hackess

I LOVE fall scents.

Imp: Apple cranberry

Wet: Red, crisp apples freshly picked from the orchard. Sweet pumpkin with cranberry relish. MmmmMM!

Dry: Ooh, spice! The pumpkin goes away and the cranberry only barely lingers, leaving me with mulled apple cider! YUM.

Wet: A wet scent, with sharp green undertones, almost like limes.

Dry: LOTS of waterlily. Oh my yes. I could've liked it if the greenness stuck around, but this is too floral. It's not soapy like most florals, but it's just too heady for my tastes.

Imp: All the fruity sweet foodiness the description promises. I want to know what happens to all the chocolate!

Wet: Graham crackers! That's it. Just the crackers.

Dry: Musk and cardamom. It's very faint, though, and it didn't last too long. I don't get cherry or chocolate, or even my hated caramel (buttery scents turn to ick on me). Just lightly spiced crust.

Imp: Straight up Lily of the Valley.

Wet: The only white flower that doesn't go soapy on me?! INCONCEIVABLE! The lilac is tempering it. I hunt down lilac bushes come early summer, just to breathe them in for the week they bloom.

Dry: It's very pretty. I wish I got some of the sandalwood and musk, because this might make it worth keeping. As it is, it's just too floral.

Imp: Smoky pine.

Weird. On initial application, it smells like...nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's like I never put it on at all. As it dried, I got whiffs of cocoa and smoke, but it's got zero throw and disappeared after about 20 minutes.

Imp: Fruity, strawberry and orange, candied.

Wet: Bubble gum. Super-sweet fruit bubble gum.

Dry: I've somehow turned this into bathroom deodorizer. This is what the girls' bathroom used to smell like at my elementary school. There's no way I can wear this!

Imp: Oh no. White flowers. High class soap.

Wet: Very heavy on the orchid. It's white orchid - a wet floral instead of the exotic spicy orchid I love in Magdalene.

Dry: I'm barely getting musk over the orchid, and I'm definitely not getting any rose, unless that's the powdery scent that lingers.

This is not for me. It's too typical of a perfume counter at the mall.

Oh wow!

Imp: Sugared citrus with a touch of mint.

Wet: Mint tea with an orange rind floating in the cup.

Drydown: Holy wow, it's honey! And it's GOOD honey. Honey tends to go gack on my skin, but not this. This is lemon tea and honey, sweet and cool. Whoever compared it to Southern sweet tea is right. This is really gorgeous and light and I may need to keep it for summer.

Hmm.

Imp: Sweetened patchouli. I fear.

Wet: Red musk smells almost like ginger on me; kinda spicy and tangy. The vanilla is sweetening everything, but just barely, which is good because vanilla usually goes rancid on me. Something is burning my skin, though.

Dry: There's no pomegranate in my batch. More vanilla is coming through and it's a spicy vanilla, but it's just not for me. Still burning my skin. Swapping away.

Bottle: Woody resin.

Wet: Cedar, front and center. There's rose in this?

Drydown: Ooh, it gets sweeter. Now I'm smelling teak. It's almost like a dry sweet tobacco or the wood they use to make humidors. Still no rose, but it's really quite nice. I may consider rescuing this from the swap pile.

Bottle: Ugh, this is going to go straight incense on me.

Wet: Yep, incense, heavy heavy frankincense. With pine boughs. Like being at church on Christmas Eve.

Drydown: There's something metallic there, but it's not blood (though, oddly, that's the psychosomatic reactionary taste I have in my mouth now). The incense is giving me a headache and I have to wash off the tiny bit I tested with.

Oh, beloved ozone/aquatics!

This is truly awesome. Wet, it's all ozone and waters. On the drydown, the vetiver comes out, but there's definitely something like asphalt underneath the tang. It's a very cold scent, but very calming - must be the aquatics for this Water sign (Cancer)!

I love rose scents, but I feared Hope would be too girly because of the sugar.

Wow, was I wrong.

It's a much softer rose than in Rose Red or Peacock Queen. It's not sour like in Zombi. It's more the subtle rose in Whip, the sweet rose in Persephone and Wanda. The sugar makes it foody, like I've slathered myself in pink frosting. Sadly, my skin eats it much quicker than it does the heady rose scents I horde.

Still, I ADORE this. I have to get a bottle.

It's a nice warm cinnamon, not spicy or the fake-y cinnamon of red hots. It's comforting and rich. Definitely the cinnamon in Three Witches. I get a bit of a woodsy hint during drydown, like there's nutmeg or something else layered underneath.

It's really gorgeous, but did irritate my wrist a little.

Boooze is right.

While I love the booziness of Smut, this one turns me off. I strongly dislike gin, and I loathe reeking of sharp alcohol. The pomegranate is like cheap fruit punch instead of the awesome sweetness it should be.

Maiden, Maiden, Maiden.

Maened went all sweet and berry on me

And I'm definitely checking my mailbox for Pink Moon!

Alice for all of the above (it reminds me of my boyfiend's soap/shampoo/deodorant combination), Ugh/Grr/Oof for calming, and cinnamony scents for coziness. Cheeriness? Rose Red makes me really happy, and Persephone is nice and bright when it's blah out. Maiden reminds me of my mom, so it's also a happy scent.

Sniffing it made me flash onto the scene of a dim corridor, the stone walls covered with dead, dry moss and beams groaning under the weight of decades. Torches line the walls sparsely, leaving enough dark between each that you fear the shadows every hundred steps.

As I got wafts of it over the next hour or so, I could taste copper as the Dragon's Blood came through. To me, it was a very creepy scent, just for the dilapidated castle in my mind's sight. (I've seen too many old horror movies, methinks.) While it's very evocative (as many BPAL blends are!), I don't think I can wear it regularly.

Citrus menthol - more calming than Vicks and MUCH stronger. It's SO fantastic. I applied some after a night at a smoky bar so I could clean the smoke out of my sinuses - it definitely helped me breathe clearly again! I need to get more of this!

Minty and cooling. I put a dab on my temples when I had a week of headaches and they got tingly, but the headaches evaporated quickly! There's sage and eucalyptus in here too on the drydown.

Definitely recommended for headache sufferers!

I love the Panaceas I've tried! Ugh is medicinal, for sure, but minty and soothing. It makes me think of Vicks Vapo-rub more than Oof or Grr do. If Bengay smelled like this, I'd use it for all my aches!

Aquatic and ozone are two of my hit-or-miss notes. Heavy aquatics smell like mold on me, and ozone in large doses makes me sneeze like mad. Sea of Glass is a little bit of both. It's salty and makes me remember summer days at the recreation center pool as a kid. It's what my swimsuit would smell like after rinsing it out - just slightly chlorined and green.

There are white flowers underneath that are evocative of Ophelia drowning herself in Hamlet. For me, Sea of Glass isn't a peaceful scent. It's the melancholy that Ode to Melancholy isn't. I don't know why, but this one saddens me.

I love "clean" scents, but I can't really wear them. Dirty, Lightning and Embalming Fluid are the exceptions.

The ozone in this isn't anywhere as strong as Lightning and it's more of a watery ozone, like the atmosphere right before it starts showering - a light spring shower that passes after a few minutes for rays of sunlight. There's definitely something yellow and bright under the aquatics.

It has energy, like others have said. Slightly citrusy and very pure.

It's definitely a male scent to me - reminds me of my boyfiend's skin after he's just gotten out of the shower. I put a tiny bit on him to test it and it amp'd into Irish Spring - which he doesn't use. The aloe came way out, which wouldn't be so bad if the aloe didn't bring the white soap smell with it. He's since washed it off.

On me, it was clean and light, but lasted all of five minutes.

My first imp of this ended up in a swap pile and went away. Just seemed too unnaturally fruity for me.

I got a second imp as a frimp from someone (Lab order, I think) and am giving it another shot.

First sniff: Rose, for sure, but there's something else over it - the apples. It's very much a springtime scent in the imp.

Wet: Hmm. Like apple-scented bubble bath. I'm not getting any lemon from this at all.

Drydown: Now the lemon's there, and it's not mixing well with the rose. It's turned sour.

Guess I had it right the first time.