Perfume decanting supplies - the UK perspective revisited

Every perfumista reaches a point when they wish to share their collection with a fellow fumehead. This may be in the form of a so-called 'care package' or a swap - whether private or via the lively swap board on Makeupalley.  I have racked up some 75+ swaps on MUA, and have sent perfume as a gift (I narrowly stopped myself there from saying 'I have gifted'!) to many of my friends, both corporeal and virtual.  To this end, I have bought and rebought decanting supplies (atomisers and small stoppered vials mostly) many times over the past five years.  In a recent post on Bois de Jasmin, Victoria takes an in-depth look at the whole business of decanting.  I gazed in awe and wonder at the photographs of her spraying 'commando' (ie straight from the nozzle, without the safety net of a funnel) into a perfectly behaved receptacle.

She also canvassed opinions about the best place to buy decanting tackle in different parts of the world.  Undina of Undina's Looking Glass has also compiled a very useful post on this subject, which Victoria referenced in her feature.  Undina's top choice is BestBottles, which has a superb selection of atomisers at very reasonable unit costs.  BestBottles is appreciably cheaper than Accessories for Fragrance, also based in the USA, with a pretty good range and ultra-friendly service.

But here's the thing - last night I had a jolly good trawl of the top perfume bottle websites and UK Ebay.  I placed dummy orders on both BestBottles and SKS Bottle & Packaging, another site that was mentioned in Victoria's post.  Hey, they would have been actual orders, were it not for the fact that the shipping in both cases - for a $50 minimum order approximately - topped out at $148 via UPS!!!  And there did not seem to be any other postal option.

Accessories for Fragrance, meanwhile, has international shipping costs that are vastly more proportionate, albeit its unit product costs are a lot higher.  So I ended up buying a large quantity of plastic atomisers from them in a selection of sizes - I really can't afford more than the occasional purchase of the glass ones on there (beyond the 1ml stoppered vial kind, that is) - and my shipping total was something like $22, ie much more in the ballpark.

I had never investigated the BestBottles site before, though I recognised many, many of the glass atomisers pictured!, which American swappers have sent to me over the years.

For a small-scale decanter like me, the only other overseas site I clocked with reasonable prices and decent international delivery rates - as in included in the price! - is Proud Style, which also gets a name check in Victoria's post, and which (sadly) I only explored after I had placed my Accessories for Fragrance order...however, I may venture there next time.

It is a while since I last looked on UK Ebay, which is a near total desert where cost-effective glass or plastic atomisers in the 2 - 5ml range are concerned.  Where it does score is in knock-off Travalos, ie refillable atomisers of the Travalo style but very much cheaper.  I even saw one seller called Max Trading offering them at £1.99!, compared to a normal retail of about £8 for the branded version.

Source: Ebay

Ebay also sells a lot of those burnished metal purse spray atomisers - some quite cheaply - but having had a bad experience with a seller in the Far East (where many of the cheaper ones hail from), I would be a bit wary again, tempting as their candy colours may be.

Lovely but leaky!

Ebay is also good for these odd little graduated snap top vials to which Freddie of Smellythoughts introduced me.  They hold about 1.5ml or so, and though the lid is very secure when snapped shut, and they are easy as anything to fill commando, I do get splashback issues with them ie as the vial fills up - the impact of perfume hitting what is already in there causes the next squirt to ricochet out again.  So unless my technique is totally to cock, I'd say these are only good in practice for a 1ml fill level at most.

So my assessment today would be: if I was an American I would use BestBottles in a heartbeat.  As a UK-based decanter, I will try Proud Style next time, with Accessories for Fragrance as an expensive but faithful fallback - for plastic anyway, and for 1ml glass vials, which don't strike me as being all that expensive from them for a big bag.  And then Ebay comes into its own for one-off fancier items such as Travalo-type atomisers.

Now I know there is a general preference for glass over plastic in the perfume community - partly for reasons of longevity, and partly on aesthetic grounds - but whilst I have had a few plastic atomisers turn in the past four years or so, it has only been the odd one.  To be honest, I much prefer the look and feel of glass myself and would only ever use glass for decants of 8 or 10ml, say, because it is a much nicer way to present a larger decant, but up till now I hadn't figured out anywhere cost-effective to buy glass atomisers in any quantity (as in 12, for example!).

1ml glass vials with plastic stoppers (somewhere in this bag!)

I mention this fact about my plastic decants not going off because I have got...ahem...about 100 of the things on their way to me as I blog!, so anyone receiving a small decant from me between now and the foreseeable, is likely to cop for one or two of this less desirable variety... ;-) ;-)

Bvlgari Off-Black, Balenciaga Le Dix Blue And DKNY Rectory Red Delicious: Perfume, Farrow & Ball Paint And The Obsessive Gene

My choco-nemesis - Source: Wikimedia Commons via ed g2s

The other night I ate a whole box of Maltesers.  For no good reason at all.  At best it was due to an overdeveloped sense of order - an 'I've started so I'll finish' moment, if you will; at worst my malted meltdown is a sign that I am on the cusp of an eating disorder.  I can hear my mother's voice intoning the familiar refrain: 'You won't be happy till they're all gone!'.  Well, happy doesn't quite cover it.  Bloated and remorseful maybe.  Teeth on edge and body speeding on sugar.  Whatever the cause, doing the whole box is certainly an example of a type of compulsion, which got me thinking about other manifestations of obsessive behaviour in my life.

Well, it took me all of two seconds to think back to the start of my perfume hobby, and how I would stalk eBay, Makeupalley and The Perfumed Court website for hours on end, agonising over which samples to bid on / swap for / buy.  Four or five years ago I was totally consumed by the acquisitive urge, and was forever scouting around for my next 'fix' of samples.  There was that reliably heady rush as I would open a swap package or a little gauze bag from The Perfumed Court, accompanied by the ubiquitous boiled sweet.  It almost didn't matter whether you liked the perfumes or not - it was like buying a Lucky Dip bag as a kid or its adult equivalent of a lottery ticket or scratchcard - so much of the 'reward' is the thrill of the chase and the anticipation of gratification, even if the reality disappoints.

I mentioned in my recent blogging anniversary post that my interest in perfume has peaked, and the fragrant lemmings are mostly slain.  Though it has taken a good five years, eventually the law of diminishing returns - (the one principle I retained from a year of Economics at college albeit it was explained to us in the context of lemon barley water) - kicks in, and the adrenaline high turns to feelings of low level anxiety at the mounting stocks of samples to test and wear.  However, the acquisitive urge itself may not in fact have been quelled, but may simply have regrouped before finding a new outlet, like some kind of 'body hopping' demon.

And as readers who are also Facebook friends will know, my latest obsession appears to be with choosing paint - for rooms I don't even have imminent plans to decorate, for the bathroom really needs doing first.  The last time I mentioned my embryonic tester pot collection was around the time of my move last summer - I think I had about a dozen back then.  Well, we are talking over 40 now, a good 15 of them purchased in the last few days in a series of sudden death raids on Homebase.  It is only a matter of time before I shan't need to go to Homebase to buy paint pots, because the entire colour palette of Farrow & Ball will be based in my own home.  I paint a square on lining paper, then place it strategically near something in the room I am trying to match - a cushion, a headboard, a wardrobe or whatever.  The famous geode has been deployed as a paper weight, ditto the koala.

And I am finding that I get exactly the same surge of excitement as I prise off the lid of a tester pot - (with all paint brands, the actual colour never looks anything like the label, which may be a cunning ruse to get you to buy the thing!).  This thrill lasts during the process of application, through to the drying stage and late into the evening in fact, for you have to keep checking the colour at regular intervals for subtle tonal shifts.  Obviously, if the colour is hopelessly wrong from the word go - the paint equivalent of a perfume 'scrubber', if you will - then my F & B 'fix' is curtailed to a matter of seconds, but the buzz you get even from opening the pot is well worth £3.99 a pop in my view.

Walls: White Tie, woodwork & ceiling: Pointing ;-)

Now with the help of fellow blogger Lucy of Indieperfumes and a couple of other friends, I have whittled the choice for the guest room down to one or three shades (Vert de Terre, Ball Green or Mizzle), and am already starting to eye up my own bedroom.  Lime White is a glaring omission from my stockpile, I note, which will doubtless propel me storewards in the next day or so.  Meanwhile, speaking of piles, I now understand why the Egyptians felt moved to build the pyramids...

And finally, while researching 'body hopping' in Wikipedia, I came upon this intriguing custom amongst the Digo people of Kenya.

'Spirit possession occurs among the women of the Digo people of Kenya.  The Digo refer to the spirits in question as shaitani. These shaitani typically demand luxury items to make the patient well again.'

Luxury items, eh?  I am hanging on these paint pots - you never know when you just might fancy a Cabbage White wall or a cupboard interior in Incarnadine - but I might just have a few samples of perfume going spare... ;-).

So...has anyone else abandoned scent squirrelling in favour of a new 'habit'?  

Do share it with the group - the more obsessive the better!  

NB All of the fictitious perfume names in the title are based around current Farrow & Ball shades.  I might also have mentioned Nandebary Ball Green, Miller Harris Citron or D & G Light Blue.  Hold on - that one is an actual perfume!

"Used Cosmetics Samples" - More Perfume Mailing Mither And My Makeupalley Karmic Comeuppance

Perfume lovers the world over like to spread the love. They do this on the swap scene of Makeupalley, the various split sites like Google Scent Splits, as well as spontaneously sending so-called "care packages" of perfume to fellow fumeheads in need, of which I have also been a lucky recipient.

Unfortunately, the postal services pretty much anywhere you care to name take a dim view of mailing perfume. I had a pop at the US Post Office once following an encounter with a very draconian counter clerk in Venice, LA - see the US POST OFFICE DIGRESSION about half way down this post. And fragrance is still prohibited by dangerous goods regulations here in the UK, though that looks set to change for consumers in July of this year according to an article last November in the trade magazine "Post and Parcel":

"Royal Mail customers will be able to post items like aerosols, nail varnishes, perfumes and aftershaves to UK addresses from next year, after a review of rules banning such items from the postal network."

VENICE POST OFFICE - NICE FRESCOS, SHAME ABOUT THE SPANISH INQUISITION

The rules regarding international outbound parcels were revised earlier this month, and sadly the position has not eased on shipping perfume to friends across the pond, though it's good news for those of us who had been champing at the bit to send lithium batteries on a bit of a hike.

"Aerosols will continue to be prohibited from international parcels, as will nail varnish, perfumes and aftershaves, but when lithium batteries are contained within an electronic device, the revised rules will allow them to be sent internationally."

So it looks as though, for the foreseeable future, it's business as usual when it comes to posting perfume outside the EU, namely getting creative with the content descriptions on the customs form. The tried and tested favourite of Makeupalley swappers who are bold enough to flout the rules in this way is: "used cosmetics samples", though the prize for the all-time most audacious descriptor has to go to The MOTH, Bloody Frida's husband, for writing "knitted hat" on a consignment of perfume bound for me. Included in the parcel were admittedly a couple of skeins of sock wool, but even so, "knitted hat" was spectacularly stretching the point. (The whole charming story is reported here.)

Yes, I have been sneaking packages of perfume past international customs officials with the weasel words "cosmetic samples" for some five years now. I guess "perfume" could very loosely be construed as a subset of "cosmetics", certainly of beauty products. However, "the beauty" of saying "cosmetics" rather than "beauty" is that it sounds reassuringly solid, and not likely to slosh around in transit, like a cleansing lotion or shampoo - or God forbid, an alcohol-based product like perfume. The addition of "used" merely serves to gross out the officials - and with any luck put them off their spot check duties with disagreeable visions of half-used cacky cakes of shimmer shadow, claggy mascaras and smeary stubs of lipstick.

And then some time last year, I entered into a swap more as a "coerced act of kindness" than because of any interest in the items the swapper had on offer, quite the reverse. The swapper in question - as I later learnt - has acquired a bit of a reputation for cajoling her fellow Makeupalley members into doing deals they would not otherwise have entertained. In this case she wanted 15-20ml of Creed Love in Black in return for anything I could pick out from her list of mostly make up items and drugstore fragrances. At one point she said I could have EVERYTHING on her list, which actually filled me with alarm.

"I have longed for this fragrance for so long...I am seldom able to go out...I do enjoy wearing good fragrances at home because it lifts my mood...if you would swap, consider it your good deed for the day.... actually for this fragrance, it would be your good deed for the year."

So in the face of such a compelling appeal to my better nature, of course I caved in to her plea, and we settled on the Creed in return for a Sue Devitt blusher. It was in a colour (Malay Reef) which may or may not have suited me, not ever having come across the brand in the UK. It was hard to judge the shade in Google images, but it looked on the dark side to me, the sort of shade that Christina Aguilera might even consider ill-advised. Not to worry, I thought. I am going to consider this as a good deed for an unspecified timeframe! (A year did sound rather a long time to me. What about all those charity bags that come through my door with annoying frequency, all vying for my attention? Am I to ignore them, pleading a prior Creed good deed last March?)

But anyway, I sent off my end of the swap, duly labelled as "used cosmetic samples", even though it was in fact a single large atomiser of Love in Black (with a smaller one as an extra). After a couple of weeks and a few bizarre crossed wires with the swapper, the details of which I shan't trouble you with, I received my package containing the blusher. And - finally - I also received my customs-snook-cocking comeuppance. For the blusher had been swiped already ie it was "a used cosmetic", if not a sample as such. And that had not been made clear in the exchanges between me and the swapper. The plastic metal-effect case was also scratched, but some people might not have been too bothered by that.

So the central item was a bit of a disapointment to be honest, and the RAOK (Random Act of Kindness) extras that had been put in with it were a bit offbeat - costume jewellery of a type I wouldn't wear, and a lipstick from Lola Cosmetics called VICE in a shade to match - but in fairness people can't be expected to know my taste.

But meanwhile....meanwhile.....there was the wrapping to admire, for this was hands down the most elaborately and exquisitely wrapped swap parcel I have ever received. Gauze and ribbon and petals and miscellaneous haberdashery fripperies and I don't know what. I couldn't help but be impressed. I felt as girlishly thrilled as my four year old self in a tutu. All my misgivings about the evenness of the swap or the wheedling manner in which the deal had been struck fell away, as I plunged my hands gleefully into the sea of petals. And even now I still chuckle about the day I actually received used cosmetics that weren't even labelled as such...

Have you had any less than stellar - or merely downright peculiar - swaps? Do share! Can you beat my all-time most bizarre extra item, a face mask fashioned from sheeps' placentas? For your sakes, I do hope not.




Photo of Venice Post Office from venicebeachliving.com, photo of Christina Aguilera from lovelyish.com, other photos my own. NB I have since tried the blusher, but even on arrival it was obvious that it had been previously used.

More Tales From Makeupalley: My Bag (And Box!) Of Hell, And Going The Extra Vial...

The swap scene on Makeupalley has its own complex etiquette. One of my earliest posts on the subject (and there have been a few) focuses on the curious custom of enclosing a boiled sweet, and touches briefly on the subject of other freebies.

"As well as confectionery, swappers often pop in extra perfume samples - from your 'wish list' if you are very lucky, or from their 'wish-to-be-shot-of list' if you are not. Along with the sweets, some of these less aspirational samples commute regularly to and from America."

After just a few months on MUA, it is clear that I already viewed the calibre of these samples with a jaded eye, and they have continued to prey on my mind on and off ever since. Today, my collection of these "less aspirational" samples has achieved a critical mass - or an uncritical mass, more like - for their growing numbers in no way validates their existence. Rather, they have become the scent equivalent of a bloated albatross that oppresses me emotionally and occupies a disproportionate amount of space, split currently between a cardboard box and a tatty plastic bag under the bed. Out of sight, but sadly never far from my mind...

Now it goes without saying that I have tried to lose these samples by every means I could think of - I have gone through the motions of adding them to my Swap List on MUA, a laborious and largely pointless task. Seriously, who is going to be out there actively looking for a sample of FCUK perfume, anything by Joop!, or some very obscure (and to my nose, peculiar) scent like Demeter New Zealand or Index Pomegranate Anise by Fresh? I have also received quite a few vials that have leaked, evaporated or gone off, and others with labels that have run beyond recognition, or with the wrong name written on them to start with. Such errors are more likely to be due to a slip of the Dynamo than any deliberate intention to mislead, though one particular scent - a "faux-Ajne" - did give me pause for thought.

So no wonder no one wants these. Most swappers I do trades with are after decants of Roja Dove and Penhaligon's, high end Chanels and Guerlains. They like the same things I like, pretty much.

Now I know what you are thinking - those samples don't look at all bad in the photo there. Yes, but in the photo - crucially - you can't tell what they are. At that distance, a vial of Gucci Envy Me looks as niche as you like!

And you might also be thinking that I am lucky to have all those samples, and should just knuckle down and appreciate what I've got. How would it be if I was in prison, say? A more sensorily deprived environment couldn't be imagined, compounded by derisory rates of pocket money - how I might savour every last one of those vials under those very different circumstances! This is beginning to sound like my father's argument when I wouldn't clear my plate as a kid: "Think of the starving children in Biafra". It didn't work then and it isn't working now, I'm afraid - the darn things just upset me. Yes, I may be a prisoner after all, though not a grateful one. And this little lot is my chain and ball...

Yet I can't quite bring myself to throw any of these samples away, clinging to the forlorn hope that a male swapper might come along at any moment and snap up Davidoff Adventure or those posey new D & Gs. And there must be armies of Tweens out there who would bite my hand off for Black XS and that Avril Lavigne.

I have periodically tried using the Wish List search function on MUA to see if anyone out there is combing the site for these wallflower scents, but the "no matches found" message gets depressing after a while. And I also puzzle over the sheer scale of the problem and how it has come about. It may actually tip me over into reviewing my own extras policy. For the most part, I give people w/l extras in swaps where I can - one or two, say - and I may add a couple of non-w/l samples to that, which will usually be niche; these will be things I think they might like or could hopefully pass along fairly easily if not. Then if I am swapping with someone who has no w/l to speak of - or does have one, but not with anything on it that I own, such that I am a bit stumped as to what to send them - I tend to go off-piste in my choice of extras, sometimes descending into the realms of silliness, I freely concede.

The final trigger for this post was a chance inquiry by a swapper recently about a couple of non-w/l extras I had included - two different strengths of the same niche scent. She asked me in all innocence which I preferred, and I was immediately stricken with remorse, indeed I have yet to formulate a reply. For the truth is...I didn't care for either of them...that was why I was giving them away. Oh no - now I have gone and done that very thing of sending something from my "wish-to-be-shot-of-list"!

So this unwittingly rattling question has prompted a flurry of moral introspection as to the ethics of extras. If they are not from a person's wish list, should they be niche, if the swapper clearly prefers niche? And if they are niche, must you as the sender also like them? Is it okay to send things that you don't care for if you are pretty sure the swapper will love them? But hey, can you ever be sure? And are there ANY circumstances in a swap under which you can job off your niche OR designer dross that you don't think anyone in their right minds could possibly care for? Well, there must be, surely, or I wouldn't be in this position! : - ) But there again, one man's Dolce Vita is another man's Poison, so all the swappers I have ever dealt with may well have followed this unwritten code to the letter and only sent things they like - it is just that I don't happen to share their tastes completely, though we invariably coincide when it comes to the main focus of the trade.

Yet, surely the whole point behind swapping IS to match your rejects to someone else's lemmings? I'm afraid this remains an elusive ideal for me. I most commonly trade scents I already love but have spare capacity of, for other scents I like at least equally - or mostly equally. It's a slippery slope if you start agreeing to swaps for fear of causing offence, not unlike marrying someone just because they ask you to.

But I don't wish to paint too gloomy a picture, because I have refined and diversified my scent collection immeasurably thanks to MUA and the majority of thoughtful and generous swappers out there. Some of them with the most exquisite wrapping skills. Just this week I fell hard for not one but THREE scents that were extras in swaps that I would never have thought to try otherwise (of which more anon). At their best, those sorts of "random acts of kindness" on MUA are simply priceless.

No, I don't want to get things out of perspective here, for, on balance, swapping is a fun and low cost way to access a much wider range of perfumes than one otherwise might be able to, whether for reasons of cost or geography. But the bag - and the box - that I have somehow managed to acquire still haunt me. : - (

Now my 200th post is fast approaching, and I had always intended to hold a giveaway to mark that particular milestone. So what shall it be, I wonder? No, no, no, nooooo, I couldn't possibly...


Photo of bag from hell from punkdimage.com, photo of furry bag from thefashionpolice.net, photo of poultry bag from retailhellunderground.com, other photos my own.

Another Tale From Makeupalley: The "Burning Coal" Extras

I still have family staying, so will have to defer the rest of my trip report for a bit longer. Meanwhile, however, I have had another funny experience on Makeupalley in connection with a recent swap, which will only take a moment to relate...

The background to the story is that I was sending a swapper 20ml of Marc Jacobs Fig Splash in return for 10ml of Maison Kurkdjian APOM pour femme. As I had trouble figuring out what extras the swapper might like, I decided to send her 30ml of the Marc Jacobs instead, not least because I had a 30ml atomiser going spare.

When my package arrived containing the APOM, I was crestfallen to note that the atomiser used was only an 8ml, not a 10ml one. In fairness, it is an easy mistake to make, as the two atomisers look pretty similar, except that the 10ml one is taller than the 8ml by 3/4".

I wrestled long and hard with the issue, wondering whether it would be petty of me to mention the shortfall. And yet my 7.5ml of APOM (slightly underfilled to avoid spillages in transit) was just not "sitting well" with me, and I knew that if I didn't speak up, the matter would continue to fester. It might even end up spoiling my enjoyment of the perfume itself, because I would now associate it with being shortchanged.

So I wrote to the swapper and explained the situation, taking care to point out that I was sure it was an honest misunderstanding, as the atomisers are alike, and the exact capacity is not printed on them - which would be handy, come to think of it.

I received a very apologetic reply straight back from the swapper, who was clearly mortified at her mistake. She has relatively few tokens, so is doubtless keen not to blot her copybook at this early stage. She said she would send on the extra 2ml and I thanked her very much.

Imagine my surprise when I opened her package the other day to find not only a top up of c3ml of APOM, but a whole stack of other samples. She had in fact gone completely overboard in her retrospective generosity, and now I was the one who felt hugely indebted.

The photo is pretty fuzzy (taken from my phone for the sake of quickness), but the stash comprises:

APOM pour femme - 3ml

Samples of:

TDC Osmanthus
TDC Oriental Lounge
Prairie Life Threads Silver
Grandi Classici Tuberosa
L'Essenziere Estratto No 4
Byredo Rose Noire
Paneangell Aroma Vaniglia per dolci
Les Parfums de Rosine Rose Praline
WJ Neroli Absolute
L'Artisan Parfumeur Timbuktu
ETRA (sic)
Aromatic Chypre (source unknown)

I am very pleased about the Oriental Lounge as I didn't have a sample of that, and while the others strike me as a fairly mixed bunch - including a few very obscure things by the looks of it - in terms of sheer quantity, I feel completely overwhelmed!

My first thought was that the swapper was getting her own back for my pernickety attitude by heaping burning coals on my head, as per the famous quote from Proverbs 25:

"If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. If you do this, you will heap burning coals on his head."

But on balance I think she is probably just embarrassed and trying to rectify an awkward situation, and most importantly head off the threat of the dreaded "negative token". Not that it ever entered my head to award her one of those, as I don't believe for a minute that there was any deliberate plan to diddle me.

Hmm....there again, she hasn't left ME a token yet...


Photo of atomisers from the Accessories for Fragrance website, photo of coals from matthewling.typepad.com