myth

Strooong cinnamon. So strong it’s hard to tell what is under it. I may be getting something a bit foody, possibly fruity.

 

As it dries I definitely keep getting some cake. Finally the cinnamon rolls off enough to reveal cake underneath, but there still may be a fruit/berry aspect, too, because it reminds me somewhat of Villainess Birth Rite.

 

I kind of like this one.

I could not find an existing thread for this, so I hope I didn't just miss it.

 

Minty and somewhat herbal; quickly going to soap once on my skin. This makes me think of Irish Spring more than electricity. I didn't actually expect this to be the kind of scent I can wear, and it's not.

Mmm, this one is interesting. I like it. Dark, resiny, spicy. Some wood? Pepper? Not quite sure but it is right up my alley. Developing a bite as it dries, but not bad. That might be some bitter citrus rind lurking in the background adding that bite. Manages to evoke metal without being metallic.

 

Second try: immediate strong fruit, turning into sour wine. This time I thought I also smelled a heady floral. As it dries at first I got something woody-resiny, and then it began to turn metallic. A very shifty scent, indeed. Final dry-down is wine and metal over dark dry wood.

At first I thought red musk and amber, and got excited and wore this to bed. Instead it turned perfumey, and I wondered if my nose was broken.

 

Trying again it seems the broken part was thinking it smelled good. It is definitely perfumey. Smells better in the bottle than on me. This is a heady, dark floral, a sophisticated perfume-scent that probably means florals of some kind. I suppose there could be some amber, and maybe a faint red musk, but I’m amping the florals so it’s hard for me to say what else there might actually be.

 

It’s not awful, but it’s more of a commercial perfume smell, albeit a dark dramatic one, than what I prefer to wear. As it dries I am getting a little bit of what I think is vanilla; it smells like the vanilla in CC:Female, but it’s elusive. If I sniff too hard I just get the florals.

Almost medicinal; something that smells like anise. Also perhaps a dark fruitiness in the background. Loses its sharpness and sweetens as it begins to dry, moving from medicinal to candylike. It keeps making me think of that Fruit Stripe gum. I actually kind of like this, even though that doesn’t sound good.

Sweet and grassy, a faint touch of pine. Reminds me some of Stranger In Camp, only with a sugary waft over it. The pineyness strengthens over the grass, and turns into a fresh wood smell. Faintly in there is something that registers as perfumey to me, and this also strengthens as it dries.

 

In the late throw I get a touch of soapiness, but if I sniff up close it’s not there. This has some elusive qualities, but the overall impression is a bit sweet, with pine and grass. Late in dry down I keep thinking I’m getting a whiff of smoke.

ETA: the original description on CC.com said, "the female scent has notes of violet and lavender" which was obviously not the case at all, but I wanted to leave that part in this review so it would make more sense, because I was responding to what I thought was in it.

I am quite surprised by this scent! Based on the semi-description above [ETA: this refers to the original, incorrect description] I really expected to hate this. [i nabbed it before ANY descriptions were up, natch.] I am the anti-floral girl, the bringer of floral DOOM, the Destroyer of Flowers.

I don't smell violet. Or lavender? I can take lavender in certain circumstances but usually BPAL's is too harsh for me, and I don't get a lick of it out of this. And violet is possibly one of my worst florals ever; it always smells like screamingly sharp chemicals. So wut?

Instead, this is light, pretty, and slightly sweet. Something about it reminds me of the blends with marshmallow notes in them, because there is a delicate light white sweetness, very clean and pure, running through here like a strand of spun sugar.

If I get really close I can in fact smell florals underneath the sweet. So either I'm madly amping something BESIDES florals for a change, or that description is so incomplete as to be nearly useless, or testing this on immediate arrival is causing some weirdness that will shake out as it settles. I dunno. I will come back and edit this review with better info as it develops, because I expected to be putting this one up for swap immediately and instead I can see it needs more in-depth evaluation.

For now it is quite light and pretty, almost foody with the sweetness [but not foody, just sugary I guess] and it is making me long to run barefoot through some slightly damp spring grass while wearing a pretty cotton dress.

I'm gonna go lie down.

ETA to add the official description. For reference the original CC.com description said this "the male version has musky amber tones." Which... turns out no amber, but now you know why I reference it below.

This scent is reminding strongly of something I can't quite put my finger on. It is definitely musky, just barely leaning to lightly powdery. So far there is not much throw, and I have to sniff up close on it. Winding through it I can catch hints of citrus and metal, although it is neither citrus nor metallic. This must be the amber, because I've smelled amber with citrus tones before.

It's masculine without being cologney. But this is a working dude, not a polished gentleman. He's got some grease around the edges, but he's huggable... rugged yet friendly. It's very quiet and understated on me so far... I am testing on the day it arrived though, so it might need to catch its breath a bit.

It's going to drive me crazy until I think of which scent this is reminding me of. It may be one of the other Steamworks scents, because it does have something of the feel of the ones I've tried out of those, with an oil and metal feel in the background. I need to go sniff some other bottles and I'll come back and update this when I figure it out.

When this one was first announced I wanted it more than anything, but after the uber-plum reviews starting coming in I scaled my wants back to just a sniffy, because I didn't think it would work on me; I figured the plum would make it too fruity. I didn't like Dionysia because she was way too fruity-sweet for me, but now I think that was the pom and raspberry at work. However, I was given the opportunity to swap a bottle of something I didn't like to someone who wanted it for a bottle of this, and so I figured why the hell not? I knew I'd have no trouble swapping it on should the plums not work out.

 

Sorry folks. You will pry this out of my cold dead heads.

 

The Evil Sugar Plum Fairy is exactly what I thought, and looking at the reviews I see I'm not the only one. These plums aren't too bright and sweet, which is what ruins a lot of fruity blends for me because I turn them to Jolly Ranchers or Kool-Aid. They are dark and heavily spiced, like plums in a pie would be. Baked in a kitchen full of incense smoke... because when the Evil Sugar Plum Fairy is baking her evil plum pies you know she is burning incense somewhere nearby.

 

The overall impression, quite simply, is darkly spiced plum incense. I freaking LOVE this.

Curry over gingerbread. Turns more gingerbready as it dries, the curry rolls off some. Final dry-down is very like a slightly-less-sweet Gingerbread Poppet. It lasts forever, too.

 

I love the way this smells, but I'm not sure I'd want to wear it as a perfume because it smells so much like curry, even after the curry rolls off. You'd smell like you'd been cooking and eating Indian food, and while I love to eat curry, I just don't really want to smell like my dinner. I think this is one I'll keep the decant to wear for myself because it does smell really delicious, but I won't wear it out anywhere and the imp I have will be plenty for me.

I feel like I'm being stalked by clove lately. That's mostly what I get here, along with other unidentifiable things… dry, woody, possibly resinous things. As it's drying it turns a bit sour, and then kind of turns back to clove. It's just to the sour side of being wearable... I turn some kinds of tobacco sour so that may be what's going on here.

 

In the vein of Velvet Bandito and Sunbird [also the Osiris proto, with the clove], dry and spicy. But yet... incomplete, somehow. It just doesn't quite get off the ground. I waver over whether I like it, but ultimately both Bandito and Sundbird [and Osiris] are so much better on me that I don't need to look for this.

I am having a hard time with this one, because it is one of those that just smells like "perfume" on me, and I have no idea how to break that down into individual component guesses.

 

Musk, definitely. But not red or black. The perfumey musk, not the soapy musk. I don't know what it is. Other reviews say some kind of fruit, and I guess I can see that... sort of. Maybe. There is something kind of bitter in here that makes me think of orange peels. But this is not at all a foody blend on me. There's a weird sour-chemical smell in here that has got to be some kind of floral being ruined by my skin chemistry... I can make them smell like metallic chemicals for some reason, and there's some of that in here.

 

I'm probably just not the person to review this scent because I have no idea what it is that I'm smelling and I am obviously doing bad things to whatever it is. This points to some kind of white musk and floral blend, because those are the ones that always go this way.

Immediate soap. But maybe something else… some wood? Quickly becomes very faint, almost disappearing.

 

Then, for a minute, this manages to be almost fresh instead of being totally soapy. I think it's because of the way it disappears, it makes it just a faint whiff and so imparts that fresh air feeling. I dunno; it's weird. I cannot wear air/ozone/aquatic notes because I turn them into some variant of soap/powdered laundry detergent/dryer sheets, so it is extremely unusual for me to have one of these blends actually smell like AIR [for reals] on me at all, even for a second. I'm kind of impressed.

 

Then it reappeared in force. Got more soapy as it dried. The amping of the soap takes over. I didn't ever get amber or incense from this, and those are my favorite things. I did get some wood, and I suspect this is meant to be an airy scent rather than the soap I made it into, so if you can wear air then you could reasonably expect air and wood. The wood could be teak or possibly frankincense I suppose, it is so immediately suppressed by the soap ampage that I don't have a chance to really tell.

 

Not for me.

A light apple/wine/harvest scent. Maybe vanilla? A touch sweet but not entirely sugary, so perhaps vanilla over sugar. With apples. And possibly other fruit. A late summer scent, more than a fall one I think, making me think of a late-summer harvest when you can just taste fall in the wind, but summer is still laying warm and heavy on your skin. This is sweet and sparkling without being too bright or at all candylike.

 

Very pretty and wearable for me, and I am definitely in search of a bottle of this one. I used to hate scents with apple in them, but first it was L'Autnno, the Fearful Pleasure, and now this lovely sugary apple golden scent that has turned me into someone who can [sometimes] wear apple notes.

Off the bat this is blueberry muffin mix… juicy blueberry, super sweet… I can feel those little pellets crunch between my teeth almost [when I was a kid I would pick them out of the mix and eat them ]. If it stayed just like this it'd be great.

 

But as it dries something else comes out… at first it's kind of making me think of the champagne blends, a sort of clear soda Sprite-likeness, only not sickening like those were. The blueberry is very faint now, but still barely present. It's not too bad still though, just not as mouth-wateringly delicious as it was at first.

 

Once fully dry it's a sweetish musky scent with faint fruitiness and a slight soapy tinge. Now it's not really a fruity-foody scent but a perfumey one. There's an undertone to it that is still somewhat appealing... something a bit deep, but I only smell that sniffing it very close-up, right on my skin. The throw is more sour/musky and perfumey-soapy-headachey. Fully dried-down the blueberry is nowhere to be found and it's all perfumey soap. I did evil things to something in this one, which is a shame because the opening was so delicious.

 

I swapped this to someone who loves it for something that loves me, so it's all good in the end.

Sweet and piney. Not very smoky to me, but lots of evergreen and something that is like pipe tobacco smoke rather than fireplace smoke [it's a sweeter, truer, less chemical smoke note]. I think I like this better than either of the released versions… 04 was cherry and 05 had something almost buttery to it. This is more piney and balsam-sweet, and I like that part a lot. More smokiness comes out as it dries... def liking this.

 

Sadly this one is right up my alley and preferable on me to either of the released versions. The cherry in Hearth 04 made me feel ill, and I have a half bottle of 05 that I like but don't wear often, but a comparison sniff to this proto brought out the apparent butteryness in the 05 release [which may be why I don't wear it much, because butteryness I have to have a real mood for or it will make me feel oogy]. I would love to have a bottle of this proto though and would wear it quite frequently for wintertime. Pine and pipe tobacco. Love!

 

But still... not as Hearth-like, really, so I can see why it didn't pass conceptual muster.

Strong, somewhat perfumey, and almond I think. Hard to pin down the notes. Wavers on being good, but then develops a sour note... perhaps some kind of sour floral.

 

I tried this twice just to be sure, because once it's fully dried down it is kind of nice, semi-masculine, a bit woody but not too dark. Unfortunately that sourness pervades and returns, and the super-late-dry-down [like, what the application spots smells like the next day when you get up and haven't yet showered] is not as good. This one kind of morphs in and out of wearability for me, but ultimately I swapped it for something I was less wavery about.

First test: Deep and woody, very similar to Penitence, but with some pine pitch maybe, and lavender. Tries to be a touch soapy like Bat of Death, which leads me to suspect orris, but overall is pretty nice.

 

Second test: strong lavender and soap. Where's mah wood/pine? Hugely throwing lavender soap. Slightly less powdery than Zenobia, but like that with lavender. And a little of Bat of Death. Kind of headache inducing actually. I have no idea what I was thinking the first time. Very powdery and soapy. I strongly suspect and orris/frankincense combo like in Zenobia and Bat of Death because this one goes off on me just like they did. Whatever is causing the powdery soap amps like mad on my skin.

 

I'm not sure which test represents the "standard" state of my skin chemistry but it was so awful on me the second time I don't even want to try it again. If Zenobia and Bat of Death worked on you this probably will too, but if they failed, beware.

This review is based on a second test, and it seems slightly better this time but still, this is not destined to be a favorite. I'd probably buy it if it were available, but then I'd never wear it and eventually sell it in a destashing.

 

The first time I tested it I didn't write a review but the impression stuck in my head was "fertilizer."

 

Testing again, it's wood, but there's something a bit sour also, which is the part I am reading as fertilizer. The smell you get from the fertilizer aisle in a garden center. Also kind of the same thing that was going on in Twisted Oak, only without all the damp and green. This is that oak note, and... well, not much else to my nose. But despite all that there's also a sweet woody layer that keeps me resniffing. It's kind of compelling, in an odd way. It continues to soften on dry-down, until it is kind of nice, and this is the point at which I'd probably be compelled to buy a bottle if it were available. But that sourness at the beginning would probably mean that whenever I thought to wear it I'd open, sniff, and then change my mind.

 

Interesting. Oak-y. But maybe oak isn't my favorite wood note. I'm on the fence here.

Bizforbrent was so kind as to send me testers of this and a couple of other scents after the first Cobwebs event.

 

Straight from the vial this is amazingly wonderful foody creaminess and spice… a little reminiscent of Sugar Cookie 08 or maybe Butter Rum Cookie, but with a whiff of Gingerbread Poppet thrown in to boot. Very foody creamy cake batter-y.

 

I would be lying if I said I wasn't the slightest bit relieved that this dries down plastic on me, the same way an earlier version of Sugar Cookie did and that Underpants did. There's a note in some of these foody scents which just doesn't agree with me... a certain type of vanilla perhaps... because they either are yummy or they are plastic, and it seems there's no way to know in advance which it's gonna be. I think I could instead layer Sugar Cookie 08 with Gingerbread Poppet and have something both close to this and yet functional on my skin.

 

Even though this one didn't work out I am very glad to have had the chance to try it, 'cause now I know it's one of *those* foody scents, and I don't have to covet it anymore.

I really hate it when people compare a rare scent to other rare scents, but that's what I'm about to do. Before I read the rest of the reviews I was going to say it's like a masculine version of Lamia, because they both have clove and I apparently amp clove so I get that strong similar vibe from both of them. But after reading the reviews I had to sniff it against Glowing Vulva, and I'd say yeah, some of that creamy teak could be going on. And the sniffing of it as compares to Hellhound was random and accidental, but it shares similarities with it as well. So it's kind of an intersection between GV, Hellhound, and Lamia, which sounds weird because I don't necessarily think the three of those compare against each other.

 

Minus comparisons to other scents [which are only helpful if you've smelled those scents, which is back to why I hate comparing things to rares] I'd say this is a dark and slightly dry/dusky scent, with clove, some wood that may be teak, some kind of slightly herbal component I think, and I suppose there could be sandalwood. It's in the dry-woody-spicy family with Sunbird, as well, although I wouldn't exactly compare it directly to Sunbird, but you can see the family resemblance. It has a slightly powdery edge that doesn't bother me, but I think it might go too powdery on the particularly powdery-sensitive.

 

I'm not 100% certain this one works on me. [i'm still trying to figure that out about Hellhound, too, a year later! ] I need to do a full-on wear and see how it goes. I like clove despite its ampage, and the woodiness pleases me, but something about this that is the Hellhound-similar note [and Antikythera Mechanism, now that I think about it, so tobacco maybe?] just doesn't quite pull it off on me. Right now this one is staying on the right side of the line though, so it warrants further testing and wear.

After reading that this one is supposed to smell foul I feel a little better about leaving a review for it. I sniffed it at SEWC but didn't test because I don't like aquatics and this is REALLY aquatic. A friend I was with sniffed and said "Ew, this smells like the bottom of an unclean aquarium!" And it did.

I tested a proto of this at SEWC and I have to say it was one of my favorites of the night. However, I didn't get floral [florals=DOOM on me, I amp them like crazy] or candy from it. Right off the top I got anise/licorice, and a little while later I overheard Andra saying the same to someone else. Once it dried down I had a harder time pinning notes, and I was testing so many other things at the same time that it probably wouldn't be accurate for me to even guess at them. The dry down reminded me a lot of the Velvet Panther / Melainis family of scents though, so I think I'm gonna love this one.

CXLVII

This smells pretty much exactly like Antikythera Mechanism, which I tried really hard to love because the notes sounded perfect for me, but finally got rid of. There's that odd astringent and almost soapy note that AM had, that wavers to tobacco, and back to almost-soap, and I'm never quite sure what to make of it.

 

So, Antikythera Mechanism and Snake Oil

Leave it to someone who hates it to ID the note in a blend! I can't believe I'm the first person to say it, but this is HONEY. OHAI HONEY, FUNKY DOOM. Sweet, sweaty BO funkiness honey.

 

Also maybe some kind of sugar note because it does have that high sweet hit that I get from Sugar Skull/Velvet Unicorn and the like [without the fruit component]. At first I thought I smelled ginger and musk a la Flesh-Eating Reindeer, but that may be because I read the reviews first and am highly suggestible. On next day/subsequent sniffing I don't smell musk anymore... I think I mistook the honey funk for a dark musk at first... and there's only a slight faint hit of ginger.

 

But mostly my nemesis honey. If there's anything else in here, it's completely smothered by the honey doom ampage happening with my skin chemistry.