bheansidhe
-
Content Count
888 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by bheansidhe
-
This smells like the amped-up magical powerhouse cousin of Recovery Room and Blackout Blinds. I love it for work when the ambient noise of 2025 is jangling my nerves too much for me to really buckle down and hit my effective zone. The scent is herbal, zippy, citrusy, and gently sunny. I think it would be an amazing therapy adjunct.
-
I absolutely adore this for the hour or so that it twines around my wrist before slithering away into the grass.
-
I sniffed this at the DragonCon booth and my first thought was, "Wait, I thought I really disliked Fae Forest, but now it smells fresh and amazing!" Then I realized I had previously reviewed the ATMO, but my hand was holding the newly released HAIR GLOSS. I don't wear hair glosses except as a body spray, but this smelled intoxicatingly good. The last three RPG hair glosses (Fae Forest, Elven Glam, and Celestial Aura) have been solid rock stars. I look forward to reading some more hands-on reviews.
-
Onnagata Making Love at a Tea House as Mane’emon Watches While Holding a Kite
bheansidhe replied to Jenjin's topic in Lupercalia
The sugared patchouli, caramel, and tobacco flower aspects create a Snake Oil-Lite variant on my skin. I can't wear Snake Oil at all, so it's pleasant to vibe along with the OG while that stage lasts. Overall, the blend opens and ends with a poof of soft orange blossom that's girlish but not cloying. -
Sniffed: musty roasted nuttiness, hearth smoke, soft leather book bindings, and parchment paper notes. Applied: all of the above, plus pale, austere beeswax. There's a light sweetness that's distinctly beeswax and not a honey note. Wear: very true to the notes. The gourmand and hearth/library aspects are so interwoven that it's hard to call the blend desserty or pictorial or both. However you characterize it, it never loses the smokiness, but the gusts of sweetness vary from sweet wax to sweet wood resins to sugared, nutty biscotti. It stays low on the skin, but smoulders a long time. The final effect of the smoke reads like hearth tobacco and teakwood incense.
-
Lots of dried mango and spicy clove to start -- at this stage it reminds me of Vero Mango lollipops or mango chamoyada candy sticks. The rest of the blend is quite subtle, with a touch of floaty resins, but no big stompy notes. Fades to a gentle glow of mango and a dark resiny note.
-
Last year the Lab released a Pumpkin Nut Bread Atmosphere Spray (Pumpkin-puree baked into a walnut-studded loaf, steaming with cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove) that was breathtakingly realistic and toothsome. Halloween Hagelslag hits the same way, but this time the top note is the melting bittersweet chocolate chips embedded in the loaf that you've just pulled from the oven. I feel like I can smell the chocolate layer as distinctly as if I were rolling individual sweet chips on my tongue, distinct from the not-too-sweet-but-sweet-enough pumpkin loaf (which smells like Pumpkin Nut atmo sans walnut). Delicious! Overall I find it has decent but not aggressive throw. I get mostly nutmeg, cacao, and buttery wheaten bread notes on the drydown. At this stage it's more like a chocolate-coated version of the croissant and baguette notes than a dessert.
-
All of the Flash blends share the same blue-black India ink note, faintly acrid and cool-smelling (how does it smell cool? It smells cool like a fresh, wet sheet of ditto paper just pulled from the mimeograph machine - there's a scent flashback for ya). For Witch Flash it's paired with unapologetically smoky, acrid herbs, rushes, roots, pungent and ferocious, overlaid with sweet incenses. I get hints of grassy vetivert, the scorched husk of a burned cinnamon broom, hay, mandrake, and an incense note that manages NOT to smell like Nag Champa, but is somehow aggressively maroon (???) and tinged with classic frankincense, "if incense were distilled into a cordial" levels of intense. The smoke aspect is biting but sweet (more like The Lights of Men's Lives than Brimstone) The herbal/acrid/smoky aspect reminds me of -- I think -- Witches' Kitchen or The Witches Go to Market.
-
I love when Beth takes a challenging (or fun!) note and noodles with it across several iterations, playing the perfume version of "Will it waffle?" I'm specifically thinking of the recent variants on bread dough, lipstick accord, milk/scorched milk, motor oil, and kerosene/gasoline. Black Eyeliner is a complicated blend when sniffed, and I suspect it's a duo play on the kerosene (Bic lighter) and makeup base accords. Right off the (sic) bat, there's a note that reminds me of Prop Chainsaw or Pumpkin Gas Can (sans pumpkin), a waxen sweetness, and a definite pop of scorched plastic. It's overlaid with waxy, gothic black leather and what my nose infers might be rosewood or soft fir (to represent the pencil aspect?). When first applied it's sweet like sweet wood notes and sweet makeup base, but also petro-chemically altered, stoned to the gills on whatever was being passed behind the gym at fifth period (senior class), liberally wrapped in a worn black (NOT brown) leather cuff. As it wears, this smells like the back racks of PVC and vinyl fetish clothes at Hot Topic before it went sparklegoth. There's some perfumed makeup samples open in the store, sure, but you're pawing through the dino bones rendered down into gleaming faux patent corsets and metallicized black poly lamé, filled with offgassing and adrenaline, back when the suburban mall punk experience was as close as you'd ever get to Picadilly Square. I'm not getting any incense or headshop notes, but you could convince me there's a sticky resin binder in the eyeliner. (It quickly loses the plastic scorch, if that part worried you.) Now that I sniff some more, I think the sweetness reminds me of black anise or licorice, so that might be contributing to the eyeliner vibe (however, I wouldn't call this a licorice blend like Black Plastic Rats). There's a light infusion of Beth's mirrored glass or silver needle note, to represent the pyramid spikes (were yours hematite or stainless?). Anyway - artificial and offputting as a black mohawk, fun as illicit clubbing in high school, leatherpunk AF, and deeply nostalgic for this OG new waver. It smells about as dangerous as a goth My Little Pony, and it makes me want to pinch the cheeks of the precious baby batses clopping by in their 12-inch platform Docs. I don't know that I need a bottle, but I would definitely use it for layering on Halloween.
-
Tested in the vendor hall, so I may have missed some nuances, but here's my fast impression: blackened plum curtains shielding the hidden doorway to an occult headshop. Only a hint of incense trickles out behind the clove, black fruits, and red musk. I don't get oud except for a hint of bitterness sharpening the fruits. No rust or rot - this is musk, sharp dark fruits, and essence of Goth, as advertised.
-
This looks like a serene, muted, office-appropriate plum -- from a distance. In reality, it's the perfect shade to wear to the surprise funeral of your secret enemy. You'll look appropriately solemn and respectful -- again, from a distance. No one will suspect the glee behind your composure, or the insouciance behind your manicure. But once the rites have concluded, and you've stripped off your black gloves, you'll grasp your steering wheel and watch the sunlight dazzle and dance off the thousand rainbow shimmers swimming in the bruise-black depths of your nail beds, and you will smile. You will smile.
-
If our eyes interpreted the lightless void between the stars not as black, but as pink, it would look like this pink. If you wanted your hands to cosplay Margot Robbie's cowgirl suit, this would be your pink. In fact, if Greta Gerwig fed every frame of the Barbie movie into a centrifuge until it separated into a spectrum of pinks, and then she made a nail polish from the densest pink particle she could extract, tossing in a handful of glitter from Barbie's dance floor, it would be this polish. So, as I mean to tell you, this is PINK. For a jelly, it's densely pigmented enough that I'd call it a crelly. I got one-coat coverage, though I'm sure you could add as many coats as your doctor allowed. It's not clear from the photos on the site, but it's actually packed with gold, lavender, and hot pink sparkles. This is PINK PLUS. This is the ENTIRE Pink Pony Club in a bottle. Drag queens, perkygoths, kindergarteners and kindergarten teachers alike: come and get your pink.
-
Coquelicot is a nonstop baby-aspirin-peach-tinted rave on my thumbnail. There is no light source - none - that keeps these flakies from flashing and glittering like a shattered disco ball. Going to the bathroom in the middle of the night? Follow the glowing reindeer nose on my left hand. Formula-wise, the jelly base is squishy and dense with a single coat, which is all I had time to apply at the booth. It's sheer and fully packed with flakes. I'm sure it would build to something spectacular or make a great topper. Color-wise, my eye can't decide if it's baby pink with pumpkin-orange flakes or pale sherbert orange with hot pink flakes; it's hard to focus through the dazzle. (Okay, now that I'm looking at it in the sunlight, I see that the flakes are multichrome hues of green-gold, gold-orange, and orange-pink.) Summation: if "vajazzle" were a fingernail polish...
-
This one sold out the fastest at the booth, for good reason. A single swipe and it's still sheer enough to see the color of my nail bed, but as I flex, it flashes nearly opaque from the density of the scattered holo shimmer. The color is old gold, peaches, and champagne beige, flaring with minute specks of lime green on rotation. I love how it's demure and flashy at the same time - "What dragon nails? Oh, THESE dragon nails? That's just a little sparkle is all." This would work as a standalone or a topper. I think it would be amazing over a black, opaque white, or bright green base. It's not really a clubbing polish, but it would be STUNNING for day wear, for dates, and by candle-light.
-
What it says on the tin: Beth's hyper-realistic lipstick accord with fresh white peach juice. Light, sweet, waxen, and fruity.
-
Are you on the fence about this one? Grab it anyway; someone else will gladly take it off your hands if you decide it doesn't suit. Is it a chewy, not-too-sweet vanilla oatmeal cookie? Is it almond milk-infused tea? Is it a cozy wool sweater freshly pulled from the wooden drawer? Yes. It's lightly desserty, but rides the line between the other notes; I'd call it half-gourmand. It's cozy, warm, softly sweet, and snuggly to the nose, with just a faint suggestion of sandalwood and baking spices.
-
Tested at Dragoncon. You MUST enjoy licorice, anise, fennel, and related notes, because this is a blast of true black licorice, not the plasticky twizzler stuff. It's an interesting balance once the pepper comes out to play, especially with the innate vegetal sweetness of licorice. I don't think I get the amber, but the overall blend is rounder and richer than it should be with the other two notes, so I think this is another of those unique blends that everyone should test. Assuming you don't hate licorice. If you do, you'll be sad - or converted?! It's definitely not a cologne, but this is a candy that drags masculine if you need that in your repertoire. I think it would be a great clubbing scent, especially around Halloween.
-
Idle Moon: White Tea and Red Ginger
bheansidhe replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
It seems like the Lab has released so many good ginger scents lately, and this is another! This duet is drier and more peppery than The Third Veil, lacking that blend's lush floral garden party vibe. White Tea & Red Ginger reads like you're joining your friend the Appalachian root worker on their front porch, and they're offering you shots of their homemade Doctor Pepper (from a mason jar, of course). Oh, and your friend makes olive oil soaps to sell at the local market. You can smell the clean, soapy notes on their clothes, but you're nowhere near the soap bars themselves. As it wears on my skin, this gets drier and more like an austere white tea, with all the lovely complicated floral notes of Silver Needle. Overall, this one fits very well into my collection of ginger and tea blends (two favorite notes). -
Dr. E. S. Packard, of Corunna, Me., in the Eastern Star, states that Mr. David Prescott, of South Sangerville, over ninety years of age, “wandered away into the woods, and not returning, a crowd of over a hundred men hunted for him nearly two days; the mill pond near his house was drained. Search was made in every direction but to no success. “A gentleman of that place decided to call in the aid of Mrs. Stevens; she told him somebody was lost, and not being able to visit the place she drew a map or chart of the locality, giving directions, by which, on his return he was immediately found alive, but died the next day. The day following I was at South Sangerville, and stopping at this gentleman’s house, examined the map, which was perfect in every respect. The house and shed were correctly drawn, the mill and pond near the house were marked, the field and woods, two fences over which Mr. Prescott must climb, even to the swinging of the road by the house was definitely given. “The spot where she said he was, was shown by a large black mark, and he was found exactly in that place. When we consider that Mrs. Stevens never saw this place in her normal condition, it is to me a wonderful test of spirit power.” Absolute and perfect clarity: rockrose, white amber, Corsican immortelle, Siamese benzoin, white sandalwood, and life everlasting. Sniffed, I get clouds of sweet sandalwood incense and white cotton -- not "clean laundry," but something white and cottony and opaque. I think this particular iteration of white amber is doing the powdery thing. It's not floral-forward, though the flowers advance as the blend wears down. Mostly, it's reading as benzoin/sandalwood dusting powder. There's a non-foody but vanilla-like sweetness (probably the benzoin, which contains vanillin). Also, somehow, the blend smells white. The vanilla-resin-powderyness makes me place it in the XYZ Lace family of Lab blends (e.g. Antique Lace, Black Lace, Red Lace). So this is... Psychic Lace.
-
Lesbian Maidservants Cavorting with a Tortoiseshell Dildo
bheansidhe replied to Jenjin's topic in Lupercalia
This one is beautiful, sultry, and bringing up some of my more ..... confusing .... scent connotations. My brain offers: this smells like the CONCEPT of CATS .... like ... not like an actual cat or (god forbid) cat-related accessory, but like if you were describing to an alien how amazing it was to pet a really plush, sleek cat's fur, but as a scent, it would be this one. Or: this smells like the sister blend to ***just*** the cushion component of the cushions in The Crimson from The Girth of Venus, so maybe it smells like silk feather-down-insert cushions and the idea of cats, as a concept overall. It smells close and secret and like something you'd go searching for in the crevices of something beautiful and warm and maybe a little (ahem) dirty. It smells ilke it could be the missing Eighth Veil. Also, a little bit like apples. Welp THANKS ANYWAY, BRAIN. -
Idle Moon: Vanilla Husk and a Bundle of Twigs
bheansidhe replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
As noted, this perfume is alllll about the bundle of twigs, and they're quite the assortment. I am getting whiffs of sweet, jammy fir sap, and also the cool wintergreen of birch, some tannic oak, and maybe some mellow rosewood as well. In addition to vanilla husk (which takes a while to emerge), I think there may be a trace of cassia bark giving it a warm, spicy afterburn. If I was sniffing this blind, I'd guess it was some kind of sweet and mellow resin blend. This one feels like a candidate for aging and retesting for sure! -
The first wave is a sharply bitter floral soap; the bitterness may be a tannic lavender of the kind described as "herbal". I'm not sure what's causing the soapiness, because it's not the jasmine. Night-blooming jasmine usually reads as "nutty and warm" on me, while it's the more traditional jasmines that cast a soapy vibe. Fortunately, once this untangles itself and gets its sea legs, it becomes a much gentler bouquet of lavender and rose hips with some kind of complicated cool white floral thing happening way in the background, and a slightly salty, slightly green-grassy moonlit dew.
-
This reads as a sexy, sultry caramel -- or possibly maple syrup, as another commentator noted. I get the comparison, and maybe that's a better choice, because there's no butter in the mix. Let's say, then, that it's syrup distilled from amber and sandalwood, sun-warmed and honey-dusted. I normally can't wear any of the Lab's honey blends, but "honey dust" seems better-behaved on my skin, so I have VERY hopeful hopes here!
-
This is not at all angsty; it's a rather peppery, pithy grapefruit and red ginger (more rooty and spicy than the white kind?) with sweet, bracing fir needle and rhubarb, anchored by some kind of tree bark. I'm never quite sure what balsam is supposed to smell like, so I can't tell you if that note dominates. There's a particular patch of forest I hike in central Oregon where the air smells of fir needle, and that's definitely the conifer here - not pine or pine freshener. As it dries, it turns into an achingly gourmet, small-batch rhubarb ginger ale - the kind you put into a $25 cocktail being served somewhere foody. (Now that I think of it, I need to try brewing a rhubarb ginger ale.) The final drydown is gently woodsy. So much more cheerful than the painting, but I'm not mad about it.
-
*heavy sigh* Gonna be another one of THOSE reviews, I can tell ..... Okay. This smells like the Gingerbread Man after you're finished f&cking him. (It's a fairytale, okay?)