Spring Thing

We need not have feared the dreary weather report, at least not today, because it turned out to be a stunningly beautiful day. After playing outside with the kids and doing some yard work, we decided to take everyone to lunch at a nice place by the water. I wanted a little color, but nothing too heavy, and I didn't want to get all matchy-matchy with my purple top or look too costume 80s. A touch of sheer green on the eyes did it, plus a nice bright pink on the lips and a glowy blush.

Foundation--None! Just used a bit of MUFE HD concealer under the eyes, with my usual teeny drop of Smashbox primer and a little MUFE translucent powder.

Blush--Urban Decay Afterglow in Score.

Eyes--MAC Paint Pot in Painterly as a base with NARS Nomad cream eyeshadow on the lid and MAC Rosemary & Thyme eye pencil on the lower lid. Touch of Almay One Coat mascara.

Lips--NYX Xtreme Lip Cream in Bonfire.

Perfume of the Day--BPAL The Fairies (apple blossom, white clover, huckleberry wine, dandelion sap, milkweed, primrose, thyme, pink moss, thorny thistles, and opium pod)

By the Book

I have finally gotten around to reading Neil Gaiman's Stardust, a beautiful book. I am enjoying it very much. I probably would not have gotten to it had I not been prodded by the extensive collection of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfumes inspired by Neil Gaiman stories, and if one from the Stardust collection hadn't vaulted into my Top 10 list from the moment I first tried it. The scent is Lady Una, based on a very sexy fairy character who has stunning violet eyes and smells like blackberries. The notes are "Honey musk, green tea leaf, blackberry leaf, vanilla bean, and fae spices" and while I was initially interested in it for its vanilla note, the honey musk is what has really grown on me. Musk can be hard for me to wear, with even the lightest, more shimmering varieties turning either cloying or skanky on my skin. I often notice it unlisted but present in scents that are supposed to smell like cake -- perfumers must rely on it to create that warm, yeasty scent of baked goods. After the initial drydown I often can smell the musk throwing off the rest of the impression of deliciousness. But in Lady Una, the honey musk and vanilla leave me with a warm, deliciously sweet and tangy scent that clings to my skin, with a slightly fruity leafiness. It perfectly captures that captivating kind of innocent sexiness and a romantic evening in the warm outdoors.

Am I Blue?

I will confess to a propensity to go more matchy-matchy than is currently fashionable. Since childhood I've often dressed in one (or coordinating) color down to my underpants. Sometimes I'll start to get dressed without having thought through what to wear, only to find I unconsciously grabbed for underwear that matches everything else I'm wearing. What can I say, it is a sickness. I associate smells with colors too, so sue me.

So when I put on this pretty blue sweater today, I had to stop myself from rifling through all the lovely blue eyeshadows I've acquired but rarely wear. Instead, I grabbed MAC pigment in Blue-Brown, which just adds a layer of teal shimmer to a red-brown shadow, and blended that with a little Bootycall from the Urban Decay Naked2 palette.  I added a touch of a blue-violet pencil in the outer V and black mascara. Blush is MAC Dainty and lipstick is MAC Viva Glam VI.

OK, I see I look slightly deranged in that photo, but I'll post it anyway. I bet you all look like it's the end of the week too. Just keeping it real.

Perfume of the Day: BPAL Womb Furie from the 2012 Lupercalia collection. "Snake Oil and three types of honey." Sanke Oil, BPAL's creator's signature scent, is really growing on me. When I first tried it I thought it was too heavily resinous and musky, but now I've come to appreciate how rich it is and how it dries down with a lot of depth and vanilla sweetness. It's extra great in this blend with honey.

Hermia and Helena Go To White Castle

If you know me even a little bit, you know that I have a background in the theater and if you know me a little bit better than that you know that I have a special fondness for A Midsummer Night's Dream. In fact, for the last few years I've been noodling around on a young adult novel that imagines the characters in a contemporary setting.

Thus, when I started getting interested in Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, I was delighted to learn that they offered a collection, called Illyria, inspired by Shakespeare characters, including Hermia, Helena, Titania, Lysander, Robin Goodfellow, and Oberon.

I can't try Helena, because the notes include night-blooming jasmine, which might as well be labeled "cat urine" for the way it smells on me, or Robin Goodfellow, which is another collection of death notes, including dark musk. Titania, which includes white grape, white peach, iced pear, musk rose, sweet pea, moonflower, and snapdragon, is super pretty on me, and what you might imagine Titania might smell like. It's a good thing I like it, since I managed to spill half an imp of it all over my desk. Lysander turned out to be a sweet-smelling men's blend, but that I didn't care for even though most of the notes (tonka, lilac musk, lime rind, etc.) sounded nice to me. I haven't yet received Oberon, but with orchid, bergamot, white musk, juniper berries, and earthy patchouli, I look forward to it.

That left Hermia, who is my favorite character in the play, and today I got around to trying her scent. With pink pepper, golden amber, honeysuckle, and passion flower, what's not to love? The pink pepper leaves a spicy tingle that stays on top of the blend, even as the sweet flowers and warm amber float around. It really does capture the essence of "little" and "fierce" Hermia.

The Rappaccini's Garden collection offers a Love-in-Idleness scent, so naturally I had to sample that as well. Unfortunately, like many in that collection, this one, while pretty at first, has a rooty base note that reminds me of nothing so much as washed armpits. I'm keeping my vial of it, though, in case I ever need a sniff for inspiration while writing, or have any opportunity to cause someone to fall in love with the first person seen upon waking.

The Eyes Have It

I spent Sunday happily engaged with my best friend, Ms. Cake, in sampling, testing, and sharing a gigantic heap of Black Phoenix imps and NYX eyeshadow pigments. First, though, she had to play several rounds of Foosball with my 5 year old, a cutthroat Foosball player.

It got so that I had a different perfume oil approximately every four inches up and down both arms. We had a can of espresso to sniff to try to clear our palates, but eventually the cacophony of smells was overwhelming. So we switched to eyeshadow.

This was fun -- a number of months ago, some pathological wave came over me and I managed to convince Ms. Cake that what we really needed to do was order and split a full set of NYX loose eyeshadow pigments offered up for sale in two batches on the discount website HauteLook. The deal was something like for $55 each we'd have about 100 eyeshadows between us and could divvy them up. As it happens, we have completely opposite coloring. I wear gold tones and she wears silver. So we got them, and they sat in bags, along with a heap of little jars and spoons and mixing medium and magnetic palettes and whatnot that we'd ordered from Coastal Scents in order to be able to press our own eyeshadow pans. See, it's not just makeup, it's CRAFTS.

With the "help" of the 5 year old, we traded gold tones for silver tones, as applicable, and for those colors we both thought we could use, we split the powder between containers. So now instead of 50 (or however many) jars we each ended up with a number of full jars of certain colors and another 30 or something of partial jars. So now I have approximately a million little jars of eyeshadow pigments jammed into a little cabinet I use for makeup, in every color you can imagine. Just click that NYX link and see the assortment of colors and their often wacko names (Lemon Drop for bright pink? 3 Wise Men? WTF?).

So what have I worn on my eyes this week?

Why, NEUTRALS, of course! Monday I used Urban Decay in Virgin and Naked to create a gently shadowed pale eye with black liquid liner. Tuesday I splashed out with some gray, using Urban Decay Gunmetal with Wet 'n' Wild Color Icon jumbo pencil in a charcoal. Today I went with Wet 'n' Wild Nutty and Brulee, two real workhorses in my collection, with a touch of gray liner. I went wild and added the smallest touch of bright violet liner in the outer V, which added with the gray gave a nice toned-down blue-violet.

I've also acquired a new batch of BPAL testers, so will be playing around with those in the weeks to come. Naturally, that means I've been keeping to my usual scent wardrobe of Blue Morpho, Aelopile, and 51. I really live the life, don't I?

Friday I'm in Love....With This Lip Tar

I was moaning just the other day about how I'd allowed the otherwise magical Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Lip Tar to migrate all over my damn face when I tried to soften it up with a little lip balm. That was before a package of goodies I'd ordered from ACW, the discount cosmetics retailer, arrived. I'd included two new Lip Tars -- Petty Beige (oh how I love that name! if only I were a drag queen!) to try to brown down some of the brighter colors, and Clear, to sheer them out a bit. Today I mixed up a bit of each with Trollop, which is a bright pink, and found great success. My lip color isn't blinding, the feathering factor is greatly reduced (though I'm still making careful use of lip-colored liner), and the Clear medium adds a bit of sheerness without compromising the long wear, non-sticky texture.

Eye makeup subtle and pretty -- NYX Skin Tight (shimmery peach) with a little MAC Woodwinked (golden bronze) in the crease, plus a touch of MAC Eye Kohl liner in Teddy (bronze) and NYX Propel My Eyes black mascara. More on that another day. Pinked up my cheeks with NYX cream blush in Rose, which is a new favorite.

On the perfume front, I slathered on Amsterdam today, for something fresh and pretty. But then like an idiot I skin tested anothe BPAL that I knew wasn't going to work for me, as much as I love most of the individual notes. This is The Great Sword of War, which contains mandarin, tonka, saffron, black tea, cocoa, tobacco leaf, "sanguine red musk and five classical herbs of conquest." To date, I have not found a fragrance containing red musk that doesn't make me want to wash it off immediately, and though I want to love mandarin as a single note, it's never blended in such a way that I can stand the result. Ditto cocoa. And it just figures that the perfumes I hate are the ones I can't wash off. So please remind me not to skin test stuff that I know won't work, or that has death notes in it, just for the sake of being complete.

My Luve's Like a Red, Red Rose

Today I (finally) got myself into my fitted black puff sleeve blouse and black pencil skirt, which I consider a triumph in light of the post-baby body stuff. Naturally, this black-on-black look required red accessories. So I put on my wonderful Cole Haan lipstick red patent leather peeptoe slingbacks and whipped out a really killer red lipstick: Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics' Lip Tar in Strutter. Lip Tar is an unusual product, in that it's a liquid that comes in a tube applicator with an angled plastic dispenser end like a lip gloss, but it's really a long-wearing liquid lipstick that is best applied with a brush. Sometimes when you're looking at color swatches you see that some users don't get this, and instead apply it like a gloss, with a goopy effect. But that's WRONG.

Anyway, I brushed on my Strutter, making sure to line first to keep the stuff from migrating into the fine lines that have crept up on me and appeared around my lips when I wasn't looking. On the eyes I did a very simple pale neutral, using Urban Decay Virgin on the lid and Naked in the crease (b0th from the justifiably adored Naked Palette) and did a nice sort of retro black line on the upper lid using NYX Felt Tip Liner in Jet Black, which even a eyeliner idiot like me can get to work. And I looked great! Crisp black blouse and skirt, deep red lips, a defined but subtle eye.

At some point in the afternoon, though, I went to touch up my lipstick and discovered that the bit of balm I'd applied, coupled with the clear e.l.f. Lip Lock Pencil had conspired to mush my gorgeous red lipstick all around my lips, but skipping over the area where the pencil had been applied so I looked like the result of the unholy union of Baby Jane and The Joker. My eyeshadow, I realized, lacked precision. I've already ranted about my frustrations with getting red lipstick to stay where I put it here, but I thought I'd nailed that down. This Lip Tar is going to last longer than actuarial tables will have me live, so I'd better get my act together.

Anyway, I smelled good, that I know. I wore Two, Five, and Seven, so I smelled like a rose garden.

It is Easy Being Green!

I was feeling.....green when I got up today. Not emerald or kelly or olive, or even green-around-the-gills green. It was more an off-kilter kind of green. So first I headed off to the bathroom to do my makeup. First thing I reached for was MAC Club, one of my favorite eyeshadows because, like everything else I seem to love, it's a duochrome (reddish brown with green frost) that gives the look of an iridescent beetle shell or dragonfly wing. I used that on the lid and topped with a simple vanilla color, MAC Mylar. Then I used a dark bronze eyeliner on top and bottom and traced over that with a touch of Jesse's Girl Antique Green pigment and added highlights with their Pixie Dust iridescent white pigment. The finished look is something like this, though this isn't me, as you can tell by the exquisite long and lush eyelashes:

Then it was time for scent. I chose "51" from the Black Phoenix Wanderlust collection, inspired by places in the real and fantasy worlds. First of all, it tickles me to wear a perfume inspired by Area 51. But it suited my mood exactly. It's described as "luminescent, glowing, and otherworldly" and contains green mandarin, neroli, honeydew, white amber, guava, freesia, white and green musks hovering over desert scrub, smashed wood, and the dry, biting scent of night air over the Groom Lake salt flats." The liquid is palely green in the vial, and the scent is brightly fruity and floral with a nice underpinning of dry wood. It gives me a color impression that is neon green and pink, but as if seen from a distance.

I should probably have some pesto for dinner, just to keep the streak alive.

I Am a Dirty Hippie

Well, it's happened. I have found a patchouli scent I can actually wear without having to run to the bathroom to scrub it off after 10 minutes. Patchouli usually smells heavy and head-shoppy to me, with a bad sour Play-Doh smell after a short time. But the nice folks at the Black Phoenix fulfillment center included a free sample with my last order (known among BPAL fans as a "frimp" since samples are dubbed "imps' ears") of Depraved, which is described as "a salacious, lecherous, leering scent -- dirty and dark, slapped with a wet sweetness. Earthy black patchouli swelling with apricot." Whew.

I was trepidatious, but am sort of a completist, so if I had the thing, by gum, I wasn't going to let it go at least unsniffed. I uncorked and....wafts of sweet apricot nectar, backed with something that smelled like fresh-turned earth. Hm. I applied a bit on my arm and sniffed. Apricot and fresh earth, with maybe a hint of dry spice. So far so good. I applied a little more.

As it dried, the apricot stayed strong, and the patchouli asserted itself but never became dominant. It did eventually morph, but into something piney or cedary. All in all, the smell was as if I'd been rolling around in good clean dirt (with a few wood chips mixed in) while eating sticky juicy apricots. Sexy. I don't get that feeling of lechery or depravity from the description, but there's definitely sexual abandon in that scent.

I certainly can't see wearing this every day or in polite company, and a little goes a long way. But I'm keeping the imp and expect I might find myself dotting it on hidden pulse points that not just anyone can smell and having a grand old time.

Olfactory Pleasure: A Theorem

Today I was feeling a little tired and burned out, so I didn't want to think too much about my perfume. That sounds ridiculous, I know. I mean, how much thought does it take? But I just didn't have the psychic energy to think about matching my scent to my mood or the weather or the colors of my dress. I just wanted to put on something that would smell pretty and make me feel comfortable all day.

I opted for BPAL's Lorelai, which is a very simple fragrance containing neroli, sandalwood, and ylang ylang. It's a sweet floral, but with a creaminess and a roundness that I find very soothing. Often sandalwood can rise up and drown out everything else on me, but this particular sandalwood stays in its place and just grounds the florals. The neroli gives it almost a whiff of orange Creamsicles that is quite lovely.

I've been going through my growing stash of BPAL samples and organizing the ones I have available for sale or swap. I was thinking about grouping them thematically, which could help isolate notes they have in common so as to help educate the nose. I noticed that certain of the scents are much more complex than others -- not just the number of notes in the blend, but also conflicting notes, notes that play off one another. Some morph over time as you wear them, leaving a different impression than the one you start with. Some are fairly high-concept and are meant to evoke very specific places, characters, or experiences. At some point I'll share some of my experiences with these, because I find them very interesting to wear and think about.

But today I didn't want any of that cognition and analysis. I don't detect anything especially evocative of the story of Lorelai in this particular perfume, and what you start with is pretty much where you end up. And some days that's just what I need.

Unforced Perfume Error

Today I was in an Amsterdam sort of mood -- Amsterdam being a BPAL scent composed of "tulips, peony, fresh flowing water and crisp green grasses." Between the desire to feel cool and fresh in light of yet another day of extreme humidity and heat and this exceedingly sprightly dress I have on (pattern detail above), it seemed like a good call, though I was also considering a couple of scents with an extra little oomph to echo the black and white crispness in the dress.

It really is a lovely fragrance, but it does need refreshing during the day, as it can fade out over time. So after lunch I reached into my bag and pulled out the sample vial I carry around with me for touch-ups, uncorked it, and started slathering away. "Hm," thought I, "this seems extra floral all of a sudden."

Turns out, I had left my vial of Two, Five & Seven in my bag and had mixed them up, so I was smelling that gigantic rose bouquet. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, and I finished applying to neck and wrists. Now I smell cheerfully of roses instead of wet peonies and grass. It's a good thing both perfumes contain grass, and peony has something in common with rose so the two don't clash.

It did get me to thinking, though, what kind of added note would transform something like Amsterdam into something slightly more substantial? Many of the "darker" notes, such as opium, patchouli, vetiver, and even violet don't really appeal to me (or flat out gross me out). Leather and aromatic wood, though I love them, tend to amplify on my skin and drown everything else out. I'll have to keep exploring, especially as we start to approach fall and I transition into wanting something a wee bit heavier but still refreshing.

Blue Morpho and Dragonflies

I wish this photo could do this color justice, but I often find it's hard to capture the depth and prettiness of duochrome and glittery nail polishes.

On Saturday I was doing my nails, and took suggestions from the peanut gallery, meaning I let my oldest kid (age 9) pick my colors. For the pedicure he picked one of my favorites, Zoya Adina, which is a soft purple with green duochrome, like a dragonfly's wing. For the manicure he picked Jesse's Girl in Glee (pictured) which is basically a peacock foil. This shows the blue base, but you don't really see the teal-green sheen. It didn't last long, but it sure was pretty, and anyway I had to take it off Monday morning for work. He decided it looked like the wing of a Blue Morpho butterfly.

As it happens, Blue Morpho is one of my new favorite scents from BPAL, so much so that I ordered extra backup bottles of this limited edition. Description:

Wild orchid, pikake, honeysuckle, calla lily, agave nectar, pink geranium, violet leaf, and wild amber.

Pikake makes me think of my honeymoon in Bali, where we were treated to tropical flowers strewn all over our bed. It seems to be the only jasmine I can wear without it turning sour and harsh on me. Whenever I wear it and catch a whiff it feels like an instant vacation. Which I need today, given the heat and humidity.

Today's Scent

This morning, with temperatures in the 90s predicted and insane humidity, I put on my lightest summer dress -- cap sleeves, faux-wrap bodice, circle skirt, black and white snake print with black sash -- and decided to go with something fresh and rose. I picked BPAL's Two, Five & Seven, described thusly:

A huge bouquet of squished rose petals: Bulgarian rose, Somalian rose, Turkish rose, Damascus rose, red and white rose, tea rose, wine rose, shrub roses, rose, rose, rose…

…and just an itty bitty bit of green grass.

I have a problem wearing many roses, such as tea rose, which instantly turns to soap on my skin, but this one stays really true. It smells like a big bouquet of fresh-cut roses, or like walking through a rose garden where the grass has recently been mowed and watered. What I love is that the rose is not one-note, it takes into account the fact that not all varieties of roses smell alike, so it's wonderfully layered, and the grass adds freshness.

Makeup also contained a revelation. I've been using shimmery nudes on my lids for years, colors like Urban Decay Sin, which is a muted nude pink, but there was always something a little off with my skin tone. Today I busted out NYX's Skin Tight, which is a shimmery peach and WHAMMO, that's my skin, only better. I did that over the whole lid (with a base of MAC Paint Pot in Painterly), added a line of NYX felt tip black liner and their Propel My Eyes mascara in black, and I had a great neutral but finished eye that was just enough retro to go with my dress.

Scent 'o the Day

Today is going to be hot and humid, and we're hosting a backyard barbecue with friends. I'm in a stay cool sort of mood, so I chose BPAL's The Dormouse, which is described as "A dizzying eddy of four teas brushed with light herbs and a breath of peony." I actually get something closer to lemony iced tea with a good dose of fresh-cut grass. It's comforting in a cool, fresh way, and isn't challenging or complicated. Suits me well on a Sunday, especially one I greeted with less than an optimal amount of sleep, thanks to a growing baby.

Too Darn Hot

I once had a bit of an argument with my grad school housemate about whether it made sense to think of perfumes seasonally. At the time, it just didn't make sense to me -- what if I wanted to wear Chanel's Coco in summer and winter! But I've come around somewhat. I still don't think of my scents exactly seasonally, but there are ones that fit my mood more often depending on whether it's cool or warm out. Actually, I think I experience scents and weather with a bit of color vocabulary, so I tend to choose scents that match that mood/weather/color profile flitting through my so-called mind.

Now that I've been hanging out a bit of perfumery forums (and realize I'm not the only freak who thinks about perfume this way, by the way), I do see a lot of discussion about scents that are good for summer or what have you, and I started thinking about what I choose to wear in hot weather. I find that my choices really fall into two categories:

Scents to Feel Refreshed By -- Sometimes I want to feel like I can resist the heat, like I just stepped out of a refreshing shower. At these times I prefer light florals, preferably with aquatic or grassy notes. I don't even mind if they go a little shampooey (though not soapy). I like citrus, too, but I tend to want the citrus mixed with either something more floral or a touch more grounded. Fitting the bill here are grassy scents like The Dormouse or Amsterdam from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, creamy florals like Quelques Fleurs from Houbigant, or fruity blends like BPAL's Croquet or 51. BPAL has a couple of refreshing citruses I like too, such as Embalming Fluid, with lemon, aloe, and green tea, and Hungry Ghost Moon, which has white grapefruit but also vanilla, rice, and wood.

Scents to Feel Gloriously Sticky -- And then sometimes I just go the hell with it, bring on the heat, bring on the funk. In those moods I might turn off the a/c and throw on a sundress and let myself get deliciously sweaty. At these times I go for something sweet smelling but earthy, or with tropical notes. BPAL's new limited edition Pussy (shut up, pervs, it's part of the Moth collection, inspired by the adorable Pussy Moth), with orange blossom honey, brown sugar, saffron, tonka, and tobacco leaf, or All on the Golden Afternoon with pineapple, tangerine, tobacco, apricot, and seltzer, plus amber and sun-baked flowers hit this note for me. Another I love is Fracas by Robert Piguet, which is heavy on the tuberose.

Today is a Sticky day, so I'm wearing Pussy. Shut up.