Shollin

First sniff: Pure cedary incense. There are a very few incense scents I can wear and make them work, and most of them are softer than this one, so I’m not sure how it’ll do on my skin, but here goes…

 

Wearing: It reminds me very much of Midnight Mass. Maybe a little brighter. It never went unpleasantly sharp on my skin as incense sometimes can, but it doesn’t quite stack up to my incensey Holy Grail (Al Azif) so I don’t feel compelled to keep it. Glad I got to try it though.

First sniff: The Tell-Tale Heart: I spent a great deal of time with my nose in the jug when I got a sneak Maelstrom preview at the Lab. And now… ahhhh. *happily resumes her spot curled up around the bottle* In this much smaller quantity, it’s lost a bit of the “oh my God I want to bathe in this” overwhelmingness, but it’s still glorious enveloping blood-warm cocoa bliss with a tiny hint of greenness underneath.

 

Wearing: TTH went through several stages on my skin, not all of them pleasant. At first, it’s happy fuzzy cocoa goodness. And then, it goes through a phase of several hours where the vetiver asserts itself and it goes rather funky. Not the dark green swampiness I’m used to from vetiver, but something not terribly nice. Once that clears away, I’m left with cocoa and something lighter, which makes no sense, because all the notes in the description are dark dark dark… but the thing I’m smelling is a lighter something-or-other like linen or aloe or white musk or… something floaty. In conclusion, I’m pissed at the SkinChemistry+Vetiver=Yech conspiracy, because that’s the only part I don’t like but it lasts for manymany hours. I’ll hang onto an imp for later testing.

First sniff: Beautiful, beautiful. Flowing herbal-floral, soft and pretty and unassuming.

 

Wearing: Soft, pale, delicate. And sleepifying. But then, I was reviewing it at four in the morning.

First sniff: Brightness and green grass and a soft aquatic… like sun on dewdrops.

 

Wearing: This is beautifully fresh and light. It’s sunny and uplifting. However. Sundew is, I think, the only scent I’ve tried where the scent directly on my skin is more subtle than the aura. When I sniff my wrist, it’s the beautifully fresh light wet version… but the throw is loud and too heady and I’ve had a killer headache all night. I don’t know if that’s related to Sundew, but it makes me sad.

First sniff: Gorgeously earthy, dark and deep with a little bit of evergreen. I’m getting the pine-mulch vibe off this one too. I totally win either way with Mandrake, because if it doesn’t work on me (and evergreens often don’t), it’ll smell delicious on my guy.

 

Wearing: It’s very cedary… but it seems to work on my skin, and cedar usually goes too sharp. This is warm and solid and really really nice.

First sniff: Ooh. I was a little turned off by the mention of dirt in previous reviews – Graveyard Dirt is nifty as hell, but so incredibly not me – but Death Cap is just awesome. The afterscent is the taste of dirt, but the heart reminds me more of warm wood… shredded wood, like sun-warmed sawdust or cedar shavings or even good pine mulch. It doesn’t actually smell like any of those things, but that’s the texture.

 

Wearing: Wow. This is… wow. Really freaking good, is what it is. It’s the perfect warm wood scent with a tiny hint of soil around the edges. I so didn’t expect to like this. Stupid me.

First sniff: A gorgeous dark winey berry. Almost boozey but not quite.

 

Wearing: It’s a little more tart on my skin, less blatantly fruity, and richly dark. I like this one a lot.

First sniff: Beautifully pale, wispy and watery and sorrowful. I need to read Berenice’s story. At the moment, I keep thinking Rusalka would also be a very fitting name for this scent.

 

Wearing: On my skin, it loses every trace of aquaticness. It’s just a pretty, pale, fresh scent. Just lovely.

I can confirm that. Lily blends always, always, always go soapy on me. (The single notes don't seem to, and I still can't figure that out, but...) But this one is glorious. Here's my official review:

 

First sniff: I’ve never seen a black lily. I don’t know if such things are possible. But if there is one, this is exactly what it smells like. It’s fresh, soft, slightly sweet – and shadowed. This isn’t a big showy flower in the sun – it’s quiet and mysterious.

 

Wearing: Lily usually goes straight to soap on my skin, but not this one. I think this might be the first floral skin-scent I’ve tried. I can’t pinpoint it, but I know I smell awesome. It’s soft, and still a little bit sweet, and there’s a richness to it that makes me think of vanilla.

And here's another raffle prototype:

 

First sniff: Huh? *sniffs again* Hmmmmm… *more sniffage* I… it’s… hmmmm. I got nothin’. Which, I suppose, is appropriate. I can smell something in the bottle, but it’s very clean and very pale and very… blank.

 

Wearing: Right at first, it reminds me a little of Pele. A light, sunny, sort of tropical floral. There’s a lot more scent on me than there was in the bottle, and it’s nice.

Another raffle prototype review to tempt everyone...

First sniff: Behold the power of suggestion! I swear I got a buzz sniffing the bottle. Apart from the psychosomatic high, it’s wet, sweet and oh so heady.

Wearing: This is undoubtedly the effect of the name again, but it smells… a little dangerous. Like sniffing too much of this could lead you into trouble. It’s richly sweet with an edge.

Moved from Unreleased to Rappaccini's Garden, added description. --Shollin

I’ve re-read “The Cask of Amontillado” since Maelstrom was released, and Fortunato’s description absolutely gives me chills because it’s so perfect. Oak-casked sherry in catacomb gloom, drunken glee surrendering to sheer terror… just meep.

 

First sniff: Rowdy, drunken oranges, tumbling into the dirt.

 

Wearing: Wet on my skin, it’s oddly pale, faint and bittersweet. I had orange marmalade with breakfast this morning and Fortunato reminds me of the taste of the bitter peels inside the sweet jelly. It got sweeter throughout the wearing, never to the point of overwhelming, and ended as a wonderfully sweet fruity orange with just a hint of something darker. Simply marvelous.

First sniff: Mmmmmmmmmcocoa. With pumpkin underneath.

 

Wearing: Just cocoa pumpkin yumminess. As it dries, there’s a lovely woody-nutty undertone.

First sniff: Deep, dark, red and complex. A little bit sweet, a little bit spicy, and very very deep.

 

Wearing: I’m putting this on having showered with Lush’s Waylander soap (RIP), which is very patchouli-incense, so I’m expecting that part of the scent to get a boost. But at first, it’s honeyed carnation, with a bit of deep resin beneath. And throughout the drydown it just got better and better. Somehow sweeter and deeper at the same time. I suspect this is one I’ll be wearing a lot one of these years when I get my reviewing caught up.

First sniff: Pumpkin and apple and spice, oh my! Exactly as described. It smells like bright autumn.

 

Wearing: Ooh. It’s more pumpkin-y on my skin, and the apple is even crisper. It’s an unusual scent and I adore it.

First sniff: The base is leather, but there’s a sweeter note above.

 

Wearing: I really don’t understand the sweet part! There’s nothing listed in here that goes sweet on me. But there it is, a definite sweet aftertaste to the leather. In the early stages, the leather is grounding without being too leathery, the sweetness adds a nice kick even though it confuses the hell out of me, and all around it’s deep and rich and wonderful. Sadly, it got more and more leathery as it dried, and leather, I’ve discovered, is not something I can wear.

First sniff: If I didn’t have a policy of wanting to try everything, I never would have gone near Kurukulla. Rose is about the most hit-or-miss note on me there ever was, and lotus usually just smells like bubblegum. But in the vial, this is pretty nice. It’s sweet but not piercingly so, and nicely aquatic.

 

Wearing: It’s a little bit powdery, but for the most part, a soft sweet aquatic floral. Better on me than I expected.

Reposting:

 

Butterfly Effect LXI

 

First sniff: Like mine, this Butterfly Effect has a bit of a hard-fruit-candy feel to it. It’s warm and fruity, but at the same time, hard-edged and almost hollow.

 

Wearing: The strongest note is lemony-limey-citrusy, but there’s warm spice underneath, and the hollowness is gone – it’s deeper now. It smells a bit like lemon-spice tea.

 

Previously reviewed by Brianne.

Reposting:

 

First sniff: Light, refreshing lime. Very direct and head-clearing.

 

Wearing: I like Detox a lot. It isn’t the sort of thing I’ve been drawn to lately (I’ve been all about food and incense recently), but I suspect it’ll be very good for its intended purpose, which is, after all, the point. It’s calm and refreshing.

Reposting:

 

First sniff: I wasn’t expecting the spicy. Checking the notes, it appears to be cardamom, but my nose reads it as cinnamon (clearly I haven’t been drinking enough chai). That’s the primary note, and there’s an earthiness underneath. No hint of florals yet.

 

Wearing: Earthy-spicy and a little chilly. I’m still not getting any of the other notes… and over the course of the evening, I never really did. It just stayed spicy patchouli.

Reposting:

 

First sniff: I love dragon’s blood. I love it even more when there’s a healthy helping of musk to ground it and tone down the sweetness. And so I love Blood Moon. What I smell in the bottle: dragon’s blood, happy warm furry musk, and sweet spice, maybe cinnamon and clove. It’s a deep, dark, warm scent.

 

Wearing: Deepest red and dark spice. It clings very close – I can’t smell anything unless I put nose to wrist, which I kept doing all night.

Reposting:

 

First sniff: When I smelled it from the big bottle at the Lab, I thought Montresor just smelled like wine. Now, I’m getting more of a deep, dark, rich fruit scent, with a hint of booze. It’s reminiscent of wine, but doesn’t exactly smell like wine.

 

Wearing: Slightly tart berries soaked in dry red wine. At first, this had very little throw on me, but as it dried it developed a fantastic deep-red aura of dark fruitiness. My visit with Montresor turned out much better than Fortunato’s.

First sniff: Chilly, wet and green. Which is bizarre, because not a single one of the listed notes says chilly or wet or green. It’s green in a green-wood sort of way, not in an herbal-fresh way. I’m not explaining this well.

 

Wearing: OK, now it’s starting to dry out a bit, and developing an edge of spice and incense. It’s still rather a high, chilly scent, and the edges aren’t quite smoothed down. As it dries further, it develops a truly glorious warm wood base – the cedar isn’t too sharp, and the sandalwood is the happy soft-focus kind that works really well on me. Before the woodiness appeared, I’d mentally stuck Sri Lanka in the category of “interesting enough to try again,” but now it’s very much a keeper.

First sniff: I’m having a very hard time pinning this scent down. It’s sharp and intriguing. Definitely masculine.

 

Wearing: Blimey, that’s limey! A sudden bright-green burst of lime swirls up and subsides under wood and soft smoke. The notes of Torture King sounded about half-and-half… smoke and leather, and especially frankincense and vetiver, are things that almost never work on me, but clove, citrus, grass and musk are happy. And it seems that as the notes battle it out, the happy side is winning. There’s a bit of leather underneath, but it serves as a grounding for the citrus, which is becoming dominant as it dries. This guy is really fascinating and deserves a proper daylong wearing.

First sniff: Yikes. Yeah, that’s rose all right – the powdery kind.

 

Wearing: Powdery rose with something a little deeper and more serious underneath. It’s almost like the sin of pride and the good version of pride combined – the flamboyant hubris rose and the deeper, self-confident base. Despite any cool philosophical implications, however, this is a powdery floral, and as such, not me.