Scentzilla!

I’ve got a million fish to fry at the moment, so I doubt I’m going to find the time to write a review today. But if you want a good laugh, please watch this video clip featuring Mr. T’s wonderous 80s fashion show. The person at You Tube who uploaded it didn’t know where it was from. But I do. Because I LURVE me some Mr. T. It’s from his self-help video for kids called “Be Somebody, or Be Somebody’s Fool,” and it features Mr. T dispensing advice on all manner of things. I wish I knew how to transfer VCR tapes to the computer, because there are a million gems on it just like this.

Is it me, or does Kelly look like she’s, uh, packing something up front? Like, something GIRLS DON’T HAVE. Poor Kelly. At least she can always be proud of her coiffure. It appears to defy terrestrial physics, existing mystically within its own zero gravity field.

An imaginary gold star to anyone who can guess my favorite line in the video clip, heh.

I know you all have left some great comments, and I will be back to respond… I’m just running shorter on time than I thought I would be! GAH!

Lulu Guinness ~ Cast a Spell and Lulu Guiness

I’m feeling a tad surly today, so please forgive my tone if I’m being overly persnickety. Yesterday I finally got around to trying Lulu Guinness’ Cast a Spell. This, even after reading Marina’s review at Perfume-Smellin’ Things and I knew it wasn’t going to my thing. I am an idiot. But that bottle freaking got to me - I mean, seriously, how is it NOT adorable? Worse, I didn’t even use a smelling strip - right onto my skin it went, like I hadn’t a care in the world as to how I used that sort of prime real estate. What to say? It’s fruity, woody, vanillic, yadda, yadda, yadda…. If anything, it reminded me of CK Euphoria. Which is also yadda, yadda, yadda. The blurb at Sephora reads, “Inspired by fairy tales like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, Cast a Spell is infused with a touch of wickedness, and glittery, frosted, enchanted forests, magic love potions, the richness of Baroque art, and the dance between light and dark, coolness and warmth.” If it was inspired by the tales of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, then they are not the twisted but magical Grimm brothers’ versions I grew up reading. Oh, no. Cast a Spell was given the full on “Bibbity Bobbity Boo” schmaltz treatment. Which is fine. I mean, that IS some people’s thing. I just couldn’t find any real villians or wickedness in the scent, and I like my fairy tales with at least a little flash of danger in them. You can read the full listing of notes at Sephora.

The eponymous scent by Lulu Guinness (simply called Lulu Guiness) is another story, and a much better one. It’s not a fairy tale, it’s just a brief ode to the ephemeral beauty of fresh-cut bouquets. Lily and lily of the valley, rose water, and a delightfully purty sweet pea note are the primary players in it. I truly adore its sweet pea note especially. The effect is so vivid, and so fresh, and I wish, oh how I wish, it worked better on me. The fragrance disappointingly begins to fall flat on my skin after a while, and the bright effect is lost all too soon. GAH! And it starts out so pretty! I am not the only person who suffers that problem, but it does not happen to everyone. I actually think this works really well on folks who have slightly drier skin than mine. Here’s another take on it at ¡Ombligo!. If spring hasn’t sprung yet where you live, Lulu Guinness might be a nice vibrant way to remind yourself it will soon enough. I think this may be discontinued (I haven’t heard anything one way or the other, it’s just getting less common is why I say that) but you can pick up for a song on the various discount sites or eBay if you shop around.

Links:

I kept meaning to link to some of the latest podcasts from Lipgloss and Laptops, but then kept forgetting. (See the posts below about me and my hinky memory. Sigh.) For the perfume lover, I particularly recommend episode #3 , aka part one of The Perfume Chronicals. You might also enjoy #4, which is mostly about blush, but Airdrie and Kerry Anne, the charmingly down-to-earth hosts, also talk about some perfume versions of other beauty products, which are helpfully listed here at the blog as well. The links are to the blog, not the podcast itself, but details on downloading the podcasts abound in their sidebar. iTunes has proven to be the easiest way for me (don’t worry, it’s free!) There’s a number of beauty podcasts right now, but it’s my fave, partly because the audio quality is superb, and mostly because it’s done in such a fun conversational style and the hosts’ sense of humor shines right through. They crack me up.

Fun with Captioning
Also, just for kicks, head on over to Victoria’s Own, where she’s recently posted some photos of sculptures she took in Paris. I feel irresistbly compelled to caption them for no good reason at all, and I just KNOW other people can come up with something way better than my weak efforts. There’s this one and this one that she’s posted most recently.

Image top from disney.go.com. Second image is one I adapted from an Early American floral silhouette from Dover royalty-free images.

First, there will be a review post up later tonight or tomorrow for Lulu Guiness, but not sure when I’ll have the chance for more than a ten second sit down.

Anyhow, the winner of the samples, et al, is Marissa! However, if you’re not Marissa, but you DID enter the last contests, you kind of won, too - if you are interested, please email me with a mailing address using the email you filled out here (so as that I knows it’s really you) and I’ll send you a couple sample vials of Fresh Cannabis Santal and L’Aromarine Cola (they are two scents I’ve gotten recently that I’ve had the most fun wearing.) I figure, why not, you know? It was fun to see some of the lurkers delurk. Just send email to katie who may be at or around scentzilla.com., with no capital letters in the email addy.

So… I found a small collection of samples packaged up and wrapped in my box of decanting supplies. What the ??? Boy, people are not kidding when they say the memory is the first thing to go. I have NO idea why I made this up. I am thinking I made it up for a friend, but I don’t recall ever doing it, and she’s already smelled these things out at my house anyhow. How embarassing. But my embarassment is your good fortune! The samples are as follows:

• 1 ml vial of Galimard A Demi-Mot
• 2 ml vial of Givenchy Organza Indecence
• 2 ml vial of Benefit Cosmetics Maybe Baby
• 2 ml vial of Escada Ibiza Hippie
• 5 gram sample of Benefit Cosmetics “Touch me then try to leave…” cream
• 2 ml sample of Philosophy Falling in Love cologne
• 5-ish ml pump sample of Philosophy Falling in Love Lotion
• 5-ish ml pump sample of Philosophy Falling in Love Shower Gel
• 5-ish ml pump sample of Philosophy Double Rich Hot Cocoa Shower Gel

I will also be throwing in my 10 ml (that’s one-third of an ounce) atomizer of Gendarme’s Greed, too, because I seriously doubt I am ever going to wear it really: it’s been sprayed only a wee handful of times, so it’s not new, but it’s not old or used up either. Oh wait, and you’ll also get my nearly-new 1/3 ounce bottles of Rimmel London Glam and Shania, too. (Which you may or may not care about, but hey - let’s clean house!)

Anyhow, same general rules as last time, but the deadline to enter will be noon PST tomorrow, so hurry! Rules:

This contest is open to anyone in the United States (so sorry to my non-American readers, I want to keep shipping cost down! And sorry to my virtual neighbors in Canada, too!) who leaves a comment under either post published TODAY (this one and the one underneath it), by noon Pacific Standard Time on Tuesday. Winners will be announced and notified by Wednesday 6 PM Pacific Standard Time. Basically, leave a comment for this or the other post I made today, and let me know you would like to be eligible for the drawing by either typing or copying and pasting the following text:

“I would like to enter the drawing - please contact me via the email address I have provided when making this post if I have won.”

And really, this is also a thank you, too - you guys are all so awesome. Thanks everyone! As Anne pointed out, I guess not everyone, since Lisa S. won the last one (so you’re out!) And also, while I won’t be sending out of the States, I do want to thank all you kind readers from all over the globe with words at least - THANK YOU!

Lily Lambert, No.s 22, 33, & 66:

Lily Lambert resides in Portland, Oregon, and engages a range of artistic endeavors, from painting to jewelry design, and most interestingly for me - perfumery. Ms. Lambert was mentored by Sarah Horowitz-Thran, who many of you many will recognize as the innovator behind Creative Scentualization. Today I’ll talk a little about a few of her scents, but I hope to get around to the rest of them later this week or next.

No. 22: If you are a fan (disclaimer: I am not) of Monyette Paris’ Coquette Tropique AND S-Perfume’s 100% Love, you are going to find much to like here. This style is not really my bag, but I can appreciate it as a rich tropical scent. So many fruity-florals seem wan or annoyingly saccharine, however this is not one of them. What I notice most on my skin is the pikake hovering gracefully above a coconut note that seems rich but not heavy. Awesomely, the coconut doesn’t smell like I went into my cupboards and slathered baking goods all over myself, which can sometimes happen to me with that note. (In fact, the “black coconut” in 22 smells a whole lot like the “black chocolate” in 100% Love to me.) Vanilla lies at the base, with strawberry and papaya accents on top. No. 22 is a fun pick-me-up for those of us in the Pacific Northwest who are getting tired of spring’s soggy greyness. It’s not my sort of thing personally, but I know someone else who it smells terrific on, so I’ll be interested in reading what the reaction to No. 22 is on some of the perfume boards. I suspect it will be a crowd-pleaser amongst fruity-floral afficianados.

No. 33: This reminded me so strongly of Lulu Beauty’s Gigi. In fact, I kept wishing it was Gigi instead, because I am absurdly in love with it. That is not to say 33 is not wearable. It is. I have to especially single out its french vanilla note as particularly exceptional - the french vanilla is of very high quality, and believe it or not, you really can smell that sort of thing. 33 is sweetly vegetal-musky, with just a stray wisp o’ smoke floating across its surface. Alas, there is supposed to be a sage note in the fragrance, which I did not pick up on. It kind of gets lost on my skin behind the other notes. I also detect something fruity-floral in it, which I am perceived as gardenia-pear, but I wonder if I’m not just thinking that because I’m associating it with my beloved Gigi. Actually, I probably am, so never mind. But um, please check out Gigi if you ever get the chance and spot it somewhere.

No. 66: 66 is described as possessing “a top note of fresh cotton, resting on the rich, sweet depths of mystical sage.” Oh pish-posh. That’s a fine bit of prose, but the actual aroma is much more ordinary and BETTER than that. It smell like reaching into a box of Tide and scooping it out into the washing machine. Lacy white trills of flowers happily decorate the Tide note, but never overtake it. I am not personally a big fan of clean scents (something about me feels excessively hygenic wearing them) but this is one I can really dig into. It’s very true smelling (to Tide) with none of those weird bleach-like or counter top cleanser mist notes I have unfortunately found in other “clean” scents. I can think of two people I know right off the top of my head who would LOVE this scent, and I’m kind of bummed out I didn’t get to see them this weekend so I could write down their reactions to it. This is a must-try if you are a fan of clean scents. Or fans of Tide - which I’m not saying to be a smart ass (well, this time at least.) I know some of you really have been hoping for a scent like that, and have been disappointed by other fragrances in the clean genre. It’s my favorite of the three I’m reviewing today, which surprises the hell out of me. Seriously, I don’t usually do detergent-y scents.

Lily Lambert fragrances are carried exclusively online by b-glowing. Currently you can get 25% off your purchases there by using the code instyle06. If you are scared to buy things unsniffed, b-glowing DOES have a sample program available for a small fee, so you can actually try some small samples (one time use ones only) to smell the line before you commit to a full size bottle. (Coupon via ¡Ombligo!, where you can also read a review of No. 44, if interested. Some brief impressions of a few of these fragrances are also written up at Pink Manhattan.)

Contest Winner:

Okay, so the winner of my mysteriously extra bottle of Compagnia Delle Indie’s Patchouly is… drumroll… Lisa S.! Congrats, Lisa! I will be contacting you shortly. I am actually trying to prepare for a move sometime soon across the river to Vancouver, Washington, so if you didn’t win or didn’t care for the prize, look for more contests if I have time. I figure if I start shipping some of my stuff away I won’t have quite so much to pack up. Hopefully.

One More Thing:

One more item, which has nothing to do with perfume, but rather with one man’s use of St. Ives Facial Scrub: “It feels like you’re washing your face with wet cement, and that’s exactly how we like it.” Heh. Boys are funny. Scroll down just a little, past the “Metrosexual” review to read the St. Ives review.

Image from lilylambert.com