Sunday, March 31, 2013

JMae's Soaps & Cancles - Pineapple Orchid

Cold Sniff: 2/3
Warm Sniff: 2/3
Throw: 1.5/3
Melting Power: 1/3 That's being nice, too. This lasted about 2 hours in a radius of about 3 feet. Then it died.
Scent Strength: 1/3 When I could smell this, it was a very background type scent. I don't know how to describe this besides the scent itself was not memorable.
Repurchase: No. While the scent was alright, the performance left a lot to be desired.

Tiffany Candles - Key Lime Zucchini Bread

I appear to've lost the notes I took on the performance of this tart. I should really stop letting my notes and whatnot compile for so long before I post about these tarts.
I remember that this was a pleasant enough scent, but I could still pick up on the tortilla-chip note of the zucchini bread. Performance was sub-par according to M's memory. He could barely smell it after returning from a day of work, but he does admit that the key lime part was super delicious. I'll defer to his judgement on that, as I just remember the tortilla smell.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

JMae's Soaps & Candles - Tinsel

Cold Sniff: 2/3 This was a minty, sweet scent. I can't even describe it, but it was pleasant.
Warm Sniff: 2/3 Please see above!
Throw: 2.5/3 It filled pretty much the entire house minus the very furthest corners of the bathroom.
Melting Power: 3/3 This baby melted forever. I took it out early at about 36 hours because the scent started morphing and becoming even more intense.
Scent Strength: 2.5/3
Repurchase: Probably not, just because this was so weirdly pleasant to my nose. M and I had a coworker over, and he described the scent as (his words, not mine) "Candy and Unicorn Jizz." By this point the scent had bumped itself up in intensity and M and I were choking on it.

My Polish Storage - Summer 2012

This is how I stored my nail polish while I was home with my parents the summer of 2012. Now I have 2 popsicle stick shelves and a Melmer drawer set that holds most of my nail polish.

Bella's Candles and Tarts - Mint Sugar

Cold Sniff: 2.5/3 Mint chocolate chip ice cream. If you've smelled that, you've smelled this. I happen to love that smell, but I've let this sit in my stash for a while now due to fear of ice cream cravings the moment I start melting this.
Warm Sniff: 2.5/3 It smells the same melted as when cold. Not one of those surprising scents.
Throw: 2/3 This filled most of the house while it had scent.
Melting Power: 1/3 This lasted right under 6 hours before the scent died.
Repurchase: From this vendor, probably not. Another reason I was holding off melting this is because I'd melted one other tart from BC&T and I felt it was sub-par. I looked at the website after Deb mentioned that she might want to check them out and I'm noticing their free shipping is like Front Porch's, only their price per ounce is higher with shipping included and the quality is less than Front Porch's. I got this in a destash, but I wouldn't buy this on my own.

HAUL: Closet Full of Wax




Yay for haul posts! This is a very awesome post that I'm super duper excited to share with you today! I'm even pulling out my camera and re-taking pictures since the pictures I'd been delaying posting have been deemed sub-par by ME!
So, story time. Get comfy with your popcorn and soft drinks (or water, or tea, or whatever fits your fancy...). I made this order on Tuesday, February 19th. By Thursday, I was seeing that people who had placed an order after me were already getting Click-and-Ships. That irked me, and I began to worry that Michele was showing favoritism in whose orders she sent out first. I decided to give her more time and see if maybe my order just didn't get a CnS (it was under $15, after all.) Come that next Thursday, I had still seen nothing of my order, so I decided to email Michele about it.
Michele quickly apologized and told me that somehow my order was missed, then asked if there was anything she could do to make up for the inconvenience. I reassured her that nothing was needed, and I felt that the free shipping was good enough. She told me that she would still send me some freebies. So I thought, OK, cool, two or three extra packs!
Nope.
Michele almost doubled my order with the amount of freebies she sent. I was absolutely blown away by the effort Michele put in to this order. Not only did she put so many freebies in, it was very obvious from the scents added that she made an effort to add scents that she felt I would like based off what I ordered. All I can say is wow.

So anyways, on to the pictures!!
 All prettily boxed up. I appreciate little things like this. Presentation matters to me because I like pretty things. Call me shallow or whatever, but you know if you had two identical products that you had no experience with and one simply looked neater in its packaging you'd pick that one.
The first half of the tarts I bought. I got Bear Claws, Dark Kiss, Plumeria, Sugar Cookies, Cheesecake, and Vanilla Buttercream.
The second bit of tarts I ordered. Cotton Candy, Serendipity, Birthday Cake, Monkey Farts, Vanilla Bean Noel, Bedtime Bath, and Lavender.


Here are my freebies. DO YOU SEE THIS?!?! I'm in heaven! You should have seen my face when I opened the box and there were most definitely not two or three extra packs.
The scents Michele sent were: Pink Salty Sea Air, Fruit Loops, Buttercream Crunch Zucchini Bread, Lick Me All Over, Hot Cocoa (Michael will love this one), Key Lime Ice Cream Scoop Bread, Strawberry Shortcake Lemon Squares, Pink Sugared Pina Colada, Fresh N' Clean Sucalyptus Spearmint, Pineapple Vanilla Bean Noel, and Cranberry Pomegrante Cotton Candy.

Whooooo-eey! I can't wait to start melting these, but Deb has insisted that I melt a mint-chocolate type tart that I mentioned to her earlier :)

JMae's Soaps & Candles - Pink Serendipity Warm Vanilla Sugar

Jeez, what a long post title name thingymajig! In my large February order (which I'm not going to post) I ordered some wax loaves and pies and gave Jamie free reign on the scent blends. This is one of those wax pies... and oh. My. Goodness. Love love love it.
Cold Sniff: 3/3 I almost can't pick up on the Serendipity, but I know it's there. This is one of those blends where almost no individual scent can be picked out, but without those individual scents the final product wouldn't be the same. Now that's good blending. I really really like how Jamie managed to make the vanilla sugar the main note here. You're competing with two very strong scents! Yet she did it!
Warm Sniff: 3/3 Love. I'm a sucker for sweeter scents, and this just tickled my sweet bone to no end.
Throw: 2/3 This filled the living room and most of the kitchen.
Melting Power: 2/3 The slice I took lasted about 9 hours. I wish I'd weighed the piece I cut off to give you an idea of the performance of the piece I cut. This was a small piece, though. About half the size of a standard scalloped tart.
Scent Strength: 1/3 This was a great background scent to clean the house and play video games to.
Repurchase: Yes! I can't wait to share with you some of the other blends Jamie whipped up for me.

Rosegirls - Vanilla Caramel Swirl

Cold Sniff: 2/3 I liked this, even though caramel scents don't usually play well with my nose.
Warm Sniff: 2/3 Same story, this was the same smell melted as it was cold.
Throw: 3/3 This filled the entire house with its sweet caramel goodness!
Melting Power: 3/3 36 hours. Then the scent suddenly disappeared. It was weird, but still... amazing melting power!
Scent Strength: 1.5/3 Very pleasant background scent, though it made me crave sweets the entire time we had it on.
Repurchase: While I loved this scent, I don't think it would justify the $9 price tag for an 8 ounce bag. Maybe if I can find this from another vendor I'll get it.

Crabby Candle Co. - Apples & Clover

Cold Sniff: 1/3 You have to understand... I don't like apples, nor do I like their scent. This is another one that M picked out, and oh my goodness is this a dead ringer for an apple scent.
Warm Sniff: 1/3 I'm sorry!! I just don't like apples!!!
Throw: 3/3 EVERYWHERE. I couldn't escape it! I was drowning in a sea of apples!
Melting Power: 2/3 8 hours of strong scent.
Scent Strength: 2.5/3 It. Was. Everywhere.
Repurchase: Please don't make me buy it again, M... I hate apples.

JMae's Soaps & Candles - Spearmint

I don't have any notes for this, as we really just melted this to try to wash out the stench of death that had been permeating the house for a couple days. It appears we had a cat die underneath the house and while M did find it and get it properly taken care of (it looked young, too :( ) the smell was hard to overcome and lingered far past when it should have left. So we pulled this out and melted the crap out of it. It's your typical Spearmint and Eucalyptus scent that reminds me of that one Bath and Body Works Aromatherapy product my dad got mom for the holidays my 5th grade year. It lasted long enough that when we finally dumped it out the stink was gone.
Sad reason to use it, but I don't really think I would have melted this particular scent for any reason but to overcome a bad smell.

Rosegirls - Hot Cocoa and Monster Cookie

Cold Sniff: 1/3 Every 'chocolate' I've smelled seems like a dupe of a horribly cheap chocolate that I recognize by smell but do not recall the name of.
Warm Sniff: 1/3 Same... I cannot get over this cocoa smell. I don't mind it that much, but it's just not what I want in a chocolate smell.
Throw: 3/3 Whyyy?! This filled the entire house and most of the yard. I couldn't escape it unless I went into work, but even then the smell lingered on my clothes over the deli-sandwich-smell atmosphere of that place!!
Melting Power: 3/3 12+ hours of solid scent strength as of the time I wrote down my thoughts.
Scent Strength: 3/3 It may just be that I did not care for the scent that much, but I smelled it no matter what I was doing. It was EVERYWHERE!!
Repurchase: Not if I can help it. Unfortunately, it appears M absolutely LOVED this. He's the one that picked this out, to my great dismay. I had to essentially beg him to let me finally pour this out when the scent was gone.
To be fair to the tart, I don't hate or even dislike it. It's just not the kind of chocolate I want.

JMae's Soaps & Candles - Love Spell

Cold Sniff: 1.5/3 This smelled lemony. I've actually never smelled the Victoria's Secret scent that this is a dupe of so I can't tell you if this is a good dupe or not, but I liked it.
Warm Sniff: 2/3 The overpowering lemon smell dropped a bit and the other notes of this scent made their way out. I just couldn't pick out them individually to tell you guys.
Throw: 1.5/3 This filled most of the living area and some of the kitchen.
Melting Power: 2/3 Lasted about 8 hours, and that was drawing out the melt.
Scent Strength: 2/3 The lemon made this a bit more noticeable than without it. Wow, I'm really going on about that lemony note.

The Bathing Garden - Vintage Christmas

I got this clamshell in a destash from Lauren over at Lolo Loves Scents. Thanks to Lauren I have my first Bathing Garden items, and my wallet continues to hate her for it :)
Cold Sniff: 3/3 I actually really liked this right off the bat! I pick up on cinnamon, but this cinnamon wasn't overpowering at all. They really named this quite well; the only description I can think of is vintage. While sniffing this I thought of Christmas wreaths, presents, and gingerbread cookies.
Warm Sniff: 3/3 The cinnamon continued to be a background aspect of this tart which made me super duper happy! I usually have issues with the cinnamon notes in a tart taking over everything else.
Throw: 3/3 This filled my entire house with its awesome Christmas-y goodness. Who cares that it was March when I melted this?!
Scent Strength: 2/3 This is a background-borderline-frontline scent in that it was pleasantly light but you could still smell it no matter what you were doing.
Melting Power: 2/3 Two cubes lasted around 8 hours.
Repurchase: Yes yes yes yes. I really enjoyed this scent and will keep an eye out for it come next holiday season.