Diabolique - Sugar and Spite Bathery

First sniff: 
Sweet, cream biscuits.

First applied: 
Still biscuity, with a slight tang of something citrus but I don't think it's lemon. Mandarin? Really pretty gourmand but not really getting why it's a Halloween scent. There's a very mild woody note in the background which I imagine will come out more when the top notes dry down.

After 30 mins: 
More woody now but still quite sweet and biscuit/pastry-ish. When I first applied it, it seemed a little weak and I thought it might fade quickly but it's actually getting stronger as the woodiness amps up. It's very much a Sugar & Spite/Morbid The Merrier perfume - Lysa has a classic signature.

After 3 hours: 
A soft, sweet but slightly boozy vanilla with a wood note adding some depth. It has faded quite a lot now - quite faint on the wrist u less I put my nose right up near it. I do like this scent a lot but I'm still baffled by its connection to Halloween. Maybe it has candy corn or something in totally not getting.

Longevity:
4 hours tops, best reapplied after about 2 hours. 

Actual notes/description: 
Orange blossoms dripping with sticky black honey, warm gingerbread, 3 vanillas, tea leaves and aloeswood. 

Availability: 
Sugar and Spite Bathery
Limited Edition - Halloween 2014
Not currently available, but may be seasonal. 

Blood Kiss - Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Details: 
Blood Kiss
Bewitching Brews
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Notes: 
Lush, creamy vanilla and the honey of the sweetest kiss smeared with the vital throb of husky clove, swollen red cherries, but darkened with the vampiric sensuality of vetiver soporific poppy and blood red wine, and a skin-light pulse of feral musk. 

This is a spicy vanilla with a sour note that is probably the clove. Not quite a scrubber but not pleasant. The dry down is slightly sweeter but that clove still comes through enough to be irritating. And of course, because I don't really like it the sillage is fairly high and it lasted 8+ hours on me. *sigh*

Rating: 
1/5

Day 181!

The Sacred Queen - Twyla Perfumes

Details: 
The Sacred Queen
Maia Collection
Twyla Perfumes & Apothecary

Notes:
Beautiful, ruthless and fiery - The Sacred Queen, with over 14 essential oils, is a deceptively sweet, complex and unmistakably regal blend of honey and smokey vetiver, amber and vintage patchouli, frankincense, neroli and bitter almond with smoldering spices, sacred incense and a heady blend of florals.  

I thought I would hate this at first because in the vial all I got was a big huff of patchouli. However, once applied it almost immediately sweetened and mellowed. I don't really get a distinct floral note but I think there's something flowery about it. It's very, VERY hippie-ish. Not my cup of tea, but not nearly as bad as I initially thought it would be. Oddly I can't smell the honey if I put my nose to my wrist and sniff, but I can smell it when I'm just moving my wrist around - I kept getting whiffs of it at work while I was typing.

The other day I was chatting on Twitter with some people about that fashion in the 90s for the semi-goth look, with long flowing velvet dresses, lace up boots, chokers, hair dyed black or red, etc. This perfume evokes that style for me. There's something about it that says to me: Wiccan, hippie, probably wears or carries a crystal. Sillage is medium - it packs a bit of a punch at first but settles down fairly quickly. Longevity was good - I could smell it on myself for most of the day.

Rating:
3/5

Day 177!

Pig & Pepper - Twyla Perfumes

Details:
Pig & Pepper
Twyla Perfumes & Apothecary

Notes: 
Cyclamen, raspberry, rose, milk accord, amber, mimosa, honey and pink pepper. 

Sometimes I have a week where everything seems like a dud, and sometimes I have a week where I like pretty much everything I test. I wonder if that's just chance or if there is a body chemistry thing going on. For example, I wonder if I'm having 'lady's days', my skin chemistry changes to make everything smell either really crap or really good. Interesting. Or maybe just creepy.

Anyway, this has been a pretty decent week and this is the third one in a row that I've tested and really enjoyed. In the vial I can smell rose, mimosa and honey, it's bright and sweet and a tiny bit fruity. Once applied the pepper gives it a bit of a spicy kick, and the raspberry adds a nice tart element to balance the sweetness. The amber is there in the dry down but doesn't amp on me for once - it just makes everything else smell a bit deeper. There's a creaminess that I attribute to the milk accord, and overall this is a lovely bright perfume that I'd probably wear more in the spring and early summer.

Sillage was medium, as was lasting power. I reapplied after about 6 hours.

Rating: 
4/5

Day 158!

Courtly Love - Possets

Details: 
Courtly Love
Possets Perfume

Notes: 
The slow stately thromb of courtly love as the man adores his lady and shows his love every day. Coconut (here used more as a serious element rather than a novelty) dances with apricot and a light kiss of vanilla and a very sweet, not stinky, jasmine to make a honey-ed note stand out. Swoony nice.

I wore this for three days in a row because it was so pretty. It's just a sweet, girly gourmand, but something about it just kept me gravitating back for another wear. In the vial I can smell the jasmine and vanilla - it's a prettier than usual version of any number of white floral vanilla scents. Once applied, the coconut comes out and the jasmine just kind of hovers around the edges - this is definitely  a foody perfume rather than a flowery one. The coconut is more creamy than coconut generally is in perfume, and the apricot makes it smell like a delicious dessert - it reminded me of something custardy like a pannacotta or a crème anglaise.

Sillage was medium to low - it didn't really scream its presence at all, but I could smell it when I moved my arm. It didn't last a long time though - it was virtually gone in 3 hours or so.

Rating: 
4/5

Day 157! 

White Rabbit - Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Details:
White Rabbit
Mad Tea Party
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Notes: 
Strong black tea and milk with white pepper, ginger, honey and vanilla, spilled over the crisp scent of clean linen.

In the imp I get spicy, gingery honeyed vanilla. The tea comes out once applied to my wrist, but it smells like a very weak, milky tea at first - more like just sweet milk, really - like how hot milk generally smells sweeter than regular cold milk. The pepper is there and it made my nose twitch a little.

The tea comes out more strongly in the dry down for a while and then the perfume is pretty true to the description, but not really my cup of tea (see what I did there!). I like it a lot more after an hour or so when it morphs again to a sweet honey vanilla - it's quite nice and pretty much stays that way. Sillage was medium to low - it stayed fairly close to the skin after the initial burst of activity on application for 10 minutes or so. Longevity was medium also - about 6 hours.

Rating: 
3/5

Day 142!

Perpetual Orgasm - Possets

Details:
Perpetual Orgasm
Possets Perfume

Notes: 
The divine honey which the bees make on the dry and craggy plains is the starting point for such a melting blend. Malta is an arid country and the non populated expanses are covered with tough aromatic growth which needs little rainfall. It is in that hard herbal mat that the bees wrestle the tiniest drops of nectar out of sparse light blue flowers and somehow manage to manufacture honey of such brilliance it’s almost as if the sun was captured and liquefied. Added to this is a shard of sharp lemon zest and the smooth modification of orange, both citrus which can be found in abundance in the Mediterranean, and which naturally compliment Maltese honey, and you will have found a paradise in a bottle.

So apparently a perpetual orgasm smells like orange sherbet. There is a dab of lemon, and something a bit.. not minty but kind of icy that just wafts through every now and then. It's bugging me no end what that is actually - it's right on the tip of my tongue but I just can't... quite... get it. AGH! I'm not a big fan of citrus scents generally, but there's a sweet edge to this from the honey that makes it much more palatable to me. I like it a lot. It really is just basically sherbet though. Who knew that's what an orgasm smells like? Sillage is quite high at first but mellows after 30 minutes or so. Longevity is good - 8 hours or so.

Rating:
4/5... and what the heck is that note?

Day 141!

Beatrix - Twyla Perfumes

Details: 
Beatrix
Twyla Perfumes & Apothecary

Notes: 
Beatrix (as in Beatrix Potter) - a scent evocative of spring blooms, warm bunnies, cotton dresses, ripe fruits and honey. Jasmine, melissa and mimosa; warm fuzzy musk, honey, grapefruit, sandalwood, clean cotton and peaches.

In the vial Beatrix smells like a fizzy floral - I realise that sounds weird but that's what comes to mind, as though there were sherbet in it. When I sniffed it my nose twitched AND WRITING THIS I JUST REALISED LIKE A RABBIT!! I have no idea whether that is deliberate but I'm delighted by it nonetheless.

Once applied I smell a very feminine, pretty floral, daubed with honey (which I realised later reading the notes is actually honeysuckle). I could smell something citrus and it took me a few seconds to work out it was grapefruit - one of the rare fruits I actually enjoy the smell of. The tart of the citrus early on tempers the sweetness a bit, but that disappears in the dry down, which is a honey musk, but one of those floral honeys like orange blossom or the like. Thankfully the peach never made an appearance on me, and the cotton just added a 'clean' element that wasn't so much a smell as a vibe. This perfume is gorgeously sweet but not sugary. Ultra girly but not sickly. I really like it. The sillage is fairly high for the first half hour or so - sensitive types could find this one a bit headachey. Lasting power is good - I put it on in the morning and reapplied mid-afternoon.

Rating: 
4/5

Day 136!

Carny Wedding - Darling Clandestine

Details: 
Carny Wedding
Darling Clandestine

Notes: 
Carefully blended and infused by me in small batches in vintage glass wine bottles, this fragrance begins butter candy sweet and mellows on the skin to resiny wood and honeyed nectar. A multitude of different scent elements and weeks of methodical alchemy make Carny Wedding no ordinary scented oil mix-it's a truly inimitable fragrance. 

Jeepers creepers - in the vial this is sweet and smokey with a slight hint of candy, and when I applied it to my wrist I got a big hit of smokey bacon! Not at all what I was expecting. I don't quite know what to make of this. I have found with the few Darling Clandestine perfumes I've played with that they never smell like the (often scantly mentioned) notes lead me to think they will. And don't get me wrong, I love the smell of bacon. It's just so completely unexpected. When the perfume dries down that note goes away though the smokiness stays in the background.

Regular readers will know that within my perfume obsession I have a little side obsession with any kind of carnival/fun fair/freak show kind of scents, but they are almost all within a family of notes - foody, sweet, sticky, etc. I had expected Carny Wedding to be perhaps a more artsy version of one of those, and it's just not like those at all. Do I like it? I don't know. It's intriguing, and it's not quite like anything else I have. And I like that Darling Clandestine perfumes are often a puzzle.  As for whether I want to walk around smelling like this, I've yet to decide...

Rating: 
Undecided. A mystery!

Day 132!

Isabella - Possets

Details: 
Isabella
Possets Perfume

Notes: 
So very ladylike but so very seductive. Notes of rose are combined with a light resin, white tea leaf and a rare honey/milky-musk. This one starts off as demure and gradually becomes more and more seductive as it warms on your skin. Finally the musk comes out, and it is the sort I call "cream musk" as it becomes very brightly smoothly sweet as the mixture matures. A light dusting of familiar spices round out the mixture and make it the perfect portrait of Isabella and what she must have left behind after she lingered in a room. Enchanting and uplifting perfume. 

I got a Possets order the other day and the entire package smelled like this perfume, to the point where I thought it must have leaked. It hadn't though - it's just incredibly strong. In the vial it's a creamy scent, distinctly musk but quite unusual, and the rose is there but that musk is running the show. There's a faint candy note - it's not like those pink musk lollies, though. More like the milk bottles you get in the Allen's Retro Party Mix.

This perfume doesn't change all that much as it dries down, but the musk deepens a little and the honey adds a sweetness. The sillage is really high - you definitely need to have a light hand with it. It also lasted a really long time - well over 12 hours and then I had a shower. It's really pretty and quite old-fashioned, but I'm not sure I could tolerate wearing it too often. It's the very definition of a head kicker.

Rating: 
4/5

Day 129!

Womb Furie - Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Details: 
Womb Furie
Lupercalia (Valentine) 2010
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Notes: 
Oh, that wily womb! Hippocrates and his followers considered the womb a mobile creature, causing mayhem as it writhed its way through a woman's body. Sometimes this ornery organ, due to lack of sexual activity, would create conflicts within a woman's system or would become blocked itself, causing anxiety, nervousness, water retention, and sleeplessness. With the assistance of doctors, nursemaids, hand tools, or, occasionally, self-manipulation, this vexing condition could be alleviated through hysterical paroxysms. Or, as we call it nowadays: orgasm. An itch that needs to be scratched: Snake Oil and three types of honey.

This perfume is a gentler version of Snake Oil, with the honey softening the head kicking element of the original. In the bottle it smells like sweet incense, and applied the honey and vanilla come out. It's so beautiful, I sniff myself nonstop like a creeper whenever I wear this. It's been brought back a few times, though sadly not this year or I would have bought another bottle - hopefully next Valentine's Day. I had a bit of a rave about it way back when I first got it, and I would say my thoughts from there still stand.

Sillage is medium, certainly not as strong as Snake Oil. Longevity is also excellent - again I could smell it the morning after I'd applied it. This is a good evening perfume if you are after having people sniff your pulse points all night, for sure.

Rating: 
5/5

Day 126!

Lucy - Twyla Perfumes

Details:
Lucy
Literary Ingenues - Spring Collection 2013
Twyla Perfumes

Notes:
Lucy - from C.S. Lewis' "Narnia" books.  Valiant, down-to-earth and loyal - Lucy never wavers in her simple honesty and conviction, bravely facing dangers head-on with a dignity beyond her years.  Bulgarian lavender, honey, sweet vanilla, neroli, pine and oak moss.

In the vial there is a bright, green fresh note. It might be the pine, but that's a note that usually makes me feel a bit sick and this one doesn't at all. Applied it's more piney and sweet, not enough to induce nausea, but enough to know straight away I'm not going to love this. I can detect the lavender, but it's subtle. The dry down is mossy and slightly sweet, probably the honey. Ehhhhhnnn, I can think of a few people who would probably love this, but it's not for me. Longevity was good - I could still smell it 8 hours later. Sillage was quite strong when first applied, but subsided within an hour.

Rating:
2/5

Day 109!

Alice Liddell - Twyla Perfumes

Details: 
Alice Liddell 
Literary Ingenues - Spring Collection 2013
Twyla Perfumes

Notes:
Alice Liddell - from the Wonderland/Looking Glass books by Lewis Carroll.  When i was little, these books helped to form my already rather overactive imagination.  Alice was the epitome of the Ingenue - sweet yet quick-witted, brave and with a sense of the absurd, and totally uncorrupted by the pedestrian world in which she lived...
A sweet, proper English scent with a bit of a silly twist, Alice is sweet, floral, quirky and the epitome of innocence. Apple blossom, carnation, rose alba, lilac, bergamot, and roobios tea with milk and honey. 

In the vial, this smells like sweet floral tea. Applied to my skin it goes a little soapy, which I don't think I've ever had happen with a Twyla scent. I wonder if it's the apple blossom? I get spice from the carnation, and the tea is still there, along with the honey. The honey really comes out in the dry down, but that soapiness is still there and never goes away. Although I don't hate this one, it just isn't me. It doesn't seem to work with my skin chemistry at all. Sillage and longevity were medium, it lasted about 6 or so hours.

Rating: 
2/5 Not my cup of tea. (See what I did there!)

Day 108!

Alchemy - Black Baccara

Details: 
Alchemy
Black Baccara

Notes: 
In this bottle is an Alchemist's lab strewn with bottles, jars, brews, and divinely scented, decaying cabinets of curiosities. A mysterious unisex perfume blend -deep and sensuous with notes of incense, honey, sandalwood, cardamom, and the faintest hint of plum.

This is a funny one - lots of weird things going on but I can't pin down anything in particular. When I read the notes, I was thinking, oh yeah - that's there, and that's there, and that's there... but without that to tell me I was lost. It's incense but not quite, spicy but not quite, woody but not quite. There's something in the opening notes that almost makes me dislike it, but then I kept getting drawn in to sniff past whatever that was (and I still don't know - something sweetly sour, like when a baby spits up milk). The whole time I was wearing this I sniffed it compulsively, even at work like a weirdo. It's so interesting, even though I can't decide for sure whether I like it.

The dry down is sandalwood, and it smells musky even though that's not mentioned in the notes. The base is more of a classic scent than the unusual opener. I've probably been of no use at all describing this one, but it's a mystery to me, even though I wore it for a couple of days in a row trying to get my head around it. Sillage is lowish, but longevity is good - 10 hours at least.

Rating: 
3/5 I might come back and make this higher eventually. I'm not entirely decided.

Day 85!

Arizona - Sage and Honeycomb - Possets Perfumes

Details: 
Arizona - Sage and Honeycomb
Possets Perfumes

Notes: 
I have had a lot of requests for a desert scent. Many people love the sagey smell and thin clean atmosphere that comes with some very heat. Arizona seeks to capture the spirit of the state. A drop of honey mingles in the astringent fuzziness of sage, a good shot of evening musk lets you know that people really are here. A very beautiful blend, clean but appealing and bright. USA. 

This was one of the (many) freebies I received with my last Possets order; I would not have bought it myself as none of the notes appeal to me. As herbs go, sage is not a favourite of mine (give me the smell of basil or coriander any day), and even if it was, I don't like smelling like herbs - I like walking into a kitchen and smelling them. In the vial this is indeed herby and sweet, and there is also a note that makes me think of hay (my mum is married to a sheep farmer - I have smelled a lot of hay). What I don't have is a lot of experience of deserts - my last trip to a desert was a school excursion 30 years ago. However, when I smelled Arizona, it actually did make me think, "Yes, this is what I think a desert smells like." Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but it's effective. And I wonder if maybe the 'hay' smell is just a smell of 'dryness'? If so, that's clever.

Once applied, I can smell the honeycomb - or more correctly, honey. I'm not a fan of honey, either in taste or smell. It's one of those slightly sickly sweet scents that makes me screw my nose up, and combined with the sweetness of sage (man, there is a lot of alliteration in this sentence!), I was not loving it. And it continued to get more and more sweet as it went on. Of course, because I was not loving it, it lasted FOREVER. I put it on early evening and the next morning I could still smell traces of it. The sillage was not too high, but I think if you slathered it on (I didn't), you would risk announcing yourself from the next room. The dry down is musky and still sweet, with the sage hanging around until the bitter end.

I can understand why a lot of people would like this - it has a whole 'nature' thing going on that many people find appealing. However, it's not for me.

Rating: 
2/5

Day 81!

Deadwood - Alchemic Muse

Details:
Deadwood
Alchemic Muse

Notes: 
Wild bergamot, clover honey, and a light dusting of spice leading to a heart of warm amber and barley grass grounded in a rich base of black vanilla, musk, teak, and worn brown leather.

In the vial I smell leather and something slightly sweet, which might be the honey. Once applied the sweetness comes out more, but the leather still dominates. It dries down to a vanilla musk with the amber adding a bit of depth but not really distinct from the blend, and the leather is there right to the end. Sillage is medium, as is longevity. I found it had faded quite a bit after about 5 hours and reapplied, then it lasted well the rest of the day.

I chose this perfume purely based on the name, because I love the TV show Deadwood. As it turns out it's yet another masculine scent that I find myself liking.

Rating: 
3/5 I wouldn't buy a full bottle as it's not a scent I'd wear too often, but this is a nice blend and definitely worth trying if you like leather notes.

Day 22!