Burlesque Lounge - Nevermore Body Company

Details: 
Burlesque Lounge
Nevermore Body Company

Notes: 
True to its name...this musky combination of Patchouli, black leather and tobacco with a floral hint of Frankincense, violet and amber is perfectly blended in fresh lemon, mandarin, juicy plum, red apple, cinnamon and fresh clove, dipped in vanilla and cherry cordial. Let the intoxicating scents of a 19th century Burlesque Lounge tickle your senses and take you back to another time.

In the vial this is fruity and sweet - I can smell the apple and plum, and there is a candy-ish note that might be the cherry cordial. It's basically the same on my skin but with a hint of lemon. This perfume went dusty on me within minutes and stayed that way. The sillage was low and it didn't last very long. I don't like fruit scents so even without the dustiness it wouldn't have been my cup of tea.

Rating: 
1/5

Day 130! 

Harvesting Zombies - Enchanticals

Details: 
Harvesting Zombies
Enchanticals Perfume

Notes: 
Harvesting Zombies is an incredibly lavish, diverse & harmonious fragrance for the senses made with the finest extractions and oils available, with earthy, aged patchouli essential oil, moody black amber essential oil, sassy cinnamon, and a harvest of amazing, fresh Autumn fruits and spices so yummy no human or Zombie could ever resist.

In the vial this smells like spicy autumn fruits - apple, pear, the kind of things you make cold weather puddings out of. On my wrist it's mostly apple and cinnamon at first, and it's obviously real cinnamon oil because it itched like hell almost immediately. I was tempted to scrub it off but I let it go for a while to see how it would go, and it did subside after about 20 or 30 minutes. The dry down is a warm spicy scent – the cinnamon is not prevalent here, it’s more a mixed spice blend with the patchouli there but not taking over. The sillage is fairly low, but it lasted a really long time - at the end of the day I could still faintly smell it on my wrist and it had faded to something familiar I couldn't quite put my finger on. I asked Noodles what it smelled like to her at that point and she said, "Old people. No, old hippies." Right. Patchouli, then.  As fruit scents go, this is more on the warm side, and therefore more palatable to me than the light, bright young ones that I hate so much, but it’s still not really my cup of tea.

Rating: 
3/5

Day 57!

Blood and Donuts - Deep Midnight Perfumes

Details:
Blood & Donuts
Deep Midnight Perfumes

Notes: 
Dark Egyptian amber and gaharu wood, well blended and served with creamy vanilla, cinnamon spice, rich chocolate, and a splash of turkish coffee. It's.... to die for.

In the vial I smell chocolate and vanilla. Once applied it’s spicy vanilla coffee. I don’t drink chai, but I imagine this is what it smells like (although is chai coffee? I’m not sure it is...). The synthetic note that a few of the Deep Midnight perfumes doesn’t show up in this one. The dry down starts as a fairly strong amber, which goes a little dusty for a while, then mellows to a slightly spicy vanilla amber. Sillage is low to medium – I caught a whiff of it now and then when I moved my arm but I wasn’t aware of it otherwise. Longevity is medium – about 5-6 hours.

Rating:
2/5 It has all the notes I like but it doesn’t really do anything for me.

Day 46!

Madame - Nevermore Body Company

Details:
Madame
Nevermore Body Company

Notes: 
Madame’s golden days of Cabaret brings back the warm and sophisticated, yet subtle blend of apple and oak, with a spice mahogany bouquet, soothing hints of vanilla, cinnamon and dark wood, ripe tones of sweet figs and infused with a blend of tobacco, black tea and fruit spices.

 In the vial this is fruity and sweet, exactly the kind of thing I don't like. Once I applied it, it smelled sour - the apple, I assume. I'm not sure what fig smells like exactly, but I was testing another perfume with a fig note the day before and there was a similar sour note in that one, so I'm guessing that's adding to it. To be perfectly honest, this smells a bit like cat pee on me. I almost scrubbed it off, but it was quite close to the skin and didn't have much sillage at all, so I left it on for a while to see if it would change. It does eventually, and dries down to a fairly pleasant, mildly spicy vanilla base. It's quite a significant morphing, actually. The longevity is medium - I could faintly smell it after 6 hours, but only if I had my nose right up to my wrist. I wouldn't wear this purely because I really dislike the opening notes of it, and the vanilla base is nice, but nothing unique.

Rating: 
2/5

Day 25!

Black Lace - Black Baccara

Details:
Black Lace
Black Baccara

Notes: 
Dangerously sexy, Black Lace is a unique and incredibly seductive blend. It has a heavenly backdrop of vanilla which dances with amber, tobacco and cinnamon. Timeless and captivating, this blend stands out for it’s vanilla augmentations; a vanilla which is more seductive than it is sweet, more sexy than confectionary. 

In the vial I smell vanilla, but as the notes description says, it's not a sugary sweet kind, more of a deep, warm vanilla. Once I applied this I could not stop sniffing - it's delicious.

Once it dries down it deepens (the amber, thankfully not jumping out and going nuts but staying well in the background), but it doesn't change all that much. I can't smell the cinnamon, there's just a warm, slightly sweet spiciness to the vanilla.

There is, however, one problem I have with this perfume:

See that redness? It's hella itchy. I assume it's the cinnamon, though that's odd because I'm not normally sensitive to perfume ingredients or really much of anything, and I have no allergies that I know of (other than hay fever kind of things). I thought (hoped) maybe it was something else, but I tried Black Lace again on the other wrist and it did the same thing. So sadly, as much as I love the smell, this is not meant to be. :-(

Rating:
4/5 High score for the fragrance - a lovely warm, grown up vanilla.

Day 20!

Cinnamon Milk - BoondockG

Details:
Cinnamon Milk
BoondockG

Notes:
Dry cinnamon bark swirled in warm milk and cream ~ drops of sugarcane and toffee ~ cocooned in vanilla pods, benzoin and sandalwood. Made with skin-safe cinnamon fragrance….enjoy the flame without the burn.

I feel bad because I'm about to shade this perfume and this is the first time I've ever mentioned this shop. I have a couple of others that I quite like, but this just happens to be the one that I pulled out for testing.

In the vial, this smells oaty - like dry porridge oats, but not the supermarket kind. The kind that you get in big buckets at the market. Not an unpleasant smell, but not really what I'd want to smell like. Once applied, it smells like a cheap plastic doll. The cinnamon note is there too and smells fake - like the kind you get in chewing gum. The dry down is killer - it smells like baby vomit. I'm not exaggerating. I asked Noodles what she thought of it, and she reeled back, screwed her face up and said, "Ew, baby spew!"

Rating: 
1/5 I'm sorry to say that I just hated this.

Day 14!