Herbal Tea - Storing and Drinking

Life has been chaotic for me lately. Not very busy, just turbulent. So I have spent my time online with relaxing things like netflix, fanfiction and polyvore... But I'll try to get out that second post about herbal teas now. Summer and herbal tea harvest season is over here, but maybe where you are summer is still in full swing and you can have some use for this post. Otherwise I guess there is always next year! ;)

Read part one about harvesting and drying herbs here. This second post will largely be photos of tea and a bit of information about what plants are good for tea. But first a bit about storing your dried herbs.

Here is most of my harvest. Each herb in its own jar. I use both ordinary glass jars and metal tea jars, with various types of lids. Air tight lids are supposedly best, but I use whatever I can find. It might be tempting to store the pretty herbs in glass jars where they are visible, but they stay good for longer if stored in darkness. The herbs should not be crushed to pieces. They retain much more flavor if stored whole. I write the name of the herb as well as the year of harvest on the lid so that I can be sure how old that particular herb is.

White clover flowers.

Rose petals.

Fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium), leaves and flowers.

Yarrow, leaves and flowers.

Pansies and violets.

I have made a few herbal blends but I prefer to store each herb on its own. This doesn't stop me from drinking blends. I usually choose a blend of several different herbs (whole) to put in my cup before adding hot water and a bit of honey. Here are some pictures of pretty and tasty herbal teas!

White clover flower tea. This is a herbal tea for the beginner! The taste is very sweet and almost a bit honey like even without sweetener. The flowers even look very pretty!

Lady's mantle leaf tea (Alchemilla Vulgaris). I really like these leaves, they taste quite sweet and look very pretty.

Rowan leaf tea. Not quite as sweet as white clover or lady's mantle but still a pleasant mild herbal tea.

Fireweed leaves and flowers.

Fireweed tea (leaves and flowers). This is one of the prettiest of herbal teas! The milky color is just gorgeous and the flowers turn from dark purple-blue to sheer and delicate white in the hot water! Tastes very good too. fresher and greener than white clover or lady's mantle.

Hibiscus flower tea. Rather cool purple color isn't it? Doesn't taste very much or very good though. 

Meadowsweet flowers and leaves (Filipendula ulmaria).

Meadowsweet flower and leaf tea. I have always loved the sweet, almond like, scent of this plant and that scent translates into taste too! The taste is sweet with an almond undertone, absolutely delicious! And don't they look pretty!

Pansy flower and yarrow leaf.

Pansy flower and yarrow leaf tea. These yellow pansy flowers give the tea an intense yellow color but the taste is quite subtle and frankly not very interesting. I am more fond of the stong herbal taste of yarrow but yarrow tea isn't very pretty... So the combination of pansy and yarrow gives both mouth and eyes pleasure.

Orange pansy and raspberry leaf tea. This orange pansy is also rather pretty, but it doesn't give the tea as intense a color. Raspberry leaves are a classic herbal tea, they taste sweet and lovely and are supposed to have medicinal effects (though I haven't noticed any).

Linnaea flower and leaf tea. I really like how these tiny flowers look in my tea cup, but unfortunately the taste is a bit too subtle for me. Just a hint of sweetness and not much more. I will have to use these in combination with something of stronger taste or when I'm in the mood for something subtle.

Finally a picture of my favorite tea. Labrador tea! I love the strong herbal taste and scent of this one! I store this tea in the freezer rather than dried as I have found thet the taste isn't really preserved well in the dried plant.

Other plants that I have harvested:

• Rose petals - Give a subtle scent and taste of rose.
• Cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) - Are pretty and blue but not much else.
• Red clover flower - Not as sweet and not as pretty as it's white sibling.
• Veronica (esp. Veronica chamaedrys) - Traditional tea plant, tastes nice and sweet.
• Blueberry leaf - Tastes wonderful, quite fresh and green!
• Lingonberry leaf - Tastes virtually nothing. Said to be a cood treatment for urinary infection though.
• Strawberry leaf - Sweet and tasty, quite similar to raspberry or lady's mantle.
• Violet flowers - Look pretty and have a subtle sweet taste.
• Mint and peppermint - I love to blend these strong flavored herbs with something pretty but boring!
• Hops - Really interesting, rather beer like, taste. Supposedly good as a sleep-inducing evening tea.
• Black currant leaves - Really strong and unique flavor! I love blending with blander but prettier herbs.

Those are the plants I have harvested and tried as tea! I have tried a lot of different blends too but I suggest that you experiement and find your personal favorites. Feel free to ask questions, I am sure that I have forgotten something...

Herbal Tea - Harvesting and Drying

I will finally write that promised blog post about my herbal teas. It will actually be two blog posts I think. This first part will focus on harvesting and drying while the next part will focus on the actual herbs and teas as well as storage.

I have no actual pictures of the harvesting, but you can all imagine me walking around with my basket collecting this and that, whatever is not poisonous according to my books. Always consult literature if you are unsure! Flowers are seldom poisonous but it's always safest to check. If a herb is pronounced non-poisonous in the books but you don't know if it makes good tea then just try it! In my next post I will show you some of the herbs that I harvest, but what herbs are available depends very much on your location in the world. I mostly wild harvest, but if you feel uncomfortable or unsure about that and you have a herb garden you can of course use those herbs for tea as well! Some of the common culinary herbs make really spendid herbal tea as well.

There are a few general rules regarding harvesting: 

• First, leaves should be hervested before a plant flowers, so generally harvesting time is spring and early summer. Flowers can of course be harvested whenever. 
• Second, choose a cloudy or not too warm day to harvest. You want the plants to be healthy and not dried up and wilting. If you live in a hot climate you should harvest in early morning. 
• Third, you should always harvest only healthy leafs and flowers. Choose quality over quantity, it might take more time when you are choosy, but the result will look better and taste better. Choose the freshest and greenest leaves and the best looking flowers.
• Fourth, don't gather herbs near roads or on/near land where weed-killers or pesticides have been used.

I usually gather only the parts of the herb that I intend to use for tea, for example I gather the leaves or the flowers but not the whole plant. If you inted to dry your herbs by hanging them up rather than flat drying it may be necessary to harvest the whole plant. You'll see what I mean as I move on to the next part of this post, the drying process!

This part of my herbal tea making has been extensively documented. I have a huge number of photos of it but I'll spare you and only show you a selection! 

In the pictures you can see the different methods of drying that I mentioned. With one herb, that has ridiculously small leaves, I have chosen to dry the whole plant in a hanging position. The rest I dry flat on whatever plate or chopping board that I could find. There is even a woven bowl. I'd prefer using such woven containers for drying, because of the air flow they allow, but as it is I have used any plane wooden tray that I could find. You can use any ordinary plate or tray too, it doesn't have to be made of wood. As you can see in one picture, I used a china plate too and I noticed no difference in quality. I would stay away from plastic though... or maybe I'm just paranoid. 

In my experience flat drying means that the plant dries faster, while bundling takes more time. I noticed no difference in flavor retention, but of course I didn't try the two different methods with the same plant. Flat drying takes up a lot of space but the faster drying times means that you can harvest in smaller doses but more often. I harvested about once a week and by that time most of the previous harvest was ready for storage.

You can also find pictures of various herb drying racks as well as DIY tutorials online. I haven't ever used one but if you plan on drying a lot of herbs and have limited space available, a drying rack might be useful!

There are a some rules about drying too:

• First, choose a dry, dark (out of direct sunlight) and not too cold/drafty spot to dry your herbs in.
• Second, shake the freshly picked herbs to get rid of insects befor laying them out to dry. Don't wash the herbs before drying, if they are picked in clean locations washing is not necessary. Wet plants mold easily.
• Third, if the plants are wet when you bring them in, give them extra "breathing room", don't place them too close to each other. Otherwise use your common sense and/or experience when it comes to how much space a plant needs. As long as there is no mold, it's fine! If your climate is humid you may need to keep a close eye on your herbs and flip them over now and then to prevent mold.
• Fourth, drying time depends on the plant, let the leaves/flowers dry until they can be crumbled between your fingers.

I think that's all for now. I have probably forgotten some details, but that's the gist of it! Any questions so far?

Midsummer Magic - A Scentual Journey

Hi everyone! Sorry about the long absense! Finishing up my studies and moving back home again took a lot of time and effort.  My room is in chaos, too many books for such a small space, but it's getting less and less chaotic every day! I'm really happy to be back home again! Especially right now, Finland is so magical at Midsummer!

(This will be a very picture heavy post, consider yourself warned!)

It never gets dark here at Midsummer, the time between sunset and sunrise is so short that it never gets darker than twilight. One of my Midsummer Night traditions is to around midnight take a walk through the woods to a dark forest lake where I can swim naked and alone in the black water. That is Midsummer Magic for me. Last night I took my camera with me so now I can invite you all along on a little journey through a Finnish Midsummer forest! I will also make this a scentual journey by adding perfumes that to me give much the same experience as these landscapes.

The nature is so lush that the path is barely visible...

Ferns.

The forest I walk through is dark and dense. Moss covered rocks, ferns and blueberry shrubs are shaded by slender white birches and dark green spruces and pines. This part of my journey reminds me of Norne by Slumberhouse. This dark and mysterious forest is just as magical as that fragrance. Herne by Arcana would also suit this landscape. This scent is heavy with powerful resins enhanced by spicy cinnamon. Definitely what a dark god of this forest would smell like.

Suddenly the forest ends but what is coming is hidden on the other side of a hill and will be invisible for a few more steps. Anticipation bulids because I know what I will see and it is always magical. The lake is nestled in a deep bowl surrounded by the rugged rocky forest hills. The suitable scent fro this part of the journey is Samhain by Haus of Gloi. There is a hint in the air of something wet, of humid soil and green herbs.

The sun is already rising in the northeast, or maybe this is the lingering glow from the recent sunset in northwest... It is hard to tell when the wholse nothern sky is aglow above the mirror calm lake. Sometimes there is mist on this lake, but not tonight. The scent that would suit the beautiful dark lake is Gaea by Alkemia. This scent is water over rocks, decaying plant life and the clear scent of white water lillies.

Blueberry and Cloudberry shrubs and birches.

The edges of the lake are wet and marsh-like, very lush and green. Devils Milhopper by Solstice Scents has a similar note of fresh green leaves. A powerful green, full of life and growth, just like Midsummer is the height of the growing season.

Labrador Tea leaves and flower.

Other parts of the lake edge is dryer and rockier, here flourish baby pines and lingonberry. But all around this lake grows Labrador Tea, looking like rosemary but with its own unique scent and white flowers. As the name implies this fragrant herb has been used for tea. Every year I collect and dry the fresh sprouts so that I can drink this tea and enjoy this wonderful scent all year.

Tea of Labrador Tea and Veronica flowers.

You can get an idea of the scent of Labrador Tea by sampling the perfume oil with the same name by Salmonberry Origins. Or if you are really interested in smelling the real deal I can just send you a little sprig of Labrador Tea!

That's the end of the journey folks. There are no pictures of me skinny dipping in the lake...
The quality of the pictures is a bit influenced by the thousands of mosquitoes that landed on me every time I stopped to take a picture. Sorry about that. I have pictures of what my arms, legs and neck looked like afterwards, but I'll spare you. I looked like a victim of bubonic plague...
Several of the scents mentioned here were gifts from the wonderful Amanda of more tea, Wesley?, she really nailed my tastes when we swapped packages! Here is a picture of the perfumes I got from her! :D

Hope you all had as wonderful a Midsummer as I did, those of you on the Northern Hemisphere who celebrate the solstice that is... ;)

Perfume - Spikenard Oil and more

Around Easter I won a giveaway that was hosted by The Perfume Dandy but created by The Fragrant Man. The prize was a little bottle of spikenard in sweet almond oil, meant as a massage oil, and a sample of a perfume blend that goes by the name of Alabaster Wrists. These blends were made by a lovely lady by the name of Brie who apparently enjoys making perfume in her spare time but who doesn't have a shop or sell her creations (yet?).

I knew next to nothing about spikenard before winning this giveaway. I had seen it as a note in some perfumes, but not in any that I had tried. Fragrantica tells me that spikenard is a flower that grows in the Himalayas and that the roots of the plants are used for both medicine and perfume. I am also told that this plant was used by both the ancient Egyptians and the Romans for its fragant properties. The scent is described as herbaceous, resinous, spicy and animalic.

It seems that the scent of spikenard is one that you either love or hate. When I wore the spikenard oil as perfume yesterday my mother asked "What's that stench??" and my friend (and skin chemistry guineapig) Blomma hated it too, but personally I love it! It has a sweet and musky herbal smell in the bottle. On my skin it is more spicy and is more distinctly animalic in nature. It doesn't smell like any musk that I have smelled in perfume though... It smells more like wool, unwashed fatty wool (where have I smelled that?)! So, yeah, if you want to smell like wool, try spikenard! ;D I love it though, I seriously do, spikenard is all the things I like right now, dark, herbal, sweet, resinous, animalic and spicy!

I have no list of notes for the Alabaster Wrists sample but it is a gorgeous scent!  I think I smell vanilla and tuberose. This was a very familiar smell for me and I couldn't  understand why, but then I remembered what it reminded me of... I have one scent, Saffron and Balsam, that is from a lovely Etsy shop called Plume Perfume and when I ordered that scent I got a sample of another scent, Vanilla Tuberose. I fell so much in love with that Vanilla Tuberose scent and it was on my FB list, but then Plume Perfumes went on vacation and has been so now for more than a year... :( I still have that little empty sample of Vanilla Tuberose and I sniff it vistfully from time to time... But Alabaster Wrists reminds me a lot of Vanilla Tuberose! Finally I get to indulge in that luxurious and sensous smell again!! I'm guessing that there is both vanilla and tuberose in this blend too! Jordan River at The Fragarant Man mentioned that there would be a post about Alabaster Wrists on that blog before long and that this post would disclose the contents of the scent, so I'm keeping my eyes open for that!

You might have noticed that there are also two little bags of peppercorn in this package. Those really confused me, literally had me scratching my head! However I later read at The Fragrant Man that these peppercorns aren't just any old peppercorns... They are Cambodian Kampot pepper, apparently one of the worlds best peppercorns! Who knew! I will have to get a pepper grinder and try them!

This was such a great package of olfactory experiences!

Oh, and I faintly remember promising to post some pictures of our dogs, so here you go!

Paavo male Jack Russell Terrier, Tyyne female Miniature Pinscher and Irmeli female Jack Russell Terrier.

Irmeli.

Paavo.

Paavo and Irmeli.

Tyyne. Although she might look quite dangerous here, this is actually her way of imitating  a human smile.

Perfume Mini Reviews - Midnight Gypsy Alchemy part 1

Some time ago I received this pretty little package of samples from Midnight Gypsy Alchemy. Midnight Gypsy Alchemy (not to be confused with Midnight Gypsy, another completely unrelated indie perfumery) sells all natural perfumes with a mysterious gypsy twist. I ordered my samples from the Etsy shop. The perfumer, Nina, is on vacation right now but will get back to business April 6th. I ordered two sets of samples, one set was the winter line of scents and the other a selection of general catalog scents. In this part I will review the winter scents.

Into the Woods

"A scent to capture the mystical aroma of the woods with a sweet smell of earth, and trees filled with the magic of night air. This perfume blend was carefully created with labdanum and benzoin resin,vanilla absolute,essential oils in creosete, frankincense, patchouli, cypress, and cedarwood,gently infused in patchouli leaves, frankincense resin, creosete leaves and vanilla beans."

This one is hard for me to describe. The prominent notes here are quite unfamiliar for me. At first I smell what I guess is the labdanum. It smells quite like amber but a bit leathery and slightly medicinal. The benzoin is also prominent right from the start and gets more dominant as this dries. I imagine that I can smell woods in the background. The wood I can smell tho most is not cedar, so I'm guessing that it is the cypress. It smells evergreen but not very fresh. The final drydown is a faint ambery vanilla. For me this scent is quite lovely, but it isn't quite as darkly mysterious as I had hoped. Nor does it evoke any forest I have ever been in. There is that hint of cypress but the rest is neither woody, earthy, mossy or green. As with most natural perfumes this is a bit lacking in sillage and longevity. The scent sits close to the skin and disappeares within an hour or two.

The Owl Moon

"A fragrance to invoke a bit of owl and moon magick in a wooded earth scent with hints of smoky vanilla undertones. Created with cedarwood, clary sage, hint of lavender, ylang ylang, essential oils delicately infused with vanilla absolute ,amber and benzoin resin , vanilla beans,cedarwood flakes and lavender buds."

This one is perhaps my favorite out of these four scents. But it is rather simplistic. It starts with a seamless blend of clary sage and lavender. At this stage this is sharp, herbal and medicinal. Lovely if that is your thing, but a bit headache inducing in the long run. Thankfully it mellows! As it dries I detect hints of cedar and a nice soft vanilla base emerges. The lavender slowly vacates but the clary sage stays a while. I can smell no ylang at all, which is good for me because I have started to hate that note. The final drydown is made up of little lingering hints of clary sage together with vanilla and benzoin with a little bit of cedarwood. I really like this one. It does kind of bring to mind a cold moonlit night full of frost covered herbs and, strange as it sounds, I imagine hearing the whisper of an owls soft wings. Of all these scents this one also happens to have both the best sillage and the best longevity, about three hours.

Black Velvet

"Dark and sweet seductive scent of mystic resins and florals uniquely blended with black tea, dark cocoa and subtle notes of woodland magick. A blend created with cocoa, labdanum, jasmine and champa flower absolutes, essential oils in vetiver, amyris, black pepper, clove, ambrette seed, black tea extract infused in black tea leaves, ground pepper corns and dark cocoa powder."

I can't really tell you much about this scent. My skin sems to have a tendency to amp champa, a note that I hate with a passion... So I scrubbed this one. :( This sounded so good, apart from the champa... I just hoped that the champa would be hidden. It wasn't.

Winter Gypsy
"The essence of winter snow and scents of the season in a forest inspired scent with warm spiced notes blended with memories of winters past. A fragrance of essential oils in juniper, bergamot, clove,cinnamon and cocoa absolute, infused with pear fruit extract,juniper berries,clove buds and real pear fruit."

I like this one too! It starts out with a sharp clove, some juniper and a soft bergamot. After this first stage mellows it smells quite like Incendere for a little while. And if you have read my review of Incendere you know that I associate that with chai tea. This is like the chai tea of Incendere without the carnation and with a lot more clove. This stage is creamy, foody and very comforting! On drydown this passes. The creaminess disappeares and what is left is a mellowed clove with a vaguely woody, sweet and maybe slightly fruity background. What I like about this scent is that short stage of chai. The rest of the time the clove dominates a bit too much... I like clove, but alone it doesn't charm me, it needs company! The chai stage transports me to the same happy memories that I describe in the Incendere review, but the rest of the time Winter Gypsy fails to evoke any images or associations. This one has a medium sillage and a longevity of about three hours.

In the next part, the general catalog scents and some final impressions of this quite unknown perfumery!


Follow my blog on Bloglovin

Perfume review - Slumberhouse part 2

This is part two of this review, part one can be found here.

Jeke has a fascinating concept that started "with a batch of smokey cade oil and the idea of a night time stroll with burning autumn woods in the distance - something fiery and burnt yet chillingly desolate, November illusory, breath of fog, ablaze. Into this design I sought to embed a defined masculinity - something well-worn yet intellectual, a refinement streamlined with rustic attributes - warmth of cigars in humidors, old leather shoes and odd buckles, traces of a fragmented sweet spice, the mysterious atmosphere that adorns the well traveled."
Jeke is intriguingly smoky with warm woody notes, a sensual hint of leather and a fantastic tobacco! My mother rolles her own cigarettes and keeps her shag in a leather tobacco pouch so when I sniff this I get the image of that pouch in my mind. This does not smell like tobacco smoke to me, but rather of woodsmoke. We have a tradition of Easter bonfires in Finland and this scent transports me to such a bonfire. The dark forest, the chill in the air, but most of all that blazing heat of the huge bonfire, the smoke drifting towards the dark blue sky and my mother rolling a cigarette. I think I get this image because of the fact that I won´t be going home for Easter this year... I regret that I´ll miss that bonfire and I definitely miss my home... I suspect that at any other time of the year this would be a scent to make my inner Steampunk happy. It could provoke the feeling of being an explorer of the Steampunk kind, gritty and dirty from tinkering with the airship, garbed in leathers, smoking a pipe and looking at old maps of exotic unexplored places. I really want to own more of this some day, when I have the money.

Grev is described as "The interpretation of the dapperest embodiments of a true gentleman. A deep, spicy, earthy, rooty fragrance with an elegant kick of herbs tinted through shades of orris, clove, birch and fir".
This one doesn´t evoke as many feelings and images as Jeke but it truly is one of the most elegant scents I have ever smelled. Grev is dignified and self contained where Jeke is gritty and wild. Grev is cold where Jeke is warm. To me these two scents seem like opposites, the arrogant highborn gentleman and the uncaringly unkempt explorer. The scent itself is herbal and I get that powdery kind of smell that I associate with orris root. I can smell clove and woods too, but somehow they manage to be old and frosty. As you might be able to see in the pictures, this perfume is a pale turquoise blue color, and I feel that this color mirrors the scent very well. I get the image of a elegant gentleman all dressed up in his finery going for a walk in a frosty park.


Free samples:

Pear + Olive is, I believe, the most recent scent from Slumberhouse. On the Slumberhouse blog the scent is described, apart from the pear and the olive, as "soft shades of herbal sweetness from Roman chamomile, the bitter booziness of grape tissue from French white cognac oil, the wet and earthy hues of zdravets crowned with the rich, velvety green gem of the very rare aglaia absolute. A chord of massoia bark & calamus absolute was created to provide a trace of cream".
This scent is lovely, very balanced and well made, but I´m lacking a concept, an intriguing background. And it smells a lot like an Yves Rocher pear perfume that I had when I was little... Not a positive association at all... I will forever associate pear and apple notes with the pear and apple perfumes I owned and overdosed on back then. Anyone who enjoys pear will love this though. It has the same smooth depth as the other scents but it is a bright and happy fragrance and you all know that that´s not my thing. There are some intriguing notes here that I have never encountered before, but they can´t quite make up for that pear.

Baque is described on the Slumberhouse blog as "a warm amber tobacco flower perfume containing notes of smokey apricot, cedar, straw, vanilla, tobacco leaf, davana, ambergris tincture and parchment. Elegant, rustic, golden and warm properly sum the four corners of its tobacco and honey heart".
This one is a fine comforting scent! The tobacco is sharp at first but mellows and mingles with sweet notes of amber and honey. This scent is somehow dusty and dry, I can smell straw and I imagine that I sense that note of parchment. Baque somehow makes me think of autumn forests covered with dry crinkly leaves. I wouldn´mind owning more of this, but unfortunately it seems that it is an older LE.

Kere is described as "Milky apricot, white chocolate and spiced plum-meat accords add texture and color to syrupy orange honeysuckle absolute and licorice within a halo of vaporous aldehydes reminiscent of champagne fizz. A circus of bizarre pairings harmonized in a blurring fashion that slowly devolves into spicy sugared hay and caramel".
This here is the most awesome gourmand scent ever!! It is so complex, so deep, I can´t even tell what notes I am smelling but it is so utterly, utterly divine!! I can smell licorice and caramel but there is also a sharp bite of warm spice. I doesn´t evoke any memories or places, it doesn´t transport me at all, but hey, I don´t care! Because I´m quite happy with being right here and experiencing only this scent and nothing more! This is another brilliant composition, balanced and intriguing! And the sillage! It is monstruous!! I´d love to own a larger bottle of this one, but alas, this too seems to have been a limited edition scent... Maybe it will come again sometime, preferably when I have some money to my name.


Slumberhouse really is such a fascinating perfumery! There is an intriguing depth to all of these scents, a rounded and smooth feeling that makes these seemingly simple scents so very complex and deep. Again and again I find myself using the word deep to describe them, I´m sorry I can´t seem to put this feeling of depth into better words... I also love the mysterious concepts behind them and the beautiful images that come to my mind when smelling them! Some of them take me away to other places and situations and all at least evoke certain moods!

All of these scents have good longevity and sillage, some more so than others. You can definitely tell that they are very concentrated! As they have no top notes there are no sharp changes in scent through the drydown. Some reviewers have remarked that these scents change dramatically about half an hour an hour into wear but I have not had any such experiences. What I get at the beginning is what follows me for the whole time!

Samples of Norne, Jeke and Pear + Olive can be ordered from the Slumberhouse website. Rume, Vikt and Grev have now been discontinued but are still available at places like indiescents until the stock runs out.

Perfume Review - Wing of Bat and Ardorem 21

These are the two scents out of my haul from Alkemia that disappointed me. Not really because they are bad scents, but because they are not at all what I expected.

The name Wing of Bat really enchanted me, together with the description, containing notes of oakmoss, green patchouli, fern, dirt, ambergris, leather. I really expected something dark and earthy. In the vial Wing of Bat smells green and herbal with hints of citrus. On wet it is a very sharp and clean kind of scent, very green but not very herbal anymore. This is the kind of sharpness that I associate with cheap men´s cologne and that just gives me a headache and no enjoyment. As this dries it becomes less sharp, but  I still get only lots of green with a vague chypre background. I get no leather, no moss, definitely no dirt, even the slight patchouli I can smell here is not very earthy, it is indeed very green. I guess this isn´t a bad sort of scent... It is made like a classic and old fashioned men's cologne, I´m quite sure I have smelled some commercial scent that is very much like it. As long as you don´t expect anything else it is fine, after the sharp green note in the beginning it is not bad. But if you expect another unique and exciting Alkemia creation this is a disappointment. This one is going on my swaps list, if anyone is still interested in it after this review... ;)

Ardorem 21 is sorted under the category "Musk Spices Suede" in the Alkemia shop and the notes are as follows. "Coriander, Mandarin, Amber, Nutmeg, Saffron, Bourbon Geranium, Blue Lotus, Tobacco, Musk, Clove, Sandalwood, Vetiver, Kashmiri Tea, Cardamom, Black Pepper, and Japanese incense." Lots of spices in that description and I am a huge fan of spicy perfumes, I thought that perhaps the geranium and the lotus won´t be so noticable and a little bit of mandarin can´t drown out all those lovely spices and darker notes. But in the bottle Ardorem 21 smells of mandarin most of all. But it was a spicy mandarin, so I had high hopes still. On wet there is a wonderful flash of spices at first, black pepper, cloves, cardamon, coriander, hints of musk, the mandarin is prominent too, but the spices are more dominant... But then comes the bourbon florals and take over. It is not an awful floral by any means, it is sweet and pretty together with amber and some faint hints of musk and spices. The floral fades with time, and the final drydown is sweet and creamy, quite complex, with tea, musk, amber and a hint of tobacco... I like this one better than Wing of Bat, I can enjoy it and the drydown is lovely... I was just expecting something full of spices, and this isn´t it... This one goes on the swap list too.


Neither of these oils have much of a sillage, Ardorem 21 slightly more than Wing of Bat, and neither lasts very long on my skin, Wing of Bat lasts just a few hours and Ardorem 21 perhaps an hour more.

Perfume Review - Salmonberry Origins

I just recently got a nice little pack of samples from Salmonberry Origins! They shop is based in Alaska and the perfume olis they sell are described as arctic scent memories. Living in the north as I do, although on another continent, that concept charmed me and I ordered some samples!

I don´t remember my life through scents, I´ve never paid much attention to scents before the last year's perfume obsession. But there are a few scents that have been very important for me! The scent of a newborn puppy's mouth is one (sounds very strange, even repulsive, if you have not been there with a little puppy attached to your nose...) that scent is addictive! Another very important smell from my childhood is that of Getpors, a plant that grows everywhere on the bogs or where the ground is swampy here in Finland. The North American name for this plant is Labrador tea.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

I have always wished that there was a perfume that smelled like the leaves of this plant. They have such a wonderful, sharp but resinous and sweet, herbal scent! There is a small forest lake ner my home where I somtimes swin in the summer. Around this lake grows Labrador tea and I always take some leaves and rub the scent of them into my skin when I walk home after my swim. The leaves are very oily and if I had the know-how I could probably make an essential oil or something quite easily... but I don´t have this knowledge. So when I found a Labrador Tea perfume oil at Salmonberry Origins I just had to sample it!!

In the bottle this smells very fresh, of forest evergreens. On the skin it is very sharp at first, with evergreens and sharp resins. At this stage I´m not a fan, but then I´m not a fan of most top notes... Fortunately this one mellows fast and the sharp green notes fades and the resins sweeten. This sweet resin state is a bit longer than the sharp evergreen state, but then herbs start to slowly emerge. I can´t tell what herbals only that the sweetness of the resins is still there but that slightly medicinal soft herbals start to mingle with it. The drydown is a soft and sweet herbal that I constantly sniff at. And it lasts for a long time! 

There are no notes mentioned in the description of this scent, so the actual content is unknown to me.... But it does not quite smell like Labrador Tea to my nose... It does however evoke the memories of the forest around that small forest lake and with that I´m definitely satisfied! This is such a unique forest scent and it works so well on my skin that I´m definitely buying a full size bottle of it! When summer comes I can compare it to the real deal, right now I can only compare it to the memory I have of the scent of Labrador tea... 

The other scents I ordered were Corvus Corax and Canus Lupus Arctos, some latin names that you might be familiar with.

Corvus Corax is, of course, the latin name of the Raven. This scent has a really interesting top notes of some sickly sweet floral and berries, it sells like somthing rotten in a very weird and awesome way. It continues sweet and dark with some vague spicy undertones, but nothing that really evokes memories in me. This one disappares quickly from my skin and it is slightly soapy on the drydown, maybe a chemistry malfunction? For me this scent was all about the top notes, which is strange as I don´t normally harbor any love for the top note stage of perfumes.

Canus Lupus Arctus, latin for the Arctic Wolf, was really more of a filler, I chose between this one and Pilot Bread but in the end I felt more like sampling a masculine leather/spice/ozone scent rather than a gourmand scent. My first impression with this scent was that it smelled a lot like Aragon from DarlingClandestine, reviewed here. These two scents really have nothing incommon on paper except for a leather note and to me  they do not smell at all like they are described. They smell like saffron... Is my nose malfunctioning here? Canus Lupus Arctos is not as sweet as Aragon, where there is honey, and has a bit more of a clean smell, maybe because of the mentioned ozone, but in essence they are the same on my skin. This leads me to believe that either my nose or my skin turns a leather note into saffron galore (because while saffron might not be to difficult to imagine as an ingredient in Aragon, what would it be doing in an arctic scent memory?)! I might need a second opinion on this one... One sample of Aragon and one of Canus Lupus Arctos is now officially up for grabs if someone feels like being that second opinion!

I also received a free sample of Wild Arctic Rose which was unfortunate because rose is a scrubber for me... I think I´m traumatized by a bath set, with body lotion, shower gel and schampoo, that I had when I was a child... I loved the pretty bottles but that was still the start of my rose hate... Maybe I only hate the syntetic rose, or maybe it´s a chemistry thing, or maybe I have just not smelled any really great rose scents as of yet... I don´t know. Anyway, this rose scent is not one of the real scrubbers... In the bottle it is definitely rose of the kind that I hate, but on it is not as aweful as I feared. (I did put it on! Be proud of me!) This is rose with a healthy dose of lemon and I think something smells like cinnamon in the background. This one is up for swaps if anyone is interested! I can appreciate the vaguely spicy background here, but neither lemon nor rose is my thing. 

Now I´m lusting for more green but sweet forest scents... As I purchase my full size Labrador Tea I think I´ll buy some more samples too. I want to try Lichen, Ursus Arctos, Willow, all herbal in some whay, and maybe a smoky one, Noon Fire.

So, do you have any scent memories that you wish could be found as perfume? Or are there any notes that do really wonky things on your skin? Do you have any favorite green/herbal/forest scents? What is your favorite rose perfume? Are there any you think I would like? (Many questions on this one, but this set of samples was an exploration for me in many ways!)

Perfume Review - DarlingClandestine

Etsy is one of the places where you can find strange scents in great numbers, whether you like steampunk, sideshow, burlesque, gothic or any other alternative style of perfumery that you are not likely to find in the perfume store at the mall.

I got this generous package from Evonne of DarlingClandestine last week. She sells wonderfully complex and odd perfumes in her shop on Etsy! I ordered the two solids that you see in the picture but because I had to wait a bit she threw in all of these other wonderful goodies!! That´s customer service for you!!

Now, I really love reading perfume reviews! I think they are the most wonderful thing ever! And I do love analyzing scents, even though my sense of smell is quite... mediocre... So I´ll try my hand at it here!

The scent that really cought my attention and made me order from DarlingClandestine was Vardogr. In her description of the scent Evonne pointed out that this was a really weird scent, and I´m all for anything weird! evonne describes the scent as "dark, damp, herbal fragrance—mossy forest floors, sunken alleys, underground spaces—with a dozen unlikely notes including pure essential German chamomile, bitter black coffee, hazy Indian musks, sharp herbs and a whip of leather". I´m usually drawn more to spicy gourmand scents, so what exactly attracted me, beyond the "weird" is hard to say. I do have a fascination for anything underground, but that is my taste in horror movies, not perfumes.
Vardogr even looks weird, it´s a beautiful green color! The scent itself is indeed herbal! it is green in a softly dark kind of way, not clean at all but full of dirt and grime. I can´t smell any coffee or musk, but, as noted, my nose is sub par when it comes to these matters. I don´t find Vardogr very weird, it is unusual to be sure but not shockingly so. It is earthy and subtly haunting, unsettling like a walk in a graveyard or a damp dark crypt. I´ll admit to expecting a stronger, less subtle, concotion, but it works! It is stunningly beautiful, but perhaps a bit too subtle for my tastes... I don´t normally do subtle.

The other solid I ordered from DarlingClandestine is much more my usual cup of tea, lo and behold, a spicy gourmand! This scent, named Big Top Train (2010 formulation), is not subtle in the least! Evonne paints a picture of a sideshow Christmas, and that picture represents this scent well with its blend of normalcy and strangeness. Big Top Train is a seemingly simple holiday spice scent. But the reality is more complex, full of strange olfactory cues. It evokes memories, fleeting memories that I can´t quite grasp.  There are scents like this one where the individual notes refuse to blend, and the result is just chaos. But here there are no dominant notes that my nose can smell, just a stunningly overwhelming mass of creamy sweet spice. I have other gourmand spice scents that grow boring after a while, but this one, in it´s complexity will surely keep my interest far longer! To me this is hypnotic, a truly intoxicating brew!! It is like a great party, of the kind that you can´t quite remember but you just know that it had to have been good!

Thanks to Evonne's great generosity I also ended up with two full size perfume oils and two large samples. I always LOVE surpise samples when I order perfumes, and Evonne took that to a whole nother level!! I really enjoy getting samples that I have not chosen myself, that way I get to experience something new, I get to maybe fall in love with something that I thought I hated.
One of the samples I recieved was like this... The thing is, I HATE clean, fresh scents. I almost completely gave up on commercial scents because there were simply too many clean, fresh scents for me to smell before I found soemthing I liked... Bottom line, I can´t stand anything clean or fresh!
And then, along comes Gram Negative and changes everything! Evonne describes it as: "Gram-Negative is deep, damp, earthy essential moss; sticky green leaf resin; a whisper of black tea; and a rare, rich, mellow, buttery orchid essential oil that is just divine."  I can´t quite agree with her description, for to me, the green leaves dominate the scent in a way that I should hate, because they are fresh and green... However, this scent also,  is crazy complex! The freshness of the green leaves is dominant, but not a terrible spike straight into my brain, like so many commercial scents. There is also an earthyness to it, a hidden depth of damp soil and moss, and a beautifully sweet orchid grows here, a sultry dark flower among these green leaves! I´m still not in love with this scent, but I like it, which IS enough of a miracle, I assure you!


Ummm... it seems I use metaphors when talking about perfumes. This is very little about the technical aspects of the perfumes (staying power, sillage etc.) and very little about notes, drydown and the like... I guess I´m more interested in what kind of associations the scents give me, be it memories or leaps of imagination. Hope some of you enjoy my whimsical flights of fancy. I might give you more on the remaining three scents, Step Right Up, Fisticuffs and Aragon, another day. First I have to wear them a bit more and see if they are friends or enemies or somewhere in between...