ltrittipoe

I can’t say X-23 and I can’t say snickt and I can’t say Wolverine, so my ability to tell stupid jokes here is limited. Let’s say this is L-10’s origin story wherein she is accidentally plopped into a barrel of room temperature French fries, and emerges with superhuman mutations that grant her immortality, regeneration, and lethal deep-fried potato claws.

 When I told Lilith I was going to make her a French fries scent, she yelled EWWWWWWWW, so here’s a perfume that smells like a carbonated caramel-flavored soda (that shall remain nameless) with a hint of marshmallow. I love, love Beth’s “carbonated” notes, whether it’s soda, champagne, or cider. And this is definitely as advertised - bubbly caramel soda! It does have a moment on first application where it’s just ever so faintly bitter, and then that vanishes to leave nose-tickling bubbles, refreshing and sweet. Yummy, mouthwatering cream soda, vanilla more than caramel - maybe that’s the marshmallow? This is very light, with low throw - I have to put my nose fairly close to my wrist to smell it, but I think that it may get stronger with a little age - most of the Lab’s carbonated blends seem to start out light and get stronger with time.

Count Chocula! I loved Count Chocula when I was a kid, and this smells exactly like I remember - and exactly as I had hoped. Chocolate toasted cereal, and those crispy chocolate marshmallows. So happy to have this.

These long-dead scents are back for a limited time in a slightly tweaked form! Darkly seductive and lethally compelling: sinuous oponax, galbanum, dark wild berries, a drop of lush jasmine and a sliver of lime. Venom was one that I always wished I had a chance to try... Now I have it and will need a backup or 2 or 3! One of my first adult scents was Christian Diors Poison, and I loved it soooooo much. Rich, sweet, almost overwhelming, and just drop dead gorgeous. Its been reformulated and now smells like a super watered down version of the Poison I loved. But Venom..... Venom has that same richness, sweetness and feel. The notes are cleaner and clearer, and of course its not the same, but they absolutely have something in common. It may be the dark berry/jasmine combo? Whatever it is, it has that grab you in the back of the throat feel that I loved ... just beautiful. Rich and potent - definitely deadly.

Gingered apple champagne. This was the first of the exclusives I grabbed, because I knew I would love it- and I was right. I love Beth's champagne note, and it's front and center here. Effervescent, bright, and nose-tickling, this is a mostly champagne scent on me, with the gingered apple in the background, giving a hint of spicy sweetness. This is the champagne from Champagne Lace, made brighter and sweeter with the gingered apple. Not an "apple" scent really, it's definitely there but as a supporting player - as it seemed with all the exclusives, to my nose at least. I probably should have gotten a backup bottle. :wub:

This is an amazingly real life key lime pie scent! Delicious tart lime, cramy cool sweetness, and sugar cookie crust. All I can say is that this smells EXACTLY like key lime pie tastes. For those wondering, this (to me at least) is the lime from Mr. Nancy. Juicy and sugary and sweet, with that tartness as well.

Proceeds from the sale of this California wildflower single note will benefit those affected by the Tubbs Fire through this GoFundMe. Funds gathered by this GoFundMe will be distributed to the Sonoma Valley Fire and Rescue Authority, Napa County Fire Department, Lake County Fire and Rescue, Santa Rosa Fire Department, and the Redwood Credit Union North Bay Fire Recovery Fund. Beautiful, elegant, lovely iris. A little powdery, a little violet-y (but iris always reminds me of violet). This is just beautiful - a perfumery note iris, not in an “actual flower” way.

Baby oil? I don’t even know what is making my brain smell that, but it smells like .... either Johnson& Johnson baby oil, or baby wipes. I guess they smell kind of the same. My nose must be broken.

In the bottle, I get mainly the pink pepper note, bright and fresh. On my skin, it is almost exactly like a layered Dorian and Antique Lace - they don’t blend together to create a different fragrance, they swirl around each other, sometimes with Dorianmoreprominent, sometimes Antique Lace coming out on top. Beautiful.

Autumn at Liliths favorite cemetery, Lafayette No. 1. Osmanthus and jasmine, Spanish moss and dandelion, Snake Oil and Dorian. This is so lovely - the osmanthus and jasmine give it a light floral sweetness, with the Spanish moss and dandelion keeping it from being too sweet or too purely floral. There's a depth and a richness to it, a dryness that smells like Autumn to me. I can't pick out the Snake Oil or Dorian, but I get a sense of them in the background depth. Maybe because I know they're there? Very evocative! I get that autumnal "dried leaf" note in here somewhere - not a dead leaf note, but crunchy papery dry leaves and fresh air. The scent that you get when you scuff through the piles of leaves under the trees, at the edges of the walk, on a dry, crisp, clearday - where the sky is so blue and the air is perfectly cool and dry. Definitely an Autumn floral - light and rich, sweet mossy floral and crunchy leaves. This is the love child of Bayou and Falling Leaf Moon....

Spiced tea, leather, liquidambar, and labdanum. Really pretty straightforward - and really lovely. All the notes are present and accounted for on my skin - and blend together to make a leather/tea/spice/amber-y haze. At first I get the tea, with cinnamon? The scent of the spices remindsme of the Good Earth Sweet & Spicy tea blend, and the spices in that tea are cinnamon, lemongrass, peppermint, anise, ginger & orange peel. Not that I can pick out any of those!! Just that I get that same sweet/spicy tea feeling from this. The leather is warm and worn, definitely brown leather. Both liquidambar and labdanum are supposed to be reminiscent of ambergris, and I am absolutely getting that in the background - that may be what is making the leather seem worn and soft to me. They are just warming and softening everything up. So, overall - warm, sweet, spicy tea & leather. I really like this blend, and I am not usually a fan of tea scents. I think the spices make the difference.

MARSHMALLOW!! Dry, powdery vanilla-y marshmallow. With a hint of tart crisp Apple, but mostly marshmallow. This is lovely, soft and sweet, but fresh at the same time.

I love the red wine note that Beth uses - its rich and sweet and not too boozey. The alcohol dissipates after a few minutes, but keeps the aura of the wine, that smells jammy and amazing. Wine and amber-y incense. Love.

This is the leathery-ist leather in my collection, and it blends so beautifully with the strawberry lipgloss to smell like my teenage years of hanging out at midnight movies in a leather jacket with loads of lipgloss on. Although it's a teenage memory, this is a beautiful grownup scent.

Spicy, clove-y amber! I love amber, oud, patch (of any color) and saffron.... fig and clove can be very hit or miss. This is a hit! Glowing, golden, and warm - the clove is very present (I think I amp clove, so YMMV), but doesn't drown out the other notes, as it sometimes can. I'm mostly getting amber and clove right now, but this is fresh from the mailbox. The other notes are definitely in a supporting role here, but everything combines to just give a warm, spicey haze of clove and amber.

I love, love this one. I agree that there is jasmine in this - or that something combines to make jasmine to me - it is a darker, dirtier version of OLLA's Hal on my skin, which is one of my favorite jasmine blends. I get the same type of jasmine as from Hal, but where Hal is sweet, bright, and creamy, , this is dark, spicy and resiny. There's a spicy kick from the pepper, and the patch is dry, and the oudh is resinous - which balances out the sweetness of the jasmine. I don't get any cacao from this, unless it it just adding a hint of sweetness in the far background.

This is an elegant and beautiful iris scent on me. I get all of the notes, and the dry down is mostly iris and benzoin, with a hint of bergamot - it's cool, silvery and gorgeous.

I love the "lace" blends, and the magic that is prominent in the other laces is here. A little bit smokey, a little bit of tobacco in the background.... but the dry down for this lace is tea. Beautiful, smokey tea with the lace background. It's really gorgeous.

This.....this is gorgeous. Everything is so well blended that it's hard to pick out individual notes, but I get glimpses of them as it wafts around me. I am getting a warm, hazy, resiny sweet and spicy scent - warm skin in hot sun, spicy honeyed amber - I don't get any cacao, but I think it blends so well with the myrrh and cardamom that it just adds to the spicy sweetness. And this is the rare blend with honey that I can wear. I'm always hoping because I love the scent of honey, but 99.9% of the time it turns to sweaty skanky nastiness with my skin chemistry. This is not that, The is honey and spicy desert sands. And it's fresh out of the mailbox. If it changes after a few days I'll come back and edit, but it's amazingly good now.

I think the gin is giving this an effervescent feel, like orange champagne. Not too sweet, not bitter, just bubbly orange.

I ordered this as soon as it was available on LtD website, but honey-ish scents are hard fro me. I wanted it anyway! Of course I tried it right away, but it needed aging. It wasn't bad, it wasn't great. Honey/beeswax, loads of it, like a clean honeycomb. So into the aging box it went. And now ... it is rich, and deep, sweet, and spicy. Honey, yes, but now the other notes are peeking out. The honey itself is light and clean, the vanilla is deep and smoky. The clove and cinnamon meld on my skin to create an almost carnation - like spice. Elka compared the honey to Door in her review, and I see that - Door is one of the very few scents with honey that I can wear without it turning into funky b.o. It stays light, clean, and very sweet - and that's what I'm getting here.

This is so beautiful and very evocative of being in the very center of all that greenery and florals, next to the water, at the very height of summer, at night. This is not too sweet and not a pure floral on me - there's too much green and water to be just a floral. But the florals are creamy and lush. Very wearable, and one of the very few aquatics I can wear - most of them turn to "cologne" with my skin chemistry, but Bayou has the scent of water without being cologne-y. I can smell the trees, the moss, the huge white flowers.... The scent of summer in the Deep South. This is a heavy, lush, hot scent, green, with the smell of water.

In the bottle, this is all banana, all the time. And not just banana, this is BANANA in giant flashing neon yellow banana-ness. And then I put it on my skin.... And the banana disappears and this is a smokey bourbon vetiver. With a little bit of tobacco, but sadly, no cacao! and I don't see any in the bottle that would stain my skin. Or float around in the bottle. Clear oil. I don't think I've ever had a note vanish as quickly and completely as that banana. Vetiver/tobacco with a little smoky sweetness is hanging around, though. And the more you type "banana", the wrong-er it looks.

Chocolate marshmallow - yes. Pie crust - yes. Yum - yes. Overwhelmingly sticky sweet - no. While this is delicious chocolate marshmallow pie, right down to the crust, this is FANCY pie. This is bittersweet chocolate, the kind that almost has a hint of espresso, or maybe this pie was made with Kaluha? I am definitely getting a hint of coffee. The marshmallow fades as it dries down, while the chocolate becomes richer and denser. This isn't as purely sweet and foody as the Key Lime Pie (the other bottle I received at the same time) - I think the bitter notes of the chocolate keep it from being purely foody. As it dries down, it turns more into a bittersweet flourless chocolate torte than a pie. Delicious! ETA: It's this: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/flourless-chocolate-cake-recipe With marshmallow glaze instead of chocolate ganache. I think I will have to make this, just to try.

I sometimes have problems with neroli, so that may be what is making this smell slightly soapy on me. I love all the other notes, and was hoping for a coconutty Dragon's Milk-ish scent. but the addition of the neroli is adding that slight soapy sharpness that makes me think of Ren Faire soap/candles/incense. There is a particular scent, not a bad scent at all, but it is associated in my head with Ren Faires, and the combination of scents that those booths smell like. Citrusy sweetish Dragon's Blood. It's nice, but I'm not sure if its a keeper. I was hoping that aging would change it a little, but I don't think it has.

This is a really beautiful leather-y lavender tobacco, with the oud and bay as supporting notes. Its kind of like.... you know how cherry pipe tobacco is so delicious smelling? This is the lavender version of that, stored in a soft, worn, fragrant leather pouch. This is a definitely unisex scent, but on the sweet side in that pipe tobacco way. The lavender stays soft but distinct, there aren't any sugary notes to take it into purely sweet territory. I think the tobacco and leather are giving me the sweet impression, while the oud is adding a slight smokiness. This was an impulse swap, but I am so glad I decided to do it. I really love this, it's a pretty unique blend for my collection. And definitely my favorite from the Pickman Gallery 2015!