OneEyeAskew

First impression: Miskatonic University? Is that you?? After a few minutes: Yup, still reminds me very heavily of Miskatonic. I think it's the "Irish Coffee" note...because this smells very Irish Cream and HEAVILY foodie to me. Not unpleasant, but I don't usually like foodie scents unless they have a lot else non-foodie going on with them. Dry: White flowers? Lilacs? To me it's got a hint of floral in there. Maybe this is the honey and oak coming through? But, I still get predominantly sweet Irish cream foodiness from this one. Results: A pleasant scent, but not something I will personally wear. I may have kept the imp if I didn't already have Miskatonic U. This one I'll swap.

This is very much softer than the apple note in Verdandi. When wet, I am able to pick out a Jolly Rancher brightness to it, as others have mentioned, but that impression is transitory and on me not prominent. Overwhelmingly, from start to finish, this is a floral apple. It's an early spring apple surrounded by soft white petals. I don't like things that are foodie and I don't like things that are very floral -- but this has a wonderfully balanced softness that I find really pleasant. I will be keeping this and I will be wearing it. Looking forward to seeing how it ages.

Got this one as a lab freebie! Didn't look up the scent description, just opened the imp one morning while feeling adventurous. It was very masculine and refined in bottle, so I decided to give it a whirl and applied some just before walking out the door for my long morning commute. Five minutes into my drive: ...oh god, is that orange? There was no orange in the bottle. Orange is THE Scent of Death to me. When someone near me peels an orange, I can FEEL the acid of the scent on the skin of my face. I really, really, really, hate citrus. Ten minutes into my drive: Orange-scented cleaning solution. Dishwashing soap and citric acid burn. The next forty-five minutes: I want to claw my way out of this car. Eyes, skin, nose burning. Omg I am never making this mistake again. Get to the office: Scrub everything madly. Apply vast quantities of Hecate with rollerball I keep in purse. Entire rest of day: Still feel citric acidity burn nose every so often. Can't get rid of it until I shower. Granted, I have an obviously very strong reaction to citric acid, and I know this about myself. Probably this is a very lovely scent for some people. For me, NEVER AGAIN.

In the bottle, it conjured an open-air herb market with dusty spices and stalls full of scarves with bells and bright thread. On my skin, it quickly turned to potpourri. Very pungent potpourri. Oh well. Not for me, then.

Disclaimer: when I got my order in the mail, I was in the midst of a nasty cold and couldn't smell them at all. Tragic! I've been waiting impatiently to start reviewing all the nifty things, so today when my nose seemed to be working again, I leapt at the opportunity! That said, it is possible my palette is off, or my skin pH is off from the cold, or SOMETHING, because seriously...this one is WEIRD. Opening up the bottle: BUBBLEGUM. Wet on skin: BUBBLEGUMBUBBLEGUMBUBBLEGUM. Bubblegum...and...soap? What is that? Ugh, this is just revolting. I don't hate bubblegum, you guys, but it's got such potency and a...grossness to it. Like being in a candy store with a stomach virus. Drydown: Thankfully, the bubblegum has receded somewhat. It's still dominant and unpleasant, but not in the same stomach-churning way as before. Underneath, there is...pale wood? Bamboo? I can't quite get past the pink enough to see this birch-colored thing. But that's what I imagine -- pale floorboards in a wooden teahouse. And the teahouse is filled with bubblegum. Dry, later: I keep huffing my wrists trying to identify this other scent, which is still incredibly faint on me. Thankfully, though, the gum has faded to a faint wisp as well, so at least there's that. As I sniff and sniff at this, the two notes blend into something I'm really struggling to put a word to. I try to convince myself that it's coffeeish? Mostly just because that's what everyone else was saying. But then I sniff my wrist and, NOPE, definitely not coffee. But wait! I remembered something someone said earlier, about the memory of a coffeeshop. That phrase jogged my palette! Sort of right, but not really. For me, it's more like the very faint whiff of sickly-sweet flavored coffee creamer. I can /barely/ get that, though, and it stank to high heaven on the journey. It's still got a too-sweet rancidness, it's just so far away that it's not so bad. I will retest this one after I've waited a bit..but my hopes are not high. This is so disappointing, I was really looking forward to this one!