Variety of Pleasing Amusements

[Monday]

Honey, leather, tobacco, and myrrh.

Oddness... for some reason this equals Celeste with additional tobacco. Has tons of throw. I disliked Celeste as it has a note that causes instant headache I always thought it was the vanilla orchid/ orris combo but this smells almost the same.

[heartlilly]

This reminds me of what CC female smelled like on me. I will eventually have to test them side by side to see the difference. On my skin it is very smoky honey with a bit of leather. It is strong too. It started off strange, but has mellowed a bit into something quite nice.

[ami226]

This one is good! Definitely getting both honey and the sweetness of tobacco. The leather really smooths this one out. Oh, no. The tobacco is starting to take over and smells a little like burnt cigarettes. And then it goes away? Huh. I think I like this one!

[Missy_killer]

In the decant: Reminds me of my beloved Smut (2011), but I get leather instead of chocolate and a hint of alcohol.

 

On me: Leather and honey mixed together seamlessly. Sweet and spicy and extremely good! And then of course, I got all teared up since Variety of pleasing amusements smells on me exactly like the perfume my ex used to wear and that I used to wear too. I love this, but I will probably not wear it - only sniff it to remember old times.

It doesn't morph much either, after a while I get more tobacco, but thankfully the sweetness remains from the honey.

 

The morning after: I can still smell it on my wrist, although it is only a faint sweetness left.

 

 

 

[karykeion]

Thank you, evanescence!!

 

In the decant: ...It smells like honey-sweet cigarettes. I'm not sure I want to smell like that. Proceeding with caution.

 

On me, wet: Wow, I'm entirely unsure how I feel about this. It smells like...sweet...danger. Like innocent sweetness with badass underneath it. The tobacco luckily isn't kicking in as much on my skin as it could have, so I don't smell like secondhand smoke. The scent is thick and deep and syrupy and kind of intriguing. Oooooooh, is that the leather? Oh my goodness I like. I like a lot. The tobacco is coming back out, but not to the extent that I smell like cigarettes, and the leather is helping this not happen by being louder and sexier.

 

On me, dry: Dark and sweet. This is actually exactly what I wanted and expected Nyarlathotep to smell like. I like it, but I'm on the fence about whether I need a bottle or not. It's getting a full test and some second opinions, but for now I am pleased.

Edited March 30, 2012 by karykeion

[milo]

This is a warm, sweet woody blend, with a touch of cream. This is very much like Atlas or Tree of Life.

[Little Bird]

I get a strong blast of honey from this, which isn't my favorite note. It's very bright and sugary sweet. I think that the tobacco and myrrh are making it even sweeter than usual. As it dries down, there's a darker, gritty smokiness from the leather or tobacco, but mostly its a bright, sweet honey on me. Reminds me a bit of Possets' 'The Girls Love Leather.'

I think that this is a little too sweet for me (and is way too sweet on my husband.. bpal oils tend to turn sweeter on him than on me), but I might keep my decant to try layering with other leather scents and maybe some clove.

[curlsandpearls]

In the bottle and wet, this smelled very much like Interfector - a strong foody tobacco note. For a while, I thought the leather might keep the sweetness in check, but it's rather like a tennis match, bouncing from honey-leather to honey-tobacco. I really wanted to love this. Alas.

[yakiguri]

I agree with other testers that this starts off with a sharp tobacco tang similar to Interfector, just with a dash of leather. As I had desperately tried to love Interfector but failed, I was going to write this off as a loss as well. Then suddenly the honey and myrrh started to seep in, sweetening and grounding what could've been a much too sharp blend. I like it, and am glad to have a decant, but the tobacco is just a tad too sharp to tip me into buying a bottle. I may hunt a bottle down though if the tobacco smooths out more with aging.

 

EDIT: OK, it's only been half an hour later, and the honey has kicked more into high gear. Variety of Pleasing Amusements has turned into the sweet-spicy-smoky blend I'd hoped it'd be, and I'm grabbing a bottle ASAP!

Edited April 21, 2012 by thatbrownelf

[ajansuz]

This has all winning notes for me, so I was prepared to love it.

 

In the bottle, the tobacco and honey are strong, and there's something pretty dry keeping that from being overtly sweet.

 

Wet: It's the strangest thing, as it's not a listed note, but I get a spicy ginger tang like the ginger in Two Leaning Pines along with tobacco and leather. There's also something almost plastic-y that I don't like very much. Myrrh is nowhere to be sniffed, which is also strange because I often amp it.

 

Dry: It's a dry, kind of spicy scent. The sweetness goes away and is replaced with dry smoke. I don't dislike it, but it's not the magic I had hoped for. For tobacco and leather scents, I still love The Tata way more.

[malibusunny]

I love this.

 

I received a half decant and adored it, so I ordered a bottle. I love the bottle as much as the decant, and that doesn't always follow the way you'd think.

 

It's the same perfect sweet that Ronin is on my skin. An almost marshmallow honey musk. Gentle and velvety. The tobacco gives it that tiny bit of incense that everything has on my skin anyway.

 

I just love it. I should have ordered five bottles.

[Alia Kaitan]

So, back when I got my decants at the very start of the Luper update, I remember testing this and thinking, meh. I remember it smelled slightly 'off'. Maybe it was hormones that day, or something, or the decant hadn't settled, but anyway:

 

I am so glad I held onto that decant and re-tested, because... oh myyy.

 

This is smokey (but not distinctively cigarette or anything), sweet leathery musk on me. It does have a slight resinous feel, which plays well to balance and give depth to the sweetness. For some reason it makes me think more of the way a person's skin smells sweet, rather than honey itself. Honeyed skin, maybe?

 

Plus it lasts forevvvvver on me. On the far, far drydown I'm left with this lovely scent that is almost a sweetened Ivanushka. Delicious and definitely a keeper. So glad I was able to get a bottle of this. The bottle is the same, if not slightly more robust even, than my decant.

 

(I should note that generally my skin chemistry is agreeable, and most scents end up well balanced for me.)

[calivianya]

I intended to buy a bottle of this while it was up but I hesitated for some reason... we'll see if I should have stuck with that initial instinct!

 

Wet: Definitely getting a lot of tobacco and honey here. I can smell a hint of leather, but it's lurking in the background.

Drying: Okay, the leather's come out to play and it's eating most of the other notes. It's actually kind of hard to smell right now. It backed off a lot!

Dry: Oh, the myrrh finally came out and spiced it up. This is pretty sexy, but something about the combinations is cloyingly sweet. I think it's the tobacco, which I generally don't have a problem with. Odd. Anyway, I'm glad I got to test it, but it's not for me.

[filigree_shadow]

I like this a lot -- none of the notes are particularly strong, they're all blended together very well. The tobacco and myrrh are a nice, dry, perfumey sort of scent, and the leather undertone is very grounding. Sometimes honey smells like play-doh on me, so I'm a little wary of it. It's fine in this one.

 

Yep, I like this one.

[aquazoo]

Oh, wow, that starts with a whole lot of warm yumminess! I’m a big fan of honey and this one really works on me. I can smell all the other notes as well. It’s thick.

[stubbornfire]

I really wanted to love this because 1: notes, and 2: cute bottle art. Unfortunately it's just too strong! Most of my reviews I have to mention that my skin chemistry eats BPAL up- short wear lengths, minimal throw. This is the OPPOSITE as far as throw goes, and I just can't leave it on long enough to test staying power.

 

VoPA starts STRONG with HONEY and MYRRH. Like, holyshit strong. There is definitely some soft brown leather in the background - my favorite type of leather, usually! But in this blend, all it serves to do is make the overpowering sweetness of the other two that much sweeter. As it starts to dry, the tobacco shows up, but not distinguishably (thats a hell of a word) by itself - it just dirties up the myrrh and honey; makes them a bit darker. It's still LOUD and STRONG and way too SWEET. A little goes a very, very long way! I wish I had this "problem" with something that actually works for me. to sales/swaps!

[DiZZysTARdust]

this is a gorgeous, complex, tobacco heavy scent. in the bottle it's strong sweet tobacco, and veers toward screechy-soapy in a way that tobacco sometimes can on me. On there's still the initial blast of cleanliness, with the honey and myrrh tumbling along after to make this a weird melange of soap-sweet-powder. It does settle though, and everything plays along nicely to dry into an elegant tobacco-esque perfume. i don't ever get much of the leather; it's almost like that's a bit of a tough underlayer giving everything else a place to stick after the initial cacophony. It has a slight powdery edge, making it more unisex than straight up masculine to my nose. as a tobacco lover, i'm pleased with this. it's perhaps only a few shades off from being tobacco single note on me but enough complexity to make it fun.

[DiZZysTARdust]

ETA: i should probably keep a log of what i've reviewed so i stop double reviewing things 🧐

Edited January 27, 2021 by DiZZysTARdust

[Cali]

A "colder" honey scent, strong on the myhrr and tobacco.