Perfume | The Last Krystallos

My first post for the Gratitude Project… see here for original post. I decided to think about the things I own…

You know when you’re a child writing your Christmas list? The list goes on and on…(my kids scour the ‘Argos’ catalogue and as far as I can see then copy it out word for word!). As you get older the list generally gets shorter (and more expensive, but we won’t go there…). When I was a child I wanted books, drawing pads and pens…still do actually, but my adult list began to include laptop, Kindle, phone etc, these latter items are better included in a later post about modern-day inventions that I’m grateful for…so I thought I’d think about other (less expensive) things in my life that mean something to me.

1. The best birthday gift I ever received was a much longed for item…a leather jacket. I could never afford a leather jacket, until I discovered ebay! My beloved Joe Browns leather jacket was a present that I adored from the moment I slipped it on and felt like it was part of me! A £125 jacket for £50, I wore it to death, the one pictured is an identical replacement for a few pounds more, but ebay again. I wear it every day throughout the year and miss it in the Summer when it’s too hot for a jacket! It’s the gift that has given me the best value ever!

2. I also like a good pair of leather boots, and have found amazing bargains for under £10 in charity shops, once I find a pair I love, like the jacket, I live in them…

3. Next is my most expensive possession…my European style Bracelet. I bought a cheap Pandora imitation bracelet and then got addicted to collecting the beads, silver and murano glass. I was happy with the cheap beads and bracelet until I bought a couple SRA beads and fell in love… I eventually bought my own Trollbeads bracelet and filled it with a mixture of beads that each represented something in my life. You can read the post about my bracelet and each bead here.

4. Most of my jewellery is inexpensive, my fascination with dragons is evident in my broach and dragon’s tail necklace…lots of wear and love. My cat earrings always make me happy, cats clinging to my ears! It’s also clear that I favour silver and am keen on filigree. My second favourite present this Christmas (second to my Kindle) was a cheap filigree heart necklace and earrings, I’m easy to please!

5. Let’s talk about my watch. I’ve worn one since I was about eight and cannot not wear one (sorry for the double negative)…I wear it on what is considered by most of my family, the wrong wrist…or the right one quite literally! My current one is radio controlled so, I’m never late (or at least can never blame my watch). I’m very OCD about my watch…

6. I’m OCD about my diary too…been keeping one since I was fourteen…yes, every day. A big diary to begin with which has shrunk over the years to a little notebook diary instead, after all I blog and journal the important bits!

7. Pens, yes I still love pens, and my favourites are Uni Pin Fine Line (from Mitsubushi, Hmmm thought they did Motorbikes?) and I only use sizes 0.2, 0.5 and 0.8. Wrote my first trilogy with a 0.5 in Pukka Pads…

8. I treated myself to the furry hat just after my birthday last year…I struggle to spend money, I can talk myself out of anything, but my daughter saw that I loved it and wouldn’t let me put it back… thank you! I love that the tassels are different.

9. I’m not big on perfume, and have pretty much exclusively only ever bought The Body Shop scents. My favourite scent is Jasmine, nothing better than the wafting fragrance of white jasmine flowers… another blogpost on my favourite scents here. I love ‘Neroli Jasmin’ and ‘Love etc’…beautiful.

10. My final favourite possession (the chocolate pictured will have to go under food I’m grateful for…) are my Scrapbook albums. Memories are so potent and important…and collecting them creates magic… I love photography and capturing a moment creates an imprint that will last forever in my memory! I have three albums and I love making scrapbook pages…I love remembering…

So these are my 10 material possessions, the ones I am truly grateful for…

I thought I’d try something new on my blog…and write about some of my favourites, and decided to begin with fragrances…

I’m not a heavy perfume wearer, never have been, I can’t stand people who drown themselves in cologne or body spray then wander around in a cloud of it that gets right up peoples’ noses…but I do have my favourite scents, and who doesn’t like to smell good when they dress up?

So I browsed my collection…and it’s very obvious that I’m a Body Shop fan. I remember the little black-topped plastic 15ml bottles of Perfume Oil from Body Shop when I was a teenager, that only cost a few pounds. I think the first one I bought was ‘Strawberry’ then ‘Coconut’ always made me think of summer beaches, I had ‘Apple Blossom’, ‘White Musk’, ‘Mango’, and several others, the names of which escape me…the only one I ever kept was ‘Japanese Musk’ which I would never wear now because the fragrance is too heavy with jasmine, cedar and musk.

The only other throwback to my teens that I have now and still love is ‘Dewberry’, in its redesigned 15ml round glass bottles. I wear Dewberry and every time I open it I am taken back to my bedroom as a fifteen-year-old girl… It’s a delicious late summer berry fragrance, its top notes are blackcurrant, grapefruit, red apple and pear, middle are freesia, lily-of-the-valley, rose and jasmine and a base of peach, apricot, cedar and musk. I inhale the berries, rose and jasmine and adore it!
I used to own ‘Dewberry’ body lotion too and was pretty upset when Body Shop axed it some years later. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I saw the perfume oil back on sale in the Body Shop and bought it again! Right now it’s not available online in the Body Shop and hit and miss if your local has it. You can, however still buy ‘Dewberry’ Body Lotion, Bath and Shower gel.

I have a love of jasmine…I can’t think of a scent I like more than standing outside catching the late night heavy fragrance of jasmine growing across your wall and in my twenties I searched everywhere for The Body Shop’s discontinued ‘Jasmin’ Perfume Oil…I finally found one on ebay and bought it for almost £30. Sadly, it was a much heavier fragrance than I remembered and I really don’t wear it, but it does still evoke strong memories when ever I open it and take a sniff.

To move on, as I ‘grew up’ I moved to the more romantic scents and discovered another Body Shop Body Mist and Perfume Oil ‘The Spirit of Moonflower’. Fruity floral…when I wear it I think of a fresh, flowery watermelon day…hinting greatly at its notes of melon, coriander and gardenia at the top, cyclamen, lily-of-the-valley and lime blossom in the middle and base notes of jasmine and rose. It really is what it says it is…a spiritual, fruity floral…though unfortunately another that appears to be discontinued…

I got a bit miffed at The Body Shop always retiring my favourite perfumes, so searched elsewhere…but I never really found anything I loved. Perhaps the closest I found was a tester of ‘Adorably’ by Mango…a fruity, oriental flowery scent. Holding top notes of red berries and citruses, middle notes of pink pepper (no, never heard of pink peppers…), freesia and lily-of-the-valley and a base of amber, petchouli, musk and vanilla.
Not bad and certainly a perfume I liked, but I wasn’t used to buying branded perfumes or paying the price for them! My Mum had a penchant for Chanel No5…yes, the same one linked to Marilyn Monroe…and Mum had a nice 5ml bottle. So guess which of her cute, 5 or 6-year-old daughters decided to wear the whole lot at once? Yes, the whole bottle…um, that would be me…and I remember buying her a replacement bottle for about £55 when I was about 17, and thinking that was astronomical for a teeny, tiny bottle of perfume! So my perfume choices were thus constrained!

And then…yes, and then…I found my perfect fragrance! And yes, you guessed it…from The Body Shop.

I’d given up on finding anything lovely with Jasmine…and there it was…Neroli Jasmin. No, I didn’t know what Neroli was either… ‘a brown oil distilled from the flowers of various orange trees, esp the Seville orange: used in perfumery’ So now we all know!

Once I knew that, I thought jasmine and orange blossom…yes, I’m onto a winner!
One spray and sniff in the shop and I was hooked. I bought the 100ml Body Mist first for £7, and within a week or two had picked up the 30ml Perfume Oil for a couple of pounds more.
I love the spritz of body mist, nice to walk through and mist my hair, to spray before dressing and a general top up when I want a fragrance…and the Perfume Oil for when I want a longer, more intense scent.
Neroli Jasmin’s top notes are neroli, freesia and violet leaf, middle notes of orange blossom, jasmine and peony and base notes of sandlewood, vanilla, amber and musk.
I feel feminine, sexy and altogether great whilst wearing it!
Definitely my signature scent, and one that I’ve stocked up on! If Body Shop ever want to retire this one they’ll have a fight on their hands!

I think my favourite scents are becoming pretty evident now…a few years back I was searching for Christmas presents, (I have ten nieces…) and came across ‘Impulse Body Spray – New York’…as I read the back I thought, I’ll give this a try too…Only £1.99 (I may have only spent £1 at the time) and containing apple, red berries, jasmine and sandlewood, worked for me! Though I do prefer pump action body sprays rather than aerosols. The Body Shop Body Mists are heavier, more liquid when applied than ‘Impulse’ which is so much more lighter and airy.

Just this year Bekah got a couple of Body Shop vouchers from a magazine, (yes, she bought more than one to get more than one voucher…and I bought one too) and we browsed the shop trying to decide what to buy for £5…Make up? Body lotion? Lip balms? Home Fragrance Oil (yes, I like them too)? In the end we checked out the ‘Love Etc’ perfume and discovered the little heart-shaped tin of solid perfume…not something we’d come across before. £5…perfect and it smelled good! So we both bought one, and she went back a day or two later with another voucher and bought the £5 trial spray. I’ve never used a solid perfume before, so this was interesting, but fascinating. A brilliant idea to keep in your purse for a top up, or to just rub onto your pulse points when needed. It lasts well and guess what the notes are? A fusion of neroli, pear and bergamot at the top, jasmine, heliotrope and lily-of-the-valley in the middle and base notes of vanilla, sandlewood and musk. Ring any bells? To me it’s a soft summer fruit fragrance with sweet shop tones…marshmallow and candyfloss ( that would be the vanilla!).

So, now you know my favourite scents…
which would be something like Jasmine, Neroli, Red Berries,
and a base of Sandlewood or Vanilla…

What do you like?

‘Dewberry’, ‘The Spirit of Moonflower’, ‘Neroli Jasmin’, ‘Love Etc’… all found at The Body Shop (though ‘Spirit of Moonflower’ is probably no longer available)

‘Impulse Body Spray – New York’ was a limited edition spray, so may also be unavailable, but I bought mine at Superdrug. You can find it at Boots.