Little Bird

Hm. I'm not getting much of the listed notes. On the label, the cat is vomiting up some electric green slime, and that's the color impression that I get from this. It's like a sour, unripe, lemony, chemical scent. Over some woods. With a hint of green. It's sort of like polishing a wooden table with lemon pledge, but more chemical and not as sweet as pledge furniture polish is. I had an aversion to it for the first two hours, and then it faded into a barely there, warm, powdery, musky thing with a hint of that weird chemical, clean, lemony something. I bought this for the label art, but I'm not really enjoying the scent at all.

First on, I'm getting mostly a warm, cozy, honeyed, roasted chestnut type of scent from this, which I really like. Almost smells of gourmand woods. As it dries down, I'm getting a lot of the gingerbread cookies, and it turns very spicy on my skin, but still pleasantly sweet and honeyed.

I don't really get pancakes, mascarpone, or a fried or jam type scent. This is all sharp, spiced apple on me, and unfortunately reminds me of a waxy holiday candle. Sharp cinnamon potpourri and air freshener apple to my nose.

I usually enjoy the 13 blends, but this one is very chaotic and jumbled smelling on me. The 'smoky cacao' is very smoky indeed, with the bitter coffee and boozy whiskey making it smell like a burnt chocolate and spilled liqueur accident in the kitchen. I can smell the spicy carnation and powdery, sugary, silvery orris as well, but they just don't fit in with the rest of the scent for me. It comes off as a very strange, burnt chocolate with some booze and floral perfume wafting about.

Fresh, springy, clean, cheerful, rather tart, and slightly soapy. The lab's white tea tends to have a sharpness and a sour, citrus edge to my nose. The cherry blossom adds a sweet creaminess that settles down some of those sharper tones, though. Pretty, sweet, creamy blossoms floating in a cup of lemony tea. As it dries down, the cashmere wood is adding a powdery, slightly white musky, clean sweater to the mix, and I don't like the dryness that it brings in. An undertone of laundry soap.

No peach for me, and this turns soapy rather than milky on my skin. A very clean, perfumey musk with an extra jolt from the clean, powdery sandalwood. Hints of woody, sweet fig, but mostly this is having a 'clean laundry left out to dry' kind of feel to me. Breezy, soapy, powdery woods.

Bpal's amber almost always turns to baby powder on my skin (except the black amber, sometimes), which is sad, because amber is one of my favorite scents. This one is very powdery and dry, with a hint of sour, tart red currant. I can't pick out any honey.

I'm not really a fan of tuberose, but was hoping the supporting cast of rich, heavy, sweet notes would be enough to drown it out. The red musk is the main player, smelling of heated skin and deep, red wine fruitiness, and I do like the extra creamy sweetness of the beeswax, but the blood chypre seems to be adding a metallic note that I'm not loving, and the tuberose still comes off as a screechy white floral to me. It's not as sweet or heavy as I was expecting overall. It sort of smells like a sheer, faded red musk with metallic, sharply floral nuances, and only lasts about an hour on my skin.

No labdanum, patchouli or oakmoss to my nose, but I do like the lab's bamboo note. It's wet, pulpy, intense green, a little soapy and spa-like, with something like an edge of sharp lemon verbena.

This smelled strange when I first got it (or else my medication was messing with my skin chemistry and my head), but I like it now that it has aged. It reminds me of the German chocolate cake that my dad always requested for his birthday. Crumbly, moist chocolate cake with that nutty, caramelized, gooey frosting, only this has an extra dose of real buttercream frosting to it as well. Sweet and cheerfully gourmand.

My bottle has zero traces of vanilla anything in it. It smells like a slightly soapy green grass oil and a little dustiness in the drydown. Disappears by the two hour mark. Really sad about this one.

I agree with milo's review in that this smells quite similar to bpal's Stinky fragrance. I no longer have a bottle of Stinky to directly compare, but it's the same 'white honey and baby powder' thing to my nose and memory. A dry, powdery, lightly sweet honey that doesn't have the creaminess of milk or butter to my nose. Honey and powder. Sadly, I actually really wanted goat's milk and butter, and this doesn't remind me of either.

I was hoping that this would be Midnight Mass in room spray form, and it does share similarities to Midnight Mass and Cathedral, but this is sort of warmer, dustier, and evocative of candles in an old church. Sweet church incense, powdery amber, and a scent like burning thousands of beeswax candles, lightly sweet and smoky in a way that's velvety and not acrid. It is the scent of being in an old church with amazingly high cathedral ceilings, old wood, and lots of lit candles. It's sort of amazing to be able to have this in a spray bottle.

Ungh. I love this. I keep trying to find eggnog perfumes that smell like cold, creamy eggnog with just a teeny tiny hint of spice, but they tend to be tons of nutmeg and no cream. This is that cold, creamy, sweet, vanilla-y gorgeousness of actual eggnog, perfectly captured, with a barely there dusting of nutmeg and just enough sweet, velvety cocoa powder to be charming. I wasn't sure I wanted cocoa in my nog, but I do. I was also worried about the longevity of this, because bpal's Eggnog perfume oil, while lovely, has very low throw and staying power on me, but a little spritz of this fills a room for hours. So good.

Surprisingly, I get no chai spice or anything tea-like from this. It's also missing that vanillic sweetness of old books and aged paper. It's really not a sweet fragrance in any way. I'm surprised that there's no tobacco listed, because it has a persistent, gritty tobacco and slight smokiness that is like cigarette smoke and a hint of ash on my skin, which must be the 'roaring fireplace.' Then there's something like a nip of whiskey and an overwhelming presence of black leather recliners saturated with cigarette smoke. It's the scent of a man's smoking room to me. I wanted something warmer and more cuddly, with some milky chai tea. The leather dominant drydown isn't awful, but I'm not loving the ashy, smoky parts, and I do like at least a little sweetness in my fragrances. I probably won't wear this again, but I do love the free book that came with it.

I like this much more than the Sugar Cookie perfume oil (which had lots of cinnamon - I get no cinnamon from this hair gloss). It smells like super sugary, store bought vanilla frosting, sticky vanilla cake batter, and coconut sunscreen to me. Heavy, super sweet, creamy, foodie. The scent that it leaves on the ends of my hair is very much a vanilla frosting and coconut suntan lotion fragrance.

I usually enjoy skin musk and that clean skin type of scent, but the musk here is reminding me of screechy, sharp, drugstore white musk, and the sandalwood is doing its usual turning to baby powder thing. I can't smell any vanilla or resin. Dry, powdery and sharp.

Drifting low to the ground, this tiny, tough butterfly searches for nectar and mates in vacant lots and coastal flats. Orange blossom and brimstone. I love orange blossom and tend to hate ashy, soot-y, smoky fragrances. I'm really happy that this is about 90% orange blossom on me, and only 10% of a smoky scent that actually isn't that bad. Dainty Sulphur is mostly strong, beautiful orange blossom. Slightly waxy, super creamy, white floral with sweet, ripe orange. Very realistic and natural smelling, and has a tropical vibe to it, like being covered in a wreath of orange blossoms. The smokiness hides under the sweet orange and adds more of a dark, sexy growl than woodsmoke or ash. It reminds me of the way that black musk can sometimes have a smokiness to it. This is one of my favorites of this year's butterflies.

This and Queen Butterfly are the two that smell better in the bottle than on me this year. In the bottle, this is a beautiful scent of earthy patchouli and tobacco, sweetened with a baked blueberry note, warmed up with amber, and made all creamy from the coconut. On my skin, the blueberry and lilac quickly amp up and are a little too sweet for me, and the tobacco note goes smoky in the background. Blueberry candy and cigarette smoke. It also fades really fast on me and stays close to my skin with not much throw, which is strange for all of the deeper base notes.

Cabbage White is a loud, white, powdery, sweet explosion of a scent on my skin. The orris is powdery, silvery, and sweet like powdered sugar covered iris petals, the lily smells clean, but also rich, waxy, and of honeyed pollen, and the vanilla cream just furthers the sweetness. It's quite a bit like Possets' Silver Lily fragrance, only richer and heavier. I like all of these notes, but together they are almost overwhelming on me. Perhaps a bit too sweet on my skin. I do like how this is a bold, heavy fragrance with notes that I usually consider to be softer and quieter, though. It smells like a very aggressive, intense, sugar hyped lily on me, and I'm sure that there will be a time to wear this, but it'll never be an every day, casual scent to me.

I love lilacs. I have over a dozen planted in my yard now, just because I love their honeyed, creamy fragrance so much. They strike a perfect balance between sweetness and a fresh, springtime airiness. Echo Azure is mostly lilac on me, with a bit of blackberry bush peeking out from underneath as a tangy, slightly herbal, super realistic blackberry. The only thing that throws me off about this is that I associate lilac blooms with early spring and blackberries with late summer, and this scent is so realistic that it almost makes me feel lost in time (not a bad thing, just a strange-ness within me, lol). Overall, it has this dreamlike, soft, purple feel to it that I really enjoy, and is a beautiful mix of sweet and clean tones.

I don't like plain Snake Oil at all (aged or fresh), but I love most of the Snake Oil blends (why? some sort of magic), and I loooove patchouli and Dragon's Milk, so I snagged two bottles of this heavenly creature. Dragon-Smooched reminds me of Schwarzer Mond, the original MMe Moriarty, and a bit of Banshee Beat. I feel like they would all hang out and be extremely close, loyal friends who share clothes and take swigs out of the same bottle. Smooched is like Schwarzer Mond's amazingly dark, plush, resins with that cola-like sweetness, and the patchouli turned waaaay up. Then the drydown has the sensual vanilla of Snake Oil/Mme Moriarty, along with the red dragon's blood going all sultry and red-fruity-ish on my skin. The patchouli is gorgeous all the way through. It's dark, earthy, slightly spicy patchouli that's so rich and perfect. A lot of patchouli blends lately have felt flat, too dry, or sour to my nose, but this one is bold and beautiful. It smells like an elegant, sensual, oriental perfume. I would have guessed at red musk, vanilla, patchouli, and a hint of honey if I were smelling this blindly. It is fantastic on my skin. I was trying to be nice by only buying two bottles of this and leaving some for everyone else, but now I wish I had not cared . Smooched has already shot up into my bpal top 10, and I love that the label is a picture of itself. I don't know why I find that so amusing.

On me, this smells like a little dish of rose scented hand soaps next to a dish of old, dusty, cinnamon potpourri. The rose comes off as very sharp, sour, perfumey, and soapy, mixed with very dusty, dry spices. This is a scrubber for me.

I like the GC blend The Knave of Hearts a lot more than this one (for red roses and a pastry scent). I don't really smell anything gourmand, buttery or cookie-ish in Cinq. On me, Cinq smells like a mix of fresh, dewy rose and a sweet-ish rose dusting powder. More and more powdery on me over time. Pleasant and simple, but I don't need more than the decant.

The almond in this smells like that maraschino cherry/almond extract type of almond, which I really don't care for. It starts off all almond extract, but finally starts to fade after about a half hour (which is too long for me), and then I can smell red rose and a hint of sharp black leather. The rose goes slightly soapy on me in the drydown. I prefer Whip in the GC for a black leather & red rose fragrance. I think that Whip is a lot stronger than Six and doesn't have the almond extract or soapy thing happening in it.