Yellow Snowballs

[Astarial]

Because I am very, very crass this year. Slushy white mint, vanilla cream, lemon drops, grapefruit, and yuzu!

 

Bright, cheery citrus. I can detect all three citrus notes - the lemon, the grapefruit, and the yuzu. It's a little bit sweet, but just enough to make me want to drink this.

Like Blue Snowballs, the citrus slowly fades and leaves behind a lightly sweetened vanilla cream. Gorgeous.

[Deliciousness]

Yellow Snowballs is all candied lemon rind and Balsam/pine with a hint of mint (but the mint may just be my imagination).

 

On first application, the lemon is very strong and almost chemical, like a strong cleaner. This abrasive scent does fade through dry down to a nice sweet lemony rind - I find the lemon not too cloying, with just a hint of tartness underneath.

 

Alas, the loveliness of citrus is muted by my skin's ability to turn anything balsam and pine to PINE/BALSAM EVERYTHING. Yes, that needs to be in caps. I think this blend would smell lovely on anyone other than myself. I feel that I just hung a pine tree air freshener around my neck.

[Floria]

Very sharp right out of the imp, with a cool mentholic blast that's almost piny, but that mellows down quickly. The remnants of the mint add a bit of chill at the back of the nose, but this isn't an extreme mint scent on the drydown. The citrus comes out, and it's a rather fruity citrus, if that makes sense. Maybe the vanilla cream plays up that aspect. There's a bit of a candy/lemondrop edge that reminds me a bit of lemon verbena. Very cheerful and refreshing.

[zankoku_zen]

2013 version

 

Bright cheery yuzu and piney snow.

 

I get almost exactly the same citrus hits as Wormwood Field on top of a pine/snow combination. I don't adore the pine as much or else this would give WF a run for its money!

[OctoberGwen]

2013 version

 

I am confused by the pine references here, because all I am getting is citrus and vanilla cream with a bit of slushy snow. I will really enjoy this in the Summer, paired with my Lightning Storm hair gloss.

[lucycat]

In the imp: Citrus, mostly grapefruit. Very sharp, and more like rind than flesh.

 

Wet: That same sharp citrus. I'm glad other people have mentioned getting pine from this, because I also get an evergreen impression here, even though it's not a listed note. Freshly cut Christmas trees often remind me of oranges, so that actually makes sense to my nose.

 

Dry: On my hand it is softer and some of the vanilla cream appears. On my arm it stays sharp.

 

I really wanted this one to work. Almost all the notes have worked for me in other blends, and while I haven’t tried BPAL’s yuzu note before, I have a yuzu hand lotion that I like and use. I was hoping for a cooling citrus-mint-vanilla scent I could wear in hot weather, but I don’t think this is it.

[milo]

Bright, icy citrus. I'd really like a shower gel like this, or a lemonade with booze. Great for a hot day, but I don't need anymore. I have hot weather scents that I like better than this, though this is quite nice.

[inhumation]

when freshly applied, it's a powerful punch of bright citrus, almost too much for me. thankfully, when dry, it's a really lovely creamy vanilla. I didn't really get any mint here.

 

 

I got a bottle of this unsniffed in a swap. I'm still a little on the fence on this one. wet, it is a screaming blast of bright citrus, way too strong for me. it dries down to a really lovely vanilla cream with a hint of citrus. maybe I will keep the bottle because the dry phase is soooo nice.

[Soupy Twist]

Way too much yuzu in this. Mint and yuzu in the bottle, with a little lemon as well when it goes on. The bitterness (like grapefruit pith) becomes stronger as it dries. There's a green lemon note — not lemongrass, more like lemon verbena — and finally ends as that bitter, harsh citrus. I was really hoping the vanilla would soften it more. I'm not getting the lovely pine-snow notes from some of the Lab's other snow scents. Dammit, why is this the citrus which hangs around instead of Embalming Fluid or Baobhan Sith?

[freyasfae]

In the imp, this smelled like a perfect winter snow-citrus scent, but on, it quickly overwhelmed me like many of the BPAL winter scents with pine, evergreen and the like do. I know those notes are not listed, but it was so strong, I had to wash it off. There was just a touch of vanilla cream, and it tried to round it out into this vanilla-mint snow scent, but ultimately the citrus and snow-pineness overwhelmed me.

[missnix]

I've had this for a few years now, and wear it every winter. That said, it's nowhere near a favorite because it's not at all what I was expecting; I don't hate it, but neither do I love it. It's very different from anything else I wear, and I now associate it with winter, so I guess I do enjoy wearing it this time of year.

Based on the description, I would expect it to be lemon and mint. On my skin, it's always yuzu + pine that for some reason reads as fuzzy to my nose. It's not overly sweet, but bright and somewhat sour like yuzu typically is. Even though pine is not listed as a note, that is definitely the next strongest component of this blend for me, and it actually makes the whole thing more interesting than just a straight up yuzu-dominant citrus scent. I never really detect the mint, which is a shame.

 

This is not your typical cold weather scent, so if those aren't your thing or you want to add a little diversity to your winter scent wardrobe, Yellow Snowballs definitely fits the bill. Tonally, it reminds me a little bit of Haus of Gloi's Rosy Cheeked winter blend, which combines grapefruit with rosemary for a somewhat similar citrus + green contrast.