filigree_shadow

This is lovely! Not overly floral, but a bright, happy scent. I love the mandarin and patchouli combination that I smell when it's wet. On me, usually mandarin is pretty strong at first and then it fades out completely, but it seems to be sticking around in this one. The honeysuckle threatens to become too loud at times but it never quite gets there, and the beautiful peach blossom really blooms when it's dry. It ends up being mainly a patchouli and peach blossom scent, kind of dry, bright, deep, and sweetly pretty. I had been hoping to get Passion but I am inordinately pleased that I got this one. Also, my husband loves it and was very sad to discover that he is too late to try to get another bottle of it from the Lab. The patchouli is much stronger on him, and it really doesn't smell floral at all on his skin.

So, Blood Lotus means it has lotus in it, right? I'm having a difficult time detecting any lotus in this -- it doesn't really smell like lotus usually does on me (which is kind of bubblegummy). Whatever else is in this makes it smell smoky and a bit hazy -- it's much darker than lotus usually is. It has a lovely soft sweetness to it. Very pretty blend. This one works on me a lot better than most of the Garden scents do.

Red musk is my favorite musk because it smells so... um, lusty. The patchouli makes it deep and rich, the ylang ylang gives it a sweetness, and myrrh makes the whole thing go Mmmmmm. Already have a 5ml of this, and I love wearing it.

The lavender is pretty strong, but it's soft and not as sharp as usual. It smells nice with the wisteria and soft rose. But... It's late at night and I've been watching a sad show, and this scent is making me even sadder. It smells like loss and tears to me. Not the scent to wear if you're battling midwinter depression.

This is mainly ozone on me with the barest bit of of incense. It's kind of a light scent; it's barely there. This is more of my husband's kind of scent than mine -- and he likes this one.

I'm not sure exactly what this smells like. Kind of gentle herbs with some spices, and something even a little creamy underneath. It smells a tad sour on me for some reason, so I let my husband try it. On him it smelled very feminine. I still can't tell what's in this, even after smelling it on him. I can see this being a good meditation blend; it smells like a good calming and grounding scent

Lots of almond at first, but I like it more than I usually do, probably because of the vanilla and cinnamon. The almond fades out to take the background when the scent is dry. This is an unusual scent, sweet but spicy too, and it seems a little bit foody. It dries down into a rich, slightly spicy, almost creamy scent. The heliotrope is lovely in this. Hmm, I wonder why I don't wear this more often. I really do like it a lot.

I'm not getting much cherry from this at all. I'm not really sure what stephanotis smells like, but I'm familiar with lilies, and I smell a different floral in there, so that must be the stephanotis. It's not bad, but I personally like the lilies better. This one has more of that heady floral scent that I'm not as fond of. I already have several floral blends that I like better than this one, so this one goes to swaps.

At first it smells like sweet tea, but then the herbs kick in and it starts to smell like cut grass. Pretty grass, but still too grassy for me. It's also kind of aquatic too, for some reason -- not like the usual aquatic, but sort of dewy.

I have no problems with the scent of Pele. It's a very clean-smelling scent to me, and the ginger and soft florals are a nice combination. The problem I have with it is that it is SO faint on my skin that I can barely smell it at all. I've tried it several times. Once I even put on a LOT. It's just hardly there at all. I'd probably wear it if it were stronger because it's an interesting scent.

Suspiro is a pretty floral. Sweet and slightly fruity from the white plum, with lovely lily notes. It's a very white scent in my opinion, lovely and kind of breathy. When it's dry it seems to be mainly a lily scent, which is just fine for me because although I like lilies a lot I don't care for jasmine. Anyone who likes lily scents should give this a try.

Sometimes night-blooming jasmine is a lot better for me than the usual jasmine. And, apparently, sometimes not. This one smells exactly like the kind of jasmine that I don't like, and it's much too powerfully jasmine-scented for me. It gets to be more tolerable when it's dry, but I have so many BPAL scents that I don't need to ever wear any that I tolerate rather than ones that I love or even simply like. So this one's going to swaps.

For a scent called Bluebeard, I was expecting something more swarthy and swashbuckly than this. This smells more crisp than I was expecting. The vetiver keeps it from being too floral, but it definitely doesn't drown out the lavender and violet. The scent this is reminding me of is on the tip of my tongue but I can't place it. It's a kind of food, believe it or not. It's something like the clear-ish squishy orange-flavored filling you sometimes get in the middle of chocolates. I have no idea why I would be smelling that in this blend, but I do smell something citrusy in this. Maybe it's from the white musk, which has a tendency to smell lemony on me. Mostly this seems to be a combination of lavender and vetiver, and since my husband likes lavender a lot more than I do, I'll be handing this imp over to him. I bet it'll smell good on him, too.

To my nose, this is a very traditional cologne scent. However, it has a deep richness to it that you can't buy in a department store. I think it's the moss and mint combination that makes it smell like cologne, but the ambergis and sandalwood make it more interesting. This smells pretty good on me -- it's a little bit too minty for me personally -- but it smells fantastic on my husband. He has a big bottle of it. I always love it when he wears this one.

It smelled boozy to me at first, but then it changed to a spicy smoke. It still has a rum undertone, but there's a lot more smoke in this than what I expected. I like the scent, but this is more like the kind of thing my husband would wear. He likes scents like this more than I do.

Herbal and medicinal. Then powdery. I would never wear this as perfume, and I'm turned off enough by the scent of it that I don't want to try to use it for anything else, either.

Bat-winged, flame-eyed, and possessed of an unearthly, perfect beauty: the Daughters of Lilith, the Succubi, invade the dreams of men and lie with them in rapturous, unholy sexual union. The scent of their skin is bittersweet, dusky and terminally seductive. Mimosa, orange blossom, neroli and bergamot with a drop of sweet clove. Well, this is kind of an odd scent. Very orangey and kind of earthy too -- there's something dark about this scent, which surprises me given the notes. It's also going powdery on me. I'm not really sure I can handle this much orange in a perfume, and I'm not hugely fond of that powdery scent either. This isn't bad, but it's just not my fave.

Woah, I get a whole lot of cinnamon at first. As it's drying the violet comes out, kind of sweet and smoky. This smells really "perfumey" to me; it has that sort of stinging property that I normally attribute to the alcohol in perfumes. I think maybe it's the frankincense that's making it do that. I think the cinnamon is just a little too much for me here. I like violet okay, but I like it best when it's creamy. The spicy/incensy violet isn't working as well for me.

At first I smell a whole lot of vetiver, but as it's drying the leather comes out nice and strong. The musk seems to be going a little powdery on me, but since this seems like an extremely masculine scent I don't think it really matters what it does on me. This imp is going straight over to my hubby. I like this scent a lot. I hope he wears it.

Hm, I wonder why I haven't tried this one before. I bet all the flowers were scaring me off... but this is a very pretty scent. It's doing that slighly sour thing that rose does on me sometimes, but I don't really mind it in this. The tea with amber and patchouli is a lovely combination, deep and earthy. The flowers give it a more feminine feel than the earthy scents usually have. Very intriguing. I like this one.

It's a boozy vanilla at first, but when it dries it's a robust leather scent with that vanilla/tonka sweetness to it. Still boozy underneath. This is a great scent -- it was one of my first 10mls. When I first got the 10ml I thought it was a different scent because it smelled like coconut. The imp I have is older, and I can tell the sweetness is from that boozy vanilla combination, but I don't really smell any coconut. So the 10ml has been sitting in my BPAL box aging for quite a while now. Like I said: Great scent! This is one of my favorites.

I'm not sure who or what I was in past lives, but I definitely feel like I've met some people I've known before. I also think I haven't met some of them again yet... there are times when I feel like I'm missing someone important who should be with me.

Heh heh. I was going to say something very similar to what you said in a blog post a couple of days ago, but I chickened out and deleted the post. I totally agree. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. At one point on the forums there were a few people saying really rude things in the update thread on the night of the huge Carnaval Diabolique introduction. It was the night when the price increase was taking effect, too. Beth put the update up a few hours before usual -- and with it the price increases -- and three or four people complained that they didn't have a chance to order their bottles at the cheaper price before the update went live (even though Beth had said the prices were going up several days in advance, so they had had time), and therefore Beth had bad business practices and wasn't honoring her "commitment" to her customers not to raise her prices until midnight or some arbitrary time that the complainers thought it was supposed to be. One of the complainers said that she shouldn't be yelled at by mods just because she had "the guts" to complain about it. I responded to her that I didn't think it took guts to say what she did, I thought it was very bad form, and I told her why. She never responded to me, so thankfully it never escalated into an argument. But in that post I pointed out that often I sort of bite my lip and wait for a mod to come along and say something because I feel like it's not my place. Or mostly because I'm too chicken to possibly get involved in conflict. But there have been MANY times I've wanted to tell someone off for posting rude or inconsiderate or mean things... but I hardly ever do it. It makes me kind of feel bad for the mods that I wait for them to do the dirty work, so to speak. I'm like that in real life too. I sit and wait for someone in authority to come around and tell the person to knock it off. I'm afraid that one of these days all this pent up frustration is going to overcome me and I'll just blow up.

Imp smells a little bit boozey to me when it's wet, kind of like a peach wine. But as it's drying that goes away and what's left is kind of a golden musky scent with some peach behind it. It's not hugely peachy when it's dry, but it still keeps that sweetness. The patchouli is a good foundation for the scent -- gives it depth. All in all it's a little bit too perfumey for me personally, which is why I never ordered a bottle of it. But I do like the scent.

This is an exceptionally strong scent -- one little swipe with an imp wand and it's almost overpowering. The vetiver isn't as strong as I thought it would be; I think the black myrrh is the prominent note. It's really hazy and dark, a little bit smoky. It's just like it's described: thick, dark, sluggish, and heavy. When it's dry I don't think I can even smell any vetiver any more, just myrrh. It seems to get a little sweeter over time. I think this would be great for layering with some other blends to tone them down a little.