Review, Recommendation, Swatches & Mini Tutorial : 4 of Chinovi's Brow Powders

I made an order from Chinovi sometime ago but only got around to reviewing them now. Here's what I got:

• Brow Powders (Dirty Blonde, Medium Brown, Deep Auburn, Dark Brown)
• Eyeshadows (Pool Party, Vulcan, Vesta)
• Blushes (Bianca, Gidget, Jocelyn)

And I got a free sample of Doww! 

For this review, I'm only reviewing the brow powders since a) I'm having a break out so I can't swatch the blushes on my face since I'm using minimal make up to avoid further angering my face, & b) I'm adding a mini tutorial on mess-free brow powder application, so this post is getting long.

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Customer Service

Vanessa was great! So the international shipping amount was a bit high, which often happens when websites calculate shipping amount by total purchase price. Vanessa actually manually invoiced me so I get charged the right amount. Here's the TAT:

• Paid: July 12
• Shipped: July 21

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Brow Powders Swatches

All done over bare skin, taken under natural light.

I'm loving the smooth texture! Brow swatches:

If you guys are wondering why I got Dirty Blonde, I used to have blonde & red ombre hair and wanted to do blonde & red ombré eyebrows.

Unfortunately, these are how they look like on me zoomed out:

Yup, very, very little difference between them thanks to my dark brows.

Now I know why brow mascaras are more popular in Asia, it's just that Asian hair is so dark, you have to coat it with a mascara to cover the natural colour of your hair. Dark Auburn is actually a perfect match for my current hair, unfortunately, it doesn't hide my darker natural eyebrow colour. I'd love a brow mascara in this exact shade though!

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Formula Review

Like all other brow powders out there, there's tons of fall out. That's why I find it a bit hard to use, and kind of frustrating when I have my eye make up perfect...and then the brow powder falls on it and ruins it. I also notice fall out when you're trying to blend, but it could be because some of the brow powder gets on the hair instead of the skin, and brushing out your brows cause them to fly out in a puff all over your face. I've included a mini tutorial on how to get around this problem below.

The annoyance of brow powders in general aside, I love the formula of these brow powders! They're great on bare skin and apply so freaking smoothly. So guess what I used them as?

Yup. That's Medium Brown blended with Dark Brown on my lids, over bare skin. No primer whatsoever. They last me 12+h though it does get faded. Here's the full face look:

Ignore the lips...I got an insect bite at this time so I ended up looking like I'm a cheap idiot who decided to get lip injections for only 1/4 of my lips.

Ok, now I need to discuss something I noticed with the ingredients. So initially, the ingredient list can only be found on my actual products and the ingredient list on the site is a bit unclear. Here's the only mention of the ingredients:

Screenshot taken on 10 June, 2015

I bought this before I learnt the importance of looking at ingredients, so I didn't notice. As you can see on the products picture above, the ingredient list on the actual products simply says: Mica, Iron Oxide. So it looks like nothing is omitted, but I had to check with Vanessa anyway and she confirmed it's correct:

Now, I'm confused about how something so simple could have a better formula than all the indie mattes I've tried before, so I decided to do some experiments to see if you can get such an awesome result with just sericite mica and iron oxides. Unfortunately, I don't have access to plain sericite mica in such a short time so I had to use treated sericite mica, but here's the results of the experiments with treated serircite mica & a quick & easy DIY matte eyeshadows guide!

TL;DR: yes, you can make a matte eyeshadow by just grinding treated sericite mica with iron oxides, BUT your colour options.

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Fuss Free Brow Powder Application Tutorial

Ok, this is my preferred method of applying brow powder without having a rain of powder ruining my make up. First, select the foiling medium of your choice. Here are some options:

• A foiling medium like TKB's Mineral Wetliner/Darling Girl's Foil Me – I only own TKB's mineral wet liner, and it gives that slick, liquid liner sort of effect. I personally find it too unnatural for my brows (see pic wayyy below)
• Water – May not work for formulas heavy on oil dispersible titanium dioxide, which ends up having a water-proofing effect. You can check out my review for Daisy Bird eyeshadows, where I ran my eyeshadow covered hand under running water, to see what I'm talking about.
• Alcohol – Some people are against this because it's harsh & drying for your skin, but personally, this gives me the perfect balance between adhesion & blendability. Oh, and I'm a tad of a germaphobe and I already sterilize my brushes before use, so adding a bit more alcohol doesn't bother me.

Mix the powder with the foiling medium of your choice to get the right consistency for you. Go with a consistency you're comfortable with. There's no "right" consistency for this. Some people like very bold, slicked back brows and may prefer a wetter consistency, some people may want a lighter touch and have a more powder-like texture.

I usually work on the cap of one of my eyeshadow tubs:

If you're using alcohol, you can pretty much dampen your brush with it's good to go. This is why it's my favourite "foiling" medium. Once your brush is damp from the alcohol, tap it into the brow powder, then tap off the excess powder before using it.

 And now you can apply it with no fall out!

Oh, and I'm sure some of the craftier ones will ask this....

Since you mentioned actual foiling mediums has a liner effect, can I mix the brow powder with it and turn it into a sort of brow mascara?

I did give it a try. 

I mixed it on my hand since I don't have an eyeshadow cap big enough for my spoolie.

I used Dirty Blonde since the effect would be most obvious and mixed it with TKB Trading's Mineral Wetliner.

I added more pigments after this but forgot to take a picture >.<

As you can see, it doesn't coat my brows at all, and ends up sinking to the skin. So nope, you can't use a loose shadow foiling medium to create your own mascara.

Japan in 12 Colours (Days 1-6)

So for the past few days, I've been in Japan. I needed to pack light for my trip, so I only brought 13 samples with me. Seems like a lot, but it's way less options than I'm used to...and being dumb, I didn't check my own swatches and ended up bringing 2 colours that are dupes of each other (Backstreet Makeup Co's Laissez-Faire & Eccentric Cosmetics' Earl). So this leaves me with only 12 colours to play with...

Here are the colours I picked:

(Swatches are linked)

• Backstreet Make Up Co — Laissez-Faire 
• Beauty For The Win — The Fault in Our Swatches
• Blackbird Cosmetics — Dog Days
• Blanche Neige — Little Mermaid 
• Chinovi Cosmetics — Gidget (blush) 
• Daisy Bird Cosmetics — Dandy Dandelion
• Dawn Eyes Cosmetics — Momo
• Eccentric Cosmetics — Earl
• Life's Entropy — Enchant
• Mad Lab Cosmetics — Pearl
• My Pretty Zombie — Grandma Cleavage
• Notoriously Morbid — Melancholy One
• Ten Three Labs — Electric Love

Thanks to lack of wi-fi & being too lazy to update the past few days, here's a compilation of the first 6 looks:

June 17 

• Daisy Bird Cosmetics — Dandy Dandelion
• Eccentric Cosmetics — Earl
• Life's Entropy — Enchant

Sorry for the crap lighting! The hotel room's dark!

Lips is Limnit's Abracadabra, sheered out with a DC's lip balm. Btw, DC's lip balms are awesome...they taste soooo good and they're super moisturizing and creamy. The oilier formula is also the best for sheering out lipsticks to get a more stained look!

June 18

• Beauty For The Win — The Fault in Our Swatches
• Notoriously Morbid — Melancholy One
• Ten Three Labs — Electric Love

June 19

• Backstreet Make Up Co — Laissez-Faire
• Blanche Neige — Little Mermaid 
• Dawn Eyes Cosmetics — Momo

Sorry for crap lighting again! Had to leave early in the morning when the sun's not out yet.

Limnit's Abracadabra on lips again!

June 20

• Dawn Eyes Cosmetics — Momo
• Eccentric Cosmetics — Earl
• Life's Entropy — Enchant
• Mad Lab Cosmetics — Pearl
• My Pretty Zombie — Grandma Cleavage
• Notoriously Morbid — Melancholy One

I'm kinda sad Momo didn't really show up in the center, and just turned the colour slightly brownish in the centre instead.

Lips is Fyrinnae ombréd out with another lipstick I customized.

June 21 

• Backstreet Make Up Co — Laissez-Faire
• Blackbird Cosmetics — Dog Days
• Blanche Neige — Little Mermaid 
• Eccentric Cosmetics — Earl

June 22

• Beauty For The Win — The Fault in Our Swatches
• Daisy Bird Cosmetics — Dandy Dandelion
• Eccentric Cosmetics — Earl 

Discworld Inspired: Granny Weatherwax

Ok, I'm REALLY sucking at updating while I'm traveling. Somehow, I thought I uploaded this already but apparently not. Oops. 

Background: I wanted to create several EOTDs that's Discworld inspired but still wearable for work. 

This one is inspired by Granny Weatherwax. Seems kinda cheesy to pick emerald for Esmeralda Weatherwax, but I was actually going for a green & purple look as a nod to the colour of magic, octarine. Of course it has to be rigid and structured to capture Granny's iron hard self-control.

DIY Cosmetics: How to Make Easy Matte Eyeshadows

I recently encountered a product that seemed to have an incomplete ingredients list since the ingredients listed was just: Mica, Iron Oxides

The thing is, the formula was great. It was blendable and works well on bare skin! I decided to test out if it is possible to create a great formula with just iron oxides grounded with sericite mica. Unfortunately, the only sericite mica I have access to are carnauba wax treated sericite mica, and methicone treated sericite mica, so the results I got may be different than if I used just plain sericite mica (and the ingredient list would be: Mica, Iron oxides, Carnauba Wax/Polymethylhydrogen Siloxane instead of just Mica, Iron Oxides).

This was the first experiment I did:

As you can see, my iron oxide & carnauba wax treated sericite mica mix isn't as smooth as the Medium Brown eyeshadow I was swatching, even with a primer.

So I decided I may need to get the precise ratio, so I mixed Ferric Ferrocyanide (I wanted a blue eyeshadow) with carnauba wax treated sericite mica in different quantities and here's the results:

SM = Carnauba Wax Treated Sericite Mica
FF = Ferric Ferrocyanide

As you can see, the perfect mix is somewhere between 4-5 parts carnauba wax treated sericite mica to 1 part Ferric Ferrocyanide. Unfortunately, it now has a bit of a sheen and the colour became much lighter. It also didn't blend as well as shadow I was testing out:

I was wondering if Ferric Ferrocyanide just didn't blend into the mica as well as iron oxides, so I did a 4:1 methicone treated sericite mica & iron oxide mix. Yup, I know this isn't a perfect experiment and I should've stuck to carnauba wax treated sericite mica, but I didn't know what sericite mica to use so I just bought small amounts of the different sericite mica available. Here's the result over bare skin:

Looks perfect! Looks like you can make iron oxide based mattes by just grinding it with methicone/carnauba wax treated sericite mica. But what about when you add micas in? Well, I added Hilite Blue Mica and that's when patchiness set in:

So in conclusion, you can totally make smooth, buttery matte shades by just grinding iron oxides & treated sericite mica, but you have some limitations on what colours you can create. 

EOTD: Golden Halo Eyes

Sorry I've been sucking at posting! Been getting ready for a holiday. I'm currently traveling so I'll be just a scrappy about updating >.<

Review & Recommendation: Possets' Cocktail Party Collection Review Part 2 (7 scents)

Oops, I really procrastinated on this one. Sorry! >.<

Finally done with the rest of the review for Possets' Cocktail Party collection! There's 7 scents reviewed in this review, and for part 1, you can head here. For my previous Possets review, you can either click here or on the tag on the right.

Reviews are done blind as always until I finish the entire review up to the TL;DR, and an overview if the notes surprise me. I've also started adding a "Final Verdict" section to help me keep track of my perfumes and figure out what to destash, since my perfume collection is starting to get messy. Here are the categories I came up with for my "Final Verdict":

• Love: Most awesome perfume ever. Need endless supplies of it and will swap my first born child for the last drops of it if it's limited edition. 

• Like: Like it, may buy a full size of it, but it's not urgent. 

• Interesting: I don't really like it or I don't think I  can wear it in public, but I appreciate the artistry of the scent. It's like a beautiful but unwearable runway piece you won't buy on your own, but don't mind owning.

• Meh: It's okay. May destash for a good price.

• Destash: Kill it with fire.

• Age it: Maybe it will smell good one day. One day. Just wait.

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Lethal Cocktail

"Topnote of bitter almonds, cucumber and a very woody vanilla go hand and hand with patchouli."

At first, I'm getting one of those almond notes that smells like Chinese almond pudding with maraschino cherries. There's also a plasticky scent that may be a leather note at first, but it morphs into whiteboard markers and a woody sort of chemical smell. Maybe it's myrrh?

After about 7-10 min, I'm getting this powdery, sweet and cloying scent, and the almond note isn't that identifiable anymore. The sweetness is that sweet & savoury sweetness of Indonesian/Malay desserts that are usually flavoured with gula melaka (very fragrant sugar that smells warm and rich in a brown sugar sort of way). I'm talking about these kind of dessert:

This is kolak biji salak and it's soooo good. The balls are chewy like bigger, softer boba balls. This dessert is dangerous though...it's usually served with a savoury coconut sauce that cuts the sweetness, so you don't know just how much sugar you're consuming.
Image courtesy of blogkudinihari.blogspot

It's just the sweetness without the actual dessert though.

TL;DR: Cloying, powdery & sweet in an Indonesian/Malay dessert kind of way.

Final Verdict: Destash

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Persona Non Grata

"A river of sugar syrup to start things off, a giant crust of thick toasted sugar covering a custardy middle surrounded by the most sugar infested sinful shortbread crust which was ever toasted to perfection."

Ok, there's that oily sort of gourmand note that's often described as fried dough/waffles/funnel cake/donuts/etc, and the same note that's prominent in Possets' Cannoli (full review here). It's kinda tempered by a woody, ginger tea scent though. It's actually a gorgeous scent –gourmand and rich, yet light and spicy. If I'm still in the mood for Fall scents, I would probably rave more about how great this is and buy 20ml straight away, but unfortunately, lately I'm more into dark florals so I still found it a bit too heavy for my current mood. It's not this scent's fault though, as it is, I can't use Cannoli anymore since I now find it too heavy, and it used to be one of my favourite scents.

It's definitely a gorgeous scent and one I'd recommend to everyone who love bakery gourmands like Cannoli, and want a lighter, more wearable version.


TL;DR: Possets' Cannoli lightened with woody ginger tea.

Overview: I'd expect a heavier scent from the description, so I'm kind of surprised this is lighter than Cannoli. I'm still waffling on whether or not I should order this just to see if I'll fall in love with it when I'm back in the mood for warm, bakery gourmands.

Final Verdict: Like (may change to Love in a different season)

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Portrait of a Lady

"A combination of lovely cupped old roses and modern florist's roses combined with that unique scent of wet stone for balance."

Wow, there's definitely a strong whiff of sweet roses when you first open the bottle. At first, I got light sweet roses and a delicious sort of cake scent. The sweet roses smell more like a perfume, and the cake part mixed in ends up being confusing to me. It's like someone messed up and put in a rose perfume instead of a rose flavouring into a cupcake. There's also the smell that reminds me of wet concrete, and by extension, wet, dingy carparks. The kind that can either be the setting of a horror movie or one of those inspirational story where juvenile delinquents (or potential ones) learn they can dance. Or sing. Or rap. Btw, if you want to see a funny spoof of dance movie trailers, I recommend CommunityChannel's video right here.

This actually is a filming location. Here's the description: "This underground car park offers a dark and dingy environment, with concrete pillars, grafitti and exposed pipes."
Image courtesy of towerhamlets.filmoffice.co.uk

By about 25 min, the rose is pretty much taking over the scent on me. Now it smells mostly like a very sweet, kinda powdery rose with hints of something edible and something bitter, but it's mostly sweet rose.


TL;DR: Rose cupcake that was accidentally flavoured with actual rose perfume instead of a rose flavouring, that has been dropped in a wet carpark.

Final Verdict: Destash

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Romanee-Conti 

"The finest of burgundy, hints of pomegranate with a background of vanilla and oak, a drift of black pepper, with overtones of black currant."

My first thought was that this was artificial grapes made great. There's a watery sort of scent that's often a leather note morphing, and something slightly icy mixed into this, so it smells like an Asian grape mint candy. I'm actually thinking of mostly Japanese grape mint candies, but I've encountered some Indonesian grape mint candies that also smell like this, so I'll go with Asian to cover the entire continent. It's definitely a candy scent, because I've worn this out twice and both times, my brother and my boyfriend asked if I could share my candy. Usually, candy scents are too artificial for me, but if you've tried Asian grape candies, you'll know they smell so freaking fragrant, complex, and delicious.

It's still a younger sort of scent, and I'm not sure if it's work appropriate though.

TL;DR: Asian grape mint candies.

Overview: Huh...I guess I'm not that surprised there's no grapes in this. I'm not really a fan of Possets' non-citrus fruit notes since they tend to smell really artificial, so I was surprised this ended up smelling so great. I guess everything combined ended up giving the scent the complexity in the candy scent.

Final Verdict: Like

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Sterling Swizzle Stick

"A bitter amber plays the champagne role along with a tot of vanilla of the more dry variety, muhuhu adds a definite metallic tang and it's all finished off with the pink in pink champagne (the lees of the grapes)."

This smells like a vanilla note going sour on me, but I know Possets’ vanilla so this can’t be the case. I’m guessing this is a vanilla note mixed with some sour fruit.There's also a dry, wood resin sort of sharpness in this.  The fruit bit smells kinda spritzy and room spray-ish, and during certain times of the month, it smells like starfruits. Unfortunately, when the fruit bit smells like starfruits, the scent smells fairly medicinal.

TL;DR: Either vanilla going sour or medicinal vanilla starfruits, with wood resin.

Final Verdict: Destash

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The Seductive Jesuit

"Turkish coffee, caramel cream, lavender, a strong and sweet amber."

Slight tangent here, but I love the name. I went to a Jesuit college and met a LOT of hot Jesuit priests, so I totally know what Fabienne's talking about.

Ok...back on topic. On certain times of the month, this smells like plasticky coffee with red spices added in. In other times of the month, it's just confusing –there's coffee mixed with a soap and a cottony musk that I personally find a bit cloying. The soap part makes me think of those "fresh white linens" sort of soap scent. Meanwhile, the cottony musk is heavy and makes me think of old lady perfumes. It's like you just got a white shirt fresh out of the wash, and someone proceeds to spill old lady perfume & coffee all over it. It's very sweet, kinda heavy and hits the back of my throat.

TL;DR: Old lady perfume & coffee spilled on a freshly washed white shirt.

Overview: Ok, now I remember why I wanted to try this scent so much –the notes sounded so good! Maybe this just needs aging to smell great?

Final Verdict: Age it

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Van Gogh Desecrated for Charity

"Honey, and plenty of it, on top of vanilla (in the gooiest of all manifestations, the Mexican persuasion) and a spot of an amazing amazing sugar musk."

When I first put it on, I get this burst of a light, watery blue scent, but it was quickly taken over by this musky, kind of clay-like vanilla or amber sort of scent. Depending on the time of the month for me, the clay-like part either gets amplified or tempered down, but there's no escaping it. Either way, it's a powdery and heavier sort of scent, that makes me think of old lady powder rooms. My boyfriend, on the other hand, insisted it smells like old men barbershops. He insists this is the smell of the products used in barbershops that typically caters to old men. We finally decided to compromise and agree that it's a "unisex old people scent".

So either this:

Ok, she doesn't look that old, but the vanity's exactly how I imagine this scent to look like.
Image courtesy of fabgabblog.com

Or this:

I just typed in "old man barbershop"
Image courtesy of tampabay.com

TL;DR: Powdery, musky, unisex perfume for old people.

Overview: Oh dang, the notes sound so good! I think I'll try aging this.

Final Verdict: Age it

Discworld Inspired: Mrs Cosmopilite

Background: I wanted to create several EOTDs that's Discworld inspired but still wearable for work. 

"It's a strange thing about determined seekers-after-wisdom that, no matter where they happen to be, they'll always seek that wisdom which is a long way off. Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.  

Hence, for example, the Way of Mrs. Cosmopilite, very popular among young people who live in the hidden valleys above the snowline in the high Ramtops. Disdaining the utterances of their own saffron-clad, prayer-wheel-spinning elders, they occasionally travel all the way to No. 3 Quirm Street in flat and foggy Ankh-Morpork, to seek wisdom at the feet of Mrs. Marietta Cosmopilite, a seamstress.  

No one knows the reason for this apart from the aforesaid attractiveness of distant wisdom, since they can't understand a word she says or, more usually screams at them. Many a bald young monk returns to his high fastness to meditate on the strange mantra vouchsafed to him, such as "Push off, You!" and "If I see one more of you little orange devils peering in at me he'll feel the edge of my hand, all right?" and " Why are you buggers all coming around here staring at my feet?"  

They have even developed a special branch of martial arts based on their experiences, where they shout incomprehensibly at one another and then hit their opponent with a broom."   

-Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

I cracked up so much over this, mostly because of how true it is. We get so many Americans and Europeans traveling to Bali seeking some sort of ancient wisdom. Meanwhile, a lot of Indonesians travel all the way to the US seeking wisdom from mega church pastors.

So here's the eye look inspired by Mrs Cosmopilite. Of course, it has to be bright and loud, and surrounded by "little orange devils".

Full face:

LOTD: Blue Ombré Lips

Went for blue ombré lips!

Unfortunately they kinda look weird IRL though...

Review & Recommendation: Possets' Cocktail Party Collection Review Part 1 (6 scents)

I finally finished trying out the 13 scents I got from Possets' Cocktail Party collection. I'm going to have to split this review into 2 because writing everything out and editing took longer than expected, so for this review, I'm only reviewing 6 scents. For my previous Possets review, you can either click here or on the tag on the right.

So on the reviews! Done blind as always until I finish the entire review up to the TL;DR. I only write an overview if the notes surprise me. I've also started adding a "Final Verdict" section to help me keep track of my perfumes and figure out what to destash, since my perfume collection is starting to get messy. Here are the categories I came up with for my "Final Verdict":

• Love: Most awesome perfume ever. Need endless supplies of it and will swap my first born child for the last drops of it if it's limited edition. 

• Like: Like it, may buy a full size of it, but it's not urgent. 

• Interesting: I don't really like it or I don't think I  can wear it in public, I appreciate the artistry of the scent. It's like a beautiful but unwearable runway piece you won't buy on your own, but don't mind owning.

• Meh: It's okay. May destash for a good price.

• Destash: Kill it with fire.

• Age it: Maybe it will smell good one day. One day. Just wait.

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A Lady In Her Own Right

"When one has their own title which they have inherited from their family and not married into, it is referred to as "in her own right". So, if one is allowed the title of Lady, and it was not through marriage, then you are referred to as "A lady in her own right". This is considered far finer than to marry into a title. Neroli is one of the most precious flower essences and always denotes a refined sense of taste in scent. Combined with a light kiss of beeswax, and sandalwood to round out things. A drop of myrtle, and a white musk backdrop should round out this splendid perfume which has enough gravitas to pass muster but with a wink to cause trouble. Ladies are actually known to do that."

I got clean, green sort of florals that almost leans towards herbal in the beginning. The green florals are very light, almost bitter, very elegant and refined. It's definitely not a young scent, but it's not old lady either. It's more of a mature, self-assured woman in her late 20s sort of florals. There's also a honey scent to this and a scent in the background that reminds me of these Asian sweet peanuts snack for some reason. I call it Asian because it's something from my childhood, but I can't seem to remember where I've had it or what brand it is.

The scent ends up smelling like you're talking to a very refined, elegant lady you're trying to impress (possibly for a job opportunity because she's definitely a high powered lady as well), but you're distracted by the sweet peanut snacks sitting invitingly next to her.

As the scent wears on, it does get more and more creamy on me. Yup...it's a peanut candy sort of peanut snack. I still can't place exactly what snack it is though!

TL;DR: Talking to an elegant, high powered lady standing next to sweet Asian peanut snacks.

Overview: I'm really not sure what's causing the sweet peanuts scent. Maybe it's a combination of beeswax and sandalwood?

Final Verdict: Interesting

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Amethyst

"A sharp amber to start combines with a smoother and more caramel-like amber and a great shot of my fabulous lavender on top of it all. Somehow this one manages to be soothing and edgy at the same time. Lavender, amber."

The first thought that came into my head when I sniffed this was that it smells "crystalline". There's hints of a purple soda sort of scent, but it's never obvious enough for me to hate it. I do smell lavenders in this, but it's more of a watery, clean, toner sort of lavender rather than the powdery kind. I love, love, love this scent. It's calming, but has a hard, crystalline edge to it. I definitely think of precious stones when I sniff this, but it reminds me of brilliant, large sapphires instead. Maybe because the cool, watery quality makes me think of deep, still lakes.

The dry down does get kind of dusty, but I don't really mind it since it's a gorgeous scent for close to 2h on me.

TL;DR: Brilliant, large sapphires.

Overview: Nothing caramel-like on me. And it's definitely soothing & edgy at the same time.

Final Verdict: Like

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Animal Rampage

"Blue musk plays a savage dance with some very sweet jasmine which veers into the "dirty" category then comes back massively sensual. A hint of anise recalls a seed mixture, and a bed of black musk keeps it all together."

Ok, there's something at the base of this scent that goes straight to my throat and makes me feel nauseous. It's like a clay-like "fruity" flavoured chewable calcium supplement. It's also mixed with liquorice, which I really, really can't stand. I hate liquorice.

After about 5-10 min, this scent becomes this unique scent that's cool, elegant and airy, yet musky at the same time. I can still smell the liquorice and chewable calcium supplements though, so ugh. No.

TL;DR: Cool, elegant and airy, yet musky....but totally ruined by liquorice & chewable calcium supplements.

Overview: The liquorice part definitely came from the anise, but I have no idea what's causing the chewable calcium supplement scent. Usually it's osmanthus that's to blame, but I don't see it in the notes.

Final Verdict: Destash

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Arbitrage

"Apricot, and smoky Tahitian Vanilla (aged to perfection). A very small amount of black tea, and an edge of mahogany essence."

Initially, I got what smells like clinical fleshy fruits with vanilla. The fleshy fruits bit smells like one of those Lipsmackers sort of peach/apricot, that's very little girly. I find that a lot of Possets' non-citrus fruit notes tend to remind me of Lipsmackers scents. The overall scent smells like a hospital grade disinfectant came in a peaches/apricot & vanilla scent.

After about 15 min, the disinfectant bit starts smelling more like plastic, and the scent becomes the scent of fruit scented, girly plastic toys. It's hard to identify the fruits, and it almost smells like powdery cherries. It reminded me of the scent of a toy I used to have. It's how you imagine a plastic toy set that looks like this would smell like:

Well, this is actually felt, but it's so pretty!
Found on Pintrest.

TL;DR: Powdery, fruit scented plastic toys.

Overview: I'm not sure what's really creating that plastic sort of smell, but I'm guessing it's a combination of mahogany and tea since I couldn't really pick them out.

Final Verdict: Like

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Fijian Broach

"Green tart leafy base with a long squeeze of lime layers over a kiss of brass in the background for balance."

This is a cool, airy green or blue sort of scent, with citrus. I'm not sure whether it's green or blue since it's one of those green/blue notes that are cool and close to each other. It starts off light, green and leafy, but as it wears on, it starts turning into a cool, sweet, and deep blue –the kind of blue note people would use to capture the scent of deep, blue lakes. I smell hints of white florals, but I'm not sure if I'm confusing it with the sweet, blue scent.

The scent almost reminds me of room sprays, but it's definitely room sprays in very classy, majestic hotels. It's one of those hotels with towering, artistic flower arrangements and can easily host the typical Indonesian/Indian wedding, where 300 guests is considered a "small" wedding.

I'm specifically thinking of Mulia Hotel in Jakarta. If you've been there, this scent smells like it.
Image courtesy of asiatraveltips.com

TL;DR: I'm typically not a fan of blue scents but I actually like this!

Overview: The scent of classy, majestic hotels.

Final Verdict: Like

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Georgetown

"A small amount of the finest leather, a tiny bit of tea, a whiff of a basic chypre note. Dark brown and sharp to the nose but with a magical refinement which makes its haughtiness somehow lovable."

This is so clean and gorgeous. I get hints of that rather watery sort of leather note, but it’s faint and just sitting in the background, giving this scent a masculine sort of bitterness. There’s also that L’Occitane green tea scent, that smells almost like a floral, blue note. The resulting scent is a clean, blue and slightly masculine scent I can see on young, professionals. It’s young (as in 20s sort of young), clean, professional yet not boring. I can see it on a guy who looks like this:

This photographer's descriptions are so detailed...this image is captioned with: "Laughing young man makes a funny and dangerous selfie with a compact camera against grey background"
Awesome photography by Gianluca D.Muscelli

As the scent wears on, the L’Occitane green tea part gets stronger on me, and the scent starts leaning towards feminine.

TL;DR: Masculine, almost floral blue note. 

Overview: The scent's actually not that sharp on me, and maybe it's because the tea part is most prominent.

Final Verdict: Like

EOTD & FOTD: Neon Studs

Another one of the instagram looks I haven't posted yet here >.<