You may have seen my post on the
Alice's Diary Facebook page a few weeks back about a company called
Suds n Sass, who make a Bella, an Edward, and a combination of both scents. The price for a small spray bottle was $4, and I was very, very excited about it! I immediately placed my order based on this description of the Bella scent:
Bella - a fresh, innocent & sweet floral with notes of lavender, iris, rose, violet & soft musk
I received my order today and felt I should share my thoughts with you, in case you wanted to order
Bella,
Edward, and/ or
The Perfect Couple, a mix of both scents (
please note: Suds n Sass is moving to a different website format so currently only pre-made items are for sale, meaning you can't buy this perfume right now - but it will be available again soon,
and in the meantime you could try it out in soap version)
ORDERINGI have to say, I'm very glad the owner, Elizabeth, decided to change the website. I had a hard time finding everything, and actually ordered the wrong product at first - I wanted the roll-on bottles, but ordered the spray by accident.
The shopping cart and checkout are very strange, and confusing. You enter your shipping info and select a payment method, after which you cannot go back to the cart, say, to add or remove an item. I chose the wrong payment method and tried to go back to change it, but was unable to. The order finalized itself without the payment going through.
So I emailed Elizabeth to let her know, and placed my order a second time, choosing the right method this time around - but the wrong product. Like I said, I wanted the roll-on but bought the spray; in the comments section of the order, I wrote that I hoped I was ordering the right size and wanted the roll-on. Elizabeth canceled both the orders after letting me know that no, I hadn't ordered the roll-on. She refunded my payment since the rollers are $1 more apiece and shipping also went up, like, $1.
THEN I went to pay for the correct order and found that, although PayPal confirmed the refund had been processed, the money hadn't hit my side yet. I was unable to pay, so this time I asked Elizabeth if she could invoice me through PayPal rather than canceling this order and starting over. She was very, very patient throughout this entire process and extremely helpful.
But like I said, she's working on the new website, so by the time you can buy these perfumes it will be completely different!
PRICINGI'm sorry to say that you'll just have to trust me on this, since the perfumes are not currently available on the website! But you trust me ... right?
At the time that I placed my order(s), the small spray perfumes were $4 each with 8mL of scent, rollers were $5 each for 10mL, and full-size sprays were 30mL and I believe $15, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
That's crazy pricing!!! Where else can you get gorgeous scents at about $0.50 per mL?! Nowhere. Trust me! (Don't you?)
Shipping was also pretty affordable - it would have been $3 for my slightly smaller order, but went up to $4 for the three rollers. With tracking info included, that's not bad at all.
There is a minimum order of $10, so keep that in mind before you go off to buy a $4 perfume. May as well just get Bella
and The Perfect Couple!
PROCESSINGThere is a turnaround time of 5 business days stated on the website, and that's exactly how long it took for my order to be made. On the 6th business day, it shipped, and PayPal notified me with a tracking number included. (An actual tracking number, not just a delivery confirmation, which shows your package as being unshipped until the day you receive it.)
SHIPPINGMy order shipped on Monday and I got it today (Wednesday). This is pretty good considering that it came all the way across the country (from PA to CA)!
PACKAGINGOK, now we're getting to the fun stuff! My order came in the standard bubble mailer, which I like to recycle and reuse.
Inside were the following (pictured): The invoice; a Christmas bag with my 3 scents AND a sample of the goat's milk soap inside; a hand-written thank-you note with a pink raffle ticket inside; a candy cane; and 2 business cards.
A lot of beauty bloggers are obsessed with handwritten notes, and I never even cared about that before - but now I see that it adds to the feeling of supporting a small, independent business run by people who genuinely care about the consumers. So that was lovely, and the sample and candy cane were exciting to receive too!
The raffle ticket apparently is for a drawing done at the end of each month - FOUR lucky shoppers win $25 to spend at Suds n Sass (I had to search on Google to find out what the ticket was for, which is a little weird, but whatever)!
PRODUCTI've been very calm and reasonable up til now, haven't I? Well, time for the gushing.
I LOVE BELLA!!!!!!!!!Not fictional character Bella Cullen (
nee Swan), but the
Twilight Blends Bella scent, which is the most lovely, sweet but not sickeningly so, sophisticated, EXPENSIVE-smelling scent I have in my massive collection - I really do own several dozen perfumes and am always on the lookout for my next "all-time favorite" - and I cannot believe this scent is only $5. Here is the perfume itself:
And here's a size comparison with a few different companies' products, just to give you an idea of how much you get:
10mL is actually a really nice size. I have a few other 10mL rollers in my collection that I bought long ago and am nowhere near using up (but then, I wear 1-2 different scents every day - it might be a different story if I wore the same scent every single day). With a roller, you don't use very much for each application, compared to a spray which visibly diminishes with each application.
I can see myself wearing this very, very often. I'd love to save it for special occasions, but you know what? It's $5. I can buy a few more (and I will!) when the perfumes become available again. I intend to get a spray bottle of this too, just because it's easier to scent my hair that way (scent lasts longest on your hair, but then it also dries your hair out - oh well).
Back to the scent itself: Did I mention how much I FREAKING LOVE IT?!?!
This scent is floral, but not intense. It's delicate, light, but definitely noticeable. I actually think that if Prada's Infusion d'Tubereuse and Benefit's B Spot had a baby - this would be it! (Considering that the Prada, which has been #1 on my lust list since it was released, costs around $100, that's very exciting!) If this is really what Bella smells like, then I totally understand Edward's struggle!
I also bought
South Pacific Waters, because I'm obsessed with beachy scents. Here's the description on the website:
ocean, sea moss & vetivert; a clean & refreshing ocean scent
I can't say how accurate that is, because I don't spend a lot of time sniffing sea moss or "vetivert." But there is something about this scent that I like; it's not your typical coconut-salt-beach scent. It's almost a bit masculine, definitely not sweet.
I also bought
Sugar Plum Fairy, because it sounded amazing:
luscious sweet plums dusted with sugar crystals
Unfortunately, I do not like this scent. It smells like grape cough syrup to me - way too sweet and strong, and not like plums at all. These products cannot be returned, so I'll be selling this in my upcoming blog sale (stay tuned!)
OTHER PRODUCTSSuds n Sass (normally) offers everything from soap, to lotion, to wax tarts, and of course, the perfumes. There is a master list of fragrance descriptions
here which will help you select one per product you want to buy. For you designer fragrance lovers who are strapped for cash, there are some famous name duplicates, including Clinique's Happy!
RATINGOverall, I give Suds n Sass about 12 thumbs way up!!! From customer service, to pricing, to the actual products, I had a fantastic experience with them and definitely WILL buy more in the future.
Again, the perfumes are NOT currently available (although you could order a soap in those scents!), but keep checking back - once the new website launches, you too can own Bella's amazing scent!
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