Lila - Wiggle Perfume

First sniff: 
Lilacs - very floral, very perfumey


First applied: 
Yep, still lilacs - this is a super feminine floral, quite potent. There's a green note in there too but it's delicate, the flower takes centre stage. Old ladyish but in a good way.

First 30 mins: 
Considering how potent this is when first applied it fades pretty quickly. I applied this to my wrists, behind the ears and in the cleavage (the warm spot - shut up, you know it's true) and I can only smell it now if I get close to my wrist and sniff. Not sure if it's a natural perfume - those tend to fade on me in minutes - but it's a shame that something so pretty is so fleeting.

After 3 hours: 
Almost entirely gone. If I press my nose to my wrist I can just barely catch the last remnants of it.

Longevity: 
Maybe 2-3 hours. 

Actual notes/description: 
Okay, so you may have noticed that I've been adding a bit of lilac to everything this spring. I found an amazingly true lilac scent and I've become completely obsessed. I love the summery promise of lilacs, but I wanted to give it a different twist. I read somewhere that the name Lila means "night", and combining that information with its use in a wonderfully dreamy Morphine song, I felt inspired to create a deeply dark romantic lilac scent. Lila combines a rich and retro-fabulous lilac note with an inky black musk, touches of vanilla and black tea, dusky black rose, and a healthy kick of black pepper.

Availability: 
Wiggle Perfume
Discontinued

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. 

Logical Delusion - Sarawen Perfumes

Details:
Logical Delusion
Sherlock Holmes Collection
Sarawen Perfumes

Notes: 
A dangerous and cunning blend of poisoned tea, tobacco, and gunpowder, with a hint of nag champa and absinthe. Beware, Holmes! This is a unisex fragrance that borders towards masculine and is inspired by the character of Moriarty from the world of Sherlock Holmes - it is the perfect foil to my Holmes' fragrance, 'Logical Deduction'!

Well, there's definitely tobacco - straight up that's mostly what I could smell in this one. I did get a whiff of the tea in the background every now and then but the tobacco dominated so it was hard to find. In the dry down, the absinthe was discernible occasionally, but like the tea, kept getting pushed back by the tobacco. This is an extremely masculine scent to me. It was pretty strong with high sillage and lasted for a good 8 hours or so. I almost scrubbed it off at one point because it was so potent it was starting to give me headache. A little dab of this is plenty.  

Rating: 
2/5 If you like very manly perfumes you might be into this, but it's too much for me.

Day 196!

Smoky Mountain Mallow - Solstice Scents

Details: 
Smoky Mountain Mallow
Solstice Scents

Notes: 
Wood Smoke, Fossilized Amber Resin, Lapsang Souchong CO2, Guaiacwood, Labdanum, Nutmeg EO, Marshmallow

I bought this maybe 6 months ago, but when I first tried it I got nothing more than smoke, so I put it away for a while to see what would happen when it aged. I still get little more than smoke, to be honest. In the vial it smells like a resinous smoky fire. Once applied, it's pretty much the same though there's an element of cigarettes as well. It's ever so slightly sweet, but just barely. It didn't really change on me at all in the 8 hours or so it lasted.

I have a lot of these smokey kind of scents because I really love them, but this is not one of my favourites. I wouldn't buy it in a full size. However, I appear to be in the minority as many people love this one, including Liber Vix, Amanda, and Rachel.

Rating:
2/5

Day 180!

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!

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!

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!

Alice's Tea Party - Black Baccara

Details:
Alice's Tea Party
Black Baccara

Notes:
A peculiar and curious scent; sweet but hinting at something surreal. The atmosphere and magic of tea time with Alice is captured in an apothecary bottle. Hints of freshly brewed green tea mix with tart wild cherries, oranges, pomegranates, honey, marshmallows, whispers of vanilla and the faintest hint of baking bread. Comforting and delicious with the perfect dose of strangeness.

I recently received an order of 10 samples from this shop, and this is the first one I've had a chance to try. As I mentioned in my last past, with the last few sample orders I've done I've tried to branch out to things I would not normally try, and this is one of them. I don't like fruit scents generally, but I figured I could at least test this out and then pass it on to Noodles, who loves them. And that's exactly what I've done.

In the vial this smells like cherry advokaat - that cherry smell that is almost like children's cough medicine. I can also smell the honey and a hint of orange. Once applied it smells pretty much the same for a few minutes, until it begins to dry down, when it becomes a fruit cocktail - very sweet and syrupy. I can't smell marshmallow or vanilla (and definitely not bread) but there is a sugariness there. Once it dries down the tea comes out, but it still smells like fruit tea. This is definitely not for me, but Noodles likes it.

Rating:
2/5 Not awful, but not at all my cup of tea.

Day 18!