sarada

Rose is one of the only floral scents that I like, but even then I can't wear it in many blends. The lab's roses are particularly beautiful but almost always have me reaching for a bottle of Advil before long, as they go straight into my sinuses. Moon Rose sounded like it could be the kind of mellow, ethereal rose that I could wear, and it does initially smell much more like a pure, crystalline white rose...it reminds me of the roses in Zombi actually, which were also culprits in the headache of doom. As this wears on me it begins to take on more of a perfumer's rose characteristic...I feel like I recognize it from various floral blends that I had to pass on. But since this is almost like a single luminous white rose, rather than a bouquet of random flowers, it almost works for me. I might keep it in my "sniff when I want to smell roses" pile even though my skin turns it to a rather generic floral perfume.

I first tried Thanatopsis about a year ago during my search for all things piney. I tried it and passed on it because it was too musky, but I recently tried it again, now with a full year of constant sniffing under my belt! The musk is the only variable in this blend that I sometimes have trouble with. When I first sniffed it, the musk was kind of overwhelming and a little too sharp. A little too...civety? Ahh, but that pine and juniper underneath is gorgeous, it's like Black Forest but much deeper and without that golden shimmer of amber. When I actually put it on, my first experience was that the musk was coming across a little like mothballs and I didn't think we were going to get along. But two weeks later, I tried it again and WOW, it worked marvellously. I rarely have chemistry changes through the month, so maybe this is just a very temperamental musk? At any rate, I was wearing this yesterday and the musk just absolutely LOVED me. It came alive, and swept the pine and juniper around me in a dark green cloud. It feels....wolf-like, dark green and feral. The bright green pine stull comes through though, just as clear and brilliant as it does in Black Forest. The musk also helped it to last all day. Musk is becoming my friend. I suggest skin-testing this rather than just sniffing before forming an opinion, as this is one changeable musk (to me, at least). Unfortunately I was in a fairly crappy mood yesterday and bad luck seemed to be following me around. I hope that I have a better day the next time I wear it, as I think I need a bottle! Black Forest for the day, and Thanatopsis for the night!

Swapped for this one -- I've been reading about it for ages! I know right away that I'm going to like it -- I like fresh, green, grassy scents even though there's little point in my wearing them since my skin eats them. Still, I like to try them out. There's a sharp bust of citrus peel in the beginning. I'm tending toward thinking it could be something like yuzu or grapefruit as it reminds me a little of Aizen-Myoo in the imp, combined with...juniper? I'm going to resist the temptation to call it pine, as I've smelled the lab's juniper berry single note and that is more what this reminds me of....but there could be some other evergreen note in there as well. And then there's a delightful green grassy warm note, like the grasses in Coyote. Gorgeous stuff. I would buy a bottle if it was available because I think this would be an almost perfect spring scent. Stuff like this vanishes on me very quickly but I'd like to sniff it and maybe mix some into an unscented shampoo or bath splash. If you amp up citrus or don't like citrus scents the early stages might be a bit much for you...but it's a great fresh/green/herbal scent and it combines my favorite aspects of a lot of other scents, very nicely!

The moment before the ruin, frozen. The scent of captured glory, of glowing pearls and rubies, of golden sunlit joy and regal grandeur: red rose, Tunisian amber, blood orange, toasted vanilla, heliotrope, gardenia and red musk. This is my first DiMV scent to try, though hopefully I will be getting some more very soon -- I had no idea what to expect based on the notes for this. Fruit and rose scents mainly only work on me if they are combined with amber, so this does sound promising. Red musk is one of my top five notes of all BPAL. Heliotrope is one of the only florals that I like consistently. And gardenia is one of those things that usually ruins a blend but sometimes, for no reason, it absolutely works! As it turns out, everything is working together in this blend, just as I had hoped! It's like a cross between Florence and Queen of Spades. It has the fruity amber of Florence, but a much deeper, stronger incensey kick to it like Queen of Spades does. Oh, or it's like Kunstkammer the way I had hoped it would turn out on me...thick, deep, dark fruit (the orange is strong at first but fades quickly and feels almost berry-like) and resiny amber. Every note in this seems to be coupled with another scent that is its perfect match. Golden, orange light trickling in and falling on dusty antique surfaces. A strange scent for a Haunted Palace, but it smells regal, antiquated and lush, like tattered red velvet curtains and tarnished gold candelabras. I love scents that take notes that I normally don't like (gardenia, vanilla) but somehow combine them in a way that makes a completely unique new scent that works on every level. I really hope I get a bottle of this for Christmas! If I don't, I'll order one!

If I had Peace I would wear that too. Strawberry Moon does make sense, for Strawberry Fields. I don't have that either! Pink Moon maybe, though that's more of a Nick Drake scent... I never make it through this day without crying, ever. It always gets me on the drive home when I flip around and they're playing him on the radio. And the anniversary of George's death a week ago. I'm a wreck for this whole week.

I swapped for a 10 ml of this, unsniffed -- I am not typically into scents like this but I've had a couple of strangely wonderful experiences with musk/vanilla combinations (Dorian and Black Opal spring to mind) and I figure I might have a little niche of interest here. It's not like either of them to me, but it has a similar soft white glow about it and manages to be sweet without being cloying or dessert-like. It doesn't sparkle with Black Opal's coldness, and it doesn't draw me in hypnotically like Dorian but it manages to be refreshing, cold, warm, and comforting at the same time. Antique Lace is also a little more perfumey than I typically wear, but wait, the pale musk is warming the cold white vanilla...there's something else here, something that comes across at first as something like hairspray. I wonder if there is narcissus in it. I have a terrible relationship with that note, as it only smells like hairspray to me. If this has that dreaded flower in it though it vanquishes its chemical spray fairly quickly...and I think ultimately it just helps give it more throw and life. I don't think I would have noticed this scent or wanted to try it if there hadn't been such a fuss over it when it was discontinued, but I think I will keep it around because it seems like something I could wear all year, day or night, for anything from a wedding to a funeral, to work or to a show, just a good all-around scent that will be there, quietly comforting you. I will probably be sharing some of this and keeping most of it -- between this and the other vanilla/musks that have won me over, I think I'm covered!

I keep getting frimps of Tamora -- I will definitely try to keep one for next spring/summer. It smells almost exactly like Fae, to me -- I used to have a bottle of that, but I never wore it. Basically, it smells like peach. The lab's peach, which is very nice, and like Fae this is held in place by amber, which is a perfect match with peach. It makes the soft, golden fruity scent long-lasting, and gives it some extra throw and sweetness. Really nice stuff. Completely inappropriate for this time of year but this was the only imp I had with me at work when my Talvikuu started to wear off...and I must smell something!! I like every ingredient in this blend to some degree, and even vanilla (an 'iffy' ingredient for me) lends its sweetness without being overpowering. I love heliotrope, for the special bright fruity sweetness that it brings to a blend...it's one of the only florals that I like consistently. If you liked Fae, you should like this, but they're so similar I think most people could take "either-or". Fae did seem a wee bit licoricey to me, and Tamora is a lot sweeter, so there's the difference. I think this would be perfect for spring or early summer when you need a fruity, sunshiney blend. I would really love a shampoo or lotion out of this too, since I rarely wear scents like this on their own but it would be very refreshing in the bath. As far as peaches go I'd tend more towards using Imp, which is a darker, earthier version, with patchouli.

I waited a really long time to order Devil's Night because there was nothing else that I wanted from the Samhain scents (except to restock my supply of Samhain itself) and I was a little nervous about the booze and sugar. However, the promise of autumn nights with fires in the distance was enough to make me not want to pass this up. In the bottle, I already know that things are going to go just delightfully with Devil's Night. It smells very much like Samhain, but instead of a fruity apple smell underneath the top layer of swirling sweet smoke there's a bit of a gingery spice scent not unlike Shub-Niggurath. I passed on Shub because it smelled too much like cookies (I'm not a fan of smelling like cookies) but this has just a touch of that, so it's not too strong. Since my particular super power seems to be to make any kind of smoke or wood scent really strong and long-lasting, this and Samhain both do very nice things for me. I get a strong, sweet wood smoke out of both of them...this doesn't have the piney/fir edge that I love in Samhain, but it also doesn't have the too-fruity undertone that overpowers me. With Samhain I only need one drop to last an entire day. But with Devil's Night I put a ton on behind my ears, in my hair and a dab on my wrists and it simmered down quickly. I can smell it in my hair but it's not too strong. Sorry to keep making comparisons, but that's what I do -- with Samhain I only wear it in October or on days when the weather reminds me of a crisp early autumn day. But Devil's Night feels like I could wear it throughout the winter without smelling too autumnal. "Booze" and sugar are almost guaranteed to make me sick -- with the rare exceptions where they are absolutely incredible for no discernable reason. This is one of the ones that works.

What can I say? Let's just rename this: Sarada's Dream Blend. Though I suspect Penance will like it too! I can't even figure out how to be eloquent about this, it's just the epitome of the resinous church incense scent. Other than frankincense and myrrh I don't know what is in this, but it's got the glorious radiant beauty of Cathedral and Penitence, and then some. There's something that kicks it up just a little bit stronger, a little more powerful, a little sweeter. But not as sweet as Al Azif, not by a longshot. This could be an every day scent for me but I'm trying to limit myself to one bottle since I have sooo many resin scents, and I like to try to rotate them now and then. But I might have to get a second, just because this is the PERFECT church incense/resin smell. Not too smoky, not too sweet, and I have a feeling like with all of the Yule scents, when you step outside into the chill winter night with this on, your skin will warm this wonderful fragrance and the wind will lift it up in a cloud around you. I don't even go to church but if it smells this good I might have to become a nun.

I'm trying to pace myself with these reviews but I just can't help myself...I need to share! Herr Drosselmeyer reminds me a bit of Hellfire, which isn't too surprising considering the notes -- pipe tobacco and leather in both of them, though the Herr has added notes of woods and linen. In the bottle this is overwhelmingly sweet tobacco. It's the "dad's pipe" smell that I sometimes love, sometimes makes me queasy. It made me queasy in Hellfire after awhile. And it makes me queasy when people are actually smoking it. But this manages to just be a tiny shade on the side of what I can wear and enjoy, as long as I use a small quantity. There is a certain nutty sweetness that also recalls some of dad's old tobacco mixes. It might actually be the "sweet leather" that is making this so very sweet, but it comes across as much more of a sugary smell. I don't smell the woods or linen, even on drydown, but I imagine that the presence of woods is what helps to turn this into something that reacts well on me over time, mellowing it and keeping the sweetness at bay. I asked my mom to sniff it when I had it in my hair and she thought it smelled a bit like coffee. That's not how it came across to me (coffee makes me sick) but I can see, if it was a very dark, rich, sweet blend, that would be possible. All in all, this is like a version of Hellfire that I can wear, though I'm very nervous to try more than a drop at a time given how pipe tobacco can give me a headache and make me feel a little nauseous when it's too intense. Just a little bit is just perfect though. And oh so masculine and mage-like. ETA: Turned out to ultimately give me a headache after all. I really loved having it in my wooden perfume box because it added a wonderful note to the overall scent that wafted when I opened the box up, but if I wear it....it's just too much of a sweet cherry tobacco smell after all. The unopened bottle, or a drop from across the room, are the most I can take.

I've been wanting to review this all day but I had to wait until I could test it at a time when it was the only scent on my skin, since it is rather complex and delicate. Talvikuu balances almost perfectly inbetween Skadi (or its cousin Dublin) and Ice Queen, if you are familiar with those scents from last year. In the bottle it reminds me a little more of Ice Queen, and on my skin it becomes much more like Skadi. It has the crisp fir/birch and crush of slushy green notes that I think I recognize from Skadi and Dublin -- paired with the sheet of pale, musky ice of Ice Queen. I think there is a faint breah of mint, but it fades in and out of focus. It's rather like looking at a reflection in a frozen pond...beautiful, scintillating but always shifting. As it dries it becomes more like Skadi, poised rather delicately on the icy border between those scents before it starts to shift more toward a snowy pine. I think it really has aspects of my favorite parts of both of those scents, very sparkling, cool and refreshing. If you haven't tried the scents I've referenced, think: a frozen, slushy snow on birch and evergreen with a faint breath of mint and the clean, smooth surface of a frozen pond. This would be a great scent to wear to see the Chronicles of Narnia...it makes me think of the White Witch, regal and distant riding in white furs through a snowy wooded landscape.

I have been looking for the perfect evergreen scent for quite some time. When you come across a stand of evergreens in the middle of the woods, it's almost like you are entering a cathedral. Their tall, dark trunks are like columns in a temple, and the pale needles on the ground form a carpet to keep your footsteps hushed, a stark contrast to the bustle and crunch of the rest of the forest. I'll sit there all day sometimes on a cushion of pine needles, rubbing the sap on my fingers and inhaling it, absorbing the silence. I've never quite been able to capture that in bottle form before. Yew Trees does it. This is the smell of living resin, the dark dark green of the forest and the dry needles underfoot. At first I recognize what smells like the Cypress oil that I love to sniff at aromatherapy displays in stores -- a distinctly sharp, dark green scent. As it wears it mellows slightly, there's the palest hint of sweetness (I don't smell very much in the way of the berries, and I had been afraid they'd be overpowering). This is one of the most natural-smelling oils that I've come across, even from the lab. By contrast, Nocnitsa smelled like a lime lollipop to me, and I had hoped it would be something like this. Yew Trees lets me smell like that sap I scrape from the pinecones and rub on my hands, but without the stickiness. It smells like going to look for a live Christmas tree and having all of the aromas of every type of evergreen in the area. I'm guessing in addition to pine and fir there must be cypress and maybe spruce. This wasn't one of the Yule LEs but it could easily be worn as a Yule scent. Fortunately, however, it looks like we'll have this in the catalog for awhile. Welcome to my top ten, Yew Trees, I just have to figure out who gets knocked down a peg to make room for you!

I don't have a camera that can take close-up pics so I hope someone else is able to post pics soon, these are gorgeous! It's going to be hard to keep them locked away in their box, I want to display them! I have five more Yule blends I hope to receive for Christmas and I am absolutely dying for them, eep!

That's a perfect solution...poisonous plants! They can still smell nice but they definitely project a "don't get too close" vibe. Powerful, feminine, not unpleasant yet not flirtatious. I will remember that. And congratulations!!

I am thinking that if it's called Ambra it might have a bit of an amber-like scent, in which case Aureus would be a great choice since that's super golden amber. Not very sweet though. Anubis was also kind of golden and resiny with a sweet aspect but that was a more honeyed sweetness than vanilla. It never hurts to try Snake Oil though!

heh, okay, now i am going to have to order a Snake Oil bottle. i had it before, didn't think it worked on me...but now that Snake Charmer has changed my tune....well hell, i just want to have another cool looking bottle like that!

I keep a bottle of Pain for the express purpose of headache remedy. The oil itself is too strong for me to wear as a fragrance (that pennyroyal is like the strongest mint scent on earth, paired with sharp lavender) and it's actually so strong that I keep it separated from all of my other oils because it was making other bottles smell minty on the outside. But man, one dab of that in the middle of my forehead and bye-bye headache. I think I had the boy rub some onto my shoulders too, since shoulder tension causes my headaches half the time. If I put some in a massage oil base that might work too. Though the cats would just try to lick it off of me. But yeah, I plan to always have some Pain on hand if I can to fight headaches.

Raven in the Violets, you have the best user name I've ever seen! What a beautiful image that conjures in my mind. That wasn't on topic but I just had to mention it!

Baneberry makes me think of little green unripe blueberries...tart, slightly antiseptic in aroma. I can almost taste it when I smell it....an almost sour apple green. It never gets too sweet, but it also does not become a powdery or soapy scent. It simply stays tart, green and almost floral before fading. I really do agree with shelldoo that it reminds me of some pleasant sort of shampoo, when I sniff it. I also agree with everyone who smells ivy...that might be what imparts a slightly "clean" smell to this as ivy is a very bright, crisp, clear and clean green to my nose. Almost grassy. I think this is interesting and I might keep it around to sniff but it's not something that I'd wear...if it was a deep, luscious purple berry it would work on my skin, but this is an interesting scent to experience to wake me up.

Queen Mab strikes me at first as crystalline, sparkling flowers with a deeper, darker undercurrent. I am cautious around blends like this, because all of the strong, heady florals like to compete to see who can give me a headache first, and though musk usually helps to make a blend last on me, when combined with flowers it typically just makes for a stronger, longer headache. However Queen Mab is grounded in a powdered sandalwood incense -- a very pale sandalwood, burned at night by an open window with a garden blooming outside. It becomes slightly more perfumey as it dries and the night-blooming jasmine starts to gain power. It becomes an old perfume bottle gathering a light coat of sandalwood dust. Perfumey, but without that aldehydic synthetic buzz. I like this fairly well for a floral but it doesn't wear well on me and winds up smelling like a fairly conventional commercial perfume....which is what florals usually do. But happily, neither this nor the other florals I tried today gave me a headache or put me off smelly stuff for the rest of the day. Queen Mab finished up a bit darker, with sandalwood and musk simmering under the bouquet, which is a nice finish for me. I might keep it around for reference but I don't think I'd wear it more than once a year when I was in a strange, atypical flowery mood.

That's funny -- Just like Olympia301 I tested Phantom Queen on one wrist, and Queen Mab on the other! I didn't want to confuse the two and made a point to keep track of how each one developed and refer to the notes several times to keep them straight in my head. Phantom Queen is a pure, ethereal, misty, delicate pollen-dusted bouquet. It reminds me most of Flower Moon, which encapsulated the idea of spring flowers in a field for me without becoming too "perfumey" of a floral. I will be saving this blend for the spring - it's a perfect pale rainbow of tiny sweet meadow flowers. I don't know what the individual notes smell like on their own because I'm not geared towards florals but these are, well...all of the good ones! Sweet and delicately fragrant, silvery and mesmerizing, with that powdery dusting of apple blossom (a note that usually can ruin a blend for me, here just adds to the fae sparkle). Though it loses some of that sparkle as it dries, I will be hanging onto the imp for the spring and I hope I find some more. There are so few, few florals that I can stand...and this is just lovely.

I tested this without looking up the notes, and my first impression was that it reminded me of how most floral and fruity blends struck me when I first started trying BPAL. I couldn't distinguish between most of them and in my notes would just write down "generic floral" or "kinda fruity." I had a similar "floral, a little sweet" impression from this along with...a very faint impression of toasted rice. For some reason I thought there might have been a fruit in it, so my immediate impression was to think of a pale orange fruit wrapped in toasted pastry and lightly dusted with sugar...served on a sunlit breakfast table near an open window with a vase of white flowers. Interestingly enough I don't like ANY of the ingredients in this blend yet together they blend into something unlike any of the components. I think the reason it doesn't strike me as the same kind of cloying, headache-inducing floral that, say, Bearded Lady was is that there is no lily in the mix. I would probably not wear this except to test it, but I might keep it around as a reference...I'm trying to build a library of scents to refer to so this is a good example of floral notes blending together into something unlike any of the individual fragrances on their own.

I thought for sure I had tried this before, but apparently today was my first time with Paris! In the imp and freshly applied this has the scent that always comes out on me when lotus is an ingredient: sort of a powdery banana candy scent. Kind of like...the banana candies in Runts. Lotus has a tendency to make scents not-work-very-well on me because of this. Ahh, but the strangest thing happened and it became a lovely, pure, gorgeous lavender a short time after going through the banana phase. What a lovely lavender! When I visited Paris it was in the spring and this makes me think of the first flowers blooming and the gentle rain that fell the first day I was there. The lavender fades quickly though -- I never get a spicey component to this scent, just the banana candy, then the lavender rainfall. It is very nice but I have a lot of other lavender blends so I don't think I can take the candy stage at the beginning. Au revoir!

Bear with me folks, I hate having to tell you what oils containing coconut or rum do to me but I really want to review every scent that I try. Truth be told, there's nothing I can do about it -- the rum note makes me sick, sick, sick. I try not to sniff if when I can avoid it but curiosity gets the better of me and then I have a stomachache to remind me that this is a bad idea. Coconut often has a similar effect, particularly when it is a very sweet one. This blend is very strong, sweet coconut/rum. I can't really even compare it to sun tan oil or the beach, since I avoid both of those things like the plague. But that is good news for you if you like coconut and rum! Actually this scent resembles what I feared Perversion would be on me. But that blend worked perfectly for me, probably because the dreaded rum was not in it. Very very sweet, heady, boozy, dripping with sunshine and drinks served in coconuts with little umbrellas in them. I don't feel so good. I'm glad I gave it a chance but once again, proof that I can touch rum!

I really love the description in the review right above mine but I will try to do this justice too! I love the concept for Thanatos and was hoping for something along the lines of Dance of Death, in the combination of myrrh, woods and incensy smells. In the imp myrrh is the strongest scent that I get, though it shifts quickly on my skin. This is much more of a perfumey interpretation of Death -- an almost feminine take on it, with the crackling static of resins snapping as they burn up on hot coals, over the high-pitched whispers of rose and loamy moss. It is a bit more light, perfumed and alive than I had though a death fragrance would be, but that does fit with the imagery of a willowy young man with a butterfly. The wood and incense are very much in the background here, crowded out by a profusion of flowers and moss that have overgrown the grave. The rose and perfumed moss turn out to be a bit overpowering on me. I like my Death best when it's dark and buried deep in the soil. Still, I think I will keep the imp because it's a lovely interpretation of the concept.