friday free for all

[synecdochic]

Now in the correct place, oops.

This post is a free-for-all for people to:

a) post links to perfume-related content they posted elsewhere (on or off DW)
b) talk about anything they want to talk about that isn't big enough for a full post
c) socialize and hang out without worrying about "off topic"
d) or anything else that comes to mind!

Comments

[synecdochic]

1) I made it through surgery! This is not perfume related, but still, yay.

2) I finished my Kabuki/Gatekeeper bpal decant circle in 24 hours even despite being post surgery. My wife is awesome and amazing, all hail.

3). I wrote up my guide to how to run a decant circle, or at least how I do it and get such fast turnaround time.

4) If you've been in my decant circles before: I made synecdochic_decants for news and updates in the future, and will fill it out a bit when i am no longer post surgery.

5) I have samples of 3 perfumes I got as freebies in an ebay buy, and will send them to anyone for cost of shipping: Love Chloe, Lolita Lempicka, and Ed Hardy Hearts and Daggers. Comment if interested so others know it's spoken for, and then PM me your address.

[byzantienne]

So I'm totally in love with a couple of these Only Lovers Left Alive decants (thanks, Syn!) and I ... really wish I could get them in a spray, or /make/ some kind of atomized version. Do people do this? Is it verboten? I don't usually play in BPAL, I'm a commercial-perfume-house girl.

How would I do it?

[asciident]

Short answer is yes - people have mixed BPAL with alcohol (either perfumers alcohol or vodka) and put them in atomizers. Occasionally you can even find people selling/swapping them. :)

Unfortunately with the BPAL forums down I don't know where to find tutorial that could give you the right proportions. Hopefully someone will come along with that for you!

[cleverthylacine]

Honestly as far as proportions go I mostly go by "does it smell right"? this may or may not be helpful.

[cleverthylacine]

Fancy meeting you here!

I have to do that. Oils sink into my skin and lose their scent incredibly fast. I have in a pinch used isopropyl alcohol but perfumers alcohol is best.

I may or may not have also mixed BPAL Morgause with Bond #9 Broadway Nite, which is nice...but has enough violets in it you could probably conjure up Jim with it...

[sathari]

That is fascinating about perfume oils--- I am just the opposite in that "mainstream" perfumes with their alcohol bases mostly barely smell like anything (except the alcohol!) on me and disappear fast; BPAL was a revelation for me because suddenly scents did cool things like lasting and changing (to something besides alcohol!) on me. Fun with individual skin chemistry!

[byzantienne]

Fancy seeing you~

Yeah, I have the same problem. Also I like being able to put perfume in my hair, and you can't really do that without some kind of atomizer! (my current deep desire is to make my hair smell like Eve, from the Only Lovers Left Alive collection.)

Where do you usually get perfumer's alcohol?

[cleverthylacine]

I don't recall quite where I got the big bottle I have right now (if I were home I could run and check), but you can find it online like everything else.

[sathari]

Not sure if this warrants a separate post, so I'm throwing it out here:

Something I'm struggling with as I try to write reviews for scents to post here is that... I don't know the common vocabulary for scent-notes, is I guess the best way to put it. Like there are common "themes" in scents that I recognize, but I don't know if there are common terms for them (like with wines you can talk about "dry" and "sweet" even though those words don't exactly mean what they do in the general usage). So I can go, "Oh, this is a THAT KIND of scent" but I don't have a good way of explaining it for review purposes.

Anyone else having this trouble? Are there guides for this sort of thing? I have lots of write-ups of scents (oh BPAL, you and your frimps!) that I'm holding back on posting because I'm not sure if they're actually intelligible to anyone but me.

[lindra]

I think the most useful resource I found was Bois de Jasmin's Perfume Language & Descriptions A-Z blog post.

Otherwise, not really that I know of. I think there are introductory guides, but they're aimed at reccing perfumes, not learning to write about perfume. *ponders*

[lindra]

And I'd love to read your reviews regardless. :D

[lunabee34]

Agreed. :)

[sathari]

Aw, thanks--- man, you guys are so awesomely encouraging! And posted!

[lunabee34]

Yay!

And I agree with you re: encouragement.

I feel like such a newbie, and I know my nose is terribly unsophisticated. But everyone has been so nice to me and answered questions and recced me things.

This has been a very welcoming fandom to join for sure.

[sathari]

This is definitely an awesome part of the scent fandom--- I'm just blown away, in the best way, by all the people who were like, "Ah, post away, whatever you have to share will be interesting". And also all the really thoughtful scent recs from you and others!

[sathari]

Oooh, thanks for the rec! And for the encouragement--- went ahead and posted!

[sine_nomine]

Personally, I think reading reviews is fascinating because everyone paints pictures of scents differently, and it would be lots of fun reading yours. I think it's not worth stressing about common language. Tell us what it evokes for you (me, I'm still stuck on OH YEAH! and HELL NO! with no idea what causes each response).

[sathari]

Oh, wow, thanks for the encouragement--- went ahead and posted. And backatcha--- I'd love reading your "OH YEAH!"'s and "HELL NO!"'s!

[sine_nomine]

Yay for reviews!

Here's where I wrote about the whole BPAL introduction.

And then down in this other post is where I actually identified what all I liked and didn't.

I still maintain synecdochic is a crack dealer Dr. Frankenstein!

[sathari]

Oooh, awesome! And in particular, I love your comment that "I don't see disappointing, I see useful data points" because that sounds like a motto for so many things.

And good grief, is synecdochic ever an epic enabler. (Seriously, in another fannish context entirely, Square Enix should totally give her a kickback, because it's due to her Final Fantasy VII fic that I got back into gaming in a huge way. And in fact, come to think of it, I'd been out of BPAL "fandom" for a good many years before she made this comm and I jumped back in, so that's twice now!)

[sine_nomine]

Goodness! Thank you... and wow, I'd never considered that at all re disappointing and data points and so many things. But it really does make sense now that you've said that.

Yeah, srsly epic enabler. And crack dealer. And monster creator.

(I am just grateful that my body seems to eat BPAL for lunch; means I won't be spending insane amounts of money on it but, rather, can keep imps around mostly for nosturbation purposes aromatherapy)

[sathari]

Yeah, it's a really awesome and useful way to think about many many things!

Yes, she is truly epic at sucking people into things!

My skin chemistry is variable--- it eats some scents, while some won't even take the hint after I've applied peroxide/alcohol/soap-and-water in various permutations and combinations. On the other hand, the number of things I'm allergic to does somewhat control my spending as well! Bodies, man, bodies.

[sine_nomine]

Indeed! And yes! She got me sucked into reading various fics in canons I knew absolutely nothing about because of her skills as a wordsmith. But that didn't actually cost me like money! ;-)

I'm having fun learning what I require scent-wise. You can ask synecdochic about the "I am drowning in a sea of Hatta!" text I sent her yesterday morning after putting on said fragrance from the bottle and not the decant (even though I'd very carefully tilted said bottle and didn't think I had that much on my finger...). It was a lovely sea to be drowning in, though I was afraid I would gas my co-workers but apparently it had faded enough that I had to extend a wrist to my next-door neighbor for her to smell it... I did get whiffs every so often, which tells me that the hollow in my neck and such may hang onto scent better than my wrists (and was grateful for their reassuring presence... again, what is in that stuff that is so good for aromatherapy?!?).

[sathari]

Yes--- so far I've managed not to get sucked into Stargate because I would miss her Cammie Mitchell too much. But "Lullabye for the New World Order" got me started back into gaming fandom... and, man, worth every penny I've spent!

Mmm, I hear you about that reassurance-from-scent thing--- some days I just need a dose of whatever my current go-to scent is. And, definitely, finding The Right Scents For You is a blast! This comm in general has been so great about egging me on to try things and experiment!

[cleverthylacine]

Read Luca Turin, and post your reviews anyway.

I disagree with Luca Turin on a number of things but he's fun to read even when I think he's dead wrong. (Which I do on two topics: 1 being that perfume DOES SO smell different on skin than on paper or fabric and 2 being that Pi by Givenchy may not be incredibly exciting or novel or brilliant but when you put it on my skin it's divine.)

[rydra_wong]

Turin and Sanchez are just as fun to disagree as to agree with, I find. I agree with them entirely on some things; I also love and revere some of their most-loathed, one-star reviewees (notably Kingdom and Miel de Bois).

[cleverthylacine]

I would have to agree though I don't know those specific frags :)

I'm halfway through my third large size bottle of Pi.

I initially tried it on just because I was into Numb3rs and I wanted to know if it was something that Charlie would wear (LOL) but I sprayed it on and it was AMAZING. I get it on eBay usually because it's less expensive and I don't have to explain to a nosey sales person that no, it's not a present for my brother/nonexistent male partner, it's for me...

[sathari]

Thanks for the rec! (Sadly, the dude took his blog down, and the PDF copy of it is coming up as a blank for me, mutter-grumble, but I'll poke around some more.)

[cleverthylacine]

Oh that IS sad, though mostly I have read his books!

[sathari]

Yes, very frustrating! Sigh.

[lunabee34]

Oh wow. That seems like such a given. Everything I have smelled on skin smelled different on paper; sometimes slightly so but often times massively so.

[momijizukamori]

So I'm sitting here with the problem of.... my ScentBase shows I have 159 scents in my collection, not including D's decant circles, and I only know what a handful of them smell like.

Unfortunately I have the attention span of a goldfish, so sitting and reviewing batches is maybe not going to work because I suspect that I'll maybe get as far as drydown and then forget to write any more notes past that.

Any ideas? Other than attempting to write a bot to remind me to take notes (which is a solution, but maybe not the most immediate one...)

[synecdochic]

on short attention span days, i do "wet on skin, dry on skin", and then remind myself to come back at half an hour and note if it's done anything interesting. remember, even imperfect notes are better than no notes!

[momijizukamori]

True! The goldfish brain has been strong this week unfortunately

[synecdochic]

here's a possible hack: put on the perfume, schedule Workrave for 20 minute breaks, the name "add more notes" the first thing you do when the computer unlocks :)

[asciident]

I just do wet/in the bottle, first on skin, dry on skin in my own reviews. If I happen to remember what a scent smelled like after a few hours of wear I'll put it in the dry on skin part. But I don't worry about it much :)

[sathari]

Hmmm... I know my first-ever "real grownup" digital watch had an optional "chime" function which would beep every hour on the hour; maybe something like that, to beep once an hour or so and get your attention, might work like the aforementioned bot?

[lunabee34]

This may be a dissenting opinion, but I don't think you necessarily need to think of it as a huge time investment. Put it on, smell it; smell it ten minutes later; if icky, scrub and if yummy keep wearing it. I think you can pretty accurately record whether you like something at the ten minute mark even if you don't capture every nuance that might happen over the next few hours. (Caveat that some scents morph beyond the ten minute mark, but I've only had one or two significantly change on me beyond that mark)

[azurelunatic]

Or reminderbot in #dreamwidth-bitch, if you're in there?

[cleverthylacine]

Any Piguet geeks here? The last time I bought a lot of perfume there were four Piguets available and now it seems like there are about 8 million.

I love Fracas but I don't love it quite as much as I did in the 80s (reformulations argh argh), I love Bandit and I love Visa. Baghari makes me smell like a nursing home, minus the pee. What are the new ones like?

[lunabee34]

I tried to be. LOL

Bandit did not work for me. It smells so aggressively leather on/to me and the leather reads almost like stale cigarette smoke to me. It's a fascinating thing to happen on my skin, and I'm glad I smelled it, but it's not me as far as a daily wear scent.

That's the only Piguet I've smelled.

What does Fracas smell like to you? And what do you think the reformulation took from it?

[cleverthylacine]

Fracas is recognisable as the same girl, but...the newer reformulation is more aggressively sweet and less sensual. It used to be my absolute favourite perfume. Now I still love it, but I'm not sure I don't love Visa just as much. Although the first time I got Fracas I was 14, and I'm willing to admit that part of it may just be that I was so enchanted with something that wasn't Joven or Love's...but I didn't wear anything else for years, and now I only wear it for the days when I wear super sweet (I'm also a lolita). It's more feminine and less female. Which is true of a lot of the Piguet reformulations. The original Piguets were very badly behaved young ladies, but the current Bandit and Visa are more wearable for me than the original.

[lunabee34]

It's More feminine and less female.

I love that description.

I have only recently gotten into perfumes and so I'm pretty much smelling everything for the first time, which means I'm missing out on knowing what the vintage formulations smell like but also means I'm not pining for them either. LOL

[cyprinella]

I was at Vitamin Shoppe today for scent-unrelated reasons and passed their essential oil stand on my way to check out. I finally remembered to stop and huff some of the oils for scent notes I hear described but don't know what they are. It was awesome to realize that I knew what patchouli is and I hate it! It's a scent that I have for some reason always associated with old lady houses (perhaps in potpourri?) and fragrances. So it was a very useful detour.

[synecdochic]

ha! Yes, patchouli is a very divisive scent :)

[azurelunatic]

I tested Streets of Detroit: http://azurelunatic.dreamwidth.org/7299158.html

Why the top notes?

[lunabee34]

Question!

If they burn off fairly quickly, sometimes in a matter of minutes, why does perfume even have top notes? Why not jump straight to the middle/bottom which will dominate the fragrance?

My husband Josh and I debated this and we wondered it if had something to do with masking the fragrance of the alcohol in perfumes but IDK.