Viridian

Somehow this smells like a very sophisticated department store perfume on me. The amber, ambergris, and musk are the primary notes to my nose, with the vanilla and peach softening the whole thing just a bit. It's warm and sweet, but it's very much a PERFUME-perfume on me and not just a soft sweet scent. I will absolutely wear the heck out of this one in the cooler weather.

On me this is creamy rice flower at first. If anyone was a fan of the long-discontinued Bath and Body Works Rice Flower and Shea lotion, you will love this - rice flower doesn't show up often in scents and this is done so, so well! I get a tiny bit of the honey and musk after it dries, but the rice flower is still very present and it + the milk note seems to be keeping the honey from turning powdery. This is probably the first BPAL scent in which the honey has stayed subdued instead of amping into powder after ten minutes on my wrist. This is just gorgeous. It settles into something like a warm cup of milk and honey with rice flowers. I may need to break my "no backups" rule since this is so unique and such a comfort scent that I want to wrap myself up in it all winter.

#188 In bottle: buttery caramel corn. On skin: Caramel corn and... cinnamon? Probably not cinnamon since iirc these weren't supposed to contain common allergens. Clove? Maybe ginger? Some spice for sure...SPICY CARAMEL CORN! After a few seconds of drying it becomes almost all spice with maybe something woody in the background. Sandalwood perhaps, as it's very smooth and subtle. After 30 minutes or so it becomes a soft sandalwood-vanilla. This one's a crazy morpher with three stages that smell nothing like one another. I'll have to keep it around for a little while and see what it does as it ages.

To me this smells a bit like my box of BPAL samples -- it's got a lot of elements that I recognize from other BPAL favorites. Definitely a beeswax-y vanilla, that after a moment or two of smelling strongly of honey starts to smell a little like a blown out vanilla candle with some soft spices in the background. It has that faded quality of lingering scents - hence the comparison to my box of imps. It's quite soft on me. I think it'll be beautiful in early fall.

So glad this is sticking around! I sniffed a bottle at Dragon Con and immediately ordered some upon returning home. To me it's just a lovely sweet amber with a little spicy freshness from the ginger. It's subtle - like my hair just smells "good" without smelling like something identifiable. I can't imagine it clashing with anything.

This smelled to me exactly like the shaker full of "pumpkin pie spice" that you can buy pre-mixed. My nose was a bit overwhelmed by the time I smelled it, but I didn't get a lot of pumpkin in it as compared to any of the individual pumpkin scents this time around.

Cool and ozoney. If you like the smell of stage fog, this conjures it up without being so dead-on realistic as to cause breathing issues (the real stuff always makes me cough, anyway!)

Smelled this at NYCC and was tempted. It's 100% damp fresh dirt, and I think it would layer well with many things for that "I've been outside" feel without any leaf notes. If you've ever seriously thought that a scent needed more dirt, this one is for you.

I love pomegranate, but I had all but given up on BPAL's pomegranate -- for some reason many blends including it took on this weird dry/dusty note after a while. This, however, is my pomegranate BPAL at last! It starts off very sweet and I get mostly the white chocolate, but after it settles a bit it's tart pomegranate balanced perfectly by the white chocolate and coconut. I don't get much of the other notes -- just a sort of tart fruitiness dipped in white chocolate. This is most unlike any of the other 13 blends that I own, and it gives me hope for pomegranate scents again!

I was expecting a sweet floral almond, but on me this goes through several rather distinct but all gorgeous and unique phases: First, I get the tiniest bit of "fizz" while it's wet, almost like a champagne note. Once the fizz settles, I get a cool, cotton-laundry feel. It smells at this stage a lot like a very, very soft version of Bath and Body Works' old discontinued cotton blossom lotion. Then, finally, as it settles more, I get juuuust a hint of whatever it was I loved so much about Black Opal. I can see the comparison to Snow White, but on me this has a touch of Black Opal's delicate cool sweetness to it. If you like any of the delicate white vanilla florals this is absolutely for you -- I don't get vanilla out of it, but it's sweet and comforting like a pile of fluffy white towels out of the dryer. Beyond gorgeous, second-bottle worthy.

I don't get much vanilla out of this at all - so much so that I thought maybe it was mislabeled. I get a really perfumey-medicinal scent from it that I guess is the Frankincense. Once I put it on the vanilla creeps out slowly, but it's not foody or vanilla extract-y at all. I feel like fans of traditional perfumes with a vanilla base will like this one. It smells very sophisticated.

Lately I've been wearing TAL Charisma to auditions. It gives me that little extra boost of positive thinking that I need to get through it without nerves.

I got a sample of this a while back and finally spritzed it in my bedroom today because I'd run out of the scented candle I wanted. It was a good choice for an early autumn day - there's something warm and cozy about it that defies the description. I get a distinct warm sweetness - so odd, when the description makes it sound like it would be mossy and cool. There's a little bit of that dry suggestion of stone that I like in Black Opal and a few others that have a stone note, but it's definitely a warmer feel with just a small whiff of dry smokiness after it starts to fade. I got a little on my clothes and I kind of want to spray my husband with this stuff. It would smell phenomenal on a guy, but it's sweet enough that I wouldn't mind spraying it in my sweater drawer to make my sweaters smell extra cozy.

In vial: strongly buttered popcorn. On skin it becomes more pumpkin-spicy, but still with a strong buttery note over the top. I actually wouldn’t pinpoint this one as pumpkin if I didn’t know it - I would guess some kind of buttery spiced fruity cookie, maybe spiced cider. The nutmeg is fairly subtle, but present, and the buttery overtone mellows after 10-15 minutes. Overall there are pumpkin scents I like better as perfume, but this is a nice home fragrance scent if you like fruity, spicy baked goods. I really do get a bit more of a baked apple feel from it than pumpkin, so if you're looking for something like apple pie and none of the apple scents have worked, try this one.

Buttered popcorn and fruit. Drink Me smells like a handful of Jelly Bellys, buttered popcorn and cherry and pineapple all mixed together, and is vaguely reminiscent of a cupcake-scented candle after about 20 minutes of wear. It’s a little too foody for me as perfume, but it smells just like I always expected Alice’s potion would taste.

Blue Moon is this for me. It's definitely floral, but I get subtle wafts of it all day and can never quite latch onto what it actually smells like for long. Honorable mentions go to Selkie and Leanan Sidhe. All of the above have sort of a "watery" note to me, so that they're floral but kind of wet and green and possibly mistakable for just how a spring day smells. I can always detect them, but they're always perfectly inoffensive even if I don't want to smell anything else.

Snagged this one from Etsy because I imagined it was one of the ones that might not come back, and my tastes have shifted such that I like more of the popular scents than I used to. At first sniff, I'm cautiously optimistic: it's a lot softer in the bottle than it sounds, and not too heavy on the patchouli/tobacco. However, on my skin it turns very dark and sticky almost immediately. It is very well blended - I can pick out what each note contributes, but I don't get a sense of them separately at all. It's sweet, dark, and a little piney/patch-y. I think I would love this on someone else, but I'm not sure I love it on me. It's still a little dirtier than I like my perfumes. It reminds me most of Schwarzer Mond, and though I haven't smelled Banshee Beat, I imagine it would appeal to fans of that one as well.

On me, the scent of this is jasmine and maybe gardenia - definitely white florals. It's a little like Somnus minus the lavender. It's super calming. I've been dealing with some ongoing stress and health issues which are caused/worsened by stress lately, so I used this for two nights in a row this week, as by the end of the week I'm usually a mess. On the first night I nearly fell asleep on the sofa directly after applying it -- I wasn't so much sleepy as just too relaxed to do anything else. The second night was much the same, only a little less sudden. I've also felt more real emotions beyond just a vague sense of anxiety/fear - it's like it calms me down enough that I can address the underlying issues that are contributing to the problem, rather than just focusing on the problem itself and worrying myself sick. Definitely like this one. Another effect is that I felt especially brave and outspoken today in a situation that had been causing me some anxiety related to the above. I was a little more aggressively annoyed than usual, though maybe some of the things I said needed to be said and annoyance was the only way to honestly express myself at that point.

On me this is a caramelly (or I guess molasses-y, though I don't get the distinct smell of molasses... maybe molasses cookies!) vanilla. Less rum than in Rum-Soaked French Tonka, though the two are similar. If the Tonka single-note didn't work for you, this one might!

I wear some of the same commercial perfumes that you do (Daisy , used to have Green Tea) and I second the recs for Dorian, Tamora and Obatala. Snake Oil might be a little too much for you if you're sensitive to strong scents; I know I can only really wear it in incredibly minute quantities.

sharkdiver, your list is super-helpful, but it kind of makes me despair for finding my perfect vanilla among bpals that aren't discontinued! I agree with your assessments of all the ones I've tried - sadly, Snake Oil does not work on me because the spices overtake the vanilla, even aged. It's just too heavy and headshoppy, and I suspect Banshee Beat would be the same if I managed to track down a bottle. I'm desperate to find the vanilla in Black Opal, which some have claimed is actually tonka. I'd hoped that Rum-Soaked French Tonka wouldn't be so boozy, but it doesn't work on me at all. I want a light, clean, non-foody vanilla to love!

Purchased this one at Dragon*Con before I knew what any of the notes were - I'd guessed vanilla/amber. I'm not surprised to see tea, since tea is one of my love notes but I almost never actually notice it outright on first sniff. This one is just really soft and warm. Hard to pick out individual notes. Faintly reminiscent of Dorian, but softer and without the lemon. Love everything about this one - it's one of my daily go-to scents if I can't figure out what else to wear because it's a very quiet skin scent.

Dawn: Mother is fantastic. Peacock Queen is good if you already love rose, but I think Dawn: Mother is more complex and less all rose, all the time.

Sugar Cookie 2011 to run errands and prepare for my vacation, on which I won't be taking any BPALs since I'm scared of breaking/losing/having things taken by airlines.

I thought I'd reviewed this already, but can't find it... In any case, I liked this well enough when I first tried it - I couldn't detect the Snake Oil at all, which was good because I'm iffy on Snake Oil. When this was new it was all cocoa and something almost caramelly -- I guess the vanilla of the snake oil. It was so good! When I started wearing it again, at least a year since I've regularly worn it, the Snake Oil is far more prominent than the cocoa and I don't love it as well. I'm hoping that was a fluke, but I'll be testing it again to see. I'll be very sad if this is now chocolate Snake Oil instead of lightly Snake-Oiled cocoa!