lady_pandora

This is a really interesting synergy of the amber, citrus, and cedar. The amber gives it kind of a glowing feel, the cedar is woody and soothing, but the citrus keeps it astringent, rather than being "comfy" like some other amber/wood combos are (such as The Magician's Wand). Wood polished with a lemon-scented product, maybe. This is a blend to keep you alert! I like it, and I may wear it for class or something.

I really want to love this conceptually, and the pom note is fine, but something else in this isn't working on me. There's a note in here that's turning on me into something maybe rubbery? maybe metallic? It's a little like the way Fortuna Dubia didn't work out. Dates, where art thou?

I really love this, but...really really close to Pink Fuzzy Handcuffs on me. It's that fluffy sweet vanilla rose vibe. What sorts of kinky things is the Priestess putting in that initiation ritual?

On me, Exodus 22.21 is not the dark heavy scent I might have expected from the presence of the resins, but a light, sweet puff of red-fruity incense. It's cuddly and comforting and close to the skin. A definite keeper!

Not dark at all on me--it's melon shading into more of a mixed fruit scent with light ozone. It's a fresh summer scent, but not quite my thing.

This reminds me of Like the Flashing of Light plus oudh. It's got the bitter-but-in-a-refreshing-way citrusiness of LtFoL and the amber softening it, and then the addition of earthy incensey oudh to the mix. It's like a more autumnal version, maybe.

This is fantastic! It starts out smelling like a honeyed campfire, and morphs into smelling like soft honeyed leather, a bit like that Ploutos imp they did for Black Friday a few years ago. The honey/beeswax keeps it from tipping into the masculine, for me, and this is one of the most comforting BPALs I've ever smelled. I think I need a bottle.

First sniff is of rose and pom, but the rose vanishes quickly once it hits my skin, and it settles into tart pommy wine. Later something sweet and lightly incensey comes in to soften it up a bit (hyssop?) and now the morning after the night I tested it, it's pom/cedar. Super long lasting pom note! Wrong holiday and all, but there's something kind of Yuleish about this. I probably don't need a bottle, as I have a lot of pom scents, but I like it.

True love renewed by night in an English garden: moonflower, Nottingham catchfly, Casablanca lily, evening primrose, night-blooming cereus, Queen of the Night, muted by the sepia tones of tonka, tobacco absolute, bourbon vanilla, and costus. I get what I think is almost 100% moonflower from this, which makes it distinct from the other moonflower blends I have where it lets something else share the stage. Cool, ethereal, and very pretty, without much morphing.

Yes, this is amazing--sweet, vanilla-y, resin-y wood, definitely a smooth, polished, deep wood note, gives me the impression of "glowing." It's the olfactory equivalent of a low soothing humming sound in the background. This Wand is well-worn by loving hands and has seen a lot of rituals. You need to try it if you like Mini Magdalene or Petite Planchette.

The eruptions in Hawaii have Madame Pele on my mind, so I decided it was time to pull this one out of the to-test pile. On me, it's dominated by a white flower that's dewy and waxy by turns, and at first I was thinking "I don't know what this flower is," but score one for finally learning some more notes--it's tuberose! I know because this note is in both Ava and Swans on the River. It's soft and pretty and not all that strong on me. I probably don't need a ton of this, since I have big bottles of the aforementioned (and more complex) tuberose blends, but it's nice.

The Fortunes of Love and Beauty A hymn to romance and glamour, passion and virility, seduction and delight: red roses and blood musk enveloped in a haze of blackcurrant, red patchouli, leather accord, and black oudh. Mmm, this is a velvety haze of all kinds of sexy red things. The notes are really well-blended here, and the overall effect is kind of smoky, kind of winey (maybe the blackcurrant?), kind of musky. I was worried the red musk would predominate on me, but so far so good.

Starts out dark red berries with an underlying scent of smoke; the smoke sometimes oscillates into a subtly "basementy" smell that makes me think it might be vetiver, but if it is, it's a really quiet vetiver that doesn't amp up as loud as that note sometimes does. Later, it's the berries with a soft haze of dark musk. I'm reminded a little bit of Her Strong Enchantments Failing, except I think I like Lampades better, because Enchantments' white musk goes dryer-sheets in the late drydown. I need this anyway for the Hecate connection, but I like it enough for at least an imp's worth in any case.

I've been raving about Silence in other threads because I lurves it. Daybreak is lovely, and I'm reaching for it more now that it's warm out. One Perfect Day is more rose-dominant but the lavender is really pretty in it.

Lots of pine, with a hazy sweet incensey note gradually creeping in like fog. I thought it might be opoponax at first, eventually settled on opium, and now that I'm reading the note list, I think it's the black musk. It's definitely evocative, but it's enough of a specific-mood scent that I probably only need an imp.

This starts out with an effervescent lemon-lime, like Sprite, but then I start amping super-sweet melon all over the place. Melon is just not my jam, and thus this isn't for me, but it's a fun sweet fruity scent that some folks will really love.

GC: Jezebel (honey, roses, orange blossom and sandalwood): I was originally planning to wear this if and when I got married. Orange blossom is even a traditional bridal thing!) Zorya Polunochnaya (Pale amber and ambergris, gossamer vanilla, moonflower, and white tobacco petals) Brisingamen (five ambers, soft myrtle and apple blossom, myrtle, and carnation) Juliet (Sweet pea with stargazer lily, calla lily, heliotrope, honeysuckle, white musk and a touch of fresh pear) LE: Between Your Heart and Mine, if you can find it (Heartwood bois de rose and vanilla-touched rose) Ava (sheer vanilla musk with tuberose, red mandarin, and the sweet poison of white almond) And yes, Swans on the River is lovely!

This was included as a frimp in my latest order. I the Lab! My first impression is of Sprite, and then it starts smelling to me kind of like the snow note that's in some of the Yules. Watery, slushy, reminded me of some old Yule I haven't smelled in years. I think maybe Darkling Thrush? (I dabbed a little Talvikuu onto my other arm to see if that was it, but nope, that's gone super piney with age and is very different from 504.) I think maybe the Lab was making a scent pun on the site being "frozen"! I'm getting some citrus a little later on too, I think maybe lime. Overall, this is clean, cool, green, unisex.

I tested this while wearing my GoT "The North Remembers" shirt and was totally hoping for some sexy slightly-dragonish Northman goodness. Alas, the oudh in this is doing the same thing it did in Zip Line, namely, smelling like pee. Pee mixed with blood and incense, but pee. I've heard of people getting "poudh" but this pee note confuses me, both because it's pee rather than poo, and because oudh works just fine for me in plenty of other scents besides these two. Maybe it has to do with what it's combined with? IDK. I haz a sad.

Like everybody else, I couldn't resist that name! On me, Clytemnestra starts out red wine, then becomes more pine-dominant for a while, then back to red-wine-dominant again. The throw, in particular, is almost all wine, with the pine hanging out closer to the skin, and I can pick out what I think is the opoponax right on the skin too. This actually has kind of a Yule vibe to me, though it's a dark mysterious Yule.

I get the lavender and possibly the sandalwood at first, but I end up amping the jasmine above all, and possibly because I don't really associate jasmine with sleep, Oneiroi doesn't seem to help me get to sleep any more easily. However, I did dream pretty vividly, in snippets earlier in the night and then a meatier dream in the early morning hours. This might be one to wear with another oil that helps with the sleep itself.

Woody cinnamon, a bit of peppercorn, and fresh rain! This is really nice. Fades to faintness pretty quickly on me, but might still end up as a hot-weather staple. The rainy note gives it a coolness that a lot of other spice blends don't have.

Ava is a blast of vanilla in the bottle, and then mostly vanilla-almond in the first moments after putting it on. This is the best almond has ever behaved on me. It doesn't go cherry and it doesn't go play-doh. The vanilla-almond combo reminds me of nothing so much as some icing my mom made for a cake recently, which was mostly vanilla icing but had this amazing hint of almond to it. It then gets weird for a few minutes--I've heard before about tuberose going "rubbery," and I've never had that happen until Ava. There are a few minutes where my skin smells like a balloon. Thankfully, this is brief. It settles down into a soft vanillic floral. Close to the skin, it's more vanilla, but as I went about my evening, the throw kept surprising me with wafts of creamy white floral. I don't get much of the mandarin. The later stages are smoky white petals, reminding me a little of Zorya P, which makes me wonder if this will age as amazingly as ZP has, picking up even more complexity over time.

In the bottle, at first I smelled nothing! I was thinking, wouldn't it be awful luck to be anosmic to one of the great BPAL holy grails...and then the scent reached me: incensey rose, intriguingly complex, making me want to sniff more. On my skin, it starts out spicy rose and gradually morphs into more of a spicy incense scent. There's also something in here that gives the impression of "skin"--not in a bad way. It doesn't so much smell like I'm wearing perfume, more like I just woke up like this. Or I cooked something spicy and then did ritual and now all of that is kind of clinging to me in a soft cloud. It's exotic, but relaxed rather than intense. I've never seen Only Lovers Left Alive the movie, but one of the stills of it has Eve languidly draped on a couch with Adam, and my mind's eye keeps going back to that. It's very well done, very well blended, and has a "classic" vibe--if I'd tried this in my very early BPAL days, I might have said something dumb about old ladies. But what I really mean is that this is the kind of thing my actual grandmother really did like. Plus, I'm 40 now, I can wear this grande dame stuff if I damn well please. I can kind of see why people compared Cicuta to it, and it also reminds me a bit of how I remember Psyche smelling, though it's been a long time. It's heavier than Sept, not as heavy as Deux. I'm glad I got a bottle.

Skin chemistry is so weird--I get almost no grass! I get mostly a soft animalic musk with a really really sweet note--I think the white fang might be tonka. I was hoping for more fresh greenery to suit the warm weather, but this is definitely a sweet, cuddly pupper.