Shollin

First sniff: It’s a clean, soft floral. Very fresh and green. It’s just on the very edge of soapy… I’m hoping my skin doesn’t amplify that problem.

Wearing: Oh, this is pretty. Gently floral and green. It reminded me throughout its wearing of Asphodel, though it’s fresh and green where Asphodel is deeper and richer. It stuck to my wrists all day, which is unusual for a clean floral. Just lovely.

First sniff: Earthy green incense, smoke and seawater. Near the beach house my family rents every summer, there’s a brick fireplace-and-chimney standing by itself where the house burned down around it, standing in a clearing between the woods and the sea. Forest-smoke-sea all together, that’s this scent.

Wearing: Dark, foresty, resiny, and a few hours in it developed a really interesting dark-honey sort of sweetness. Nice.

First sniff: Dark and spicy cherry cough syrup. The cherry is really sweet.

Wearing: I tried on Bat’s Blood yesterday, and this alas reminds me of the “liquid Red Hots” impression I got from that one, with a bit more sweet than spice.

The resurrected version:

First sniff: Liquid Red Hots. Very much a sweet spicy-cinnamon explosion.

Wearing: The Red Hots hit my skin and developed a glorious deep undercurrent of dragon’s blood. Wasn’t expecting that! There’s still sweetness and spicy-cinnamon floating above, but mostly it’s deep rich red wonderful dragon’s blood.

Unfortunately, as it dries, the dragon’s blood fades away and it’s back to Red Hots.

A note from your friendly neighbourhood review mod: This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews of this upcoming scent. The full description will be added when it goes live on the Lab's website.

A note from your friendly neighbourhood review mod: This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews of this upcoming scent. The full description will be added when it goes live on the Lab's website.

A note from your friendly neighbourhood review mod: This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews of this upcoming scent. The full description will be added when it goes live on the Lab's website.

A note from your friendly neighbourhood review mod: This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews of this upcoming scent. The full description will be added when it goes live on the Lab's website.

A note from your friendly neighbourhood review mod: This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews of this upcoming scent. The full description will be added when it goes live on the Lab's website.

First sniff: Bitingly cold air, sunsparkles on the snow. There’s a hint of berries and greenery underneath, but it’s all sheathed in ice.

Wearing: Frozen flowers and frozen berries hidden just beneath the surface of a frozen world. The sweetness is there, but I can’t get to it through the bitter cold.

First sniff: In the vial it’s all spice and resin – the honeysuckle is hidden away. Strong dragon’s blood, a sprinkle of pepper, and something that smells like frankincese to me.

Wearing: Dragon’s blood and pepper. I get a tiny whiff of honeysuckle tickling around the edges, but the spice-and-resin overwhelms it.

I'm trying something new to make the organization of reviews a bit more proactive, and hopefully it'll be helpful to those intrepid souls who post The First Review of a new scent.

I'm going to start posting new review topics for each new scent as it goes live. (Some sharp-eyed forumites may have noticed a few of these appearing this evening for the handful of Literary Vampire scents that didn't yet have reviews.)

This "placeholder" topic will contain all the information that eventually ends up in every review topic - the full Lab description (including any poetic or literary inspiration), the release date, any relevant subcategory - but this way, it'll be there from the beginning. And the process for posting new reviews will change only slightly:

1) You get your bottle, you sniff it, you love it (or hate it), you want to tell us about it.

2) You do a search* for the name of the scent. This isn't a change; you should be doing this anyway before posting new topics.

3) Voila! Even if no one else has reviewed it yet, the placeholder topic for that scent will pop up, and you'll post your review as a reply to that topic.

4) Whoever is first to review, please report the topic's first post so I can merge it with yours. That way you'll be listed as the Topic Starter. (This reminder will also be included in every placeholder topic I post.)

And there's a new subforum, too!

As part of trying to get reviews more organized, we've made a new place for Event Exclusives, where you'll find reviews of the Trunk Show prototypes, along with Comic-Con exclusives, Convergence scents, things you can buy only at Will Call, that sorta thing. The Retail Exclusives subforum is still around for things like the Traveling Salon Exhibit, Dark Delicacies' Summer Blockbuster Series, and other retail-only scents that don't require you to attend a certain event to get your hands on 'em.

Questions? My PM box is always open.

*Almost-foolproof search tips for finding anything in Reviews:

1) Type the name of the scent into the "Search by Keywords" blank. (Hyphens are your enemy; the site treats a hyphen as a minus sign, so if you search for "lambs-wool" it thinks you mean "find 'lambs' but not 'wool'," and the search will fail. Just put a space in; searching for "lambs wool" or "ya te vo" works just fine.)

2) In the "Search Where" box, highlight "Reviews." (The box for "Search in child forums" should already be checked; that's the default, If it's not, check it now.)

3) Under "Refine Search," select the option for "Search titles only." (The option for "Show results as topics" should already be selected; that's the default. If it's not, select it now.)

4) Search!

5) If you can't find what you're looking for, check here. If you still can't find it, please PM me before starting a new topic yourself... I'm pretty good at hunting these things down.

First sniff: Soft-sweet flowers and greenery over dry wood.

Wearing: It’s very “perfumey” on me, far more so than in the bottle. It’s a sweet-white-flower scent, but a very perfumey one.

First sniff: Beautiful strong vanilla. It’s a different sort of vanilla, too, more of a bright-sweet scent than a rich-warm one.

Wearing: A floral vanilla, not a bakery vanilla. Smelling vanilla usually makes me hungry, but this one is much closer to the plant than the cookie. I’ve never been around an actual vanilla plant, but man, if this is what they smell like, I want to live on a vanilla farm. And I think my husband agrees, because when I asked his opinion, he snuggled his nose into my wrist and wouldn’t give it back.

First sniff: Ooh. This is nicer than I expected. It’s an aquatic, of course, but instead of a cold-rainy-ozoney aquatic like I’m used to, this one is a warm, sunny, green aquatic that reminds me of snorkeling in the Caymans on my honeymoon.

Wearing: Gorgeous and sunny and soft and relaxing. It wraps me up in a happy cloud of memories.

First sniff: Smoke in the jungle. Harsh, bitter smoke and wet green leaves. I can’t get the image of the “smoke monster” from LOST out of my head.

Wearing: The wet greenness is definitely different – it’s a really interesting contrast with the dry, acrid smoke. But Moai is in the same family as Djinn and Brimstone, and I can’t wear those either.

First sniff: I madly adore orchid, but I fear the gardenia, which is quite prominent from the bottle in its white sweetness. The orchid hangs back a bit, a rich warm presence surrounding the gardenia.

Wearing: Instantly it’s an enormous cloud of gardenia and nothing else. I smell like the girl Frank Butler wants to marry. Sadly, nothing else ever really shows up.

First sniff: Warm pineapple cookies. It smells way more like a baked goodie than a cocktail.

Wearing: Very serious pineapple, warm bakery vanilla, a little sprinkle of toasted coconut. Nom nom nom.

First sniff: Very fresh and green and wet. It reminds me quite a bit of Holiday Moon.

Wearing: It’s nice to smell like spring when there’s yet more unexpected snow on the ground. There’s a lovely light citrusy-floral bit floating above the jungle of wet greenness.

First sniff: It’s a bit muddled and chaotic in the bottle – the only things I can make out clearly are almond and booze.

Wearing: Hellooooo cherry-almond madness! Drat. I was hoping the citrus and mint would show up to the party, but it’s all cherry-almond booze on me.

First sniff: Pineapple and ginger and grapefruit, immediately – it’s sweet and spicy and tart all at once. It’s a bit of an olfactory assault from the bottle, but a pleasant one.

Wearing: Fresh ginger grated over fresh pineapple with an undercurrent of Grand Guignol’s apricot brandy. It’s intense without being loud. I like.

First sniff: Wow, that’s loud. Screamingly neon-bright sweet-tart fruit and rum.

Wearing: My nose insists on interpreting this as pina colada even though there’s no coconut in it. It’s the kind of fantastic frozen fruity tropical drink I want right by my lounge chair at the beach.

First sniff: Like sweetpea, gin appears to be a note that messes up any scent it’s in for me. Which makes me sad, because the outer edges of this are beautiful tropical fruits and sweet pineapple, but the gin is really overwhelming.

Wearing: Fizzy and fruity and sunny… but yeah, too much gin. Dangit.

First sniff: If I hold the bottle right up to my nose, the gin is pretty much all I smell, with a tiny splash of tropical fruit in the background. From farther away, the blueberry is what wafts. I don’t think I’ve ever had a scent do that before.

The second half of my reviews usually starts with Wearing: but this time...

Spilled on my desk: Due to my own severe klutziness, I’ve been surrounded in a cloud of this stuff every time I've been at my computer for the past several days. I’ve also been sick for about the same period of time, so I now have a bad association with it and don't want to try it on. It’s headachey-boozey blueberry and it needs to go away.

First sniff: A very manly coconut over warm wood and a waft of bright tartness.

Wearing: Musky coconut heaven, and a little bit of lemon.