i would never wear obsession though i enjoy it sometimes on other people, and this isn't one i would wear all the time, but i'm definitely keeping it and already worrying over whether i should buy more. Another imp? A 5 ml? Decisions decisions...

I hate it when a scent, though it may be lovely and appealing in many ways, still manages to remind me of some other scent i hate. In this case, once dried on my skin, tenochtitlan smells exactly like the generic country spice potpourri lysol spray in my office's bathroom. Argh! See, i think many crappy-smelling things ruin good-smelling things for me. For instance, cheap perfumes and airsprays and the like. There could be a note in a bpal blend that i would love if not for bad associations for me (public bathrooms, ugh! junior high perfumes, ugh!), but if i can't break that association i'm screwed. I think tenochtitlan is one of those for me. I can tell that it is a beautifully blended scent, but i think i probably won't ever be able to do it myself. Sad!

I ordered this in my first order of imps from the lab, considering it one that i was branching out on. Mostly i was choosing the more earthy, spicey, woody scents, but this one sounded very intriguing and i didn't want to get too many similar scents. I'm just learning how to identify notes so i probably don't really know what i'm talking about yet. But i will say that it smells exciting and unique in the bottle - very bright and minty. It's minty on my skin for a short time before it dries down, but then after ten minutes or less it settles into a smell i'm unsure about. I'm leaning toward it being the ambergris, but it could be the mosses. I'm struggling like mad to place it - i think perhaps it reminds me of many men's colognes? And i love many traditionally masculine scents (not that ambergris is always masculine by any means, but i suspect it's a common note in men's scents?), but i'm not sure this one works on me. I can't stop smelling my hand every other minute trying to place it, and to judge whether i enjoy it. I'm leaning toward no, which is too bad because i think this could be a really fantastic scent on someone else perhaps. I'm keeping it around though - gotta try it different times and see what my chemistry does to it then. ADDED Jan. 30: I take back my previous doubt about this one. I love it. It's minty in the bottle and maybe for a few seconds wet, but then the mint goes away and it's mossy and resinous. An extremely unique scent to my nose. It also lasts a lot longer on my skin than most other scents i've tried so far.

This is one of the imps in my first lab order, which i just got last night (!!!). It was one i was most excited about from the description, and it smells wonderful in the bottle. The strangest thing though - when i put it on, it all but disappears in a matter of minutes. I've had it on for an hour now, and when i put my nose to my wrist i can smell it only very lightly (and it smells lovely - a bit of amber and faint carnation and maybe the moss are what i get right now), but i want it to be so much stronger! Not that i want overpowering by ANY means, but i feel like i'd have to reapply every hour or so to get more than the faintest whiff when i put my nose to my skin. I'm hoping perhaps this is a temporary chemistry thing and in a week or two it'll stick around more.