malanna

Crapulence! I don't actually feel like applying Snowblind and keeping it on as the sole scent of the day just to re-review it, so I will be going on memory. Snowblind starts out slightly buttery and smelling slightly fizzy, almost like a Sprite, but mostly like the carbonation of a soda. It gets really buttery over time. It smells a great deal like Spooky, actually, except it didn't smell like mint so much as it smelled like...well, I don't remember. Perhaps peppermint? It's really, really buttery and the butteriness dominates the scent.

The Coiled Serpent is a lot of patchouli and something vaguely lemony, with herbs and a bit of vetiver. Over time, the vetiver comes out, and after three hours, it smells like dirt. I'm not sure what a yogic oil does, and I'm not so big on how it smells, so I won't be holding on to this.

Nefertiti starts out as a light floral. As it dries, I can smell the herbs! Sweet herbs that remind me of a scent that had some relation to Ireland (Irish name?). After a two hours, there's something balmy to it, and after four, there's something in it that makes me think of amber. After a lot more hours, it smells like dry herbs with a sandalwood backing.

Lurid starts out with slightly humid lavender and ozone. While it's drying, there's a kick of currant that comes out. It's lightly sweet and is slightly tart, but not too much so. It's a purple scent, with the memory of lavender in the background. Even though the lavender is very, very light, I just keep having the scent memory of lavender, which sort of ruins Lurid for me. After a few hours, there's musk and a hint of the resins. It almost makes Lurid a dry scent. It smells like the dry feeling you get when you sniff a spicy scent that's been on your skin for more than eight hours and has melded into your skin.

I read the reviews and I was very intrigued by how Stardust could smell like cheap hairspray. Not only that, what does cheap hairspray smell like? Well, now I know what cheap hairspray smells like, courtesy of Stardust. Like everyone else says, this starts out with tuberose and ylang ylang. At the same time, it's hairspray. Then it's hairspray with a bit of white musk. Then there's a bit more champagne in the mix. After a few hours, it gets slightly spicy, a spicy sort of floral (perhaps it's the tobacco flower?). It's not very spicy, just rather surprising given the notes list. Then, as it's fading, it's slightly spicy floral with the white musk. Not so much hairspray then.

This starts out smelling very fizzy, vaguely like Sprite, because of all the carbonation. The mint comes out half an hour later, but it still smells like Sprite. An hour later, it smells a bit like the first stage of The Dormouse, when it's all acridic herbs and astringent smelling. Another hour later, it calms down, and smells cool. It doesn't make me think mint so much as menthol and the cool feeling your tongue gets when you're chewing on icy gum--the stage immediately after the initial "gah, my tongue is overwhelmed by the coolness of the gum" stage. Nuclear Winter pretty much smells the same after that, except, of couse, getting lighter as it dries.

Al-Shairan starts out very spicy, reminding me of Gingerbread Poppet or Shub-Niggurath. After half an hour, I thought I smelled something like rosewood--something floral yet woodsy. However, after and hour, I'm definitely picking up on the clove and incense notes, although it smells rather soapy. It smells less soapy, but also less of incense over time and is practically gone after five hours.

Holy kazowza, this was very strong on the oakmoss the first few hours. It smelled like the moss-covered brown roots, with a hint of dirt. It made me think I was smelling some vetiver, too. However, after several hours (at least five), the patchouli's come out and a bit of copal and heliotrope--something that's making it slightly sweet. It's really interesting how it turned out, but Greed just isn't my sort of scent.

Chaos Theory XXXI

allamanda gifted this to me a while back. What a sweetheart.

 

Immediately upon application, I'm hit by grape juice. Really tart Welch's grape juice. After about ten minutes, there's a hint of florals that rounds out the tart sweetness of the grape juice. Further along, it's very plum-y well mixed with a floral that seems rather familiar. It makes me think of gardenia, in the whole sugary sweetness wafting about sort of way, but I'm pretty sure what I'm smelling isn't gardenia. It dries down to sweet herbs, herbs in the vein of Leanan Sidhe (maybe also like the herbs in The Dormouse's drydown, but I can't quite remember what it smells like).

 

Reviewed by allamanda

Like everyone else said, this was very powdery. A lot of scents will turn to powder on me, and I'll think, "Hmm, something like a light dusting of perfumed powder on my skin," but this one actually made me think of baby powder, lots of it, dumped on my skin. I don't actually think this is a bad scent, although I don't enjoy it. I'm sure other people would. There's some sickly florals in the powder, and I think in the beginning, since people mentioned it, I can detect some lemon (a very perfumey type of lemon). At the end, there might be some jasmine, because there's something in the floral powder that I really do not like. This might've worked, because when I went to make copies and buy candy bars, there was some change left in the machines. However, I'd worn this several times, meaning to review this, without any extra money, so I wouldn't say that it worked on me.

Jacob's Ladder smelled like floral water, the kind with red rose that you buy to spritz on your bed sheets and ends up smelling like potpourri. Fortunately, the incense and amber that was in the background pushed the floral water aside (even though it took them two hours). As a scent, Jacob's Ladder evolves by becoming lighter on the amber and having the incense (especially the benzoin) become more prominent. The drydown smells like powdered incense, somewhat similar to Midnight Mass, but not as sweet or woodsy (by woodsy, I mean that Midnight Mass smelled like glossy pews).

I visited several cathedrals when I was in Europe (that is the thing to do, when you're a tourist in Europe, after all), and Midnight Mass really does make me think of the vastness, holiness, and smoothed woods of the cathedrals. Now, I'm not so sure if this is the power of suggestion (once I read a description, whatever was describes gets associated with the scent), but regardless, Midnight Mass is a nice scent. I'm not very familiar with what frankincense and myrrh smell like, so I'll just say that this smells like sweet incense. In the beginning, it smelled like incense with a hint of sour berries, but the berries faded away over the hours to leave sweet incense. I was pleasantly surprised by this. I had been expecting to dislike it, but the sweetness has me on the fence.

Chaos Theory CLVIII

I don't think this has been reviewed yet. This was received from a swap.

 

This starts out smelling of lavender or something like it, that I don't really like. If it's lavender, it's not one of those lavenders that end up being very humid and hot smelling, but the sweeter variety. After an hour, it starts to smell a bit fruity--perhaps berries? The white musk comes out a short while after. After three hours, it starts to smell like dry musk, with dried herbs and berries (sort of like potpourri). Six hours later, it smells like spicy incense, sort of like a cross between church incense and the Snake Oil spices.

The Living Flame had joined my favorite LEs pile, the LEs I was going to keep around. Currently, that pile consists of Samhain, Lick It, and Milk Moon. It's a very selective pile (I guess it's not really a pile...). The Living Flame is no longer in that pile. Perhaps it just wasn't as fantastic as I'd remembered it, or maybe my skin chemistry changed. I'm really sad though, because I had thought I'd found a floral scent I really liked.

 

The Living Flame is basically just a haze of red (not a solid red, but a smokey haze of red). I think, before, it got to be a hazy, red, musky vanilla, but it just seems vaguely floral with a tad bit of musk. It seems vaguely remniscent of another LE in the red haze quality--maybe Lughnasadh? At one point, I thought that there was honeysuckle, because it got to be a very sweet floral. There's a tiny bit of musk that comes out later. The Living Flame is very light.

The first few times, I really loved Miskatonic University (Misky U makes a nice nickname, doncha think?). I was just enamoured with the foodiness. However, I came to realize that this was just too sweet for me. It starts out smelling like sweet coffee--something sweet and frothy you'd get from Starbucks--then gets even sweeter. Today, I realized that it smelled like that weird sweet note (so sweet, it doesn't quite smell like food anymore) that had a hint of hazelnut in the coffee (but not coffee, because it's too sweet) that was in Gluttony. I think there might be some tobacco in here. Some tobacco notes tend to have a piercing brown sweetness to it. It remains sweet, but after several hours, the sweetness is tempered by a hint of the dusty tomes--that slightly musty (and a tad bit sweet) note in The Hermit. Misky U is quite powerful and wafts a lot.

I was really surprised by this, because I hadn't expected it to smell as pumpkin-y as it did (PP 1 and 3 didn't). This is a buttery pumpkin, like Jack, but it was less buttery and had more than the pumpkin in Jack does, which surprised me, because I didn't expect sandalwood or orris to lend tang to the pumpkin. It pretty much stayed tangy pumpkin for at least five hours. After, the sandalwood and orris came out, making it a dry sort of scent, and finally, after eight hours, it was mostly dry and woody, all sandalwood and a little orris.

 

ADDED April 9:

 

I expected Pumpkin Patch 4 to be earthier. However, this is mostly buttery pumpkin with a hint of sandalwood. The hint of sandalwood actually gives PP4 a perfume like tint of artificiality. This is pretty consistent throughout, with the perfume aspects getting a bit stronger over time.

Annabel Lee is a very ethereal scent. It starts out mostly cucumber and sweet pea, but I the lilies definitely come out over time. I wonder what the difference is between lilies and sea lilies? After several hours, the sage and moss come out a bit more, and this gets to be a slightly spicy and woodsy scent.

I got this in a swap with brownbear.

 

I thought I would love this. I love food, foody scents have the highest success rate on me, and I love chocolate. Lump of Coal started out smelling like a combination of the chocolate in Bliss--a yummy milk chocolate bar--and the chocolate in 13--a perfumed chocolate (to me, nauseatingly so)--with a bit of a bias towards 13. Now, I can say that same chocolate gets slightly buttery, but it still has a perfumed tinge to it. If I sniff and think about it, I can say that it smells like brownies, but the perfume-y aspect just won't go away. Ah well. I guess the Lab knew what it was doing when I didn't get Lump of Coal in my Inquisition order.

I've tried this several time, each time intending to do a review, but saying I'd have to try it again to do a review. The first two times was slightly different than the last time I've tried this.

 

Buck Moon starts out with a whiff of sweet coconut--a very light coconut, yet still the strongest note. The last time I tried it, it ended up smelling of light coconut the whole way through, except with a hint of green musk (is there such a thing?) coming out after it dried, and perhaps sweet grass (sweetgrass! I love sweetgrass as a concept). The first two times, after the coconut, herbs (not sweet) popped out, accompanied by the "green" musk. I didn't like the herbs--well, I typically don't like scents when the herbs are the main focal point, so that's no surprise. Then, it got musk-y in a slightly acrid way. Not white musk, nor the green musk of before. I really liked the coconut in this scent, because it's not prominent, but rather ethereal.

 

Overall, a nice scent, but not something I feel that strongly about.

The City in the Sea starts out smelling like dark, murky sea, sort of in a similar way to Chthulhu. However, The City in the Sea is a sweeter smell than Cthulhu, and not actually bitter. I definitely do get a men's cologne/aftershave feel from this. It starts out smelling more like the waving kelp in the sea, and ends with light, slightly salty men's cologne.

The Lion is like basking in the warmth of a warm day's sun. The Lion starts out as a golden amber on me, with a bit of cinnamon. Oddly enough, the strength of The Lion fades quickly, not that it was an in-your-face type of scent to begin with. Upon drydown, it smells like the spices in Snake Oil, but much lighter. A nice scent, but not with much oomph on me.

In the vial, Pumpkin Patch 3 smells like the warm, buttery pumpkin of Jack. It still smells like that, with a bit of tang, shortly after application. Soon after, however, all I can smell is pomegranate. The one pomegranate experience I can remember clearly is Persephone. I'm sure I've sniffed more scents with pomegranates, but that's the only one I know that had pomegranate. However, although Pumpkin Patch 3 smells like pomegranate, it's a slightly buttery pomegranate, a pomegrate without the tang. A mellow pomegranate, if you will. It fades quite quickly, nearly unrecognizable after four hours.

I expected Bess to be a very floral scent, but it wasn't. It starts out strong on the rosemary and I can definitely detect the orange flower. However, the orange flower doesn't actually smell like the flower itself, but like orange flower extract--highly concentrated and slightly bitter. Or maybe the rosemary makes it so. In any case, I was starting to wonder if what I was smelling was grape, as I had expected a lot of grape because of the previous reviewers. Anyway, grape came out then, letting me know that what I had been smelling wasn't grape. It was, like another reviewer said, a white grape sort of scent. Maybe a white grape sort of liquor--there was a sort of alcoholic note to it. After several hours, it smells slightly floral and skin musky.

Medea was heavy on the black orchid and myrtle leaf, but it was especially strong in the black currant department. Thus, Medea was a dark scent, slightly floral and a bit of tang (but not very tangy, actually). Wearing it, I felt like I had a black cloud hanging around me.

Slightly fruit--like mimosa--with a hint of spices. The spices warm up upon drydown and Eris gets slightly musky. It's hard to describe it. It's not white, dark, or red musk, but the muskiness (that's a word, right?) that comes from the spices sinking into your skin and becoming a skin scent. This ísn't a distinctive sort of scent (at least after the first hour).