Blooddrop - Smoldering review

This was my first experience with ordering from Blooddrop.  In addition to perfume, Astrid offers corsetry, bath items, chamber sprays and catnip toys. (Yes, my next order will include at least one catnip pillow for the spoiled feline brats that live here!)

I chose Smoldering for my first order, partly because it's part of the Autumn collection and I didn't want to take a chance on it selling out.  I had asked around about Smoldering on the "Other Perfumes You Love" thread at the BPAL forums, because the "soft gentle smoke" in the description worried me, since I'm not a smoke lover.   But berries...all those luscious berries in one perfume??  Oh, yes, please!  I was assured that the smoke in this blend doesn't show up as a smoky smell, but rather something that adds a background complexity to the berries. 

The scent description from the site is: Inspired by a wonderful Zinfandel I drank this summer; Smoldering is a simmering brew of berries and a touch of cauldron smoke! Raspberries, blackberries, alpine strawberries, blueberries, elderberries, gooseberries and currants enveloped with soft, gentle smoke. 

Sniffing the bottle closed, all I could smell was berries, which helped to reassure me some.  And these are real, juicy, not fake or dry berries.

When I took the lid off and took a big whiff, I did get something that smelled almost like buttery smoke (?) but fortunately (for me) that doesn't come through on the skin.

On me, both wet and dry, I get a gorgeous medley of berries.  No smoke, no butter - but something is softening, rounding, and complexifying the berries in the background.  Just simply beautiful.  I kept huffing my wrists all night at work.  This has good lasting power on me too - I put this on an hour before I left for work, and I could still smell it at the end of my 7 hour shift. 

There are several other scents I want to try from this company, notably  "At The Diner after Rocky" and "Broomstick".   Blooddrop also has what are called Simplicities for each season, which are scents or single notes appropriate for the time of year.  Right now, of course they're all candy and autumnal, and I have been told that Apple Cider Doughnuts is one not to be missed! 

As always, Astrid of Blooddrop Clothing, Fineries, and Perfume doesn't have a clue who I am, other than a random customer.  I paid for the perfume out of my own pocket, and was not compensated in any way for this review.

Of wand-caps, prototypes, and perfume

I am part Scottish.  The stereotype of Scottish people is that they are frugal.  Well, I don't know how accurate the stereotype is in Scotland, but as for me, it holds true.  I'm not only frugal, some people have commented that I'm downright cheap.  (But never easy...*grin*).

Therefore, the prospect of paying more for shipping than an item costs is a difficult hurdle for me to get past, no matter how much I might need said item.  After looking all over the internet for a place that sold glass perfume wand caps (to apply perfume oil - you don't want to dip your fingers in your bottles and contaminate the oil, or at least I don't, plus you get way too much scent that way), for a cheaper shipping cost, and after listening to Chris complain for the third time about my perfectly reasonable (and much cheaper) alternative of plastic sword shaped swizzle sticks, I finally caved and ordered wand-caps from BPAL's Etsy shop.  The reason I ordered from the Etsy shop instead of the actual Lab site is because I eased the pain of paying $7.50 shipping for a fifty cent item (well, 16 fifty cent items, actually), by choosing a bottle of a prototype oil to ride along with the wand-caps.

Prototypes, as described by the Lab's Etsy listing: "Black Phoenix scents usually go through many iterations before they’re ready to go live. Sometimes a scent stalls out because of component issues, and other times we just keep working on it and tweaking it until we get it where we want it to be. We chose to put forth the prototype scents to our customers through the Black Phoenix / Dark Delicacies trunk show events because we wanted to share some of the experience of the creation process with our customers, and we’re sharing the overstock on these prototype bottles here on etsy."

Eat Me is part of the Lab's Alice in Wonderland line.  The description for the final product that was actually released is: "Three white cakes, vanilla, and red and black currants."

The prototype has it's own review thread at the BPAL Madness forum (my internet home), and the general consensus is that the prototype has more of a berry rather than a currant feel, and there is much more almond in the cake note.  That sounded pretty good to me!  I'm sure the final version of Eat Me is delectable also, and someday I'll have a bottle of that, too, for comparison purposes.  But for this week, discretionary income has been discretionarily spent! 

Before the great wand-cap/swizzle stick debate, I had already ordered a bottle of one of Blooddrop's autumn limited edition scents, Smoldering.  Here's the site description: "Inspired by a wonderful Zinfandel I drank this summer; Smoldering is a simmering brew of berries and a touch of cauldron smoke! Raspberries, blackberries, alpine strawberries, blueberries, elderberries, gooseberries and currants enveloped with soft, gentle smoke".  

I've been eyeing it for awhile, even though the smoke note in the description concerns me - but the berries will get me every time!  I did some asking around at BPAL Madness and from the replies I got, the smoke seems to show up as more of a complexity and another layer to the scent rather than a true smoke smell, so I have my fingers crossed that this works for my non-smoke loving self.