calivianya

I am not a huge fan of chocolate in perfumes, but I feel like I had to give this a try. This is the 2011 version. Wet on my skin: whoa! Cocoa overload! It is definitely cocoa as opposed to chocolate - it has that dry, dusty feel to it that cocoa powder does. The cocoa in Gelt is all, 'I am cocoa, hear me roar!' As it dries, the amber comes out more and just adds to that dry feeling for me. It is a yellow, resinous cocoa powder, like cocoa powder dusted with gold flakes. Unfortunately, on the drydown, the amber/cocoa combination goes almost bitter. This is a little too dusty for my skin chemistry, I think.

In the vial: Mostly dry leaves. I really like the Lab's dry leaves note, so this one passes the initial sniff with enthusiasm. Wet on my skin: Leaves plus rose, mums, and amber. Quite lovely! Drydown: I'm starting to agree that this does smell a lot like La Calavera Catrina. It's nice but I have a bottle of that, so I will be rehoming my decant.

This is one of the two Yules I was the most excited about. Let's see if it was worth the excitement. In the vial: BITTER! orange with other things lurking in the background. This is very astringent. It is extremely orange-y and bitter, which I wasn't quite expecting. On my skin: It stays in the bitter stage for about five minutes, then it morphs into an orange-honey smell. I don't really get the other notes. Dry: The orange FINALLY recedes to the background, thankfully. I get mostly sweet vanilla honey with the vaguest hint of linden and orange. I like it, but not enough to warrant a full bottle. The orange stage is way too hard to get through.

With all the notes in this, I half-expected it to be stronger. However, this is not the case. Frost would smell pretty light, and so this does. It's light, airy, and vaguely like a cold forest. I definitely smell the pine, but the rest just sort of combines into a general feeling of cold. I believe the fierce musk may be a white musk, as this feels pretty brisk. I'd also swear there's ozone in this, but it's not mentioned in the description. Basically, it really does smell like a frozen forest. I like it, but I'm not sure I'd really wear it.

I am in turns very excited and very afraid of this perfume. The descriptions sound fabulous, but the word SNOWballs is present in the description and the Lab's snow note hates my skin. In the vial: oooh! Thick, creamy vanilla with rose... this smells like Alice and Snow White had a perfume-baby together. I hope it stays this way. Wet on my skin: I get more of the same. I get more rose as it starts to dry down. I'm definitely seeing the Snow White plus rose attitudes now. I'm experiencing a tie between rose and cream for the dominant note. Dry: This is mainly a dusty rose with a plasticky cream undertone in the background. I'm not quite sure what happened, but this went from AWESOME! to o.0 pretty fast. I think I will not be upgrading this decant to a bottle.

I'm pretty sure there is just a hint of BPAL's snow note in this, or BPAL's snow note includes a faint hint of one of these woods, because this goes the way of anything with BPAL's snow note almost the second it hits my skin, which is to say that I smell like a giant dryer sheet now. Maybe it's the pine?

Hollywood Babylon will knock you down with its sweetness if you're not prepared! It really is a straight shot of vanilla, cherry, and strawberry initially. It's a little too sweet for me. After a few minutes, I smell a floral, though I wouldn't have known it was heliotrope without reading the description. I don't ever really get the amber. Hollywood Babylon is just a very, very sweet fruity scent with a heck of a lot of throw on me.

I am wearing Fetish.Goth over Spun Sugar Spectre bath oil. I am in heaven.

When I first tried this, it did some really weird things on me. This is test v2, after I let it set for a week. Wet on my skin, it's mostly soft white tea. I do get a little bit of the violet leaf, and something almost spicy in the background, but the white tea is the strongest note by far. After about ten minutes, the red musk amps, and I mean it really amps. The scent becomes almost single note red musk. The tea is way in the background, and I think I can pick out the saffron and the myrrh as well. It's very musky at this point. After it dries down, the musk recedes a bit, and it becomes a spicy white tea scent. It reaches the perfect happy medium between light white tea and sexy musk/spices. I really like this scent a lot, and I'm glad I sprung for a bottle unsniffed. I think this will only continue to get better over time.

I'm wearing Thousands of Lights currently, as I just got my partial in the mail and I'm testing it out. It's love.

I feel like CCNow follows the same principles that gas stations, restaurants, and hotels do - you get authorized before you actually pay to make sure you have the funds. Try using a debit card at a restaurant and go home and check your holds - the number's not going to match what you paid unless it's some kind of weird coincidence, because they run the card before they come back for you with the invoice where you can write how much of a tip you want to put on there. It's the same thing at gas stations - you swipe the card before you have any kind of clue what your total is going to be. It makes sense for those kinds of companies to authorize to see what kind of funds you have since they have no idea what you're going to spend. However, it is a little strange for that kind of system to be used for a company like the Lab, since we know what the charge is going to be off the bat because we put it in a shopping cart and came up with a total. I really would be interested in finding out why the Lab decided to use this kind of payment system.

Odd as this sounds, I was really hoping that this blend would have absolutely none of the snow note in it - it's technically not in the description, right? Well, apparently this blend definitely contains the snow note. It goes on bright and citrusy with a hint of the snow note, but quickly morphs to dryer sheets scented with a hint of vanilla and lemon. The snow note always goes dryer sheet on my skin.

Ambergris accord makes me nervous, but I will skin test this anyway. This almost... disappears. I can barely smell it. What I do smell is a bitter background with white florals that turns vaguely soapy on the drydown.. It reminds me a lot of what The Last Unicorn did on my skin. It's a close cousin to my skin chemistry. Unfortunately, that didn't work on me either. I need to learn that things with any kind of violet just do not work on my skin.

Lemon and/or lemon blossom always ruins scents for me. I get very faint citrus cleaner from this blend, and nothing else.

Oh my, this is really surprising! I received Maiden as a frimp from the Lab. It is exactly as it has been described - tea, rose, and carnation, innocent and sweet. This is such a beautiful, pretty scent. I'm tempted to keep it, but I don't really wear this kind of scent and I know it won't get much, if any, use from me.

Red musk can be hit or miss on my skin, and I'm hoping Hygeia is the type that's a hit! Wet on my skin, Hygeia is red musk! I don't get much of the other notes at this point. As it dries, Hygeia somehow seems to hit a blind spot in my nose, if there is such a thing... I put a lot of this on, now where is it? I'm a little bewildered. None of these notes are tame, but they're being awfully shy on my skin right now. Once Hygeia dries, it still is somewhat in that blind spot. It also just doesn't impress me too much. It's sort of generic red musk with some other unsmellable components. I think I may be able to pick out the frankincense, but everything is hiding so well behind the red musk that it's really hard to tell. I was really looking for more of a blend, and less of a red musk single note, so my decant will likely be rehomed.

I think the best word for this blend is "interesting." I'm not sure what the heck I'm smelling, but it really is evocative of industrial waste and coal. It just smells dirty. Not a dirt kind of dirty, but an air pollution kind of dirty. This is definitely not something I will EVER wear again, but it was a neat experience.

I received this as a frimp from the Lab. Golden Wave is bright and citrusy - so of course it makes me think of cleaning fluid. It doesn't smell bad or sharp, it's just... citrusy. I'm not a huge citrus fan.

This is the powderiest powder that there ever will be. It smells like cleaning products, deodorant, and other powdery things. I am not a fan.

I get a large waft of white musk in this initially. White musk can be good, or it can be eau de dryer sheet. We'll see. I get a lot of honeysuckle as this warms up on my skin... and it starts to smell like burning death. WTF? Apparently I can't do honeysuckle, because at the moment this smells somewhat rancid. Wow. Okay, this is off to swaps...

Okay, I fully intended just to sniff and review because I don't like dirt scents much, but all of the crazy positive reviews convinced me to give this a try. Wet on my skin, it's all dirt, all the time. I do start to get the sweet smell, whatever it is, after a few minutes, and I start to get the fungus about five minutes later. How does this work? I do sort of like this, but I can tell you right now that I will never wear it because of the dirt. I'm pleasantly surprised, though, and glad that I got to try it.

Another one I probably wouldn't have tried on my own. Thanks for the frimps, Labbies! Wet, I smell mostly patchouli - but that quickly moves to the background. I get the three other notes much stronger. The juniper berry makes it tart, the oakmoss grounds it, and the myrrh adds that little bit of sexy spice. I am REALLY surprised at how much I like this. Omen is a keeper. Coming back to try it again later, I'm thinking this is actually too astringent for me.

Huh. Lysander totally slipped under my radar for some reason. I'm glad I received this as a frimp from the Lab! Wet, I am definitely getting some vanilla-like tonka and the lilac. Lilac sometimes amps, but the tonka is keeping this in check. I really like this right now! As it dries, I can pick out a bit of the lime, but other than that, there isn't a ton that I'm familiar with. I wouldn't even peg this as masculine, and maybe not even unisex. It feels feminine to me with the sweet tonka and lilac. This is a huge surprise. I think I may keep this and try it again later!

I'm a little surprised by this blend. With a name like Grief, I'd expect it to be sharp and at least somewhat unpleasant. I'm no floral lover, but for a floral, this is very soft and gentle. It's more like grief after the initial devastating stages have passed - you're looking back on something terrible, but the pain is slightly muted by time. It is mainly lily of the valley, and it is very light and ethereal on my skin.

I received this as a frimp from the Lab. Hymn goes on with very strong lily of the valley, with the rose and frankincense as supporting players. As it dries down, it goes a lot more sharp than I expected it to. I can't yet pick out laudanum as a note, but this blend makes me wonder if it isn't good with my skin chemistry. It's either that or the lily that is misbehaving, but I'm not sure which. Anyway, this started out light and springy, and ended sharp, slightly resinous, and very soapy.