bheansidhe

"Yule at the pub" is spot on. The opening bars of this dance are dark ale and strongly spiced fruitcake. The beer is thick, yeasty and hoppy, with the sweet black head of a fresh Guinness. The spices dominate with cinnamon, clove, allspice, and what smells like wine-stewed plums or prunes - an earthy, figgy fruit. I say beer and fruit, but I don't mean boozy or berry-like at all. As it wears, the blend ages to a fifty/fifty split of spicy fruit and dark resinous wood - the age-blackened timbers and dark shellaced floor of an old British pub.

 

Clove-spiced beer-soaked dark wood. Tragic discontinuation!

The top notes are the more delicate baking spices: nutmeg, allspice, mace, cardamom. There might be the lightest sprinkle of cinnamon, but I usually amp that note, and it's not dominant here.

 

The middle hints of holiday baking, but without an overtly dessert-like quality: unfrosted carrot cake, fig, bread pudding, and fruitcake. I don't get citrus off hand (though there could be some orange zest in the blend), but I do get a faint whiffs of cranberries and maraschino cherries, and maybe a touch of candied ginger.

 

The drydown adds a yeasty sweet bread note, like the inside of a fresh loaf of challah, lightly buttered, while continuing with the spices and the lovely bread pudding middle.

 

Overall: delicious!

Very fizzy and citrus-y. Great Indian summer scent, when it's still hot and kind of dry, and you want something light and refreshing on your pulse points.

 

Then it starts to smell like, I swear to you, pomegranate-tinged cotton candy floss. Apparently my skin thinks this is tasty, because it eats it up. All gone.

Heavy cocoa & tobacco right offhand, and an almost soapy star anise. For such warm notes listed, this blend is surprisingly cool and herbal.

 

The notes surge over & slide under each other; the scent is choppy, not melded, which is interesting in its own way, since each sniff is different. Cocoa and red musk finally fight their way to the top.

 

 

...ending, sadly, in weird herbal soap. Blast my skin.

PIRATES IN THE POMEGRANATE PATCH!

 

Sharp, dark, and interesting, with noticeable tar and pepper salting up the fruit. I like it.

I have worn Black Forest twice now, and I think I may have to give up on it. While I love the way it smells wet (juniper and pine tempered by the musk), once it dries all I can smell is musk and a faint, blunted pine. Where did the juniper go?

 

Are there any woodsy, foresty smells that do not contain musk?

 

The new Dawn: Cernunnos is very piney and completely devoid of musk. It's lovely, dark and green.

 

I also recommend Yew Trees, Belladonna, and Nocnitsa.

Yep - gingersnap cookies with candied citrus peel, or maybe some lemon pound cake. The citrus note fades fairly fast and just leaves gingersnap crumbs on the plate. God, this makes me hungry.

Astringent, biting and effervescent. Yuzu and lemon-lime soda hit by lightning and served in a white metal beaker. A real jolt.

 

I LOVE how metaphorical these scents are...

Frimped from the costume contest at DSWC!

 

Honey or waxy honeycomb, rootbeer, and a sweet, dusty herbal note like Roman chamomile or hyssop. A hint of wood in here too.

 

In the spirit of the Lab's descriptions.... This smells like sweet honeyed promises, a big swig of Aunt Ruby's home-brewed sasparilla, and sunshine beating down on the fresh-mowed meadow and the rickety wooden bandstand where the candidate is stumping. Hee.

 

Honey hates me, so this will never work, but it's fun to pick out the metaphors.

No soap, no bitter note, no blood; just musk, musk, and more musk, plus just the faintest peppery nose-prickle of snow. This is Smut sans sugar, Smut melted down into dark, dark liquid Eau de Sex God. If this scent was a guy, I'd beg him to bang me against the wall.

 

TMI? I think not, my friends. I think not.

Sniffed: I agree with myth; aquatic plus a stomach-churning note of aquarium bilge.

 

However, just as Encroaching Madness did a volte-face on the skin, so does PoF. It turns to dryer sheets, lime, and then a light mellow ozone-and-citrus scent, quite breezy and pleasant. Just.. don't sniff it wet, okay? Test it first.

"Old foul, bad yellow things." Well GEE, Beth, when you put it so temptingly, how can I resist?

 

Smelled from vial: foot funk. Bad foot funky. Funky funky foot funk.

 

Applied: complete 180 degree rotation into a lovely crisp green and floral scent. Perfect for those hot golden summer days when you stand at your upstairs window and look out at the cool green lawn shadows and the merry dandelions and the buttercups blooming, whilst behind you the wallpaper creeps closer and closer....

 

Really, a winner. Pinch your nose and slap it on and see how it works for you.

...aaand, on me, it's dusting powder.

 

Very expensive perfumed dusting powder, from an Oriental type of perfume, but dusting powder.

 

No mint, no rose, no discernable florals; just powdery resins. Very proper and Victorian, very light and feminine. Don't mind me, dear; I'll just be boozing it up with the gravediggers over in the corner. You carry on without me.

There's a Mexican pastry that my boyfriend and I are addicted to, called a Beso ("kiss"). It's a round sweet bread sliced in half, filled with strawberry-guava jelly, sandwiched back together, and then frosted all over with this white granulated sugar-and-buttercream-frosting-stuff. And when I say "buttercream" I'm pretty sure I mean "pure lard" but ooooohhhh my gawwwwwd they are good. And rich. You wouldn't think from the description, but we typically cut one beso in half to share or else we get a little sick. GOOD TIMES. The number of besos that come home from the store are the number of besos I eat the second I get home, with the rest of the groceries still unpacked and melting on the counter.

 

http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/texas/entry/besos_mexican_pastry_kisses/

 

Golletes smells exactly, I mean to the life, like sticking my head in a box of fresh-baked besos and whiffing.

I'm shocked this DIDN'T go to soap on me, because ambergris and violet are normally one-way tickets to Ivory Soapville.

 

I first tried this at Will Call and was barely able to smell it at all given the olfactory onslaught. My impression at the time was fog-machine smoke (you remember the dance floors of the late 80s too, don't you? Right? Right! ). I gave it a second test all by itself at a later time, and I got wet fog, a lightly citrus-crisp note, and light green sandalwood. It teetered on the edge of being soapy, but instead warmed and cleared into something better.

 

What dominates this blend on my skin are the ylang-ylang and white musk notes. In fact, though it's not an exact match, this has very much the feel of The Girl on my skin. A luminous white nimbus, with surprisingly persistent throw and wearlength.

If there's a scent that makes me think "blue candyfloss," it's Skytyping With Chemtrails. So maybe it was the power of suggestion, but as I waved the tester wand in front of my nose, I thought I smelled the same blue spun-sugar poof note under the pumpkin in Blue Pumpkin Floss.

 

Applied to skin: Pumpkin pie spice.

 

..and Red Hots.

 

RED HOTS RED HOTS RED HOTS... Is that blackberry pie filling in the back over there? No, it's just PUMPKIN PIE SPICE.

 

SPICE SPICE WOO SPICE.

 

...and blackberry pie filling.

 

....aaaand a little blue sugar poof.

 

In approximately that order. It takes a while for the huge rush of peppery allspice to back off. The pumpkin itself never really pops up; it's all spice, and then some sweetened black fruit and blue floss around the back.

 

ADDED Sept. 22:

 

Wow, I'm really surprised to read all these reviews mentioning spice, and it makes me wonder if there's batch or separation issues, because I didn't really get any spice in my decant.

 

Maybe a separation issue? I tested a different person's bottle last night, to check, and it smelled just as spicy as the first bottle.

A fruit blend smells alternately like spring, summer, and fall. It starts with a tart cocktail of pomegranate and sweet apple blossom; the result smells almost like cranberry juice. There's a hint of almond at first that develops into a maraschino cherry / amaretto note as the blend moves into summer. As it wears it ripens up to a more fall-like feel with the grounding willow bark and fig. The fig is never present as a top note, but it definitely finishes off the scent toward the end, with the sweet apple blossom laid over it.

 

Not a lot of throw on me, but definitely worth a try if these are your notes.

The beer note is nothing like ale or yeasty lager; it's more traces of foam from a white Belgian witbier (wheat beer). My dad used to grow his own hops, and I get a faintly bitter herbal note that could be fresh hops or giant hogweed (whatever that smells like!). The rest smells oddly like herbal hand lotion; cool, creamy, with lightly crushed wildflowers. Not bad on my skin, just odd. The more I sniff it, though, the more it grows on me.

 

A cool wet soft blend; I can't think of anything in the bpal catalog that smells similar.

Priestess is weighty, complex, and a morpher. I dislike myrrh and rose on my skin as a rule, but I love actual white sage and I liked the concept of the scent. Once on, I liked the feel of the blend, even though individual notes behaved oddly on me.

Sniffed from the wand, the initial top blast is rose; if you figured the blackest burgundy of rose notes, you'd be right. It smells nothing like the rose in Maiden. I waved it back and forth for several seconds and each waft smelled different, spicier, with fruity resins (in the same way that wet tobacco is fruity, and not as in actual fruit). The rose binds everything together, but after the first whiff this isn't a "rose" scent; it's resins and darkness wreathed in the smoky medicinal tang of white sage.

I didn't get jasmine at all except as a sharpness behind the rose. On my skin, this sank down amazingly low and took on a smoky, smouldering quality. This isn't cheap headshop stank; it smells like anointing oils and high-quality ritual incense. I can smell the white sage, which I love, but isn't everyone's cup of tea; it's nothing like cooking sage and more like sharp conifer sap. Smells like magic herbs burning on a dry fire.

After a while this went unpleasantly close to body odor on me, which is the fault of myrrh, and then to dead, dusty roses. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

A dark and musky tapestry with bright floral sparks. Sensual and very womanly. The honey is sharp and lemony, the magnolia cool and white, like soft water in the background, well blended over the bass notes of patchouli and sandalwood.

 

On my skin....

 

Lehman Brothers bankruptcy versus my 401(k) levels of bad. Honey hates me. Instant trip to the sink. Not, I emphasize, the fault of this blend, which will sing on the right person.

 

In fact, late last night I noticed that I smelled really, really good. Whoever said "naked skin with a wicked grin" was right on. I can't take the intervening hours, but if honey doesn't hate you like it does me, this scent screams sex.

I love Fae and Aglaea. La Vague is like their sophisticated older cousin. Wet, I get the cream, grape, and peach notes on top. Dry, the "cream" note fades back like a white velvet tablecloth laid under fizzy flutes of peach wine and bouquets of lily-of-the-valley in crystal vases. Warm, sweet, and just a hair crisp (but not overtly citrus-y).

 

I tend to amp florals, especially headache death-florals like jasmine and iris, but this blend is subtle and lush without any one flower clawing to the top. It does eventually turn a little bitter on me, which is the sad fate of any blend with "wine" notes, but this is lovely enough to put in a diffuser or scent locket.

In my opinion, this is the best and most distinctive of the Claw Polish shades (though Lady MacBeth and Blood Countess are also very good).

 

Words like "shimmer" or "fleck" imply a glitter-infused nail polish, and that's not this at all. It shines like solid mica flakes. As you move your fingers it flashes from a deep, true raspberry pink to silver-pink metallic cloisonne and back again.

 

If I can figure out how to do a decant circle for nail polish, I'm so doing this one, because more it has to be seen in person to be appreciated.

Caveat: this blend has the honey that goes sharp and acrid on me. Here's what I can get from around the edges:

 

Wet: assertive and voluptuous, but just short of heavy. This is full-blown unashamed rose sprawled on a spicy Turkish carpet of frankincense, wearing nothing but a garter belt and a fur coat. I get the saffron as a kind of dusty warmth in the middle, especially after the blend has settled on my skin for a while.

 

Dry: much spicier and woodsier than I anticipated. It's warm, matte, and Oriental. The rose is drier, almost smoky at this stage (though this may be the honey effect). Good throw, but not overbearing.

 

Verdict: seductive and complex. Going to be a winner on the right skin.

I splurged at Dragon*Con on the set of four (the labels are GORGEOUS, by the way). Maiden was actually a pickup for someone else because I am not a fan of rose in any incarnation, and honey is typically awful on me. Typically, floral honey blends go one of three ways:
-cloying,
-musty, or
-sour.
But I've learned my lesson and I always skin-test even the most unlikely suspects.

Sure enough, this was the one that appealed least on paper and worked the best on skin. Maiden stays sweet, but never cloying; light, but with hours of stay and persistent throw. It has the milky smoothness of chalcedony or opal. It's just so.. so darn...pretty. Not frilly or bubbly or girly; just clean and serene. Even drydown was graceful; it didn't change, just gradually faded away.

The top note is tea rose - definitely tea rose and not damask or any other type. Tea rose always smells "rosiest" to me; it's clarion, not unbearably heavy. The heliotrope and honeysuckle stay light and delicate, and the olive blossom (which is a favorite note) lends a beautiful round fullness. The milk-and-honey background is similar to that of Dana O'Shee, but somehow never goes feral on me the way that blend does. How does Beth do it? No clue. But I am abashedly fond of this beautiful blend and I predict it will be a real favorite.

I've tested two decants of this: a prototype sniffie, and a half-imp bought from another person.

 

Proto sniffie: I get the resemblance to Kali, though I'm reminded a bit more of Santa Muerte. On me it's a warm, rich, spicy musk with a hint of powdered (not fresh) ginger and cardamom. Subtle and low to the skin. There's a dusty cocoa sweetness that is neither bitter Mexican chocolate nor hazelnuts, but somewhere between.

 

I also get a flavor reminiscent of the tobacco husks note in Pinched with Four Aces. If there's a floral in here, it's a warm and pungent one like marigold.

 

My purchased decant was heavier on the musk - a dark brown smelling musk - and a touch more masculine, but otherwise read like the first tester. On a second test, it reminded me of the oak-and-hazelnut background in Wezwanie/Hold, still with the cocoa cardamom note on top.

 

No rose in either sample.