Astrid: Strawberry Blossom and Pear Blossom

Although long past their initial release date, it is spring and so it's an apt time to pull out these Astrid spring single note reviews! As usual, I picked these up from Ajevie - and I chose the slonk size for both. 

Strawberry Blossom - Nature-inspired single note. Notes of little baby alpine strawberries hiding behind green leaves, sweet orange blossom, juniper berry, thyme, and wild mint to evoke my concept of this blossom.

This is a fun strawberry scent, although rather than give me the delicate shades of pastel pink strawberry, this is actually far more bright and cheery than I'd anticipated. The opening notes of this strawberry is very similar to Bloom and Pucker (Stereoplasm), that is to say, it's fantastically sweet, and extraordinarily sugary. While the strawberry here is far from the freshness of vine ripened strawberries, it's first and foremost very much capturing the essence of candied strawberries and strawberry hard candies. Although it's faint, hidden underneath the sweet treats, you can find a touch of sweetened mint syrup, with the barest hint of citrus and berries to add a little bit of depth to this scent, with the assorted berry syrup coming more to the forefront during the wear of this, reminding me a little more of the softer, more nuanced strawberry accord from Strawberry and Rhubarb Jam (Nui Cobalt Designs). I don't mind this one, I think it's a lovely strawberry accord, though there are a lot of lovely strawberry scents that I don't feel the need to specifically seek this one out, but I'll definitely use up my slonk. As mentioned, this is a 'single note' although it has a lot of nuances in it, but I personally would really love to layer this one on top of scents because I feel like it's linear enough to mesh well with other blends. 

Pear Blossom -  Nature-inspired single note. Notes of ripe Anjou pear, unripen Bosc pear, green leaf, bergamot, and blue tansy to evoke my concept of this blossom.

I really love a pear note - I love a sweet pear note, and I have to say, Bartlett pears are absolutely one of my all time favorite fruits ever and I really wish there were more pear dominant scents. I picked this up hoping it would be a nice contender but this is very much the 'nature inspired' aspect rather the pear, so this scent is pretty much more pear blossom than it is pear dominant (which is a shame) - and the greener notes of this scent pretty much dominate most of this blend. It smells exceedingly 'green', leafy and very floral - crushed vegetal, cucumber esque/tomato leaf vibes, paired with a sharp, clean pansy floral note. For me, this scent reminds me a lot of the type of floral/green air freshener vibes - very upscale Glade. While the dry down of this scent brings out more of the sweetness from the pear, the scent still stays very much as a green/floral blend, and there's something about the blue tansy floral accord here which just leans a little too much into toilet cleaner territory for me. It's not quite a scrubber, but I think it's wasted on me and will probably be heading to my destash pile.