Shollin

First sniff: Dark and spicy cherry cough syrup. The cherry is really sweet. Wearing: I tried on Bat’s Blood yesterday, and this alas reminds me of the “liquid Red Hots” impression I got from that one, with a bit more sweet than spice.

The resurrected version: First sniff: Liquid Red Hots. Very much a sweet spicy-cinnamon explosion. Wearing: The Red Hots hit my skin and developed a glorious deep undercurrent of dragon’s blood. Wasn’t expecting that! There’s still sweetness and spicy-cinnamon floating above, but mostly it’s deep rich red wonderful dragon’s blood. Unfortunately, as it dries, the dragon’s blood fades away and it’s back to Red Hots.

The Hermit, from Tarot Oils. First sniff: Less dry than Seance, definitely. This isn’t an old-crazy-guy-with-a-long-dirty-beard Monty-Python-type hermit… he’s holed up in a nice cabin in the woods so he can study his mysteries without interruption. A sabbatical hermit. The scent is dark but not ominous, and tinged with a purple that could be a sorcerer’s robe. Hermit isn’t one of the few Tarot cards I’m familiar with – I need to do some research and see what he means. Wearing: On first touch it’s a fluid herbal scent with maybe a hint of citrus. Through the night it fleshed out into a warm purple, maybe red grapes or berries or even an inkstain. Decidedly unisex, very nice, and completely unlike Séance… so I’m glad I got to try them both.

Strength, from Tarot Oils. Strength is my soul card and personality card, and I really liked her even before I knew that. First sniff: A green scent, slightly fruity with a touch of grounding earth. It strikes me as very feminine and very complex – I’ll be very interested to see what it does on my skin, and whether the lion ever shows up. Wearing: Softly earthy and very soothing, but with a firmness behind it. There’s a very faint sweetness dusted over the earth – I think this is what I translated as “fruity” at first sniff, but on my skin it’s more like honey. A few hours into wearing I sniffed my wrist and I swear it was cocoa - not sweet at all, and not nearly as rich as Vice, but cocoa. A hint of the overall earthiness is still lingering about, twelve hours after initial application. I wore this to work and kept almost falling asleep until I resorted to coffee... I'm not sure Strength was the culprit, but I've discovered "grounding" scents do tend to make me a bit sluggish if I'm not hyper when I put them on. I'll keep this one around for days when my mind is racing a zillion miles an hour and needs to slow down and take a breath.

A note from your friendly neighbourhood review mod: This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews of this upcoming scent. The full description will be added when it goes live on the Lab's website.

A note from your friendly neighbourhood review mod: This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews of this upcoming scent. The full description will be added when it goes live on the Lab's website.

A note from your friendly neighbourhood review mod: This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews of this upcoming scent. The full description will be added when it goes live on the Lab's website.

A note from your friendly neighbourhood review mod: This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews of this upcoming scent. The full description will be added when it goes live on the Lab's website.

A note from your friendly neighbourhood review mod: This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews of this upcoming scent. The full description will be added when it goes live on the Lab's website.

First sniff: Bitingly cold air, sunsparkles on the snow. There’s a hint of berries and greenery underneath, but it’s all sheathed in ice. Wearing: Frozen flowers and frozen berries hidden just beneath the surface of a frozen world. The sweetness is there, but I can’t get to it through the bitter cold.

First sniff: In the vial it’s all spice and resin – the honeysuckle is hidden away. Strong dragon’s blood, a sprinkle of pepper, and something that smells like frankincese to me. Wearing: Dragon’s blood and pepper. I get a tiny whiff of honeysuckle tickling around the edges, but the spice-and-resin overwhelms it.

I'm trying something new to make the organization of reviews a bit more proactive, and hopefully it'll be helpful to those intrepid souls who post The First Review of a new scent. I'm going to start posting new review topics for each new scent as it goes live. (Some sharp-eyed forumites may have noticed a few of these appearing this evening for the handful of Literary Vampire scents that didn't yet have reviews.) This "placeholder" topic will contain all the information that eventually ends up in every review topic - the full Lab description (including any poetic or literary inspiration), the release date, any relevant subcategory - but this way, it'll be there from the beginning. And the process for posting new reviews will change only slightly: 1) You get your bottle, you sniff it, you love it (or hate it), you want to tell us about it. 2) You do a search* for the name of the scent. This isn't a change; you should be doing this anyway before posting new topics. 3) Voila! Even if no one else has reviewed it yet, the placeholder topic for that scent will pop up, and you'll post your review as a reply to that topic. 4) Whoever is first to review, please report the topic's first post so I can merge it with yours. That way you'll be listed as the Topic Starter. (This reminder will also be included in every placeholder topic I post.) And there's a new subforum, too! As part of trying to get reviews more organized, we've made a new place for Event Exclusives, where you'll find reviews of the Trunk Show prototypes, along with Comic-Con exclusives, Convergence scents, things you can buy only at Will Call, that sorta thing. The Retail Exclusives subforum is still around for things like the Traveling Salon Exhibit, Dark Delicacies' Summer Blockbuster Series, and other retail-only scents that don't require you to attend a certain event to get your hands on 'em. Questions? My PM box is always open. *Almost-foolproof search tips for finding anything in Reviews: 1) Type the name of the scent into the "Search by Keywords" blank. (Hyphens are your enemy; the site treats a hyphen as a minus sign, so if you search for "lambs-wool" it thinks you mean "find 'lambs' but not 'wool'," and the search will fail. Just put a space in; searching for "lambs wool" or "ya te vo" works just fine.) 2) In the "Search Where" box, highlight "Reviews." (The box for "Search in child forums" should already be checked; that's the default, If it's not, check it now.) 3) Under "Refine Search," select the option for "Search titles only." (The option for "Show results as topics" should already be selected; that's the default. If it's not, select it now.) 4) Search! 5) If you can't find what you're looking for, check here. If you still can't find it, please PM me before starting a new topic yourself... I'm pretty good at hunting these things down.

Hiya folks, When I have time in the next few weeks/months/whatever, I'll be going through the reviews and editing out most of the Lab descriptions. It isn't uncommon to see five or six reviews in a row that include the Lab description, and it's come to my attention that some people find the repetition so annoying that they avoid reading reviews because of it. If you're seeing 25 posts per page (the forum default), you'll get the description at the top of every page. Those of you who always post the description in your review... you won't be warned for doing so, but I'd take it as a kindness if you'd refrain in the future. Thanks!

Virgo, from Celestials - Astrological Oils: apple / white musk / rosenarcissus / oakmoss patchouli First sniff: The first thing I notice before even opening the vial is the colour -- it's dark brown. Appropriate for an earth sign, I suppose. The scent is definitely earthy with a hint of incense, which doesn't bode well for my ability to wear it. I'll try it on anyway just in case it decides to like me. Definitely matches its dark-brown colour, though the scent is more cherrywood-coloured than dirt-coloured. It's a bit on the dry side too, and more musty-earthy than Hermit. Wearing: I'm not entirely sure. Woody and earthy, yes, and very deep. Must wear again when I have more time to analyse. It didn't go immediately bad (in a sharp-sweet resiny sense), which is encouraging. I'm intrigued. I'm a Virgo-Libra cusp, incidentally - Sept. 21.

Azazel, from Diabolus: One of the Chiefs of the 200 Fallen Angels of Enoch and Satan's Standard Bearer. Azazel was cast out of Heaven when he refused to kowtow to Man: "Why should a Son of Fire fall down before a son of clay?" Why, indeed. Black Mountain sage, bay, lemongrass and citron with a spike of lavender. First sniff: I have no idea what this one actually smells like, but it's bold and green-spicy and I like it a lot. More of a masculine scent, I think -- a male dancer, all fluid motion and shirtless grace... sorry, I think I'm drooling. I'll definitely be trying this one on -- maybe at night in hopes of interesting dreams? Wearing: I figured out what the familiar scent is, and that so rarely happens! Republic of Tea makes an herbal called Desert Sage, and this is totally it -- a dry spice that's homey/kitcheny rather than exotic, green and not bright. Of course, now that I have the desert image in my head, the gorgeous dancer-man has turned into a cowboy... *curses her uncooperative imagination* After about an hour it loses its spice and turns into more of a clean, almost soapy scent.

A soft, beguiling, seductive scent: lotus, lavender and neroli. First sniff: More traditional, but with a bit of sharpness. Wearing: Soothing and lavender - not the herb, the colour. A teeny bit of a citrusy smell - it's a little bit cleaning-product-ish at this stage. Faded into a floral baby-powder scent, which was very nice, and I can still smell it in the morning after applying it at bedtime. Second wearing: There's something bright green in this that I didn't notice before. Definitely sharp-edged. The sharpness fades after a few hours to the floral baby powder, at which point it smells almost like Unseelie at the same stage, and Unseelie is more pleasant for the rest of its wearing.

I was lucky enough to receive a bottle of the unreleased BPAL version of Arabian Nights. I haven't tried the TAL oil, so I can't comment on any similarities... but this stuff rules. First sniff: This is so cliché, but the one word that comes to mind is: exotic. Spices and powders and maybe a little rose? It smells like faraway and reminds me a bit of Silk Road, minus any hint of almond. Wearing: It’s still a bit rosey, but the primary floral note feels more like carnation – there’s a lot of spice under the surface. It makes me think of Aladdin’s marketplace. And it dries down to a glorious red-musk warmth. I adore this. NOTE: This topic is for an unreleased, "perfume-only" prototype. If you're looking for the Twilight Alchemy Lab oil of the same name, those reviews can be found here.

First sniff: Soft-sweet flowers and greenery over dry wood. Wearing: It’s very “perfumey” on me, far more so than in the bottle. It’s a sweet-white-flower scent, but a very perfumey one.

First sniff: Beautiful strong vanilla. It’s a different sort of vanilla, too, more of a bright-sweet scent than a rich-warm one. Wearing: A floral vanilla, not a bakery vanilla. Smelling vanilla usually makes me hungry, but this one is much closer to the plant than the cookie. I’ve never been around an actual vanilla plant, but man, if this is what they smell like, I want to live on a vanilla farm. And I think my husband agrees, because when I asked his opinion, he snuggled his nose into my wrist and wouldn’t give it back.

First sniff: Ooh. This is nicer than I expected. It’s an aquatic, of course, but instead of a cold-rainy-ozoney aquatic like I’m used to, this one is a warm, sunny, green aquatic that reminds me of snorkeling in the Caymans on my honeymoon. Wearing: Gorgeous and sunny and soft and relaxing. It wraps me up in a happy cloud of memories.

First sniff: Smoke in the jungle. Harsh, bitter smoke and wet green leaves. I can’t get the image of the “smoke monster” from LOST out of my head. Wearing: The wet greenness is definitely different – it’s a really interesting contrast with the dry, acrid smoke. But Moai is in the same family as Djinn and Brimstone, and I can’t wear those either.

First sniff: I madly adore orchid, but I fear the gardenia, which is quite prominent from the bottle in its white sweetness. The orchid hangs back a bit, a rich warm presence surrounding the gardenia. Wearing: Instantly it’s an enormous cloud of gardenia and nothing else. I smell like the girl Frank Butler wants to marry. Sadly, nothing else ever really shows up.

First sniff: Warm pineapple cookies. It smells way more like a baked goodie than a cocktail. Wearing: Very serious pineapple, warm bakery vanilla, a little sprinkle of toasted coconut. Nom nom nom.

First sniff: Very fresh and green and wet. It reminds me quite a bit of Holiday Moon. Wearing: It’s nice to smell like spring when there’s yet more unexpected snow on the ground. There’s a lovely light citrusy-floral bit floating above the jungle of wet greenness.

First sniff: It’s a bit muddled and chaotic in the bottle – the only things I can make out clearly are almond and booze. Wearing: Hellooooo cherry-almond madness! Drat. I was hoping the citrus and mint would show up to the party, but it’s all cherry-almond booze on me.