ipb

i honestly don't see custom scents coming back any time soon. and if they did, it'd probably be significantly more than $150.

for a one-liner review: bearded lady reminds me of antique lace without the linen, only better. me likee

uhm, i guess you can pm me for html-y related things. if it's major enough i need to talk to beth, it may not get fixed right away, though. i'm going to bed in the next hour, though, because i'm going to la tomorrow.

if it's faq-y things, you should contact answers@blackphoenixalchemylab.com.

i'll be honest, after the fantastic FLOP that silk road was for me, i didn't have high hopes for sri lanka - enough that i was content to wait until a swap floated by to get it. i'm not a fan of cedar, i'm leery of some sandalwood, and i don't know what olibanum and gum mastic smell like.

that said! on me, the cedar's very much in check by the sandalwood (which i think maay be similiar to the one in queen mab). it's slightly sweet, slightly spicy, and not horribly wood. it's definitely a soft and round and light scent, which is exactly the opposite of what i expected.

it's actually more what i thought silk road would smell like - the softness of the fabrics, the light spices, the wood chests for transporting everything.

i enjoy it, and i may put it on the bottle list.

it's very sweet apricots on me, not so much in the brandy. ripe and juicy apricots, mind you, but thassit. i'm not really a fan of apricots so this is going in the swap pile, but it was good to try it

We've enabled the modification to regulate the images. (The modification that regulated signature images has not been ported to v2.1 of the forum code.)

Currently, the settings are as follows

• Maximum width: 480px (which should be no surprise as that's our maximum width for forum images!)
  
• Maximum height: 100px.
  
• Maximum size: 20kb.
  
• Maximum number of images: 8
  

If you currently have images in your signature, please right-click on each image to make sure that they meet the height, width, and size requirements. If they do not, Edit Signature (in the User Control Panel and remove the images if you cannot resize them.

If you have images in your signature that do not comply with our regulations, it will tell you which of the settings that have been broken. It will not, however, tell you which image is the problem, but it should be fairly obvious. If it comes to our attention that your current signature violates the policy, we will let you know that you have to comply. If you do not remove the image in question (or fix it so that it does comply), we may edit your signature.

nope, i wrote that part before i spliced and diced, i was surprised it wasn't mentioned!

i'm splitting a chunk of this thread into hijacks as it went into an ugly hijack that doesn't deserve its own thread - if you want to talk about infertility and the frustrations or celebrations (when/if a pregnancy or adoptions happens) about it, you're welcome to start a new thread. to those of you who had posts that were both re the hijack and on topic and asking for more recs, i apologize for not having a "copy post" function. it sucks sometimes to not have that ability at times like this.

and i don't really have anything to add other than beltane! beltane is the fertility celebration - after all, "blessing your garden the old fashioned way" (teehee) for a bountiful garden (beit plentiful flowers or veggies) is basically having a nice bit of sex in it! it's also sowing what's reaped in the harvest

the question comes up often, and in several threads, so i thought i'd post a quote from beth (from another forum) answering why limited editions are limited

The LE's are limited because at least one of their components is an oil I cannot get on a regular basis, /or/ because the oils that go into them are so expensive that putting them into the general cat would be cost prohibitive. Sometimes some of the components are seasonal oils, sometimes they're a one-shot. The best example I have is a bottle of German black narcissus oil that I've been sitting on for a few months. I only have 4 ounces of it, so it has to go into a LE that is really, really special. Oils like Snow White and Rose Red contain oils that I can only get in late fall and winter. Mi-Go had five components that I only had 4-8oz of, so I had to keep it very limited. It's not a matter of market testing... I'm a fool, so I never really do things like that. I just make what I love or am inspired to make, and hope other people love it, too. If an oil really bombs, I'll take it out of the cat because it's silly to keep producing something that sold five bottles during its lifetime, just because I love it. Morella is a case in point. LOVE that one, no one else did.

 

I'd love to make all the LE's all the time, but I just can't. =/

so now you know, and knowing's half the battle.

Just curious -- what's the fastest anyone's ever gotten their order?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

of course, this was in 2003

minty minty mint! the cuke doesn't really scream out (an aura of general_fruit in the back, if you will), nor does the white pepper. it's just the ultimate mint. sadly, i'm usually not in the mood to smell minty, and this doesn't last as long as other minty scents (like shattered). it's very lovely, though. i'm going to keep it for my car, i think, because mint's such an eye-opening scent that it'll be good to commute in a minty car. and, of course, on those hot sweltering days that i need to cool down, i'll probably grab some tulzscha to wear.

i think i have to start off saying that i adore spicy scents (ha! as if you didn't pick that up from my love of pumpkin king or uranus or hamadryad or ...), so the fact that the cardamom and black pepper speak loudly is A Good Thing.

in the bottle, it's all fresh and spicy - basically, how it dries on me.

wet on my skin, the spices overwhelm the other notes - it's all cardamom and black pepper, with a hint of juniper. not a bad thing, because it reminds me of one of my grandmother's roasted venison recipes, and it's tasty and smells great while cooking.

dry, the bamboo and moss come out to balance the spices. the juniper and cedar hang back, so it's just really fresh, spicy, and slightly earthy and breezy.

i think it'd make a great office scent, and i'll be sad when my bottle is no more.

on me, once it dried, azathoth was all vetiver and cedarwood, with the occasional hint black amber. very dark and masculine. i'm not really a fan of cedarwood to begin with, and vetiver and i have an uneasy truce, so this was not a scent for me.

it did, however, last for about 12-15 hours. good if you like it, not so good if you don't.

Because it's come up a time or two this week, we said in the guidelines (emphasis mine):

'Panhandling' for particular scents via pm is also strongly discouraged! It's one thing to ask a friend if you can try something they have, but it's another to try to solicit an imp of something you want from a stranger or a casual aquanitance. That kind of behavior wouldn't be deemed acceptable offline, and it's not welcomed here either. Repeated begging can be considered harassment, and may earn a warning if the person complains.

This means that no, you cannot ask someone if they'd be willing to swap or decant an oil they've reviewed or talked about elsewhere (regardless of it showing up in their "have" list) unless it's already listed in their swaps. It also means that NO, you cannot approach several people one time in such a way.

Stated as clearly as I can thing: If someone has a disfavorable review, you should not contact them and ask if they'd be interested in swapping (unless it shows up in the swap area). If someone has a favorable review, you should not contact them and ask them if they'd be willing to decant a bit so you can try it (unless they offer to do so in the swap area).

We have been getting reports, off and on, for several instances of this kind of thing happening. We would appreciate it if you would let one of the mods know if someone does approach you, unsolicited, to swap something that you don't have up for swaps.

when you email customer service, let them know what item(s) are you having issues adding, what browser you have, and what not -- it'll help them when they talk to ccnow.

uhm, or if you've got a paypal account, you could just use paypal.

there's not much i can say that hasn't been said ... lightly floral, lightly musky, clean, beautiful...

i adore this scent. it's a great office scent, because it doesn't throw horribly far and it's sexy without being in your face about it.

very pink, very tropical fruit salad (which is NOT a bad thing as i adore tropical fruit salad!). the peony, pink pepper, and white ginger lend a slight spiciness to it that is, in a word, divine. jasmine didn't take over (which surprised me), and the white tea and the musks come out a bit towards the end of the journey.

i'd have to say that as much as pele reminds me of the hawaiian tropics, mi-go reminds me MORE of the caribbean tropics. laid back, eating fresh juicy fruit, and sitting in the sun with a virgin pina colada

it's a slightly soapy rose, like someone tainted it with the questionable lily family - though the soapiness disappears on the skin to become just a clean rose -- very clean, very rose.

white rose is the cool rosebud you see on many boutonnieres at weddings - self-important and untouchable. not quite as freshly cut as, say, rose red... but fairly recently.

it was my favorite note in my old dublin prototype, and me likes it alone as well

the lab rocks!

i haven't tried it in ritual yet as i'm out of candles, so i can't say how that goes, but it smells like bubblegum when i opened the bottle and is a very happy, hopeful scent.

As we previously stated here, we don't allow swapping in signatures. We have a small handful of individuals who have been banned from the swaps forum for swaplifting, and the only way we can keep them from swapping on the forum is to limit swapping to being within the swaps forum only.

Acceptable "swap" things in signatures:

• Links to topics in the swap forums (including the "wanted" thread). Examples: ::wanted::, ~swaps~, .make my day, buy something.
  
• Links to circular swaps.
  
• Links to third-party places such as ebay. Examples: ~my ebay auctions~, celestials@ebay, jupiter for sale
  

Non-acceptable "swap" things in signatures:

• Offering to buy specific things. Examples: !!$50 for a bottle of Shattered!!, Sell me your Spooky!, Wanted to buy: Samhain, Mabon, Beltane!, anyone got some harlot they don't want?
  
• Offering to sell/swap specific things. Examples: SNs 4 sale!, Buy my Sin!
  

In short: general forum links and (general OR specific) third-party links are ok. Specific swappy things are not ok EXCEPT for third party links (like "jupiter for sale" with a link to an eBay auction). When in doubt, ask.

When the new guidelines come out (which should happen within the next month or so), swapping outside of the swaps forum - including signatures - is a potentially warnable offense, so please get rid of them. Anyone who is reported as having a signature with this in shall be asked to remove it. Failure to comply will result in us removing it for you.

As some of you may know, we're on a shared, maintained-for-us server. During a routine upgrade, it was found (after the fact) that there was a flaw in the version of the kernel used in the update. This problem causes the servers to lock up and requires that they are physically rebooted to be fixed.

The probability is high that our downtime was due to our server locking up (I don't know if they told us one way or the other what was causing the problem).

They will be fixing this problem tomorrow (the 30th). It shouldn't require any downtime, but it's possible that:

a) the server could lock up between now and then, and

b ) the fix may cause the forum to go offline a few times as they reboot a time or two.

Since this was also covered in hte Abbreviations and Lingo FAQ, I'm closing this and moving it to the BPAL FAQ.

with the help of the very patient josey, we managed to get something working for that. i still don't know what the problem was, but it's fixed!