DIY Floral Headbands

Long time no chat!  I haven't been doing much in the way of nails or reviews.  However, on one of my slightly more energetic evenings I decided I was going to try my hand at making some baby headbands.  There are several different styles that I would like to make, but this was the first to check off my list.  I cannot recall who I first saw these from, but I know I came by it on Pinterest.  I think the one I most closely followed was The Penny Parlor.

These are so incredibly simple to make and the variations are endless!  This is just my first batch.  I'd like to expand the type and color of flowers as well as the center piece in them. 

I selected some gerber daisy style of flowers and pulled them apart.  This means popping the flower off of the stem, removing the plastic underside of the flower, and pulling apart each layer.  Some people keep the plastic middles of the flowers, but I didn't want any plastic left on the flowers.  I wanted to just work with the fabric layers.   

I hot glued each layer back together and then a white button (for most) into the middle. For the clip portion, I bought some pre-wrapped alligator clips.  You can get these at the craft store (which will cost you more), at a hair supply place (Sally's would work fine), Walmart, or even the dollar store at times.   If you buy the naked version (aka: not wrapped in ribbon already) you can either leave them as is or buy a thin ribbon and glue that around them yourself.   I lazily selected the pre-wrapped kind to cut out an extra step on my first batch.  I glued those down to the backside of the flowers.  I like the idea of being able to change out the flowers on the headbands, which is why I took the route of clips and not sewing down the flowers. 

Tada!  Cute flowers that you can clip to any fabric headband!  Above and below are the same flower, just on a different band.

Vera Wang Princess

Princess is not an unknown perfume.  It was created in 2006 by Ilias Ermenidis and Harry Fremont. It is considered an oriental floral.  While packaging shouldn't be important, let's face it, we all appreciate a lovely bottle. This particular bottle is a heart shaped jewel.  It is supposed to have a youthful, carefree feeling to it.  And it does.  Between the color of the juice (lilac), the name of the perfume (princess), and the shape of the bottle (heart), we are made to see something very young and sweet.  Lilac + Princess + Heart = SWEET!

You will notice that my bottle doesn't have the adorable little crown on it.  That is because I opted to purchase a tester bottle.  I was able to get the largest bottle available for a fraction of the price.  I'm completely okay with this because, really, very few people see my selection of perfumes outside of myself and my family.  And, at the end of the day, I'm wearing the juice inside and not the bottle. :-)

Onto the fragrance itself!  When I first spray this on, it takes a couple of moments to really come to life.  It opens, on me, with delicious sweetness.  There is a hint of zing from the mandarin, but it is swimming in a pool of vanilla. There is something floral in there that doesn't come off loud at all.  It is just enough to keep this perfume from being 100% edible.

At the 10-15 minute mark is when I, personally, detect the dark chocolate.  It isn't exactly sweet.  It actually is slightly bitter.  I read somewhere that said it is dusty and hinting at patchouli.  DING DING DING!  Spot on.  It really does have a dusty patchouli quality to it. The vanilla is also livening up even more at this point.  There is something a bit fruity tip-toeing in, but I couldn't put my finger on it.  While researching, I came across some information about guava and I believe that must be the note.  It is almost lemony citrus-like, but without being kitchen cleaner sharp.

About one hour in, something about Princess reminds me of Coach Poppy.  It has the same cozy sweetness to it. The difference is that Princess is easily detected.  In Poppy, it was there, but you had to breathe deeply to find it. This is vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, and snippits of amber.

I can definitely see where everyone says this is a young, youthful scent.  However, I enjoy wearing it.  It is playful and lighthearted.   It is just a very happy fragrance.  I'm pleased that I went with the big bottle because I've enjoyed wearing this often.

Lolita Lempicka Coral Flower

Lolita Lempicka's Coral Flower was launched in July of 2008.  This is considered an oriental floral perfume.  You will notice the bottle is very, very similar to that of L De Lolita Lempicka.  However, Coral Flower has a frosted finish where as her sister, L, does not.  Also, Coral Flower has flower charms and no netting.  There will be no mistaking, though, that they are of the same family.

The opening of this is sharp and slightly bitter.  I don't see it listed, but I promise you, I get black licorice.  It doesn't last long, only the first couple of minutes, but I swear it is there. It isn't sweet, but rather spicy.

A few minutes later, after it has settled a bit, it becomes citrus-like.  I can pick up on the grapefruit and bergamont.  I think the bergamont was there in the opening, too, because there was something bitter about it.  I think the sharpness was coming from the bergamont note.  The more clean, bright, fresh citrus scent is the grapefruit that I am picking up on. Right along side that are clean, tropical flowers.  I also get jasmine, which isn't listed.  I think that is the frangipani.....which I don't believe I've ever smelled in nature (at least that I know of)....but upon research, it is in the plumeria family and takes on a jasmine scent.  It definitely smells like jasmine, as I am reminded of Thierry Mugler Alien, which is heavy on the jasmine note.

Around the 30 minute mark, the strangest thing happens.  On my wrists, it is an all jasmine smell.  however, on the crook of my elbows, it is soft and powdery.  It is lovely orchid! Isn't it odd how different areas of the body will allow perfumes to develop unlike one another?  I don't know that I'd have been able to place an actual name with the next thing I detect, but I read a review where someone said it smells faintly of calamine lotion. It's true!  I don't find it to be bad, though. I smell it when I am sniffing the elbow area that I sprayed.  I think it is something about the powderiness of the orchid that is creating it.

Around an hour and a half in, I am reminded of salted sea air at the beach.  There is a slight musk to it but also something that is a tiny bit woodsy.   If all the other fragrance developments didn't hint at summer and warm evenings, the dry down definitely does.  I just keep thinking "vacation", "beach", "sea air", and the like.

Maybe I am crazy, but the base is sweet and salty at the same time.  I'm still getting all the beachy references, but also something almost vanillic.  There are slight hints of the amber, but I really detect vanilla!  I don't know if it is the amber tricking me and taking on a, somehow, vanilla form, but I really find something sweet in the base.

This is different than a lot of the other Lolita Lempicka perfumes, yet tips its hat, recognizing they are still from the same family.  There are similarities to the others in the licorice at the opening as well as a spiciness that initially reminds me of L de lolita Lempicka.  However, it all stops there and Coral Flower makes a name all its own. It is from their family, but has created its own personality and is more vibrant and playful.

ScentSationals Fragrance Cubes (haul)

I have said this before but,  I adore scented wax cubes for tart warmers.  I went crazy in the fall and winter stocking up on cozy, food-like, and pine scents.  Now that spring has arrived and I'm craving fresh, floral, and fruity scents, I realized I only had a couple!  YIKES!  This weekend I solved that problem.  We were out running errands and I bought three spring-like fragrance cubes.  I want some more, just because I like to have a large selection to choose from, but this gets me started.

When I pick these out, I have to keep in mind what my husband enjoys because he, too, will have to be in the house smelling them.  So, we go back and forth picking up bars and making the other sniff it. I'm easier going than him...  I think most of them smell amazing.  We narrowed down the selection to these three: Lemon Meringue (his pick), Sheer Orchid (his pick), and Apple Blossom (my pick).  See what I mean? HA!  I was more agreeable on the selection and was A-okay with the ones he picked up.

Lemon meringue is extremely fresh and, obviously, full of citrus. It is sour and sweet at the same time.  It kind of reminds me of the taste of a lemon head candy.  Yes, somehow the smell reminds me of the taste of a lemon head.  This one would work well pretty much all throughout the house, whether in a living room or even a bathroom.

Sheer Orchid is also a fresh scent.  It has a clean quality to it, like soap.  It reminds me of being freshly stepped out of the shower. Obviously, it is a floral scent, but not artificial.  This one manages to be soft yet crisp in smell.  This is, again, one that I think would be perfect for any room in the house.

The last one we selected is Apple Blossom.  It is bright, cheery, and like a perfect bouquet of flowers.  It reminds me of something I feel like I've smelled at B&BW, but I can't figure out what, exactly.    This is like having your windows open, and the breeze carries in the odor of blooming trees and flowers.... or walking through a newly blooming flower garden.  The air is perfumed with sweet flowers, but it isn't irritating to the senses.  This one is a romantic smell, in my opinion.


All around, these three make perfect additions to my growing collection.  I'm going to be switching out the warmers to hold some of these very soon.  If you have smelled any of these, let me know what you think.  OR, if you have particular fragrance bars you like to burn in the spring, please tell me which ones!

DIY Paper Flowers

WOOHOO!  Let's all do a happy dance that it is the end of the week!  Time for the weekend!  Alright, now that we have that out of our systems...  Remember earlier in the week I said I would do a post about the flowers that I made for the DIY Painted Vases?  Well, that is this post!

I am so addicted to the vase painting and the flower making.  It is a little bit ridiculous. I find it relaxing, though.   As much as I'd love to, I can't take credit for this idea or any instructions on how to make these.  I found the idea through Pinterest.  The person whose directions I followed can be found here: Moms Crafty Space.  She made the tutorial very simple to follow.

My original idea was to stick with bouquets that contained flowers of a similar color.   However, I quickly got bored of that and changed it up to be a rainbow of flowers.  I'm loving all the brightness!   You can also see one of the mason jars I painted and used as the vase here.

I even got a little crazy and started adding random colors to each individual flower instead of a gradient.  Either way, they turn out beautiful.  And they're really very simple to make.   Since I have a black thumb when it comes to living plants and flowers, I figured this is the best way for me to have flowers in my home.  Plus, I can easily make more to match colors for different seasons or holidays!

Here is another bouquet I have displayed in my home.  I kept this one more simple and clean.  I painted a glass vase that my mother-in-law donated when she realized how absolutely bat crap crazy crafty I can be. I used a peachy pink acrylic paint, but for some reason it turned out softer than it appeared in the bottle.  I still think it is lovely.  The flowers are a mix of solid pinks, solid white, and a combo of the two.

AHHH!   I love making these.  Eventually, I anticipate people are going to walk into my home and think I've lost my marbles because they will be on every surface!  HA!

Christian Dior Miss Dior

OHHH, I love this one!

I have the new formulation of Miss Dior.  It is the ad campaign with Natalie Portman.  The creator behind Miss Dior is Francois Demachy. 

I have said it before, but I appreciate a pretty presentation.  Miss Dior doesn't disappoint.  The bottle itself is squared with a hounds tooth textured underside.  But, the lid is what is so beautiful.  The lid has a silver metal bow attached by a little ring.  Otherwise, it is clean and simple. It is just enough to be romantic and not over the top.

This opens very crisp and bright with mandarin. It is fruity and youthful, but not sugary sweet.  While the citrus burst is going on, I also smell a slightly earthy note.  I, without question, detect patchouli.  It keeps it grounded and from becoming syrupy. As a fan of patchouli, I love this.  Even at its most "dirty", I love patchouli.  However, this isn't as harsh as patchouli can be.  (How many times can we say patchouli?  HAHA!)

About 15 minutes in, I finally pick up on the jasmine.  Thank goodness it isn't heavy, though.  Somehow, the jasmine is delicate and plays nicely with the mandarin and patchouli. While not listed, I pick up green tea. It gives me a sense of Déjà vu, but I don't know why.  I have tried and tried to figure it out...but can't. 

The dry-down is diamonds, pearls, and elegance.  I get rose, but not real powdery and obnoxious.   It is a tamed, shy rose. I also get something clean, like being fresh from a shower...yet not soapy, if that makes sense. It is pastel pink, lace, and all things sparkling...seriously. That is what I keep picturing.  The musk, I believe, cuts the rose and makes it sit nicely on skin...  kind of blending with the skin and not sitting heavily on top.

For me, Miss Dior starts out quite fun and flirty, but settles into something classy and soft spoken.   The personalities in this perfume amaze me.  It changes so much from initial spritz to the dry down.  It keeps me interested. I highly enjoy experiencing each change that comes forward. The amazing thing is, it only contains mandarin, musk, patchouli, jasmine, and rose.

I think this can be worn year round, but the opening would blossom in warm weather.  However, the dry down is what lingers, and that works well for year round, I think.  I can tell you I will be going to this perfume no matter the season.  Ah, and the lasting power is amazing on my skin. I can spray it on several hours before I go to bed and the next morning it is still there.  A lot of perfumes have worn off at that point, but this is still lingering (mostly in the crook of my elbow).

While I was waiting on my bottle to arrive, I had been in a Sephora and sprayed some on a little paper strip and brought it home with me.  I kept getting little whiffs of something delicate, soft, and just plain beautiful.  I don't get bored at all smelling Miss Dior.  It is all around a winner for me.

I like to spray this on my wrists and the inner corner of my elbows, and sometimes a bit on the back of my neck, under my hair.  It wears differently depending on where I spray it.  It is the most light on my wrists, and stronger on my inner elbows.  This makes sense since it can evaporate quicker on the wrists where very exposed, and will linger a bit longer on the crook of my elbow.

I think this is worth a sniff.  Check it out when you are at a counter or in Sephora.  

LISTED NOTES:

Top: Italian Mandarin

Mid: Egyptian Jasmine, Rose

Base: Patchouli, Musk

Coach Poppy Perfume

My husband gifted this perfume to me this past Christmas.  I first came across it in a magazine as a paper sample.  I swiped as much of it as I could onto my skin to test out.  I absolutely adored it and decided right then and there that I was going to own it at some point.  :-)

Poppy opens very crisp, fresh, and clean.  Initially, it can be strong, but give it a bit to settle in and it is beautiful.  A lot of people say they pick up on cucumber when first sprayed on.  I don't know that I can 100% say I smell that, but it does have a similar fresh kind of feel to it.  It quickly moves into a more sweet fragrance, but not sugar-sweet, in my opinion.  I pick up a good mix of floral in there, too.

About 15-20 minutes in, I know this will sound crazy, but there is something reminiscent of Curve.  Not full blown, by any means, but when I'm sniffing my wrists I get this odd deja-vu.  The two must have some similar notes in them.

At the 45 minute mark, the fragrance has settled into the skin and melded better.  Instead of seeming like a perfume that is just hovering over the skin, it has mixed in.  Now, is when I start smelling more sweet notes.  Only when breathed deeply, however, I pick up a sugar scent and the vanilla. Also, it seems that it is on the second inhale that I really notice it...almost as though the exhale from the first breath has to warm up the skin in order for those sugared layers to come to life.   It is a warm, sweet note...tons of candies and vanilla combined.  Maybe the marshmallow is what I am smelling. That is what it reminds me of at this point.  It is an extremely delicious scent.  Now, if these were the notes, constantly, from top to bottom... I would probably get bored of it and crave something to mellow it out.

I find that it has quite good projection.  My husband tells me he is able to smell it on me when I'm near him.  I prefer a perfume that can be smelled when semi close.  I don't want it to be so weak that you can only smell it if you hug me, however, I don't want it so strong that you can smell me from across the room.  Being able to pick up hints of my perfume's scent while sitting/standing near me is fine.

While the looks of the packaging and the bottle shouldn't matter, I can't help but appreciate a lovely presentation. I think the bottle is very pretty!  It isn't overly fancy, in that it is just an oval(ish) bottle, but it has a pink juice inside that lends a girlish feel to the whole perfume. I really adore the lid.  It is a golden ball with Coach texts embossed.  It says things like "coach", "love", "poppy", "1941", etc. Below that is a delicate little red orange (It has taken me FOUR MONTHS to realize this isn't red, but orange. Wow, brilliance at its finest right here!) ribbon, which is attached by an elastic.   Even the box that it comes in is eye catching.  It is a red orange with white and spatterings of yellow text.  The top, where the logo is show, is golden.  I think the bottle is pretty enough to be out on display on a mirrored tray.  Mine, however, is kept in its box in a corner shelving unit to preserve the perfume.  It is best to store fragrance in dark, cooler areas, so I have tried to do this as much as possible.

Over all, I really enjoy this perfume.  I have been wearing it quite often, even though most believe it is best suited to spring and summer. I just can't get enough of it.  As with any fragrance, it is very personal, too.  While I really love that it goes from crisp and fresh to sweet and youthful, others will think that somehow makes it boring.

The official notes are as follows...
Top: sweet, cucumber, marshmallow
Mid: mandarin orange, vanille, freesia, water lily
Base: gardenia, rose, sandalwood, jasmine, Virginia cedar

Simply Belle Perfume

Simply Belle is a perfume that I received as a sample vile in my order that I placed with fragrancenet. I can't tell you what pushed me into sampling it at this point in time.  I suppose curiosity.  I had sniffed the little vile of it, but that is no way to experience a fragrance.  I wanted to know how it would unfold on the skin.  I'm not disappointed, yet at the same time I'm not head over heels for this particular perfume.

Simply Belle was created in 2011 by Exceptional Parfums.  It is categorized as a floral fragrance.    I would definitely say it is a true floral. There is no questioning that.  Pretty much all the way through, from the moment you apply it, to the point when the scent vanishes, you will experience a bouquet of flowers.

It opened with a burst of citrus.  It was a very fresh, true orange smell.  It was kind of nice.  It had a zingy quality to it that I liked. Unfortunately, that was fleeting.  It lasted no more than a minute or two.

The citrus was replaced by a nondescript floral bomb. It was a bit overwhelming at first and extremely powdery.  My husband even commented that he smelled something that he could only describe as powder.  Not necessarily baby powder, just powder.  It is the kind of powder that feels as though it has stuck in the back of your throat.

Thank goodness the suffocating sensation passed after around 15 minutes.  Yes, I suffered for around 15 minutes just to find out what was behind the wall of powdery flowers.  It was more flowers! Oh exciting day!  The good news, however, is that it was a soft, small bouquet of flowers or perhaps just the tiniest whiff you'd get on a walk through a garden on a spring day.  It wasn't as though someone was shoving six dozen mixed flowers into my face at once.

Finally, the tiniest hints of vanilla came into play.  I wish they were more prominent, though.  They were too faint to be fully enjoyed.  Even in the base I still get mostly floral notes.  I feel like this was a missed mark.  I think they could have kicked up the vanilla a bit more and still allowed the floral to dance on the top, but sweetened it up.

I think you have to really love floral fragrances to enjoy this perfume. You won't pick up on much else. I think they hit the mark, though, with what they were going for (it just isn't for me).  It is a very "pretty" perfume.  In that, I mean it is demure, light-hearted, and not very exciting.  It is flouncy and reminds me of vintage oils that ladies would have worn in Victorian times.  Crinolines and corsets come to mind.

Over all, I think this is a decent, light fragrance that is good for applying after a shower or in the summer.  It has a clean, almost floraly soap-like smell to it that would be perfect to extend out your "just stepped from the shower" scent or to wear on scorching summer days.  Because of the clean scent it has, it could be very refreshing and not sticky for hot summers. Just make sure you really enjoy pure floral fragrances first.