filigree_shadow

I have a decant somewhere of old Spooky, and I remembered liking it enough to hold on to the decant even though I honestly don't think I've ever worn it. When the resurrected version came out, I got a decant of it in case I liked the fresh version. Well, I do like it -- it smells like minty coconut with a vague rum undercurrent -- but whatever BPAL note smells like plastic on my skin is in this one. I've never been able to nail down exactly which note that is, but it seems to happen pretty frequently in foodie scents (although not always). So what I've got is a nice fresh peppermint over an odd synthetic-smelling coconut. Unfortunately this one didn't work out for me.

Sadly I don't really smell any chocolate in this, just lemon and green tea. Lots of lemon. It does smell quite zesty and fresh, and it seems like a good summertime scent... but I don't wear lemon scents.

Definitely dark and lusterless. Good for people who like resin scents that smell a bit sticky and sweet. This one has a definite edge to it -- it's not entirely resinous. There's something additional in there that smells like a harsh herb (is that hemlock?). It's a bit too masculine for me, but I think my husband might like it, so I'll hand it over to him. ETA: Yep, he likes it. He's keeping the decant. I advised him to take it easy when he wears it though because WHEW! Strong stuff!

This is why you should always try whatever BPAL perfumes you can get your hands on. I don't like ANY of those notes except tonka. Not a fan of metallics or ozone, mint is meh, and I actively avoid lemongrass. I didn't expect to like this. But this ended up being my favorite Phoenix for this year. The lemongrass is sweet and soft, not harsh and bug-candley at all. I don't really smell anything that seems metallic or electric (like ozone)... just soft and a little earthy with that interesting lemongrass over the top. Fresh and pleasant, and nice in the summertime. It doesn't smell like a winter scent to me -- definitely summertime.

This smells like a kind of acidic orange on me, with the ambers going powdery. Oops. My skin has trouble with a few of those notes, so I didn't really have high hopes for this one anyway. I like the overall feel of it, though -- it does smell pretty golden. I can tell it's my skin chemistry that's botching up the whole thing. I bet it smells lovely on someone else.

This smells a bit like violets to me too. I like the moonflower and pear -- it smells sheer and sparkly. It's a bright, sweet, smooth scent. Very reminiscent of silver. I like this scent, so I've worn it a couple of times. Whenever I wear it, I enjoy it for the first hour or so, but it's kinda strong, and I get a little tired of smelling it after a while. Except it doesn't go away. For hours. This is one of those strange perfumes for me that's one that I like... but in small doses. So it ends up being something I don't really wear.

I usually try to avoid gardenia, but I was taken in by the "rice paper." That sounded interesting to me. ... and it is! I can certainly smell something that smells like what I assume rice paper is supposed to be, and I do like it. Sadly the gardenia is just a bit too overwhelming for me, though. It does tend to be a loud note on my skin, which is mostly why I avoid it. To be honest, it does smell good, it's just too strong. The gardenia/rice paper combo is a good one, though. If you like that smooth rice-y scent and are looking for a pretty tropical floral, give this one a try.

When the Bards came out, I wasn't sufficiently interested in any of them to hunt down a decant circle in order to try several of them, but I had my eye on this one. Generally anything with the patchouli note is going to spark my interest because I usually like BPAL's patchouli. (Except not the red patchouli. That one is not my friend.) I finally got a decant of it just this week! I got a nice patchouli-oakmoss scent when I first put it on. Oakmoss isn't a note I generally seek out, but I definitely like it in combination with a couple of other notes, and patchouli is one of them. I like them together. The orris root gives it a nice dry overtone without being overtly floral, and although bergamot and neroli are pretty bright notes, they're not turning this into a bright/sweet scent. It stays warm, dry, and a bit earthy. Every once in a while I get whiffs of sweet currant, but the overall scent seems to be mainly coming from oakmoss, musk, patch, etc. -- the darker notes. I definitely like this. My only issue is that I already have a bunch of BPAL patchouli scents, and I'm not sure where this one fits in on the do-I-need-a-bottle scale. I'll have to do some side-by-side testing. Mmm, that sounds like fun.

Well, crap. I wasn't paying attention when this came out and totally missed it. Now I've just gotten a decant of it to test, and I loooooove it. It's stunningly beautiful. Possibly a bit more "traditional" of a scent than most BPAL perfume wearers usually go for, and actually more perfumey of a scent than I usually go for too. BUT... I make an exception for the exceptional. And this is one of those. It smells soft, dark, a bit floral, slightly mossy, and just oh so lovely. Sophisticated, feminine, and surprisingly sexy. Now to hunt down a bottle.

Huge blast of peppermint there at the beginning, but that's pretty much what you'd expect anyway, right? When it's dry it seems like a fairly even balance of peppermint and lavender. If I wasn't sniffing this right now, I wouldn't be able to imagine what that combination smells like. Well, it smells like a very blue lavender (not the herbal harsh kind) with a nose-tingling minty coldness over the top. It's kind of refreshing and calming at the same time. Not the sort of scent I'd normally wear as perfume, but I have to admit that the tingly mint and the soothing lavender are having something of an aromatherapy-style effect on me after sniffing it for a few minutes. That's kinda nice.

Well, after the heartbreak of Lamia (which did NOT smell good on me and I wish it would have), I am incredibly pleased to have found this one. I really wasn't sure what to expect from this because honey often goes wonky on me. It's behaving itself nicely in this. It smells slightly herbal, but not in a harsh way, in a fresh way. It does actually smell a little blue and smooth. I love Neverwhere, and Door was one of my favorite characters, so I'm very pleased that this one works on me. I'll have to try wearing it for a full day before deciding whether I want a bottle -- it's not the sort of scent I usually wear but it's one that might just grow on me.

I should have really liked this. All those notes sound awesome. I was looking forward to it like you wouldn't believe. But what happened when it touched my skin? An artificial, weird, plastic-y coconut smell. I am not happy about this at all. I can't really even smell anything else in it because I can't get past that weird fake coconut part. Dammit. Stupid skin. I want the kind of skin chemistry where this smells glorious and I can wear ones like O. But no, that's not what I have.

Mostly blackberries, with a little bit of a cakey scent. On me, that's the way it starts, and that's the way it stays. Blackberry tends to be a fairly overwhelming note on me -- it's one of those ones that's so strong that when I wear a blackberry scent, it's all I smell for 4 hours. But I do like this. I've kept my bottle ever since Convergence. Mostly I'm hanging it on to it for sentimental reasons (going to Convergence was a nice vacation), but I probably would only need about an imp or so.

I guess I smell some jasmine in this, and a little bit of dark haze, and I suppose those are berries but it kinda smells more like plum to me. It's hard to me to tell exactly what Venom smells like because when I sniff it pretty much the only thing I think is that it smells an awful lot like Poison, which I wore for several years about 20 years ago. Because of that, it is instantly a familiar, comforting scent. I definitely like it. If I could get a bottle of this, I sure would. I've had this on my wishlist for like 4 years now, and nary an additional drop has come my way (except for that initial decant I somehow got a hold of). You used to see a couple of bottles on eBay now and then but they were all out of my price range. I had been hoping to find some, but I've given up by now. It's okay... I can always get a bottle of Poison.

Ash and palm? Er... this is pretty much just vetiver on me. Except for something that reminds me slightly of ... um... I hate to say this, but toilet cleaner. Are my scrubbing bubbles palm-scented? Maybe so. There are very few BPAL perfumes that just really don't work at all on me. This poor little guy is one of them.

I was expecting this scent to be loud, but it's not. It's soft. I can smell lavender in it, but it's not too strong. Maybe a wee bit of other things, but it seems like mostly a soft wood with a soft lavender. It definitely does seem like a lazy scent. I like it. Sweet and a little floaty.

This is a very silky soap that smells strongly of honey to me. I used it without looking at what notes were in it, and to be honest the only scent my nose could pick out was the honey. Specifically, it smells like BPAL's honey. (I have used other soaps that have a honey scent, but I felt like this one was noticeably the BPAL honey note.) The scent level is pretty much perfect for me -- I can definitely smell it while I'm using the soap, but it's not so loud on my skin that it interferes with my perfume. I feel like I can put on any perfume after using this soap and I won't have to worry about the scents clashing. That's a good thing, in my book. If you're a big fan of BPAL honey perfumes, definitely give this soap a try. I think you'll really like it.

I don't usually wear perfume that smells "green," (eg, I might have an imp of Embalming Fluid, but I haven't worn it in at least a year) but I often like that sort of scent in bath products. This is a great one. I enjoyed it every single day that I used it. It seemed to be more strongly scented than most of the Villainess soaps I've tried (and believe me, I've tried a LOT of them), and the lather was excellent. I have dry skin to start with, and it didn't dry out my skin at all. The scent of the soap did lightly linger on my skin for quite a while after I used it, too. (To me, it smells a bit muskier than the Embalming Fluid perfume, which I personally don't think is a bad thing at all.) My only issue with this one was that after being in the shower for 15 minutes, enveloped in this scent, the only perfume I wanted to wear was Dorian. Usually I like to try to wear different perfumes every day, but using this soap scent put me in a strong Dorian mindset every single time I used it. So although I definitely want another bar of it, I'll have to cut it into smaller pieces and use the pieces from time to time, rather than using up the whole bar all in a row. Otherwise I'll just put on Dorian every day for a month!

Very sweet tropical floral. Pretty... on someone else. Unfortunately this is one of the ones that has that weird artificial plastic smell when it's on my skin. It's all right -- I have Vasakasajja for my favorite tropical floral, and that one smells amazing on me.

Smells kinda glassy. Like Sea of Glass. It's not that rainy electric-charged sort of metallic ozone scent. It's kind of like dryer sheets plus ozone. I tend to like the ones I describe as being "like dryer sheets," and I like this one. The ozone gives it an interesting twist, but the base underneath smells comforting. Plus there's coldness over the top. My husband usually likes the aquatic/ozone ones, so I let him try it. He said he wants to keep the decant. I guess he likes it!

On me this is strong cypress, with a little bit of incense smokiness. It reminds me of church. And it's strrrrrrong. Three hours later, it's entirely cypress. That's all that's left. This is something that I'd like to smell on someone else. It's a pleasant scent, and I enjoy being around it... for a little while. It's not something I'd personally want to smell for 4+ hours non-stop.

Sweet, green, and masculine. It definitely smells like cologne to me, and not something you'd expect a woman to wear. Plus it smells sort of like green powder on me after about an hour. Initially, though, I liked it, so I asked my husband to try it. He said it was okay, but it wasn't his favorite (he tends to like ones with leather better than ones that smell like herbs). True, it does smell a little harsh for his personality. So I guess this one won't work for us.

For some reason, in my head, I get this one mixed up with Fearful Pleasure. I keep thinking this is the one I didn't like that well. It's not -- this one is fine. Tart, sweet, pink candy. I have no problems with this scent, it's just not something I'd wear. I prefer smoothness over sweetness, generally. But it does smell good.

It smells strange and powdery at first, but then mostly like "blood" with a sourness from the whiskey. There's a smoothness underneath it that reminds me of caramel... I guess that's the barley and beer part of it. I have to admit that I kind of like it. The whiskey that's giving it a sour overtone is the only thing I don't like about it. The sweet smoothness is very appealing, but I'm just not fond of that whiskey scent. That does seem to go away over time, though, and what's left is a powdery sweet dragon's blood type of scent with an atypical smoothness beneath it. Not bad at all.

Doesn't work on me. I thought that for SURE something with sandalwood and vanilla would be absolutely amazing on me, and I was really looking forward to this. But... no. It smells like sweet pea or something. That super sweet kind of chalky scent. No creamy vanilla, no dry lovely sandalwood, just that almost piercingly strange sweet-pea-like powdery scent. And it's strong. I did wear this to school one time, and a friend of mine who knows about all my various perfume oils told me that he likes this one -- he thought this was one of the good ones. I just don't like the scent of it, though. I'm seriously really sad that this one didn't work for me.