Lavender Prickly Pear Shaved Ice

[doomsday_disco]

Runnels of darkly translucent purple syrup sinking into a dome of creamy-fine snow scrapings.

[Little Bird]

The fruitiness reminds me of melon, like a mix of honeydew scented lotion and watermelon bubblegum (but not very sweet). I expected a sweet lavender syrup, but the lavender is very herbal and dry.  The overall feel is clean, a little bitter, and unfortunately very plasticy and cheap smelling to me.

[theredkilt]

Opens up with a syrupy texture, then goes into herbal cooling lavender. Afterwards, a melon note pops up, while the lavender almost fades away. The melon note is unexpected and kind of random. Out of all notes i expected pear, but not melon. Further it develops as a cool melon air or breeze.

[bheansidhe]

Fresh, this smells SO very purple - like a pure, bright, saturated child's purple in smell form. The purpleness itself is comprised of both a sweet but sharply herbal lavender and juicy cactus fruit  (which does read like sweet melon flesh), plus a touch of Beth's snow note to stitch them together. The wear stays true to a "dark lavender" impression, like a dash of lavender bitters in your Midori. 

[AutoroboticTribal]

Ooh, YUM. I'm one of those weirdos who love lavender essence in cocktails and desserts (I find it that it gives a delicious herby contrast in sweet things like lemonades and vanilla frosting). So when I first tried this--Lavender Prickly Pear instantly won me over.

 

Like others have said, it definitely smells dark, syrupy and herby. And it pairs so well with the cactus fruit which smells like wet, scrunchy watermelon. I barely get any ice at all, but there's a faint aquatic musk which keeps it all refreshing. I'm lucky that it hasn't turned plasticky on my skin chem, but unfortunately I can't tell if the cactus note is realistic on account of never smelling a fresh one before (living in the UK makes it difficult to find fresh cacti fruit. I've eaten some before, but it's the kind of fruit that loses all flavour and scent after travelling all the way to the UK).  I was hoping to smell some green cacti skin, but sadly I can't  sense that with my nose (as I'm sure that would smell lovely with the sweet melon-like scent and lavender). Either way, I really like the smell of this lavender syrup. This one's a keeper for me and I can see this helping me smell clean and herbal during the summer months.

Edited April 16 by AutoroboticTribal

[sea turtle]

Wow, I just realized I've posted my praises for Lavender Prickly Pear Shaved Ice everywhere but here 👀I don't get a lot of outright lavender from this one, but the prickly pear ends up smelling like a chilled honeydew and the lavender gives it a minty feel. This is an excellent green melon + mint salad, very refreshing, uplifting, and summer-y! I can see it going plastic/artificial for some folks - on me, it toed the line of fake melon & realistic melon, and I think the minty note helped it stay realistic enough

[doomsday_disco]

I didn't review this in a timely manner, lost the decant, only recently unearthed it so I could retest it and write a review.

  

I got decants of all of The Lavender Kitchen scents (from both years), just for the sake of trying them all, although I would have typically avoided this one due to the pear. I'm not familiar with prickly pear, but I don't have a great track record with pear scents in general, so this was the Lavender Kitchen scent I was looking forward to the least from last year's collection.

 

Not being familiar with prickly pear, I have no idea what it is supposed to smell like -- but this actually doesn't smell pear-like at all, so I'll consider that a plus. It's actually more like a cucumber melon sort of scent with some sweet lavender syrup (maybe the same one from Hazelnut Lavender Latte) and a cool, shaved ice note. The lavender doesn't last as long as the cucumber melon and ice notes, and the scent itself has pretty low throw and longevity -- I had to put my nose to my wrist to smell it, but it was barely there after a few hours of wear.

 

I didn't upgrade this to a bottle, and I don't plan on hanging onto the decant, but I'm considering myself fortunate to have avoided another unpleasant pear incident (go see my review for Honeyed Pear Tart if you want to know more).