biggnerd

Love Let Her is having a real battle with my skin chem. It goes between spicy, lightly incensed peony rose to soapy, spicy squished carnation. The soapy carnation won. 

On first application - oh no, what have I done? Foot funk, musty funky funky body funk...but....15 mins later - beautiful, creamy magnolia surrounds me and is hanging on. It's worth the funky part to feel like I'm sitting in a magnolia bloom. 

Starts off as nutty coconut and white chocolate with a little warmth from the clove. It smells like a white chocolate coconut syrup. Eventually the clove peeps out and then goes away. It settles down to sweet coconut cream. I don't get any carnation, which is disappointing. 

I can't decide if I like this scent. The oak is warm and woody, the vanilla is sweet but not gourman, the tobacco has that spicy, chewy quality of pipe tobacco, but the teakwood, the teakwood is chaotic neutral. I never know if teak is going to behave and be decent, or if it's going to wreck the scent. Here, it does the later. The teak amps the sweet aspect of all the other notes, which makes AM go overly sweet on me. It's such a bummer because this should be a no-brainer scent for me. 

This is an interesting smell. The lilac isn't very strong on me. It's a background note adding some floral sweetness. The dominant scent is an almost mallow like woody hay. Like a non-sugary hay marshmallow. This isn't a dried grass hay, but more of a woody hay. This smells like some item created last harvest and kept for a personal reason that you've taken out to look at while your brain registers the soft scent of a distant lilac bush. This is being melancholy in the spring about Fall remembrances and the beginning of a new cycle of rebirth, growth, and death.

A white floral with an undernote of bubble yum that's been misted with diluted amber and myrrh.

Predominantly powdery musky amber, a little citrus apostrophe from the lemon and neroli, with frank and cedar hanging out way in the background keeping the disparate parts from going awry.

Citrusy kumquat - which is reading somewhere like mandarin on my skin - a hint of white tea, and orange blossom. When citrus is paired with orange blossom on my skin, they combine to make a sweet/tart scent that is reminiscent of the powdered sour candy (lickit sticks? pixie sticks?) I had as a kid. It's very fresh and pretty. Here, I think the white tea and pepper help keep it from going too sweet and high pitched, even though I can't smell them directly.

If diffused light had a scent, this is what it would smell like. This is a soft scent with low throw. It starts off with a soft honey musk scent with the sugar cane, and perhaps the acacia, adding light greenery and notions of general forest to the scent. It's like the memory of those things, rather than their actual scent. Then it goes soapy. The end.

When first applied, it is very strong, astringent mandarin - all peel. It's very orange cleaner on me. It takes a while for the mandarin to chill out. When it does, a lovely, sweet, non-powdery fig steps up. The fig note is really great. Unfortunately, the mandarin note doesn't change into something less astringent. It stays strong peel. I let this rest about a month before testing. I'm wondering if aging it will bring the fig out more.

When first applied there's a little hint of black currant and vanilla, it settles into a pale, meditative sandalwood with a hint of sweetness - maybe from the vanilla and blackcurrant? It's mostly a sandalwood scent.

This starts off with pretty sweet pea and plumeria notes. The peonies are in the background. There's a bunch of them. The the peonies come forward and the three flowers meld to create a FLOWER FLOWER FLORAL scent. It would be amazing if the pink peppercorn stepped up this point and tempered the flowers, or even if there were a white pepper note to add a little zing. Sadly, the peppercorn is MIA. The rice flower is the oddling in this group. It appears later and adds a flat, doughy note that brings the scent down. Poor rice flower doesn't wear pink on Wednesday.  

This is a sugary, lemony, green tea candy where the sweetner is honey instead of sugar. The khus doesn't really come out to play. Hopefully it will with some more time. It could benefit from a deeper grassy note to pull it away from the sweetness. 

When first applied, this is charred wood and tangerine. I was not impressed and almost scrubbed it. The wood was acrid. I forgot about it while playing video games when I started to get whiffs of something wonderful. It mellowed into a warm saffron scent where the saffron behaves itself for once. The saffron melds with the black amber and vetiver to become a lightly spiced, slightly waxy resin. 

This is a light, wispy scent. The amber and lilac go together nicely. This isn't a heady lilac, it's more an imprint of lilacs you smelled long ago or are far away. The amber is the soft, almost powdery kind that serves as a foundation but isn't overt. This is a pleasant scent, but too light for me. It's like when you put on a sweater you haven't worn in a while and you smell the perfume you last wore on it. 

This is heavy on the incense (is that fucking nag champa ruining the party again?), and light on the honey and mushroom. 

I knew I was in trouble when I started hearing things like "fizzy" and "champagne." Those types of notes tend to go soapy on me and Spurious Cooter Bees is no exception. This is a fizzy ginger ale soap. 

This is predominantly black musk on me with a little red musk and soft, sweet cardamom.  

Sweet, dry grass, roses, and lilies, a touch of dry, papery dead leaves, cool, green cypress comes out later.  I don't get lavender or Dorian. 

Salty, buttered peach popcorn. I could see this smelling like traditional peach cobbler - with the biscuits on top. 

Dryer sheets with a hint of peach and bergamot. 

Starts off non-minty snow note. Normally I really dislike the Lab's snow notes, but here it's soft and just chilly. The blueberry is there just being quiet and sweet. The snow burns off quickly and leaves a soft, sugary blueberry. I get a little hit of lime that helps keep it atmospheric instead of fruity or gourmand. I don't get blackberry, which I'm happy about because it goes soapy on me.

Starts off as a strong, almost minty herb, then becomes an herbal, almost medicinal coconut (not as unpleasant as it sounds), then creamy, sweet coconut SN.

Starts off as vague, soapy florals and candle wax. It's giving me craft store vibes. A sweet, soft leather, like the note from Diana, comes out and it's sweet leather with sweet, waxy beeswax, it's okay at this stage, but not extraordinary. Then it softens down to waxy soap. 

Lavender Lightning is not what I was at all expecting. I don't get much petrichor or ozone in it, but it's a delightfully complex scent that will probably be glorious during sweaty weather. The first notes I get are lavender and lime. It's giving me a lavender fougere vibe. Then I get spearmint and thyme? There's some nice green herbal shooting through it. It makes me think of a little of Lush's Dirty shower gel. Very refreshing and herbal. It's the feeling of a thunderstorm, but not the smell of one.