TrailerTrashPrincess

it was the "Crystal Musk" that sold me on this one. with most of the other notes also being positives in my world. lavender and lotus being the main ones that could go wonky. sniffed from the bottle: oh yum! this is in the crystal/glassy family that i love so much! on skin: this reminds me a whole lot of Berenice and Spirits of the Dead. clear and clean, almost powdery, with a perfumey note wafting around. i can't really pick out any individual notes from this - thankfully not even the lavender - but it is very pretty.

JASMINE, cedar and lemongrass. i think the sandalwood, rose and patchouli were frightened and ran away. eventually this turns into a lemon-oil furniture polish on a cedar chest... i had expected more from a blend based on the "all that is holy and sacred in me acknowledges all that is holy and sacred in you."

sniffed from the imp: dark, thick molasses & raw sugar on skin: oh this is soo yummy! oak and molasses -- blending into what i had wanted Misk U to be, before i got to try it. the honey keeps trying to come out and do something bad and medicinal here, but so far - perhaps through sheer force of will alone - this just keeps getting richer - not sweeter, just richer and more savory.

lavender-mint! overwhelmingly so. i couldn't keep this on for more than the few minutes it took me to close the imp, stand up and get to the sink to scrub it off, so i never got to see what happened as it dried down.

sniffed from the imp: smells like red velvet cake on skin: cordial cherries (the kind with the goo not the kind with the cream) and a touch of either something woodsy (mahogany? cherry wood?) or maybe brandy or port. smells entirely too red and masculine for me -- but it is pretty!

sniffed from the frimp: candied roses in a buttery pastry shell on skin: candied roses after about an hour, i can finally begin to get wafts of the blackcurrant and it blends nicely with the roses. quick edit: oh my goodness, how freaky! i wore this tonight because it smelled interesting. i'd completely forgotten i'd tried it before... but lookit, it was a year ago almost to the minute that i wrote this review! freaky, that! anyway, i re-tested what is probably the same imp i tried last year! sniffed from the imp: cookies! and roses on skin: roses and cookies on skin after about an hour: sugared pomegranate.

sniffed from the bottle, this is a yummy men's cologne... something like Gravity or Halston Z-14. nothing too exotic or trendy, just traditionally male. and quite yummy. (and for a few brief seconds, reminded me of one of the Gap fragrances from the mid 90's ... Heaven is the one i'm thinking of... i think? on skin: for a few minutes there's amazing throw of the same scent i got from sniffing the bottle, but it quickly goes through some crazy changes... the first was almost rubber, then the tang of tarnished metal (copper/brass/iron)... rounding out with some Gojo hand cleaner that's been used and re-used and scraped back off into the bucket. (yeah, sounds gross but that stuff can be reused for at least 20 years and never stops working, even if it is no longer green or orange or whatever the original colour was) there's definitely some motor oil in here, too but what's crazy to me.... is that after about two hours of constant morphing... the original men's cologne scent comes back. a little bit different, but still a yummy & hard-working man.

sniffed from the bottle: crisp and green on skin: none of the notes "jump out" - so i can't smell sage or mint or cucumber or lime specifically. the green tea/crushed grass notes are possibly what i smell the most out of this. so, overall, this is a very lush and green sort of scent. very little-boy friendly, i think, in that been-outside-playing-and-have-grass stains-all over sort of way.

sniffed from the bottle: sugared christmas trees and cream. on skin: this smells familiar, but i can't place it! there's a base of creamy-sugary-sweetness with high notes of xmas type greenery... the cypress and pine blend (almost like a Chypre) into a very green scent. crisp, fresh and sweet all at the same time. beautiful!

sniffed from the bottle: smells almost alcoholic...like a flower-based wine. on skin: first thought - mixed fruit or tropical punch! where's Punchy? oh, this blend doesn't like me at all. it smells like it keeps trying to turn into ick. i think the plum-persimmon-cherry-orange-yuzu is the problem. i don't like fruit scents, though, so this is probably just my perception. the magnolia & osmanthus must be adding their voices into this cacaphony because i don't completely dislike it.... it smells almost familiar somehow, like maybe the body shop or bath & body works had something that smelled like this once, a long time ago. overall? very meh.

sniffed from the bottle: reminds me of Stardust, plus white sandalwood and some new kind of white floral. on skin: strong sandalwood and i think passion flower? smells almost like gardenias. after awhile more soft florals come out. turns out to be quite fresh and feminine, very pretty.

sniffed from the bottle: buttercream frosting and honeysuckle - and possibly tonka to note: i HATE jasmine, apricot and almond... can't stand most "fruit" based scents, fig has a tendency to turn into something awful on me, carnations sometimes turn to pepper and the Lab's honey hasn't ever really worked on me. so why'd i buy this? i honestly have no idea. i love honeysuckle and sometimes the Lab's "herbs" blends turn yummy on me. amd i already wish i'd bought more than one bottle! on skin: i can see how The_Witching_Hour got The Oval Portrait out of this, it smells very similar to that on me, as well, which is very odd. i get the same sort of sugar-sweetened breakfast cereal + whole milk smell from this as i did from Oval Portrait, but without the bitter/plastic vanilla musk base. overall? this is really yummy...and sortof what i thought O would smell like. very hard to describe, nothing really jumps out and says I AM JASMINE or anything (yay!), but much more of a skin-scent sort of scent. and very little throw, so this is something that wouldn't be smelled unless someone was snuggled up close or possibly if you walked by. really like this. and i'm shocked.

i've got both the '04 and the '07 - one on each wrist... and honestly i prefer the older one for one simple reason -- the new one turns to plastic on me.

there are a couple of notes in this blend that i have no clue what they should smell like... that being said, on me this turns into a waxy-plastic peachberry.

sniffed from the decant: lemon-scented cleaning products on skin: lemon-scented cleaning products and musty musk/stale sweat.

oh this is SO gorgeous! i took one sniff from the decant and had to slather myself silly. i'm so, so very glad Beth has made another blend that's in the genre of Archangel Winter / The Evening Star / House of Mirrors / Spirits of the Dead... all these gorgeous crystalline scents - no odd fruits or incenses or things i can't identify. some days i feel *simple* or want to smell uncomplicated... and this is so fabulous! i can't define any of the notes in this, and it is doing that almost-headachey thing that ozone sometimes does, but it is so pretty i'll deal with it.

i honestly was expecting cigars. sniffed from the bottle: really don't smell much of anything - something that faintly reminds me of Quincey Morris and that's about it. on skin: old leather - like a leather jacket that's been worn until broken in jusssst right. by somebody that smokes - a lot there's a teensy bit of something... almost green/sweet that i'm guessing is the date palm. but mostly it is cigarettes and leather. very nearly identical to villainess' AntiHero.

sniffed from the bottle: sweetened cigarette smoke on skin: this is nice, but not outstanding. it smells rather like furniture polish. (the non-lemon spray kind) or spray starch. reminds me of my mom.

this may be the closest BPAL i've tried that's got that "name-brand fabric softener" smell to it. this is freakishly like Downy and wintergreen/spearmint toothpaste.

wormwood, eh? sniffed from the bottle: cucumbers and black tea on skin: ooo... this becomes really neat. but still smells more like artificially-flavoured-tea than anything.

sniffed from the bottle: the lumberyard on skin: again, no change... i smell like freshly-cut lumber of varying types. and yes, i'm a lumberjack and i'm o-kay.

sniffed from the bottle: almost minty, peppery on skin: nose-wrinkling unpleasantness....almost vetiver. this is so not the smell of rotting oak. or ivy. at least not any we've got in our neck of the woods. reminds me quite a bit of a lot of the uber-popular men's fragrances out right now, commercially, that all smell the same. overall? absolutely never on my skin again.

sniffed from the bottle: smells like mead! or homebrew wine that's still fermenting. on skin: no real change... still somewhere between a strong/spiced mead and fermenting wine. i should also say, i love those two smells, they're very comforting to me. after about an hour an odd powdery note comes out to play, along with something almost like red musk.

sniffed from the bottle: smells rather like my daddy's backyard after the grass has been cut. on skin: no change - still smells like fresh grass, wildflowers and smell of the garden warming in the sun. this is really pretty!

sniffed from the bottle: a faint pale musk of some sort on skin: oh, teh YUM... i really don't get books or incense or really even much musk out of this. it turns into the scent i associate with the "coffin wood" or "rotting ebony wood" or "teak" or some such like that in several scent descriptions. i'd probably have thought this was a Rappaccini's Garden blend, or an orchid, if i had sniffed it blindfolded. that being said, i bought three bottles. and that won't be enough.