Slightly late in posting this — but the explorations continue!

* Bubblegum & Rose (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “big round bubblegum bubbles with fruity tuberose blossoms.” Smells like exactly what it says on the tin . . . and much to my surprise, I think I kinda like it? It’s a little odd, because it’s sort of a rose perfume that intermittently gives off gusts of bubblegum smell (though those quiet down after a while), but I think whatever’s going on with the gum helps tamp down on the aspect of the rose that I usually find unappealing.

* Mama’s Porridge (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “brown sugar sweetened oatmeal with a spash of milk and a piece of buttery cinnamon sugar dusted toast.” I’m becoming fairly certain that I loathe the buttery/creamy corner of the scent spectrum. I’m fine with those things as food, but not on me. Eventually this fades to a decent cinnamon, but I do. not. like how it starts.

* Gnome
Described as “an explosive blend of effervescent golden ginger and black peppercorn with sarsaparilla, gurjum balsam, nutmeg, gear lubricant, and smoke.” Points for originality! And early on, there was a fresh, green scent I kind of liked. But then as it dried . . . they’re not joking about “gear lubricant.” I do not particularly want to smell like machine oil, thank you.

* Bliss
Described as “the serotonin-slathered scent of pure milk chocolate.” They aren’t kidding. And I presume there are people who want to smell like they spilled melted chocolate on themselves; I, however, am not one of them.

* Satyr (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “blood orange and vanilla.” Somehow those components manage to smell kind of like licorice early on. That fades, and this again wins some points for being different from most of what I have — but those points don’t make me like it.

* Old Cider Haus (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “old oak, sweet drying hay fields, crushed apple pulp and vanilla husks.” I think the vanilla might be what makes this come across initially as butterscotch. I don’t think I ever really picked up on the oak/hay elements, though; this was mostly just apple, and that faded.

* Horchata (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “vanilla kissed rice milk with a touch of cinnamon.” Further evidence that I do not like milky notes. But this one isn’t as off-putting as Mama’s Porridge was, and it mellows to quite a pleasant cinnamon vanilla. It’s going in the keeper pile for now.

* The Soft Lawn (Imaginary Authors)
Described as “linden blossom, laurel & ivy leaves, vetiver, oakmoss, fresh tennis balls, clay court.” My sister idiosyncratically declared this one “salad dressing,” apparently because it gave her a flashback to some kind of hoity-toity salad she had in the past; we wound up in the kitchen sniffing bottles from the spice cabinet to see if we could figure out what herb it was reminding her of. It’s very sharp and green and I’m not sure I actually like it . . . but I’m keeping it anyway, just because it’s very different from the majority of what I’ve tried, and if I come across anything else with one or more of those components, I’d like to be able to use this one for comparison.

No longer actually an advent calendar, unless I’m counting down to . . . some random time in February? But I might as well continue with that name for these posts.

* Cape Heartache (Imaginary Authors)
Described as “Douglas fir, pine resin, western hemlock, vanilla leaf, strawberry, old growth, and mountain fog.” Late in the process I get maaaaaybe a hint of vanilla leaf, but mostly I smell like HI I’M A FOREST. Which isn’t all that bad! (Though my nose misidentified that mix of trees as cedar, which I guess is nowhere in here.) Like O! Unknown, this has a very strong throw — I think I am using my new perfume terminology correctly? the tendency of the scent to kind of leap out and grab you? — which I’m starting to think is characteristic of Imaginary Authors’ woody scents in general, possibly aided and abetted by these being spray bottles instead of dipper sticks. I sort of wish I could just dab it on, rather than getting a big gust.

* Unmasking the Sambaso Dancer
Described as “king mandarin, passionfruit, Moroccan rose absolute, labdanum, and amber musk.” Sadly, the orange in this comes on strong, but fades very fast. When it was wet, I picked up something kind of . . . sharp? . . . which might have been the labdanum? (I haven’t encountered labdanum often enough to really know; it just doesn’t seem like it’s any of the other ingredients.) For a little while there was a floral overtone, but the whole thing didn’t really last.

* Liquid Gold Is [in] the Air
BPAL’s site and my bottle disagree on the exact name of this one. 😛 Described as “liquid gold cascading over parched earth: three glittering ambers, golden oud, golden apple, saffron, and orange blossom honey with vanilla husk and gilded cedar.” It’s deliciously apple-y in the bottle and wet, like you got the skins in there as well as the flesh, but as it started to dry the apples faded and I mostly got something sharp and kind of chemical-smelling that I think might be the oud (which I’ve seen described as “medicinal”). Not a fan.

* Pumpkin Peach [Patch? Queen?] (Haus of Gloi)
Haus of Gloi’s site does not list an oil called “Pumpkin Peach.” It has Pumpkin Patch, which is described as “dried leaves, twisted vines, orange pumpkins, golden amber and earth;” it also has Pumpkin Queen, described as “gentle hay pillows, pumpkin, ripe peaches dusted with clove and nutmeg, dried summer herbs and lastly, a lovely crown of amber.” Although Patch -> Peach is the more plausible typo, based on what I smelled, I’m more inclined to guess Queen: it started off as very buttery pumpkin, but as the butter note faded the spices came up, and something warm that I’m inclined to call amber. But what it really is doesn’t matter so much, because my reaction was, eh.

* HR2 Prototype
Still not sure what’s up with the bottles labeled “prototype,” as they are nowhere to be found on BPAL’s site or forum. This started off pretty nice, with eucalyptus and lemon and an undertone of what I suspect is champak, and for a little while the eucalyptus and champak balanced each other nicely . . . but as often happens with musk, the champak won that race, and left me with a fairly boring scent.

* Whispered Myths (Imaginary Authors)
Described as “natural Cambodian oud, cantaloupe, cedarwood, muskdana, honey, and salvaged shipwreck.” My notes for it start with “cantalOH THERE’S THE CEDAR.” Yeah, cedar pretty much beat up every other note in this perfume; it had a kind of spicy note for a while in the middle, but not for long. And again, this one was quite strong.

* Y’Ha-Nthlei
Described as “a swirling, lightless, effervescent scent: the deepest marine notes with bergamot, eucalyptus and foamy ambergris.” Dear god, in the bottle this straight-up smelled like soap. Interestingly — and in contrast with “A Cozy Sweater & an Apple Cider” — the soapiness actually faded with time; I started to pick up something else that might be the ambergris if I kind of sneaked up on it from the side. That lasted after the soap was gone, but only faintly, and not for long.

* Morocco
Described as “Arabian spices wind through a blend of warm musk, carnation, red sandalwood and cassia.” I think I quite enjoy this one! It had too much carnation for my sister’s taste, but I like how that lightens the sandalwood and spices. It’s going in the keeper pile.

This goes up through the 23rd. I decided not to test perfumes on the 24th and the 25th, because 1) BPAL’s Thieves’ Rosin smells like Christmas to me (pine resin, cinnamon, and other stuff I can’t ID), so I wanted to wear that instead, and 2) I really didn’t feel like playing roulette on the holidays, lest I wind up with something awful on me. <lol>

Lots of Haus of Gloi this time, but since my pattern has been to leave BPAL unmarked and mention the others, I’ll maintain that pattern.

* Black Fig, Oak Bark, and Brown Sugar
In the wet and early drydown stages this smelled distinctly like some kind of Yankee Candle — as in, I swear there was some kind of waxy element to it, like I was sniffing a candle with these scents in them. It eventually settled into fruity sweetness, but it’s not for me.

* Scarecrow (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “Dried corn husks, dust, straw, weathered wood and a ruffle of inky black feathers.” This actually legit smells like corn husks! There was briefly a delicate floral overtone, and later something that smelled like sandalwood to me, but the corn part stayed. It was unusual, and unlike a lot of the “unusual” combinations I’ve tried it wasn’t terrible, but I have a hard time imagining when I might say “this is what I want to smell like.”

* Kumbaya (Haus of Gloi)
The description says “Round the campfire with friends singing silly songs and making smores: chocolate, graham cracker, marshmallow, sandalwood, and woodsmoke.” I didn’t get pretty much any of that. It started out almost nauseatingly buttery, and resembled butterscotch quite strongly when the sugariness started to rise up. Very late in the game I could maaaaaaybe sniff out graham cracker and marshmallow, but on the whole, nope.

* ICD 17 Prototype
I have no idea what’s up with these “prototype” bottles, as I can’t find them listed on BPAL’s site, nor on the forum a friend linked me to. Anyhoo, this one launched very medicinally — my sister compared it to Vicks VapoRub — and while some resin came through later, it felt more like resin and cherries were having a duel on my wrist rather than anything particularly harmonious. Another nope.

* Garden of Earthly Delights (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “Soft amber bear musk, playful porcupine spike of pineapple, and crumbled leaves.” This one was sweet and fruity in the bottle, but with a bit of a sharpness that kept it from being cloying; on my wrist, the green “leaf” scent took prominence over the pineapple. Unfortunately, it faded rapidly to a boring musk. That seems to happen to me a lot . . .

* Springwater (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “Cool water, mossy river stones, and mineral rich silt.” This one actually worked fairly nicely! It was the second of three perfumes in a row to basically swap their balance from bottle to wet; it was floral and cucumber, then cucumber and floral. The balance of the two wound up being very nice and fresh, quite unlike what I expect of florals. This one I can imagine wearing as a spring or early summer kind of thing; I will certainly try it again, and possibly keep it.

* Sanctum (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “Muskmelon, coconut water infused with bergamot flower, kaffir lime, polished ho wood and sticky benzoin.” I don’t know what ho wood smells like, and I haven’t tried enough perfumes with benzoin to pick that one out either, so I don’t know what brought in the warmer scent along the way. But this did the same initial swap as the previous two, this time with melon and lime; then the lime sort of faded out, but the melon struck a nice balance with the coconut. (My sister, who hates the smell of coconut, didn’t make faces like she wanted to cut my arm off to make it go away.) I could see wearing this one at the beach! . . . as if I ever go to the beach, but you know what I mean.

* Fair Maiden Side-Eye
Can’t find this one on BPAL’s site, either, but the forum had people agreeing that it smells very . . . pink. In a bubblegum-ish way, at least to my nose, with some kind of spice like cinnamon early on. It very rapidly dried to vanilla musk, though, which is ever so slightly less boring than plain musk, but still not interesting.

(For values of an eight-day “week” again.)

All scents from BPAL unless otherwise specified.

* O, Unknown! (Imaginary Authors)
Probably the current leader in the “fascinating but also NO” sweepstakes. Described as “black tea, lapsang souchong tincture, orris butter, Kyoto moss, musk balsam, and sandalwood.” Because Imaginary Authors sell their samples in tiny spray bottles, I learned the valuable lesson that I should not sniff immediately after application; all I will get is a snootful of alcohol fumes. 😛 After a brief flirtation with spiciness, it settled down into something firmly earthy and smoky (I’m guessing that’s mostly the moss and the lapsang souchong) — and also OVERPOWERING. I tried taking it off with acetone, which didn’t work, and then with olive oil, which did, unlike my previous removal experiment with it. Seriously, though, after a couple of hours this had gone from “this is interestingly different but not for me” to “oh god is it actually getting stronger with time?”

* Caramel Apple Pops (House of Gloi)
Initially the sweetness of this was really reminiscent of maple more than caramel. Eventually it settled into exactly what it says on the tin, which was fine, but I don’t like it quite as much as BPAL’s Honeyed Apple.

* Flesh of My Flesh
Described as “bitter almond, amber, champak, labdanum, musk, black orchid, and vanilla.” I’ve got champak-based incense, so that part of the scent was very recognizable. Especially in the early stages, though . . . the only way I can describe it is that something smelled cold. I have no idea what that is!

* Où Sont les Jouets, S’il Vous Plait?
Exactly what the description says: strawberries, raspberries, and French vanilla. Didn’t change noticeably at any point in the process. In fact, y’all, I still smell like fruity vanilla on my right wrist FOUR DAYS LATER. What the &#@$!%? Is this normal???

* Shub-Niggurath
Described as “A blend of ritual herbs and dark resins, shot through with three gingers and aphrodisiacal spices.” In the bottle this had a faintly musty tinge, which fortunately didn’t come through in application. However, it was also strong enough that the traces I spilled on myself in opening the vial were sufficient. (Any advice for getting those tiny ampoules open without spilling them on yourself?) It starts out as ginger, transitions to spices, and then the resin comes through. It was vivid, but almost too strong for me.

* Cardamom Cream Pumpkin Cake
Starts out very buttery/creamy; the spices come through later, but at no point did I get much pumpkin from it. Overall it was nice, but not distinctive. Also, I still smelled like cardamom a day later — which, given that my other wrist still smelled of fruit from two days before this, meant that for the following day, I had to spray the inside of my forearm to avoid layering scents.

* Memoirs of a Trespasser (Imaginary Authors)
Described as “Madagascar vanilla, guaiacwood, myrrh, benzoin resin, ambrette seeds, and oak barrels.” Initially there was a sort of green note to it; I’m not familiar enough yet with perfume components to know if that was the guaiac or what. Over time the myrrh came out, along with something sort of warm that I think might be the benzoin, the ambrette, or both? I didn’t mind this one, though I don’t know if I’d wear it very often. Like O, Unknown!, it was quite strong.

* A Cozy Sweater & an Apple Cider
Started off promisingly enough with some faintly apple-y cider . . . but then it straight up turned into soap. Oh well.

Bonus coda: I mentioned before that I was curious how BPAL’s Wolf’s Heart (which on me was “horrific quantities of laundry detergent” followed by “baby powder”) would behave with different skin chemistry. My sister agreed to play guinea pig — and hey, on her we can actually pick up the lilac! It’s still definitely floral, and I can see how it gets from that to what happened on me, but on her it’s a much more tolerable scent (even if it’s not what either of us would choose). So, yes, skin chemistry: it’s a thing. Her skin also ate Memoirs of a Trespasser in about an hour flat; it wasn’t nearly as strong and lasting on her.

I actually started my “perfume advent calendar” on the thirtieth, because the perfumes were there and why not. So this is eight days’ worth of perfumes — and in fact, I’m likely to report in eight-day increments, for silly reasons that have to do with numerical magic in Rook and Rose. >_>

All scents from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab unless otherwise specified.

* Lemon Peel, Marshmallow, and Orange Blossom
Wow no. In the bottle, it smells like an orange creamsicle; on me, it smells like an orange creamsicle with something musty that I think is supposed to be the marshmallow, but if so, it’s gone off in the back corner of the pantry. This one was unpleasant enough that I looked online for advice about how to remove perfumes. The remedy I tried was olive oil — which didn’t actually remove it, but did, bizarrely, make it smell better. Still like an orange creamsicle, but more recognizable marshmallow. However, I don’t like that combo enough to want to go dousing myself in olive oil just to make the perfume work.

* Peach Brandy
Holy monkeys, in the bottle this smells like the world’s most cloying cough syrup. It got a lot better once applied, with hints of spice to go with the fruit . . . but it also faded fast and lost its interesting factors along the way, until it just smelled like I’d used some vaguely fruity hand soap.

* Honeyed Apple
This was very pleasantly seasonal! There was a brief moment as it dried where it had a kind of chemical tinge to it that I didn’t like, but it mellowed out into something sweetly apple-y, i.e. exactly as billed. I would use this again.

* The Wish
Described as “An incense of candied smoked fruits, Oman frankincense, red oud, labdanum absolute, sheer vanilla, patchouli, red musk seed, osmanthus, and datura accord.” I mostly just got florals from it, with traces of the frankincense and vanilla, with no fruit at all. It eventually dried down to an incense-tinged floral, which in my book makes it better than most things that feature flowers, but still not my speed.

* Honey Taffy Smut
The listed tags for this are “booze, honey, musk, smut, sugar, taffy.” I have no idea what BPAL means by “smut;” the overall effect I got from it in the early stages was a kind of burnt caramel or maple. Later on it dried to musk with a trailing edge of honey — and man, I can already see myself developing the weird idiosyncratic vocabulary necessary to discuss scent, because to me the honey really was this thing that only came through at the end of my inhale and sort of registered on the top of my soft palate. It’s not a bad perfume overall, but not as appealing as some others in this batch.

* Zephyr
Described as “A gentle white scent, breezes laced with the scent of springtime blooms and citrus. Lemon, lemon verbena, neroli, white musk, white florals, white sandalwood, China musk, bergamot and a drop of vanilla.” It starts off being sweetly floral with maybe a brightening touch of citrus, but when the sandalwood and musk come through, they wind up being the only thing left. And I don’t mind that combo, but having already begun to discover how interestingly complex some of these can be, it’s kind of boring.

* Flutterby (House of Gloi)
Described as “Clean cotton, warm summer winds, and linden blossom.” Pretty firmly in the “laundry detergent” category for me, or maybe “dryer sheet” would be a better description, but not nearly as obnoxious as Wolf’s Heart was — I wouldn’t refuse to wear my clothes if they smelled like this. I got a bit of a citrus note off it, and have no idea if that’s the linden blossom or what, since the description is profoundly unhelpful. Not one I’m likely to wear again.

* Mad Hatter
Described as “A gentlemen’s lavender-citron cologne unhinged by the feral pungence of black musk and a paroxysm of pennyroyal.” HELLO PAROXYSM OF PENNYROYAL. That’s in the mint family, Wikipedia tells me, and in the bottle it smelled like BPAL was trying to beat me to death with a candy cane. I maybe got a hint of the citron when it was wet, but after that it was just sort of minty lavender with a hint of musk. Which is certainly interesting (see above re: Zephyr and me finding it boring), but it wasn’t the sort of interesting I’m inclined to keep.

I posted the other day about testing the BPAL samples I picked up at DragonCon, as an early stab in the direction of training my nose to pick out the different notes of perfume. In response, Yoon Ha Lee offered to send me some of the samples he was getting rid of . . .

. . . and today, fifty-seven perfumes showed up at my door.

So, uh, 1) thanks, Yoon!!!! and 2) I have (more than) enough perfume to do an advent calendar. Which I will probably drop the ball on because I’ll miss days here and there, but hey, I might as well give my experiments some structure. I won’t post every single day, though; more likely I’ll collect them into weekly reports.

But first, let me report on what I had before the bonanza arrived! I’d grabbed seven random bottles from their booth, and attempted to do the organized thing of sniffing each one in the bottle, then immediately after application, then about ten minutes later, then about twenty minutes after that, to see how the scents changed. Huh, people are not kidding about that latter part! There’s a definite modulation over time. As for the scents themselves:

Incubus — musk, musk, and more musk. In theory this has lots of other notes; in practice, I don’t think I could smell a single one, and neither could my sister. The best we could do was theorize that they were taking the edge off the musk, as it smelled fairly “gentle.” Also, holy crap, I could still smell this on my wrist twenty-four hours later; in fact, a lot of these last on me a very long time. Not bad, but also not interesting.

Seraphim — started out as PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE FLORAL (I’m not yet anywhere near the point of being able to tease the different flowers apart), then later mellowed to sandalwood with floral. Only much, much later could I maaaaaaybe tell there was some frankincense in there. I’m not very keen on florals, so this is also probably a no.

Wolf’s Heart — in the bottle? A little spicy and maybe citrusy. On me? LAUNDRY DETERGENT. Mellowing to baby powder hours later. Firm NO. But I’m curious to put it on my sister and see if skin chemistry does something different there.

R’lyeh — my sister dubbed this “the potpourri aisle;” I’d say it mostly comes across as evergreen, with some citrus coming through in the middle stages, and possibly some musk very later on (this is one where BPAL doesn’t list the ingredients, so I’m wildly guessing). It also had an interesting element that I can only describe as salt — it produced a dry sort of feeling in the back of my nasal passages, like I was breathing sea air. Interesting, and I might try it again.

Vasilissa — very floral to start; after a while I get a little bit of the warmth of the sandalwood and I think the resin of the myrrh. Still way too floral-heavy for me, though.

Thieves’ Rosin — I smell like Christmas! Starts off incredibly sweet and reminiscent of baking spices; then something like pine starts to come through, and maybe a bit of musk. It doesn’t last as long as most of the others, but I can see myself using this during the holidays.

Bastet — HELLO WINNER. It’s golden and sweet in the bottle; immediately after application, it’s almond and something a little brighter (might be the saffron or lotus?). Then it mellows into musk, cardamom, some almond sweetness, and just a touch of floral. I seriously kept sniffing my own wrist because it made me happy. 😀

So that’s my first sally into the world of perfume! In a week or so I’ll report back with my initial dive into the enormous stash I’ve received. I’ve put them all in a sack and am going to draw at random, without looking up what they are first. 🙂

When I was at DragonCon last year, I picked up a bunch of ampoules of perfume from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (because Alyc and I were trying to work out scents for different characters in Rook and Rose — a project that would have gone more smoothly if either of us were a perfume aficionado). Recently, inspired by a friend’s explorations of their own stash, I decided I should actually experiment with these: not just smelling them in the vial, but putting them on, seeing what they were like initially vs. later on. (I have learned the term “drydown,” and the fact that I didn’t know it before is a measure of my ignorance in this realm.)

This is an interesting experiment because I have a very sensitive nose. I can smell alcohol on my husband’s breath hours after he drank it — not in a “hah, I caught his secret alcoholism” way, just in a “hmmm, I smell something; did you have a gin and tonic?” way. I take chicken packaging out to the trash bin immediately after prepping the raw chicken for dinner, because I will pick up the stench from it long before anybody else here thinks the kitchen smells funky. I refuse to smell the milk to see if it’s gone bad because if it has, I’m going to be having flashbacks to that for the rest of the day.

What I don’t have is the ability to parse what I’m smelling.

I think the musical equivalent here would be if I could pick up tiny whispers of sound, but couldn’t tell you what instruments are playing if you paid me. I recognize individual scents, but blend them together and it frequently becomes indistinguishable. I can listen “into” a piece of orchestral music to find what the French horns or the oboes are doing and follow along with them; the first BPAL ampoule I tried theoretically had sage in it, and even after going to my spice cabinet and huffing a container of sage for orientation, I still couldn’t find any trace of that in the perfume. The reviews commented on the pleasant mintiness or the warmth of the caramel: all I got was musk. (A gentle musk, probably because it was being mitigated by all those things I couldn’t pick out. But still.)

Of course, there’s an extra twist in this game, which is that (again, I am told; I know so little about this) individual skin chemistry can play all kinds of idiosyncratic games with the source material. Going back to music, it would be as if some audience members are sitting there going “holy crap, composer, enough with the trombones already” while others are grumbling that their ears never seem to be able to hear clarinets. So maybe the mint and the caramel and the sage just . . . weren’t actually there for me? I really don’t know.

Which means that this particular experiment is less about “let me explore random bits of the BPAL catalogue!” and more about “let me try to train my nose!” I have less than perfect hearing but a well-trained ear; the reverse is true when it comes to scent. But if one can learn to pick out the French horns and the oboes, I imagine one can also be taught to find mint in a cloud of musk.