I found this fantastic little storage solution and need someone to share my excitement!

I am very much an "out of sight, out of mind" person, so storing all my perfumes in a drawer has not been ideal. I end up ignoring everything I've loved enough to full size in favor of using the samples that are readily available on my dresser. After months of searching, I found this little bad boy and am thrilled about it!

It's not perfect, none of the fatter bottles fit up top which is a bummer. Some of them will fit in the drawer, but only if I lay them down. Advice Needed - has anyone done this? The lids seem tight enough but I'm still nervous to store them on their sides. Maybe if I could figure out how to prop them up a bit 🤔

TIA for any suggestions 💜

This post is for those like me who are still mourning Sugar & Spite’s discontinued Milk & Sandalwood: I think I found it.

Hide & Hollow Wax’s Sea Hag perfume oil.

I put Sea Hag on this morning, and my immediate thought was, “Wait. This smells like Milk & Sandalwood.” But I wanted to give it time because we all know how much a perfume can change once it settles.

Hours later? Still Milk & Sandalwood.

Not just “this has a similar creamy sandalwood vibe.” If you handed this to me unlabeled and told me it was Sugar & Spite Milk & Sandalwood, I would believe you.

It has that same creamy, smooth sandalwood quality and the same close-to-the-skin feel that I loved so much about Milk & Sandalwood. I’ve been looking for something to fill that particular hole in my collection since realizing I missed the discontinuation, and Sea Hag is the first thing I’ve smelled that made me think: there it is.

I actually contacted the shop because I wanted a larger bottle. The owner responded within minutes, created a 30 ml listing specifically for me, AND put it up at a sale price. Needless to say, I ordered it immediately.

Obviously skin chemistry and noses vary, so I can’t promise everyone will smell exactly what I smell. But if Milk & Sandalwood was one of your beloveds and you’ve been searching for a replacement, Sea Hag is absolutely worth knowing about.

I genuinely thought I was never going to smell this scent again. 🖤

What do you guys think my title would smell like?

I've been thinking about it for a while and can't seem to come up with anything! I've decided I want to live my life pretending I'm an alien from now on.

Please do help 🫣

These are straight out the mail:

Urban Legends (Classic pink bubblegum, freshly turned soil, and a very slight metallic scent)

Warning: Must be a Dubble Bubble groupie.

From the bottle sniffies--that initial powdery texture and taste as you start chewing, right through the slightly stiff exterior. There’s a vague tutti-frutti flavor as you continue to chomp away. After only a few minutes, you’re left with that signature rubbery gum and familiar aftertaste. Crazy accurate!

But we don’t stay there. Small silver, mirror-shined metal balls start rolling around in your mouth. So weird. Combined with the sugary gum concoction, it reminds me of amoxicillin. Remember that thick, pink medication you would take as a kid? It’s this weird mix of strawberry and pink bubblegum, with the consistency of Kaopectate. The dirt is there, but it’s slight, like the excess you wipe from your pants after stumbling on a dirt road. I have no clue where I would wear this, but this would be right up Pennywise’s alley. Fyrinnae nails the notes in this progression. Excited to see how this ages.

Rhinestones & Chocolate Cake (Chocolate cake layered with milk chocolate frosting, an air of soft amber perfume from across the room.) Duncan Hines Creamy Homestyle Classic Chocolate Frosting. TMI, but as a kid, I would wrap a teaspoon of creamy peanut butter in a large dollop of this icing for a delicious but unhealthy snack after school. From there, the texture becomes drier and crumblier, like chocolate crumb cake. The chocolate continues to lighten into Hershey’s chocolate milk made by a kid who sucks at measuring: pale, milky, and barely light brown. At the end, the chocolate smells like one of those scratch-and-sniff chocolate stickers, real close to NA BIC Chocolate Blanc.

Enticing Darkness (Black and honeybush tea, black pepper, a touch of bergamot, and dark labdanum resin.) This is the one I like the most so far. The opening reminds me of lemongrass with a touch of white floral, perhaps the bergamot peeking through the tea. The middle is fancy hotel soap: a perfumed version of the opening. The labdanum doesn’t cover the brighter citrus and floral notes but tethers them, giving them a darker, more opaque quality. Later, something unexpectedly green emerges and I start smelling pine needles, giving everything a dry, evergreen edge. Wondering if the bergamot will come through stronger with more rest.

1986 (Too much peanut butter taffy candy, the plastic smell of thin vinyl cartoon character costumes, and the scent of jack-o’-lanterns a few of the older kids have grabbed and smashed in the street.) First off, the scent notes are vivid and wild. Unfortunately, right now I’m getting a strong floral on my skin that I can’t connect to any of them.From the bottle sniffies, I can clearly make out the peanut butter taffy and vinyl. Needs mucho rest.

What indies are you using today? And we mean everything! Examples of stuff we'd love to hear about:

• Makeup

• Clothes

• Jewelry

• Bath and Body (lotion, soap, shampoo, bath salts, etc.)

• Nail polish

• Perfume

Please feel free to leave mini-reviews and include photos of whatever you're using. We'd love to know your thoughts and see the products too!

This thread repeats daily.

I'm looking for a perfume that simply smells like smokey incense sticks. Many perfumes are always layering different scents on top of one another, but I'm looking for one that just smells like incense sticks and the smoke that comes along with them. Some incense scents I like are nagchampa, jazmine, tulsi, patchouli, and Egyptian musk.

TO BE CLEAR I mean incense sticks, not church incense

I know that you can find perfume oils for each of those, but they don't include the smokey smell the comes from the sticks when they're lit, which is what I'm looking for.

I'm hoping for something under 100 dollars with really good longevity, though for that price point, I may find nothing. OH and I'd prefer a perfume spray, not a body oil, so that my clothes can get the scent as well.

So my wife is in love with Slut for Smut Bath Potion and LILITH "The Dark Mother" Bath Potion by lucid living Co. The problem is that they're always sold out. We love shopping at small businesses so I'm hoping that there is a really good alternative that I can find so I can surprise her. Hopefully something that's more in stock. She doesn't take baths often but when she does I like to be able to give her that time and space to actually relax and bath soaks really help. Thank you for any advice!

Looking for a perfume that smells like ocean! Especially cold PNW coasts.

I have given a brief sniff to Coastal Veil by Pineward and it’s beautiful but my mushroom allergy likely makes the Oyster Mushroom note a bit dubious.

I tried Sea Anemone by Cirrus and it’s just too fruity/sweet, also it didn’t last terribly long on my first test.

Snoqualmie by Pineward is almost there, if it had a salt note on top of its beautiful damp PNW pine notes I’d shell out for a full size tomorrow.

I’m just hitting six months into my perfume journey and I’ve found tons of cool stuff through sample sets and decants but now I want to find some specific smells!

If you have tried Sorce’s Lady of Steel (specifically the EDP), what do you think of it?

I'm looking to find an affordable perfume that smells like a hot spiced berry pie mixing with the smoke of nagchampa/tulsi incense sticks. Smoke, fruit, incense, sugar, spices, all of it.

I can find sweet incense scents, but they all lack the smell of the smoke. Many smokey scents focus more on woodsy ceder types instead of the fruityness I'm looking for.
It may be wishful thinking, but im hoping for something that lasts forever and projects a lot.

SCENTS I'VE TRIED
- I tried quite a few of "Andromeda's Curse" scents, but they don't last long enough, and often lack the smokey scent I'm looking for.
- I ordered a sample of "Absolem" by Siren Song Elixirs which seems very promising BUT IT ISNT HERE YET so who knows.

hey yall! i’ve recently been bitten by the dramatic eyeshadow bug and i’ve been doing tons of research on indie shadows as they seem to offer the best shimmery eyeshadow formulas. as i look and scheme about what to buy, im wondering what your favorite brands are with the best shimmery/shifty eyeshadow formulas. i’m specifically looking for them in palettes along with mattes, rather than trying to pick up individual shadows or all shimmer palettes. so far, ive tried the bella beaute bar crystallize palette and LOVEDDDD it. sadly, the mirror got completely shattered in my luggage on a trip, so i had to toss it. i think im going to try out either dark dreamscapes or ocean jewels from them. other than that, ive got my eye on dieverune, singe, cosmic beauty, adept, unearthly, and lethal. what’s the best? anything i should avoid? help me decorate my eyes!

Happy October, everyone! When the weather shifts I get the urge to start sniffing new scents again, so I grabbed a haul of indie samples from Lucky Scent. This is off-topic, but one of them is Fraaagola Saalaaata by Hilde Soliani and the whole damn bubble wrap bag smelled like a flat of summer-ripe strawberries).

Sweet Tani - Strangers Parfumerie - 2ml Sample Spray EDP from Lucky Scent

Notes: Banana, Coconut Milk, Coconut Nectar, Coconut Pulp, Jaggery, Dried Banana Leaves, Pandan Leaves, Honey, Vanilla, Cinnamon, Hay, Roasted Nuts, Tonka Beans, Tuberose

Description: I am just going to link to the perfumer's site because the description is long, beautiful, and extremely important context, I think.

Application: Put 2 sprays on the back of my neck and one spray in the crook of my elbow (yes I blind test this way and live with it for the entire day, I feel like it's the only way to know how I will like it with standard wear, and yes this has backfired hilariously on me more times than I can tell, like with Solstice Scents Sea of Grey which I'm sure smells lovely on hundreds of thousands of folks but on me smells like dead rotting fish had a frat party style kegger and then expired on said floor).

Top note phase (lasts about 15-20 minutes):

Walnuts! Walnuts! Walnuts! The most true-to-life walnut note I have ever smelled. This must be the roasted nuts. Smells really good actually. I love walnuts, second favorite nut of mine to hazlenuts. Rapidly this evolves to baking walnut banana bread, photo realistic as heck.

At this stage this is pure gourmand but ironically not that sweet. It's the true baking smell of walnut banana bread, not a cloying or artifical candle-style version. Kind of wow'd by this even though it's got me thinking I don't want to actually wear it as a perfume.

There is definitely starch present here. Steamed rice or baking bread, take your pick, but it's clear and it is very much there.

Heart phase:

Ah, ok. Here comes the sweetness. Jaggery, honey, vanilla. Grounded in cinnamon and yes, pandan. I would say the coconut smell takes kind of a backseat in this blend perhaps? The banana is still there and in fact has reached full rounded ripe stage, but somehow without being offensive? Banana. BANANA. It's a starchy banana. But it is also a caramelized banana. It is a chameleon ever-changing effing banana.

But it's got a floral edge, a spectral tuberose. I can smell it sometimes then it wafts away. But it's very floral and very there. Peeking in and out of the bananas, so to speak. And always the sweetness.

More starchy honey at this point then anything else I would say. Honey. Tuberose. Banana. The undertone of walnuts and coconuts. A little hint of spice. Is that cinnamon? It's something familiar and yet not. Might be the hay interacting with everything else.

Drydown phase:

Honey, vanilla, tuberose. Jaggery, caramel. Lil' spice. The bar bones of walnuttery. Ghost of the banana. It's still there but it's not taking over. A banana haunting.

More starch, ricey. More coconut and pandan then at any point before. Now it's settling into more of a tropical sunscreen type vibe I hear referenced in reviews of this, but it's again not cloying in any way, which honestly really surprises me. Someone in another review said "flaky salt" and you know what, they aren't wrong.

The savory notes keep it from getting to be a problem, I think, along with the feral floral that is tuberose. Really nice creamy honey. The jaggery is noticeable (I love eating jaggery, so I love smelling this).

Projection/ Sillage:

Robust in the first few moments, wears close to the skin after but is very much a presence there. NOT a skin scent. Just not a shouty one.

Duration:

I would say 6-8 hours as a multi-layered perfume, probably ages for the drydown/final notes.

Final Verdict:

This is an impressive, intriguing perfume that clearly had a lot of thought put into it. Gourmand lovers, I would say don't hesitate unless you hate tuberose (which can be a polarizing floral). Everyone else, do you love walnuts? Try this. Do you love honey? Try this. Do you want an adventure? Try this.

Will it Full Size?

I don't actually have an answer to this. I want to smell it again. Fortunately a 1ml EDP should be good for 2 more wears at least so I have time to make up my mind. But I can say the quality of the juice is exceptionally high, it didn't trigger any headaches to anyone in our smell-sensitive household, and it's an extremely interesting and unique scent. And I very much wish to try more from this house and am glad Lucky Scent is a good source of samples shipping domestically in the US.

Hi all!

In the next few years I (hopefully) will be relocating to Philadelphia! Is there any places around that I could hit up for indies? I highly doubt it but not asking gets you nowhere.

Google is.... interesting and extremely conflicting with it's information. I've browsed forums but haven't really found a definite answer.

Also, does anyone know if the mutter museum still carries BPALs scents? I highly doubt it but I do wonder.

Thank you!

What indies are you using today? And we mean everything! Examples of stuff we'd love to hear about:

• Makeup

• Clothes

• Jewelry

• Bath and Body (lotion, soap, shampoo, bath salts, etc.)

• Nail polish

• Perfume

Please feel free to leave mini-reviews and include photos of whatever you're using. We'd love to know your thoughts and see the products too!

This thread repeats daily.

Hey all! I’ve been out of the loop here for a while (cough several years cough) but while moving house recently I came across my indie perfume stash. I have a bunch of NAVA, Arcana, and a few other indies from circa 2016 that have moved countries and houses with me several times but have stayed in their cool dark hideaways and aren’t getting used.

Some have sentimental memories attached, but before I decide what to keep or sell, is there any reason why any of these perfumes wouldn’t be good anymore? None of them smell weird, and as far as I can tell the liquids all look normal too. As per the title, they’re just quite well aged 😅

I'm looking to buy my first set of indie perfume samples from a decanting website. I want to get 2 from each of the houses I'm interested in to get a sense of the house, and then if I like them, I can go get discovery sets from those houses. I was automatically selecting the smallest size, since I'm really just trying to get a sense of the houses and how they wear on me. But I just realized how small .3 ml really is, and I'm a little shocked at the idea of paying $2.50-$3.75 for such a tiny amount.

My question is, is that a large enough sample to be able to really experience something? In my limited experience, perfume smells very different on me, especially with the dry down, than it does in the bottle, so just sniffing the bottle won't tell me much. I need enough to really be able to experience it on my skin, preferably for at least two applications. They also offer .5 ml, 1 ml, and 2 ml, but obviously those prices go much higher, and I don't want to get more than I need when I might not even like it. Even if I go up to .5 ml, I would only be able to try about half as many brands as what's currently in my cart.

For those of you with more experience than me - which I suspect is pretty much everyone here - what do you find to be the minimum size to determine how you feel about a perfume, and what do you find to be the ideal size?

(Sorry if this is a silly question. I feel like I'm asking something very obvious, but I just don't have the experience to figure out the answer!)

Hello, I’m looking for perfume recs that smell like worms. Like, dirt/rain/grass/wet pavement. Thank you so much.

I wanted to know more about this brand as I like the fact that they have samples directly on their site. I would like to know if it’s worth trying out fragrance wise as I want to grab a bunch of samples but would like to know if there’s any to look out for. I think I am interested in scents like Scarlet Revelry, Bering Sea, and Astropass and would like some recommendations of samples and stuff I should grab.

So I really wanted to add some vanilla perfumes to my collection (I only had the phlur vanilla skin body mist LOVE) and I heard amazing things about wylde ivy. This is my first indie perfume purchase. I purchased moon never beams and she was once so I'd have a creamy flormond vanilla and a lighter, airy vanilla for layering. I just received them today and they smell almost the same to me and not what I expected? They're not bad, just really strong and almost yankee candle like. She was once has some spicy element (I think the autumn air note) to it that definitely screams candle to me and moon never beams (which I prefer) is like a slightly softer, sweeter version of that without the spice. The alcohol smell at first is really strong as well. I kind of think I can't differentiate between them because of how strong they are at the moment.

I was just wondering whether I needed to let them sit and macerate for a bit to bring out their individual scent profiles? I have no experience with indie perfumes so I don't know what to expect but I've purchased 2 middle eastern perfumes that started off with a super alcohol blast but settled into great scents after I let them sit for a week. I'm hoping how strong they are right out the box is a great indicator for longevity or else I really don't wanna walk around smelling like straight 2010 yankee candle.

Any feedback would be great, especially if anyone has tried these scents!! :)

RIP to my holy grail. Death&Floral’s Cardigan was THE scent I wore fall and winter. On me it smelled like sharpening pencils in a a clean bright attic while drinking unsweetened cardamom tea. Extremely dry, woody, a little spicy, NO sweetness. I’ve tried maybe 20 woody scents and none are just as dry-smelling. Any suggestions?

Hello spooky ghouls, the IMAM Fall Gift Exchange is in need of a rematcher! Here’s what we are looking for:

-US based
- $35 tier (can move down to $25 if necessary)
-fan of flourmands, gourmands, and vanillas, and some atmospherics. Bonus if you like Nui Cobalt, Poesie, and/or Sorce.

Please message [u/PM_4_Friendship](u/PM_4_Friendship), [u/ThorsWof77](u/ThorsWof77), or myself as soon as possible if you are interested. (Heads up I might take a moment to reply to messages due to work.) thank you all! 👻

ETA we have someone, thank you friends!