phaedrine

Oh so good! This is such a beautiful blend. In the bottle, it smells like a big cup of tea with milk and sugar, being handed to you by a sexy Victorian man in a pale suit. It's so subtle and awesome. It's not really feminine, but it's not masculine, either. I can see it being beautiful on either sex, especially on those that toe the line between. For the first few hours that I wore it, I got tea with milk and lots of sugar. No lemons at all, as others have mentioned. Subtly, slowly, the tea fades and is replaced by hints of the musks and what must be the fougere. Very sophisticated, yet still covered in sugar. The tea has been finished, and it's time to move on to other things... All in all, so happy I bought a bottle of this one unsniffed!!

Oh, yum.... I totally agree with Penance. This is like Skadi's younger, androgynous cousin. It's got the same chill, beautiful pine as in Skadi, but it's not as spicy, and while sweet, it doesn't have the berry sweetness. In the vial, it's all sweet pine, with a very chill aquatic note. Once on the skin, it does warm up a bit, but still stays very nice and piney. The throw only lasted about an hour on me, but six hours later I can still smell it on my wrists. A winner, for sure!

I really adore lavender, so I'm trying to test all the lab's lavender blends. It's listed as lavender, lotus and spice. In the vial, I can smell lavender, and I can definitely smell lotus, but there's no spicy. Just juicy and fruity (not like the gum, though). The moment it touched my skin, though, it went pure bubblegum. Bright pink sugary bubble gum. It's got to be the lotus. No lavender whatsoever. After about a half hour, I gave up and washed the bubblegum off, as it was giving me a headache. :/

I was lucky and got to try this on at QuantumSpice's house. OH YE GODS. I am in love. I had to keep sniffing it all evening, just to make sure I wasn't dreaming. In the bottle, it was so warm/creamy/spicy perfect. I agree with the pumpkin cheesecake comment above, it's so creamy and heavenly. I didn't notice much pumpkin in the bottle, and I didn't get any apple at all, but there was a hint of something fruity there as well. It goes through a phase while drying where the pumpkin/creamy scent really comes to the front, but the spices are still there, hanging out in the back, waiting for their turn again. Once dry, it's amazing. The spice warm and come through more than they did in the bottle, yet it still has that sweet pumpkin flesh scent there. It smells like you've just baked a chunk of pumpkin in the oven, soaked in all sorts of wonderful spices. It's loooong lasting, too! I woke up the next moring and could still smell the last traces of this. Oh please oh please oh please let this be released. If I had the chance, I'd buy a 10ml today. I'd buy a vat, had I the chance!

This blend is so incredibly HOME for me. It's so much the southwest, the warm desert as the chill of fall is approaching. It's so very complex, but so very beautiful at the same time. It's dark, sweet smoke, rich dark chocolate, and the fresh sweetness of cactus blossoms. That's all I can say. It's just home to me.

At first, the description didn't do anything for me, so I didn't order this one. Later, I decided that I was interested, and ended up getting a bottle for my birthday from Caitfish. In the bottle, it's a smokey, resiny floral with that chill wind bit. It really does smell a bit like a chill wind, wafting through a church. On my skin, it becomes a very unremarkable smoky floral. However! This stuff is FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC as a room scent. It gives the perfect combination of floral/smokey/resin, wafting about my room and making me comfortable and relaxed. So beautiful.

This is one of the first bpal scents that really gave me scentgasm. It was glorious! Both in the bottle and on the skin, Samhain is far more apple-y than I had expected, but it's the warm, sweet apple cider, full of spices. It's hot spiced liquid on a cold day. I love the scent, it throws for hours and hours, and I just keep thinking "I smell goooood" when I wear it.

From the description, I really, really wanted to like Red Moon. Sadly, the combination just didn't work on my skin. At first, it was very similar to Siren, in that it smelled only of Hawaiian Punch on me. After that, it faded down to a sweet, somewhat spicy orange, but really wasn't anything I could see myself wearing in the future.

Val I got as a freebie in an order long, long ago. Can you tell I'm catching up on my reviews? In the vial, it was all fresh green, like the smell of the forests in the nearby Jemez mountains after a rainstorm. Unfortunately, green scents do not work on me at all (nor am I terribly fond of them), so this went to a better home.

Heh, as darkitysnark above, I had to get this because of my sign. Right when they were announced to be discontinued, I was >< this close to ordering a 5ml unsniffed, but ultimately I passed. I got this imp from darkitysnark in a swap...and now I'm sort of glad I passed on the 5ml. In the vial, wet on my skin, dry on my skin, it doesn't matter. It's all pure, fresh cedar. Like cedar shavings or a cedar chest or something. I was really hoping for the resins or patchouli...but all I got was cedar. While it's a very fresh, clean scent, it's not really for me, especially as a perfume. Back into swap rotation she goes...

I really, really wanted to love Blood Amber - and I did! In the vial, it was exactly what I had been hoping for, warm and sweet and spicy all at once. On my skin, the promises of the vial were totally fulfilled, and it became warm and rich and red/gold/beautiful. So wonderful. Sadly, it doesn't last very long on my skin, which is odd for anything with Amber in it. As much as I like it, I'm not one to want to reapply it every two hours all day.

Ok, I ordered the last 3 of the dream oils I didn't have with my last order, because I wanted a full set. I decided to try Baku last night. Now, I don't have nightmares. Well, very, very rarely. I do have dreams, very long, complex, detailed dreams. Every night. If I think about a dream for a few moments when I wake up, I can remember it for years. Baku made me dream of doing my taxes. No, really. Uh... As far as scent-wise, it was lavender/fennel in the bottle, but once I put it on, it was allllll fennel. Very strong fennel. I didn't catch a single whiff of the lavender anywhere. Another odd thing - within 5 minutes of putting it on, my skin completely ate the scent. It just wasn't there. I stuck my nose right in to my skin and could only smell the barest whiffs of something...which I suspect was the Cathode I'd been wearing much earlier in the day. Verdict? Swap pile. Even without the weird smell and vanishing scent, I don't want to dream about doing my taxes!

I love this one even more than I thought I would! Oddly, I don't get much incense out of it. Some, yes, but mainly it's smoky woods. It completely and totally makes me think of Santa Fe, New Mexico at Christmas time, walking through the plaza where all the evergreens are, maybe stopping in to the huge old church, or even walking around the corner and going in to the small, cozy chapel that houses the miracle staircase. So lovely. I love wearing it, and need to try it as a room scent, as well.

This sounds like me! So much like me! I love musk. Love myrrh. Love ylang ylang. Like patchouli well enough. In the bottle, it's sweet and candy-like, totally not what I expected. On me, it's all very, very sweet patchouli. No musk or myrrh at all. And while I like patchouli, I don't love it, and the sweet version just didn't do it for me. A note on how everyone is different - I gave what I had to a girl at work, and it's totally different on her. She gets no ylang ylang at all, more like myrrh and patchouli. I like how it smells on her better. She like how it smells on me better!

I usually avoid violets, they make my nose itch, so I wouldn't have ordered this on my own. It came as a freebie in a swap, though, so I figured I'd give it a try. In the bottle, it was a sweet, pleasant floral, so I dabbed some on and sat and waited. For the first half hour or so, it was just like it was in the bottle, a pleasant floral. After that, I think the violets took over with a vengenace, because it became very, very soapy on me. I ended up washing it off before it could make my nose itch. Another floral for someone else to love...

With the musk, ginger and spice, I figured I'd love this one. I'm even pretty keen on cranberries, though I can't say I've ever tried to wear them as a perfume. In the vial, I got a sweet, somewhat spicy smell that was very encouraging. The moment it started to dry on my skin, however, it all went to hell. The lilies took over, I guess, and make a sickly-sweet mess of the whole thing. It didn't drive me as far as to wash it off, but I did decide not to wear it again. Fourteen hours later, as I was getting ready to fall asleep, I noticed my wrists smelled good. Like cranberries. Just plain cranberries. After fourteen hours, it got perfectly tolerable....a bit too long for me to wait. :/

I got this in a swap, as I had been very curious about it for a while now. In the vial, WOAH MINT! It's very fresh, very minty, it zaps you right in the nose. It doesn't last that long on me, but for that half hour or so, it's a real eye opener. After that time, the mint fades completely, and I'm left with a soft, very subtle mossy smell. I think this would make a *fantastic* hand lotion, great for when you need that pick-me-up jolt that the mint will give.

I'll second Madrid, the clove was very strong, and fought constantly with the red wine on my skin. Malice is listed as ylang ylang, clove, Indonesian red patchouli, and dark myrrh. It's very wonderful and spicy, but doesn't really scream clove. It'd more of one of those vibe ones. Also, if you can get your hands on it, the single note sweet clove (sadly discontinued), smells like my lips taste after I've had a clove.

I'm not really big on florals, but this came as a freebie, so I thought I would try it out. I had higher hopes for it, because it has white rose, which my skin doesn't grab like other versions. It's a very pretty blend, white, wistful florals. After a few minutes of drying, it's mainly the rose and the gardenia. It's just not me, though. Even if it had lasted longer than a half hour on my skin, I'm just not a floral person.

Sigh. I'd really wanted to like this one, as I love the smell of leather, but this one goes into the pile of blends that just didn't work for me. At first, I thought it would work, but just be too strong....but after a few minutes, it just turned stinky on me.

In the bottle, this one smells lovely, all frankincense and myrrh sweetened by the florals, but not anything heavily floral. On, sadly, this is one of those blends where my skin grabs the rose and eats everything else. Five minutes later, it was ALL rose, no lovely frankincense, no lovely myrrh, no anything else. Sigh. In to the swap pile with ye!

A google search tells me olibanum is frakensince, so that with myrrh, sandalwood and herbs gives a really wonderful, soft, warm blend. It rounds out and grounds the iris from being too floral, but the iris keeps the others from being too heavy. The first impressions are of egpyitan ritual incense and gold, which fades down to filmy linen. Sadly, within an hour, my skin eats every last drop of this. Beautiful, but not for me!

In the bottle I got mainly myrrh with a shot of green from the herbs As it dries I'm smelling more of the balsam, which smells sweet and honey-like. It's making it very rich and warm, yet still green. This is a really unusual one, I'm reminded of something, but I'm not sure it's something bpal. It's very strong and rich. There it is! It very strongly reminds me of Athens, but the red wine replaced with a greener note. A green honey. As I just got a whole bottle of Athens, this one will probably end up in the swap pile.

Wet I smell the linen, clean and crisp, and the sweetness of the honey, with a bite that is either the ginger or the pepper. Probably the pepper. After a few minutes, the linen all but goes away, and I get the tea, with a liberal amount of honey and vanilla poured in, and the ginger. It's almost totally different! Still incredible, though! I can't stop smelling the back of my hand, this is so complex and beautiful and totally unusual for me in a perfume. I adore it, though, and it's going on my bottle list for sure!

When I first saw that this had been added to the permanent collection, I ordered a bottle. Usually I'm very wary on ordering bottles unsniffed and untried, unless they are LEs, because my skin can be funky, and I can also be very picky. However, there was just something about the description of this that struck a chord in me. The lion, the savannah, and warm amber. How could I resist? So I ordered a 5ml bottle, which arrived today. I am SO GLAD that I did. Wet in the bottle, it smells of something golden-spicy, with just a hint of amber. As soon as it hits my skin, it warms to the golden, tawny scent of pure amber, a lion carved of gold, stretching on a hot summer desert day. It's so perfect. Warm and golden and spicy and AMBER. I'm in love. Completely and totally in love.