brilliantcat

This is SO lovely! I finally managed to get my hands on a bottle after falling in love with a sniffie and was thrilled to finally be able to skin test it! Wet I get salty, slighty sweet aquatic which is pretty much how it smells in-bottle. As it warms, it gets a bit of spiciness from the wood note and remains a nice salty-sweet aquatic that does not go men's cologne on me. It's often hit or miss with me and aquatics, though I love sniffing them they often don't work on my skin. I am happy to report that this one DOES, and works beautifully. I am so thrilled I found a bottle!

In the vial and wet on skin, it's vanilla-y lemon gorgeousness. But as I mentioned in my review of Bones Trombone, there are distinct lemon notes and one works great on me, turning to candy lemon pez, while the other turns dish soapy. This is the latter. It went soapy even before I could get any of the absinthe or mint or chocolate. I love the notes in this so I was disappointed If only it had had the lemon candy note instead, it would have been perfection.

From sniffing the tester, I almost couldn't get myself to skin test this. It smelled like the county fair. Not the fair itself, but the trampled weeds and grass and mud. Like a wet, muddy field. STRONGLY. But in the interest of THERE'S SCIENCE TO DO, I bucked up and tried it. It was slightly better on me, but still muddy weeds and grass. Not fresh grass but trampled grass. It turned pretty quickly to all leather, all the time with a hint of the dirt component. I'm a leather-lover but I like my leather either spicy, sweet, or Rivet-ed. I don't much care for it covered in mud and grass. I agree that it smells like rodeo clown. The churned mud and grass smashed by the passing of thousands of feet, overlaid with leather chaps. In that sense, it's very evocative, but I'm not fond of the actual scent. Pass.

Easily my favorite of the Coulrophobia scents. In the vial it smelled like pie. Creamy, sweet pie. Wet on skin I got heavy lemon that reminds me of lemon pez, which is fine by me as the lemon note that turns to lemon pez always works well on me (as opposed to the one that smells like true lemon and goes dish soapy). It's the same one in Lemon-Scented Sticky Bat which I loved. As it warms, the lemon fades and softens, allowing the blueberry to emerge a bit. I get creamy vanillic marshmallow with hints of blueberry and lemon. I fell asleep and when I woke up, my wrists smelled like vanilla ice cream so I think there's some benzoin in this too. Guh. YUMMY.

Though the chamomile note concerned me as I usually amp it into powdery hell, the rest of the notes are right up my alley so I gave this one a try. I am SO glad I did. Definitely a smutty musk with gorgeous earthy patch, and the florals complement the blend beautifully. Gardenia happens to be one of the florals I actually like and lends some creaminess as well. The narcissus stayed true rather than turning powdery or dusty and the chamomile behaved itself, I heard not a peep from it. Tonka does amazing things on me, perhaps even better than actual vanilla. As it warmed, the massoia bark added more earthiness. I ended up buying a bottle.

It smelled utterly beautiful at first. I was getting an incense-y feel and a fresh, sweet note that my husband I finally identified as the hay, with a spark of mint. Then the moss took over. Sadly I seem to amp oakmoss and it stomped all over the nuanced blend and turned it into a muddy, mossy mess. Very disappointed, because otherwise this would have been AMAZING on me.

This was my sleeper hit of the Lupers. I got herbally, nutty, creamy with distinct lavender. The thyme and bergamot faded pretty quickly and it was all beautiful sweet creamy nutty notes with a bit of bite from the clove and a haze of lavender. I absolutely loved it! Definitely getting a bottle and I'll be keeping my eyes open for unloved bottles in sales posts to pick up a backup or two.

The pine/snow was quite strong at first, it scared me a bit but it mellowed quickly and the cedar and musk peered through. A wolf in the forest. Musky fur and woods. I adore it!

This was a last-minute addon to my decant order and I am SO glad I did! It's absolute perfection on me! Smoky vanilla musk, soft woods, the warmth of the amber, and just a hint of spice from the carnation. I have quickly learned that my holy trinity of oils are vanilla/tonka, wood notes, and musks. There's really nothing else I can add except that my husband got *that* look in his eye when I asked him to sniff me

Sweet-tart pomegranate wreathed in a light veil of opium with carnation petals lying alongside. In vial I got the beautiful sweet-tart pom with spicy carnation, amber, and a hint of opium. As it warmed, I got a glow of amber surrounding the fruit and carnation and under that, the hint of opium. I love it! My only complaint is that my skin seemed to love it too and sucked it up super-fast. I'll have to slather myself in moisturizer (and the oil!) to keep it around longer.

I could cry, I love all the components in this, but somehow they just didn't work on me. It smelled deliciously syrupy cherry and amaretto in the vial but on me it went plasticky and sour. This is the first coconut note to go plastic on me (at least I think it's the coconut doing it). The saffron just smelled bitter to me. It was a mess of plastic, sour, and bitter notes. Oh Ghoulish, we should have a love to last the ages

V. 2010 Perhaps I'm just lucky, but my skin chemistry ADORED this. It smelled like fall. It screamed fall. It was fantastic and gorgeous and heady and I loved it. I got fresh apple with spices and even a hint of leaves, as though I were in an orchard and had cut an apple in half and poured spices on it. As it warmed, the milk added creaminess but never went sour and the ale added a little bite. The apple and spices melded beautifully. My husband came home from running errands and I told him to come sniff me and he said "I don't need to, I can smell you from here! You smell just like fall!" He's not really a fan of foody blends, and I didn't get foody from it either. It smelled like an orchard in fall and I wanted to roll around in a vat of it. No craft-store potpourri or fake air-freshener scent. Just pure outdoorsy apples and fall. I'm in love!

In bottle, it's all pink frosting and a super sugar rush. At first on me I get the bready feel but that does fade fairly quickly and the throw is pure pink frosting. I only get bready if I sniff my wrist directly. As it warms, the bready note calms down and I get exactly what it says it says on the tin: pastry with pink frosting glaze. It's not a buttercream frosting but more of a sugary icing with strawberry/cherry fruit hints. My husband isn't a big fan of foody blends, but *I* am, in a huge way so I think I need a bottle of this! I wonder if that breadiness will mellow with age; though it's not BAD, I prefer the more cake-y scent it has later on. The fruity pink frosting has me hooked.

Like many others, I had damn near a single note red musk. It definitely has some powerful throw and an almost-incensey quality on me. I never got the honey or creaminess. I wish I had, I expected to love this one and instead it's just meh.

Cinnamon-heavy pumpkin pie! I didn't get the cinnamon so much when I sniffed the vial but after it was on, HELLO CINNAMON! I love cinnamon so I was pleased. Very faintly in the background, the blackberry lurked. It became more pronounced as it warmed and added a nice touch of depth. I'm also not getting buttery pumpkin, it's more squash pumpkin on me. With the sweetness of the fairy floss, buttery pumpkin would have been TOO sweet so I'm glad my chemistry reacted as it did. The cinnamon also tempered the longer it was on so it wasn't so in-your-face. I ended up with just what it promised: spiced pumpkin, sugar, and a touch of blackberry. Definitely a comfort scent and I foresee a bottle purchase

I'm naturally auburn but I dye it true red. Right now it's black because I had some weird urge to do something different and I don't feel at all like myself. I'm dyeing it back asap. I've often been mistaken for a natural redhead, I have the porcelain pale skin (which is a nice way of saying the only sunbathing I do is at my computer monitor). Personally I like spicy, foody, boozy, musky, resinous, leathery scents as well as sweet fruity scents like peach. I agree on the spicy, resinous scents for redheads. I can also see some of the foody scents, particularly those with booze notes. Hellcat screams redhead to me Red wine notes as well. Brunettes I envision warm scents. The cocoa scents particularly, Bliss comes to mind. The warm leather notes as well, the ones that feel like well-worn leather or suede. I see the "new" leather kind of scents on women with black hair. I can also see aquatics, especially the ones meant to evoke deep water. I attribute cool scents to these women. Blondes could either be sweet foody scents like Cake Smash or fruity blends. Some of the Atomic Luau would also fit, the light booze notes like gin or vodka as I associate rum, whiskey, and red wine notes with redheads.

I have completely fallen in love with the lab's leather note. I ADORE Perversion; as soon as I put it on, it rocketed up to probably my favorite BPAL blend and definitely my favorite GC blend. As I already posted, Rivet.Goth was pure black leather jacket to me. I need to find something to sub in for it though as I only have one lonely imp. It sounds like The Black Rider might do it. I have plenty of other blends to test, thanks to this thread, so I'm sure I'll find one that does it for me I get zero leather from Nanny Ashtoreth, I was so disappointed. I just tried Bow & Crown of Conquest today and I loved it. My next imp order from the lab is going to be heavy on the leather blends! I'm really looking forward to Coyote because furry/musky scents are also a love of mine. Long live the leathers!

Oh wow, this is a morpher for sure! I just ordered this when it was announced that it was disappearing after the current stock sold out. It has some of my favorite notes and seemed like it would be a perfect fit for me. My bottle has the DD anniversary label and it's definitely got an apple-y start. In bottle, I get what I think is the linen note, very crisp along with perhaps the booziness of the cognac. Immediately after applying I get apple. Tart, fresh apple. Very little vanilla, no tobacco, no musk. It fades pretty quickly into the linen/vanilla-ish stage. It took around an hour to really warm up. Now I'm getting a sweet, almost dusty vanilla and the tobacco. I'm not terribly fond of the linen but I LOVE how tobacco notes smell on me and the one in this blend is quite lovely. The throw is fairly strong, as others have mentioned and I get sweet vanilla in a cloud around me. Skin-close, I get musk and tobacco. I am so glad I let this warm up completely! I wasn't impressed with it until I did. Now I understand the love. However, it's not good enough for me to wait forever for it to warm up and/or deal with the linen note, especially when other people would love it and give it a good home. Happy to have had the chance to try it, but ultimately not for me. Edited to update impressions.

I took a sniff of the decant, got LEATHER and proceeded to slather this all over. It is definitely absolute love on me. Early on I get soft patchouli, ginger, clove, and woods over leather then it warms to a very Raven Moon-esque spicy patchouli with smoky vanilla with the addition of leather. As Raven Moon is one of my absolute FAVORITE scents, I was in full-on lust for this! Perfection, at least for me. Bottles. Plural. I am going to hoard this one. VILF indeed.

This one smelled UNBELIEVABLE at first. It had beautiful earthy notes from the patch and sage with just a hint of the clove, and a tiny tiny bit of the florals all in perfect harmony. I was in love. Then jasmine paraded onto the scene and decided it was hers. I could've cried. I loved it and jasmine ruined it

I have to agree with talula_fairie, this was nothing like I expected, but perhaps it was just my chemistry. I got generic men's cologne from wet to drydown. NOTHING evocative of books, parchment, candle wax, or that sexy vamp in a library I was hoping for I was so diappointed. I'm still searching for that perfect bibliophile scent for me. I really need to get some Miskatonic U

I happen to have acquired a bottle of Raven Moon so I have a sniffie/tester from my empty decant I can send you if you like Send me a pm with your address and I'll send it on out! Then you see if it works for you or not.

Erisea, you may have hit it on the mark! Bastet has been on my wishlist since day one but I've yet to order her. The notes are perfection for me and it definitely would suit me so good call! I can't wait to get ahold of her and skin-test! Yoginispirit, Raven Moon immediately comes to mind. I, of course, associate ravens with Poe so that would suit your literary and folkloric bent I think. Affinity to birds, absolutely! I also associate ravens and crows with Halloween and autumn and Raven Moon, while not a Weenie, is a nice scent for autumn. Honestly it's one of my favorite scents and I think it hits on all your main points. Don't let the patchouli scare you off, it's very much in the background and there's not a hint of dirty hippie feet. I HATE most patchouli notes (except the lab's, they turn to wonderful on me). I think the spice in it would be lovely on you.

This is BEAUTIFUL. I wish I'd bought a backup bottle (or 2)! In bottle I get a lot of carnation with the woods but on my skin, it vanishes and I get a lovely mix of the sandalwood, bay, hinoki, massoia bark, and clove backed by a smidge of patchouli. As it warms and deepens, I get a tiny hint of creaminess from the vanilla. Not as much as I'd hoped for but I'm not disappointed to be honest. This is so well-blended and smells so rich and comfortingly soft, I can forgive the lack of vanilla that I expected. It's an amazingly evocative blend. I am embraced by downy feather fluff dotted here and there with full, gleaming feathers. It's a soft skin scent that is utterly cozy and relaxing. If I were a cat, I'd purr. This shot right up into my top 10.

I'm testing this as a bedtime blend, believe it or not. I know it's a smack you in the face kind of scent but one of my medications has the horrible side effect of causing stuffy noses and I can't and don't want to rely on yet another medication to unstuff my nose, especially with a tachyarrhythmia (fast heart rate) and high blood pressure. Decongestants are a no-no. I thought the kick of the pennyroyal coupled with the lavender might make the perfect nighty night blend for me. In the imp it's very herbal-mint from the pennyroyal. I haven't figured out just what mint it smells like to me, but it's got an herbal and almost dusty sense to it. I learned from Mad Hatter that I like pennyroyal but this is a rip-roaring pennyroyal, not a background note. It's kicking me in the face but it IS unclogging my nose a bit. Excellent! Maybe my snoring won't scare the cats and keep my husband up. It's got fairly strong throw and that's where I smell the lavender. Sniffing up close, everything but the herbal minty godzilla that is the pennyroyal is obliterated. However, I don't feel energetic. I actually feel calmed. So much so that I slathered myself in it after the teeny bit I tested with warmed up. I'm surrounded by a cloud of icy mint and I can actually breathe through my nose! And I can sense the lavender wafting around me like a soft floral hug. So far so good! Let's see how I feel in the morning. Edit: I figured out what it smells like to me! It smells exactly like Sleepytime tea! No wonder I love it. Granted there's no chamomile or valerian, but chamomile turns to powder on me and valerian, if I recall, smells rather nasty. Well that explains why I associated it with sleep