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I, too, get the pine note when I first put this on. Sharp, dark green - I think it must be the orange blossom, as this is in other scents that I think of as "green" and which, looking back, contain orange blossom. There's definite morphing, though - in five minutes, we've moved to something sweet-spice floral. It's the orange blossom mixed with the emerging carnation, and they blend together in the most luxurious fashion. I don't get the patchouli, but I do get the warm, yellow ambergris as what pulls this down from the top notes of the florals. This one doesn't do much for me as some of the other new scents, but I'm hanging on to the Imp so I can come back to it later. It has definite potential.

No problem on re-sending.

Oh, yeah. Grapefruit. Chamomile. A hint of lavender. Of course, the Cheshire Cat smells like you took these things, put them in a giant vat with the red currants, and threw Lucille Ball in to squish things up. I say that because one minute she's stepping on a grapefruit, the next, a bit of lavender - they're all blended, but from time to time there's a burst of one note while the others hang above it all. The delphinium is actually fainter to my nose than the lavender, although neither are overpowering. The delphinium and chamomile seem to be the ribbon on this package - they're frosting, but they're also what's holding the other layers of the cake together. In this case, it happens to be a berry tart. Nicely done, and lovely for spring or summer. A good scent for most any fragrance "type", too.

I am just amazed at the recent batch of samples Beth has sent me. This is the fourth amazing Imp in a row. Not much floral or whiteness in this for me, but rather a sugary, earthen firepit with aromatic logs smell. It's dry without being dusty, earthen without being loamy, and sugary without the faintest bit of fruit or dessert sweetness. Light, but not fleeting. This scent is a bundle of contradictions, and they're stellar. I'll wear it year-round because it's fantastic, but it would be perfect for autumn. It's not poetic or terribly descriptive, but it's all I can come up with, as I'm stunned by this one ... Wow.

This is so beautiful first on! Ripe red grapes is an absolutely perfect description, and some of the spices that are so lovely in Snake Oil are here, as well. I am in absolute fermented-fruit heaven when I first apply this! Your body chemistry is likely different from mine, but there's something about civet that turns very unpleasant on me. In fact, it goes distinctly litterbox-ish, and gets quite loud when it touches my skin. I held out hope with Bacchanalia, though, because for a good five minutes, this was just fruity, boozy perfection. Unfortunately, Bacchanalia made up for lost time by going from heavenly to horrid in under three seconds. The civet-beast roared to life and my toddler, who's toilet-training, tried to look down the back of my pants and asked if I was poopy, while the chihuahua started frantically sniffing the air and wiggling in her sexiest manner. I managed not to tell my child I was neither in heat nor poopy, but was sorely tempted. I was terribly disappointed that I can't wear Bacchanalia, as it was so lovely for those first few minutes. If civet works on you, jump right in and try this one - it's fantastic. Even if civet doesn't work on you, the Imp's Ear would be worth a try - since I usually get the rancid smell immediately and this took several minutes, it might not come out on you at all.

Crisp and barely bitter - like eating the orange peel rather than the orange - with an underlying sweetness. Went on sharp and almost green, but quickly mellowed into warm, smoky orange peel, this time with a bit of the fruit still clinging to it. After a couple of minutes, I could detect the cloves, but only faintly. Unfortunately, they kept emerging on me, which means instant headache ... but when I sniffed my wrist one last time, more out of habit than anything, they had backed off quite a bit. Hooray - a scent with clove that I can wear; better yet, one that I want to! Ends up as lightly spiced orange peels, with a soft undertone of floral. Not flowery floral, but melded into the spice note like petals thrown into an exotic dish as it's being prepared. Nice! Buying it is still up in the air, but only because of my overall hesitancy with clove scents.

This one smelled sort of like an iris flower to me - for me, it's the big deep purple-blue ones! - but more like the leaves and the root of them, as well. There was a house built before statehood (1907) on my parent's place - they lived there until shortly after I was born, while working on the home they moved onto the land and eventually moved into. Out front, there were iris ... they were there when my parents bought the land and house, and they were there when we had to tear down the "old house" about three years ago. They were obscenely huge, and had finally started to stop flowering with their usual intensity, but I wept when I came home that Friday to find that the bulldozer had accidentally crushed them all when tearing down the house. The air was absolutely thick with the smell of almost a hundred years of iris plants, and it's something I've thought ever since smelled like the tears of an old house losing all its memories to something new and shiny. Florentine Iris seemed to capture all these things. I know I'm greatly influenced by the name of the scent and my experience, but it really is the scent of uprooted, crushed iris plants in flower. It's beautiful, and has more complexity than you might expect of a single note. On, it has solid staying power and is softly true and intense without being overwhelming.

I can't decide if I truly like Venom or not. It has such a dual nature to it - I've almost decided it's like getting an injection - or what a snakebite must feel like. Icy in nature at first, then warm and throbbing. Definitely alluring. It calls to me, and some days it's all I can think about wearing. The jasmine would usually be off-putting to me, but it's just the smallest part of this scent, and mingles with the berries in an absolutely compelling way. While not classically beautiful, it's very striking in a soft, sinuous manner.

Jezebel is decadent and sexy, without question. On me, the honey note is the star of the show, with rose and sandalwood definitely the supporting cast members. The orange blossom must be the best boy or the grip or something behind the scenes, because I can't actually smell it, but can certainly feel that it's keeping the blend light and balanced. As beautiful as this is, it's just too sweet for me and the people around me. I won't wear it often, but not because I don't love it; it's just not as perfect for me as it is for fellow poster Jezebel.

When I was in college, I lived in a little house whose backyard sloped off into the local creek. The south side of the yard bordered a little old couple's property, and they had long ago planted honeysuckle to provide a little more privacy. The honeysuckle, after 30 years, had completely taken over the fence, utility poles, and much of the treeline near the creek, and when the creek flooded up to the back step of our houses, as it did at least once every spring, the air was filled with the smell of honeysuckle, wood, and some pale tang from the rushing water. Twilight has just enough jasmine to round out this memory and make it more lush and a bit less sweet than the original, but I really do feel like I'm standing in knee-deep water and waving cars away from crossing the deceptively shallow-looking bridge at our corner, breathing in our annual "celebration of spring". A little goes a long way with this one. I usually have issues with jasmine and ylang-ylang, but put such a tiny quantity of this on myself that I can wear it, bear it, and be smelled!

Anne Bonny and I didn't get along, which was too bad. Sniffing the bottle, I could smell wet, salty, wood. Absolutely amazing, and definitely something I wouldn't mind smelling like. On, though, I smelled like the mop that had been used to clean up after Antonio Banderas's bar shootout in "Desperado," then left sitting in a wooden bucket of salt water for about six weeks. The notes in this are soooo good. The scent is fantastic in the bottle, and other reviewers say it stays pretty true on them - so definitely worth a try if you don't have odd chemistry like mine.

For me, violet is the striking feature of this scent. It's not too powdery or sweet, and it just breezes over the lily of the valley, keeping it gentle. Myrrh is most definitely a "warming" factor to this one, but it doesn't get bitter or take away from the airy, ephemeral feel of the scent. While I never smell them individually, the juniper and cypress must be what balances this so well, since Azrael never feels top-heavy. No pun intended, but this is just divine. It's absolutely spectacular, and in a light, almost insidious way. It creeps into my senses and firmly establishes itself, while I look around for the lovely springtime flower in bloom that I smell floating past on the breeze. I can completely relate to this scent as representative of release and renewal. By the way, I'm not a floral fan. This ranks up there with Ophelia and Unseelie for me, which should tell you something about how fantastic this is. It's certainly worth a try, even if you don't prefer florals, as it may change the way you think about florals on yourself.

No kidding! I just put in another order, too!

I'm happy to help if I can ... you can be my "break" from everything else. In limited quantities, drudge work is soothing. Too bad we're all so spread out. Would be great to sit around one afternoon as a group and work on the vials - the BPAL version of a quilting circle!

and !

Wow! Thank you, Violet - I had to try on several of the new avatars you created!

Absolutely. I hope you know that's always the case, on good days and bad days. Peace be with you. I've only been to Mass a few times, but I always thought that was fitting for the world we live in. Certainly my wish for you right now.

Seance gives me that feel, with the dry, almost dusty tone to the wood. Like something old and almost forgotten that doesn't want to be. The Wheel of Fortune, from the Tarot series, is incredibly ethereal to me, as is Water of Notre Dame, from the Voodoo collection. Haunting, in very different ways.

This is one of those few BPALs I didn't care for. On me, this was absolutely Big Red gum. Sharp, overpowering cinnamon, although a very thick, lightly resin-y version. Drydown softened it up a bit, but this clashed with my chemistry and turned my skin (admittedly, very sensitive) a bit pink where I applied it.

For me, the Black Phoenix scents have been absolutely love or hate, with almost all of them love. This one falls into the other category, unfortunately, as it was overpoweringly almond, sticky-sweet and instantly generating a headache. There's a spice and cinnamon note underneath that's interesting, but it takes too long to get there through the almond for me to be able to enjoy it.

This was such a cloying scent that I found myself making the upturned-nose-grimacing-face five minutes after I put the cap back on, and raced to the kitchen sink for the Dawn dish soap. The combination of the red wine and dragon's blood resin turned vile on my skin. My mother, though - she loved this one. On her, it's smoke, incense, and roses - and absolutely delightful.

Best wishes, now and always, Beth! I'll be thinking good thoughts and sending them your way ...

There's a distinctly metallic and yet rotting smell underneath the sweetness of this one. Like bad, bad, breath mixed with cough syrup that's turned. I once saw someone describe the scent as "menstrual."

My father refers to Harlequin novels as "Harlot novels," and in the immortal words of one particularly bad one he and I laughed about when I was a teenager, "Take me, now!" Carnal is sexy in a bright and twinkling way, with mandarin and fig creating quite a complimentary pair. Fruity, but not, which is quite an accomplishment for two fruit scents. Like all romance novels, these two are very much a happily ever after.

I don't know what frangipani is supposed to smell like, but this was greener than I expected and not an overpowering floral - a nice balance of the two.