Catch Up Post #8

Delightful Rot Poisonous Dream - The blackberry musk of of a sweet dream, distorted by cool mint and black oud.
This is a synthetic smelling soapy perfume. It smells like an old lady rose-scented soap set that's been gathering dust on the shelf of a country chemist for at least 10 years. Sillage is fairly low and longevity is low to medium. It was gone in about 4 hours, and I can't say I was sorry to see it go. 2/5

Deep Midnight Perfume Nivens - Nivens will lead you down a rabbit hole to tasty helpings of sweet creamy pastries, cakes and sticky puddings, topped off with plump wild berries and a touch of spices and soft florals. Fresh, sweet, and delicious!
This smells really synthetic to me, as most of Deep Midnight's perfumes tend to do. The smell is nuts, coffee and cream to my nose and it's all a bit sickly. The dry down is a slightly sickly creamy milk scent. This was pretty gross, to be honest. And of course, because I didn't like it, it hung around for ages - about 8 hours. Thankfully the sillage was lowish, so I wasn't inflicting it on anyone else. 1/5

Solstice Scents Violet Truffle - Dark chocolate, violet, violet leaf and vanilla absolute.
This is a sweet chocolate floral that reminds me a bit of Serendipitous. It goes a wee bit dusty in the first few minutes but doesn't stay that way for too long, maybe 10 minutes or so. I was just starting to decide that I didn't like this at all when it morphed into a vanilla base and became quite perfumey and pretty. The dust note was still there, but low key. In the end I liked this one quite a bit after the first half hour, but I doubt I'd buy a full size. 3/5

Possets Lovechild: Sweetbaby - Vanilla concentrated with lavender and amber.
At first this is sickly sweet - all lollies and baby chunder, and I almost washed it off. However, I stuck it out for the cause and it mellowed after half an hour or so to a sweet, creamy vanilla - somewhat similar to Courtly Love though more foody and not quite as perfumey. This one had average lasting time on the wrists - maybe 6 hours - but I also dabbed a little in my cleavage (oo-er missus!) and it really stuck around in there.  I was catching whiffs of it 12 or more hours later. This one's a clinger. 3/5


Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab - Regan A deceptively sweet orchid vanille with a faint trace of stephanotis.
A very heady powdery floral, pretty and old-fashioned, but nothing remarkable. I feel like I've smelled versions of this a million times. Sillage is highish and it lasted most of the day - not really an office perfume. Meh. 2/5


Days 217 - 221!

Blood Bath - Delightful Rot

Details: 
Blood Bath
Delightful Rot

Notes: 
A sexy, romantic bath with a vampire. Crisp water soaked with rose petals and a trickle of blood and musk. NOTE: No actual blood was used in the creation of this perfume, I promise.

In the vial and when first applied this is mega rose, and that's ALL it is. It's not a bad perfume, but man am I over rose - I seem to have acquired eleventy million rose perfumes lately. After a few minutes it did seem to smell a bit watery, which was quite an odd combination as rose is usually more of a creamy floral - on me, at least. It was kind of interesting, but watery florals don't do it for me. The musk did come out a little in the dry down, but mostly this is just a honking big slap in the face with R.O.S.E. Sillage was pretty high at first, but calmed down after the watery element came out. It lasted a good 7 hours or so and then I had a shower, so who knows how long it might have gone on for? 

Rating: 
2/5 Sorry rose, welcome to Dumpville. Population: you.

Day 112!

Catch Up/Round Up

I have had some family dramas going on lately - nothing major or out of control, but it's sapping a lot of my time and energy so I've fallen behind on reviews and comments (and reading other blogs!). I'll catch up with comments in the next day or so but I have decided to do a quick montage of the perfumes I've tested in the last week to get up to date. I'm just going to put a few brief words about each - really just the impressions I write down as I am testing them. Sorry to do this, but I feel like I'm just going to keep falling behind otherwise, and I'm really into this project and don't want to abandon it. Hopefully I can resume normal daily reviews in a couple of days. I'm linking to the creator's description of each scent.

Twyla Lirrit - Sweet and candyish but not sickly. A fruity floral I don't hate - a very rare thing. Doesn't last long. 

Twyla Honekakala - Honeysuckle and tropical flowers. It's very pretty, normally honeysuckle makes me think of the American south, but this one reminds of somewhere like Hawaii. I imagine this is what a lei smells like. Again, didn't last more than about 2 hours, but most of my Twylas are the old formula and these have since been strengthened so hopefully longevity is no longer an issue. 

Twyla Bohemian Baby - This is one of the new formula perfumes, and it certainly lasted a while on me. Unfortunately it's mega patchouli so not really to my taste. If you're a patchouli fan it's definitely worth checking out. 

Possets Theodora - Resin, resin, resin. Very exotic and vampy, but totally not my thing at all. I’m not a big fan of frankincense and it amps on me like crazy with this perfume. The dry down is a strong, slightly masculine musk, but there’s something vaguely cheap-smelling about it. It makes me think of a men’s musk cologne that would be in a stack near the front counter of Chemist Warehouse and cost about $15 for a 100ml bottle. Sillage and longevity are fairly low – it lasted about 3 hours and I wasn’t sorry to see the back of it.

Possets Gingerbread Whorehouse -  In the vial, this smells like sweet cake with a dab of ginger. AGAIN WITH THE CAKE SCENTS. In my defence, this was a freebie – not one I chose even though I already have eleventy million cake scents. The ginger comes out a lot more when it’s applied to skin – I like the smell of ginger, but there’s something else in here that’s not very nice, a note of something that smells like turned cream. Thankfully, about 20 minutes later at the point where I was seriously considering scrubbing this off, that note disappeared and the perfume dried to a cakey, sweet vanilla. Oddly, given the name, the ginger doesn’t hang around. Sillage is medium, as is longevity.

BoondockG Vanilla Vanilla - Really strong, sickly vanilla toilet spray.

Delightful Rot Ravenclaw - One for the Harry Potter fans (I'm not). I like this but I don't love it. The pear is vaguely alcoholic - as pear always is to me, and the amberwood is soft and doesn't dominate. I don't get more than a flash of tea every now and then. It works well. It's just... not my thing. 

Black Baccara Old Fashioned Holiday Candy - I asked Noodles what this smelled like to her and she said pineapple and pina coladas. To me it smells exactly like Wonka Nerds, so I guess it lives up to its name.

Again, apologies for the half-arse catch ups, and if you want more information about any of these, please feel free to ask and I'll say more in comments.

Days 89 - 96!

Creeper - Delightful Rot

Details:
Creeper
Delightful Rot

Notes:
Ssssss... That's a nice everything you have... A powder keg stuffed with sweet lime and grass, this scent is innocuous at first with a smoky, spicy undertone. 

My thoughts on this perfume:

*sniff* "Oh god, this smells like lemon floor cleaner. I don't want this on me - I wonder if I can put it back and pretend I didn't pick it out?"
"No, can't do that... okay, here goes. Oh god, it smells like floor cleaner and tyres! "
"Now it just smells like tyres."
"It's like a mechanic's garage. A similar note to '67 Chevy Impala, but not nearly as pleasant."
"That citrus is back again. Now it smells like the freshly cleaned toilet of a mechanic's garage."
"This is gross."
"Still gross."
*about an hour later* "Bearable. Smokey diesel oil. Not as awful as it began, but not my thing."
Sillage was annoyingly strong at first but not so bad when it finally morphed into something more mellow. Longevity was about 7 hours or so.

Rating: 
1/5 I resisted the urge to scrub, but only just.

Day 79!

Cantina Band - Delightful Rot

Details:
Cantina Band
Delightful Rot Perfumery

Notes: 
A bawdy, raucous scent. A mix of smoky air and scuffed wood bar, dusty boots, aliens musks and the sweet molasses edge of rye liquor.

In the vial this is a smoky, booze scent. Applied to the skin the smoke and wood really come out. There's something about this I really like, though I'm not entirely sure what it is - the smell as a whole is just mmm.... it's weird because when I first got this order from Delightful Rot and opened up all the vials to sniff them, this was the one that made me reel back in horror. Yet smelling it now in the vial I'm all over it.

The smoke retreats considerably when it dries down, but there's still an edge of it there. Mostly it's a musky wood with the liquor adding an almost vanilla-like note. Very warm and snuggly - an aran sweater kind of perfume. Sillage and longevity were both medium - not overpowering but definitely noticeable.

Rating: 
3/5 I like it a lot, not sure if I'd have use for a full bottle of it though.

Day 56!

'67 Chevy Impala - Delightful Rot

Details:
'67 Chevy Impala
Delightful Rot

Notes:
A man's scent. Bay rum, spiked with graveyard dirt, gunpowder, a touch of leather and a ring of salt, with an overtone of masculine musk. 

Manly men doing manly things. When I was 11 or 12 my aunt and uncle had a friend who was extremely masculine - I think he was a truck driver, and he could fix cars, had a motorbike, and wore neatly pressed Hard Yakka shirts with the sleeves rolled up and Blundstone boots. I had the biggest crush on him, even though he was probably in his mid-30s at the time. He smelled like this perfume - like a mechanic's garage - car oil, manliness and ability to fix things.

Once it dries down I can smell the bay rum (which I'm really starting to like generally as a scent note), leather and musk. This is an amazing masculine scent - I haven't been able to stop sniffing myself while wearing it. Having said that, I would probably never wear it - it's just too blokey for me. I feel like if I wore this I might grow testicles.

Rating:
4/5

Day 42!

Boba - Delightful Rot

Details:
Boba
Delightful Rot

Notes: 
A sweet fragrance, reminiscent of your favorite bubble tea! With notes of sweet milk, cinnamon and spice tea, and a touch of black coconut, this is a definite foodie scent, with a mild and sweet dry down. 

In the vial and when first applied, this is really fruity and bright. I've never had bubble tea so I don't know exactly what it smells like, but I imagined it would be like a milkshake, whereas this is more like a smoothie. The dry down is more milky and creamy, with no particularly distinct notes - it's sweet and warm, and a tiny bit spicy. The sillage is low and it doesn't last long - it had disappeared entirely within a couple of hours.

Rating: 
2/5 It's okay, but there was nothing that grabbed my attention.

Day 40!

Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster - Delightful Rot

Details: 
Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster
Delightful Rot

Notes:
Invented by Zaphod Beeblebrox, the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster is described as "the alcoholic equivalent of a mugging - expensive and bad for the head" and drinking one "is like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick". With a bright lemon top note backed by a tropical, fruity scent, Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster is reminiscent of a posh, pricey cocktail. 

I'm not a big fan of science fiction, and I've never read The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, so I don't have any affinity with this name or anything. It was a freebie I received with an order I did recently from Delightful Rot. In the vial this is a sickly sweet lemon sherbet. Once applied it's super fruity and sweet - it makes me think of those really cheap imported lollies you can buy in junk shops like The Reject Shop. The dry down is... fly spray. Well, it is on me anyway. I really hated this. I resisted the urge to scrub it off because I wanted to see if it would improve but it didn't. Thankfully the sillage and lasting power was lowish - it was gone in about 3 hours.

Rating: 
1/5

Day 36!