Soupy Twist

Honey and smoky laurel/wood in the bottle. Goes on as bay and smoke. For a minute or two this is surprisingly not bad! It's woody and sweetly smoky and not... oh, and there's the incense, turning sickly sweet. Yecch. Scrubber.

Lily in the bottle. I don't know where all the hysteria of the description comes from; it's just a green, planty kind of lily which quickly breaks down into a powdery floral.

Lily in the bottle. Not much to write home about; it's a fairly standard lily which eventually turns sickly-sweet. I have much nicer lilies elsewhere.

"You got your gin all over my chocolate!" "You got your chocolate all up in my gin!" Man, this is nasty. Two otherwise wonderful notes which do NOT mix.

Musk in the bottle, and goes on as musk with a generic white floral. This curdles briefly into something sickly sweet, and then fades into an acceptable lily. I have other lilies which are much nicer. Pass.

While this one's description piles on the sugar, there is ironically not enough vanilla. A very accurate candy cane, but not sweet enough. No burn. Disappears very quickly.

I will totally admit that I got this because it's my sign, and since it didn't have any of my no-no-notes, the best case scenario for me was that it didn't suck. I wasn't expecting that I might actually like it. Dandelion and chamomile, I think, in the bottle. Goes on as a melange of chamomile, something planty which I guess is the balm of gilead, woods, and "green." A clove note comes in very briefly, and then changes to grass. It settles as a mature summer grass. Not a lot of throw. This is quite nice — something I could see myself wearing over the summer. It is not, in any capacity, "Mutable Fire: the essence of striving," or anything even remotely related to Sagittarius. It's calm and settled. Sag is big and loud and moving and fiery and on the go. (mind you, I'm not complaining — at the Lab, "fire" means either smoke, ash, or dragon's blood, and I hate all three.)

Spring days I go for florals and fruits; summer days I go for citrus and "green." so: Spring: Sea of Glass Titania Katharina Lilium Inter Spinas Summer: Baobhan Sith Embalming Fluid Squirting Cucumber

A boring lily which quickly sours to that "jasmine stamen" note which the Lab's florals sometimes collapse to on me. I'm not surprised this was discontinued given all the unhappy reviews here.

Pure Applesauce (Scalias): Our applesauce is decidedly impure: mashed apples with sugar and honey, slivered with tobacco tar and black tea. The 2015 Weenies had five Apple scents plus an Apple Cider. Punkie Night is "apple orchards and cider," but I get apple juice.

Monsterbait: Tokyo Stomp is exactly like those crumbly white mints you get on the way out the door at some restaurants. Nice longevity on the vanilla. Miskatonic U is a great Irish coffee. The Witches is pumpkin and coffee-smoky-vanilla and cream and one of my absolute favorite BPALs. Père Noël is tangerine, oranges, anise, and vanilla. Sugar Skull starts as sugar and finishes as crème brûlée with cinnamon, which is what other people were saying about Askasleikir. Stekkjarstaur is everyone's favorite marshmallow vanilla sheep dude. El Dia de los Reyes is cocoa, sugar, and cinnamon. Another favorite. 21 is the perfect gin and tonic, if you count that as food.

Sea of Glass is the absolute perfect hyacinth. It's like an olfactory photograph. It's definitely floral, so I don't know if it would be to your taste, but it's a GC so you can easily get a sample to test.

Cinnamon bark in the bottle. mmmm cinnamon. Some clove comes in, and it starts to smell like cider. I really like this. If it doesn't burn my skin it might supplant Inferno. Continues to dry down to more of a cidery spice, with a round creaminess which is probably the honey. Unfortunately this finishes as baby power. Dang, it had so much promise.

Cognac in the bottle. Goes on as cognac with a fruit note (maybe the quince?), which develops some more. The quince becomes mandarin, which edges into vanilla briefly. There's a little spice, possibly, and just when I start wondering about the tobacco it debuts, and that's where it stays. It's the lighter tobacco from Sherlock, so that's awesome for me. There's almost no throw to this; I have to put my wrist right up to my face to smell it. I really like it and it's sort of killing me that I can't get any of it! This is the first Luper I've really been able to enjoy because almost every single one has one of my no-no notes (musk, sandalwood, incense, patchouli, dragon's blood).

PINE PINE EYE-WATERING PINE with a side order of Pine-Sol and some PINE on top. And it all vanishes in five minutes. That'll clear out your sinuses. Not one other note to be found. No mint, no khus, nothin'.

Okay, I give up. The Lab's leather note hates me. I get "a leather satchel" in the bottle; that's the only way I can describe it. It's a very nice leather... in the bottle. When it goes on me it just goes foul. There's a wee bit of balsam struggling to show, but the leather just smothers it. Scrubber.

(Yep, still testing my way through these years later. ) More vanilla and less mint in the bottle, which is how it goes on. Very brief burn, only a moment, and then there's an odd top sour note — the musk, I guess. Fortunately it vanishes in less than a minute. Dries as a nice balance of vanilla and peppermint, with some of the burn returning. More like the original Lick It than my favorite, Lick It Again. I love this series.

Another vote for Sea of Glass; one of my favorites. Grief: hyacinth (similar to Sea of Glass) Lilium Inter Spinas: mostly lily-of-the-valley Titania: peach and flowers Embalming Fluid: tea and lemon Baobhan Sith: grapefruit and tea

What the hell happened? If I hadn't seen a photo of the label on the Lab's etsy page I'd swear I got the wrong perfume. Ginger with a hint of tonka in the bottle. Goes on as ginger and nutmeg with a sour base. Maybe there's some thyme, and the ginger gets dusty, and it ends up as unpleasant woodsy herbs. There's no chocolate, no sugar, no florals, and no other spices. I must be in the "my skin does not play nicely with this" camp.

Another vote for Titania and Katharina, which are both on my eventual bottle list. While I didn't care for Desire (Ars Amatoria: bittersweet neroli, black patchouli and black musk, gilded by apple, bergamot, blood red rose, teak, and vanilla) because it was too heavy on the rose, you might like it. The Countess of Morcar’s Blue Carbuncle (Dazzling blue musk, white juniper, iris pallida, white oudh, and sugar crystals) was "grown-up Juicy Fruit gum" to me; I liked it a lot but it vanished quickly. Verdandi (Excolo: Deep herbs and apple with black amber) and Apple of Sodom smell almost exactly like Salon Selectives. I was very disappointed with Sjöfn; it smelled really fake to me.

I like citrus and fresh mint in the summer, although my skin devours BPAL's citrus notes so I have to use a locket. I can recommend Baobhan Sith (one of my favorites) and Lemon-Scented Sticky Bat. (all my other summer scents are from other companies, so I can't rec them here. )

Aspen and pine in the bottle. Goes on as mostly pine, shortly dries to wood, which turns soapy. Quite boring. None of the floral or berry notes I was hoping for. I probably ended up with Finarfin and not Glorfindel.

Wore Sea of Glass today. I bought an orchid for my grandmother because she loves orchids, and I handed it to my little one to hold while I was putting on my coat. She started exclaiming how she loved it because it smelled so good — "like the purple flowers outside!" I told her "Those are hyacinths, and it's my perfume you're smelling, not the orchid." She sniffed my wrist and went "oh YEAH, that's it." It really is the perfect exquisite hyacinth.

2011 decant: Fresh apple juice with fragrant dried orange in the bottle. Goes on as as apple juice warmed with an orange slice. The spices come in and continue to deepen towards cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove. Really lovely, and great execution. Sadly it's gone in an hour or so. Didn't irritate my skin like Inferno did, so there's that.

Is no on the cider. It's a lovely cinnamony baked apple, but frankly almost identical to Pure Applesauce.