Paintbox Soapworks Yuletide Mariner and Victorious Sun

The Yuletide Mariner is a blend of spruce and evergreen with a salty ocean accord. Evergreen scents can smell like air freshener and marine scents like washing powder, so it's a credit to Hayley of Paintbox Sapworks that Yuletide Mariner smells like neither. A good evergreen oil has an almost jammy succulence to it, and I can only assume that's what is used in this blend because it has that wonderful, full-bodied, in-the-middle-of-a-cold-forest smell. If the Yuletide Mariner scent is made from fragrance rather than essential/absolute oils in the blend it uses bloody good ones. When I poke my nose in the pot I mostly get the evergreen notes, but when I use the scrub on my skin the cold saltwater smell comes out too. This is a perfect winter morning pick-me-up in the Sorbetto scrub.

Victorious Sun has jumped straight into my top five favourite body product scents. I love lemon verbena for its delicate zestiness, and thought it was a shame when Jo Malone discontinued the Verbenas of Provence Body Lotion because it's such a good scent to layer underneath other fragrances. In Paintbox Soapworks' Victorious Sun verbena is blended with frankincense and pepper, and the combination of subtle spicy warm notes with the refreshing verbena is glorious. It works very well in the Goat Milk body cream; it leaves a subtle citrus veil on my skin that doesn't fight with any fragrance I apply. I'm glad to find that the Goat Milk cream is sufficiently moisturising on my skin now the weather has turned colder, and I'm still enjoying the texture of it very much.

Both of these are from the Paintbox Soapworks Winter limited editions, available in the Etsy shop here www.etsy.com/shop/paintboxsoapworks.