Shollin

First sniff: So. Very. Chocolate. Super-creamy smooth rich chocolate. Vosges chocolate, which would be eye-rollingly swoonworthy even if it didn’t have neat stuff in it. Wearing: This lady morphed in all kinds of strange directions. Sniffing it directly, it stayed very firmly in the creamy rich chocolate category, but I kept getting wafts of vanilla (specifically, BBW’s Warm Vanilla Sugar scent!) and berries. Quite the weirdness. But every variation on the theme was truly droolworthy, I must say!

First sniff: Warm, golden-y sweet without being too cloying. Yum. Wearing: It’s almost a honey scent on my skin, straight sweetness without going smoky (as Lab honey sometimes does). Of course there’s no honey in it at all. Hee! But overall it’s gorgeous, despite my fears of bubblegum.

First sniff: Quiet, gentle, pale and watery and a hint of citrus. Wearing: It’s a beautifully clean, soft scent with a tinge of sadness. The artwork shows Orpheus charming the beasts; I’m trying to remember the myth, and whether the beast-charming happened before or after he lost Eurydice in the underworld, because this scent speaks quietly of loss. The white musk blossoms as it dries. Just lovely.

First sniff: Allow me to wax poetic (or at least musical) for a moment: Golden, golden is her hairLike the morning sun over fields of corn Golden, golden flows her love So sweet and clear and warm. This scent is the olfactory incarnation of that song. It’s incredibly golden. Smooth, sweet, flowing and enveloping. Wearing: Liquid summer. Warm sunshine and a delicious breeze that keeps it from being too hot.

First sniff: I haven’t tried the “top” three chakras yet, but starting with the Heart, they seem to be getting progressively darker. Like slightly deeper versions of the same shade of color. They’re all resiny-sweet, but get richer and more profound as they travel down the body. Swadhisthana is glorious. Almost all the sweetness is gone, and it’s a wonderful round rich resin. Wearing: Round fruity resin, warm wood, and as it dries, a gorgeous deep musky base. It’s very red and slighty sweet and wonderful.

First sniff: This one breaks the sequence of the previous three. Anahata, Manipura and Swadhisthana seem to be progressively darker versions of the same resiny-sweet scent; Muladhara, while still resinous, is completely different. No hint of sweetness – it’s got a bite to it, and it’s much more like wood than the others. Wearing: Vetiver and mint? It’s very woody-bitey-sharp and cold. Not liking. It’s going weirdly peppery as it dries.

First sniff: A bit darker than the Heart. Still resiny-sweet, but more serious. Wearing: This has quite a bit of spice to it. Alas, as it dried it turned to straight swampy vetiver.

First sniff: Wonderfully sweet resins, just this side of sticky. Wearing: I swiped this on in the usual places and added a dab just over my heart. Seemed appropriate. On my skin, it’s… fantastic. Stunning. Resins sometimes don’t work on me, but whatever is in this, I love it. It’s light and sweet, but at the same time, it’s solid and grounded. Like white flowers blooming in the sunlit topmost branches of a very old tree.

First sniff: Like biting into the juiciest piece of honeydew imaginable. Wearing: Pretty much straight-up honeydew. It’s brilliant green, very wet, and incredibly melony. And it vanishes within a couple of hours. Dang.

First sniff: Bright citrus with a resinous base. Wearing: Very strong lemon, and possibly pine or cedar underneath – something sharply woody. It’s a wake-up sort of scent.

My impsie beheaded itself in the mail, so I’m sort of trying this based on the scent of the little baggie my swapper sent it in, and swiping said baggie on my wrists. First sniff: It’s very strongly aquatic, clear turquoise seawater. Much brighter than I expected. Wearing: It gains some depth on my skin… now it does smell more like underwater than like the sparkling surface, but there’s still plenty of light. (Not that I’ve ever smelled underwater, y’know, because it’s hard to smell when you can’t breathe, but that’s the impression.)

First sniff: YES YES YES. It’s that damned elusive fig. Fig is a very weird note to me – any time I read a scent description and see it in the notes, it leaps out as really obvious, but if I don’t know it’s there I can’t figure out what it is. This is it, firmly pinned down for me in a decant from the lovely and talented Brumbjorn. And it’s mouthwateringly gorgeous, which doesn’t hurt. Wearing: Wow, this is good. It’s perfectly rich and dark and … squishy, but in a fuzzy teddy-bear way.

Butterfly Effect CDXXXIII (from Elri) First sniff: Soft watery-blue with a jolt of… something. Licorice? Spice? Something unexpected. Wearing: I’m guessing there’s lotus in here, but I don’t know what else. It’s definitely aquatic. And as it dries, it blossoms into the figgiest fig that ever figged. It vanishes completely before the evening’s out, but the dry stage is exquisite, and I’m so keeping it. Butterfly Effect XI (from zenvodunista) First sniff: The afterscent is lime, but the primary note seems to be something fairly funky. I know Beth left civet out of the Chaos because so many of us react badly to it (possibly the understatement of the year), but I’m guessing this might be a black musk, ’cause I sometimes get a similar funk from that. Sniffing again a few days later… Where was my brain? This is leather. It’s leather and lime. And now I’m laughing because it reminds me of the Ray Stevens song about the pansy pirate who doesn’t like rum and asks for Perrier with a lime in it. Wearing: Ooh, there’s some vanilla in here too. Vanilla, lime and leather. How entirely bizarre. Last reviewed by cybra111.

First sniff: Okaaaay… this is spicy red chocolate. It’s red chocolate. I swear. It makes absolutely no sense to my nose. Wearing: It’s pretty spicy until it dries, but by the end of the night, it’s a perfect rich-not-sweet chocolate cake with just a little somethin’ extra. Closet is still my favorite Monster Bait, but this is one I’ll hang onto for chocoholic moments.

First sniff: Dum-da-dum-dum-GUM. Fruity pink bubblegum. Wearing: Oh, much better! It’s total bubblegum in the vial, but on me it’s fantastic juicy tropical fruit. It didn’t last very long, but I didn’t put a whole lot on, fearing the bubblegum effect. I’ll know better next time.

First sniff: Did you ever watch The Electric Company as a kid? You remember that person at the beginning yelling “HEY YOU GUYYYYYYYS”? This is the citrus equivalent. It’s really bright, really loud and really silly. Electric yellow-orange. Wearing: This is just fantastic. It’s Suuuper Citrus (and you have to say that in an sonorous, self-important comic-book narrator voice), with just a little bit of bittersweet.

First sniff: Oh, damn and blast. This sounded so very exquisite, absolute perfection unless the sweetpea ruined it… and in the vial it’s all soap. *grrr* Wearing: On me it’s a bit more vanilla than soap, but it’s still quite soapy. Curse you, sweetpea!

First sniff: Nutty-musky. There’s cherry in here, but it’s nicely subtle. Wearing: It’s very, very rare that I buy a full bottle of a GC scent unsniffed. I fell in love with the King from his description and made an exception… and I think I was right. On my skin, it’s lavender and musk, mostly that wonderful shimmering white musk I love so much, with a hint of woodiness. Simply brilliant.

First sniff: Stunningly beautiful. Deep, dark-golden and elegant. Wearing: Rich and golden and regal and wonderful… but it’s just too much. The throw is seriously strong, and it’s a big scent to begin with, so it comes off as being too loud. Which makes me sad, because it really is beautiful.

First sniff: After the loudly buttery-sweet Drink Me, Eat Me is quite restrained. It’s definitely sweet, but in a subtle white way, much quieter than the brazen hussy that is Drink Me. Wearing: Ooh, there’s the fruit. It’s still primarily a sugary scent, but the berry part blossoms on my skin. It lasts a surprisingly long time – I was still getting wafts at the end of my work shift. Much love for Eat Me.

First sniff: Holy hell. Forgive me, Beth, for I doubted that anyone could take pineapple, cherry, custard, toffee and buttered toast (let’s not even mention the turkey) and make it all smell amazing and not just a big jumble of stuff. And this is amazing. It’s pineapple and cherry and almost a butter-rum note and I WANT TO DRINK IT! Wearing: Whoa. I actually just smelled toast. On my skin it’s buttery and, yes, bready. It smells quite a lot like bread baking. The sweetness is almost completely gone.

First sniff: Breathtakingly glorious. Dragon’s blood, bright fresh air, soft flowers and flowing water. Wearing: This is by far the lightest dragon blend I’ve ever tried. It’s airy, flowy and blue-grey, not the heavy red sweetness I’ve come to expect from dragon’s blood… an honorable and respected ruler of weather and water, not a scary fire-breathing beastie. And here’s a tangent: I was absolutely delighted to see that Macha’s dragon has five claws. Most Chinese dragons have four; the five-clawed dragon is a symbol of the Emperor.

First sniff: This one is dark and mysterious too, but in a feminine way. There’s something sweet and seductive under the swirling darkness. Wearing: Whatever is in this, it’s strong, and a little bit boozey.

First sniff: The very first whiff is dark, slightly sweet and warm… and it makes me think of chicory coffee. It lightens up a little during the inhale and develops an almost floral overtone, but the dark, dark base reins it in. Wearing: Darkly sweet and warm and wonderful. It’s so fantastically rich.

First sniff: And once again I’m transported to Foody Heaven. It’s a Sugar Skull sort of sugar, a fantastic golden warmth and a wee bit of incense. Wearing: Astonishingly, I don’t love it on my skin at first. The wood is quite prominent (resists underpants joke) and it’s very very rummy. It calms down as it dries, and it’s quite pleasant sweet wood at the end.