Arcana Halloween 2014 - Apples and Pumpkins!

[white_aster]

Splurged on some Arcana Soaps Halloween LEs and thought I'd share my impressions.  Their Ebay store is having a 5% off sale through the end of Friday!  (and for a three-bottle purchase, they gave me about five samples, four of which were samples of un-sample-able Halloween LEs, so was a great deal.)

First of all, Arcana's pumpkin scent is very pumpkin pie: foodie, slightly spicy and buttery but no overwhelmingly so. Long-lasting and fragrant, with good throw. (Just ask my roommate, who gets a whiff of them every time she passes the counter the closed bottles and samples are on.)  Their apple is true, tart, and blends well.  As it dries down it becomes tarter and sharper on me, so I went for the blends that would complement that.

Apples Crave Resins - Wet, this almost smells bubblegummy, fruity/cherry.  I imagine that that is the dragonsblood.  As it dries it becomes more straight "resin", and the apple is very subsumed in the incensey goodness.  This is not overly sweet at all, and almost smells nag-champa-ey.  Very nice.

Apples Crave Vanilla - The vanilla sweetens the apple nicely, though on drydown the apple sharpness and the vanilla sweetness are two different channels of the scent...they don't blend so much as coexist.

Pumpkins Crave Terror -  I got this because Holy Terror is my fave, fave, fave incense blend ever.  It is dry and deep and sacred and I just couldn't resist knowing what it smelled like with the pumpkin.  This is a deep, dark scent with a foody overtone that spices up the more it sits.
 
Pumpkins Crave Honey -  Pumpkin pie with a resiny, golden honey note.  Still very foody, but sweet as well.

Pumpkins Crave Bacon - This was a freebie sample, and...no.  The bacon note is a kind of deep, almost charred smoke, and I washed this one off as soon as it dried down.

I also tried Luxuria, which is from the Hieronymous Bosch collection and is:  "Wild, carnal musk with blond tobacco, vanilla, dark resins, and sugared peach."   This was much sharper than I expected.  A dry base, not very sweet at all, and it dried down to a sharp, almost austere layered but mostly peach scent.  Perhaps it's the tobacco that's giving it the dry/sharp?  Not sure.  Not bad, but not as lush or sweet as I was expecting.

Comments

[vicki_rae]

Apples Crave Vanilla sounded like it should be good.

Coexisting instead of blending is an excellent description of what quite a few scents do on me too.

[white_aster]

It's a nice scent! I think if it sounds like something you'd like, you'd probably like it. Just so long as you're not expecting apple jolly-rancher-type apple, you'll be good. :)

And yeah, that perfume is one of the best examples of top vs. bottom notes I've ever smelled on me. :P

[cyprinella]

All of those but the last sound like they would make me hungry while wearing.

[white_aster]

Very possible! The pumpkin is quite foody. The apples stuff is less so, at least for me. It's not so much apple pie as real fruit, which I can more easily associate with perfume rather than food. :P

[recessional]

Hmmm. Luxuria sounds v interesting.

[white_aster]

It is! Not quite what I was envisioning, but very nice. I might try layering it with a dab of something sweeter.

Arcana Halloween

[devon]

I just ordered "Apples Love Tea" and two older ones: "A Pale Young Gentleman" and "Growl". We'll see how they turn out. I expect them all to be nice. therhinestonehousewife.com seemed to have most of the Halloween/Autumn scents in stock.

Apples Crave Tea: Smoky black tea leaf, golden musk, cardamom, and baked winesaps.
Growl: Caramel, chandan, tiger maple, burnt vanilla, smoky musk, and vetiver. (chandan is a kind of sandalwood.)
A Pale Young Gentleman: Violets, amber, coconut husks, frankincense, and white peach.

Thanks for the heads-up on Arcana. I usually forget to look at their goods. Should I be following them on facebook to see when their new stuff comes out? It doesn't seem to last very long.

Re: Arcana Halloween

[white_aster]

Yay, good luck with them! Arcana has made some of my favoritest scents.

As for following them, hrm! I follow the arcanasoapslove LJ comm (octoberess runs Arcana Soaps, and she always posts there when she updates) I linked above, so I'm not sure where's as good a place to follow them. I can see the Facebook page, but honestly have no idea if that is even her, sorry!