bambi

I haven’t ever done a Switch Witch, but I’d love to do one. I also loved the 13 Nights of Halloween swap I did a couple years back 🦇🎃✨ And also the 12 Days of Christmas one I participated in. And a summer one I was part of. 
 

Can you tell I really miss swaps? 🥹

This is not at all the type of scent that I usually go for. My partner requested a decant of this from the Winter collection and graciously let me try it, and it is the only scent from the Winter collection that I absolutely need a bottle of. In fact, this will be only the second scent that I've bought a full bottle of. This is a soft, very herbal lavender. Some lavender is more floral, and some is more herbal, and this lavender skews heavily toward the herbal. I can smell both the pine and the smoke, but they're somehow separate and the same. There's pine smoke, but there's also the smell of freshly crushed pine needles. The white tea is herbal, but slightly sweet to me (or maybe that's the snow note?), and it really just ties this all together. This honestly smells like a crisp winter wind. The kind that kind of burns the back of your nose a little. But there's something soft and slightly sweet about this, too. It's irresistible, and I love it. 

In my decant, this smells like you just took a bite of a fresh peach, fuzz and all. There's a faint hint of apricot and the tiniest earthy hint of moss. On my skin, the peach is still the star, but I can smell something slightly green. It might be the fir needle, the moss, or the sap, but it's not distinct enough to place. As someone who amps rose, I was really worried that I'd get the rose out of this, but other than the slightest hint of something floral, I get none of it. The peach rescued this for me by being so strong. Toward the end, I'm getting little puffs of amber, and the scent as a whole has gotten muskier. This is in turn a warm and cool scent, and it matches the painting perfectly. 

This is so lovely. At first the lavender is quite astringent, but it ends up softening considerably. I'm not sure what the sweetness is that I'm smelling. Sugar, tonka, marshmallow? Honestly, this smells like lavender-infused sugar or lavender marshmallows. It's so cozy and relaxing. It also lasts a long time on me. I put it on an hour before bed and woke up still smelling it on my skin after 8 hours. 

I'm not sure what version it is that I have, but this smells exactly like going to midnight mass with my grandparents when I was a child. It's nostalgic. It's woody, smoky, incense-y, with that lemony hint that some church incense has. It's thick without being heavy, and I'll be keeping my decant purely for nostalgic purposes since this isn't a me scent at all. 

Oh my goodness. In my decant, this is tart and bright, with both the beautiful raspberry and red currants shining. On my skin, this smells like I took a fresh raspberry and just *smooshed* it against my wrist. It's tart and fresh and so realistic. This is my first perfume with goat's milk as a note, so I'm not sure what it smells like, but there's a very slight creamy nuttiness happening here that I'm assuming is the goat's milk. It's not the star here, but it's giving the tart fruits something to rest on. I like this a lot. It's very refreshing and simple.

In the decant, I get tart citrus, guava, and a soft floral. On my skin, I get a lot more herbs. The citrus is still present at first, as are a few more sharp fruit smells. The flowers stay soft at first, but then they start to smell soapy and get stronger. I'm not sure what lunar blossoms are, but whatever they are, they and the cherry blossoms take this scent over, and the fruit is barely discernible. It's disappointing that even with all these fruit notes, I get flowers instead. 

In my decant, I get an herbal, musky, lemony scent with a slight nose-tickle from the pepper and a hint of earthiness. On my skin, this smells like musky lemon-scented floor cleaner, but not in a bad way. It smells like freshly washed wooden floors with the window open to let in the sunlight and breeze. It kind of reminds me more of a summer scent than an autumn one. Or maybe very early autumn. It's light and airy, and the musk and amber gives it a bright, fuzzy feeling. I end up mostly with lemongrass and woody notes, and I really like it.

At first, this is a very sweet cherry scent with a more bitter note lurking in the background. On my skin, there's a moment of cough-syrup smell, but it fades fairly quickly and turns sweet again. There's something with a fuzzy and musky quality; it might be the velvet-flocked wallpaper, whatever that's supposed to be. This isn't a bright, fresh cherry scent, but a fuzzy, sweet cherry plus almond that has a bitter note hiding out waiting to jump on you from the shadows. Definitely appropriate for the season and befitting the name Bleeding Walls. 

Upon opening my decant, I was very confused. Why does this smell like salted peanuts??? And then I remembered that both salt-spray and bitter almonds are components, and it all made sense. This smells completely different on my skin. With that number of notes, it's no surprise that this is a complex scent. One second I get salt and aquatics, the next I get pear and blackcurrant, then florals, then earthy notes of moss and cedar. It's beautiful. As it dries and settles, I get more of the florals. They're soft and almost creamy. Fully dried, the aquatics and florals makes this smell a bit like laundry detergent, but in the best way. I really like this.

This is much stronger in my decant than it is on my skin. I get a sharp pine in the decant with a small amount of peppermint. On my skin, I get an explosion of almost-mentholy peppermint and very woody pine before it quickly settles and fades quite a bit. This is very airy and dry smelling. It's not at all sweet, and definitely smells cold. Since my skin devours this, I probably won't wear it, but I'll find other uses for my decant because I do really enjoy the scent.

Wow! This is so RED. In my decant, it's bright, tart, and sweet red fruits mixed with a lovely soft dough smell. On my skin, these fruits are amazing. It's half fresh, half cooked fruits, and they are very bright. As it dries, this really smells like a jelly-filled doughnut, heavy on the jelly. This is probably my favorite suf I've tried so far.

This one is confusing to me. All those notes sound beautiful, but they don't seem to be working on me the same way they do in other perfume oils. In my decant, I get the blueberry, citrus from the lemon peel and bergamot, and an herbal edge from the bergamot and white tea. It's lovely at this point. On my skin, the white tea takes over a bit, pushing this into a more unisex/gender-neutral scent, and the lemon peel edges it closer to masculine. Unfortunately, the blueberry smells a bit like play-doh. I've never had this happen, so I'll be retesting this a few more times, but I was so sad.

In the imp, this is bright and tart with a small edge of earthiness. On my skin, it's largely the same. I can pick out the green tea and mango, but the fig and patchouli merge into a soft earthy note that gives this an edge. Unfortunately, this fades within minutes on me, so it isn't something I'll be wearing.

This is wonderfully foodie, but not spiced, for those who are looking for such things. In the imp, I'm getting the toffee and custard very strongly, with the cherry and pineapple in the background, along with a very strong buttery note. On my skin, this doesn't morph all that much. The pineapple gets a bit stronger, but this stays a butter-toffee-custard forward scent. I love the cherry in this, though it isn't very strong. It's more of a memory of a scent that an actual note. When I lift my wrist to my nose and sniff, I smell everything EXCEPT the cherry, but when I pull away, the note that lingers in the back of my nose/throat is the cherry. Honestly, this smells like butterbeer to me. 

In the imp, this is a very strong, sweet tobacco with some spicy-smelling flowers. On my skin, it's still very strong, almost overwhelming. A very small drop will do for me. It's sweet and spicy and sexy, and the rum brings out a tiny bit of sharpness to balance it all out. Something about the sweetness of the tobacco says brown sugar or maple syrup to me, and this ends up a sweet, unisex perfume. It's definitely mostly sweet tobacco on me, but it's still very nice.

This is a hard pass from me. This is exactly the kind of patchouli I don't like. At first, I got a hint of pine and dirt and thought this might be a soft patchouli scent with pine, and I was ok with that, but then the patchouli got super strong, and so did the flowers. It screamed patchouli and roses at me until the patch died away and I was left with just roses, which I dislike to the extreme. 

In the imp, this screams GREEN. There's a lot going on here, but all my brain can handle in the imp is green. On my skin, I start to be able to pick things out. I get melon, citrus, and something very dry. This smells like laundry detergent or dryer sheets. The freesia comes out, and its very realistic. It ends up super bright, dry, and fresh. I can't shake the feeling that I used to use this scent in my laundry items, so, this isn't something I'd wear, strictly due to those associations. 

In my decant, this is a very fresh and crisp apple. There's a hint of sweet honey and an almost floral blackcurrant, but the apple is a the star. On my skin, the apple turns to an almost apple-blossom-like scent, and the cardamom pushes through briefly before it's eaten up. As it dries, the blackcurrant and honey start to edge in and give it more balance. On me, this ends in a very honey-heavy apple. It's very feminine and pretty, perfect for spring and summer. 

In the decant, this smells like apples, spices, and some sort of musky edge that smells a little powdery. On my skin I still get apples, and maybe the spice is the quince? I don't know exactly, as I've never smelled a quince. There's a slight citrus smell to it, but it's not very strong. I honestly wish this had more of the cherries, melon, and peach. I wanted more variety. This is definitely a darker fruit scent. Not juicy, fresh fruit, but more sinister smelling, which is evocative of the goblin market, but not what I was hoping it'd be. 

This is really nice. In the decant, it really smells like a squished fresh blueberry, plus warm honeysuckle and some citrus. On my skin, this is all about the lemon verbena. There's a hint of lavender and honeysuckle, and the blueberry is hiding out there in the background, but this smells like a lovely herbal citrus mix. Super spring/summery. 

In the decant: "well, that sure is gingerbread."

On my skin, oh yum chemicals. Cinnamon always goes chemically on me, so I let this one sit for a while to see if the spices would tone down just a bit. As the spices calm down, I get a hint of sharp lemon, which also fades after a bit. The apple and pumpkin soften this up a bit, and keep it from going all holiday-craft-store on me, and the rosemary gives it a tiny hint of something special. Overall, I wish that the other aspects had had more time to shine, as this dried down into a fairly generic gingerbread, but in the drying stage, it was really fun to have something slightly different.

I wanted to like this so bad. In the decant, I get sweet spices, warm rum, and citrus. It smells so yummy. On my skin, those spices go sharp and chemically. Eventually, the spices settle a bit, and I get a hint of the lemon drifting in and out, and then... Gingerbread. Just gingerbread. Nothing distinctive or easy to separate. Just craft-store-at-Christmastime gingerbread *cries*

2020 version.

This is the first Samhain I've tried. I have no idea what it smells like aged, though it seems like most people find it to be more wearable after aging. However, I found it quite nice as is. This isn't a me scent, really. The notes made this seem as though it would be a thick, heavy scent, but it's not at all. In my decant, I get apple, herbs, and patchouli, and it is very sweet. Patchouli is one of those scents that rarely works on me, but I wanted to give it a shot here. On my skin, I get a hint of something minty, which might be the fir needle. The patchouli is so soft, not at all like other patchouli scents I've tried. I definitely amp apple, so I get a lot of that, but this scent is very gentle, and the spices are just adding some more earthiness. It smells soft and damp, exactly like walking through an abandoned orchard in late autumn. It's nice and earthy, but the apple keeps it sweet and interesting. I'm interested to see what aging does to this, but I'm happy with how it is now.

In the decant, I get a whiff of the blackcurrants, which seem both bitter and sweet. There's a hint of cinnamon, and a strong smell of buttery pie crust. On my skin, I get a brief moment of horrible chemical smell that cinnamon always does on me, but it's quickly beat back by the blackcurrant. The seem like a mix of fresh fruits with jam/pie filling, which is nice. The pie crust is still buttery and there, but the blackcurrant is definitely the star here. Toward the end, I barely get any of the spice (which is ok for me), and the pie crust is just giving the currants something to rest on.