Review: Black Violet

UPDATE: I unfortunately cannot recommend this company anymore. It has come to my attention that Black Violet uses stock bases for their body lotion and several scents may be stock scents.  Leilani has come forward to state that she does not use any stock scents, but I still have my suspicions since Red Lotus smells exactly like Orange Thyme's Lychee & Red Tea, as well as Rainbow Honey's Sakura Matsuri cuticle balm. As a nail polish company, I expect Rainbow Honey to scent their balms with stock scents. Here is a list of her questionable scents. 

I've seen Black Violet before and have been drawn to them because, well, their site is gorgeous! So when Leilani posted on Reddit with a discount code, I obviously had to buy from her. I have to say, I'm blown away. First, check out how my stuff arrived:

Pretty packaging!

I thought it was a clutch! I was so confused since I was pretty sure I never ordered a handbag despite my many late night shopping sprees. I can't have gotten that sleep deprived. Then I saw it was from Black Violet and realized that it was just her wrapping. Wow.

Here's what I got:

• Red Lotus mini perfume oil
• Pattiserie mini perfume oil 
• Sugar Clouds perfume oil sample (free)
• Yuzu Cookie perfume balm
• Lilikoi Creme Soap
• Affogato Hydra Conditioner
• Sample size of Steel Petals Body Butter (free)

Leilani truly has an eye for design and she knows how to pay attention to the smallest details to create a really beautiful experience. Opening her package is like opening a Christmas gift, and gives you the same amount of excitement.

Customer Service

Leilani is amazing and replies to messages almost immediately. I actually got a bit worried once when she replied to my message until past midnight her time! As soon as we settled all the messiness with international shipping, she sent me my order within a day so the TAT is awesome.

Now I'm used to waiting for long international delivery, so I learnt never to keep checking the mail tracking since you'll just get worried when there's no news on your order. She was the one who constantly updated me on the delivery. I'm so impressed by her customer service and she's genuinely warm and sweet. She's awesome!

I still have to finish my current bath products, so I've only tried out the perfumes for now. As usual, reviews are done blind, and I only check the description before writing my overall impression.

Perfume Oil General Review

The sillage is amazing. I can smell it wafting all over my cubicle as I type. The sillage for Red Lotus is definitely the strongest out of the scents I tried. Longevity-wise, you can smell them wafting around for about 1 1/2h and last about 6 hours on your skin. I definitely like the quality!

Sugar Clouds

"Playful and sweet~ sugar crystals, dreams of candy floss, vanilla and musk. (Valentine's Day stock fragrance request)"

Initially, this was the perfect sugar cookies scent. Only the sugar got stronger and sweeter until it's a super sweet and sharp sugary vanilla scent. The sweetness toned down after about 30 min, but the scent stayed at a sugary, musky vanila.

Overall impression: This scent smells pretty plain to me, and I wonder if it's because it's a stock scent.

Red Lotus

UPDATE Dec 8, 2014: I've recently sniffed this same exact scent in 2 other products –Rainbow Honey's cuticle balm in Sakura Matsuri & Orange Thyme's Lychee & Red Tea. I'm now a bit suspicious about whether or not this is a stock scent.

"With vermillion red beauty & hairlike spines, rambutans are unforgettable fruits from Southeast Asia which bring a tart aroma. Exotic lychee radiates a sweet note thru red rooibos tea. Red Lotus is complete with floating lilies and wild geranium. (limited edition)"

This is amazing! It's like floral lychee (sorry, this is how I was taught to spell it where I grew up, and I'm sticking to it). There's a fresh, watery coolness to this scent that keeps this scent from going too sweet with the lychee or too heavy with the florals. I'm trying to place the florals but it's buried by the strong, lychee smell. This sounds weird, but it smells like one of those flowers with very thick petals that has a slight green-ness to their scent. There's definitely tea in this. This smell makes me think of a very pretty, lychee tea mocktail, that'll be decorated by flower petals. This scent is amazing as a perfume!

Post description review: Woww....the description is spot on. I guess I get lychee and rambutan mixed up, whoops! I'm so getting this in full size.

Pattiserie

"Petit fours of eclairs covered in powdered sugar filled with vanilla custard, lemon meringue tarts in a buttery short dough shell brimming with lemon curd, a swirl of baked meringue & finished in a light dusting of confectioners sugar."

This smells like creamy shortcake crossed with lemon cakes initially, but the lemon got stronger to the point where it's just lemon cakes. Towards the end, the lemon mellowed down and I'm left with a cake smell that smells delicious enough, but still a tad artificial. I think this may be awesome in body butter form though, so I plan on grabbing some body butters in this scent.

Post description review: The scent is more creamy and milky than buttery. The description makes this sound like it's going to be insanely sweet, but it's not. Even on my skin that loves amping up sweet smells! This is a great scent, but I just wish the smell doesn't morph into a slightly artificial cake scent at the end. To be fair, it's not a cloying, play-doh type of artificial and still smells delicious, so I'm still impressed.

Yuzu Cookies Solid Perfume

"For hundreds of years, yuzu has been placed in Japanese baths, releasing a grapefruit and mandarin orange-like aroma. The citrus fruit is found in many exquisite dishes & drinks. Enjoy it paired with butter cookies!"

The freshness of yuzu mixed with the creamy, buttery scent of cookies produce a heavenly smell of...cheesecake. It's really weird. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, really, since cookies usually smell heavy and buttery, while yuzu smells fresh, light and tart. Guess cheesecake's what you get. The yuzu disappears faster than the cookies smell, abd you'll be left with the lingering scent of absolutely divine cake. This is more of a beautifully decorated, heavily frosted white cake displayed in a cake shop rather than a freshly baked cake smell. It's delicious for sure and I'm definitely interested in getting more of this!  

As for how the perfume balm is, this has a great throw for a solid perfume! You can smell it from an intimate whisper away, which is the throw I've gotten from some perfume oils, so I'm impressed. 

Longevity-wise, the smell wafts for slightly under an hour and you can smell it for up to 3h. Not too bad for a solid perfume. 

This has an oily, melty texture that's similar to Notoriously Morbid's lip balms. It takes a while for your skin to absorb the oil if you just let it sit there, so you end up with a scary oil patch like this for a while:

It sits like that for a long time so you just have to rub it in

It doesn't bother me much though, since I love everything else about this.

By the way, I just did something really stupid. I'll start by putting this picture here:

You can guess what happened...

Yes. I accidentally mixed it up with my Coffin Kissers lip balm. In case you're wondering, it tastes and feels exactly like lip balm. No bitterness or weird texture or anything. Pretty sure it's not lip-safe, but I really couldn't tell the difference between the two balms if it weren't for the different scents. I didn't even realize my mistake for the first few seconds before the scent registered, and when it finally did, I looked down and realized the balm I was holding was yellow instead of white. After that, it was a frantic rush to the bathroom to rinse it off my lips. I'm carrying these two items separately from now on.