TrailerTrashPrincess

bear with me while we go on a journey. one of my favourite sweet treats are these orange slice things they're nothing like the "orange slice" candy i grew up with, which are like gumdrops but shaped different. these are softer, squishier, and sweeter. i love the idea of orange juice, but i don't actually like the taste of it. or real oranges. just so bitter. Clementines, satsumas, and mandarins are good but i can't eat regular oranges or grapefruits, just too sour. so. wet in the bottle, this smells a bit like yellow cake batter, and a hint of one of those orange slice candies. not a real orange, but a sugary treat that happens to be orange in color, more than anything else. with me so far? then, once it settles in, that yellow cake batter and orange candy scent just vanishes, and what is left is an almond-extract-ish sugar cookie dough. because most sugar cookies have either almond, lemon, or vanilla, right? this one has almond. a little bit later, that cookie dough has become cookies and they were baked alongside some sort of savory roll/bread. and maybe.... molasses cookies? or maybe i'm imagining that 'cuz i had two of those for breakfast. or wishful thinking because they were my last two and i'd like more.

the Strawberry version of this, from a few years ago, is one of my top-20 BPAL scents. i adore it. this... ok. when i was little i adored Strawberry Shortcake. to be honest i still do. some of her friends were a little odd. but this? this smells to me exactly the way the Raspberry Tart doll did. like somewhere between blueberry and blackberry, with sweet pastry. almost delicious, but not quite (because i don't like raspberries).

one of my favourite BPAL scents is Rose Cross. and it mixes really nicely with Snake Oil. and, for whatever crazy reason, after about an hour, this has settled onto my skin and smells a lot like the bottle of those two that i mixed together about five years ago (a very-obviously-not-a-BPAL-bottle, that i combined imps of varying ages into). powdery and spicy but none of the play-doh.

the crazy thing is that this doesn't smell all that floral to me. on my skin, anyhow, this ends up smelling closer to what i wish all the milk and cream based scents smelled like. i love the idea of those scents, but instead of milk, to me they end up more like... Greek yogurt that's just this side of going off. unsweetened, tangy and a little off-putting. this smells milky, and pale pink, and with the slightest whiff of aerosol White Rain hairspray. when i tried it two years ago, i didn't think much of it but now? now it is so very pretty.

this turned out nothing like what i expected, but isn't that so often the case? the in-bottle and wet-on-skin changed so much, and so quickly that i barely had a chance to form an opinion of the wet-on-skin scent before it settled into what it stayed as. Strawberry Money House from the 90s, or strawberry incense from the 80s. i haven't had Strawberry Money House in ages, and haven't had strawberry incense in, oh, 20 years? but that's what i get from this amazing little bottle. not the sugary strawberry-preserves of Strawberry Moon, and nothing even remotely Smut-like or Scherezade-y. but like.. Strawberry Shortcake, the teenage years. when she painted her walls dark red and wore Vamp nail polish.

this smells so familiar. i haven't sniffed it in years - maybe i'm thinking of the Spinning Multicolored Metallic Pinwheel one from a decade or so ago? i don't get that plastic-y strawberry, this is more like the one from Strawberry Moon. i'm not getting cotton candy or the zing of lime zest - but i am getting something more like key lime pie (which, honestly, i prefer over lime zest... and i love cotton candy but these days it tends more towards that blue raspberry thing and not what i remember it being like).

dry, suede-y leather and a crack of gingerbread. like if a Gingerbread Man joined a biker gang. there's a little something Whiff Lash-ish happening in the background, so maybe there's Irish Spring and greasepaint happening in the clubhouse of that biker gang?

this is that honey note the Lab uses that i think of as California Honey. which is not what i (as a Georgia peach) think of honey as smelling or tasting like. once, many years ago now, i purchased some Fage greek yogurt with a little side pocket of honey that you were to mix in just before eating. that honey *tasted* exactly like the way the Lab's honey note *smells* i'd never had honey that tasted like that before. i couldn't eat it then, either, it just wasn't right. honey was one of the first things i ever purchased with my own money (from a beekeper who had a roadside stand.) and i've bought raw and pasteurized honey from all over the country and all over the world. i also can't stand orange blossom honey, just for the record. anyhow. this is that honey note, which if you know you like it, you'll probably like this. and it is not the Parkerhouse yeast roll / soft white bread being baked kinda smell i was hoping for. this isn't Wonderbread, it is something almost oaty and hearty and the kinda thing i'd want with stew, not with honey. sadly this is a no-go from me. also i can totally see how L403 got first Doritos and then Lush from this, but i get less of a HIWTK than a - what's the other one? Beautiful? Flying Fox? the one that used to be B Never or some such? because it is that kind of honey.

i had a migraine the night i tested this so i need to try it again to be sure... in the bottle and wet on my skin it was alllllmost Snow Glass Apples, and it was so beautiful i almost wanted to cry. but then it settled in. and started reminding me of the Pink Champagne from... a while back. which never worked on me (too soapy?).

cashmere makes me itchy. all sheepwool makes me itchy. this reminds me of F5, and my PawPaw's old recliner. @Dark Alice's mention that this smells like a Tradition That Must Be Kept makes sense, because the smell of this made me cry. I feel like it is reminding me of something I've lost, something I've forgotten. this is beautiful, though. green and snuggly and familiar but not commonplace.

i love patchouli, and ambergris, and oudh, and most vanillas. many many years ago i got a BPAL bottle in a swap or a purchase from a forumite who worked in some kind of medical lab, and they had some sort of cling film that they used to seal things to make it super duper leak proof. kinda milky-clear, thicker than the food type of cling film (Saran Wrap, etc) and super adhesive without actually being sticky. I then looked it up on a lab supplies website thinking how neat that would be for packaging, and then promptly forgot about it, I guess. i ordered this beard oil earlier this year (in May), but it wasn't until a lovely forumite mentioned earlier this evening that she used it as nail oil that i thought to get it out and open it to see how that would work for me! and it was wrapped with that same sort of amazing sticky but not sticky film. way easier to remove than tape, didn't stick to the label or the bottle, just itself. anyhow, thought i'd mention that the dropper bottles were packaged well to avoid leakage/spillage. which is a good thing because this bottle is so full that it looks empty, if you know what i mean. like, tilting it upside down there are just a couple of tiny air bubbles that move to show it is full. the oil is a light caramel colour and smells more like carrier oils than much else. which, again, since it is meant to be used right under the nose i can see why it wouldn't be highly fragranced. on my skin (since... i don't have a beard) after a little bit it settles in and warms up and i get a little bit of a patchouli and vanilla scent. but sadly i don't get any ambergris or oudh. *update, about an hour later i'm getting a hint of something earthy that adds a little oomph, but it is smooshed-nose-to-skin in order to be able to smell it. the carrier oil scent is gone now, though. The Lab's site lists the ingredients as: Jojoba oil, argan oil, rosehip seed oil, evening primrose oil, grapeseed oil, rosemary oleoresin extract, and Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fragrance. i put a single drop on the top of my left hand, and rubbed the top of my right hand on it and then used them to rub down my arms and I can still see where the oil was, and where it wasn't, nearly half an hour later. it did make my skin very soft, though! it still doesn't have much of a smell, even in the bottle. so i bet this will make a good nail oil, for days when i don't want a heavy scent. or a beard oil for someone who doesn't want a super smelly face!

admittedly it has been a whole lotta years since i last tried Ü (the Mutter Museum scent) but once this settles onto my skin, that's what it reminds me of. a touch less dry and a teensy bit maybe something like brown sugar in there? maybe it is the patchouli making me think something brown-sweet, though. i'd say this is on the masculine side of unisex, and could also make a nice room scent if you wanted a resin-y sort of scent that didn't lean towards cedar or frankincense/myrrh. i admit i bought this for the name, because the Error 502 is one of the most frustrating things to try and resolve from the tech back-end perspective.