The Piemaker - Sarawen Perfume Art

First sniff:
Fruit, but for once not gross fruit. Okay, I'm going in.

First applied:
Sort of like cherry, but this smells like actual cherry pie made with actual cherries, not that cough syrup cherry note you usually get in perfumes. I kind of like this - it's warm but light at the same time.

After 30 minutes:
Jammy fruit and something floral - it smells like one of those blossom jams you get at farmer's markets. There is a very, very slight dustiness - I hope that goes away. Sillage is not high, even after just half an hour I don't really notice the perfume unless I sniff my wrist.

After 3 hours:
Sadly this went completely dusty not long after the 30 minute mark, and pretty much disappeared within 2 hours. That first burst was pretty nice, but it didn't like me much after that.

Longevity: 
Not long - not even 2 hours. I find that with a lot of Sarawen perfumes, my skin just seems to eat them.

Actual notes/description: 
Having baked pies all morning, the piemaker opened his establishment and commenced to serve his customers. The scent of berries, baked pastry and a hint of floral wafts through, beckoning one to sit at a booth and enjoy one of the piemaker's fine treats! The piemaker is inspired by the character of Ned from Pushing Daisies, and is a balanced unisex fragrance with a floral amber background blended with gourmand notes. Main notes: berry pies, pale musk, apple spice, tuberose, amber.

Availability:
Sarawen Perfume Art
Limited Edition - Valentine's Day 2015
Available at the time of writing in sample and full size.

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!

Garden of Desire - Deep Midnight Perfumes

Details: 
Garden of Desire
Deep Midnight Perfumes

Notes: 
Garden of Desire Perfume Oil: Draw him into your circle of desire with your unique magnetic presence. This blend was a special request from my customer Nia. Blended with rare and delicious Mignonette, tuberose, ylang-ylang, and a touch of magic. Sensual, sweet, and heady!

I had never heard of mignonette. Apparently it's a fragrant flower that was popular in the Victorian era. When I first smelled this I thought it was violets. There was also a very faint almond-ish note that I could smell in the vial of this perfume, and I wonder if that's mignonette as well? That note had gone when I applied this perfume to my wrist. What we have here is a fairly standard floral. The smell of violets (which of course I know now it isn't) dominates in the first 20 minutes or so and then a white floral scent comes out - the tuberose and ylang ylang. Super flowery, super girly. Sillage was quite low for a perfume that was entirely floral, and it had disappeared within 3 hours. It's quite old lady-ish, which normally I would enjoy, but there was a synthetic element to it that put me off. 

Rating: 
2/5

Day 127!

Nightgown - Solstice Scents

Details: 
Nightgown
Valentine's 2012 Collection (now made permanent)
Solstice Scents

Notes: 
Vanilla, white chocolate, tuberose, tiare flowers.

Floral haters look away now! In the vial this is a pretty white floral, but doesn't smell like anything different to any number of other pretty white florals (and I have a lot of those). On the skin it comes alive. A gorgeous creamy, lush tuberose and tropical tiare flower. Oh man, I cannot stop sniffing my wrists!

Nightgown doesn't really change that much on the dry down, though the vanilla and white chocolate make the florals super creamy. Sillage is quite low for a white floral, a minor disappointment because I want everyone around to know how FABULOUS I smell in this. It did last a good few hours though, so that gave me plenty of time through the day to creepily sniff myself.

Rating:
5/5 I adore this. I will definitely be buying a full bottle, and probably whatever else I can get in this scent. If you like white florals at all this is a MUST TRY.

Day 12!