Etsy love!

I love Etsy - there's a lot of weird junk on there, but there are also tons of little gems that you just don't come across in your bog-standard department store. Noodles has become a bit of a fan too, and spent some of her birthday cash on cute little goodies such as a teacup necklace and Invader Zim pins. Today we came home to three Etsy packages (only one for me, boo!).


This was my package - gorgeous little costume items from Forevermore Creations. These are lovely, delicate little pieces and I love all of them. My favourite is the cream rose earrings. So cute!

On the subject of Etsy, I need to mention two shops I've discovered recently. These three perfumes came from Haus Of Gloi, who are apparently well known for their soaps. I'm not a fan of solid soap bars at all, but as anyone who's read this blog for a while will know, I am certainly a fan of perfume oils! I bought four - the one that is missing from the picture is Imp, which had me reeling back in horror after sniffing it. It's SUPER fruity, and I hate fruit scents. When I looked at the notes on the site I wondered for a few minutes what on earth had possessed me to buy it, but then I realised that I had gotten it for Noodle Arms, who adores fruity fragrances. She loves it and has absconded with it, hence its absence from this picture.

Of the other three, I love, love, LOVE Troika. I had it on yesterday and wasn't impressed at first - there was a sharp marzipan note that jumped out on application - I can't stand marzipan (smell or taste). However, that disappeared after just a few minutes and I was left with this gorgeous warm scent that's very hard to describe. Foodie but not foodie, vanilla but not vanilla, sweet but not sweet. It reminds me very much of another perfume, but I can't for the life of me think what it is and it's driving me nuts. I spent ages last night Googling "Haus of Gloi Troika smells like" trying to find out. In the end I gave up and just ordered a full size bottle. It's SO good. Honey Tree is beautiful, but reminds me too much of BPAL's Womb Furie, and I've just bought two bottles of that one, so no full purchase of Honey Tree for me at this point. I haven't made up my mind about Satyr yet. I want to love it, because at first it's a gorgeous warm vanilla with just a slight hint of orange, but after about half an hour it went weirdly dusty on me. I'm going to try that one again over the next week or so.

My other new discovery is Poison Apple Apothecary. I am a bit sad that I only discovered this shop a couple of weeks ago, because I bought a tin of Limited Edition samples that were only available until the end of March, and I ADORE at least two of them and wish I could get full size bottles. I hope they bring them back! Of the other samples, I have only tried Lady Victoria and Garden Of Graves. I wore Lady Victoria last night, and I could still smell it on my wrist this morning - it has great staying power. It's a lovely vanilla and jasmine scent, yet another for the full bottle wishlist. Because of course, I really need another vanilla-based perfume... Garden Of Graves is a deep floral dominated by fresh-cut roses. Unfortunately it didn't last as long as Lady Victoria - about an hour after applying this morning I could barely pick it up on my wrist. That doesn't really bother me in a perfume oil - they're easy enough to reapply - but although I loved the scent, I have a lot of other perfumes that smell like fresh roses, so I doubt if I'll be getting a full size of this one.

I'm a bit scared to ask this question, because I'm really trying not to buy anything new at the moment (ha!), but tell me... have you discovered any Etsy gems?