A Scent/Perfume You Can’t Live Without:

Buttella was originally supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek, special limited edition Whipped Cocoa Butter by One Hand Washes the Other, but it has become so wildly popular that the fragrance itself was brought into the company’s full-time private stock fragrances. While I highly recommend the Whipped Cocoa Butter, it does have a high risk of melting in transit – thus it is only available for purchase during the colder seasons. Until then, you can pop by their website and order a solid scent or perfume oil to enjoy the rich, luscious, and positively sinful blend of chocolate, hazelnut, and vanilla.

A word of warning: Your arms will not magically become edible once applying this fragrance, so while you may be highly tempted to chow down on your wrist, the taste of blood will more than likely ruin the experience.

Ah, did you click for more? Well then. Here’s some text and other pictures!

Truth be told, my closet almost never looks like this. Clean clothes go in one pile on the floor, and dirty clothes go in a different pile on the floor. But for you, I hung things up until I ran out of hangers. I either need to buy more hangers, or get rid of some of this stuff. I’m hoping for the latter, actually.

As you’ve probably noticed, I wear a lot of black on a daily basis. There are rare pops of colour, as I have a fondness for hot pink, as well as neon green and turquoise. Trousers are usually dark wash blue jeans, with a couple of Tripps (because I’m still a tool at heart).

I also have some of my falls lounging in the closet. All of these were made by me, with the exception of the green, purple and black ponyfalls, which I bought from a seller on the now-defunct gothicauctions.com.

Shoes range from utilitarian boots, to five inch platform sneakers. There are simply too many to single out, but these guys are the ones I wear on a fairly regular basis:

Out of all of my collection, my pride and joy is always my coat. This past cold season, I scored a positively gorgeous Miss Sixty wool peatrench hybrid with mock vestee from Burlington Coat Factory. I usually wear it with the vestee zipped, but the front unbuttoned, but I’ll include a picture of it fully fastened, as well. This baby has garnered many compliments, and is hands-down my favourite article of clothing.

So now that we’ve got a peek at what sort of things I have, what is more or less my daily look? Very basic. You can rarely go wrong with jeans and a t-shirt.

Many thanks to Lola, for being such a wonderful and cooperative mannequin. I don’t know why I brought you home, but I’m so very glad I did.

The fragrance mist package design and formulation was updated and released for general sale in February 2012, but I’ve been playing with the new design since mid-December 2011. Now, as a Bath & Body Works employee, it is my job to say that this redesign is the best thing since gay bacon strips. As an Influenster reviewer, I’m finally free to say exactly what I think.

The best way to address this is by its pros and cons. So let’s just get on with it.

Pros

First of all, the design is extremely functional. The tall, thin bottles take up less space than the geometrical nightmares of the last design. The bottles are more stable, not having the problem of being “top-heavy” like the last design. There’s also that beefy cap; how many of us have lost those tiny plastic caps off the old bottles, or broken them from accidentally stepping on them? I’ve never had a problem with these caps getting lost or broken, at home or at the store.

Second pro is in the delivery of product. The new Fine Fragrance Mists are so called because the mist is much more fine with the new design than any of the old designs. This means there is less of a problem with “droplets” appearing on clothing.

Another pro that I have noticed is that the pump never randomly stops working. This was a problem with older designs, if you had a habit of depressing the pump in rapid succession. The only way to fix it was to unscrew the pump to equalize the pressure inside the bottle, re-screw it, and start over. Not a huge deal for most, but it did get on my nerves at time.

The final pro of this new design is the new formula that came with it – which uses less alcohol. This means that the most subtle notes of a fragrance can be more easily detected. It also theoretically means that the fragrance itself will last longer, since there is not as much alcohol to evaporate.

Cons

Theoretically. Now we face the cons. Despite the lower alcohol content, employees and fragrance fans alike have noticed that the new Fine Fragrance Mists lack the lasting power of old, standard Fragrance Mists – especially in the newest fragrance, Pink Chiffon, which is extremely light and sweet. Heavier fragrances such as Into the Wild still fare rather well with the new packaging, but delicate fragrances need regular refreshment.

Another con is that it does take more pumps to distribute the fragrance all-over-body. Since it is a finer mist, there isn’t much coverage in each pump. So not only am I now using more product to keep the fragrance strong and fresh – I’m using slightly more from the get go.

This next con comes in from my mom, who noted that the new packaging makes it impossible to refill travel-size bottles from the large bottles. The new bottles are completely sealed – there’s no unscrewing the cap whatsoever. So if you had a habit of refilling your purse-perfume from your at-home bottles, this might be a dealbreaker.

The last con – and this one is a biggie for me – is the value. Prices have been gradually increasing at Bath and Body Works, with Paris Amour fragrance mist clocking in at $12.50 for an 8oz bottle. This new packaging has seen a dramatic rise in price: $14 for 8oz. Considering the lasting power of the new fragrances, and the additional amount of product one might use to keep their fragrance strong, the value of your dollar crashed about as hard as it did when G W Bush took office.

Brass Tacks

In sum, there are some good points to the new Fine Fragrance Mists, and while I do enjoy the aesthetic value of the new packaging, I do not find it to be at all practical or economical. The only way the price becomes a worthwhile consideration is if you take advantage of in-store promotions, and only purchase Fine Fragrance Mists or higher-priced items. But even then, is it practical to purchase a fragrance that needs so much attention?

Thankfully, I stocked up on all of my favourite fragrances in the old design at the last Semi-Annual Sale – and they will be back this coming June at cut-rate prices. For future fragrance releases, the travel-size mists are a better value at 3 for $10 ($1.11 per oz when purchasing three travel mists, rather than $1.75 per oz per one bottle of Fine Fragrance Mist off-promotion).

FTC ETC: Items in this review were sent for consideration by Limited Brands and Influenster.com. All opinions in this review are my own.

Needless to say, I am extremely impressed with this box! It started out kind of, “nyeehhhh mehhhhh…” but the Sally Hansen Salon Effects nail strips and Bath & Body Works Fine Fragrance Mist totally made it work for me. Thank you, Influenster!

Searching Google also reveals a single blog post, stating that four different post offices were affected, with one arrest made.

However, no search has revealed any such activity at this company’s local or regional post offices. One would think, considering that tampering with mail is a federal offense, that this would have made the news, or at the very least, would have been entered in public police records.

After failing to find any confirmation of an alleged arrest outside of the company owner’s statement, one intrepid community member contacted the USPS herself. This is her account of her communication with the USPS:

I am posting this here because it NEEDS to get out. I just got off the phone with the post office in Maryville, TN. There have been absolutely no arrests or reports of theft there or in any of the surrounding towns. I am not waiting on a “stolen” package, so I have no personal reason to look into this. I went into this completely objectively because it sounded fishy. My parents work at the USPS hub in Jackson, MS. They asked around. No one had heard of anything. My friend is a reporter for a local newspaper in Maryville. He hadn’t heard of anything. So unless Evil Shades is somehow connected to a CIA type of deal (and it’s not), you’re being lied to. Don’t let her get away with it if you’re owed money and/or product.

IF YOU ARE BEING TOLD THAT YOUR PACKAGE WAS STOLEN, you should file PayPal disputes immediately and explain what you’ve been told. I would be contacting the BBB myself, but that’s up to your own discretion.

You can easily find the phone number and the street and email address to the post offices in and around Maryville, TN. There aren’t many. You can submit a request for information on the USPS website. Contact them yourself. This isn’t being made up to make Evil Shades or its owner look bad. This is easily verifiable information.

Of course, there has already been some backlash to this revelation. The company owner stated that although she was finally caught up to her TAT, and was planning to work ahead of her stated TAT, she would instead be pursuing legal action. In other words, customers who have been waiting for their orders will have to wait even longer. While I am not at all against her taking legal action if the accusation of lying is false, this decision makes me extremely uncomfortable as a recent customer who waited a full week after TAT for my order to ship (another huge thanks to my dear friend who placed my order for me). After all, customers have 45 days to file a dispute with Paypal for non-fulfillment of orders. I waited 37 days for my order to ship, without dramatic complications. How long will you wait, now that the USPS has been entirely unable to confirm any arrests?

Now, have I contacted the USPS personally? No. All I have is a friend with family in the Maryville area, who have not heard of any such arrests, either. But he-said-she-said is not quite enough for me, therefore, I cannot confirm or deny any of this. Will I be contacting them soon? Yes, because I want to know for certain whether or not the pie cake is a lie. And if the USPS can confirm that arrests have been made, I will of course amend this post to reflect that. The original individual who investigated these claims has stated much the same:

This comment, unfortunately, has been deleted by the company owner. For what reason, I cannot imagine – one would think that it would be welcome for the “offending party” to come forward and take responsibility for her own findings. I will not speculate publicly on the motivation behind this choice, but I must say I do have my own personal thoughts which have no concrete basis in fact – there’s no need to “email me for the truth” when all you’d honestly receive are opinions.

Now, if you have read this far, I must apologize. This is the sort of material that nobody likes to see. I certainly don’t like to write it. But as we’ve seen with companies like HVC and Glittersniffer, silence does no favours to anybody.

Edit 05/10/12 @ 7:08PM EST
There has been a claim that concerns have been raised by members with a “personal vendetta”, and not recent customers. As a matter of fact, I am a recent customer. Though I was not banned from the Evil Shades website at the time, I enlisted the help of a friend to make an order for me, because I knew that individuals in my little social network had been previously banned. Considering I have been viewed as “guilty by association” before, I felt that ordering through a friend would be the only way I could ensure that my order would not be rejected. Once she received the package, it was forwarded to me.

There was nothing wrong with my order, outside of the fact that it was shipped from Evil Shades after the stated TAT of 30 days, and one of the lipglosses leaked in the package.

But this argument is a strawman, after all. The issue isn’t about recent customers, the issue is the claim that packages shipped by Evil Shades were stolen, and an arrest was made in connection with the thefts. The issue is that there is no proof of this claim. No records exist, and nobody at local and regional post offices can support the claim.

Since this news has broke, several customers, past and present, have said their piece about the business and the products. Several concerns and complaints have been expressed over the past few months about shipping time, lost packages, “lost” packages which were “resent” with the original shipping label, and so on. Of course, most of these issues were discussed in private, due to a certain fear of “glittermobbing” that plagues the indie beauty community. Evil Shades was, after all, a well loved and respected company. Coming forward with complaints is a risk that most are not comfortable with taking.

Edit 05/10/12 @ 8:02PM EST
A recent experience with Evil Shades
Another Evil Shades Experience
Not a Happy Customer
Are False Claims a Habit?

Edit 05/11/12 @ 1:32AM EST

“So yes I will continue to delete drama creating lies/slander and the like as is my right to do from my business fanpage just as they all have me blocked from the blogs they are posting lies on.”

For the record, the owner of Evil Shades has not been blocked from my blog. The only individuals who have been blocked are Wendi G of MakeupZombie, Phyrra, Christie Brooks, Snarky P, and IPs that are caught trying to login to this blog’s admin panel. So unless Andrea has tried to login to my admin panel, a banset has not been placed against her. If she cannot respond to this post, it is only because she is choosing to refrain from doing so.

Edit 05/10/12 @ 10:11PM EST
Here is an exchange between ES and another blogger/artisan regarding the issue:

Andrea of Evil Shades, and her original claims that she’s been banned from commenting here and at Toxid-Lotus, as well as her throwing out multiple strawman fallacies to try and distract from the issue at hand. This has nothing to do with the individuals known as Becca, Allison, Victoria, Manda, or even “recent customers”. This is issue is nothing more than the fact that no proof exists of any arrests relating to thefts at the USPS, in Maryville or surrounding post offices. No blog post exists that suggests that Andrea of Evil Shades is being investigated for mail fraud – that is her own scaremongering.

The author of this response wanted it to be included that due to past experiences with some of Andrea’s friends (the inclusion of her name and photo in an out-of-context conversation on a blog with 1000+ followers), that she no longer uses her photo on Facebook.

More screenshots of the exchanges between ES and Robin can be seen on Toxid-Lotus.

Edit 05/12/12 @ 12:12AM EST
http://snarky-princess.com/2012/05/11/glostix-its-not-nice-to-lie/
By request, I must clarify a statement made in this entry. Wendi, Christie, Snarky P and Phyrra have never, to my knowledge, tried to access my admin panel. What I meant by that statement is that these individuals and (as in, ‘in addition to’, not ‘because’) IPs caught trying to access my admin panel are the only IPs on my banlist. These “other” IPs are most likely spammers, trying to hijack my blog and post about Qua1i7y C4n4d1an Cia1i$. If you are a self-hosted blogger, I’d highly recommend installing Login Lock to block these IPs.

I am surprised that this is the conclusion that some people reached from this statement, but we all know that inflection and interpretation don’t always go hand in hand.

Edit 05/14/12 @ 11:32AM EST
Allison of NewYorkGlitter responds to the accusation of lying here. It’s bad enough when you’re falsely accused of lying due to a failure in reading comprehension. It’s worse when it’s an actual company.

Edit 05/15/12 @ 11:37PM EST
Good as my word, I contacted the USPS myself, and the woman I spoke to found nothing in her records about arrests relating to thefts at Maryville or any area post office. She did say, though, that anyone whose package has not been received in a reasonable time frame should contact the USPS directly with your tracking number, and they will open a case to investigate the whereabouts of your package.

Also, being the clever pup that I am, I recorded the conversation. If this is a “rumor”, then the USPS is clearly in on it. Kentucky is a one-party-consent state for telephone recordings, so my doing so is well within the law. While I have no plans to post this conversation on my own blog, it may pop up on the blogs of other concerned parties.

Edit 05/16/12 @12:03AM EST
There’s also been the defense that Andrea did not use the Maryville post office. I checked the DC on my package, and the DC of another person’s parcel as posted on their blog, and both were accepted at the Maryville post office. This means that it could not have been sent from anywhere else but Maryville. (The few times I have paid for postage at my post office, and mailed them at a different one while visiting my parents, the acceptance scan is recorded at the post office where the parcel first arrived, NOT where shipping was first purchased.)

If anyone who has ordered from ES can check their records and look up their DC information to verify whether or not other post offices were used (as much as two hours away, according to Andrea), we can prove/disprove the validity of this claim.

And because EVERYONE who “RSVP’d” is a winner, here’s your chicken dinner!

Mmmmsammich. Thanks again to everyone who entered.

On a side note, I am going to be taking a bit of a hiatus from blogging. As always, it’s those “personal things” that bloggers tend to have now and then. Recent events have turned me somewhat passionless about… well, everything. Nothing to be worried about, though. I’ll be back when I get things figured out.

I would like to thank everyone who entered the giveaway, and I will be picking the two prize winners as soon as I get back from my trip. The magic of scheduling posts is letting me tell you this, despite not being around a computer. Fancy.

The winner will be selected and contacted on the 17th or 18th, depending on when I recover from the flight home!

Thanks again!

I’ve decided that the white art pen is total balls. The coverage is sheer and somewhat buildable, but the formula is such that building it will create streaks – much like writing over another color on a dry erase board. The black pen, however, is really nice for detailing and outlining, as it goes on opaque in one stroke. Sadly, I’ve only seen these pens in a black and white two pack, so buying one good colour requires buying the other bum colour.

Also, WHY had I not bought the Hard Candy matte coat sooner? Black nails are infinitely more groovy when matte. I might rock black nails more often now. It’ll be like being a teenager all over again.

I picked up the Megalast Salon Nail Color by Wet n Wild in “I Need A Refresh-Mint” on a whim a couple of weeks back, and finally got around to trying it out. Results? Kind of nice.

This is just one coat of colour, with a coat of Wet n Wild Wild Shine “Hallucinate” on the accent nail. I could’ve used two coats, because application was a bit patchy in spots due to the brush, but the opacity of this one is nothing short of amazing. Well worth the $1.99!

While we’re on the subject of the brush, this is a revamped design of an old line, so the bottle and brush are a bit different. This one is rather interesting. It is a flat and wide ordeal with a slightly curved tip, which should deliver a near-perfect application without much effort. I found this to be mostly true. Pinkies only took one swipe, and the other nails only took two for edge-to-edge coverage.

My only complaint about the brush is one that I have about Wet n Wild polishes in general: the cut. The bristles on this bugger are very choppy, so it can cause some patchiness. If you’re keen to trim your brushes, or put on multiple coats, it’s not a dealbreaker. But I do wish they’d get some better QC on their brushes.

Have you tried any of the new line Megalast polishes? What do you think about this brush?