Nothing to Disclose
The Blushing Heart was a limited edition scent from Paintbox Soapworks, sold in Spring 2012 and Late Winter 2013. It is not currently available, but if you're interested, you may want to contact Paintbox Soapworks to see if there's backstock or a custom listing you can get your hands on instead.
Price: This particular scent is no longer available, but Paintbox Soapworks' solid scent balms are currently priced at $9 per 0.6 oz tin. (My tin is 0.5 oz/14g.) Shipping starts at $3 for the US, $8 for Canada, and $12 everywhere else.
Samples: Samples are not available for the solid scent balms, although customizable sample sets of soaps are available (5 0.7 oz soap tablets for $6), and I believe all the scent balm scents are also available as glycerin soap, so for $6 you can check out five different scents in soap form.
Description from website: "Coy rose petals & sweet milk hide an exotic heart of fragrant lychee & pink grapefruit"
Ingredients: Butyrospermum parkii (Shea) Butter, Prunus armeniaca (Apricot) Kernel Oil, Apis mellifera (Yellow Beeswax), Persea Americana (Avocado) Oil, Fragrance Oil.
Due to the inclusion of beeswax, my particular balm is not vegan, but it appears that these have been reformulated--for example, the ingredients for Moundshroud solid perfume are now listed as "Butyrospermum parkii (Shea) Butter, Prunus armeniaca (Apricot) Kernel Oil, Euphorbia Cerifera (Candelilla) Wax, Persea Americana (Avocado) Oil, Fragrance Oil"
I purchased this out of an obsession with the rose-and-rhubarb-scented Hermes Rose Ikebana. I thought lychee and rose sounded like a similar heavenly, fruity-floral combination, so I ordered one of the solid scent balms to give it a try.
It's not a dupe by any means, though it's nice in its own right. Rose Ikebana is a soft and subtle scent that's more fruit than floral, inoffensive and very wearable, with a clean, grassy, citrussy mellowness. The Blushing Heart is far more floral than fruity, and way more aggressive than Rose Ikebana--a powerful, heady, slightly powdery rose note wallops you in the face the instant you put it on, and drifts around the room, bullying lesser scents into submission.
The lychee and grapefruit notes are subtle, but definitely present as a grounding fruity, almost melon-like sweetness under all the rose petal. The longer the perfume wears on my skin, the more evident the lychee note becomes relative to the rose scent, making it softer and more wearable--it turns into a very pretty lychee-centric fruity-floral after an hour or so, instead of a rose-dominant bully.
I do not smell the listed milk note, which is fine by me, as milk and cream notes often make me nauseated after a while.
Solid perfumes are nice and portable, very travel-friendly. However, I admit I had some difficulty with the packaging--it took me ages to pry it open, and now I usually leave the lid a little ajar because I'm afraid I won't be able to get it open again. They're now listed as screw-top tins, but mine appears to just have a little raised ridge around the middle that you can use to grip the bottom and pull off the top (no threads on the edge of the tin)--I'm unsure if the packaging has changed since I bought this. You can see in the photos that in wrangling with the tin, I unfortunately managed to get the perfume balm all over the outside labels, making it look oil-stained and messy.
The scent balm is very soft and creamy, and like Bryl-Creem, "a little dab'll do ya." This particular scent, at least, only requires a tiny dab to melt into your pulse points and leave you smelling lovely for hours. If you have issues with scents changing on your skin due to skin chemistry, you can also dab the solid perfume into your hair. It's not safe for lips, but the moisturizing ingredients make it a nice balm for your cuticles. It has a wonderful texture, and I'm sure it would also be a lovely hand cream if the scent weren't so concentrated.
In this particular case, I'd recommend using the balm directly on skin to allow the rose topnotes to evaporate and fade a bit, letting the lychee heart notes emerge, rather than wearing the scent on hair, where the rose notes in the perfume will linger. Since they are not as warm as one's skin, applying perfume to hair, clothes, or scent lockets will increase the longevity of scents, but decrease the complexity and transformation of scents over time.
Paintbox Soapworks' solid scent balms are very reasonably priced, long-lasting and with great sillage, and I like the formula a lot--while this particular scent is no longer available, if you see a scent you're interested in, I would recommend picking up a tin to try out.
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