Shollin

First sniff: Bright fresh lemon, very very yellow. Wearing: It’s still mostly lemon, but there’s something else here that makes it a bit deeper.

First sniff: O Droolworthy Sweetness, thy name is Lyonesse! Bright and deep and sweet and deep and edgy and deep. Wearing: This may be the deepest sweet scent I’ve ever tried, almost to the point of darkness. It’s endless and beautiful.

First sniff: Bright apple and raw honey. Very, very fresh. I was expecting sex in an orchard based on the poem, but this is quite innocent. Wearing: Wonderful soft warm musk shows up on my skin, wrapping the apples in velvet. Yum. Just yum.

First sniff: Wait until the absolute peak of harvest. Come to the Yakima Valley in central Washington. Find yourself an apple orchard (it ain’t hard, come visit me and there are at least two within walking distance of my apartment). Grab the sweetest, most amazingly crisp Fuji the farmer can find, yank it right off the branch, and sit in the sun while you take that first perfect bite. Do you hear that sound? That’s what Ladon smells like. Wearing: As in the vial, plus a hint of dragon’s blood in the background. This is wonderful.

First sniff: Pungent on the outsides and hollow in the middle. It makes me uneasy and I’m not sure why. Wearing: Sharply fruity and still weirdly hollow. Not my thing.

First sniff: It reminds me of drywall. Like a construction site with sun and wood and dust. But my first impression is dull white drywall. Wearing: Well, this is much better. (It’d pretty much have to be, wouldn’t it?) On me, it’s a very quiet dry floral. It’s soft and light and quite subdued, just a little bit of sweetness. I’m not used to white florals that aren’t screamingly sweet, but Ghagiel fits that description.

First sniff: Medicinal… and outdoorsy. Which is a weirdass combination. It smells like medicine but it makes me think of camping. Maybe this is the first-aid tent down by the river. Wearing: I still can’t pin down the outdoorsiness, but this is definitely medicinal. … And now that it’s dried down, it’s transformed into a lovely ladylike floral. I’m so very confused. The end stage is pretty, but the weirdness lasts a bit too long to make it worthwhile.

First sniff: Now this is an odd one. On the surface, it’s light and fresh and minty, but there’s a weirdness to it that makes you think it’s up to something. Wearing: Oh, this is beautiful. Minty citrus tea, wonderfully light and refreshing.

First sniff: This feels like a combination of berries and citrus. It’s definitely sweet-fruity, but there’s a sharp edge to it. Wearing: And on my skin it EXPLODES into coconut. Very much yum.

First sniff: Hee hee! F5 is indeed quite refreshing. It’s along the same lines as Shanghai or Embalming Fluid, that soft citrus-tea combination, with a little extra zing of mint. Wearing: Limey minty tea-y goodness!

Opium-laced dreams of flame, plunder, power and fury: dragon’s blood resin, poppy, amber and ylang ylang. First sniff: Dragon’s blood and heavy sweet florals. Wearing: It’s quite floral with the heavy red of dragon’s blood behind it.

But if you want to find reviews for those short names, check out this list. The scent description will be in the first post of every page. Also, I think the Lab site's search engine hasn't been updated in a while, so if you're looking for a recently released scent, it may not be there. But despite a few limitations, it's a very handy tool!

First sniff: Snickerdoodle cake. Does that exist? It’s crazy buttery, very spicy and completely cakey. Wearing: Superyummy. I really like this one.

First sniff: Dark, dark, dark. I can’t tell if it’s a resinous dark or a woody dark, but it’s seriously dark. (Also, I’ve been quite lucky not to get any decapitated imps so far – this is the first one I’ve run across [ordered in August, yes I’m really that far behind on reviews].) Wearing: Dark and warm and a little bit carnationy-spicy. Nice, but not a huge standout.

I fell madly in love with this one at a Seattle meet’n’sniff, and Thursdae graciously allowed it to come home with me. After the meet I was covered in probably seven or eight different scents, and this is the one I kept going back to (not to mention my guy’s nose was buried in the crook of my elbow where I applied it for quite some time). First revisited sniff: Oh so resiny, warm woods and incense and it totally smells like something that would go very very wrong on my skin. Looking back at the notes, it strikes me as a much darker, heavier Morocco. Wearing: Darker Morocco seems to be pretty accurate. It’s the same sort of muskywoodyspicy warmth, but there’s more oomph to it.

First sniff: Decidedly unusual. I’m getting tropical fruits and chili powder. Wearing: It’s a big ol’ burst of melon and something darker, liberally sprinkled with chili powder. Strange, but good!

First sniff: One great big heaping helping of seriously juicy fruit and candied ginger. It’s sweet, but with a ravenous bite. Wearing: This is so incredibly juicyfruitysweet! And the ginger is perfect. I madly adore ginger scents (the original Siren is still one of my absolute favorites) and the candied version is a very happy shift from the root-scent of Siren and the spice-scent that’s shown up in lots of other places. Damn, this is good.

First sniff: Oh, this is just funny. It’s lemon, and linens, and powderfluff, and completely innocuous. One might think this just an ordinary rrrabbit and overlook the big nasty pointy teeth. Wearing: And there it is… glorious shimmering white musk that turns this into SO much more than a powdery lemon scent. I’ve gone from laughing to swooning – this is gorgeous.

DCXCI (691) First sniff: CAKE. My Chaos Theory smells like cake! Dense yellow cake with mint frosting. And vanilla ice cream. This is the CT3 I was meant to have. Hooray for single-bottle karma! Wearing: The mint is predominant, but there’s a whole lot of vanilla goodness going on behind it. It’s not super-buttery or super-sweet, but there’s definitely something cakey in here, which gets more honeyish as it dries. This is fan-bloody-tastic.

First sniff: Blue fruit? Dark bluish-purple fruit. Very round and juicy and blue. It’s very strange for me to associate a fruity scent with blue – blue scents are almost always aquatic. Wearing: Blue-fruity with a background of incense. Like a farmers market in church. It’s a weird combination, but it works really well.

First sniff: Oh, WOW. I don’t know if I can pull this off, but it’s pheomenally beautiful. A dark, earthy beautiful. It’s musky and deep and a little bit fruity and hippielicious. [stalkerfangirl]Is it creepy that I can totally imagine Beth’s hair smelling like this?[/stalkerfangirl] Wearing: This scent has got some serious presence going on. It seems subtle at first, but I kept getting wafts of it all day. Definitely one to apply with restraint. Over the course of the evening, a fantastic soft cedar scent showed up. I generally can’t wear cedar, but this was so soft and warm, no rough edges at all. Simply wonderful.

First sniff: It smells like a cocktail. Is it supposed to smell like a cocktail? *checks* Nope, I guess not. But it does… there’s nothing specifically boozey, but all the different citrus notes make me think of a vodka tonic, a bubbly vodka tonic with lots of lime. Wearing: All kinds of sophisticated citrus. This isn’t a bubbly bouncey scent; it’s elegant and a little snooty.

... This Harvest Moon oil is a merging of autumnal scents from all over the globe: chrysanthemum, pomegranate, cane sugar and dusty wheat, sorghum, green tea leaf, rice flower and rice milk, Russian sage, bamboo shoot, elderberry, black cherry, wild plum, red haw, hazelnut, red apple and shagbark hickory. First sniff: There’s so much going on in this scent, but the only thing I can really pin down is clean crisp apples, with a fruity richness underneath. Wearing: It’s just gorgeous and rich and fruity and so, so deep. Velvety rich fruit. I love this.

First sniff: And there was light! This is another gorgeous golden shiny happy scent. It’s less warm than Litha, and quite a bit fresher. Wearing: Oh, this reminds me of Snow Angel. It’s the same sort of fantastic sparkly sweet lemon, with an added swish of fresh sunny flowers.

First sniff: Slinky sexy man. (And no, I’m not talking specifically about Brian. ) There’s a weird disconnect going on with my nose and this scent. The leather is really subtle – my usual experience with leather scents is that they come screaming LEATHER out of the bottle – but even though it doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the blend, it’s still the only note I can make out. Wearing: It’s decidedly masculine, and as always the leather amps on my skin. There are some manly blends I can get away with, but sadly, Doc isn’t one of them.