Venus Libertina - Arcana Soaps

Details: 
Venus Libertina
Arcana Soaps (bought from The Rhinestone Housewife)

Notes: 
Night-blooming tuberose, pink gardenia, wax myrtle, tiare, bay rum, sandalwood, cucumber, iris and a teensy spill of champagne. 

Don't those notes sound lush? I imagined this to be a gorgeous, rich white floral with a dry down warmed by the sandalwood - pretty much my jam. And yet what I got was... lemon toilet cleaner. I don't get it. There is nothing lemony mentioned in the notes. Could it be the bay rum? I know sometimes that can be a tad limey. The wax myrtle? Wax myrtle gives us the scent bayberry. Fine and dandy except I have no idea what that smells like. Is it lemon?

Not to put too fine a point on it, this was grooosssssssss for the longest time. I really wanted to scrub it off, but I wasn't going out anywhere so I stuck it out, hoping that somewhere along the line it would morph into the amazing white floral I'd been expecting. Nope. Never happened. Instead after about an hour the toilet cleaner finally went away and I was left with a very faint, generic pot pouri floral that was completely gone within 2 hours. I considered trying it again the following day to see if there was just something weird going on with my skin chemistry, but you know what... I didn't want to.

Rating: 
1/5

Day 224!

Black Pearl - Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Details: 
Black Pearl
Bewitching Brews
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Notes: 
Evocative of the sea's unplumbed mysteries. Gentle and lovely, but menacing and profound. Coconut, Florentine iris, hazelnut and opalescent white musk.

In the imp this is a sweet, candy-ish coconut, like a particularly froofy cocktail. Once applied, the sweet tropical coconut smell is still there but there's also a note that smells vaguely synthetic, like you sometimes find with really cheap makeup products. It's quite odd, and not all that pleasant. I wonder if it's the iris? It's kind of floral, but not really - very hard to pin down. I don't get the hazelnut at all, and I was a bit surprised by that because that's usually a  note that tends to be fairly dominant on me. The dry down is a slightly floral, watery musk. Sillage isn't high and it doesn't last long either. Kind of a dud, really.

Rating:
2/5

Day 72!

A Murder of Crows - Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Details:
A Murder of Crows
Halloweenie: Pumpkin Patch 2007 Companion
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Notes:
Sleek iris and verbena, grey amber, benzoin, davana and glossy herbs.

Nadja requested a review of this one, and I was happy to oblige because I love me some iris. In the vial, I can smell the iris - it's floral and pretty without being girly, slightly astringent and lemony from the verbena.

Annoyingly, once applied on my the iris all but disappears and all I mostly get is the verbena. It smells herby with a faint indistinct floral note for a while as it dries down.

After about 30 minutes, the iris becomes more prominent again, while the herbal notes retreat to the background.

Unlike many BPAL scents on me, this perfume sits very close to the skin with little throw. It disappeared entirely within a few hours.

Rating: 
3/5. It's a nice enough perfume and the iris is lovely when it appears, but I have far better iris scents.

Day 1!