coldandsleepy

In the bottle and straight onto my skin, this is oranges and wet woods and dust and I freaking love it.

Within 15 minutes, it's dried down into nothing but musk and a faint hint of lilies. And there it sadly stays.

Well, I'm not sure what I was expecting, but on me this is like Eat Me plus a big ol' bowl of cake frosting. There's some booziness in it as well. I get no incense at all, and not a whole lot of nuance or complexity, I guess because everything else is drowned out by FROSTING.

Hey, I don't mind, I like frosting.

So I've had a bottle of this sitting around since-- well-- I think since it was first released. I smelled it at the time and set it aside. Things were busy in my life and I thought oh, I'll get back to it...

And here I am 5 years later. I was looking for a scent I hadn't worn in a while and stumbled across my bottle of this. Couldn't remember anything about it but thought I'd take a gamble and dabbed a bit on.

In the bottle, it smells very faint to me. There's something that reminds me a little of Selkie, a bit aquatic and wildflowery, but nothing that stands out.

Straight on my skin, it's the same thing turned up a bit. I keep thinking "crushed wildflowers" though I've no idea how crushed fits into that. It has a sweetness to it that I quite like but it's still overall very gentle and faint. So much so that I nearly forgot about it...

Ten minutes later: what is that smell? That lovely smell? Oh! It's the Lady on the Grey! Which has now opened up and amped quite a bit on my skin. Still getting the wildflower note (whatever that is), but here comes a bit of sandalwood and just a little hint of spice. I get the comparison to posh soap. It really smells... expensive. Like something a classy lady would apply whilst wearing a silk slip in front of her vanity. Really very lovely.

A couple years back, I had this rooibos tea blend with sliced almonds and little candy hearts in it. That is precisely what this smells like to me, with the gentlest touch of licorice on top. I don't really get much in the way of individual spices, just that strong herbal scent rooibos has and some bonus sweetness.

Nice but not a home run on me-- it just doesn't smell super distinctive on my skin. I was hoping for something a little spicier.

This reminds me really strongly of the bath oil from the L'Inverno set from BPTP a few years back... In a good way.

It starts out all lilies and hemlock on me, then it turns very sweet. My nose is telling me tonka though it's not in the notes. There's a definite cold note here but I'm not recognizing it as mint thankfully... Just smells... Chilly.

Really quite pretty.

I'm surprised by how much I like this. It's berries-- sweet, red, bordering at first on bubble gum-- and golden resins. Frankincense and sandalwood, neither overpowering. I get a breath of florals, but only just a whiff, and I can't pick out the rose.

Overall, it's quite beautiful on me.

Like others mentioned, this is much sweeter than I expected. To me it's sweet spruce and a TON of sweet birch-- almost birch beerlike at times. And yet it's not candylike or cloying at all... the sweetness makes it almost sparkle to my nose. Like a glittering Christmas tree.

This scent is so beautiful and straightforward to my nose. Doesn't morph on me at all, stays true for hours. I'm totally in love with it.

I have no idea why I ordered a decant of this other than that I like the image-- this is basically all death notes for me. Three types of honey? Three types of yuck! Vanilla? Ewwww. Okay, I do like linden sometimes, and orange zest, and I love amber...

Very sweet and honeyed. It reminds me VERY strongly of Blood Kiss and I had to check the notes to make sure there wasn't cherry in there. My nose is swearing up and down that there's cherry but...

Also brings O to mind, though this does much much better on my skin than that did.

I actually think it's rather beautiful but not the kind of scent that I'd personally enjoy. However, if you like the other two I mentioned, I would advise you to give this a go.

On first application, this is nothing but laundry detergent on me. A nice unscented laundry detergent (you know the way "unscented" still has a smell?) but laundry detergent all the same.

After a while, it's a little less aggressively detergent-y and I get a nice skin musk and a very, VERY gentle breath of tea rose. If I wasn't looking for tea rose in particular, I might just describe it as "petals".

It's a nice clean delicate scent. It does make me think of a little girl-- not a dressup scent but the way an actual child might smell fresh out of the bathtub.

Unfortunately, it's just a little TOO delicate for me to see myself reaching for it in the future.

Okay. So my package of decants that went wandering (thanks USPS) finally showed up today, and I opened it with my 2 year old son who gets verrrrry excited about BPAL. He wanted to try some on, so I picked this out, thinking we'd both end up smelling like candy or cake or both. I dabbed a little on his wrist and instructed him to sniff. He sniffed.

"I can't smell that, Mommy." What? Sometimes he uses "I can't" to mean "I don't want to" so I asked if that's what he meant-- and he told me again that he couldn't smell it. Then, his little face scrunching up in a way that often indicates a storm is coming, he wailed, "I need mooooooore perfuuuuuuuume."

I dabbed a little more on him, then finally got around to dabbing some on myself. Sniffed. Huh. He's RIGHT. This is super, super faint on me, and on him too. It smells like... almost nothing. I expected it to maybe be overwhelming, but it's sort of the opposite end of the spectrum.

On both of us, there's a sort of breath of chocolate, a hint of molasses, and a tiny tiny touch of spice. What I can smell is nice (and smells especially good on him) but boy, it is just faiiiiiint. I'll have to try slathering this and see if I feel differently about it then...

My bottle is getting up there in years now-- it's from 2006, though it didn't come to me until 2008 or 9. It's amazing that I've never reviewed this because it's easily one of my favorite BPALs, and one that I reach for most at this time of year.

To my nose, there's nothing dirty or floral about this. It smells like eating a pastry (just some random danish or something) while stomping through the snow in an evergreen forest, feeling slightly buzzy from the beer you had before you left the house. Let me recap: sweet but not spicy pastry, something snowy, green trees (but not Christmas trees/pine-- more like juniper to my nose), and a bit of hoppy beer, all in perfect balance.

Delightful. It's only gotten lovelier with age.

This is so straightforward to my nose: bitter almond oil and nice spicy (not sugary or sweet) cinnamon.

When I first applied, it smelled distinctly like SWEET almond oil, but now it's morphed. I love almond in any form and so I'm happy with both. And it's nice to have a cinnamon smell where the cinnamon doesn't smell like a cookie, if you know what I mean. Though I gather it does smell quite sweet on some other people.

Neroli is sort of a scent blind spot for me. I don't smell it here but then I often don't notice it in scents...

This is really a nice simple blend. If you like it, I'd suggest you look into All Night Long, which has a similar vibe.

Interesting. I really expected this one to be a floral explosion and was bracing myself for that.

Instead, it's mostly the other things in the scent description-- I get high, cold breeze and spicy amber with maybe just a slight touch of white florals. No fruit that I can detect.

I like it quite a bit though.

Fresh out of the imp, this is a WHAM of peppermint to my nose. (Or pennyroyal, I suppose.) We're talking like toothpaste levels of mint. Mint tends to go catastrophic on my skin and I almost went and washed it off but was heading out to work and thought what the hey, I'll see what it smells like when I get there.

It mellowed out a LOT over the course of the next hour and progressed into a definite floral stage. My nose was telling me a little lavender, a little cologne-y lilac.

Now, 3 hours after application, it is yet another scent entirely. Now I primarily get the musk (which isn't dark and scary to me, more... soft and woolly?) and sweet vanilla (?) with just hints of the peppermint and florals.

Big time morpher on me, which seems pretty appropriate for the Mad Hatter.

Okay, this is way too bizarre on me. You know what it smells like? At first it smells sort of generically aquatic-- but five minutes later, it is a pretty clear scent of coconut meat, lotus blossom, and vanilla. And maybe a little light musk? It reminds me REALLY strongly of Obatala, except that I don't hate it. (Maybe it's the lack of shea butter?)

Doesn't seem milky to me at all, and I don't really get anything oceanic from it after the first few minutes. Not at all what I was expecting from this scent.

Aha. I tested this one yesterday and spent the couple of hours before it faded entirely (too soon!) sniffing it and thinking, boy, this is one SWEET, fruity pumpkin. Browsing the notes, it makes sense now-- that sweetness/frutiness must have been the peach.

Interestingly, I got more or less no spice out of this aside from a slight whiff of clove when I first applied it. After that, it turned into pure sweet buttery pumpkin and fruit. I like that, though... I have a lot of spicier pumpkin blends from BPAL and was happy to smell more of the pumpkin and less of the pie.

Gentle tones of plum, soft powdery leather, and... hair spray? The plum is nice but a bit understated on me, more mild than some BPAL plums. The leather is quite nice and reminds me of the leather in The Ta-Ta in a good way. But something about the rest of the scent is screaming hairspray! hairspraaaaay! to my nose.

Despite this, I don't dislike it. It just kinda reminds me of how my mom smelled in the early 90s. (Like hairspray.)

Oh, how funny. I put this on last night and thought, boy, this smells like light musk and dust and nothing else on me. Then I thought, that can't possibly be right, I'll have to look at the notes and re-test. But now that I'm looking at the notes again, I can confirm-- light musk and dust, and the slightest touch of violets. I think the light musk I'm getting must be the "icy skin" note. It's definitely not the red musk.

It's not bad at all, but so insubstantial on me. I guess my skin just eats up most of the notes in here. Not bad, but not a homerun either.

This starts out as a really sharp sandalwood on me. Almost single note. Over the course of about 30 minutes, it morphs from that into almost single note rose with the tiniest bit of spicy carnation.

Weird. I genuinely wouldn't have known there were any other florals in this if I hadn't checked the notes again. I'm sniffing and sniffing but nothing's coming forward... just the rose with a hint of carnation.

It's a *nice* rose, a good clean tea rose. Not too sweety or cloying. But I don't know that the scent is overall particularly interesting to me because on my skin, it is just SO one note.

2009 version:

Initially, this is APPLETASTIC in a way that I love. It smells like a cider apple, like the apple in Fearful Pleasure. Things are great for about 10 minutes, wherein I bask in the glorious apple glow and can't stop sniffing myself.

Then things change. Suddenly, here's that caramel you promised. Wha-hoooooa, caramel. Big and sweet and sugary and all over my apple! And there's something else, too. This seems to be going back and forth between big fat caramel apple and... a ladle full of fruit punch? That must be the rum. Weird, it's not coconutty to me at all. Just sort of fruity-boozy.

2.5 hours after applying, all of that is gone and I'm left with a faint sugar smell, like the wrapper of a caramel after you've already eaten the candy, and an odd smoky-incensey smell. Wha? No idea what that is. It's pleasant, very mild, but smells NOTHING like this scent started out.

Sad that the apple didn't stay longer, and perplexed by the wild rollercoaster this one went on, but overall... I think I like it?

Sometimes I feel like it's harder to review scents that I really like than it is to review ones I feel more blah about. Such is the case with romanti.goth. I can tell you straight up, I think it is totally, totally wonderful. But it's hard to explain just what makes it so lovely and wonderful.

It smells rich and elegant and decadent and dark. I get clouds of opium, amber, resins. The plum gives it a sweetness that doesn't overwhelm. Curiously, I don't get a lot of what I recognize as incense scent, though if I had an incense that smelled like this I'd burn it constantly. Um.

Though the notes are different, the feeling of this reminds me of Arachnina. And in some ways, of Blood Countess. There's just something about it that smells really luxurious to my nose. It is really strong on my skin and lasts for hours and hours, so I think it might be overwhelming as a day to day scent-- but this is a scent that just screams special occasion to me. It makes me want to put on a low cut dress and swill champagne and act very fabulous.

Wha-hoooooa, this stuff is SWEET. It's so sweet that an hour after applying it and sniffing it on and off, I still can't figure out exactly what it smells like to me other than SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR SWEEEEEEET.

No, I take it back, I *do* know what this smells like. You know those little strawberry flavored hard candies that come in the red and green wrappers that make them look like little plastic strawberries? That is what this smells like. And it adheres to my nose the way those candies adhere to your teeth.

Super super sweet. It's a little overwhelming. But if you need more candy scents in your life, find this stuff!

(2007 version)

Huh. I was expecting this to be a very straightforward rose scent... and it is. This is about half red red rose, lovely and fresh and perfect.

What I was not expecting was the blast of mint in here, and what is even more of a surprise: I *like* it. Mint is usually a death note of horror on me, but in this it is so fresh and green and never gets out of control. It's an herbal mint and not a bubblegum mint or candy mint. It smells so GREEN that this smells gloriously like springtime to me... not winterish in the least.

Quite beautiful. I like it!

To me, this is like sticking your face in a bag of licorice allsorts and huffing. I can't really explain it but this is NOT an anise scent to me, even though there's licorice. It's not overwhelmingly black licorice-y, but more a layer of mild licorice and then a layer of that creamy vanilla-y sugar-y stuff that you get on an allsort. Vanilla is usually not a good note for me and there is vanilla by the bucketful here. And yet... I love it.

It remains unchanged after 3 years of aging... still straight up all sorts to me. Still lovely.

Nothing But Death is Nothing But Violets on me. I like violet quite a bit as a scent but am sad that my skin seems to eat everything else that's in here.