Genius Etsy Perfumer
As a big lover of perfume, I have found out three key things over the past two years.
1. Mainstream perfumes often smell bad, strong, and common
2. Mainstream perfumes are expensive
3. Mainstream perfumes are basically poisonous. o.O
These three led me to looking into cheaper, better smelling, more unique options. This brought me to looking at small-scale, independent perfume makers. Which, delightfully, brought me to etsy.
Etsy is awesome for cosmetics. TONS of cosmetic makers now use it as their platform. That said, it can be a total minefield. I washed my wrists seven times after trying on a perfume I ordered from an etsy seller, for instance. But I've had some glorious finds, my favourite of which is:
Firebird Bath and Body (https://www.etsy.com/shop/FirebirdBathBody)
This shop is AMAZING. I ordered 15 samples (I realized only after checking out that you can buy samples of her entire line for a discounted price) and while not every one of them was great on my skin, I did not hate a single one. Words cannot express how rare this is.
These scents are unique, come in rollerball form, and are made with mostly natural products. Their base is scentless coconut oil (great for the skin, and totally clear), and while she uses fragrance to make the scents, it is still infinitely better for you than the freakish amount of chemicals in mainstream wares. Because of this, and because of them all being rollerballs, her scents sit close to the skin, which means no entering a room with a giant cloud of perfume around you (which is some people's thing, but it's not mine - I much prefer for people to get slight whiffs of me as we talk).
While I have only tried her perfumes, she also makes soaps, scrubs, herbal baths, lip balms and tints, and body lotion. Because her lotions come in the same scents as her perfumes, if you wanted a stronger, longer lasting scent, you could layer a lotion with its same scent of perfume.
Highlights, based on what I've smelled:
Peach Tea
The perfume oil isn't in her shop at the time of this post, but the lotion is. This stuff smells divine. Definitely a good mixture of a bright, light black tea, and ripe juicy peaches. I have tried many peach perfumes, and not once have I found one that was like this (one was that one I washed my hands seven times from).
Pomegranate Rose
Rose scents can definitely smell stuffy and too old lady-ish, but not this one! The fruit and the flower really share this scent 50/50, and it's perfect. The pomegranate makes the rose young, lucious, and bright, and the rose makes the fruit elegant and mature. This is the smell of a true lady, but one with some bloom of youth still on her cheeks.
Saltwater
This one is listed as unisex, and is not usually the type of perfume I like at all. Anything that says it smells oceany generally just smells more like a car freshener to me. Chemical glop. But this lady truly captured the essence of the sea, without the dead fish and slimy seaweed in the mix. It is the smell of breezes, saltiness, and water crashing at your feet.
Tobacco Honey
This one is also listed as unisex. It is a boozy honey, sun warmed with wildflowers, and a sweet, smokey, sophisticated pipe tobacco. The heaviest and richest of the scents I've listed, this one smells golden and is definitely best for an evening scent. I also think it will make a great winter scent, whereas the first three are definitely all best in summer.
She has many other great scents, but those are my personal highlights. Once I stop being so broke I am going to get the rest of her line in samples, and I will post my thoughts on some of those as well. Some of her scents are much more masculine, and those are pretty great too.
So yeah. Check her out. And buy me her entire line of EVERYTHING while you're at it.
