miamaslegi

Hee! I have unintentionally applied oil to my nostrils through being a bit over-enthusiastic in sniffing my wandcaps!

Hi Magycmyste! I wandcap all the bottles that I know I'll definitely keep - for me, it's easier to apply using a wandcap and I don't worry as much about spilling oils. I usually order mine from E. D. Luce, too, and have been very happy with them, thought lately I've been ordering wandcaps from the Lab. By broken, do you mean that the glass wands have come out of the caps? It should be possible, theoretically, to glue the wands back in. I probably wouldn't, however, because I don't know what types of glues would stand up to the oils or what the glues could possibly do to the scents of the oils. I'd just order more, honestly, but that's just me!

There's an oil by Solstice Scents that I'd love to find a BPAL similar to: Lace Draped Spectre - Madagascar Vanilla, Baby's Breath, Pink Carnation & Green Pepper Essential Oil To me, the combination of the creaminess of the vanilla and the spiciness of the carnation and green peppercorn is absolutely wonderful. I'm stocking up on Lace Draped Spectre as it's apparently being discontinued, but I'd still love to find a similar BPAL, if anyone knows of one. Also, just for the record, White Chocolate with Mate, Hazelnut, and Banana Cream from this year's Lupers smells very similar to Solstice Scents Nightgown (Vanilla, White Chocolate, Tuberose & Tiare Flowers). Well, to my nose, anyway. I've worn only BPAL for so many years that now when I order oils from another e-tailer or am given a bottle of "regular" perfume, I feel like I'm cheating on the lab! Edited because I apparently can't spell worth a fiddle.

Yay! I'm so glad I could be of help.

Hi Mimsical! I haven't tried giving anyone recommendations yet (heck, I've barely posted at all!), but when I was reading your post, the paragraph above caught my attention and several scents popped into my mind. I'm going to stick with general catalog scents and I really hope I can give you some good suggestions! If any one scent makes me think of night, the moon, snow, and ice, it's Black Forest. It's a chilly evergreen scent (like "an evil Christmas tree" my roomate says) - when I smell it, I get images of someone lost in a vast coniferous forest blanketed in snow, trying to find their way by the light of a slim sliver of moon while shadowy, menacing things lurk just out of sight amongst the black trunks. Ultraviolet has similar icy, nocturnal associations for me. The notes I pick out are violet and eucalyptus - violets always conjure up nighttime images for me and the eucalyptus gives it a chilly edge, like a beautiful posy of delicate purple blooms encased in ice. The water-scents are some of my favorites. Calico Jack puts me in mind of a pirate ship - salty, tangy sea air with nose-tingling pepper, cinnamon, and other spices in the dark hold of the ship. Hurricane is lovely - a similar clear, tangy sea water scent but with the addition of the green, smoky darkness of vetiver (which is probably my favorite single note). It really does smell like the dark, menacing side of water. Jolly Roger is, again, the same sort of salty, tangy, sea smell but mixed with bay rum, like the bay rum aftershave I remember my great grandfather wearing - sort of masculine, but really lovely. Undertow is a dark, cold, watery scent - like a river running still under a thick coat of ice. That image really captures my imagination. The juniper and mint give the fragrance its coldness and darkness, while the lotus softens things up and really gives that gentle, watery quality. As far as rabbits go, I immediately thought of The White Rabbit, predictably enough. It's a soft, creamy scent, like milk and honey and vanilla with a touch of tea - to my nose, anyways. A sort of cozy, soft, fuzzy, snuggly scent that actually reminds me of a sweet bun-bun I once knew. Bewitched is a purple scent, to me. Purple and green. It smells like a blackberry cane in the middle of an herb patch on a hot summer evening - warm and sweet and purple and earthy and green all at the same time. Ok, to throw in one Limited Edition scent, I'd have to recommend My Happy Day (it's still live at the moment - it's one of the Pickman Gallery: A Tremulous Song scents on the Limited Edition page of the BPAL website). If the essence of the color purple could be distilled into a scent, My Happy Day would be it. It's fruity and sweet and very, very purple - it's also fizzy smelling. It's a fruity, bubbly, happy, fizzy, very berry purple scent that is a sheer joy to wear. I love to bake, too, and that made me think of Bread-and-Butter-Fly. It's a warm, almost yeasty, sweet, buttery smell, like a freshly baked loaf of rich, sugary-sweet bread. It's hard to restrain myself from licking my wrists when I wear it! There are other sweet, foody, rich BPAL scents that the chef in me loves like Sudha Segara, Dana O'Shee, and Hecate, but Bread-and-Butter-Fly is probably my favorite and the most bread/pastry/cake smelling to me. Your mention of singing with a choir immediately put me in mind of Cathedral. It's a solemn, ecclesiastical scent that makes me think about a midnight mass in a massive old stone church with a choir in the background. It's a dry, resinous, incensy, but warm sort of smell that is, to me, both distant and yet at the same time comforting, like an unexpected gentle hug from a cold, distant relative. Ah, fountain pens and academia! I was just recommended Miskatonic University - when I tried it just a few days ago, it immediately made me think of an old library or office. It's a lovely, rich coffee fragrance with a bit of a sort of dry paper/wood smell. I can't help but think of steaming mugs of the bitter black brew, fascinating old books, fountain pens, tweed blazers with leather elbow patches, and (for some reason) the big, brittle, yellowed pages of an amazing old herbarium I was lucky enough to get to spend a day examining. I really hope that my recommendations can be of use to you, Mimsical. I will warn you, however, that once you get drawn into the world of BPAL, it becomes a marvelous addiction! Cheers!

Thanks, zewtsuit! I actually just received an imp of Miskatonic U. in my last order, but I haven't tried it yet. I know what I'm going to go do now!

Good morrow, everyone! I'm a bit nervous about this, as this is my . . . mmm, second post, I think. I've been a big fan of BPAL since my first order in, ah, 2005, I believe it was, but just joined up here last year. This thread really has intrigued me - I'm quite curious to see what scents other folks would recommend for me! I'm going to be really very lazy here - I'll say a bit about myself and then I'll paste in what I wrote on my "About Me" page, if that's alright. I'm a 32 year old woman, I was born and raised in the southern US, I'm extremely shy/introverted, I like to think I'm intelligent but know I'm probably not, I enjoy working word puzzles, number puzzles and jigsaw puzzles, I'm not creative in the least, and my About Me page says: "My interests are as follows: Learning things (chemistry, geology, physics, ecology, dendrology, entomology, meteorology, astronomy, history, anything vaguely pertaining to self-sufficiency, solar power, small engine repair, trivia and facts of all sorts, and basically anything I don't already know - which is quite a lot, actually ...) Doing things (trying to become a chippy autodidact/polymath/renaissance woman/jill-of-all-trades, reading nonfiction books on science and history, reading pre-1900 novels [Victor Hugo has my heart at the moment], cooking [especially dutch oven and open-fire/hearth cooking], knitting, crocheting, sewing [mostly by hand as my sewing machine is on the fritz], gardening, canning and fermenting, playing card/dice/board games [and Arkham Horror when I can find other folks who want to play], re-purposing old things ["upcycling" sounds slightly ridiculous], amassing old cookbooks and dishes, improving my vocabulary, hiking, gardening, memorizing Romantic/Victorian poetry, developing a working homestead out in the sticks, watching scientific and historical documentaries, camping, improving my Latin and Esperanto and math skills, visiting the library regularly, playing too many games on my roommate's XBox, corresponding with folks having similar interests [hint, hint]...) Liking things (my wonderful and talented man, aprons, cold weather, folklore, fairy tales, hunting boots, history in general, Viking feasts, old books and papers, attics, inkwells, comfy long skirts and overalls, the woods, snow, ecru and green and blue, handkerchiefs, steamer trunks, crocheting doilies and bedspreads and tablecloths, a good steak, moths, mountains, glaciers, hot cocoa and really good Assam or Scottish Breakfast tea with milk, bats [let's combat whitenose!], big dogs and little kittens, Peep Show [not peep shows], fireplaces, fountain pens, well-written letters, Austen and Bronte and Dickens and Trollope novels, real furs, real food, farm animals, sturdy furniture, libraries, dusty old natural history specimens, Baroque music, ancient Greek and Roman anything, Albrecht Durer and Hans Holbein and Gustav Dore, British comedy [especially David Mitchell], massive trees, beetles, galleons, walruses, thatched roofs, sloths, moose, tall bookcases with ladders, stone walls, gentlemen scientists, cassowaries, hiking sticks, caves, swift cold rivers, notebooks and bins and forms and office supplies, Rasputina, Scott & the Worst Journey in the World [and most all other polar exploration, ie. Franklin, Greeley, Mawson, Shackelton, Nansen, Amundsen, etc.], everything that Lovecraft ever wrote, Chap-Hop, red velvet drapes and white lace curtains, the Spanish Treasure Fleet and the East India Company, the history of the British Empire, The Golden Age of Piracy, Benjamin Franklin, butter churns and crocks, hair pins/sticks/forks, Numberwang ...) Disliking things (religion of any sort, plastics, politics, superstitions, most modern "literature", most modern "music", most everything on television, hot weather, fruit of any sort, pink and yellow and orange, the ocean [sea monsters, yes?], little yappy dogs, children, sitcoms, sweets, email, slurpy and/or licky sounds, microwaves, shorts, aluminum, cooking on a parlor stove [i'm sorry, my love, truly], toucans, American History...)" That should be enough to get a glimpse (of sorts) of my personality, right? If anyone has made it this far, I'd be quite interested to see what scents you all would recommend! Thank you all so much! A