tartsquid

I'm mostly getting sweet, candied fruits from this, mixed with a little bit of vanilla and occasionally the faintest touch of something herbal. It's very sweet but not overpoweringly so, and doesn't seem to have a great deal of throw. The grapefruit is the strongest fruit that I can smell but it's not bitter at all. This is by far my favorite of the moons this year!

This has become one of my favorite GC blends. The most prominent notes are dragon's blood and spiced wine, along with a lighter berry note. It smells candy sweet yet spicey, not quite like red hot candies but similar. There's also a subtle metallic tang that I can detect every so often when I put my wrist to my nose.

The first time that I tried this I was immediately turned off by it. The notes that I made on my spreadsheet say that it smells like "dirty cherry cough drops", and I do remember that it was very sharp and unpleasant to my nose. However, I pulled it out of the box and decided to give it another try tonight, and I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised. I can smell the faintest hint of cherries and wine covered by a mix of vanilla and clove that almost smells like cocoa to my nose. It reminds me of a sweeter Tell Tale Heart. The sharp, medicinal note is completely gone and the scent that has replaced it is sweet yet with a touch of something deeper and mysterious. I can tell that, when worn at a time when it works with my skin, this will definitely become one of my favorite blends.

I'm going to have to wait and decide exactly how I feel about this blend. So far I'm a little disappointed because the vanilla in Underpants isn't quite the rich vanilla of two of my favorite blends, Tombstone and Snake Oil. Instead it's a dustier, lighter vanilla like that of Antique Lace. This actually smells almost exactly like Antique Lace with a faint woodsy note. No cake and no cream, sadly. I do think that I'll decant a couple of imps and hang onto the rest in hopes that it ages well or will smell a bit different on a different day. Edit: A few months laterand I've noticed some subtle changes in the oil - it smells a lot nicer and richer on my skin that it did before. I'm glad I have some to age even longer because it does seem to get better with time.

I had high hopes for this because I love apples and lemon but alas it instantly turned into soapy lemon and rose on my skin and I didn't keep it on long enough to see if it morphed because it was making me queasy. Sometimes skin chemistry is just the oddest thing.

Dee was something that I wanted to try based solely on the fact that I am a huge geek for 16th Century literature and history. However, I found it a bit too masculine for me, since I'm a fan of fruity and sugary floral scents. I put a bit on my boyfriend instead and it smelled much better on him and he really liked it. There is a soft note of leather and a sort of dusty note overtop of the wood and leather scent. This did evoke the feeling of an old library to me, so that's a "yay!" (I immediately connected this scent in my head with the Magdalen College library in Oxford ).

Cinnamon had me a bit scared because Three Witches turned me into an altoid, but Mercury redeemed cinnamon for me. When I first put it on it smelled herby and sort of metalic. The lavender was there and just a hint of spice. The cinnamon comes out a lot during the drydown but isn't over powering. This seems like a head-clearing sort of scent. I can see it as something that I put on in order to focus. I like it but it's not an every day sort of scent for me.

This is the first GC scent that I've put on and immediately known that I had to buy a big bottle. This smells like spiced apricot jam. The cloves are very sweet and the apricot is juicy but not overpowering. It does kind of remind me of a scented candle but is much better. I want to lick my arm. It seems to have good throw and stays strong on my skin, which is good since oils seem to quickly fade on me.

I got an imp of this to test before deciding whether or not to buy a bottle and statue. When it's first on me it smells strongly of burning wood. It gradually dries down to a spicey plum mixed with smokey incense that smells very rich and deep. I liked the scent a lot but it seemed too heavy for me - just a little dab was strong enough for my roommate to ask "what's that smell?".

I, too have been drawn in by the sugared sweetness of La Fee Verte. In the bottle it smells very green and herby. On it starts off smelling a bit like lemon and powdered sugar with a tinge of herbs. Dry it smells like honey, vanilla, lemon and sugar. It's incredibly sweet but soft enough not to be overpowering. Initially I wasn't too impressed with it but after the dry down started I just had to go order Balthazar and his big bottle of this.

My main thought here is OMG a floral that works on me! In the bottle: smells a bit like candy, sugary and sweet with a whiff of lily. Wet: soft, non-spicey lily. Dry down: this starts picking up a sort of candied orange scent to compliment the lilies. They work very well together. The candy scent stays strong as does the lily. They compliment each other very well and I'm thrilled that my skin doesn't throw the lily to the forefront to overpower everything else like it usually does with floral scents. I'd call this a floral for people who don't like florals. I'm thinking of getting a bigger bottle myself.

I'm learning that I should avoid scents that are predominately floral. All I'm getting here is jasmine even after it's been on my skin for almost an hour.

In the bottle: I'm picking up something very bitter and not very pleasant but with an underlying foral note. Wet: immediately turns to floral without the bitterness, which is a good thing because I didn't really care for the bottle smell. Dry down: My skin is really amping up the floral, but it's not an unpleasant, overwhelming floral. I agree that it smells sort of like a juicy floral - I'm guessing that's cactus flower. I don't seem to be getting anything other than floral though. Two hours later the cocoa never really showed up at all. The cactus flower started to fade as rose took over and this ended up just being a pretty rose blend on me. I was hoping that it would have the cocoa note to prevent it from being just a boring floral scent, but unfortunately my skin seems to amp up floral notes.

In the bottle: Fruity and candyish. Wet: rich fruit that is quickly joined by dirt and earth tones. Dry down: the dirt softens a bit and blends with the fruit, which becomes sweet but not overpoweringly so. I can definitely smell the pomengranate and the red currant lurks a bit behind. Slowly an incense note comes into play, blending well with the other notes. This is a really beautiful scent and I'm afraid that it's not a good thing that I'm loving it so much since it's hard to get a bottle of. This smells very sophisticated to me and I love the sweetness of the fruit interacting with the incense and myrrh. The rose never comes out for me, but I'm not really complaining about that. The earth scent fades out a bit and I do wish it had stayed because without it I smell the incense a lot more. The boy remarked that I smell like a headshop.

In the bottle: smells very intriguing! The cinnamon note is strong but the clove and pepper is definitely there. Wet: Strong cinnamon. Reminds me of cinnamon altoids. Drydown: Still very strongly cinnamon. I waited over an hour hoping for some clove to come out but I still smell nothing but cinnamon. I like cinnamon but I was hoping for something else to compliment the scent, espcially since I like cloves. I layered a little with Red Lantern and found out that I liked that a lot, so I will be hanging on to my imp even though I'm not particularly excited about this scent by itself.

In the bottle: All my nose can pick out is a very strong floral that seems to be jasmine or maybe even lily (I have an imp of Cobra Lily and these smell similar in the bottle to me, but I am very new to all of thise ) and nothing else. Wet: JASMINE. Wow, it kind of reeks of a very strong floral note even though I only put a drop on my skin. Dry down: The florals are still very strong but a slightly spicey, fruity scent creeps in. After a while the strong floral fades (yay!) and I get the candy smell that has been mentioned. It smells a bit like Sour Patch Kids to me but I like that. The floral smells softer and a little wet so I'm thinking that it's cactus flower. My nose isn't too good at picking up exact notes. After almost an hour of having it on, the chocolate and tobacco never really came out. I'm starting to think that my skin amps florals and rejects tobacco because I didn't get much tobacco with my Red Lantern either. Overall I think this is a very pretty scent, though nothing like what I was expecting, which was something foody with incense and slight dry florals. I'll be hanging on to my 5ml bottle but maybe decanting some out because I'm not sure how often I'll wear this. After that initial overpowering floral dies down it's a very nice scent.

In the bottle: Butterscotch schnapps. It's so sweet and boozy that it turns my stomach at the first whiff. Wet: Thankfully doesn't smell like butterscotch but instead almost entirely of tobacco with only a slight hint of caramel. Drydown: The sweetness starts coming back and taking over the tobacco. A hint of spice and floral notes also comes out. It ends up being mostly sweet caramel with some spice. The tobacco comes out some more after I've worn it for a while, but I really wish that my skin amped that up more because it's a scent that I love. Edit: I also get that note of playdoh that someone else mentioned after a while, but for some reason I really like it. After a few hours that turns into a sort of sex scent that I adore, so I ended up swapping for another bottle of this.

This is my first BPAL scent and I seem to have lucked out in trying this one first because I LOVE it. In the bottle it smells very green, somewhat mediciney and I don't detect any lemon or florals from it. On my skin the rosemary really pops out along with a sweet, slightly floral scent. I'm not really getting any lemon with this but that's fine with me. As it's dried a hint of something spicey has started to come out. I'm finding this to be a very pretty, fresh herbal scent with just a touch of sweet florals but not overpoweringly feminine and girly. Now I think I'll have to hunt for another bottle and hope that it gets rereleased this March.