smell a day

Amber-illuminated roasted chestnut, cardamom, caramel, and allspice.

First sniff: Caramel, heavy and sticky, like the one in Mother Shrubs Squamous Sea Salt Caramel Cookies.

Wet on skin: A heavy roasty-toasty kind of spice that edges on a chestnut I don’t particularly love.

Drydown: The caramel here disappears quickly, with just a lingering trace of it enveloping all of the spicy stuff.

White musk, watermelon, pineapple, whipped cream, and lemongrass.

First sniff: Juicy fake watermelon candy. Delicious, but artificial.

Wet on skin: Oh, this smells like GUM. Exactly like candy watermelon, transparent like jolly ranchers sticking in your teeth.

Drydown: There’s a little tempering of the fake candy scent here that’s turning a bit creamy. It’s still very much a watermelon candy scent on my skin.

Moonflower, lemon, blue chamomile, mugwort and vanilla CO2.

First sniff: Lemon tea, like a lemon iced tea.

Wet on skin: Definitely tea. It’s a more realistic lemon tea note than I’m used to, but it’s not something I care for typically in perfume. It’s fresh and clean scented but not in a way that hits for me.

Drydown: I’m not getting any vanilla or florals at all. This is pretty much just an herbal iced green tea type of scent. I definitely understand why this was a summer scent, but it’s not a summer scent for me.

Radiant orbs of luminous lemon amber illuminating a backdrop of black orchid and ivy-twined, plum-touched cerulean musk.

First sniff: Carnation spice.

Wet on skin: Still, carnation spiciness with maybe a touch of sour fruit in the background when I sniff really hard. This is pretty and feminine in a very unexpected sort of way. I don’t own anything like this.

Drydown: This one is mouthwateringly feminine, I love how rich and gorgeous it is. I can’t really pick out any notes here, I just love the floral dark spiciness of it.

Lemon cream, incense smoke, and candle wax.

First sniff: Definitely lemon and candle wax, the sweet kind.

Wet on skin: The lemon is taking on a fizzy sort of a quality to it, it reminds me of both pez and another Luper, penis bound with gold ribbon. There’s something that’s a tiny bit unappealing in the background that’s a little dusty to my nose. It’s nice but kind of reminds me of a Halloween kind of a scent.

Drydown: The lemon cream description is fitting, but not exactly hitting for me. The cream is going salty-buttery the same way that the cream in Kyphi and Sweet Cream did, only supported by a fizzy lemon incense note. I wish I got more wax from this.

Warm clover honey is drizzled over a sugared gourmand blend of juicy passion fruit, velvety purple iris, Tahitian vanilla beans, pink candyfloss, reflected sunshine, sheer layers of soft orris, glowing musk, and a hint of wild lavender stems. Infused with moonlight from the Full Pink Moon in Libra.

First sniff: Tangy lavender honey.

Wet on skin: The passionfruit blooms immediately on the skin, there’s a touch of a powdery floral honey hovering around the edges, but this is a truly passionfruit forward scent, exactly what I was hoping for. It’s bright and reminds me of a delicious glass of honeyed iced passionfruit tea.

Drydown: This is still solidly in passionfruit honey drink territory, a reminder of one of my old favorite iced tea orders from the boba shop. I suspected that I would love this, and I do!

Lightning splits the sky, illuminating the skeletal skyline of the carnival rides: sugared incense, flickering blue musk, and night-blooming flowers.

First sniff: Definitely flowery, but I can’t quite put my finger on what flower. I see why some people say this smells soapy.

Wet on skin: More perplexing laundry soap kind of scent, floral and clean with a touch of aldehydes.

Drydown: This definitely has a fizzy sort of ozonic brightness to it while still being a little soapy and clean. I’m not getting any sort of incense from this which is a bit disappointing.

The pale sugared blossoms of innocence wrapped tightly in sleet-soaked arms. Vanilla bourbon, cream peony, and white carnation enveloped in a warm, protective fortress of tonka, white cedar, orris root, red amber, and leather.

First sniff: Perfumy, not the kind of thing I normally like.

Wet on skin: The leather comes out and it’s not the kind of leather that I care for. There’s a lacy kind of floral here that reminds me a little of a potpourri, not particularly carnation or peony to my nose. There’s no spice and no rich heaviness from either flower.

Drydown: I scrubbed this. I really didn’t like it. The flowers and leather combo was just coming off super gross on my skin. Not for me.

First sniff: This is giving way more creme brûlée than passionfruit. The passionfruit is there, maybe, but not bright and tart like I expected it to be.

Wet on skin: There’s a creamy sort of root beer vanilla that I’m getting, with hardly any tart notes at all. It’s not creamy in a way that makes me think of root beer float, either. Just regular root beer. It’s fine, but not blowing my mind.

Drydown: Not what I expected at ALL. There’s barely any tartness to this, it’s creamy and sweet and nice but it’s kind of just “generic creamy” to me. I wish there was more tart passsionfruit, or more burnt sugar, but on me I get neither.

Voluptuous melted caramel coils around softly whipped coconut creme. Sun-warmed Californian wild oranges are laced with honeyed cardamom, then dipped in vanilla beans, Muscovado sugar, and delicate ivory patchouli.

First sniff: Coconut creamsicle vibes!

Wet on skin: There’s a touch of warm cardamom and zesty orange, with an undercurrent of caramelized coconut. The orange is fresh and juicy, mingling with the rich sweet notes.

Drydown: This morphs from caramel coconut to a sweeter sort of creamsicle Drydown, all of the oils and sharpness from the orange stripped away. I like this more than I expected I would, with no plasticky Drydown that some vanillas from arcana tend to do. I hoped there would be more zesty orange so that this felt more summery to me, but it’s much softer and more tempered than I expected. I love it!

Nutmeg and tonka bean nuzzle up against fluffy marshmallow, cottonflower, pink pepper, and a trace of carrot seed.

First sniff: Brown sugar oatmeal.

Wet on skin: It’s giving maple brown sugar oatmeal powder. There’s a touch of clean underneath the sweetness, like a fresh clean napkin on a brunch table. I imagine that’s the cotton flower, cleaning up this sweet lacy scent.

Drydown: The carrot seed is noticeable now, but just barely. I’m not getting much pink pepper on me, which is a shame because I love pink pepper. This is lovely, brown sugary, and barely, barely spiced from the nutmeg. A gorgeous autumn scent, maybe for a rainy day too. The first scent I’ve ever tried from Nui Cobalt, and what a lovely first impression!

Billowing bulbous blobs of grapefruit marshmallows.

First sniff: Very creamsicle.

Wet on skin: This is a salty, cakey kind of grapefruit. It’s more like grapefruit cake than grapefruit marshmallow up close, but I can catch a whiff of the marshmallow from far away.

Drydown: The grapefruit on this vanishes on me almost instantly, and I’m left with a buttery type of marshmallow that’s just fine.

Damp stone accord, pomegranate, white pepper, cool musk, and lemon

First sniff: A wet and fruity “red” kind of scent.

Wet on skin: This is a touch perfumy, as many Astrid scents tend to go on me. It’s fruity and red, with just a touch of juicy lemon on my skin. I love the undertone of this, which I’m guessing is the “wet stone accord” that I’m smelling. I usually am not a huge fan of pomegranate on my skin, but here it’s really tickling my fancy.

Drydown: This gets faint on my skin pretty quickly! I like it, but it’s also just kind of a gentle fruity red skin scent. I suspect my partner will like this one.

First sniff: Definitely cookies! This is like a super duper vanilla sugar cookie.

Wet on skin: This one is…confusing. It doesn’t smell like cookies, exactly, but it also doesn’t smell like nag champa in a way that I recognize. It’s got a bit of an artificial edge to in on the skin like how some white chocolate notes can smell on me.

Drydown: Okay, now it’s opening up! It’s like a nag champa sugar cookie. I really like the nag champa here, it’s not too strong and the cookies temper the sharp incense really nicely. This reminds me a lot of cozy sweater from Haus of Gloi.

Cold black pepper ice cream with vanilla bean specks, a swirl of dark caramel, and a bit of accursed waffle cone.

First sniff: I’m getting the black pepper and vanilla in equal measure here, and it’s really quite nice.

Wet on skin: Boozy vanilla bean, with a good crack of black pepper for good measure. This is the kind of Arcana vanilla that I typically don’t love because it’s so buttery and strong, but it’s complimenting the vibe of everything here, almost like a molasses cookie. The throw is really strong, I can smell the scent from typing distance away. There’s a caramel richness to this, dark and amber colored.

Drydown: With no spice mentioned, this is still a pretty spicy one! It’s like a molasses cookie to me. I can see why this was a holiday release.

Innocence defiled. Sticky pink bubblegum and the thick, sweet scent of orange and cherry lollipops smeared over a breath of heady womanly perfume

In the Imp: Gross. Like cough syrup.

Wet on skin: Vaguely alcoholic, like some kind of fruity type of wine.

Drydown: Orange suckers, like blo-pops. It's sugary and wet, with the dusty pink bubblegum sticking all underneath. It's nice and sweet and powdery. It fades awfully fast on my skin, but oh well. It's nice, but not something I would be compelled to wear often which is convenient because it's apparently been discontinued for years, haha.

She herself had cheeks like blood and milk and grew every day more and more beautiful: creamy skin musk and blushing pink musk with soft sandalwood, white amber, dutiful myrrh, and star jasmine.

First sniff: Wow, I hate this. It's powdery floral, and STRONG

Wet on skin: More floral, more powder.

Drydown: This is a flowery, powdery, GIRLY kind of a scent. It's feminine to the max, and not in a way I like. It's the closest thing to a traditional perfume type of smell that I've tried from BPAL, and it is Not one for me.