astarinel

Profoundly sensual. The echo of caresses: raw black coconut, ambergris accord, ambrette seed, champaca flower, and sugar cane. In the imp, the coconut is definitely the most prominent note. After I put it on, the other notes definitely start to blend and settle more. The sugar cane gives it a thick, sweet base, and the coconut is rich but not candied. The champaca is quite prominent wet, giving it a heavy tropical feel alongside the coconut. It does have a bit of an odd salty touch, I guess from the ambergris. It has a musky feel, despite not having any musk as a listed note. Sensual and sweet. I don't dislike the way it smells, but I'm not loving it. I feel like the combination doesn't work for me -- it's a bit too beachy/sexy to be something I'd want to wear.

Perhaps Endymion? A sweet, wistful blend of d'Anjou pear, Lily of the Valley, bois du rose and white musk. My personal favorite pear is The Perilous Parlor, which is semi-impossible to find now, but I'm really looking forward to trying The Vine which sounds full of pear deliciousness!

Although I hate to recommend long-gone LEs, I think the most carrot-cakey blend is Sleipnir: Confections spun of hazelnuts, honey, elderberries, and bilberries with a dusting of hay and a bit of carrot. It's from Yule a couple years ago, and I don't think was very popular, but it smelled to me like moist a carrot muffin. If you're looking for cream cheesy icing, though, something like Cake Smash might be a better fit. That one's probably even harder to find though!

This is awesome. I tend to use the bath oils just as moisturizer and scent, rather than in the bath, and this one has an amazing amount of throw. Super-fruity, but not overly sweet, this is such a bright and happy fruity scent that I had to get a big bottle even though it takes me forever to go through them, because I couldn't stand the idea of never smelling this again when my tiny imp-sized sample ran out. Definitely my favorite bath oil since the Warrior Queen ones.

First, I definitely don't get much pumpkin. The pumpkin note tends to be hot rancid buttered fail on my skin, so this is a good thing from my perspective (very few pumpkin blends are exceptions to this rule). The spice mix is a little odd, but not unpleasant. It's chai-like with a bit of licorice. It's rather sweet with an almost baked good sort of quality to it, and it's rather nice but not outstanding. If you like warm spicy foody blends, this might be up your alley.

Surprisingly, the ozone is failing to turn to soapy dryer sheets, but I can already tell this is not a me scent. It's cold and remote, a little piney, and a little bit of that mineral note feel as well. There's something sharp, too, and very wintery. I guess I should just stick to L'Inverno and Snow Moon, none of the other snowy blends ever work for me! I prefer the sweeter snow note, and the ozone just ends up giving me a headache most of the time.

I love this in the imp. The citrus is very strong and bright, which is exactly what I was hoping for. Unfortunately, wet on my skin the mint takes over at first, leaving the citrus notes crushed underneath. As it dries, the notes come briefly into a better balance, but the piney aspect of the snow note really starts to take over while the citrus finally fades away for good. I really like the snow note in some blends, like Snow Moon, but sometimes the piney-ness is too much for me, and it definitely is here. Super disappointing, this one was really amazing sniffed in the imp.

I definitely agree with the reviews that say this one is reminiscent of O. I personally love O, but I find it a little too sexy and assertive for daily wear. This has the same soft amber honey combination of O, and I get only a faint orange. The linden is surprisingly strong while wet -- I normally think of linden as being kind of a soft and wispy floral note, but it's definitely dominating the blend for a little while here. As it dries, the linden fades a bit and I get more warm vanilla amber, tempered a bit with some bitterness which I suspect is coming from the orange zest. It's actually quite pretty, but wears a bit similar to other honey scents that I have. I'll have to give it a few more trial wears to see if it wins me over. Edited to add: As it dries and I give it a few more tests, it starts reminding me significantly of Et Lux Fuit (my favorite!). It's that same warm blend of honey, resin, with gentle florals. I honestly don't get much of the orange from this, but YMMV as usual!

I was expecting this to be a much sharper mint, more like the Lick Its or Green Tree Viper, but the mint here is very soft and subtle. On wet, these mints are gentle and there's a definite ozone-y tinge here which is threatening to get soapy. My skin does not play well with most of the lab's air/ozone notes, and it's unfortunately affecting this scent for me. Before my skin ruins it, it reminds me a little of Nuclear Winter, but less slushy and more airy and herbal. The musk is very nice and sticks close to the skin. I really wish this one worked for me, because it's rare that I like a pepperminty blend (even though I love peppermint!), but whatever ozone/cold note went in here is one that my skin definitely doesn't like.

I really wanted to love this. It's a very pale, shimmery apple/vanilla/floral scent on, but it fades super-duper fast on my skin leaving nothing behind but a pretty generic vanilla musk scent. It's lovely in the imp, but so soft and boring on my skin. I have a bunch of apple scents, so an apple has to be really special for me to want a bottle of it, and this one might have lived up if it lasted better. As it is, I'll stick with Snow Glass Apples and Arcana's Stretched on Your Grave for my chilly apple floral fix.

I really like this one wet. The apple note is juicy and more prominent than in the other apple blends, and the soft spiciness added by the carnation and ginger almost gives this an apple-pie vibe, only not sweet enough to be foody. Unfortunately, as it dries, the pretty notes I liked fade and I'm left with a slightly sweet frankincense with vague spices. It almost turns a little soapy, which is sad. If it stayed how it was for the first minutes on my skin, this would definitely be bottle-worthy.

I'm sort of hoping that I got a poorly-mixed decant somehow, because the reason I got this was the lime note, and I'm smelling absolutely zero lime. I love lime and dragon's blood, and was hoping they would overpower the sort of questionable other notes. Unfortunately, it worked out the opposite way and I get a noseful of heavy floral and a ton of cedar. A ton. Absolutely not my thing, blah.

This is so interesting but so not something I want to wear as perfume. I also get something like cinnamon from this blend, and it ends up smelling like spicy, smoky brown sugar. Like brown sugar left to melt in a pot with baking spices added. I don't really get anything identifiably marshmallow, but the lab marshmallow note is hit or miss on me, and the only ones I can really wear are Chewing Little Bits of String and Plastic Pink Flamingo.

I have a pretty high tolerance for sweet scents, but this one is REALLY sweet. This is like apple flavored bubble gum, with a sort of weak apple flavor -- the strawberry and pom are definitely the notes that jump out at me here. The rose is flat out nonexistent. My skin is notorious for rose = soap, and it's not doing that here, which is good. Definitely a bright sweet scent, but I think it's a little too much chewy gumminess. I prefer my candy scents a little hard and sparkly and tart (Treat #1, Spinning Multicolored Metallic Pinwheel) and this is definitely a sweet soft one.

I'm normally not very into this genre of scent, but I wanted to try all the apples, and I ended up liking this more than I expected to. On wet, it's a very cool, watery scent. Normally I'm pretty wary of the florals in this, particularly anything lotus-related, but they mostly seem to be behaving. I would class this scent as primarily a floral, despite the apple, which is pretty mild. The lack of a crisp apple note is a little disappointing, but this is a pretty scent even if it's not my style.

This is a little... odd. There is definitely a pumpkin note, but notably not a buttery one (those are awful on my skin). I'm going to guess the mix of currant and tiare is what's making this go a little tart and soapy on me, unfortunately. I can get hints of pumpkin, guava, and chocolate, but this scent just isn't mixing well on my skin. If you're one of those people who doesn't normally like the lab's pumpkin notes, this is a comparatively wearable pumpkin that definitely stands out as being different, but the other notes in this end in fail on my skin. I'd be interested to smell this on someone else, because as it dries I start to get something really pretty and bright, but it's too late for it to work on me.

I didn't know quite what to expect from this blend of notes. The leaf note is definitely the most prominent, which is disappointing to me because that note always hits my nose as a bit too sharp and bitter for my liking. There's definitely a mint component here, and the musk/vanilla/mint combo is sweet and smooth, but the leaf note keeps it from going overly sweet. It's certainly an interesting and unique scent, I just don't really like it. As it dries the notes meld together better into sort of a cool soft round scent and the bitter leaf note no longer is assaulting my nose, but this one definitely just doesn't work for me.

I tend to love cake scents, but I'm glad I didn't spring for a bottle of this one as it's not particularly special or awesome on my skin. The cake note here is very yellow cake, like cake from a box yellow cake. I can definitely smell a sugary vanilla icing note, and I love that note, but on top of the icing is what I guess is the "sprinkle" note, and that's what's not really doing it for me. There's a vaguely fruity-smelling powdery candy note, almost like necco wafers to my nose, that definitely makes me think "candy sprinkles" but not entirely in a good way. This scent ends up being pretty much what you would think from reading the notes, but the sum of the notes ends up not being overly great on my skin. Slightly disappointing, but I hardly need more cake perfume at this point, so probably ultimately a good thing.

A pretty, sweet, delicate scent. I mostly get the watermelon and sweet pea with a bit of a watery feeling. As it dries, the warmer notes come out a little bit more and the cool watermelon fades. This is really lovely, sweet without being cloying, and a bit fruity without being overwhelming, and extremely wearable. I don't have many other watermelon scents, and the one I do have (Treat #1) is a very strong hard candy type scent. This one is more realistic and juicy, with the watery side of the watermelon keeping it cool and airy. I'll definitely have to track down more of this one!

I normally hate orange blossom. There's only one blend with a strong orange blossom note that I like (Katharina, which I actually like quite a lot and wear regularly), and every other perfume that I've tried with an orange blossom note has gone sharp metallic antiseptic soap. This blend has in it the orange blossom that I like, a soft orange floral. It's definitely got this fizziness going on, and the grapefruit is quite tart -- even with the honey, this is not really a sweet scent to me. It's sparkly and bright though, and gets a little softer as it dries. This is definitely my favorite of the Grendel scents.

I like the bottle scent for this -- bright sweet floral notes with a slight nose-tickling underlay of spices. Wet on my skin, it was also pretty nice, with the vanilla and amber coming out a little and the florals starting to fade. However, after about 10 minutes, clove takes over, beats the crap out of all the other notes, and leaves merely a vague musty clovey-ness on my skin. Kind of disappointing, but I've long realized that clove is a troublesome note for my skin, and this blend is unfortunately no exception. I really liked the wet scent, however, so someone with different skin chemistry who is looking for the spicy-heady floral kind of scent would likely be pleased with this one.

This is impressively lime-y when on wet, to the point where I have difficulty picking out any other notes. There's something vaguely dark underneath it, almost a bit perfumey or soapy. As it dries, I get a little bit of plum and some dark smokiness. Surprisingly, the opium doesn't take over and become unpleasant, which it has a history of doing on me. This isn't a very me scent, but it's very interesting in how it develops from this blast of sweet citrus to a sort of smoky dark resin scent.

Juicy mango and tart pomegranate dominate this one for me. I was worried about the red musk here, which can amp and take over a blend on my skin and has killed fruity blends before for me (Semiramis, I'm looking at you), but it's very light. The mango note is definitely the star here, fruity and delicious, with the pomegranate keeping it from being too overly sweet. It definitely sort of reminds me of a fruity cocktail, without a heavy booze note. I rather like this, and I'm going to have to give it more testing. With the Lupers this year, I tried Mango Buttercream and discovered that I really like the lab's mango note, and that's definitely what this blend is all about. I find it fruity and bright without being syrupy or overwhelming.

I've smelled a lot of honey blends, and on my skin, this one doesn't have anything particularly special going on. I generally dislike orange blossom as a floral note, it strikes me as sharp and weirdly metallic, and although it's pretty weak here I get some slight echoes of that unpleasant metallic-ness. It is not overly sweet, for a honey blend, and reminds me of the more herbal/floral honeys, like Door or Flower Moon '09. There's something a little dark in the background, maybe the tobacco trying to peek out, but the honey definitely dominates this blend on my skin. This is not as heady and sweet as I was expecting, which is usually a good thing, but I just don't like the non-honey notes in this blend. I vastly prefer Valse Finale for a floral/herbal honey, which has a lighter honey note in it.

I love the foody ones (although I hate Eat Me -- something in there doesn't agree with my chemistry!) and so in the GC I would suggest: Cockaigne The Knave of Hearts Miskatonic University (this smells ridiculously of coffee shop and pastries on me) Chimera (smells like cinnamon buns to me, especially aged) Hellcat Velvet (chocolatey!) Shub-Niggurath (gingernsnaps!) Centzon Totochtin (also chocolatey, less sweet) Queen Alice Bread and Butterfly High-Strung Daisies (this smells like pink spun sugar to me) Good luck!