starfish327

a comment in a review got me thinking. i amp rose to 11, as in, think bathroom cleaner. most rose blends don't work on me (though i can wear blends like bien loin d'ici). however, most of the time what gets me isn't so much that i amp rose so much as it is that they're way too feminine and girly. i'm not a light, pretty, floral type person- i sort of need to smell like death (i heart the gore shock) and burning not tea parties in the garden. so are there blends that run towards at least the androgynous if not masculine?

very sweet and sort of grainy. reminds me of a graham cracker. the pumpkin in this one is more buttery than normal. i think i like the nutty one with walnut better than this one, but this one is nice.

in the bottle: very sweet, caramelly but not burnt. it's definitely the same family as sugar skull but not as...fruity or burnt- this is white sugar where sugar skull started out life as brown sugar. wet: this actually reminds me of coffee more than kettle corn. it reminds me of a caramel macchiato though the years of working as a barista may have me biased. dry: yep this is still more coffee sweet than candy sweet. i get the impression of corn more than the actual smell of corn. i wish i had tested this earlier, it's lovely. it actually reminds me a lot of sleipnir for some reason, maybe the sweetness and the grain.

oh goblin ilu so much... sweet coconut that's not candy sweet except at first application. there's a deep vanilla-tobacco feel to it as well, which must be the patch though i would be shocked if there wasn't tobacco in this. it's like eating mounds bars in a tobacco shop. damn this is gorgeous. win win win. and i don't even know where this imp showed up from lol. the bpal gods must like me today.

woody, earthy rose. the rose behaves better than in a lot of blends, but wooden doll strikes me as being too feminine and tame for my tastes. it's nice if not a little mundane.

a very sweet slightly woody rose. i don't get much wood from this blend, but it's not going soapy or overpoweringly rose on my chemistry either. that's a rarity, though this is still definitely a rose blend more than a pumpkin blend. i'll try layering it with either a spice or pumpkin to see if i can pull more pumpkin from it.

in the imp: brown and sugary. reminds me of sugar skull. wet: the lab's pumpkin note, almond coffee syrup, and a sweetness that i'm going to assume is the brown musk- i've never worn a blend that uses brown musk dry: slightly pumpkiny, the same brown sugar note, and honey. very warm without spice. i really like this one but i wish there was a touch of spice to this.

cxl (141) previously reviewed as fruity in the imp: sweet and fruity wet: musky and candy sweet dry: musky, rasberry, and orange- reminds me of akuma with musk

actually quite pretty- slightly spicy, pale brown type scent, very me. it's dirty, as in dirt like, but not muddy the way that some of the dirt blends have gone on my skin. it reminds me faintly of root beer (which i like). it reminds me of laudanum without the scent memories that blend gave me.

in the imp: leather and something so green it's coming across as medicinal and astringent wet: WHOAAAAA. this has the best leather note i've smelled, but it also has the worst mint/herbal quality of any green that i've had had go wrong on me- leather and sharpie, or paint thinner dry: it alternates between leather...and nothing, then green nastiness...then nothing, and then leather and green nastiness...and nothing. i really wanted this one to work too. this may be my biggest bpal disappointment yet.

i didn't realize that this has rose, or i put on my wishlist before i knew that rose and i are sworn enemies. but i love vetiver and leather, so i'll give it a shot. in the imp: vetiver and...something. i'm guessing the rose. but the vetiver is much stronger (though i normally detect it in much higher amounts when it's in a blend, so that's not saying much). wet: vetiver blast, then it backs down and becomes smoky rose. i can live with this- it's st. john's eve without the incense. dry: oh no. it's going sort of smoky plastic- though what i'm registering as plastic is actually the leather note, and it's actually a nice leather note. i'm just used to smelling it in blends where it's not this dominant on my skin. it's actually a fairly simple blend on me once it dries, and i actually wish i got more of the cinnamon or the rose just to balance out the leather and vetiver. i'm going to keep the imp for layering purposes but i'm not sure that i'm going to seek another one out when it's gone either. i like leather and vetiver but it's not complex enough to wear on its own.

in the imp: pink florals, very very floral, something sweet behind it. very young, though also precociously young. innocent though not particularly naive either. wet: pink florals. it's not as painful on my skin as florals normally are though. still very young and not really my style. dry: the florals have gone white, and straight into soap. florals are normally hit or miss, with majority being miss, on my skin so i'm not entirely surprised either. if it weren't so young i may have been tempted to keep it to try layering it under some darker blends but it's too girlish (not girly) to me to want to keep it- it's just not a good match for my personality.

in the imp: i had skimmed the reviews for this scent so i knew to expect lighter than what i had initially thought it would be, but this is MUCH lighter and cleaner that what i had thought. wet: all i'm getting is resins. this is still very clean. dry: it morphs between very clean almost soapy resins and spice. i think what i'm associating with soap is the floral aspect. impressions: um i guess hades is a lot less goth than what he thinks he is? because this not what i was expecting at all. i'm running into the same problem that i did with faunalia, except that i'll keep this one- i wanted something much darker and animalistic, and got what smells like some of the stuff my decidedly not animalistic guy friends wear. my first impression, though this smells nothing like old spice, are those old spice commercials where the guy is riding the horse and telling people that their boyfriends can smell like him. i'm going to try to layer this one to see if i can pull some of the spice out of it.

snow bunny is the only snow scent that i've found so far that i can actually wear. it's very cold, but it's also very sweet. in the imp and wet there's a hint of something fruity- a darker berry that borders on fig (but stays firmly on the berry end however), but the fruit fades and i can see where the pine references come from dry. it does have that impression that i get from some snows of bath products but it's not overpowering. i like snow bunny enough to keep my imp and the novelty of having a snow blend i can wear without pain makes me want to find a partial bottle but at the same time i'm going to wait to see if it gets released again so that the people who actually love the blend can access it.

fig and berry, straight up. it's very sweet, and lush. the berry gives it an almost sweet-tart edge, but the fig makes the berry wearable (i normally can't wear the lab's berry note). i wish i got more leather, but i'll give up the leather since the cream isn't curdling on my skin the way that it did in candles moon. this is a very pretty blend and the only thing i wish is that it lasted longer on my skin- though i did notice that it amps every so often.

very woody and sweet. it's very feminine and light. it's also quite pretty- i'm getting something faintly floral on my skin. unfortunately there's something that's also aquatic-like on my skin, and a lot of aquatics give me headaches, so while this is pretty it's not pretty enough to want to keep around and tempt the migraine gods. it is however one of the nicest honeys i've tried so far, though it smells nothing like a honey note to me.

in the imp: there's a faint sweetness but it's quite faint and i don't get any other note impression from the wand. wet: a blast of sweet fig grounded by something faintly earthy. dry: the fig fades, nothing but amber/dirt left. very powdery. i love fig, it's one of my favorite notes. i wish the fig lasted longer than what it does on my skin but the powder note isn't offensive either. i'm going to try layering this under a couple of my other fig blends to see if i can more fig out of this.

grass (hay more than fresh) and smoke. i'm glad that i got to test this one, but i really wish i got more of the notes. i'm actually surprised to read the note list on this one, because my first impression was the long dry down of a hay and vetiver blend.

this is a truly nice blend. i wish that it worked with my skin chemistry. it's very sweet and creamy in the imp. i don't get any of the listed notes other than pumpkin, but it's very spicy and warm. it's the most foody of the pumpkins i've tried so far, and it was closest to my holy grail of a bpal pumpkin that smells like pie, and not pie plus _____ insert note here. i love the lab's pumpkin note in all forms, and this was almost perfect. until it dried and turned into microwaved plain popcorn.

i've been putting off trying this imp for awhile, putting it back in the test bag every time i pull it out. i sort of see why now- perhaps the bpal gods were trying to tell me something. it's very soapy on my skin, a screamingly high soap. periodically i get whiffs of orange blossom but that's the only note that i can identify right now. it's tolerable right now because it's so humid and warm in my room but i don't see this working at any other point of the year- it almost registers as a snow note on me, and snow notes rarely work (snow bunny is the only blend that snow isn't painful to my sinuses).

very very dry black herbs bordering on dusty. i think that if i got any of the current out of the blend, it would probably have saved it for me. otherwise, it's just too dry and herbal for my tastes.

it's very green, and almost bitter. however i don't get that much pine out of it- just a hint. that being said it's not overpowering and is almost what i would call light. it's not overly green and it doesn't smell like floor cleaner by any means, which is a problem i have with some of the greener blends. it's lovely underneath my CT:frankincense.

pumpkin and coconut with mid notes- i actually thought it was apple before i read the notes. it's an odd little pumpkin but i like it!

this must be strawberry week for me. this was the imp i had left out to test last night not realizing that i had already tested a strawberry blend yesterday... in the imp: gum. strawberry gum. very young. wet: wow. the strawberry gets dirty. but i'm not sure that i like it. it's very musky and there's something under it that i can't really identify (the amber and the vanilla from the notes description). dry: okay. i had put this in my swap bag but i may have to go pull it out. it's straight up red musk on me with a hint of vanilla. periodically i get whiffs of the strawberry. this is closer to what i wanted smut to be. this isn't sweet on me at all which is what saves it.

in the imp: very sweet, with a faint floral/herbal undertone. not quite citrus, but a citrusy tone. other people are saying strawberry but i'm not sure i've ever worn the lab's strawberry note so i'm going to take their word for it. wet: this reminds me of either candy or the dentist. it's very sweet still with a slight tart kick. there's a hint of spice underneath it as well. dry: a sort of fake strawberry note- like strawberry scented things, and not strawberries. that said, it's not bad but i feel like i want to try layering it with other things.