marared

This is the one I was most looking forward to out of the bottles I ordered, not only from the description, but from the early reviews as well. It's a lovely strong cider with lots of spicy personality in the bottle -- it makes my mouth water. Fortunately, the wood/smoke behind it brings me back to my senses before I drink the damn thing. It's just such a delightful nummy scent. I want candles with this!

In the bottle and freshly applied, it's got kind of a scented laundry detergent aroma about it. As it starts drying, it's got more of a leafy and smoky smell to it, with the apples far in the background. Ten minutes later, it's still leaves and smoke. Very definitely a great representation of late autumn.

I say it everywhere else - Dionysia is pure sex on me. It reaches out and invites your nose to bury itself in my cleavage. Hetairae puts some swish in my walk, too...

This obviously is one of those blends that's going to have to sit quietly for a few months to really reach its prime, but it's pretty nice fresh from the lab, too. It's a spicy musk with a bit of not-too-sweet vanilla lying underneath, but there is absolutely no fruit whatsoever in the bottle OR on my skin, and if it hasn't shown up by now, it's not going to. This is kind of what I was expecting from Snake Oil. I'm definitely going to have to revisit this in a few months - while I'm disappointed that I can't smell the plum, it still has lots of potential. (My card? The Chariot.)

I can smell the currant straight off on fresh application, but it disappears pretty quickly into a nice warm amber musk over a meadow. I have to ask, though, what the difference is between dragon's blood and daemonorops? The only other blend I have with it is Ladon, so I'm not familiar enough with the scent to pick it up. It's not nearly as sexual/passionate as the description and the bottle image imply, but it's really nice. I just wish it had a little more throw.

Wow, a rose that ALMOST works on me! It's arguing with the orange blossom and the orange blossom is winning, but only just barely. I do love me the orange blossom, but this is just a little too much rose. Maybe I'll save it for the Renaissance Faire this fall! And as I remarked with regard to Bess, I never smell the rosemary in any of these blends - either it's drowned out too easily by other scents, or my skin sucks it up.

Decant. Whack o' cherry right out of the imp, and then it turns into Red Hots candy and stays there. Verbena doesn't stand a chance. It's even stamping out the patchouli, and that's tough to do. I am going to assume at this point that cinnamon must be another note that my skin likes to amp, because I had the same experience with Bakeneko - all that goodness just turned into HELLO CINNAMON BABY. It also itches just a tiny bit, which is the first time I've had any kind of skin reaction to an oil. It's pretty insignificant, but it's there. I'm glad I didn't go for the whole bottle...

I got this as a freebie. When I popped the cap, I wrinkled my nose at the sour smell, which almost reminded me of the unpleasantness of Queen Alice, and wondered if it had wine in it. Went to look up the notes, and yep, it's got booze. I bravely tried it on my arm, prepared to wash it off in a hurry and ... Rose and mint. A very well behaved rose and mint, come to that. It's almost like one of those after-dinner mints you get in some restaurants, at least on fresh application. It gets a little more orange-blossom as it dries, but the mint lingers. Oddly, I never smell the rosemary in any of the blends that contain them. Which is probably not a bad thing, since I can only tolerate rosemary the herb in very small quantities.

It's funny how most people think of New York State as an industrial metropolis all over, when most of the state is ... farmland. Following the Thruway? Buffalo, cows, Rochester, cows, Syracuse, cows, Utica, cows, Albany, cows, Poughkeepsie... okay, more like mountains and river there, and then you get NYC. But there's a whoooole lotta farm country. That said, I'm not sure myself what silage smells like from experience - because, you know, cows.

This is a lovely warm nutty smell - it's almost like really good maple syrup over walnuts, or maybe candied walnuts - just not quite so *sweet*. I can't quite call it a favorite, but it's definitely a keeper for the time being, as it's a warm scent that's a little different from my usual.

The Phantom Calliope? Having finally got a decant - this definitely ain't it. I think the cocoa butter must be crucial to the scent, in the end...

The Phantom Calliope? A few months later I actually see this response. lol. That's one of the scents I have been considering, but the reviews mostly seem to point out the cherry, and I'm afraid of the patchouli - at least in terms of trying to match the scent. And it's not impable, so I'm waffling on whether to buy a bottle and hope I like it even if it's not at all like YSTW... Just give Bordello a try! The description of Bordello terrifies me - as much as I love the Lab's plum, the amaretto/almond and booze are two of my biggest scent-dislikes. I think what I'm looking for - having gone and sniffed what remains of my YSTW bar again - is a scent that's predominantly fruity - black currant with an undercurrent of chocolate and bergamot. If Marianne had cocoa notes, that might almost do the trick. Yeah. Black currant, bergamot, and cocoa! *flutters eyelashes at the Labbies*

Frimp. It was nice in the imp - a vaguely floral, vaguely vanilla mix - but unfortunately, it smells a bit like a scented plastic doll on my skin. I'm going to stuff it away to try in a few more weeks...

Frimp from the lab - I'm glad, because I've been interested in trying an appley scent and hadn't settled on a place to start. This is pretty much all apple blossom and hyacinth, with an underpinning of ... well, I've never sniffed dragon blood resin, so I'm not sure if it's that or the musk, or if the two have blended so seamlessly I can't tell them apart. I actually like this very much, despite it being more floral than I would normally enjoy. Hell of a throw, too.

Given that this is very dark with lots of patchouli, it's a given that I'm going to have to revisit this in a few weeks for a better idea of what this is REALLY going to smell like. What this smells like to me right now is of hot smoke and ashes - but of the productive variety. It smells very much like the air in a reconstructed 18th/19th century village or plantation, where people actively engage in jobs of the time like smithing, woodworking, etc, and many of them have open flames -- this reminds me of the sooty smell of people working hard in an older time. Except now that I've written that, there's a flower trying to push its way through...

Frimp! In the imp: a Renaissance faire mix of sweet wine and sweet cider left in the sun for hours and gone sour. Makes my nose twitch. On me: it's not quite *as* sour and I smell the carnation, but again, it smells like it's been sitting in the sun too long, rather than the hothouse fragance of other carnation blends I've smelled. Maybe this'll improve with time, but right now, it's pretty blech to my nose. Edit: wow, this is tough to scrub off, too. It took two thorough soapings just for one swipe of the wand.

This is probably the most morphingest scent I've yet tried from BPAL. In the bottle: fresh slightly squished blueberries with vanilla ice cream. Immediately on me: black licorice. Which is odd, because there's no anise in the blend! A few minutes later: vanilla and ginger. (there's supposed to be blueberry and currant in this! why can't I smell it anywhere other than in the bottle?) Fifteen minutes later, blueberry tea. I think I shall set this one aside, sadly...

I've started stalking ebay for "Warm Apple Crisp" which was my mom's favorite candle - the alternatives I've found for her are not quite the same, she says. What would be the BPAL comparison to that, I wonder? I can't seem to find the notes for it, possibly because it's been discontinued for a few years now. (Aha, it's Crisp, not Pie, and it's available on the net!) Baking apples, brown sugar and spices. Samhain seems to be closest, but it's got pumpkin in it. Maybe the Halloweenies will have something. I really like their Spiced Pumpkin Pie and Autumn Harvest - I have the latter in a reed jar in my bathroom, and then I have Greenhouse in my kitchen with a leaf of basil from my balcony laid on top.

Another warm, sweet and spicy frimp from the lab. This one has been on my "maybe" list for a while - I'm very wary of rose because I tend to amp it, but the honey and the orange keep it from overloading my olfactory gears. In fact, the orange plus the rose is an interesting combination and I keep inhaling it every minute or two, trying to wrap my brain around it. I don't think this is a bottle purchase, but it's a fascinating scent that I'm glad I got to try.

Frimp! Based on the frimps I've gotten this batch, I think the lab is catering to my love of warm spicy scents and has been passing on variations that I might not have considered. This one is definitely mandarin and magnolia. Magnolia can be pretty loud (I can smell a tree from fifty feet away when it's got 15-20 blossoms open) but it's not TOO loud in this, thankfully - and the mandarin and the musk keep it sweet and spicy. I bet this is going to be awesome in about a month.

Another frimp. This is kind of smoky and dirty on my skin - burnt lavender incense is what it makes me think of right off the bat. This would be something I'd put in an oil burner to scent the room, rather than as a perfume for myself.

Frimp from the lab. I whimpered when I saw five roses plus jasmine in the description, because it was almost guaranteed to be too heady for me. And it's definitely HELLO JASMINE! straight out of the imp and freshly applied on my wrist. The vanilla, the coffee, and the mahogany are waaaay down in there, so far that I wouldn't have noticed them if I wasn't looking for them. Fig is too delicate a scent to stand up in this. Heady flowers like this just don't work on me, I'm afraid - they overwhelm everything else.

The dominant note straight out of the bottle is tobacco, but it's not in-your-face tobacco - the herby things start clamoring for attention almost right away. I can smell the lavender and the neroli in particular, and I'm pretty sure that's moonflower, but the resins and the woods don't come out so much - they seem to be *grounding* the scent, and the herbs/flowers provide the personality. It's kind of like walking through wet woods at twilight. I like it, but I'm not 100% sure this is a keeper - but I'm going to keep trying it every week or so for a while and see how it changes. (Mead Moon didn't really excite me at first either, but it just got better and better with time.) Edit to add that I definitely like this better as time goes by. I've been layering it with Red Moon for a lovely close-to-the-skin numminess.

CCCV = 305? Mine is a somewhat strong, sweet fruit-and-flower blend that I would classify as a very tropical scent. The fruit is very bright - a sweet citrus that gets stronger and stronger as it dries and pushes the flowers into the background. I think there might be a touch of rose in it, but it's not heady at all. ...I kinda like this! Later edit: nope, didn't work on my skin. The fruit went off, if you know what I mean - not quite sour, but it went kinda plasticky. It smells great in the bottle, but not on me!

I thought from the notes that I would be head over heels in love with this - spicy citrus is emphatically my favorite type of scent, and I lovelovelove satsumas/clementines/mandarins (and Body Shop's Satsuma lotion makes people walk over to me and inhale) - this was so perfect that I bought the bottle before I even got the imp in a swap. ...unfortunately, I didn't quite love it nearly as much as I thought I should - the cinnamon and the tea totally overpower the citrus to slap me in the face. I do like it, but I prefer the citrus to be the more dominant note. I have the feeling that this is something that I would have enjoyed more while it was fresh.