Lady_Ell

I tried this on thinking of it as a doomed-to-fail experiment. I'd been having a lot of bad luck lately with certain ingredients (cherry, roses, sassafras, currant) so I had been feeling like nothing was working out. This smelled so weedy and stemmy in the bottle that I was sure it was going to be another weirdly-unsettling scent experience, kind of like when I tried on Laudanum and gave myself a terrible headache. And then the dandelions made an appearance. I never thought of dandelions as being *sweet* but these are - the tobacco and hemp kind of undermine the bitterness that I usually associate with dandelion and add to the sweetness. It is a very hard thing to describe, but once it was dry it smelled "wet" somehow - like when you cut the stems of carnations or honeysuckle or lilies and that clear sap-liquid comes out in just one drop. I smell like that sap. I'm not a floral type of girl, but because these are stems and not flowers it works out to be a wet, sweet, green, fresh, living smell. This is really, really amazing and beautiful.

I second Aureus, just because I LOVE it, but it doesn't smell all that sandalwoody on me - it goes really spicy and cedary on me - but that might just be my chemistry. Velvet, on the other hand, is cocoa and deep, smooth sandalwood. It's an unusual and decadent mix, and very well-balanced. It's really pretty and rich.

This is great. I like leather scents but they're usually very strong on me. This one is a lovely combination and each ingredient keeps the other ingredients in check. Application - leather and tea (per site description) Drying - leather... not black and heavy new leather, but a lightweight and not-too-strong older leather Dry - still leather but with a hint of lemon on top. Just a hint. When Mr. L tries this on I'll update with what it does for a dude who loves DeSade. I didn't think I could wear leather scents because they usually scream out of me and turn rancid. But this (so far) is calm and lovely and sophistocated. ETA: Mr. L tried this on and loves it. It's the summertime counterpart to DeSade, which is very strong and dark and appropriate for winter. On him the lemon is stronger than it is on me, and the leather yet again mixes with his skin chemistry to make me hang around his ears like a gnat, sniffing at him. Very perfect.

This is a metallic-cinnamon-peppery scent. It kind of reminds me of fresh galangal root as you smash it in a mortar and pestle for Thai food, with a hint of smashed mint leaves. It's really bright and astringent, in a similar way to The Star, but without the sugar-coconut essense. It reminds me a little bit of a light blue fluoride rinse we had to have every day in 2nd grade after lunch, but in a really pleasing way... which is interesting because I really hated that fluoride rinse. I don't see myself reaching for this every day, but it does make me feel centered and matter-of-fact and kind of like "whatever happens, I can deal with it."

Wow, my chemistry must be really off. This smells nice in the bottle, kind of like concentrated root beer and red licorice. As soon as it touches me, though, there is a disastrous reaction. A sickly rotting/funky smell appears over a sugary sweetness. As it dries the rot-funk gets stronger and the sweetness becomes a powdery sweetness. It keeps morphing for about 5-10 minutes and the end result is Band-Aids and corn syrup. I think there might be some sassafras in here, due to the root beer smell and also because Tombstone did a very similar thing, and all the other ingredients in Tombstone all work great with me except for the sassafras. Final thoughts - if sassafras works with your chemistry, this would be very nice.

Wet, this smells like Cherry Cold-eze and acetone. As it dries, the myrrh comes out and darkens it a bit to give it a cherry-smoky feel. Eventually the cherry disappears and a lovely sweet-smoky-spicy thing happens, kind of like Dragon's Milk but less sweet and more muddy. This is a very dirty-sweet scent that seems to work well on me once it's dry, but wet it's kind of upsetting. I don't think I'll get a big bottle, because it's similar to things that I like better, but I'll use the imp for sure.

This smelled so complex in the bottle, and I for some reason don't have any reaction to cinnamon oil (I usually have very sensitive skin), so I was very excited to try this one out. However, any cinnamon oil turns overpowering and chemical on me, and I just smell like Fireballs or Red Hots or Big Red gum. As a room scent this would be nice, but it seems so cinnamon-y that anything else in the mix gets sent to the background.

This smells cool and wet in the bottle, just like sweet snow - like when you put boiled-down maple syrup on snow to make snow candy, and there are little traces of syrup left in the meltwater - that's Snow White. Once it dries, I smell like white cake (no frosting)! Cake that's been flavored with almond extract AND vanilla extract, but neither one is overpowering. The awesome smell that pervades your house when you bake a cake is suddenly coming out of ME. This is so beautiful. ETA: I wore this again a few days ago and it was more wet, cold, and honey-sugar-floral on me this time around. I was hoping to get the just-baked-cake thing, but I guess this week's hormones weren't agreeing that that's what I should smell like. In any case, flowery and wet or cakelike and dry, this is lovely. And it lasts forever and has huge throw.

I will start out by saying that this smells GREAT on sedentaryedge: all powdered sugar and bright juicy fruits. However, it smells exactly like Bazooka Joe bubblegum on me. For hours. And hours. And hours.

This immediately went all Cherry Coke on me. After 1/2 an hour it calmed down into what Mr. L. described as "malasadas with baby powder instead of powdered sugar" - for anyone who doesn't know, malasadas are Portuguese doughnut-like pastries. Kinda like Krispy Kreme but less sweet. I was really looking forward to this, because it had such an interesting mix of ingredients. But it really just smelled so much like Cherry Coke that I felt like a 12 year old playing dress-up.

I have come to find that cherry doesn't work so well on me. I love cherries but as perfume I end up smelling chemical-y. That said, Old Kyoto didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I smelled like melty red popsicle for a while, and then light pretty flowers (like honeysuckle) stuck in sticky popsicle melt. Then after 1/2 an hour... woooooosh! it was gone. Oh well. I'll console myself by shoveling fresh cherries from the Farmer's Market in my mouth all July long.

Why do all the pine scents dissipate into fleety nothings when they hit my wrists? Oh well... Jabberwocky is sublime for the few moments it stays on me. If there was a Jabberwocky soap (please?) I would buy quarts of it. I love how it smells - so fresh and bright and smack-you-in-the-face PINE - it got rid of my terrible stomachache and associated languishing on the couch and I perked up right away. This might be good in bathwater as aromatherapy - it would have to be something that would be guaranteed smell-fun for a specific amount of time, because it just doesn't stay on my skin.

Unfortunately, I had to wash this off after 10 minutes. I have the unfortunate chemistry where any kind of jasmine or rose just screams out of me and overpowers anything else in the blend. Black Widow unfortunately has both, even though the other things in the blend are things I love (sandalwood, myrrh, etc.) This gave me a pretty bad headache and eventually nausea. On someone else, though, it would be very pretty.

This smells so strange on me. It's not bad, but it's just strange. I feel all woozy and heady and dizzy. OK, maybe I'm just hungry, but still. It's herbal and medicinal and sweet, in an ominous chemical way. It's such a green smell, but not green like grasses and fresh leaves - more green like an old fashioned chemistry experiment that makes explosions of bright green smoke happen. The poppy is very strong in this, with the other ingredients rounding it out and sweetening it. I think this is how the field of poppies smells in the Wizard of Oz. This is an intriguing smell, but not something that I personally want to smell like. It gives me a bit of a headache. ETA: I tried to wear this again, but even opening the bottle made me feel dizzy and nauseous and even made me kind of angry, like in an emotional way. It does the opposite of growing on me; the more I smell it the less I like it.

Mmmmm Mmmmm Mmmmmm. When wet, there's a bright, short flash of strawberry fruit roll-ups, which hit me like a brick the first time I wore it... I haven't had one in probably 15 years and I adore them. Drying: It becomes more grown-up, like switching to cassis after a childhood of Berrilicious Juicy Juice. There's definitely a strawberry-quality to this on my skin, even though it doesn't have strawberries in it. I can't stop smelling myself. I get wafts of strawberries and blackberries and oranges and figs in a mixed fruity swirl and feel very happy to know that it is ME that smells so good. I feel like going up to strangers on the sidewalk and going "You know what? I'M the one who smells so good on this here sidewalk!" After an hour: Since I only have an imp of this, I'm not being very generous with it on my skin, so it tends to fade... not as quickly as Old Shanghai or Kumiho, but it doesn't have the staying power of say, Dana O'Shee or Old Morocco. Layered with O, however, makes it stick around and be less strawberry and more something sweet and sticky and slippery and beautiful, and it stays for hours. I just bought a 10 mL so I'll be dousing myself in this when it arrives. This is divine.

Perfect description! This is great. It's like mulled cider spices soaked into cedar and other strong woods and then dried for a few years. It works really well with my chemistry. It's a good one for me when I'm doing a lot of sweaty manual labor because it complements the smell of my sweat (sorry if that's too much info). Big bottle list. I have to edit to add: I know I say this over and over again, but this really might be my favorite BPAL. The more I try them the more picky I get, and this one is so great and so natural on me, in a way that makes the others that I tend to wear (Snake Oil, Dana O'Shee, O, Old Morocco) feel like dress-up. Aureus is for everyday and special days and going out and staying in and going to bed and waking up. And to remember that I thought I wouldn't like it!

This is the only BPAL fragrance I've worn that Mr. L. has said "You smell good!" just out-of-the-blue. Usually I'm shoving my wrist under his nose and he says yes/no (he usually prefers Embalming Fluid and Old Shanghai type scents on me). But for this one he said I smelled "good, like cookies." Which at the time I didn't think I smelled like at all, but I sure did smell good. We did make cookies later that night, so he couldn't have been that far off... Anyway, this goes on strong and sweet and a little cloying but quickly settles down into a warm vanilla scent with a little bit of spice and what seems to me like a carnation-y smell even though there's no carnation in the description. Kind of like those sugar cookies called Snickerdoodles, but less foody and a little more... deep, I think. It's more innocent than Snake Oil, but similar in most other aspects. It's a simple scent yet remarkably hard for me to describe in the way I want to describe it. I love this. I love it more than almost any other BPAL. Which is saying something. I am buying my own 5 mL (since I've had to borrow Sedge's) in my next order.

I wanted to like this and from the ingredients I had such high hopes. But unfortunately the vanilla smelled artificial and too strong. It didn't waft up gracefully from me, but stayed very close to my skin, so if I wanted to smell it I had to shove my arm under my nose and then get blasted with a vanilla Yankee Candle smell. It just didn't work with my chemistry, I guess.

Embalming Fluid or Old Shanghai Kumiho or Baobhan Sith Dana O'Shee Undertow Loup Garou I will definitely order anything that you make, though! This is very exciting.

This goes on heady and sweet, and even a little floral. It quickly tempers out to a woody and slightly piney scent as it dries. After 2 hours the wood fades into the background and the musk makes an appearance. I'm left with an understated, slighly masculine, elegant, handsome, dignified aura. Like a gentleman werewolf. This smells good on me and I think I'll keep the imp, but in general I prefer strictly woody scents like Loup Garou that don't have dark musk in them.

I like the earthy/woody scents for that: Loup Garou, Ace of Pentacles, Belladonna, Black Forest, and also Bluebeard.

I was totally expecting to hate this one. I usually do not like lavendar except when I'm eating it as an herb on chicken or something (herbs de provence and whatnot). That said, it starts VERY strongly lavendar, and hits you high in the nose like BLAM! and makes you a bit disoriented in a very lavendar-y bitterness. Within 5 minutes it calms down a lot, and gives off a very clean, slightly soapy, somewhat herby smell. The lavendar is more in the background, but still noticeable. I can't exactly explain what the other notes are but they work very well to make a complex yet light scent. It floats off you, too - every now and then I'll turn my head quickly and think "Oh, that's me that smells so clean and bright!" The above reviews have described this as angry and persistent and "lavendar with a past" - I don't get that at all for some reason. I feel capable and industrious and in control and ambitious; it's very no-nonsense. I am frequently described as a no-nonsense person, and I don't think this would be for everyone, because there's nothing warm or particularly friendly about it. ETA: lately it's been giving me heartburn as soon as I smell it. WTF?

Re: Hellcat I know there was a problem a while back about getting the rum scent - the man who distilled that particular rum oil died, and the lab couldn't find a suitable replacement rum-scented oil (which is why I think that Hellfire was discontinued). If you got the rum-smelling one before December (I think), then the original rum scent was still available, but it's not anymore and they might be substituting other ingredients now for Hellcat.

OK, so it was reminiscent of smoky, moldy trees, but I liked it all the same. Wet: strong, bracing, biting, gnawing, mossy and tree-y and dark and damp and generally kind of scary like you're lost in woods haunted by demon trees Dry: much nicer. Still a bit sinister and strong, but the tree smell is coming out and the smoky smell is kind of pleasant. I wasn't really in the mood to smell like Fangorn Forest so I put some Snake Oil on top of it, and it worked really well. Usually Snake Oil is too sweet for me, but the smoky-tree aspect calmed it down and made it more balanced. I'm keeping the imp, but probably won't buy a big bottle because I'm usually not in a mood to wear something like this.

Wow wow wow. Foolssilver just gave me a partial imp of Velvet to try, and I don't know how I'm going to give it back to her. I don't know how I'm going to wait for a month or two (when i have money) so I can buy a big old bottle of this stuff. It's so goddang beautiful and rich and soft and really like Velvet - I imagine a deep purpley-brown colored velvet with gold highlights when the sun catches it. OK - on with non-poetic review: Wet/Drying - fancy cocoa... kind of milky, not bitter at all. Sweet and nice. Since I don't like chocolate this is saying something! Dry - a rich sandalwood emerges and balances with the cocoa. The cocoa fades a bit with time, but the sandalwood sticks around. Since I loooooove sandalwood, this is a good thing. I can't stop smelling my wrist. I described it to husband, who also loves sandalwood, as "hot chocolate with sandalwood" and he said it sounded gross (!). It is so not gross, and he will agree when he comes to visit tomorrow. And even if he still thinks it's gross, I'm going to keep wearing it because I feel soft and slithery and slinky and sophistocated in it. Even on the elliptical machine at the gym wearing a dorky T-shirt that says "Beware of Rocks" on it (geology humor, unfortunately). If anyone wants to get rid of some Velvet, please PM me. I have some imps that need good homes.