marared

Wishlist frimp from my witch:

 

Oh, this is wonderful. It's so nicely blended that nothing in particular really stands out - I can tell the orange blossom, mint and a wee bit of rose are there, and kinda the sandalwood too. It starts out just a touch flowery, but it dries down to a warm and bright scent that is definitely of a masculine nature, but is pretty darn nice on me. I will be considering a bottle purchase, but I do want a male to smear this on and sniff...

While this is certainly quantifiably a masculine scent, it's not as dark and heavy as I thought it would be based on the notes - I smell the musk and the patchouli, and the saffron to a lesser degree -- I think it's the saffron that keeps it from being really dark. It's very warm and sensual, but not outrightly sexual. Spicy and just a little sweet. It gets a little woodier as it dries, but still pretty awesome. (And the oil is a pretty typical gold, not the olive green others have mentioned.)

 

I really like this one - if it doesn't go sour in the next half an hour, it's going on my bottle wishlist. I need to try this one on a guy, too.

Resurrected:

 

*huff* oh. *huffs some more* oh man. While this smells nothing like Dionysia, it has the same scent vibe - resiny and spicy with a good dark tart fruit to it, that's so finely blended that neither really takes over. If it's this good now, I can't wait til it ages. I'm so going to buy at least one more bottle, possibly two, before it comes down next month.

Oh wow, this is quite a fuck-me-with-my-heels-on scent, isn't it. It's all musky honey on me with a bit of the tuberose - I'm sure the patchouli must be coming into play too, even though I can't smell it (blended with the musk, no doubt), because patchouli invariably turns to sex on my skin. It just gets warmer and richer and *delicious* on me as the minutes pass.

 

 

The more I sniff this, the more I'm certain that it's going to be a bottle purchase. Good job, labbies!

 

 

Edit: oh man, it went sour. CURSE YOU BOOZE NOTE WE COULD HAVE DANCED SO BEAUTIFULLY AND YOU RUINED IT.

Imp: straight up dark red apple with a bit of herbs in the background.

 

On my skin: juicy red, super-sweet apple at first, and then it gets lighter and less sweet as it dries, and it turns more of a white floral that must be the oleander. This is very nice, but it fades rapidly - less than five minutes on a swipe and it's nearly gone. The starter whiff is pretty awesome, though.

LOUD chocolate. It's so loud it even drowned out the floral four inches away on my arm. It's definitely very foody compared to some of the other cocoa blends, to the point that I have a sudden craving for brownies. Yum.

Lavender and poppy are the strongest notes right off the bat, but the other flowers join in after a bit for a dark floral arrangement corralled by amber. This is a floral mix that I really like - I'm usually not too big on heavily floral blends - that calls up embroidered satin corsets and long skirts. I might consider a bottle of this one, if only to have something so *different* from my usual likes.

I'm going to have to go with "yuck" on this one. It *does* smell like car freshener - like white flowers swiped on cardboard. I think the cardboard for me is what other people are calling almond - it *is* a vaguely nutty smell, but almond is straight up vile on me, and this isn't almond.

 

 

Editing a year later to say - yep, still yuck. It smells lovely in the imp, but it turns to rotten coconut on me.

Creamy peppermint, yum. Loud peppermint, too, although the vanilla note that doesn't exist in this gets stronger as it dries.

Fir and mint - natural mint like the herb, not the sugared mint in candy and chocolate. I kept wondering why I smelled mint when there isn't any in the notes listed, and thought maybe I'd gotten a bit of Lick It on my finger from sniffing it just before testing this, but obviously I'm not the only one! Fir, mint, and just a whiff of berry. There is a bit of cedar and sandalwood when it's wet - but it fades almost immediately into mint.

Rain and dust. Not cold rain, though - warm rain, on a path somewhere in Thailand, Vietnam, etc, with a vague hint of incense in the distance. I can see how the scent translates into grapefruit for some people - it does have a mild tang to it that's almost citrus, but it's part of the rain scent to it.

 

It's a very pleasant and mild scent, and I think it would be best for evocative purposes - meditating, sitting down and writing, activities along those lines.

 

Oof, gotta edit - it ended up going sour on my skin after about an hour. Very sad.

Glasgow is my favorite berry scent, although it is not especially blackberryish eight months after purchase - fresh, though, it's like walking past a blackberry bush.

Frimp from the lab, which sent me several fruity type things this time around.

 

I liiiike this one. I wouldn't say it smelled like a martini so much as a pomegranate *soda* -- I don't really get any booze in this scent (which is good, because booze and I generally don't get along), but it has the dry sweetness of a good pop that hasn't been overwhelmed with sugar. I almost even smell lime in this.

 

I'm not suuure I want a bottle, but it's going on the tentative list.

Man, I was so disappointed - I had such high hopes for this and it smells terrible on me. It's a very bitter woodsy smell, and it isn't the balsam, so maybe it's the cypress or the artemesia -- the latter of which is described on wikipedia as also being "bitter," so that might be the culprit. It's also very hard to wash off - I still get a whiffs after scrubbing.

 

I'm going to let it sit for a few weeks, as I do with all scents that don't work on me right away, but I'm pretty sure this is going to hit the swap pile.

Fresh decant. This is leather and sage and no Snake Oil that I can detect yet -- it's definitely an *evocative* scent and calls up lots of interesting images, but not really a *perfume* scent for me, and consequently not a bottle purchase. I've read many comments noting that this gets substantially better with age, though, so I'm going to hang on to the imp and check it again in a few months.

Testing a fresh decant. Oof. I've heard of scents turning to soap on people, and I've occasionally gotten a vague soapy whiff from other scents, but this is the first time I've had an oil go straight to Ivory soap on my skin. I put it on, and it was initially a nice woody Snake Oil with a tiny bit of floral in the background. Mild and hangs close to the skin, but very nice. Within five minutes, SOAP. Wow.

I've had this on my wishlist for a while because the notes seemed like something I would reeeeally like - patchouli and pomegranate? Should be made of WIN on my skin!

 

Alas, on my skin the cassia has stampeded all over everything else, almost obscuring even the dragon's blood (which is a pretty loud note in its own right), and it turns to overly sweet cinnamon incense.

 

This makes me sad, as it confirms that I need to avoid cinnamon and cassia.

Decant. Holy champaca and sugarcane. This one is totally the diva of the Snakes that I've smelled so far - it sashays right up and smacks you in the face. I don't get nearly as much of the incense as everyone says, but I think that will develop in the scent as it ages. As strongly floral as it is, I'm surprised I don't dislike it. I'm definitely going to get good use out of the imp over time, but I don't really want a bottle.

Decant. This is bright and fruity right out of the imp, but not obnoxiously fruity, which is a good thing. It dries to smoked vanilla with a bit of fruit in the background - the astringency of fresh Snake Oil probably makes up a significant portion of this particular scent right now.

 

I'm debating whether or not to get a bottle, because I really like it and it has the potential to age amazingly well, but it also has the potential to start turning sour. It keeps reminding me a bit of Gunpowder without the maple, which unfortunately did sour on my skin.

I was a little afraid of this one due to the booze, because I could smell it in the background in the imp, but on me, surprisingly, there was no booze at all that I could detect. It smelled like a nice light mint for about ten minutes, and then it ... disappeared. This one might be interesting for layering purposes, though - I must experiment!

Antikythera Mechanism, without question. It's the most "masculine" vanilla I've smelled so far, and it's SO good.

This is SO yummy, and that's just the fresh bottle. It's a nice DARK chocolatey aroma, not the milky sweet stuff. I can't wait to see what this smells like in two months...

A frimp! I had never considered this for myself because the notes didn't sound like something I'd like - dirt and booze tend to be dealbreakers. In this, I can smell the dirt on immediate application, but it's quickly relegated to the background behind the flowers. I can still tell it's there, but it's not *dirty* -- nor is it boozy. Booze oftentimes goes really sour on me, but so far this comes off as a bitter floral, which is actually kinda cool. I don't think this is going to be a bottle purchase, but I'm definitely going to enjoy the imp from time to time.

This was a frimp. I normally haven't done well with the Excolo scents - I've tried a few of them, and there's invariably something that's turned me off, or they just weren't suitable on me to wear as perfume. This might be the exception to the rule - it's like Lightning/Tempest but with cotton in it, and I like cotton, but it's hard to find one that doesn't go straight into my sinuses. I can smell fruit sitting in the background, but it's a light sparkly fruit that doesn't demand your attention. I'm not sure I'd call this salty; saltwater smells are not this heavy, and they tend to have a background aroma of decay, especially near harbors and piers.

 

This would be great for dryer sheets, I'd love it if my laundry smelled like this.

I just got a backup bottle of Mead Moon, and the background color of the label is brown, whereas my original bottle - the background color is black to the point that the honeycomb is very hard to pick out. The bottle currently on ebay is also a black label. I was going to ask how often that happened, and it seems from this thread that it's not uncommon at all to get slightly different labels.