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BPAL Madness!

Lycanthrope

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Posts posted by Lycanthrope


  1. Definitely different from Blood Moon's past incarnation. It's less sharp, more sweet. For some reason it reminds of a LUSH product... the heady scent is something brighter, really on the tip of my nose but I can't tell... On my skin it segues again towards something more like Hunter Moon, as posted above, the musk note that's in Ivanushka, Coyote, coming to the surface. On top of it all there's this smokiness without quite crossing into ashy vetiver zone.

     

    It's not quite as hoardworthy to me as the original Blood Moon, which is more fiery and violent, this is more sweet smoldering.


  2. Hi Leopard!

     

    I too burned Yankee Candle's 'Green Grass' tarts in college, and longed for their candles in that scent. Smelled like Duke's commons areas, frat boys playing, lying down on a blanket to study organic chemistry but really studying a different 'subject.' If only... *reminisces*

     

    It's pretty much a dead ringer, bright mushy stain-inducing grass. Very unique.


  3. Strange. This is a 'light scent' overall in terms of what it is, but WHOMPING STRONG when you've applied some to your neck and throughout the day appears to get... stronger.

     

    Agree with above, if you're worried about rose, this is not a rose-based scent. It does this sort of bizarre sweet floral bizzness with what I thought was beeswax or honey (although it's not listed as a note), not overly spicy. This scent is just the first hint of rose brushed together with a veil of sweet, almost again the first touch of honey.

     

    I'd describe this as a scent that is 'on the verge' of being things, is the start or just tiny touch of rose, honey, spices. It's very soft. Yet, at the same time, on me it amped and became more prominent over my call night.


  4. I just wanted to weigh in to add my perspective regarding the whole 'accords' versus 'base chemicals' issue.

     

    I paint with acrylics. I know that you can buy your own separate pigments and mix with gesso base to 'make' your own specific colors. I'd say that sounds like what the lab does (takes components from various sources to make their own bases), or, like me, you can buy premixed tubes of paint in standardized colors.

     

    Does the fact that I don't mix my own pigments make me less of an artist? It's what one does with the components and the final product that really matters. You can be mind-bogglingly obsessive about mixing up every bit of the palette and come out with a generic painting, or you can use premixed potential to make something awesome.

     

    Regardless of what the method is, I think the end result are unique blends that cannot be so 'easily emulated or better produced' with self-blending.

     

    I've dabbled in using bases (premixed, Sweetcakes) and essential oils to try to make my own blends, and they've turned out really, not very good. Heh heh. Partially a physical problem of getting oils to stay in solution, or the aromas smelling imbalanced or off because of the balances of different scent oils that are already far too complex. I've yet to try using pure perfumer's bases because I don't have a hold of where to buy those components.

     

    Overall, Beth creates something unique no matter what the pathway to get there that is special and I treasure it.


  5. Yes, this is a strong and potent fragranced oil. I carry a Hand of Hermes bag in the inner pocket of my white coat for work, and I 'feed' it with a multitude of oils, generally those to amplify communication and increase confidence in that respect. I'm starting work in a very stressful area of the hospital (critical care) very shortly and wanted to do a small peaceful ritual with Healing (recently obtained) for my white coat and a few drops in conjunction with my usual Charisma + Hand of Hermes weekly reapplication.

     

    The aroma is sharp citrus, blended with a very white, creamy and sharp floral. I think it may be honeysuckle. Not sure. Dries down perfumy on my skin with that residual bite from the citrus, and the continued powderiness of whatever florals are mixed with it.

     

    I anointed the bag with three drops, and rubbed it along the nape of my white coat. Hopefully the fragrance will dissipate some by the time I actually start service (if not... I have a spare coat that I can anoint elsewhere so it won't be as omnipresent).

     

    It'll be a tough month but I'll try to focus on the small halo of power and intent I have charged into the coat for support and maybe a little push during this trying rotation.


  6. A minor jinxing oil, used to cause irritations, restlessness, unease, anxiety and discontent in your enemies.


    Unassuming little bottle. It is labeled classically with the word 'Brittle' emblazoned across it. I don't think I've ever owned an oil called Brittle.

    In general use? As odd as it sounds, I want to try the oil, but don't have a particular person in mind. I normally don't cause others distress. This time, I'm oddly enough, focusing the intent and energy behind this onto my stuffed giraffe toy.

    Wet in the bottle: I smell pepper, a little citrus lemon, maybe some cinnamon.

    On Giraffe: Giraffe now smells like cinnamon and some strong fruit.

    On Skin: WHOA man, this is strong. Definitely some sort of citrus rind, on top of some seriously biting, bitter herbs. Fiery spice of cinnamon and pepper is rising in the back of my nose. It's so fiery, I can feel it catching in my mouth and feel it on my tongue.

    Drying Down: Have you ever had Big Red gum? This is very similar.

    A touch malevolent! I'll have to reserve it for a proper use, if someone really gets on my nerves and I want to find some non-violent, non 'calling down the spirits from on high' approach to forwarding them a little chaos.

  7. Each bottle of Chaos Theory is truly unique, a fragrant fractal, and exercise in the joy of chance and uncertainty! Each is a one-of-a-kind, utterly random combination of scents, the composition of which is based on whim, mood and gut instinct.


    I ordered 32 CTs for a decant circle, and will be adding reviews as I do 'em to this post. Any snarky names added are not actual titles from the Lab, just my demented and odd sense of humor while on Ambien.

    CCCXLVIII (clear, no tint of color): "We'z gonna get marrieds? Creamy vanilla sweet kiss and bridal veil..."
    Slightly creamy, vanilla, a very yellow flower, creamy... honeysuckle? Like Antique Lace, but with a different flower, instead of ancient wispy florals this is a bolder, more 'heady' note, like osmanthus or honeysuckle.
    Previously reviewed by Aerinha.

    CCCXLIX (light pink! srsly!): "We're in Redwoods national Park and my tires done exploded."
    Redwood, definitely more woodsy than I would expect from the color of the oil, and there's a touch of a rubbery, sleety note (like asphalt). Very strange. It smells like I imagine Redwood National Park might.

    CCCLXXI (blonde yellow): "Oh HAI, I'm evil gingerbread kissed with orange rind."
    Orange and currant? A touch of ginger or pepper. Dries down to a mishmash of spice, clove perhaps.
    Previously reviewed by Aerinha.

    CCCXXV (gold yellow): "Tasty squishy drippy melon pulp and bright cucumber..."
    Cantaloupe! Melon! Something tickling the back of my throat. Fairly straightforward and fades fast.

    CCCXXXI (slightly greenish yellow): "Fizzy Happy Drinks, Mixed Drinks as Kiddos." Apple Juice and gingerale.
    Ginger? Apple? Some kinda light floral?

    CCCLXVIII (light yellow): "Fruity fresh herbal with a hint of berry."

  8. Licwiglunga (sp?) is the weirdest scent ever.

     

    It is like bottle confusion on me. I just don't get it. I think the description is also something like 'what graphemes are these?' And it's totally like that in my nose. How does she do it?

     

    Also votes for:

     

    Smokestack, Brimstone, Djinn.

     

    Shadwell.

     

    Ligur.

     

    Mr. Nancy.

     

    Black Annis.

     

     

    Whoops! Impables, eh? Srry...


  9. I don't even know. Weirdest BPAL ever.

     

    Even with all my years wearing niche BPAL blends, this blend just wonks the heck out of everything.

     

    My tongue and nose are betwuddled with confusionation.

     

    This is like sweet rubbery metal fruit but not, and kinda gummy sweet like those weird chewy Gum Mastic pies you can get in Greece, but then roasted over a smokey spit lit by resinous tears. And yes, on top of it all there is a phantom pomegranate that is gloating over its pending victory by making this into... a fruit smoke gum resin thing.

     

    I think I need to lie down.


  10. Frum. Caramel and me do not get along. Overall, after I've worn this for a while, my impression is the scent of sweaty skin, musk, and butter. Yum, right? My history with apple blossom is also probably to blame.

     

    Now I smell like a touch like a drunken buttery whore.

     

    I guess there are worse things to be, but... sadly, the wrong bits of this fragrance amp and the right bits that I was hoping would play together, do not.


  11. Oh man, is this one dark.

     

    It's vetiverish at the start, over this pure essential distillate of EBIL. Yes, my hackles are raised, this is essence de menacing, bien sur. It really reminds me of something in GC Smokestack, a sort of clean, dusky grittiness touched with that sharp bite of vetiver, and if there is wine in this, it's dry, dry, dry.

     

    Combines beautifully into the scent of scared religious fervor.

     

    Oh man. Yikes.


  12. I have discovered that my body chemistry enjoys pomegranate just as much as I do.

     

    Which, is unfortunate, as whenever a pomegranate containing oil touches it, I become One.

     

    One, with the pomegranate.

     

    Oh, the seediness.

     

    Oh, the multiparous inverted raspberryness.

     

    Dionysa started patchouli on me, but after just a few moments, it became on my skin identical to any other pomegranate BPAL I've attempted to try, with maybe just a little dirty whiff of something trying to break through.


  13. 13 is significant, whether you consider it lucky, unlucky or just plain odd. Many believe it to be unfortunate...

    ... because there were 13 present at the Last Supper.
    ... Loki crashed a party of 12 at Valhalla, which ended in Baldur's death.
    ... Oinomaos killed 13 of Hippodamia's suitors before Pelops finally, in his own shady way, defeated the jealous king.
    ... In ancient Rome, Hecate's witches gathered in groups of 12, the Goddess herself being the 13th in the coven.

    Concern over the number thirteen echoes back beyond the Christian era. Line 13 was omitted form the Code of Hammurabi.

    The shivers over Friday the 13th also have some interesting origins:

    ... Christ was allegedly crucified on Friday the 13th.
    ... On Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered the arrests of Jaques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, and sixty of his senior knights.
    ... In British custom, hangings were held on Fridays, and there were 13 steps on the gallows leading to the noose.

    To combat the superstition, Robert Ingersoll and the Thirteen Club held thirteen-men dinners during the 19th Century. Successful? Hardly. The number still invokes trepidation to this day. A recent whimsical little serial killer study showed that the following murderers all have names that total thirteen letters:

    Theodore Bundy
    Jeffrey Dahmer
    Albert De Salvo
    John Wayne Gacy

    And, with a little stretch of the imagination, you can also fit ”˜Jack the Ripper' and ”˜Charles Manson' into that equation.

    More current-era paranoia: modern schoolchildren stop their memorization of the multiplication tables at 12. There were 13 Plutonium slugs in the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Apollo 13 wasn't exactly the most successful space mission. All of these are things that modern triskaidekaphobes point to when justifying their fears.

    For some, 13 is an extremely fortuitous and auspicious number...

    ... In Jewish tradition, God has 13 Attributes of Mercy. Also, there were 13 tribes of Israel, 13 principles of Jewish faith, and 13 is considered the age of maturity.
    ... The ancient Egyptians believed that there were 12 stages of spiritual achievement in this lifetime, and a 13th beyond death.
    ... The word for thirteen, in Chinese, sounds much like the word which means “must be alive”.

    Thirteen, whether you love it or loathe it, is a pretty cool number all around.

    ... In some theories of relativity, there are 13 dimensions.
    ... It is a prime number, lucky number, star number, Wilson Prime, and Fibonacci number.
    ... There are 13 Archimedean solids.

    AND...
    ... There were 13 original colonies when the United States were founded.

    Says a lot about the US, doesn't it?

    In our paean to all the mysteries surrounding this enigmatic number, there are thirteen lucky and unlucky components, including white chocolate, dark chocolate, apple blossom, honeysuckle, frankincense, allspice, nutmeg, black tea, tonka, and sandalwood.

    I did a search for 'Thirteen' and 13, and I didn't see it come up amongst the search results. Apologies if there exists a thread already...

    So... whereas white label original thirteen was cocoa oranges, purple label was spicy cocoa clove, green label 13 actually is... chocolate apples, with a bit more creaminess than the prior two. There's a similar feel to the blend that is akin to the past incarnations of the scent - a touch more herbiness, some 'substantiality' to the scent beyond just cocoa, but it's most definitely an interesting mashup of a milky, creamy chocolate and what is like apple rind (not so 'juicy' per se, it reminds me of dried apples).

    So, cocoa mixed with some herbs that keep this in line with the other 13s, but blended up with dried green apples.

    Staying power is moderate on me and there's a decent waft. After about thirty minutes my skin has eaten most of the notes, it's mostly cocoa with a tiny dry bitterness to it.


  14. Au Bon Pain makes a cookie that I have eaten many, many times as a snack on the wards. It's called the 'Key Lime Sugar Cookie,' and it's a hefty, sprinkle-encrusted beast that tastes like a buttery shortbread cookie, yet also tastes very limey and citrussy. This perfume smells like that cookie tastes.

     

    Which, to me, also evokes the smell memory of it being 2:30 AM, I'm very tired and slamming down a cup of coffee and eating one or two of these instead of a proper meal, my hair is mussed up, I'm not able to smell like BPAL because I'm working, and my break ends in about two minutes.

     

    Wet, from the bottle, it's all a strange mishmash of bright lime hovering over a sugary, buttery bread/cake note, on my skin, it's almost as if I've layered two perfumes, one of Beth's mad foody ones, and one of her dapper gentleman's lime colognes/fougeres, and on me, they don't really 'come together' on the skin. However, as a joint fragrance, it smells totally like I've been indulging in cookies.

     

    If cookies were a drug, this would be the equivalent of a whiskey binge. I have the unmistakeable aroma of a torrid night with a few too many little tasty golden circles.


  15. I reviewed Ligur first. In reality, I tried Hastur first whilst decanting. The thing that struck me was how very dark this oil is. So dark. A glob of it sat in the pipette, taunting me, going 'yanno. you want to. do it.'

     

    Wet on my skin, this is remarkably sexy. Dark. Smooth. It's musky, but not in a fiery red musk, or in the way that blends incorporating several kinds of musk are. This is a cool, deep musk that is rounded out by the sweetness of labdanum, resinous, brings to mind very well polished black onyx.

     

    Whereas Ligur really takes a more twiggy, wood note, Hastur approaches 'dark and broody' from a resinous standpoint. He's sticky, just sweet enough to be wicked, but without the smoke and brimstone usually associated with demons.

     

    I'd call Hastur one of the best, more masculine but still very wearable sexy scents, one that commercial men's perfume only wished it could be, in its most wildest dreams.

     

    Try this if you like Iago but not Iago's vetiver, or if you like Beth's musky scents (like Fenris Wolf, Loviatar, Crowley) but without too much fire or red musk.


  16. Dude!

     

    Ligur is all sorts of scent memory awesome. I don't quite know if I could pull this off as a personal perfume (I'm sure coworkers would love it...). Wet, and from the bottle, it was pretty much one gigantic drop of vetiver, but once it hit the skin and was able to settle a bit, it brought to mind a ton of association memories.

     

    I'm thinking... wood chips scattered haphazardly in a makeshift trail through a bit of preserved Michigan, or jogging on a trail with my friend in North Carolina, or standing outside on vacation in Northern Michigan in the dead of winter, smelling the curls of woodsmoke wafting through the air. It's eerie how much this brings that to mind. Ligur smells of smoky mulch, potting material, gardening, hardware store gardening section, earth without being dirt, forest without being sweetly woodsy.

     

    Dark, charred, crackling campfire.

     

    And the ultimate clincher? With the drydown, this beings to have hints of the drydown of the first ever still unreleased blend I ever tried, Kweku Anansi, which immediately makes this ULTIMATE WIN.

     

    I really need to get my own full bottle. Or two. Srsly.


  17. I was hoping for glittery resins as the above reviewers gave glowing reviews, but I'm mostly just getting lilac. A really strong lilac, too. I think around the edges I can detect a little something golden, sticky, but it's just a hint before I get the strong 'pull' of lilac, and the Cross turns into a bright, very sweet floral on me. Maybe I have to try this again...

     

    The color I get from this is stark white. Which is very odd.


  18. Pwrhrrhrhhrhhr..r. Rose'd.

     

    Also... akin to above, after I dabbed a little on, I was like OH NO.

     

    But it is very beautiful, like Rose Cross (resinous rose) but it actually dries down to a less rambunctious rose on me.

     

    Seriously... Rosi-crucian... yeah. *smacks paw to head*


  19. This is the CD scent I was looking most forwards to trying, and I got a bottle unsniffed. It's mostly because the idea of swampy bog violetz really clinched it for me. Also, I've always wanted to wear captured souls. Neat.

     

    From the vial, it's not that violetty nor is it green or herby, it's definitely fresh, watery. It's got a very similar feel to the Tiki Blend Moana, but where Moana evolves towards a mildly salty, white subtle floral, Faeu stays misty and wet. It kind of smells like guava juice. citrus pulp, it's not cooling like peppermint, and I think if there is mint in this it is spearmint or watermint, some kind of less 'fresh and bracing' mint and more 'herbal grassy mint.' In terms of 'swampiness,' it really is what you'd think swamp mist would be - that filmy, breathy, steaming mist that hovers over the ground. There's not any of the dirt note I feel is present in blends like Penny Dreadful, Deep in Earth, all that. It's a scent that is glowy, transparent, that hovers in the swamp, but not in the ground of a swamp.

     

    The strangest thing though is I get absolutely no sensation of violet at all off my skin. That's odd, because I love violets and make an effort to snorfle them in blends whenever possible, and Faue stays this citrussy, misty thing, and I can't for the life of me locate the florals. Whrrf?

     

    GC similarz to Faeu, try: Nyarlathotep, R'Lyeh, Olokun, The Deep Ones.


  20. Parthenope... my decanter gave me her trading card - oh my, she's a naked green glowing girl. She escaped from Captain Kirk?

     

    P was on my 'secondary list' of CDs to try, along with Marge and Dai, because of several notes in the description that made me balk. This would be star jasmine, as jasmine is one of those notes that enjoys strangling the heck out of everything else and turning into single note lush, yet stark similarity on me. Yet, this is not at all what happens with Parthenope. In fact, it's very fitting to the astral or aquatic, floating green lady of the label.

     

    Oil itself is a rusty orange, in the vial I'd call it smelling of mostly the resinous, sappy bite of benzoin, and some night time, smooth, unassuming florals. No smack of jasmine yet. Wet, the jasmine is more apparent. The entire blend is musky powdery sweet, but so far the jasmine is not overtaking anything. I think the honeysuckle/jasmine combination lends the concoction a very sweet, feminine edge. There are no sharp corners on this scent. Underneath this luminous floral creeps the benzoin. The moss does not leap out and give her a gritty edge, it's just a little color (green!) dappled on her cheeks.

     

    Overall - this is a very potent oil, of the night floral category.


  21. *quizzical*

     

    I got a decant of this. In the vial, it smells like Gummy Savers, as acai tends to do. I put it on, and it's very nice, light, fruity, a touch of floral but no overpowering jasmine. About twenty minutes later, it smells like Dorian on me. Like, exactly the same drydown. I think it's the musk and tea. Maybe a nip of acai still very, very faint in the background but hullo, sugared musky tea.

     

    Frrrrah?

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