Elspethdixon

Obatala - to me, it smells clean and fresh and beachy, but in a pleasant, sweet way instead of the soap-and-dryer-sheets clean you get from aquatics. I wear this one to bed a lot in the summer, when our window-units-only/no-central-air apartment is always humid and warm and I just want to feel cool and clean. Halfling - Fresh oatmeal raisin cookies. For pleasant weather/weekend morning lounging. Chicken-legged Hut - Like a less sweet/slightly more savory Halfling. This smells like hay and sweet feed to me, and reminds me of barns and tack rooms, especially when layered with just a hint of something brown-leather-dominant like Red Rider. No. 93 Engine - cozy balsam and beeswax and a hint of something smokey. This one is a good fall scent. Dark Chocolate, Black Tobacco, and Vetiver - cozy, dry, warm, and reminiscent of the smell of hot wood and warm coals in a fancy sauna. This one is my favorite for rainy/grey days or cold, damp weather, though Smokestack is a decent GC substitute because it has a similar vetiver note. Anything with smokey vetiver + warm/sweet notes (vanilla, chocolate, tobacco, coffee, brown sugar) tends to last well on me and smell warm and cozy. Seven Word Story: Sloth is probably amazing for cozy/warm "it's cold and wet outside" snuggling as well going by the reviews and listed notes, though I haven't tried that one.

I would definitely need 5 bottles of this! Yum. I have a mild skin allergy to cardamom, but amber/vanilla bean/cardamom would smell so amazing that I'd probably buy two bottles and wear it anyway.

In the bottle: No noticeable aquatic notes, but I can distinctly smell both lavender and iron. Wet: Cool, herbal lavender and a hint of iron. It smells just like my grandmother's porch garden when I was a little girl - she grew lavender in pots there, and the porch furniture were these heavy, slightly rusty wrought iron things. I love it! Dry: The first half hour was all lavender, gradually getting less cool/metallic-tinged and more soft-fuzzy from something I suspect must be the oude. Then, alas, the ice/aquatic notes start to make their appearance and do what aquatic/ice/ozone always does on me: turn everything into dryer sheets. An hour and a half after putting it on, Ganymede is all dryer sheets and fresh laundry. On my hair, the top notes last much longer - two and a half hours in, I can still smell lavender and metal with only a hint of dryer sheets. If aging doesn't help reduce the dryer sheets effect on my skin, I may wear this on my hair and pajamas at bedtime.

Australian Copperhead Having patiently let my snakes sit and settle for a full month, the testing may now begin. Cracking open the imp, I can smell the fruity-tart acai berry, as well as a hint of sweet vanilla and an underlying musty note. Once it's on my skin, the musty note becomes stronger and dominates. Curse you, patchouli, my eternal foe. After a minute or so, the mustiness starts to morph into a medicinal, almost mentholated scent, and I can feel the cardamom stinging on my wrists/forearms, although there's no redness. The menthol/camphor-like note is strongest directly over the pulse in my wrists, and while there's a hint of freshness from the acai that makes it a lot more pleasant than straight Snake Oil (which smells like 50% medicinalness and 50% "a vanilla cookie rotting in a incense-filled brothel" to quote Nicnivins immortal description) it isn't the acai dominant scent I smelled in the imp. Come back, acai berry! After about fifteen minutes, the cardamom sting goes away, the medicinal blast starts to fade, and the smoked vanilla becomes stronger, but the acai berry is still in hiding. When I tested this fresh from the decant circle a month ago, it was all acai. What gives, Copperhead? You are now milder/less musty snake oil with extra vanilla, and not fruity goodness. After about an hour or so, hints of acai berry do come back. Now it's vanilla with a hint of acai, and the funky/musty/medicinal snake oil is entirely gone. Still not as acai-forward as the imp or my first testing, but worth keeping the decant. Not bottle worthy, though.

Seconding the Initiation (which shares the red wine and vanilla notes with Lisbon Seaport). The coffee note is a little harder - there aren't nearly enough blends with coffee in them - but you may want to try layering Miskatonic University, which is a very gourmand GC that smells like Irish coffee, with something that has patchouli and vanilla or berry notes. There's also Centzon Totochtin ("Bittersweet Mexican cocoa with rum, red wine, and a scent redolent of sacrificial blood"), which I've never tried but which definitely sounds both gourmand and pirate-y.

I'd be more worried about the Hay absolute, to be honest. A lot of people are allergic. I've never been allergic to a BPAL (totally surprising, I'm allergic to everything else!) so I can't speak to the allergy factor, but it's actually the combo of hay and beeswax that makes me LOVE Bunraku so much! So glad I got a bottle. I know I will wear the heck out of it in late summer and early fall. My only bad allergy experiences were with the Dead Leaves notes (which I think was probably psychosomatic - I'm allergic to leaf mold, not leaves themselves, but the dead leaf smell was so realistic that I must have subconsciously expected leaf mold) and the weed/hemp note in Ask the Nearest Hippie.

I agree with everyone else that you may want to give a selection of imps or decants if you're not already familiar with what kind of fragrances each of them likes. The Bride is beautiful and appropriate (I wore it for my wedding), but if she doesn't like honey/doesn't like vanilla/doesn't like white florals, she may almost never wear it. Better to give either a bunch of small, fun samples, or a 5ml bottle of something you're already pretty sure she'll like. I like the idea of either pairing the imps in themed sets (Elf/Rogue, Queen of Hearts/King of Hearts, Anne Boney/Calico Jack or Mary Read/Jolly Roger, Persephone/Hades, Lilith/Old Scratch, etc.) or giving them a selection of Ars Amatoria blends with romantic or sensual names, as SophieCedar suggested.

Did you have any list of your personal favourite for floralsl? ;D I love most of your vanilla list so I think this couldnt go wrong I'm wary of florals because I don't really like jasmine, and because rose is an iffy note on me (rose blends that smell good in the bottle can turn into sharp green stems or a sort of rotting flower petal smell), but some that have worked on me are: Skuld (horrible funky wet phase, delicious honeysuckle-like drydown) Paris (sharp, herbal lavender with sweet/crisp/juicy lotus) The Bride (very soft, not at all the heady sweetness of Skuld despite also being white floral+ honey) Jezebel Blossoms in Springtime (really a vanilla scent, but the wet phase has the same yummy lotus as Paris) Adrastea (best foodie/honeyed rose ever, like rose turkish delight combined with walking into a kosher/middle eastern bakery) Elf from the RPG line and Tenochtitlan from Wanderlust are both fresh, clean-smelling florals (but a good "clean," not like dryer sheets or soap) - though I just checked the notes on Tenochtitlan and it's mostly herbs (sage, hyssop) and amber, with "mexican poppy" as the only floral note, it smells like a fruity floral to me. Faiza from Carnival Diabolique was also a very nice, sweet/sophisticated white floral, but unfortunately I got a red/stinging skin reaction from the cardamom. Anathema was nice once the vetiver calmed down and stopped clashing weirdly with the honeysuckle, but that took at least an hour.

omg omg omg steeeeekkkkkk!! Oooh I was also considering volcano in springtime!! (i derped and read blossoms as another blossoms haha) I was debating between stale chick and stekk and stekk won before deep down I wanted to believe I had matured... but now i wish I got it because my daughter's favourite colour is purple and the label is purple and it is *SO* her kind of scent. Though I didn't detect any florals in any reviews for stale chick- maybe ill have to track a bottle down afterall! haha Yeah, I meant Blossoms in Springtime but was too lazy to type it out on my phone. Volcano in Springtime is more of a clean/fresh vanilla than a sweet/rich/creamy one, maybe because of the white sandalwood. Stale Marshmallow Chick doesn't have any florals, but it's a nice creamy-vanilla marshmallow, if not quite as good as Stekk (though I maybe biased because Stekk was my wedding-night perfume).

I have a set of the twins before the carnival went dark, gifted by my twin years back . I do have them down for back ups too though because Faith is just so lovely. Finally enough I also have muse of fire thanks to some easier recommendations. And you're right, Jezebel is not my kind of scent , unfortunately... But everything else was a bottle worthy win! Though none had the same honey quality I got from blossoms in springtime which I'm currently obsessing over. Blossoms in Springtime is amazing. My initial Lupers vanilla cream pick was Volcano in Springtime, which turned out to have a laundry/linen note I wasn't a fan of. So I made a last-minute purchase of Blossoms and it's the sweet, slightly fruity vanilla cream of my dreams. My current vanilla/cream list in order of wonderfullness is: Stale Sugar-Crusted Marshmallow Chick Giljagaur Blossoms in Springtime ~*~Stekkjarstaur~*~

I was going to suggest Jezebel when I saw honeyed florals, but that has a lot of orange in it (to the point where it smells like sweet floral orange juice in the imp). You might want to track down decants of Hope and Faith if you can find them - sugared rose and sugared violet. Also Muse of Fire, one of the past couple of years' Liliths, which is "rainbow flower petals and sugar." Blossoms in Springtime confirmed me as a lotus fan, so I'm currently on the lookout for scents with lotus that don't feature any of my hated notes. Most of the GC blends tend to pair it with things I don't like.

Giljagaur is probably my favorite overall coconut blend, but Lovers and a Fan is a close runner up - and it's just about time to retrieve it from the back of my scent cabinet now that it's summer again.

For another GC suggestion, one of my favorite honeyed florals is Jezebel (orange blossom honey, rose, and sandalwood). I get no sandalwood at all from it, just the first two notes, and it's one of the rare roses that works well on me. I've also heard good things about Round Dance as far as vanilla/strawberry/florals go, but I haven't tried it myself because carnation is not a good note on me. Faiza from Carnival Diabolique might fit the bill for a "deeper" floral scent. It's sweet and gentle but complex, and one of the few white floral-heavy blends I really like, possibly because of the inclusion of vanilla and black amber, but be warned if you're sensitive to cardamom - while my nose couldn't detect the cardamom in it, my skin sure could and went all red and itchy.

I had high hopes for this blend based on the listed notes (custard! Vanilla! White rose!) but I can only assume the bottle I got hold of didn't age well, because it's all consternation and zero delight. Consternation is, in fact, probably too mild a word for the horrible cleaning solvent reek that greeted me on opening the bottle. I was prepared to get very little chocolate and lot of lemon-custard since my bottle is one with no chocolate sludge, and was a little worried about the lemon element. I should have been a lot more worried. This is Little Bird's "funky smelling skin musk and sour lemon blossom floor cleaner" grown vast and powerful with age, with an added helping of windex on top of it. I have no idea if it morphs on skin once dry, because I washed it off within three minutes, it was so bad. I guess I at least now know to avoid any form of lemon note like the plague.

I used this as a moisturizer on my skin rather than in the bath. On first application, I just got chocolate and (when I put my nose right to the skin) the faint scent of the shea oil and other carrier oils it's made from. But after a few minutes, once the oil' absorbed into my skin/warmed up, the throw is all chocolate/ marshmallow/ graham cracker pie crust/cookie. Pure foodie heaven. And it lasts for hours - I put it on before bed and could still smell traces of it this morning. And the texture of the oil itself is really nice - it absorbs into your skin without being greasy.

In the imp: Roses, with a hint of honey and something thick and syrupy. Wet: More of the lush roses with a touch of honey - the oil is somewhat runny, and I ended up applying slightly more than I intended to. On the drydown: Within the first minute or so, I was already fearing that this would be one of the roses that doesn't work well on me, and that impression turned out to be correct. You know when you're a little girl and you make "perfume" by mashing up flower petals and adding a tiny bit of water, and then your "perfume" sits there in the sun in the humid 90-something degree heat and starts to rot? My arms and wrists are covered in a stronger, thicker version of that smell. Overblown honey-touched roses starting to go off, with a hint of sour rot. 20 minutes in: O Rose, thou art sickening. The unfortunate note, that instigates sneezing and tickles the throat: has once again ruined my BPAL joy: as a lush, lovely blend does its destroy. The rotting flower petals have taken out an option on morphing into soapy green stems, and the combination makes me want to sneeze. At this point I gave up on my normal procedure of wearing whatever I'm testing for a full day and/or until it disappears on me, and washed Hedylogos off. One more stuck off the list in my search for a GC rose blend I can wear.

My parents keep bees and have for years, so I love all things honey-scented for the nostalgic associations (my mother, who likes all decorating to have a theme, buys honey-scented, soap, lotion, etc. to go in the cutesy little beehive-shaped soap dispensers. There are bees on the kitchen curtains and tea towels. Everything is bees!). My all time, holy grail honey scent is Boots Royal Jelly/Pure Honey (actually a bubble bath oil and shower gel), which alas, can only be purchased in Boots drug stores in England. I do not currently live in England. Short of begging people in the UK to ship me bottles of it, there's no way for me to get it in North America I've tried many different BPAL honey blends (O, Redoul Honey, Chokecherry Honey, Tobacco Honey, etc.) but so far nothing has been quite the same, though most of them are awesome in their own right. (Lush's Honey I Washed the Kids isn't quite the same, either, though also awesome). Any UK forumites familiar with my beloved drug store shower gel have any suggestions for what BPAL (or BPTP) blend to try next?

So many imps, so very many. GC Imps - Keepers: All Night Long Antikythera Mechanism (travel imp)* Bastet Bensiabel The Chicken-Legged Hut Chimera (travel imp)* The Deep Ones Eclipse Elf Half-Elf Haunted (2) Jack Jezebel orange blossom honey & okay-ish rose on hair. Will trying it on skin produce bad!rose sorrow? ETA: No! Is also okay on skin. Miskatonic University No. 93 Engine (2) Obatala* Paris Red Rider (2) Redoul Honey* Skuld Smokestack Tamora Tenochtitlan Tezcatlipoca Titus Andronicus GC Imps - To Test Anathema (tested - honeysuckle & vetiver take a while to play nice together) Centzon Totochtin Chokecherry Honey Daphne Honey Dragon's Milk (sweet & cloying, must re-test) Grog Harlot Hedylogos - alas, Hedylogos is the bad rose Scarecrow Snake Oil (re-test after aging) LE Imps - Keepers: Mars Ultor Two Old Men* The Avenue* Beanman and Beanwoman* The Gift* Hidden Pearls* Priala the Human Phoenix Saw-Scaled Viper Boomslang (must test on wife) Australian Copperhead Western Diamondback Death Adder (maybe will improve with age?) LE Imps - Not keepers Impressions of the Floating World Faiza the Lady of Serpents Behemoth GC Imps - Not Keepers Alice^ (gone) Al-Shairan^ Beer from the Marsh Woman's Brewery Bewitched Black Rider^ (aged) Blood Rose Bon Vivant Brown Jenkins^ Calico Jack^ Cheshire Cat The Coiled Serpent A Countenance Forboding Evil Dana O'Shee^ (gone) Death Cap^ Deep in Earth^ Defututa Destroying Angel (aged) Dragon's Heart^ (aged) (gone) Dragon's Musk (aged) Embalming Fluid (aged) (gone) Endymion Evil Fire for thy Stepmother's Daughters^ Gaueko The Ghost Gomorrah Hedylogos^ Kali Laudanum Mary Shelley (gone) Masquerade Mata Hari (2) Neutral (2) The Night-Raven Nyx Queen Alice Queen Gertrude The Raven Satyr Sherlock Holmes (gone) Sin Squirting Cucumber Somnus Sybaris (gone) Vial of Holy Water (aged) (gone) Wicked (aged) *Also have bottle ^Tested/Used

All bottles bought from the lab unless otherwise specified. Pink text for faves. Bottles Owned: GC: O (aged 4 years) Tombstone (aged 3 years) - Tombstone backup (aged 6 months, BNNU) Velvet (aged 3 years, nearly empty) empty Black Pearl (aged 2 years, nearly empty) - Black Pearl backup (aged 6 months, full-to-shoulder) Chimera Drink Me Antikythera Mechanism (aged 1.5 years, 1/4 bottle) Light of Men's Lives - Light of Men's Lives (back-up) Redoul Honey Cockaigne Obatala (2016, full-to-shoulder) Mouse Circus (2016, BNNU) LE: Pumpkin II 2014 She Perishes That She May Live (burns skin) El Dia de Los Reyes 2014 (1/4 bottle left) - El Dia de Los Reyes 2015 (backup, BNNU) Lovers and a Fan ('15 Lupers) Mars Ultor ('15 Lupers) Clement I's Phoenix Bartholomaeus Angelicus's Phoenix Dead Leaves, Vanilla, and Myrrh (triggers asthma, must get rid of) Gone! Frosted Pumpkin Spice Cookie ('15 Weenies) Satan Summoning His Legions ('15 Pickman's Gallery) Thirteen (13) November 2015 (TOL) Palmyra Channukiyh 2015 Giljagaur ('15 Yules, TOL) - Giljagaur backup (BNNU) Stekkjarstaur ('15 Yules, TOL) Adrastea (Moons of Jupiter Jan '16, TOL) - Adrastea backup (full, bought from forumite) Love's Philosophy ('16 Lupers, TOL) - Love's Philosophy backup (BNNU) Dark Chocolate, Black Tobacco, and Vetiver ('16 Lupers, TOL) - Dark Chocolate, Black Tobacco, and Vetiver backup (BNNU) Beanman and Beanwoman Climb Genital Mountains ('16 Lupers, full-to-shoulder) - Beanman and Beanwoman Climb Genital Mountains backup (full, bought from forumite) Volcano in Springtime ('16 Lupers, full) Blossoming Vulva ('16 Lupers, full-to-shoulder) Hidden Pearls ('16 Lupers, full-to-shoulder) The Avenue ('16 Lupers, TOL) The Initiation ('16 Lupers, full-to-shoulder, like but don't love) The Bride ('16 Lupers, full) The Two Old Men ('16 Lupers, full) Bunraku Theater ('16 Lupers, full-to-shoulder) Pumpkin V (2012 Weenie, half bottle, bought from forumite) Wooden Bullet (OLLA line, 1/3rd full, bought from forumite) Mommy Fortuna (Last Unicorn, age unknown, just below top of label, bought from forumite) Fresh and Blooming as a Rose (Trading Post 2015 Yule, full) - turns into soap on skin, swap/sell The Strange Old Woman (Trading Post 2015 Yule, full) Bulgarian Tobacco single note (full) Thirteen (13) May 2016 (full) Europa (Moons of Jupiter, May '16) BNNU Ganymede (Moons of Jupiter, June '16) Full-to-shoulder Guatemalan Coffee Bean single note BNNU Amicitia (Liliths '14, bought from forumite) Callisto (Moons of Jupiter, July '16) top-of-label Meshkenet the Vulture Maiden (Carnival Diabolique '16, 1/4 bottle, from forumite) swapped SN: Haitian Vetiver (1/2 bottle, bought from forumite) The Malignant Dreams of Cthulhu in Love (1/4 bottle, from forumite) Giant Vulva (2009 Lupers, TOL, from forumite) swapped Priala the Human Phoenix (Carnival Diabolique '16, full-to-shoulder) SN: French Vanilla De Vos's Unicorn (Unicorns '16, BNNU) St. Clare (Unicorns '16 BNNU) vanishes in minutes on me, need to swap swapped Allegory of Chastity (Unicorns '16 BNNU) Wulric the Wolfman (Carnival Diabolique '16, full-to-shoulder) Lilith and the Four Sons of Horus (Liliths '16, full-to-shoulder) Honeyed Apple ('16 Weenies, full-to-shoulder) Caramel Apple Cookie ('16 Weenies, full-to-shoulder) Samhain ('16 Weenies, full-to-shoulder) Disc. GCs: Tobacco Honey (partial, age unknown, bought from forumite - chemical/cleaning fluid smell, not the honeyed tobacco of my dreams) GC Bottles Needed: Antikythera Mechanism backup Bensiabel? Velvet Mouse's Long and Sad Tale? (Delicious vanilla & sandalwood) Bow & Crown of Conquest (snuggly vanilla-leather) bought! CD bottles Needed: Wulric the Wolfman bought! Unicorns Needed: Allegory of Chastity bought! GC Imps Needed: Tested, need more, contemplating bottle- - Moar Jack - Moar Miskatonic University - Moar Titus Andronicus - Moar Paris (is fresh as good as 4-year-aged? Will it last longer than 1 hour? fresh not as good as aged, still short-lived) - Moar Smokestack (do Black Tobacco & Vetiver, Priala, and the new 13 fill the smoky resin spot enough for me, or do I need more?) -Moar The Lotus Tree - Moar Bow & Crown of Conquest (delicious but do I need a bottle or do Tombstone & Blood & Judgement suffice?) - Another Old Demons of the First Class(why did I give it away to my cousin before retesting?) Never tested, want to try - Brown Jenkins (coconut husk) No coconut on me, only musk Shub-Niggurath ("evil gingerbread") Shoggoth (coconut & lime) Too much lemongrass. Gave to my mother. Robotic Scarab & Galvanic Goggles (because there seems to be no Steamworks blend that isn't amazing except Aeliopile) Hellfire (tobacco & leather) Hellcat (gourmand to end all gourmands, apparently) All almond, all the time Bordello (plum, currant, wine) cherry musk and bakewell tarts, like but don't love Intrigue (black palm, cocoa, wood) inexplicably smells like stale sweat Athens (honey, wine, flowers) Eden (honey, almond, fig, coconut) cloying - damn you, almond, you do this every time Dragon's Milk (vanilla/milk,but will the dragon's blood ruin it?) tested unsure about Bard (cousin scent to Antikythera Mech?) Gnome (ginger ale/rootbeer, nutmeg, machine oil?) tested - mostly ginger ale, effervescent and crisp but not for me Halfling (pastry) oatmeal raisin cookies! Good (sugar/honey/vanilla, but reviews mention baby powder, also worrying mentions of lemon) Faustus (frankincense & cinnamon - GC cousin to Priala?) Roses, Pearls, and Diamonds (will it be the good rose, or the bad rose?) (good rose) How Doth the Little Crocodile (chocolate and mint, for wife) Mouse's Long and Sad Tale (vanilla) Delicious vanilla & sandalwood. Bottle-worthy? Tlazolteotl (cacao, copal, maize) Kurukulla (rose & lotus, is it the good rose or the bad rose?) Lawful (fruity oak, tried at NYCC but need to get imp for full-day test) Katarina (apricot) GC Imps - To Test: Eat Me(cake!) Centzon Totochtin (chocolate & wine) Perversion (rum/tobacco/leather/champagne/tonka) - tested, leather takes over Penitence (frankincense & myrrh) - tested, starts off funky but becomes soft/powdery sweet and comforting (but similar to Clement I's Phoenix which I already have) Baron Samedi (bay rum) GC Imps Tested (Liked but don't need bottle): Bengal (glorious but burns skin) Elegba Eclipse Kill-Devil (meh when fresh, improves with age) Bastet Red Rider (leather single note) Jezebel (good/okay-ish rose & orange-blossom honey, glorious on hair) Tezcatlipoca Tenochtitlan Tamora Haunted Fighter (harsh, new leather) Halfling (delicious oatmeal raisin cookies) Chicken Legged-Hut (horse feed/hay/sweet feed) No. 93 Engine Hunter (Neverwhere) half dry grass and dusty-warm cat in the sun, half lovechild of The Lion and Bow & Crown of Conquest GC Imps Tested (Okay, but not *great*): Queen Alice Black Rider The Lion Al-Azif Elf Half-Elf Dragon's Heart Dragon's Milk Morocco The Deep Ones - an aquatic I can actually wear! Azathoth - weird combo of orange & vetiver. Not sure I like it but can't stop sniffing it. Antony - amazing when wet, vanishes within half-hour Bordello - half sexy leather-tinged berry wine, half bakewell tart Penitence - morphs from weird stale/funkiness through decent church incense and into cozy soft/warm powder Perversion - leather with hints of rum and tonka, dry-down is entirely leather Door (Neverwhere) - gentle honey-chamomile-scented LUSH bathmelt GC Imps tested (Disliked) Aeliopile (orange-scented dish detergant/floor cleaner) Alice Endymion Dana O'Shee (too cloyingly sweet even for me) Spellbound (the bad rose) Defututa (jasmine ruins everything) Al-Shairan Dragon's Bone Calico Jack (aquatics = not for me) skekNa the Slave Master (harsh leather) Sudha Segara (raw, fresh-sliced ginger, no milk) Fire for thy Stepmother's Daughters (starts out lovely fruity white musk, ends up dryer sheets) Intrigue (smells weirdly like sweat) Shoggoth (lemongrass too strong)) Y'ha-nthlei (soap and dryer sheets) Great Sword of War (citrus and red musk take over everything, avoids floor-cleaner effect but still not great) LE Imps Tested - liked: My Baby and a Baby Goat (wonderful! Snuggly fur musk and honey!) The Vine (smells like fresh, juicy pear when wet, turns into delicious sweet/sticky BPAl honey as it dries) Boo (vanilla cream and clean laundry) Mother Shub's Spiced Lait de Chevre (goes on tangy yogurt, dries to warm milk with clove syrup, gentle and soft) A King Pursued By a Unicorn Good Morning London (lavender & amber) My Little Grotesque (sweet/creamy cardamom SN) O the Joy of My Spirit (hazelnut/tonka/pine) First Cry of the Warbler on the Plum (wisteria, plum, and honeyed green tea, lovely spring floral) Poor Monkey (pleasant creamy fig/lotus/ylang-ylang that almost smells like there's coconut in it, but bad during shark week) LE Imps Tested - (Okay, but not *great*): Joyful Dalliance in the Underworld - dead ringer for pit barbecue Faiza - surprisingly pleasant for a white floral-type scent but burns my skin Australian Copperhead (all acia-berry, all the time) Leda (like a less complex De Vos with strawberry instead of apricot & more white musk) St. Clare (too faint & fades too quickly, not as sweet as I'd hoped) Himalia (like a less-sweet Chicken-Legged Hut) Spiced Apple Cider ('16 Weenie) A Commentary (apricot and vetiver and red musk, like a less-barbecue-ish Joyful Dalliance) LEs Tested - Disaster: Delight and Consternation - horrible floor cleaner/cleaning solvent scent The Unicorn Rushing... - Lovely in the imp, turned feces-like on my skin (first jasmine to do so) LEs and Discontinueds I'm Curious About: Blood and Judgement so Well Commedled (really nice and pleasant) Avunculus Apple I In the Time of Plague (buy before it's out of stock or be strong?) All That I Possess (buy before it's out of stock or be strong?) Amicita (everything sounds good except the carnation) - glorious! Tarantula Fascinator Captain Cully The Lilac Wood The Last Unicorn Mommy Fortuna (The sexiest BPAL I've ever worn. Sticky honey & salty gunpowder) Aristocratic Couple Arana Haloes (as a Dark Delicacies blend, might as well be a disc./LE for me) (like the lighter, spring/summer version of Antikythera Mechanism!) Adante con Fantasia (why did I not order a decant when I could?) Ivory Vulva/Glowing Vulva (haha, good luck!) Katrina van Tassel (yeah, like that's gonna happen) Question Mark Atlas Moth Gypsy Moth Grievous Swarm - wonderful gritty vetiver/myrrh, my holy grail vetiver scent Bjugnakraekir Perilous Parlor Notes that ruin things: Jasmine (star jasmine is apparently a different plant) Dead Leaves note/accord Carnation (except in Bow & Crown of Conquest) Ozone/aquatic notes Narcissus (the most cloying white floral of them all) Lily of the Valley (except in Audumla) Patchouli (very occasionally okay if the other notes drown it out/you can't smell it in the blend) Nag Champa (bad "headshop" associations) Hemp accord/Weed (reeeeaally bad associations) Lemon verbena (horrible lemon cleaning solvent of doom) Notes that are iffy: Rose (wonderful in Adrastea and Lush's Rose Jam, okay in Jezebel, Roses, Pearls & Diamonds, and Allegory of Chastity, awful in Hedylogos, Harlot, The Rose, and some other rose blends) Ylang-Ylang (sometimes okay, sometime too white floral-y) Orange Blossom (same as Ylang-Ylang) Champaca (will it be too reminiscent of Nag Champa?) Lily (high risk of soap) Lavender (will it remind me too much of my mother's bath products?) Dragon's Blood (was this the note that rendered Dragon's Heart too perfume-y?) Red Musk (or was it this one?) White Musk (high risk of dryer sheets) Black Musk (possibly what turned Black Rider into baby powder?) Basically all musks except "skin musk" nope, all musks White sandalwood (similar effect to white musk) Most florals "Dirt"/"Loam" etc. All citrus notes Oude/oud (can smell sour/fecal) Notes of Win: Vanilla Marshmallow Honey Coconut Tobacco Myrrh Amber (black, golden) Teak Benzoin Cream/milk Goats Milk Nutmeg Notes of Like: Leather (like but amp) Vetiver (would be under "love" if Joyful Dalliances in the Underworld hadn't smelled like pit barbecue and Death Adder hadn't been... weirdly and inexplicably unpleasant) Cocoa (love but can vanish or be cloying) Almond (like but can be cloying) Cake Cinnamon (love but amp liek woah) Clove (love but amp) Coffee Pumpkin Peach (like but skin eats it) Pear (hard to find, often paired with icky florals) Lilac Frankincense (like but skin eats it) "Resin" "Smoke" "Spices" "woods" Beeswax Hazelnut Orris/orris root + coconut Sage Fig Oak Lotus (possibly the glorious crisp, fruity note in the wet phase of Paris, possibly also what caused Paris to vanish off my skin in under an hour) - confirmed, Lotus is the wonderful crisp/juicy sweet fruit note from wet/freshly applied Paris. Notes I Amp: Leather Cinnamon Possibly Rose Possibly Clove Possibly Honey? Possibly Jasmine (or maybe I just hate it enough that any jasmine is too much jasmine)

In the imp: I can smell both a strong dry, grey leather, and a slightly floral-tinged fruit note. They're really distinct, separate notes, with the leather slightly stronger but the fruit very present as well. Here's hoping it doesn't become leather single note on my skin. Wet: freshly applied, there's a brief period of slightly stale funkiness, as something in the blend threatens to go unpleasant on me (or maybe it shares an ingredient with Skuld or the Gift, which both did the same thing). After five minutes/on the drydown: The stale/funky whatever it was vanishes (just like in Skuld and The Gift) to be replaced by a strong leather with an overlay of fruit and something fresh and slightly floral. Half an hour in: The silage/throw has more of the fruity freshness (though still with a leather tinge), while close to my skin the leather dominates, as I expected. I didn't realize at the time that Bensiabel has lilac in it, but testing it a second time after going back and reading the notes, I can definitely smell the lilac as well as the plum juice. By the second hour, the plum has faded except for faint whiffs of it in the silage/throw. On my skin, the leather has triumphed, but in the process it's blended seamlessly with the lilac, making it a fresh, floral-tinged leather that's perfect for spring. This is a light, grey-violet leather, as opposed to Two Old Men's grey-green leather or Red Rider's intense brown leather (or Fighter and Skekna the Slavemaster's harsh leather). I think I may need a bottle of this. I really like it and am definitely going to quickly use up my imp.

I'm not a patchouli fan, but I can definitely recommend Bengal for spiced honey. It gave me a very strong "raised red welts" skin reaction, though, so you may want to be cautious. Kil-Devil is very molasses-rum with hints of something green from the sugarcane, and improves with aging (my imp was rather meh at first, but when I pulled it out to retest after a year, it was lovely). You might also want to check out a few of the Carnival Diabolique snake pit blends; all of them have a the same snake oil base as Womb Fury, with a variety of different additional notes (Saw-Scaled Viper reminded me a little of a non-skin-burning Bengal before my cinnamon-amping powers turned it into red hots candy).

If you like the aquatics + moss + wood + "hothouse blooms" in Bayou, you might want to check out Kumari Kandam (which also has "hothouse blooms" and aquatic notes, though with clay and incense rather than moss and cypress), and Ogygia (notes includes cypress and "sea air"). Both are from the Wanderlust collection. Smokestack is one of my favorites and is all woodsmoke and wood/resin on me; I'm pretty sure that it has a strong Vetiver note and possibly some tobacco, so you might want to check out other blend with tobacco, Vetiver, or "smoke" listed as notes. Starting with Antikythera Mechanism (tobacco plus beeswax and wood, which means it also has similarities to Bard with its beeswax and wood notes). Dark Chocolate, Black Tobacco, and Vetiver is an LE from this year's Lupers and not a GC, but it has a "warm resinous wood" smell that's similar to the later stages of Smokestack. And if you like Bard, you may also like Mr. Nancy, which has a similar bay rum component plus tobacco, sugar cookies, and lime.

2016 version. I've never smelled the old version of any of the snakes, so I'm coming at this a snake pit virgin. Snake Oil on its own was not really my thing when I tried it a couple years ago (I should probably retest an imp now that I have more experience with BPAL, but my fear of patchouli stays my hand), but the snake pit is so beloved that I knew I had to try decants of them when they came back around. Since I adore cinnamon and am pretty sure I amp it at least some of the time, I decided to start with Saw-Scaled Viper on the theory that the cinnamon would drown out any potential patchouli cooties. In the imp - I can smell the cinnamon the moment I got the lid off. Lots of cinnamon, backed by a sweetness that reminds me a little of Bengal's spiced honey (which could be either very good because I love the way Bengal smells, or very bad, because Bengal gave me raised red welts wherever it touched my skin). Wet - delicious buttery cinnamon baked goods - Boomtownrat's "sexy cinnamon cookies" is the perfect description. I immediately slathered it all over my wrists/forearms and chest, and am either going to be very delicious, or very sorry. Dry - fifteen minutes in, and there are no welts, redness, or stinging/tingling. Another cinnamon-heavy blend that doesn't irritate my skin! Rejoice! (Thus far the list consists of Saw-Scaled Viper and Chimera). Unfortunately, the delicious sexy cinnamon cookies have turned into pure cinnamon red hots. I smell less like cinnamon baked goods and more like a craft store cinnamon broom. I *like* craft store cinnamon brooms, but I have other perfumes that already make me smell that way. Then I went out with friends, forgot to keep checking my wrists, and didn't remember until hours later when the perfume was basically gone. I'll have to retest Saw-Scaled Viper again in hopes that the sexy cookies come back at some point during the dry down.

Gattepefur was the bread and jam fellow. Stufur is like medieval carrot cake, to me, so also worth mentioning! And not to forget BPTP, The Strange Old woman is like a delicious cinnamon pecan roll....mmmm. Moons of Jupiter: Adrastea is also really foodie on me - like warm pastry with honey and cream - yummy and comforting. Those are the only ones I can think of right now that may not have been mentioned up thread, as they are fairly recent. ETA: Pumpkin Cheesecake Cupcake! How could I forget it, it's so delicious on me. Agree about Adrastea. The rose note dominates on me most of the time, but in the bottle and during That Time of The Month, it's cream cheese pastry with honey and a hint of rose. My favorite baked-good BPALs are El Dia de los Reyes (smells like a pan of brownies baking in the oven), Cockaigne (sticky-sweet honey-cake), and Frosted Pumpkin Spice Cookie/Pumpkin Cheesecake Cupcake, but I have a bottle of The Strange Old Woman on the way that I have high hopes for. Jack is amazing cinnamon-spiced peach pie hot from the oven for approximately five minutes until it's finished drying on my skin. Whatever element it is that creates the hot/baking peaches smell, my skin eats it immediately.

In the imp: a strong leather single note, like walking into a high quality leather goods shop. Wet on my skin, it briefly becomes more complex and less leathery,as if red musk or the moss and balsam were fighting valiantly to make an appearance, but within a few minutes my skin chemistry has defeated them, and the single-note leather returns. Dry: From five minutes after application through to seven hours later (at which point it was still going strong on my skin, though without as much throw as it had at first), I'm enveloped in the smell of fresh leather goods. This isn't an aged, soft, leather - it's the smell of fresh, brand-new leather, but not quite the harsh "brand new motorcycle leathers" smell of Fighter. It's more like a leather goods booth at a Renfair, the one you wander into in order to lust after the corsets and jerkins and belt pouches and leather-bound journals with hand-worked covers and epically expensive leather cloaks you can't afford before finally leaving with a wrist bracer. The only reason the scent went away after seven hours was because I took a shower. Otherwise, I suspect the leather scent would have lasted all day and through to tomorrow morning.