I’ve been working my way through the Riddle Oil discovery set. It would make a great Christmas present, but if you know you like musk, go with the Original and order a body oil in that scent, or the Santal version if that’s more you. Ex is more refreshing and Sphinx has a bit of sandalwood in it.
Muse has a yummy coconut note and I’m not mad about that (I would layer it with Datura Noir), and Voyeur is fruity, maybe for turning up that pineapple note in Aventus. But the original is my favourite. I’ve been wearing it to bed every night and now even my pillow smells like it and I love that.
The sample kit in the pictures above is $40 and available from their website.
Have you smelled these? Would you want them for the holidays?
A coral makeup moment thanks to Guerlain Terracotta Bronze Light in the colour Medium Warm. Blended together, this shows up as a warm coral in my skin and works well as a bronzer or blush.
Paired it with the Charlotte Tilbury HappiKiss in HappiCoral. This is a super moisturizing but long-wearing gloss. This colour isn’t available at Sephora but it is on the Charlotte Tilbury website.
Some makeup empties, and there aren’t very many because makeup seems to take longer to finish. Except for glosses… those finish rather quickly.
The Charlotte Tilbury HappiKiss lipgloss is the one from my selfie yesterday and I started using it in the summer. This was my car lipgloss for a while.
Dior Lip Glow, which I’ve finished a few of this year, and I always love. This one lived on my desk and now it’s done.
Did I finish a Nars Satin Matte lippie, or did the crayon fall out and get crushed by the lid? Ugh. I wouldn’t say I like a lippie that I have to sharpen because you waste so much product every time you sharpen it, but the colours and formula are among my favourite.
Nars Sarah Moon eyeliner in dark brown from a million years ago. This was the perfect dark brown liner in a formula that wasn’t too smudgy, and I may have been gate-keeping ti because I know that it’s discontinued and you can’t find it anymore. I’ll be looking for another dark brown but not black eyeliner.
Finally – the BareMinerals translucent pressed powder. This just blurred all imperfections and was so easy to use. I did find another pressed powder that I like better, but clearly, this one is a winner and I would repurchase.
I spent too long looking for something that was like Carnal Flower because I didn’t want to pay Carnal Flower prices. I even stopped myself from enjoying this perfume that I love, just to realize that there will never be anything as good, so I’m just letting myself enjoy what I love today.
I just had to learn my lesson the hard way, and no, I don’t want to know any other tuberoses, because this one will always be my favourite.
Carnal flower is a lightly mentholated tuberose, slightly lactonic but not too coconutty, and feels cool and verdant. It’s perfection on a warm day but if you love it and want to feel like you’re walking through a lush cool misty tuberose garden, there’s never a wrong time to wear it.
Watery florals by way of soap or linen spray or maybe even bathroom freshener, the colour of lavender just to mess with your head. More petitgrain than anything else, and then an mildly indolic tuberose makes its appearance.
You make coffee, breakfast, almost forget it’s there if not for the persistent fresh laundry smell that follows you all day.
Remember when Insta was new and we all dug out our old pictures so that we could post them for #flashbackfriday? Let me chime in and be one of those people who says that I miss a non-curated feed, a picture filtered to look like a polaroid, and a complete disregard for the aesthetic or golden light or whatever.
Anyway, here’s a flashback, mostly it belongs in a finance bro starter kit. Smells profesh…
Acqua di Gio from 1996. Are you drinking a lemon water at a seaside patio or are you wearing Acqua di Gio?
Hair empties from the past couple of weeks… I find I go through hair products so quickly sometimes, but the 2 full-sized products took me a long time to finish which is as it should be.
I got another Moroccanoil Hair Treatment Mini with a Sephora order, and I finished that in the same week that I got it. I do love this treatment and I think if you have dry or frizzy hair you should absolutely try it. A little bit seems to go a long way.
Finished a Kevin.Murphy Hair.Resort which is a texturizer. It kind of gives body to very fine hair but without the tackiness of a salt spray, and without drying hair out. I’m sure I’ve had this for over a year and even when I used just a dollop on my hair every time that I washed it, it lasted a long long time. I liked this, but I don’t think I loved it enough to repurchase because at the end of the day my hair does need something more moisturizing.
Living Proof Perfect Hair Day Styling Treatment lived in my purse for a while and I only used it in emergencies (haha, I know, what is a hair emergency?) because I hate the smell. Would not recommend it. This was a mini that I got with a Sephora order.
I got a mini of this Drybar Triple Sec Finishing Spray which is kind of a blend of dry shampoo and texturizer in one and I loved it. The scent was kind of sweet, almost chocolaty, I want to say. I think this brand is consistently underrated.
Olaplex No. 0. I enjoyed using this but on the left, you’ll see the bottle from Sephora and on the right is the bottle I got from my salon. The salon bottle has a nozzle which actually makes it easy to apply, while the one from Sephora with the spray was difficult to use because the product came out in a stream rather than a mist. Olaplex has said that it’s a dangerous product to inhale so it’s not supposed to be a mist anyway.
The nail colour is Sakura Blossoms from Genesis by Biosculpture.
Because I’m a crazy party animal, Fridays I like to bundle up, go to the pool for a swim, soak in a tub with Epsom salts and then put oil on my skin. And then I 😴 early and I’m ok with that. I get the best sleep ever and I highly recommend this routine.
I’ve been using Beauty of Eczema Epsom salts and then using this new Chere Mere oil out of the Caribbean.
The oil is a blend and doesn’t soak into your skin but it coats it to keep hydration in. The scent is decidedly tropical and not overpowering. I’ve been using it consistently for a couple of weeks and I’ve noticed that even the eczema that was starting has subsided. It really has been the best thing for my skin and I adore it.
Natural perfumery that’s not boring. I’ve been wearing these two by Maria Candida Gentile for the past couple of weeks.
I have Cinabre and Barry Lyndon.
Barry Lyndon is an aromatic scent that feature artemisia, the same herb that gives absinthe its distinctive flavor. This is an aromatic herbal perfume that smells especially refreshing on a hot day. Is the artemisia like licorice? A tiny bit but mostly it’s smoother, more refreshing, like being outside, a breath of fresh air.
Official notes: Artemisia, Arnica, Heather, Leather notes, Haiti vetiver, Madagascar vanilla
Cinabre is more me, it’s all zingy spiciness and resins coating an ancient rose. I can’t get enough of it.
Zingy spiced roses stirred into liquid resins. Melts on contact at body temperature. Must be the heat, the humidity that makes them feel like they’ve always been a part of you. Honestly, this is a rose perfume that’s not very rosy.
Official notes
Top notes: Ginger, black Indian pepper
Heart notes: Splendens rose, Moroccan rose, Davanà
Base notes: Benzoin, Vanilla from Madagascar, Opoponax
The perfumer reached out after I posted this little caption on Instagram to say that this is her interpretation of a medieval alchemist’s rose, so it’s not supposed to smell too rosy.. which it doesn’t. It’s quite unusual because of the ginger note, but honestly I find that note to be so addictive.
I’m also finding that this perfume has hardly any sillage or projection. It just kind of sits on the skin all the time and doesn’t go very far. I think that’s ok, but I was spraying many many sprays in order to be able to get it to travel up to my nose, (we are talking at least 5-8 sprays here), and I noticed that it seemed to be missing many of the modern aromachemicals that perfumes have. These always seem to bolster the other notes, and this perfume was lacking that cushion. Again, I reached out to the perfumer, and it turns out that these are “natural perfumes” and she doesn’t use ingredients like iso-e or ambroxan, even in minute quantities, and so yeah, the scent isn’t going to travel far.
That being said, it’s still a beautiful perfume and easy to wear, and I find the opening of it so addictive. I really craved this scent and basically wore it every other day for 3 weeks straight so that was good, and I’m almost done my little 15ml of it which never happens. I’ve also come to think that 15ml just isn’t very much perfume, and I’d like no less than 20ml of a scent if I’m going to be getting a small bottle, and I can see why so many new perfumeries are doing a 30ml size. That does make more sense to me.
I’m really interested in trying more perfumes from this line. I have a sample of Yasmeenah, a tuberose scent that I’ll have to wear more to get a sense of, and Barry Lyndon which feels a bit masculine for me. Elephant and Roses is a one I’d really like to try next.
Maria Candida is also known for her use of incense. I didn’t get any of the perfumes that had incense since I only wanted these little travel sizes and these are the ones that Indie Scents had in stock at the time, but I’ll be looking for those the next time. This is a brand out of Italy, so the perfumes might be easier to sample and smell if you’re outside Canada.
Muse has a yummy coconut note and I’m not mad about that (I would layer it with Datura Noir), and Voyeur is fruity, maybe for turning up that pineapple note in Aventus. But the original is my favourite. I’ve been wearing it to bed every night and now even my pillow smells like it and I love that.
The Charlotte Tilbury HappiKiss lipgloss is the one from my selfie yesterday and I started using it in the summer. This was my car lipgloss for a while.
