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smellsgood2014-05-10 03:24 pm
jenett) wrote in smellsgood2014-05-10 03:24 pm
Entry tags:
Perfumes from Underhill Alchemy and Blooddrop
This time, a round of perfumes from places other than BPAL.
A story, and then three reviews from Underhill Alchemy (Dragon and Phoenix, Firebird’s Child, and Tam Lin), another story, and two reviews from Blooddrop (Gem Twist and Uffington Horse)
So, this one comes with a brief story. I’m one of the staff at Paganicon, a Pagan hotel-based convention in Minnesota. This year, we were frantically working to get the vendor room set up, and two very nice people (vendors) chipped in to help us out, and were awesome and cheerful and amazing.
And because one of the best ways one can thank vendors at such things for being awesome is to buy things from them, I was delighted to discover that they do perfume. The scent website is over here, and you can use the tags to browse. You can see their non-perfume stuff over here
A number of their perfumes are at least partially intended for ritual use, and that’s a large part of why I bought the three I did (for reasons that I’m not going into here, but the Phoenix is a particular focus of my religious tradition). I’m definitely planning another order at some point.
Dragon and Phoenix The fragrance is warm and sweet, with herbal notes of clean water and floral notes that finish with a touch of spiciness. (link to full description)
Wet: Spicy, at first, but there’s a definite scent of water and of something sort of floral. I’m having trouble placing the specifics - it’s more a sense of ‘not cinnamon, not the usual sort of flowers’.
Drying: Settling down to something warm, and yes, also sweet. I love the complexity of this - it’s got something a little different each time I sniff it. I want to roll in this and just enjoy it.
Dry: Still that very pleasantly complex sort of thing. This is mild on me - not a ton of throw, and not very invasive, but it’s a very companionable sort of smell.
End result: Like this! A lot.
Firebird’s Child Desert flowers and cinnamon dance with feathers of flame. (link to full description - inspired by the S.J. Tucker song of that name.)
Wet: A much warmer scent than Dragon and Phoenix, almost immediately. I don’t get as much cinnamon off of this as much as I do that smell of sun-baked sand, that dryness. There’s something else there - flowers, but a kind I don’t know at all,
Drying: There’s wind here and sun and fire and still that sense of dry air,
Dry: Dry and a hint of spice, and movement.
End result: I like this even more than I thought I might. It has an awful lot of light in it, and warmth, and companionable.
Tam Lin Midnight rain and heather, with bright and dark accents : Months have passed since the rose was plucked. Now Carterhaugh smells like midnight rain and heather, the mint of pennyroyal, and darker hints of myrrh and black poppy. Can Janet hold her courage, and her lover, through all the changes yet to come? (link to full description)
Wet: Rain and heather and a bit of damp earth, and the road through the forest.
Drying: (This portion of the review elided because I had a very affectionate cat demanding attention.)
Dry: This has gone slightly more powdery on me than I was hoping for - not entirely, but it’s got that edge to it. However, I very much like the combo of the water and the sharper-herbs of the heather and the pennyroyal.
End result:
So, when Astrid at Blooddrop released the L’Ecurie scents, I knew I had to get two of them. The second one is simpler: I’ve been fascinated by the Uffington Horse for a while now, and it will probably eventually be part of a tattoo.
The first one’s a bit more complicated, and she tells her own encounter with Gem Twist in the description of the scent. But you see, once upon a time, in 1985, when I was completely horse-mad (as I was for some time after that - I was about to turn 10 at that point.)
Anyway, the USET Talent Derby at that point ran within driving distance of us, and Mom took me and a friend to watch. The Talent Derby is show jumping, lots of high jumps that you have to go around, with points deducted for knocking things down, not jumping over them (refusals) or for going over the allotted time. It’s flashy and showy, and quite complicated, as well as being fun to watch. The Talent Derby was limited to people under 25 (and some combination of ‘haven’t won other major things’ that I forget the details of.)
We’re out there all day, and I keep saying “Mom, that gray horse and his rider are going to win.” And I am, y’know, *ten*, and Mom just keeps nodding and smiling, and not believing me. I turn out to be entirely right (they won by a decent margin, too), and the two of them went on to break all sorts of records and win silver at the Seoul Olympics a couple of years later. Not just skilled, but with a glee and style that were just delightful to watch.
About four years later, I got to actually meet Gem Twist (my Pony Club games team was competing at the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden that fall, and that meant we had barn passes.)
Very very sweet horse, and in total geekery, he was cloned (he’d been gelded) after his death in the hopes they can breed his genes down in useful ways. (The link on his name goes to Wikipedia which has more on this.)
Gem Twist: Bright and forward lemon verbena, michelena alba, white tea, rosemary and a touch of frankincense.
Wet: I get the tea much more than anything else,
Drying: Still lots of tea and not much else.
Dry: As it dries, there’s a bit more of the other things - I can get more of the verbena and the frankincense.
End result: I do not hugely want to smell like this, but I am still glad I bought the bottle, because memories, they are a thing.
Uffington Horse: The Uffington horse smells of wild, fresh herbs such as lavender, wild chamomile, small violets, mullein, sage, wild roses cozied up to a bed of soft, pale chalk
Wet: Damp fields, hints of herbs and flowers, a hint of earth. I get the rose more than most things, but also a bit of lavender and violet.
Drying: Very faint, but pleasant. It’s not all floral, it’s got more depth than that, but something in the mix of flowers and herbs is very soothing.
Dry: As it dries, it picks up a bit more throw, and there’s - oh, this is basking on a hillside on a summer day, with a light breeze and the last hints of the morning dew in the air, and everything right with the world.
End result: Very much like.
A story, and then three reviews from Underhill Alchemy (Dragon and Phoenix, Firebird’s Child, and Tam Lin), another story, and two reviews from Blooddrop (Gem Twist and Uffington Horse)
So, this one comes with a brief story. I’m one of the staff at Paganicon, a Pagan hotel-based convention in Minnesota. This year, we were frantically working to get the vendor room set up, and two very nice people (vendors) chipped in to help us out, and were awesome and cheerful and amazing.
And because one of the best ways one can thank vendors at such things for being awesome is to buy things from them, I was delighted to discover that they do perfume. The scent website is over here, and you can use the tags to browse. You can see their non-perfume stuff over here
A number of their perfumes are at least partially intended for ritual use, and that’s a large part of why I bought the three I did (for reasons that I’m not going into here, but the Phoenix is a particular focus of my religious tradition). I’m definitely planning another order at some point.
Three reviews
Dragon and Phoenix The fragrance is warm and sweet, with herbal notes of clean water and floral notes that finish with a touch of spiciness. (link to full description)
Wet: Spicy, at first, but there’s a definite scent of water and of something sort of floral. I’m having trouble placing the specifics - it’s more a sense of ‘not cinnamon, not the usual sort of flowers’.
Drying: Settling down to something warm, and yes, also sweet. I love the complexity of this - it’s got something a little different each time I sniff it. I want to roll in this and just enjoy it.
Dry: Still that very pleasantly complex sort of thing. This is mild on me - not a ton of throw, and not very invasive, but it’s a very companionable sort of smell.
End result: Like this! A lot.
Firebird’s Child Desert flowers and cinnamon dance with feathers of flame. (link to full description - inspired by the S.J. Tucker song of that name.)
Wet: A much warmer scent than Dragon and Phoenix, almost immediately. I don’t get as much cinnamon off of this as much as I do that smell of sun-baked sand, that dryness. There’s something else there - flowers, but a kind I don’t know at all,
Drying: There’s wind here and sun and fire and still that sense of dry air,
Dry: Dry and a hint of spice, and movement.
End result: I like this even more than I thought I might. It has an awful lot of light in it, and warmth, and companionable.
Tam Lin Midnight rain and heather, with bright and dark accents : Months have passed since the rose was plucked. Now Carterhaugh smells like midnight rain and heather, the mint of pennyroyal, and darker hints of myrrh and black poppy. Can Janet hold her courage, and her lover, through all the changes yet to come? (link to full description)
Wet: Rain and heather and a bit of damp earth, and the road through the forest.
Drying: (This portion of the review elided because I had a very affectionate cat demanding attention.)
Dry: This has gone slightly more powdery on me than I was hoping for - not entirely, but it’s got that edge to it. However, I very much like the combo of the water and the sharper-herbs of the heather and the pennyroyal.
End result:
Blooddrop
So, when Astrid at Blooddrop released the L’Ecurie scents, I knew I had to get two of them. The second one is simpler: I’ve been fascinated by the Uffington Horse for a while now, and it will probably eventually be part of a tattoo.
The first one’s a bit more complicated, and she tells her own encounter with Gem Twist in the description of the scent. But you see, once upon a time, in 1985, when I was completely horse-mad (as I was for some time after that - I was about to turn 10 at that point.)
Anyway, the USET Talent Derby at that point ran within driving distance of us, and Mom took me and a friend to watch. The Talent Derby is show jumping, lots of high jumps that you have to go around, with points deducted for knocking things down, not jumping over them (refusals) or for going over the allotted time. It’s flashy and showy, and quite complicated, as well as being fun to watch. The Talent Derby was limited to people under 25 (and some combination of ‘haven’t won other major things’ that I forget the details of.)
We’re out there all day, and I keep saying “Mom, that gray horse and his rider are going to win.” And I am, y’know, *ten*, and Mom just keeps nodding and smiling, and not believing me. I turn out to be entirely right (they won by a decent margin, too), and the two of them went on to break all sorts of records and win silver at the Seoul Olympics a couple of years later. Not just skilled, but with a glee and style that were just delightful to watch.
About four years later, I got to actually meet Gem Twist (my Pony Club games team was competing at the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden that fall, and that meant we had barn passes.)
Very very sweet horse, and in total geekery, he was cloned (he’d been gelded) after his death in the hopes they can breed his genes down in useful ways. (The link on his name goes to Wikipedia which has more on this.)
Gem Twist: Bright and forward lemon verbena, michelena alba, white tea, rosemary and a touch of frankincense.
Wet: I get the tea much more than anything else,
Drying: Still lots of tea and not much else.
Dry: As it dries, there’s a bit more of the other things - I can get more of the verbena and the frankincense.
End result: I do not hugely want to smell like this, but I am still glad I bought the bottle, because memories, they are a thing.
Uffington Horse: The Uffington horse smells of wild, fresh herbs such as lavender, wild chamomile, small violets, mullein, sage, wild roses cozied up to a bed of soft, pale chalk
Wet: Damp fields, hints of herbs and flowers, a hint of earth. I get the rose more than most things, but also a bit of lavender and violet.
Drying: Very faint, but pleasant. It’s not all floral, it’s got more depth than that, but something in the mix of flowers and herbs is very soothing.
Dry: As it dries, it picks up a bit more throw, and there’s - oh, this is basking on a hillside on a summer day, with a light breeze and the last hints of the morning dew in the air, and everything right with the world.
End result: Very much like.
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You sound like an awesome con organizer. ;)
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