Haunt! Palmist and Fates reviews

 Haunt is a new company for me.  But when she had her Halloween sale, I found that she had added two GC's...Fates and Palmist.  And I had to try them, even though both list the dreaded patchouli as an ingredient.  This company does things a little differently from most of the others I buy from regularly.  Her seasonal sale stuff goes FAST - as in, sometimes only minutes.  But her GC's as far as I can tell, are available most of the time.

 Palmist:  blackberry and leaf, dark plum, wild violet, sweet patchouli leaf, sandalwood, vanilla orchid, and black spices.

Wet - sweet berries and plum, almost candy-like. Thankfully no patchouli in sniff.
Drying - Ohhh, violets.  I'm finding that the combination of violets and blackberry seems to be one of my favorites.  Still no patchouli, which is great, considering that the bottle even lists patchouli oil as an ingredient...Oh, this is good....
As this dries, it gets progressively less sweet and more dark. I still am not (thankfully) getting the BO/dirt smell I associate with patchouli, but I can tell that there is something in the background darkening up the scent.  Maybe a blend with patchouli I can actually wear??
 Dry:  Plum and violet...this is yummy!  Definitely a keeper and I am so glad I got a bottle! 

Fates: plum, pomegranate, davana flower, clove, cardamom, frankincense, patchouli, sandal heartwood, red musk, and bourbon vanilla.

In bottle:  Not as sweet as Palmist - pomegranate?  But it's not tangy, either.
Wet, on:  Yes, that's pomegranate...mmmm.  And vanilla...and red musk.
Drying: Here come the spices!  Definitely clove and cardamom. And ah, there's the plum.  Again, with this one, no dreaded BO/dirt smell that denotes patchouli to me.  This one is a bit of a morpher: one sniff I get plum/pom and the next I get spices.
It's drying down to mainly spices now, but every now and then I'll get a whiff of plum/pom and vanilla.
I don't like this one as much as I do Palmist, but it's still good, and still a keeper.

All in all, for a first experience with a company, this was excellent.  I also must mention her packaging: The little cloth (muslin?) bags she uses are adorable, and the included sample of Fright Night was in the smallest amber glass bottle with a cap that I have ever seen.  I didn't even know you could make glass bottles that small!

As always, the folks at Haunt don't know me from Eve, other than a random customer. I purchased the oils on my own, and I was not compensated in any way, shape, or form for this review.

Blooddrop - Smoldering review

This was my first experience with ordering from Blooddrop.  In addition to perfume, Astrid offers corsetry, bath items, chamber sprays and catnip toys. (Yes, my next order will include at least one catnip pillow for the spoiled feline brats that live here!)

I chose Smoldering for my first order, partly because it's part of the Autumn collection and I didn't want to take a chance on it selling out.  I had asked around about Smoldering on the "Other Perfumes You Love" thread at the BPAL forums, because the "soft gentle smoke" in the description worried me, since I'm not a smoke lover.   But berries...all those luscious berries in one perfume??  Oh, yes, please!  I was assured that the smoke in this blend doesn't show up as a smoky smell, but rather something that adds a background complexity to the berries. 

The scent description from the site is: Inspired by a wonderful Zinfandel I drank this summer; Smoldering is a simmering brew of berries and a touch of cauldron smoke! Raspberries, blackberries, alpine strawberries, blueberries, elderberries, gooseberries and currants enveloped with soft, gentle smoke. 

Sniffing the bottle closed, all I could smell was berries, which helped to reassure me some.  And these are real, juicy, not fake or dry berries.

When I took the lid off and took a big whiff, I did get something that smelled almost like buttery smoke (?) but fortunately (for me) that doesn't come through on the skin.

On me, both wet and dry, I get a gorgeous medley of berries.  No smoke, no butter - but something is softening, rounding, and complexifying the berries in the background.  Just simply beautiful.  I kept huffing my wrists all night at work.  This has good lasting power on me too - I put this on an hour before I left for work, and I could still smell it at the end of my 7 hour shift. 

There are several other scents I want to try from this company, notably  "At The Diner after Rocky" and "Broomstick".   Blooddrop also has what are called Simplicities for each season, which are scents or single notes appropriate for the time of year.  Right now, of course they're all candy and autumnal, and I have been told that Apple Cider Doughnuts is one not to be missed! 

As always, Astrid of Blooddrop Clothing, Fineries, and Perfume doesn't have a clue who I am, other than a random customer.  I paid for the perfume out of my own pocket, and was not compensated in any way for this review.

Perfume bottle and cap primer

After my last post, it occurred to me, that I may have lost a few people who aren't "into" the perfume oil world, so I thought I'd put together a post about what sorts of alternatives are out there for both closing perfume oil bottles, and applying said oil.

As I mentioned in the last post, Chris nagged me into buying wand caps.  Okay, so what's a wand cap?  Well, pretty much what it sounds like... it's a cap with a glass wand attached.  The glass wand dips down into the oil, and makes it easy to apply without getting too much, or contaminating the oil with your fingers.  There's still a limited amount of skin contact that goes on when using wand caps, but it's a lot less than dipping your fingers in there every time!  This is a wand cap:

Wand caps are great to have (and I got my order today, so now all my bottles except for three are wandcapped).  But there's all sorts of alternatives.  I was using swizzle sticks.  These are actually maybe even better for not contaminating your oils,  because you can throw them away after using them to apply an oil.  If you've got a bottle of oil that you're not sure you want to keep, use a disposable method when testing it, so as to avoid skin contamination for the next person.  Here's the swizzle sticks I was using that Chris threw a fit over - and I guess it would be kind of odd if you didn't know what they were for, to see a package of cocktail swizzle sticks on the dresser of someone who doesn't drink....

Now, what about those three bottles I just said don't have wand caps?  Why don't they?  Well, Conjure Oils packages their bottles a little differently.  They include an insert, called a reducer, with their bottles that keeps the oil from coming out all at once should it get turned over without a lid on.  These are my two Conjure Oils bottles with reducer caps:

The third bottle that doesn't have a wandcap is one of the smaller ones from Arcana.  The 3.7 ml vials have a smaller bottle circumference, so a wand cap won't fit, they're too big.  However, I was thrilled to find that a wand cap fit on my bigger bottle of Pomona from Midnight Gypsy, which is 7.5 ml.

After wandcapping all my bottles today, I have six wand caps left over; but I also have three more bottles of perfume on the way.  So that will leave me three wand caps left over before I need to order another batch.  I'll probably order more when I place my next BPAL order, which won't be too long, because I need a bottle of this year's Pumpkin V, and if I'm already paying shipping, wand caps might as well come along for the ride.

And last but not least, here's the current bottle stash.  This will be increased by three bottles when the rest of my orders get here over the next two weeks.  Currently I am waiting on my Blooddrop order for Smoldering, and my Haunt order for Fates and Palmist.  I have a shipping notice for Blooddrop, which  means I should see it by Monday at the latest,  and according to Haunt's Facebook page, she's shipping orders placed around the same time I placed mine this weekend.

The astute reader will probably have noticed that I had a bottle riding along with the wand caps.  Eat Me v. 6 arrived safely, and I'll get a review up for it (along with the frimps), in a few days.

Of wand-caps, prototypes, and perfume

I am part Scottish.  The stereotype of Scottish people is that they are frugal.  Well, I don't know how accurate the stereotype is in Scotland, but as for me, it holds true.  I'm not only frugal, some people have commented that I'm downright cheap.  (But never easy...*grin*).

Therefore, the prospect of paying more for shipping than an item costs is a difficult hurdle for me to get past, no matter how much I might need said item.  After looking all over the internet for a place that sold glass perfume wand caps (to apply perfume oil - you don't want to dip your fingers in your bottles and contaminate the oil, or at least I don't, plus you get way too much scent that way), for a cheaper shipping cost, and after listening to Chris complain for the third time about my perfectly reasonable (and much cheaper) alternative of plastic sword shaped swizzle sticks, I finally caved and ordered wand-caps from BPAL's Etsy shop.  The reason I ordered from the Etsy shop instead of the actual Lab site is because I eased the pain of paying $7.50 shipping for a fifty cent item (well, 16 fifty cent items, actually), by choosing a bottle of a prototype oil to ride along with the wand-caps.

Prototypes, as described by the Lab's Etsy listing: "Black Phoenix scents usually go through many iterations before they’re ready to go live. Sometimes a scent stalls out because of component issues, and other times we just keep working on it and tweaking it until we get it where we want it to be. We chose to put forth the prototype scents to our customers through the Black Phoenix / Dark Delicacies trunk show events because we wanted to share some of the experience of the creation process with our customers, and we’re sharing the overstock on these prototype bottles here on etsy."

Eat Me is part of the Lab's Alice in Wonderland line.  The description for the final product that was actually released is: "Three white cakes, vanilla, and red and black currants."

The prototype has it's own review thread at the BPAL Madness forum (my internet home), and the general consensus is that the prototype has more of a berry rather than a currant feel, and there is much more almond in the cake note.  That sounded pretty good to me!  I'm sure the final version of Eat Me is delectable also, and someday I'll have a bottle of that, too, for comparison purposes.  But for this week, discretionary income has been discretionarily spent! 

Before the great wand-cap/swizzle stick debate, I had already ordered a bottle of one of Blooddrop's autumn limited edition scents, Smoldering.  Here's the site description: "Inspired by a wonderful Zinfandel I drank this summer; Smoldering is a simmering brew of berries and a touch of cauldron smoke! Raspberries, blackberries, alpine strawberries, blueberries, elderberries, gooseberries and currants enveloped with soft, gentle smoke".  

I've been eyeing it for awhile, even though the smoke note in the description concerns me - but the berries will get me every time!  I did some asking around at BPAL Madness and from the replies I got, the smoke seems to show up as more of a complexity and another layer to the scent rather than a true smoke smell, so I have my fingers crossed that this works for my non-smoke loving self.

Arcana! Murder Ballad Blues review

I have been anxiously awaiting my order from The Soapbox Co. for my first Arcana products.  The one I have been most looking forward to, was of course Murder Ballad Blues.  Not only does the title instantly remind me of Sharyn McCrumb's Ballad series of books set in the Appalachias, but the scent description had me at "blackberry".  

It is described as: "In the tradition of murder ballads, the essence of an old-time jailhouse lament (on fiddle): wild Appalachian blackberries and sugared mountain violets with hints of dark earth and guilty secrets."

Even though I had a suspicion that the "dark earth and guilty secrets" part might hide the presence of the dreaded patchouli I ordered it anyway.  I was also going on an online review that compared it to blackberry jam,which would have made it all win, all the time for my blackberry loving self.  

In the bottle: the blackberries and a floral, which I am assuming is the violets.
Wet: Still berries but more and more violet coming out. 
As it dries, I'm getting more violet and less blackberry...oh no! Go back the other way!  However, on the bright side, there's not a hint of "guilty secrets" anywhere....
Ahhh..here come the berries again.  I do like this, even though it isn't blackberry jam-like on me in the least.  I definitely do not get "foody" from this.   I had just been thinking I needed to back off on the foody and get some more florals, and I think the powers-that-be must have been listening.   When dry, on me, this is a pretty blend of fresh, juicy blackberry, and violet.  I think I'll be wearing it a lot, especially in the summer.  If a scent had a color, this would be purple.  I'm really glad I took a chance on an unsniffed bottle and ordered this!

In this package, I also received Drool, part of the Cocos Nucifera collection by Arcana, and a sample of Sway, from the same collection.  Quick sniffs are all I've done with these so far, reviews will be later. 

Recent Reading, Gargoyles, and Perfume, oh my!

Well, I've been a little quieter than I intended this week, but really, other than New Release Tuesday, which I'll talk about in a minute (was too busy to do so at the time), it's been pretty boring around here.

All my author friends have been at Bouchercon in Cleveland this weekend, so I've been watching Facebook for their updates.  The best news for me, a dedicated Julie Hyzy fan, is that she was awarded the Anthony award for Buffalo West Wing, the fourth entry in her best-selling White House Chef series.

Even before New Release Tuesday this month, I was all excited for both Cozies and Urban Fantasy releases. One of the UF releases I had been eagerly anticipating was Anton Strout's Spellmason series debut, Alchemystic, which debuted Sept. 25th.  I couldn't wait, and have already devoured it, and let me tell you it did not disappoint! I'm thoroughly hooked and can't wait for the next entry in the series.  Stanis (the gargoyle) and Alexandra are a fantastically engaging hero/heroine combination, and I just can't praise this series debut enough. (And no, Anton did not pay me to write that, *grin*).

In cozies, this month we had new releases from both old favorites and new friends.  One title that I've been waiting what feels like forever for, was Iced Chiffon, by Duffy Brown.  I won a contest she sponsored several months ago, and have been on pins and needles for the book ever since.  It's going to be my next read.  Joelle Charbonneau had a new entry in her very popular (and popular for a reason, they are excellent reads), Skating Mystery series.  A new JoAnna Carl Chocoholic mystery, a new Sara Rosett Mom Zone title,  and an eagerly awaited new entry in Laura Child's Scrapbooking series were all present this month as well.  New entries came from David James, Waverly Curtis, and Sheila Webster Boneham.  In addition, this month we were blessed with titles from Ellen Hart, Lydia Adamson, Melissa Bourbon, Hazel Holt, Paige Shelton, Rhys Bowen, Carolyn Hart, Elise Hyatt, and Casey Mayes.

Mid-month we can look forward to the second in the Max Tudor series by G.M. Malliett, a new entry in the Lady Emily series by Tasha Alexander,  a new Sarah Woolson adventure by Shirley Tallman, the second in the Maggie Hope series by Susan Elia MacNeal, and a new one in the Berger & Mitry series by David Handler.

And the end of the month brings treats (instead of tricks), with the Oct. 30th releases of a new Penny Brannigan adventure by Elizabeth J. Duncan, December Dread by the oh-so-talented and wonderful Jess Lourey, and the second release this month by David James, which will be the second in his real estate series, I think (?)

But I am currently reading (and thoroughly enjoying, I might add), Lowcountry Boil, by Susan M. Boyer.   This book has more twists than the Snake River, and has been keeping me on the edge of my seat.  I'm about 2/3 done, and can't wait to find out how it ends.  I hope for many more Liz Talbot escapades!

And yes, there are more perfume reviews in this blog's future. I have four bottles on the way.  I have Drool (Ripe figs with vanilla beans and hypnotic honey amber), from Arcana's Cocos Nucifera II collection , and Murder Ballad Blues (In the tradition of murder ballads, the essence of an old-time jailhouse lament (on fiddle): wild Appalachian blackberries and sugared mountain violets with hints of dark earth and guilty secrets.)  also from Arcana coming that should be here Tuesday;  and my curiosity plus fear of the dreaded "sold out" message prompted me to place an unexpected order with Haunt for Fates (plum, pomegranate, davana flower, clove, cardamom, frankincense, patchouli, sandal heartwood, red musk, and bourbon vanilla) and Palmist (blackberry and leaf, dark plum, wild violet, sweet patchouli leaf, sandalwood, vanilla orchid, and black spices).  Those should be here in another few weeks, as that company advertises a two week turn around time.  I've been looking at scents from both companies for awhile now, but I haven't tried either, so I'm eager to get these and try them.