angelamaria

In decant: soapy florals and citruses. I didn't expect it to be this strong, although I think I should have expected it.

 

Wet on skin: soapy, almost grandmothery florals and citruses. The citrus should have given it a bright edge, but while it does peek out, the florals are definitely going to town here. Slightly boozy, with an old fashioned feel.

 

Dry: soapy florals--more "white" than anything else, but this isn't your delicate or dainty white--this is a bold sort of white. And a heavy touch of almost-boozy fruit feel to it for me, and definitely soapy.

 

Verdict: I expected this to be the most promising of the anniversaries, but oh well! Definitely not for me.

In decant: green and citrusy, with a definite "juicy" feel--seems to be crisp apple.

 

Wet on skin: green fresh note, apple, and citrus. This is actually cool to the skin, and slightly minty--maybe there is a hint of eucalyptus here, or a different slightly-medicinal mint. But the overall effect is not medicinal--sweet juicy apple. Apple juice with ice?

 

Dry: well, it's morphed into a soapy apple. The green-ness is gone, as well as the citrus feel, and what's left is the sweet soapy apple that is going faintly grandmothery over time, which leads me to suspect some white musk element here.

 

Verdict: pass! The wet phase was nice but this just didn't work out.

In bottle: sharp floral, slightly sweet and slightly citrusy.

 

Wet on skin: light floral, citrusy and summery, and the sharp note in the bottle is thankfully note present. Smoothed out by faint, soft spices, and a yellow/golden scent, which seems apt. There's a slight powderiness that is coming out, but it's faint and not overwhelming, rather pleasant really, a nice mix with the aforementioned spices--so far.

 

Dry: at this point I started looking at the review thread, and this shows you how much my nose has to learn--when I read amber, that's when I realized that YES, this blend has a nice smooth amber. Which also explains the dustiness, but it's not all gone to dust. Amber, and a bouquet of yellow/golden flowers, creamy and smooth. The amber becomes stronger and more prominent the longer it stays on my skin, too.

 

Verdict: keeper! Such a beautiful scent. My, I seem to really like protos...

In imp: cool floral, slightly heady at first sniff.

 

Wet on skin: whoaaaa dusty floral. Slightly green, somewhat cool, but not minty. A fresh, natural-smelling blend, were it not for the dusty rose, although the dustiness seems to be quieting down.

 

Dry: sweet--almost syrupy sweet--florals, bright and fresh and faintly cloying. A bright and lively scent, and I can see why this is well loved. Obviously, the rose has disappeared for me, but the dustiness has disappeared, or at least has died down enough to not be noticeable and have the fresh flowers and nature scent shine through unheeded. The green-ness and faint resins ground this scent well.

 

Verdict: if this were still available, I'd probably get a bottle, but by now I'm really not looking forward to yet another discon hunt.

A Wonderful Light is an instant must-buy for me (linden blossom and vanilla are absolute win), but I recently was able to test an earlier year's Pink Snowballs so I'm adding that in when I finally make my before-Weenies-come-down order...and hope that this year's Pink Snowballs is just as nice and plays well with me.

 

My other two Yule scents that I have tested and consider keepers are Snowblind and Waltz of the Snowflakes.

 

Why yes, I love vanilla!

Is Glittering Apple of the Stars much like Ladon? They seem to be similarly structured, from the descriptions (apples + floral + light musks + a sweet base note), but I haven't seen any explicit comparisons.

It's been a while since I sniffed/tried Ladon, but no--I remember hoping for apple from it, but dry, I got hyacinth and an old-ladyish feel from Ladon, whereas Glittering Apple stayed a crisp sweet/sugary crystalline apple.

In tester: tobacco flower, faint lily, tea rose, and carnations. A touch of sandalwood.

Wet on skin: tobacco flower, sandalwood, and tea rose. Aaaand the rose is getting dusty, very dusty--the kind that makes me want to sneeze, too. The sandalwood is quite prominent for me, and the lily is fading away--which is a shame. Smoky tobacco flower and sandalwood giving this a faintly incensey feel (though I wouldn't call it an incensey blend), and the carnations are starting to come up.

Dry: well, what do you expect? Powdery rose, and that's it--none of the other notes are coming out for me now that the rose has trampled everything to oblivion.

Verdict: it's a shame, tea rose can work on me sometimes. Oh well!

In decant: woody tonka, and a bitter, dry note.

 

Wet on skin: very resinous blend with a hint of tonka. Wet, it's slightly salty in feel, an aquatic sort of saltiness, but it's also very dry. "Dry aquatic" doesn't make sense, but this is it. It does seem to be spot on for a Mary Celeste/ghost ship scent. Quite evocative, and I like the smell, but I'm not sure I'd ever wear this.

 

Dry: very woody blend, some tonka creaminess, with a salty dry feel and faint dry greens. Gender neutral and very evocative. Much later, all the creaminess and tonka seem to have disappeared on me, leaving behind old dry oak wood. An interesting development--from a dry and run-down wood with hints of salty aquatics, into a salty old dry wood scent.

 

Verdict: very evocative, and quite pleasing--I'd be super interested to see this get released.

In imp: green, with some florals.

Wet on skin: green and lightly citrusy--definitely getting the lemon blossom here. It's somewhat understated in feel, soft, and really, really pretty. I would say it's floral, citrusy, and clean, with a hint of complexity since, to me, it changes between a white/yellow/green scent at different whiffs.

Dry: soapy, but oh so nice. A soft, clean skin scent, I'd love to drop this into lotion or some such and slather it on myself. I actually forgot about this blend for a couple of months, and wrote it off eventually from my keeper list, but kept the bottle. After revisiting it recently--wow. With a bit of aging, it's not so much green now as soft and creamy and resinous--this one definitely does well aged. It's still green and citrusy and pretty white flowers, but the resins and sandalwood ground this very well and it's certainly become a dreamlike and shimmering scent.

Verdict: definitely back on the keeper list! What was I thinking?

In tester: an earthy, grassy note, almost sharp. Something feels familiar.

 

Wet on skin: doesn't change from the tester scent, and I've realized what this reminds me of: Thunder and Blazes! I could swear this was Thunder and Blazes, although I don't have my decant or empty anymore to be sure. The dirt/earth/grass note they share is very, very identical to my memory, and I remember a fair bit because T&B was one of the first blends I smelled that was "weird", or not traditionally perfume-like.

 

Dry: this doesn't change at all for me, from the tester scent down to the drydown.

 

Verdict: interesting because of the T&B similarity, but not for me.

In decant: chocolate, coffee, and...uh, flowers?! This is a weird scent. I get white and/or yellow flowers as the floral notes.

 

Wet on skin: aaaand yup. Chcoolate, a bit of coffee, and some bright florals, with a touch of citrus. It's a bit weird, although it may be just my nose not knowing how to process the scent, exactly. As it dries, the chocolate note is getting noticeably fainter on me, and the florals more pronounced. It's almost too "bright" but the chocolate is tempering it well. This is quite an interesting blend.

 

Dry: well, dry, the chocolate seems to have quite disappeared! Looks like my skin is the culprit here--going from very chocolatey in the decant, to just plain almost-sharp yellow flowers. There is still that chocolate note lurking in the shadows and giving it a sort of richer feel, but not remarkably so, and there is a slightly sour note coming up for me, too, again likely something with my skin chemistry being the issue.

 

Verdict: initially I thought this might be a keeper, but the drydown is too weird for me, especially seeing how it's so different from the decant scent--it will likely be too volatile a blend for me. So, pass.

In decant: creamy tonka and citrus, with some sweet spices and a foody vibe--the cake-y foody vibe.

 

Wet on skin: creamy, slightly resinous tonka. Hello tonka, I do love you. This is still slightly foody, maybe cinnamony, but it's missing the cake vibe now, which is just as well. Sweet but not cloying, and a more vanilla-than-tonka note is emerging. A hint of the citrus also remains, but it's definitely more of a spicy blend now than citrusy.

 

Dry: very sweet-spicy to my nose, cinnamony and creamy vanilla/tonka. Low throw. And...this rather reminds me of a softer, no-carnation Morocco: sweet and creamy spices, soft and inviting and mysterious. And...without the clove-y carnation, too, which is what eventually broke the deal with Morocco for me. As it ages on my skin, the blend gets softer, slightly dustier, but still very lovely.

 

Verdict: I finally tested this proto to see if I should get a bottle, and I'm glad I did. I love it, and it's different enough from Morocco v2 (which is Morocco with lavender, and something I already have) to justify getting it.

In tester: a musky aquatic, salty, and a hint of night flowers; a kind of purple "feel".

 

Wet on skin: definitely a salty aquatic, and doesn't really change from the tester scent for me. There's a slight ominous, "purply" feeling, but it's not exactly dark or menacing, and I wouldn't classify this as a dark scent. It's just not "light" like most aquatics are, but yet not deeply sorrowful and heavy like some other aquatics.

 

Dry: does not really change from the wet phase, but does smooth out and blend together better, and becomes a tad softer. Some people have mentioned Sea of Glass, and I can see that, but it wasn't the first scent that came to mind when I smelled this--to me, it was like a less-sad and less-floral Annabel Lee...but with the flowers there transformed to a lot of salt.

 

Verdict: tempted to get a bottle, but I fluctuate between liking this and thinking it's a bit too somber for me. Maybe I'll retest and think again.

Know your way around a computer? Why, F5, of course!

 

All seriousness aside, personally I would probably wear something light. Light floral, light vanilla, "white" scents--anything as long as it's fairly unassuming and not in-your-face...although, well, some of my favorites kind of fall under that "category", so I find I'm not too hard-pressed finding something. Fresh scents would also probably work, white and green and clean as long as they are not "sharp".

I loved Serpents as well, but I gave up on finding a bottle of it It's just not as popular and so there's little of it floating around, I think. Other green scents that aren't replacements for Serpents but I also liked--and maybe you will too--are Envy and Sea of Glass. They're both green scents, which I'm discovering I'm just not as in love with as I thought I was.

 

For Hesperides, have you tried any of the apple scents currently available from the Halloweenies? I'm afraid Hesperides didn't work out on my skin but you might find a good apple replacement in one of the LEs.

 

 

Viridian, I mentioned this elsewhere but for the rest, Tree of Life reminded me of Black Opal when I tried it. Black Opal is tonka to me, and Tree of Life had the same kind of tonka--to my untrained nose, anyway Also, I think someone also gave a few suggestions in another thread very shortly after the announcement--I'm not sure which at the moment.

Is customer service/emails still backlogged for the lab?

In imp: green, clean! Definite yes on the "purity, crystalline" scent description. Makes me think of bright light--and you know when you look out on a lake or sea etc and the sun is shining on the water and the water looks like a bed of diamonds? Yes, this is it.

 

Wet on skin: green, with faint white florals. Clean and beautiful and uplifting, almost healing and rejuvenating.

 

Dry: beautiful. Sweet and bright and uplifting, slightly tart; pure and crystalline. Green with just a slight touch of floral, and I think a citrus as well. Very spot on with the "sea"--it gets more and more aquatic on my skin as it "ages". Doesn't really morph from the wet phase.

 

Verdict: admittedly, this was a bottle scent, before I found Parsifal which is now more to my liking. I still love how evocative the blend is, but on the times I've worn it, it does tend to be quite sharp for me, so I'll be looking for a new home for my bottles.

In decant: crisp white floral, petitgrain, and ozone. Definitely a "clean" scent. White..

 

Wet on skin: paperwhite narcissus, indeed. Paperwhite florals, with a touch of citrus and ozone. Very beautiful and fresh, clean smelling. Initially it goes dusty on me--I hope this disappears as the dustiness doesn't go well with the ozone. Well-blended, feminine.

 

Dry: doesn't change from the wet phase. All throughout my initial test, I've been trying to figure out what this scent was reminding me, a general catalog scent, something I've tested before and really liked too, but I wasn't sure. After a good while, I finally realized that it was Sea of Glass, which was a bottle scent. Against Sea of Glass, this is much more softer, and with that floral tone whereas Sea of Glass has a definite aquatic tinge (in addition to the ozone).

 

Verdict: keeper! This is replacing the spot Sea of Glass has in my perfume collection.

This little review has quite a story to tell. A few weeks ago--maybe two months, or even more!--I became friends with a lovely lady through her sales post. She was such a dear and sent me testers of a good chunk of her collection, which included hard-to-find blends! She gave me a dry sniffie of JKv6, or it wasn't dry before she sent it, but it was dry when it reached me! I was perfectly all right with it--it still smelled divine, and confirmed to me that I needed to skin-test this beauty, stat. Upon learning that it was dry, she straightaway sent me ANOTHER SNIFFIE. In the middle of this second package, another super-lovely friend sent me a fairy package...which INCLUDED a sniffie of JKv6 too!

 

So you might say this was meant to be. I delayed in testing, however, because I was not feeling well for a time there. When I finally did...well, you will find out.

 

In tester: oh wow. Orange, dusky, slightly musky, but it's sweet in a non-candylike way. Just...sweet, slightly honeyed in feel. Lovely. Winner. Must skin-test. MUST!!

 

Wet on skin: creamy, slightly musky and full orange. OHHHHH, super love. A nice sweetness, but it's not candyish, more of a honey sort of sweetness that blends well. A deep, full, womanly orange, though "womanly" isn't something you would usually say about an orange scent! Very, very pretty. LOVVVVEEEEE.

 

Dry: light throw, pleasing and..."adult"? This is colored by my experience with the "creamsicle" PL176, which I love, but is a bit too childish a lot of times. So this is like an older and age-appropriate PL176, creamy and vanilla-ey and resinous and musky and sexy and sweet without going into candy territory. Light throw, will probably need to reapply, but I am now super itching to find myself a wearable amount!! It's dried to a nice, sexy orange-y scent, creamy and slightly resinous in just the way I like it.

 

Verdict: SUPER WIN, omg. This also kind of makes me weep, because I've seen a couple bottles on sale before and it's always gone for more than my BPAL bottle budget, which is fairly high already. Okay, it's nowhere near Storyville high, but...SORRY I AM RAMBLING. BUT, THIS IS LOVE. THAT IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW.

In tester: ooh. Coffee and a hint of carnation. Smoky, creamy, and soft and rich. Very nice, and quite promising. I'll have to watch that carnation though.

 

Wet on skin: uhhhh. Cologney, chemically, and alcoholly? This is quite disconcerting. I think it might be the leather. Other notes I can get are coffee, tobacco, and is it possible the carnation is even softer? Not clove-y so far.

 

Dry: soft, soft leather--and the aforementioned alcoholly note continued to fade away into virtually nothing. Aging would probably work for this one, to even out that leather and remove that high-pitched chemical note. Coffee, and tobacco and a vaguely carnation note is still hanging around, in that order. Masculine, quite sexy.

 

Verdict: it is VERY tempting to get a bottle of this. This is sexy, masculine, and I love it, but I really wouldn't use it since masculine isn't for me. But...oh, so TEMPTING. *twitch*

In tester: whoa. super sweet syrupy cotton candy, a touch of pine and faint flowers. Quite dead on.

 

Wet on skin: hello, cotton candy! This is far too sweet for me, for sure, although it's a very pleasant cotton candy smell. The sugary-ness has faded a little from the tester scent to let the pine and wildflowers take a bit more of the spotlight, but it's still predominantly a cotton candy scent. But it's definitely better IMO now than it was in the tester.

 

Dry: sadly, with my skin chemistry, the sugar goes all burnt but the pine and wildflowers hold their own, and is quite pleasing. It's a bit saddening really: the wet phase, when the sugar wasn't too sugary and the pine and wildflowers were not cowering in the corner was quite nice--if the sugar was dialled down a bit, that phase would probably be a bottle scent. And I think, if the sugar did not go burnt on me, in time it would have been that way on my skin.

 

Verdict: spot-on, but my skin chemistry messes it up.

This is like that song that you seem to know the tune of but can't pinpoint, or that quote, or whatever that's on the tip of your tongue. Halp! So I'm testing Parsifal tonight (care of my lovely witch and nacho witch) and this reminds me of something that I've tested before (BPAL too). Only I just can't put a finger on it!

 

Paperwhite narcissus, petitgrain, rosemary, cyclamen, and ozone accord.

 

I was wondering if it might be Dirty, but I have no imp anymore and to my memory, I like this better than Dirty. I've sniffed my light floral bottles and none of them are as long as what I remember.

 

Any suggestions?

In tester: oooh, nice. Green and resinous sandalwood, somewhat smoky.

 

Wet on skin: sandalwood and ivy. Simple, somewhat smoky in feel. This is a very nice and uncomplicated blend, although I'm not yet too sure if I'd wear it.

 

Dry: a nice, soft, gentle green scent, grounded by the sandalwood: a simple and almost understated blend, uncomplicated (which is good!). It's green, but quite notably different from your usual green blends--there is no "brightness" or crispness here. Unfortunately, it seems the smokiness is amping quite a lot on me--it's bordering on powdery, although I'm not entirely sure which is the culprit here.

 

Verdict: I had hopes for this one, and I did retest to see how it goes, but it's ultimately a no: I doubt I would wear this much at all.

In tester: resinous and woody, by far. Somewhat incensey, definitely masculine.

 

Wet on skin: resins and frankincense, whoa. A bit difficult for me to pinpoint which note is which (I don't have a lot of experience with wood notes), but definitely woody and resinous and incensey.

 

Dry: the chamomile comes up to add a touch of brightness, but still well in line with the woods and resins here: a rich blend of frankincense and woods and resins and a hint of chamomile. Masculine, color impression is a rich brown with a touch of smoke.

 

Verdict: interesting, but not for me.

In tester: creamy linen, smoky tobacco, light florals, and a touch of masculine cologne.

 

Wet on skin: a very evocative blend. Linen, smoky tobacco, sad florals, and laudanum. That masculine cologne is keeping this from a feminine blend despite the florals--quite gender neutral--and it blends well with the other notes. Very evocative of Poe, and yes, while this is suitably gender neutral, it does side a bit more on the masculine side for me. A dustiness also comes out for me as it tries that's distinctly different from the smokiness of the tobacco.

 

Dry: dry, it's ink and cologne (maybe it is one and the same, but my nose gets confused) and linen, not so much sad florals as those other "notes". Very spot on--in addition to all that, there's a hint of a dark menace underneath, or maybe more of a dark unknown or mystery that is not exactly menacing but somewhat...feared.

 

Verdict: I was very tempted to get a bottle because of the Poe connection, and I do think this is a fabulous scent for him. However, I really wouldn't be using it :/ So it's a pass.