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Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Review: Ripe Lip Balms, Lip Scrubs & Perfumes

I ordered from Ripe sometime ago and only got around to reviewing them now.





So here's what I got:


  • Perfume Oils
    • Ambrosia
    • Dirty Gardenia
    • Ginger Milk Tea
  • Solid Perfume
    • Chocolate Cake
  • Lip Scrub
    • Coffee
    • Honey
  • Lip Balm
    • Honeycomb
    • Taro Milk Tea
    • Tiramis


Customer Service Review


First of all, everything came beautifully packaged and shrinkwrapped!

Shrinkwrap makes me feel safe...

Their TAT is also freaking awesome:

Ordered: June 27
Shipped: June 27
Arrived: July 1 (at a US address)

Anyway, on to reviews...

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Perfume Oil General Review


These perfume starts off at a throw of about faux whispering distance and lasts this way for around 30-50 min. Afterwards, the throw is about intimate whispering distance for about another 1-2h before you have to get close to your skin to catch a whiff. You can get traces of it for about 8-9h.

As always, all scent reviews are done blind until the TL;DR's written. I write an overview if any notes surprise me.


Ambrosia 

"RIPE signature fragrance! Creamy coconut, summer cantaloupe, violet blossoms, and clementine orange - if you love fruity scents like me, this one is perfectly ripe."

This is a candy-like scent. Definitely a chewy candy since there's that chewy candy smell to it. The smell reminds me a lot of a Starburst candy. I can't really identify the flavour of this Starburst, but it's definitely one of those medley of fruits sort of flavours. For the first 5-10 minutes, there's also a very slight icy flavour (like mild "cool" candies..think Relaxa if you're in Indonesia).

It's nice enough, but teethers on smelling very artificial at times. Full disclosure, while I do like grown-up candy scents like Haunt's summer scents or Ten Three Labs' Artificial Angels, straight up candy tends to be a nope for me. I'm 26, I can't smell like a 6 year old who ran around unsupervised in a candy store. If you like candy scents though, you'll probably like this.

After about 10 minutes, it starts teetering on turning soapy and the dry-down has a bit of a sunblock smell. I'm guessing there's a coconut note in this since coconut notes often turn into sunblock.

TL;DR: Cool, fruity candy.

Overview: I knew there's coconut in this, I think the coconut is the one causing that chewy candy sort of smell. The violet may be the ones causing the soapy scent.

Dirty Gardenia

"Rich, floral blossoming gardenia and an undertone of freshly dug earth (this is a strong scent for true gardenia lovers)"

I'm actually not sure how gardenias smell like but I like this. The "dirty" part is more like the bitterness of lilies so no worries there if you don't like the smell of dirt. I'm guessing from this scent that gardenias smell like sophisticated, almost woody, light florals.

Unfortunately, at around 30 min, the smell gets lighter and lighter until it smells like a chemical I've smelled in a science lab before. It's a sweet scent, light scent that makes me think of balloons. Ether. It smells almost like ether.

TL;DR: Lillies & gardenia turning into ether.

Overview: I'm still not sure what's causing that ether smell. It's definitely a chemical smell.

Ginger Milk Tea

 "A creamy and spicy ginger with notes of sugared milk, black tea and nutmeg"

This just smells like a citrus soda. In the beginning, it has that slightly drier citrus that almost smells dusty. I'm expecting ginger milk tea and can't smell anything. I think the dry, sour smell may be the tea note they use. After about 10 minutes, the sourness eases and I get a citrus soda-scented soap.

TL;DR: Citrus soda-scented soap.

Overview: It's definitely the black tea that's turning into dry, dusty citrus on me. It's pretty overwhelming and I can't smell anything else. Nope, no milkiness at all.



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Solid Perfume Review


 The presentation is a bit messy but oh well, it happens with hand-poured items.


This is a waxier formula so it definitely feels sticky where you applied it. One thing I'm impressed with is that it starts off with a long throw - up to faux whispering distance! Unfortunately, by 5 min, my skin eats this up and I have to get close to my skin to catch a whiff. Oh, and there's a waxy scent that keeps threatening to overpowers the perfume by then. You can get faint traces of the scent on your skin for about 5-6h though. 

Chocolate Cake

"Milk chocolate cake with notes of vanilla and a thick layer of white frosting"

This scent is just straight up chocolate. It's not a complicated scent. One thing I like is that it doesn't smell like the highly artificial, way too sweet chocolate that some perfumers use. It's bordering on turning completely artificial but never gets there. It's a tad on the sweet side, but not cloying. Overall, I'd recommend it if you want an uncomplicated chocolate scent.

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Lip Balm General Review


First of all, I looove the presentation. Look how neat it is!

Smoooooooth....
These lip balms are definitely waxy. They definitely glide on easily, but it's still waxy. I think my lips don't react well to lip balms with higher wax content because these ended up making my lips crack. They're unsweetened, but Honeycomb seems to have some honey sweetness to it. I don't know if it's my mind tricking me, though. These also have a very waxy scent that tends to be overpowering.

Honeycomb

My only win out of the batch. This tastes exactly like fresh honey from honeycombs that you get in hotels. Delicious!

Taro Milk Tea

Wtf is this. It's just old wax. Sour old wax. I had to ask another indie owner who makes lip balms because the scent of this worried me so much. Turns out it's probably too much flavour oils since that can cause sourness.

Tiramisu

It's a sour, old wax scent and I don't get any of the creamy, coffee deliciousness of tiramisu. It just smells like a less sour version of Taro Milk Tea.

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Lip Scrub General Review


This is brand new and unused.
As you can see, unlike the lip balms, the lip scrubs are less smooth presentation-wise. They're still sealed though, so I'm happy.

These lip scrubs use fine granules of sugar, and there's more balm than sugar granules in it, so I find that it doesn't scrub as well. It feels more like a sweetened lip balm where they used sugar instead of stevia. The balm part melts easily:

This is with one light swipe over my lips. My lips ended up caked with the balm.

So it's definitely messy - I recommend using this over a sink.

Coffee

This is coffee beans - bitter, unsweetened and slightly acidic. It's not romanticized coffee at all. Again, the sour wax scent that the lip balms have is present in this.

Honey

Delicious! It's a much sweeter version of the Honeycomb lip balm!


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