ramblingrambler

I can't do caramel scents so I wasn't sure what I was going to get with this, but man oh man am I glad I took a chance! In bottle, it smells like waxy, stale candy corn. Wet, the stale smell is pronounced, and it's slightly worrying because the drydown doesn't start happening for a while if you slather like I did . Dry, it becomes a glorious buttery, sugary, creamy frosting scent... no staleness, no caramel, nothing I can't do but everything I can. In LOVE with this purchase, and just in time for Halloween .

Holy crap. I wore this today and thought I made a mistake when I first put it on (first time wearing). I didn't have time to remove, so I had to go with it—and to a very packed academic conference. It was very strong wet... very powdery. But at some point during my hour drive this morning, it became something MAGICAL. And people couldn't stop complimenting me. It's warm. It's calming. And it's damn good. This is a very deep golden scent to me, and aptly so with the listed notes, I guess.

Earthy, loamy—and with dried roses—Zombi makes for an incredible scent *for the right person,* but that person is not me. I can see its appeal the instant it goes on, but for skin chemistry like mine, it smells like neosporin and bandaids as it begins to dry. Since I do not want to smell like neosporin and bandaids, I'll be passing my bottle along.

I hate to say it, and I don't know what it is or why it happens, but something about this on me reminds me of Raid! How sad.

Review from a very aged Vixen: This is phenomenal (still). It smells like a beautiful but linear red musk wet, and then as it begins to dry, it morphs into Snake Oil. Unless slathered, aged Vixen stays a skin scent, perfect for close, intimate moments with the significant other or heating up a more innocent date.

Like zankoku_zen above, I was tempted to discredit the beauty of the blend so everyone would sell me their bottles (kidding!), but it would do a disservice to anyone who wears these notes well. This is fresh, green strawberry scent tempered with musk (or, perhaps, the other way around? Musk brightened by strawberry? Either way, it works!). On me, the chypre reads as very, very perfume-y wet, and as it moves into dry down, blends more evenly the strawberry-musk fruitiness that, for me, is the starring role of this fragrance. As wear goes on, it oscillates between strawberry-musk and perfume-y perfume until about the hour and a half mark, at which point it becomes exceptionally intermingled and no longer does strawberry or musk have meaning anymorethey are two in one, body and soul. If any notes listed are your jam, this is a must for you. My favorite DragonCon scent, and probably my favorite release this year. Thank you, Beth! Now, time to find precisely 3749493927 more bottles...

Jealous of anyone getting blackberry from this. Redoul Honey is a sharp, green scent on me and dries into... a sharp, green scent. Some time into drydown the honeyed sweetness comes out, but it isn't enough to tone down the sharpness.

Hellfire smells like I slept—just slept!—next to a gorgeous man who is all sorts of bad in just the right ways. I can pull out each note by itself if I want to, but I would rather smell it blended together, not concentrating on what's what because hot damn is it delicious. It's just a mish-mash of sexy smells!

I would imagine a forest elf would smell like this. At first, wet, it was pencil shavings which didn't make sense because I don't see any notes to indicate it would go that way, but after drying, it became a fragrant mix of florals. Everything you would expect from a fragrance called Ephemera is here.

Sharp, clean, herbal-green-citrus scent that alone makes me think cologne but layered with a predominantly gourmand fragrance works really, really well to lighten up an otherwise heavy scent.

On me this is all honey and fig. Much too sweet and pronounced for me! I smell no patch or clove throughout wear. Somewhere into drydown it becomes slightly musty, which I attribute to either fig or honey since I get this reaction to both if they're prominent notes. For those into either, this blend should work for you!

I got Urd because I love all the notes, and it doesn't disappoint... but it is definitely different from what I expected! On me, it's a playful blend of fruit and incense, very light and almost child-like. Patchouli is almost non-existent except to balance and temper the fruitiness from the grape. If you were to tell me this were a patch blend, I wouldn't believe you—unless I stopped to think about how to balance a bright and juicy fruit like muscadine in a completely understated way. THEN I would notice the patchouli. Beautiful all around, especially as the muscadine fades away and gives in to the trailing nag champa at the end of wear. Lovely!

I'm sure this is intended to rile up my beloved, but honestly, I'm making myself hot just sniffing my wrist over and over . Applies almost as a faint cinnamon single note but eventually becomes more complex—starting off as slightly doughy cinnamon (soft, soft cinnamon), and then adding a light, resinous-woody note of some kind (my guy thinks cedar, but I think more probably just a drop of some type of boswellia). It reminds me of a TAL (maybe La Flamme? Glamour? I can't remember which at the moment), one that inspires sexual attraction, romance, charisma, etc. It makes me feel sexy, and it's easier to pick up on BPAL instead of the TAL etsy, so it works out for me.

Mmmm, this is delicious! I wouldn't wear it personally because it doesn't fit my personal identity, but it smell beautiful on me and in the imp (purchased a decant from a FB member). It's soapy upon application, but it dries into a blooming floral, slightly herbal and soft. I wanted to try this to see if I should pick up the full bottle for my mother who is very much into these types of fragrances, and I will be adding it to my purchase list!

Just got this in from the Lab's eBay a couple days ago and made this mistake of wearing it bright and early to start my day.'if. O thing else, this scent is the scent of sleep and dreams—I woke up not too long ago bright and refreshed, and all I want to do is return to bed and sleep the day away... a very bad idea since I have lots of work waiting for me on the first day back to my job after Hurricane Irma came through. I can't make any notes out alone, but this is a cool, relaxing scent, and it feels like what I imagine drinking cool chamomile before bed would feel like.

This is a lovely fruity-creamy blend that blossoms with crisp, shining apple with every sniff. I'm putting this away for aging because I really think the white patchouli will develop beautifully, making this an exquisite blend that will be popular in later years.

Dear me. I want to supercharge my aging on this imp. I don't know how or why I haven't come by Haunted before, as this sounds like the perfect blend, but I haven't... and I've been missing out. On application it is very sweet. I was slightly taken aback at how it read immediately on, wet. How could black musk and amber scream lemon sugar? I was flabbergasted. I love lemon and sugar, don't get me wrong, but it was not what I was expecting at all. Two minutes in and then things started coming together as amber and musk. "Wowie-zowie, this is good!" I exclaimed like a child. Yep. It moved me to become five years old again. Into drydown it's resinous and deep, and my goodness, I can't wait to get my hands on a bottle or seven and stick them away to age. Holy wow. HOLY WOW. Yes, this is perfection.

Jasmine is hit or miss for me, and the jasmine in Nyx is a hit. Wow, this is beautiful. Truly, this scent is evocative of its description: I feel like I'm wandering through fields of flowers a midnight. There's a slight, soft soapiness to it, but it's beautiful, fresh, and clean, not "old-lady"-like at all. Wonderfully apt namesake. Love this blend (she says after writing an "anti-floral" review in her last post...) .

Got as a Lab frimp in a recent order and slathered without reading notes. I expected it to be an aquatic (salty tears of grief is where my mind went), but I can see why it's actually a floral now that I've "read" the scent on and read the notes here. Not gonna lie---I'm not an aquatic or floral fan (on me; I love these on the right chemistry, but that's not mine!), so that's going to come out in my review. Wet, it's a bunch of flowers in my face. There's something extremely sweet in here too.... not foodie sweet, but just... florally sweet. Since I rarely wear florals unless mixed with other heavier notes, I couldn't tell you what it is. As it begins to dry, the flower-power fades some (oh, you can tell it's floral still, most definitely, as those are the predominant notes), but it isn't as... in-your-face. There's a green note that comes out and makes it a million times more wearable for me. Into fade-away, the florals high-tale it out of there and leave the greenery. I'm okay with this stage. If only it were this stage all the way through. Floral lovers will be pleased with this, I'm sure. Stay away if flower aren't your thing.

I just got frimped Shango in my last Lab order and wanted to do a comparison between my original aged bottle and the new, unaged Shango, because BOY ARE THEY DIFFERENT. Aged, Shango is spicy and sweet, like Hollywood Babylon meets a bottle of red pepper flakes. It is glorious. I love it. It's usually a little too sweet for me when I first apply it, but after it hits that fifteen minute sweet spot, magic happens. Not so with the new Shango. All the way through this is a sweet, smooth blend with heavy coconut and dark fruit. I get no coconut in my aged bottle (thank goodness; I truly despise how coconut smells on me), but it's there all the time with the unaged version. This could be an excellent thing for coconut lovers everywhere, but count me out of that group. I wanted to post this to show the power of aging. You'll either really love the aged blend, or you'll prefer the new version in every single bottle. I typically prefer aged blends, but there are some I'm completely fine with non-aged bottles (Morocco, namely. Yum either way!). Turns out Shango's also one of the "must be aged for me to love" fragrances. This lab frimp becomes a frimp for someone else.

I'm torn on this. I want to love it, but the mango--always the damn mango (or coconut)--kills it for me. For some reason, my body does not play well with "tropical" fruit. Wet: Mango and cassia. It's intensely each of these, inasmuch as you can tell that there's a lot of mango and a lot of cassia separate from each other, and then together, they're pretty intensely mingled. Five minutes in, the cassia swells and tempers the mango (thank god), but the mango's still there. Intro drydown, this becomes a slightly dry, fruity scent. I think the musk and cassia makes it read as dry and warm, and the mango, lemon peel, and sugar cane sort of make it... sharp and tart. I wish the cassia stayed for me, but since I love cassia, of course it disappears . Oddly enough, as it moves toward fade-away, it becomes green and grassy. I can only imagine that's my mind playing tricks on me, thinking dodo birds with croquet and mallets in the grassy yard. Or maybe there's some greenery in there... Dodo Bird could be a win if you like mango, but it's a nope from me. This will become a frimp. ETA: I forgot to mention that my BF said I smelled sort of stinky wearing this about midway through, like rotting fruit and garbage. You must believe me when I say that it's just my skin chemistry turning what could be absolutely lovely into something absolutely terrible.

I don't know what's wrong with my skin that all I get is soap after drydown, but... well, all I get is soap after drydown. That said, I actually like it, and I plan to keep a bottle for me and a bottle for my guy, but on him it smells like Dragon's Blood, leather, and smoke, as the notes suggest it should. Could go either way for you, too, I imagine. For me, this soap is perfectly acceptable. It's clean, fresh, and not powdery, so all is well.

Calaveras is Tezcatlipoca minus spice on me. This is a beautiful scent, and well worth aging for more depth. (I used half of my original release when I got it and aged the other half. Despite missing out on its glory—Worth it!) Tezcatlipoca is one of my very favorites because of the spice and the foodie, incensy, resins goodness, so Calaveras comes in on my (long) list of favorites but not at the tippy-top since the spice is lacking. If you're into any of these things, especially if you're into all of them, it's well worth a blind buy if you haven't tried it. The notes are all balanced and weighed beautifully, perhaps with just a hint more chocolatey (cocoa) goodness than the other notes. Love.

For some strange reason, this smells of caramel wet and into first stages of drydown. I wanted to immediately wash it off because caramel and I are not friends, but I decided to stick it out since the listed notes should work for me. Once the caramel fades after a good fifteen or twenty minutes, green notes come forward to temper overwhelmingly sweet, smoky tonka and slightly (sharp? acerbic? I'm not sure if that's the right descriptor, but I'll go with it) lilac musk and lime. As the sweetness recedes, Lysander becomes beautiful: sharp but mellowed, slightly powdery but masculine (I suppose androgyne, the mix), soapy but zingy. It's unlike most blends I own, and I'm sad that I only have an imp. I can see this heavily in rotation during the spring and summer---I think a hint of sweat might make this do even more wonderful things. Truly a find in a handful of imps from the Lab.

Aglaea is bright, sweet, and intense. Throw is huge, lasts all day, and, frankly, overstays its welcome while overstepping boundaries into others' personal space. I knew a peach scent would be a wrongdoing to others around me, but I couldn't resist trying because smell all the smells, right? This fragrance makes no room for any other notes than peach on me. It's essentially a peach SN from wet to complete late-stage dry down. Color association would be apricot (despite its peachy scent ). Anyone into peach, you'll want this. For me, it's one of the fruits I *have* to stay away from.