...Ah, but 'a dirty mind is a joy forever".

...Keep the pros & cons coming! At least the miniatures won't have been sprayed into sample vials, like the decant shops do. The manufacturer's samples are different of course or so I assume. Both the Opium and the Samsara were simple pull-able lids. The Angel miniature was a PITA as it had to be unscrewed. I love it that I can dab instead of spray! Slightly off topic.. I am about to strangle the person who posted the video demonstrating how 'easy' it is to decant using a syringue. Regular needles were too thick and now the tiniest syringe (diabetic insulin needles) aren't strong enough to get through the tube! Here goes the hope for spill-free and topnote-saving decants!

...Thanks for all the answers. From everything I read here (and elsewhere where I posted the same Q), I get a good enough vibe to keep buying them.Apart from easier storage and less 'angst' for spoiling and 'I'm never ever going to be able to finish that bottle' , there's also the distinct advantage of them mostly fitting in a padded envelope, so postage is much lower and fairly easy to ship world-wide as opposed to the current witch-hunt going on for those 'dangerous combustible fragrances' .PS: the 3 different miniatures I'd bought on Sunday arrived safely today and they all smell terrific! Phew!

...This past weekend I've ventured onto the Dutch eBay ("Marktplaats/Market Place")and bought a number of miniatures.What struck me was a few things: perfume gets 2 different listings: when one wants to sell the juice , it goes into the 'Perfume' subsection of Jewelry and bags. But miniatures or bottles go into the collectors area where they are called 'perfume collection'.After having read so many warnings about fake bottles and being wary of having large-sized bottles (no space and a too high absolute price and wanting to own MANY different fragrances, no matter what size), a miniature seemed like a safe choice. However, I started to wonder: don't most people who own miniatures just have them for the bottle? So they don't care about storage conditions (sun, heat) and simply don't care whether the bottle is full with awesome or turned juice or even water. Fortunately those that are intentionally filled with water, mostly carry an identification and a warning : factice. Those are the fake bottles on dispay in perfume stores, issued by the perfume house itself. Bought 4 different miniatures on Sunday, first one arrived today (a 7,5ml Opium edt) arrived today and smells quite OK! (tested the pure parfum and fell in love!)How has your experience been? Perfume still smelling great or are there bottles that have gone bad?And vice versa, if you don't mind pre-loved bottles, how do these smell versus miniatures of the same age that are still full? I've also bought a 100ml bottle of Givenchy Amarige with approx. 30ml remaining content for about the same price as a miniature that was about 5ml in size , which made me wonder what was the better choice: would that miniature have smelled better (assuming the same person would offer them, which was not the case)

...So we are not the only ones who do this! Our cat is officially named : Birgitte (her first owner is a fan of Switzerland), which generally gets shortened to Birgit. When we tallk sternly to her, we use her full name and when we dote on her, we use the totally ridiculous nickname "kleine poes" (small pussycat). A ridiculous name, because since growing up, she is possible the largest female cat I've ever seen. BTW, cats are carnivorous species. As such it is equally laughable to give them kibble, which contains a ton of carbs. Since switching to liquid low/non-carb foods, our cat had no problem losing weight. Which leads to the next remark. She got sterilized at a rather young age, which may explain the huge amount of surplus skin. When we had the money, we would have her operated on so she can be truly majestic w/o dragging so much belly skin around. Especially since she's so fit: shortly after she was with us, she got scared and jumped up almost 2metres onto a dividing wall. A-ma-zing for a cat of that size and weight! 8) :shock:PS: when you train them very young, they may get used to a leash. Ours doesn't but a friend of ours walks her male cat around the block which we find totally charming! It can substitue having to take her/him in a cage for short distances.

...Hah.. here I thought to be clever by deserting the site, but I should have ventured into the advanced search mode of Parfumo!

...Can't speak for them yet as I only tested a few, but bought a sample pack of 'skanky' fragrances, containing- CB I Hate Perfume : CBMusk - Guerlain: Jicky (already tested it.. nah!)- Jean Desprez: Bal à Versailles (I believe it)- Miller Harris: l'Air de Rien- Montale: Aoud Cuir d'Arabie- Narciso Rodriguez: Musc for Her EDP intense- Nasomatto: Narcotic Venus- Penhaligon : Amaranthine (nah!)- Rochas: Femme - SL: Musc Koublai Khan- The Party: The party in Manhattan- Worth : CourtesanTaking notes from the other ones here :) . Probably I'm more daring (or just inattentive) than others as I did and still do wear anything everywhere I go, including the weights area of the gym.PS: recently got a 5ml split of the newest Parfum d'Empire: Musc Tonkin. It wasn't what I had hoped for but I think it may work wonders when layered as in turning 'shy' perfumes into animalic ones :)

...Zwitsal edc! It is the scent that nearly 99% of Dutch households use when there are babies involved (there is baby soap, baby oil, baby powder and probably much more) but even adults enjoy using these products, including my husband. They put out an edc a few years ago and it has been a massive success. I own a bottle and can see it being emptied as it is a great bed time scent.

...It is not Tindrer, is it?

...Odeur 53 from Comme des Garçons?

...I've bought 15 samples, so 3 discovery sets of Tauer. Generally I liked them, but did not love them. Not enough to buy any.Frankly, for me they were too strong. As a dabber at heart, it was a pity they were all in spray vials as 1/2 or even 1/3rd of a spray would have been more enjoyable, than 1 full spritz.So, gave all of hem away to fellow parfumistas and may re-acquire simple dabbing samples instead of the ones I liked most:02 L'Air du Desert MarocainZetaand possibly also (in numerical order)03 Lonestar Memories04 Reverie au Jardin07 vetiver Dance08 Orange Star

...I've bought the Ineke sample set too after enquiring about it, but not from the perfumer directly but from a distributor in the NLs (Annindriya Perfume Lounge). I was not too keen at first, because when I saw their picture it only showed the A to G (Gilded Lily) collection and not the latest addition of H (Hothouse Flower). What a nice surprise when that one was included as an extra gift! I just needed to cut a bit of the foam to make space for it in the nice box. Plus I got the same gift certificate! A few weeks later I was invited to their December sniffing experience and bought another discovery set (a sample each of the newest acquisitions) as well as 3 samples from a new and upcoming Dutch artisanal perfumer with a very intrigueing name for his house: Magnetic Scent.http://www.magnetic-scent.com/product-category/samples/For 3.5 euro each I bought 3 of his scents (Tindrer, Indigo and Untitled #2) . Quite the experience to meet an actual 'nose' 8). He sent them to me by mail after having sniffed 2 of them at the same location.

...Very soon it will be necessary to start hunting for most fragrances, even when they are officially still in production as the new reformulations are often a mere shadow from what they used to smell like. Just today I've placed a bid on 2 versions (edp and edt) of Opium as a miniature (don't care for a large bottle) after falling in love with a tiny pure parfum sample, because the latest release is so different from how it once smelled like.

...Yes you ARE! The longer I stay here, the better it feels. In any case I had never thought the very first thing to discuss would be folding bicyles! :D

...Sherapop:Flaconneur:To be perfectly honest, I have objected to spraying perfume from atomizers into a sample vile. I think that aerating the perfume can change the way it smells. Does anyone else share that opinion?Is there another way? Do you use syringes with long needles? Now I'm very curious.... :?:On youtube there is a small video of someone who uses a syringue. When buying decant supplies (a ton of vials) I also bought pipettes along with syringues. That was a no-go area when trying out the first bottle to decant from. The tube is far too narrow to have a regular needle go into. So I sprayed into vials.. a horrid experience as I spilled as much as got into the vial (even WITH a funnel that came with a travel atomizer) . It scarred me and scared me away from making decants for 3 months already!!! However, I was told that particular bottle was a royal PITA to spray from, so this made me feel better about being such a klutz (a biehl). The person who actually posted the Youtube video (forgot where it is, may look it up) told me to get diabetes needles . Only 2 days ago I finally bought a few of those needles.. now just look whether they are really that slim and can be used.So, originally my idea was that decanting with a syringue would preserve the top notes better, but now I just think it would be less messy. Provided you CAN actually lift off the cap as for some bottles this is next to impossible.PS: LiliumLibido:I'm the opposite: spraying bashes me in the head with a giant mallet, lol. I'm totally a dabbler at heart, so I decant all my scents into vials and rollers. But when I can't see the sprayer... Well I once sprayed myself full in the face. It was quite an experience, lol.Oh, how I love thee... :) Another dabber! Really, if I had known about the options I would never have thrown away Trésor and use Tendre Poison more often. 1 single spray was/is waaaay too much. Love love dabbing the samples of sillage monsters!

...LOL @ Lola. Curiosity can make me sniff at all samples but I know better than to apply them all on the same day, so option A is the wisest choice.However, in the last 3 months I've acquired well over 100 different samples ( and a few bottles) so got into a panic mode on how to get through them all. TWO a day, one in the morning and afternoon and the 2nd one in the evening , depending on longevity of the first fragrance , so option B is it (more than 1). Testing only one every 3 days requires the restraint of a saint! Which makes me LOL again as I had never considered Lilium as being a saint :P :wink:

...No exile, but I was missing the people who made the most interesting posts at the English Fragrantica. Still saw a lot of them at FaceBook where I started spending much more time than on Fragrantica, so barely even came on the forum , except for visiting individual member topics. When even one of my favourite members stopped her individual thread I was flabbergasted and asked where she'd gone to. Parfumo.net was the answer! Speaking of individual threads, one of the best ones around was the Enneagram personality types. Turns out, after having thought for all my life I was the scientific exploring type, I'm the 'loyalist' (with the scientific slant as a wing)That person who stays on the Titanic until it is fully submerged, believing things will go better.... well, as much as I love all the features in their database and still do (like how people can vote for how strong a note is being perceived, which somehow changes the order of accords, so there IS crowd-sourcing going on!), banning people left & right just because they are outspoken , irritates the hell out of me. I've asked 3-4 times already how exactly accords are tied to notes, which seems to be the case , but no answer.. yet. Any question that is a teeny bit more complicated than 'what is the sexiest scent' just gets ignored. And believe me.. I have tons of questions! BTW, somewhere in this thread I saw a remark concerning the repetitiveness of questions. I wondered whether mods here merge threads that are similar? When I used to be a mod, this was an option we used frequently. However.. the stupidity of SEO seems to be that Google will punish that type of behaviour. Forums score best when the same questions pops up 100 times rather than when the same question is just in 1 thread with all similar questions/answers being filed under that thread. Also, whenever you bump a very old thread, this gets punished too.. at least on forums that thrive on Google-based advertisements and deem SEO to be very important. So here you have the conflicting interests of a gazillion boring same threads (with old ones being deleted or closed) versus having everything on the same topic in 1 place. Will stop now.. in a former life-time I used to be a literature researcher/documentalist and currently am a web shop owner so am on both sides of the fence (wanting to be found by Google, but also wanting to file away everything orderly!)

...Hello there!My name here is DutchSniffer as well as on a few other forums,but my real name (well, changed it a decade ago) is Yvana Contrary to most connoisseurs here and just like Guusje, I have only started on this fragrance journey a bit over 1 year ago. In October 2011 I sprained a wrist in the gym when trying to deadlift an oversized (men's barbell) with straps. Only about 15 months later I finally am able to train fully again (with a suitable 2nd hand women's barbell, just like the one in the avatar pic). In the meantime I gained some weight but not as much as I could have when I had not gone on a 'Perfume Diet'. ( http://www.oprah.com/spirit/The-Perfume-Diet-Guilty-Indulgences#ixzz1jpvEhA3y )Quote : Perfume diet: "The result was not a diet so much as an invasion—the infiltration of perfume into nearly every aspect of my life touched by food.:abf7adf7ce]After the first bottle in many years (Poême), I discovered the option of buying samples and there I went down the rabbit hole. My collection just grew and grew and keeps growing. Counting each and every drop of fragrance , the maximum amount I owned sofar was nearly 400 different scents (50 have been given away already). The pace really picked up once meeting Dutch parfumistas (from the Dutch Fragrantica forum) who regaled me with lots of samples! as well as a number of FB groups. The reason I came here is an invitation to have a look at Parfumo.net when I was posting Fragrantica links in a group that had people who fled away from the English site. Decided to stay and become an active member after seeing how the English Fragrantica has become boring as hell and devoid of interesting discussions. Mind you, the Dutch one is still very cosy and interesting. Parfumo.net has really great features (it feels like a hybrid between Facebook and a regular fragrance forum and the souk is 10x easier to make me offer my surpluses. Most are just samples, so don't get too excited ;)Downside of course is lack of reviews, so am trying to do my best and add my own (not so good) reviews.

...French Cancan by CaronNot a great one