hecate_jones

Not so easy to find, but the Trading Post did do an Atmo proto that is "Swamp". It's quite nice.

In the bottle: Watery fig and apple, and I swear I smell peach or apricot, almost aquatic, like rinsing the cut fruit under cold fresh water. Very refreshing, and I swear I smell a hint of cinnamon in this, despite it not being in the notes. Wet: Same as the bottle, but suddenly much spicier, and it's really cinnamony now, like sprinkling cinnamon onto fruit when making a pie. Where is that even coming from? At the same time, really 'juicy' fuity. The fruit in this is just dripping juice and it's lovely and fresh. I almost feel like I've got rich, ripe fruit in front of me. Drydown: Mostly spicy, and almost powdery, but with whiffs of sweet fruit in the background.

In the bottle this is sweet, sugary pear and a hint of tea. On skin, it's Zebra Stripe gum with a dash of fresh lime.

I wanted to love this so much... but I don't. My bottle did have a glob of cocoa sludge, so I rolled well before trying it. In the bottle, it's all lemon custard pie. VERY lemony. Wet on skin... weirdly aquatic lemony citrus. Very... unexpectedly fresh smelling. Then it's all rose, rose, rose. Aquatic, slightly lemony rose. Drydown... sweet rose. I'm sure lovers of sweet, discreet florals will love this, but it's too floral for me.

In the imp: PEAR. That is all. Pear juice. Juicy, juicy pear. Sniffing it, the DH said "Smells like pears in apple juice" On skin, the gardenia really comes out to play and it gets very, very floral. Too floral for me. Still very pear, but now it's a flowery pear. Drydown: Neroli and gardenia. The pear is all but gone, except for the sugary sweetness. If this smelled as good dry as it does wet, I'd be in love, but it gets too floral for me, in the end.

I got absolutely no cherry from this. It's very buttery and extremely foody smelling, wet. Drydown on me: Euggggggggggh! Get it OFF. This turned into rancid buttered popcorn and stinky unwashed soured skin musk. It actually reminds me of a pair of socks that got wet and muddy and were stuck in a ziploc, and the smell after they were discovered in the trunk of the car a week later. With an added note of buttered popcorn. Obviously this scent hates my skin. Or vice-versa.

Fizzy and effervescent like a light citrus soda! On first sniff, this reminded me so much of Intergalactic that I had to get it out to compare. There's a similar citrusy fizziness to both, but Smilin' Servitors doesn't have the same light floral/musky background, it stays a light citrus and fades to a powdery herbal. I think this will become a favourite summer scent, since it has so much light and bright energy to it.

This is very ginger-frankincensey. It's very... FRESH, and spraying it actually makes me feel like I should get up and do... Stuff. Invigorating. It's like the smell of the idea of spring cleaning in a bottle. I'm sad this was only a goblin squirt, because I want a big bottle, it's so gorgeously energizing.

In the bottle: cold, snow and... sour! Definitely lime! Wet on skin: Oh, glorious, exactly what I was hoping for, it's the blackberry note from Blackberry Scones and Jam! With friends! It's like blackberry jam and lime curd with blueberry preserves and... snow! This is definitely the lab's snow note, and this version reminds me of Shivering Boy... I think because I always get that hint of frozen grapes/grape vines from Shivering Boy, and the fruitiness of this reminds me of that. Drydown: the sharpness of the lime goes away and leaves a fruity cold smell that goes a wee bit powdery, but lovely. Not a lot of lasting power, after a few hours, it left behind a faint haunting hint of sweet and was gone.

In the imp, this is a sort of light cherry blossom scent. This almost turned me entirely off it, because florals never work well for me, no matter how lovely some of them are. But, I perservered, because I'm determined to try all these honeys. Boy, am I glad I did. Wet on skin, this is SOUR cherry, and maybe a little metallic Almost like opening a can of (no syrup added) sour cherries. At first, it's not sweet at all, no honey apparent, just sour cherries and... bitter almond? Weird, cherry pits often smell of that, so. Aha, honey, there you are. As it dries, the honey comes out to play more, and brings back a little cherry blossom note. But my brain's telling me this is the smell of cherry flavoured dental alginate. Almost exactly. Weird. Not the greatest scent association. After an hour or so... it's now the smell of the cherry car air fresheners from the early 80's. I haven't smelled one like them since then, but my goodness, scent associations can be so strong, and this is now reminding me of the "Wild Cherry" air freshener my brother had hanging in his oh-so-awesome Buick Regal back in 1980. And he had it hanging in there because he didn't want our parents to know he was smoking sweet cigarellos, so... there may be a little of that mixed in, but my brain's telling me this is Exactly That Smell. It's a keeper, if only for that walk down memory lane. And it really is a lovely cherry scent.

In the imp, this is a sort of light cherry blossom scent. This almost turned me entirely off it, because florals never work well for me, no matter how lovely some of them are. But, I perservered, because I'm determined to try all these honeys. Boy, am I glad I did. Wet on skin, this is SOUR cherry, and maybe a little metallic Almost like opening a can of (no syrup added) sour cherries. At first, it's not sweet at all, no honey apparent, just sour cherries and... bitter almond? Weird, cherry pits often smell of that, so. Aha, honey, there you are. As it dries, the honey comes out to play more, and brings back a little cherry blossom note. But my brain's telling me this is the smell of cherry flavoured dental alginate. Almost exactly. Weird. Not the greatest scent association. After an hour or so... it's now the smell of the cherry car air fresheners from the early 80's. I haven't smelled one like them since then, but my goodness, scent associations can be so strong, and this is now reminding me of the "Wild Cherry" air freshener my brother had hanging in his oh-so-awesome Buick Regal back in 1980. And he had it hanging in there because he didn't want our parents to know he was smoking sweet cigarellos, so... there may be a little of that mixed in, but my brain's telling me this is Exactly That Smell. It's a keeper, if only for that walk down memory lane. And it really is a lovely cherry scent.

Wet, this is extremely sweet fruity taffy, to me. Almost like opening a package of Laffy Taffy smells. After about 10 minutes, I finally started smelling something sharp and almost... citrusy. Must be the cranberry+pink pepper, but what it makes me think of is pink grapefruit. It's an almost aquatic citrusy note that's not as sharp as some of the lab's grapefruit, hence, pink. Now, even though I know what the notes are supposed to be, my brain's telling me "Lotus and grapefruit" Or bubblegum and pink lemonade. The pink musk is a stronger background note than I'd hoped for, I think. I love sweet and fruity scents, but this is maybe a little too sweet and not something enough. It's nice, but I don't want a bottle. For someone who likes juicy, fruity, sweet scents, this one may be great.

First sniff, this is like full-on Amaretto, like, not just amaretto, but WHAMaretto. Wet on skin, it's still very amaretto, but now it's like someone dropped a handfull of cinnamon redhots candies in it. And there's a waft of cherry, but it's not really what I think of as black cherries, this is sweet maraschino cherries. Then I'm assaulted by the "Hi! Want some cinnamon redhots?" again. I'm not getting any particularly noticable licorice notes from it, but this is good, me and licorice, we don't get on well. Dry for about half an hour... it totally smells like I had a mixed drink of cinnamon schnapps and amaretto with some maraschino cherries in and poured it all over my arm. It just *smells* like a sticky frou-frou drink. Not that this is a bad thing, I'm really loving this scent.

Maybe my nose is weird, but I don't get any clove or almond or even really any booziness from this. To me it's like soaking vanilla beans in a really good dark Jamaican rum. One of the ones so dark you can barely see through the bottle. Like a caramel so burnt that it doesn't even smell sugary anymore, just smoky and, well, caramel. I mostly got this because tonka was a pretty common note in the descriptions of quite a lot of the scents I've fallen in love with, and this is, indeed, the note that they all have in common that's so gourmand and foody to my nose. It's a lovey waft of "oooh, can I EAT that?"

Before I discovered BPAL, I mostly only wore vanilla. I was always in search of the perfect vanilla, and eventually found it in a Victoria's Secret Limited Edition Voyage de Vanille called Vanille Caramel. It was gorgeous vanilla bean, but darker and caramelly. No musk, no florals, just vanilla and sugary caramel. Then came the lab, and I've tried all the scent with vanilla in that I could get my hands on. They've all either been too floral, too musky, too light, too incensy, or not enough vanilla and heavier on something else. Some I've loved, but the 'perfect vanilla' has been elusive. This is that perfect vanilla. Vanilla and caramelised sugar. I want vats of this. I want to bathe in it every day. I'm so in love with this, I want to layer it with every other scent I have, just to see how it works. Sadly, I can do none of those things, because I don't even have an imp. My bottle arrived from the lab shattered in a zillion pieces. But the cardboard of the package was soaked in oil and smelled gorgeous! I got to try it by rubbing oil-soaked bubble wrap on my arm. And then got a cut from a glass sliver I missed. Stupid. But truly, that's how great and tempting this was! I risked my skin to try it! ETA: Because so many nice people have asked: I contacted the lab to let them know my poor bottle broke, and because they're utterly awesome like that, they replaced it. It was still heart-breakingly sad to see a WHOLE BOTTLE of something that awesome shattered.

This is precisely the smell of a real, fresh clementine. Which is what folks in Texas call mandarins, or something very close to them, anyway. I digress. Opening the bottle was exactly like peeling a fresh clementine. Wearing the oil gives my skin the smell my fingers and hands have after peeling and eating one. Lovely, soft, sweet, bright citrus. I think it'd be very interesting to pair it with the vanilla SN, and smell like a Dreamsicle

This changed very little between wet and dry for me, and I have no idea what horse chestnuts smell like, but I don't think I smell them. For me, this is just HONEY. But not like a light, clover honey, this is a dark, sticky, almost crystallised buckwheat honey, they kind that's almost as brown as molasses. Definitely an in-your-face honey scent, nothing floral about it.

In the imp: Sharp and plant-sap smelling. For some reason I immediately thought "Shampoo!" Reminds me a bit of dandruff shampoos, like Neutrogena or T-Gel similiar. Realising that, I'm not sure I want to try it, but... Wet on skin: Yup, medicated shampoo Dry: Powdery medicated shampoo. Not a keeper.

In the imp: honey, honey, honey... and ooh a minty herbal? Wet on skin: Ugh! Sharp medicinal mint and bitter herbs. Dry: oooooh, honey! Dark honey, honey with an edge to it. I really don't seem to get any floral from it at all, and the mintiness/herbal quality literally disappeared on drydown, but my skin does amp anything 'sweet', so soeone else's mileage may vary. This is a must have a bottle scent, because I think it'll layer beautifully with anything that needs a little more honey.

Read through and noticed no one had mentioned one of the scents that is very cedar-y to me, Mandrake. It's got a drydown that's very foresty cedar, and less cedar wood furniture. Also, an old LE, but Ventriloquist's Dummy was almost pure cedar. Aelopile is almost woodworking shop woody to me, with a lot of cedar overtones. Azathoth has a very sharp cedar to it, but dries down to a dark woody, musky incense. Kathmandu's a good balance of sandalwoody cedar and spice. Sri Lanka is similar, but 'darker' to me, if that makes sense. The Jersey Devil has a very strong cedar note in it, as well. Umbra's all patchouli and cedar to my nose.

I had such high hopes for this, but it doesn't smell anything like any sort of metal or machine oil. It's straight up men's cologne, and very strong. I smell bay and maybe a citrus and some sort of woody note, and almost a floral undercurrent. There may be ozone, if so it's hiding under the 'OMG cologne!' Starting to wonder if it's a mislabeled bottle, because it's so very far from what I expected.

Sweet and erm 'fizzy' but slightly musky with a hint of citrus in the imp. For some reason I keep thinking "ginger ale!" even though it doesn't, well, smell like ginger ale. It just has that sort of effervescent quality to the scent. On, tropical floral, wow, a floral I can deal with... maybe gardenia, and a hint of lotus. The floral keeps fading in and out and I catch whiffs of some sort of citrus-y something. Or maybe it's tropical fruity and I just think citrus. Hrmm... 'tropical' keeps popping to mind, but it doesn't have a tropical feel at all, it's got a very *bright* throw to it that keeps wafting around, but closer to the skin, it's soft and musky and sweet.

In the bottle: Buttery pumpkin with a tang of fruitiness Wet on skin: Whoa! Grape Kool-Aid. Weird, but that's *exactly* what it smells like to me. No pear at all, all grape, grape, grape Drydown: The grapiness fades into the background and something very cinnamony is coming out, now it's a pumpkinish grape background, wafting a cinnamon spiciness. Not what I expected, but gorgeous. No tea or jasmine at all from it, but they could be there, lurking, and waiting to appear hours from now. Although *something* is giving that cinnamony note... could it be the jasmine? Strange. Maybe my nose is confused.

In the bottle it's very smoky, woody, and a hint of the treacle. On... roasted chestnuts. Why it smells like roasting chestnuts, I have no idea, but that's *exactly* what it smells like to me. After an hour or so, the nuttiness goes away and I'm just left with a sweetish, smoky, musky scent. This one's really lovely, a perfect 'the weather's turning cold now' scent.

In the bottle: Patchouli, patchouli, patchouli... oh, hi there coconut Wet: Still patchouli, but the coconut's making itself known and there's a nice not-quite sweetness balancing out the sharp bite of the patchouli Dry: Still patchouli, still sharp, slowly mellowing out and the coconut makes itself more apparent Dryer: Much more mellow, thank goodness. I have to admit, I am not a patchouli lover, and thought I hated the stuff till I discovered some of Beth's blends, but I was afraid this one was going to be way too much. However, I love coconut, and this is definitely coconutty, the more it mellows down, the more the coconut pokes its head up and says "Hi there!". It's wavering on the edge between sharp and mellow, patchouli and coconut, and one whiff is nearly pure patchouli, the next is coconutty goodness. I'm thinking I have to have a bottle of this, and set it aside to age. I think with a bit of age, the sharpness will mellow out and be absolutely lovely.