Elspethdixon

St. Clare is a very soft, cuddly scent on me - I've been wearing my decant at bedtime a lot this week.

Aging must do something amazing to this blend, because I got relatively little licorice or metal/rust from it. On me, it was primarily a cozy/snuggly tobacco/myrrh, with the myrrh doing that soft, powdery thing myrrh sometimes does on me. A hint of licorice/anise was there at the beginning, and I could detect some metallic notes trying to peek through occasionally, but for the most part, Krampus' Chains were the softest brown-velvet-lined padded leather cuffs. Apparently, bad children really just need a nap, and Krampus is going to gently cuddle them to sleep.

Wet/in the imp - pale florals - smells both slightly ethereal and very like the kind of traditional pale/white floral my mother would wear. On first application, it's pale florals with an element of something acrid/musty. Then the lilac comes forward and from about the fifteen minute to the forty-five minute mark, I'm surrounded by a glorious cloud of delicious lilac. If I put my nose right up to my wrist, it's all pale florals accompanied the soap/dryer sheets effect aquatics often give me (that must be the mist) plus a hint of powdery orris, but the throw and silage are all lilac. It's wonderful. I love it. If only this stage lasted, it would be bottle worthy for the lilac silage alone. Alas, after about a half an hour of gently wafting lilac beauty, something goes very wrong with my skin chemistry, and my wrists start to smell like floral diaper poop. Baffled because I knew this didn't contain jasmine, I check wikipedia, and sure enough, lilac has indole in it. Crap (literally). I've never gotten this effect from white florals before - my avoidance of jasmine is because I just don't like it not because it goes bad on me - but apparently there's a first time for everything. After several hours of pale/musty/powdery/soapy floral with hint of dirty diaper, the awful notes finally subside and I'm left with faint traces of a much more pleasant dry/powdery orris along with a hint of soapy aquatic. I can tell this is a really beautiful blend, but my skin chemistry does something horrible with it. Off to the swap pile it goes.

In the imp - cool, cologne-y sort of scent Wet - Sweet/cool teak and cognac. Something in this smells cool and almost minty (the oil even felt tingly/cool on my skin in the same way as mint). There's a hint of something unpleasantly musty, similar to the fusty/sour/musty wet stage of some honey blends. Dry - By ten minutes in, the mustiness has faded away, just as it usually does with honey notes, and the minty/herbal element has also gone, leaving smooth/sweet/warm teak accompanied by something clean and cool and by something else which reads to my nose as fruity honey but which is probably the cognac (which doesn't smell boozey at all). This is one of my favorite Unicorn blends so far. I can see how it reads as masculine to other people, but on me it's very sweet and gentle, like a cooler, fainter, less sweet Antikythera Mechanism without the tobacco/vanilla, or like The Gift from this year's Lupers but with less honey. It doesn't morph much after this point, though by the one hour mark it began to fade down to a skin scent and the smooth/cool teak has become warmer and softer/fuzzier. I don't get much myrrh, except for one spot on my left wrist where it smells warm/dry and incense-y (my right arm and the rest of my left forearm are all soft, warm/cool wood). I would swear there was either amber or honey in this based on the warm/powdery finish of the drydown, though neither are listed in the notes. Like all the Unicorn blends I've tested so far, Orpheus has very light/limited throw. Good wear length for something so light, though - it faded to a faint nose-to-your-wrists skin scent after about two hours, but that skin scent stage lasts a while. Six hours after application, I can still catches traces of it if I press my nose to the skin of my wrists.

Seconding De Vos's Unicorn and Allegory of Chastity if you like Pink Snowballs. They're both sugared, creamy florals. (And if creamy, gourmand rose is your thing, you should search the sales/swaps page to see if you can get your hands on a decant of Adrastea, this past February's lunacy. It's white rose with goat's milk, cocoa, and honey, and is pretty much what I imagine the turkish delight the White Witch offers Edmund in The Chronicles of Narnia must have smelled like). You might also want to try Asp Viper from the reformulated Snake Pit - it's kind of like a sweeter, Snake Oil-y Bastet with orange added.

This is glorious, probably one of my top fen BPALs I've ever worn. I get a hint of the salty/foodie chips during the wet stage (though I didn't mentally peg the smell as "tortilla chips" until I read other people's reviews), but mostly it's a clean, somehow outdoorsy scent. It makes me think of a salt marsh - not of the fishy brackish river mud smell salt marshes actually have, but of the idea of a salt marsh. In a perfect world, the Chesapeake Bay shoreline would smell like this. There's just a hint of aquatic freshness (probably created by the salt - I don't get the usual "soap/dryer sheets" aquatic scent from this at all), combined with clean/fresh sage and sweet, warm frankincense and nutmeg. Once the drydown begins, the salty-fresh notes fade slightly and the nutmeg note combined with the frankincense starts to remind me strongly of the nutmeg and resins in Mars Ultor. This isn't a sister scent to that one, exactly, but I'd say it was at least a second cousin. It's not a gourmand scent by any means, but it's definitely foodie-adjacent. I forgot all about the "honyed saffron" in the notes until I came here to post my review and re-read them, and thinking about it now, that's probably what's giving it the sweet, foodie-adjacent warmth. It lasts well, too. If I put it on my skin and hair before bed, I can still smell traces of "fantasy salt marsh + hints of Mars Ultor + honyed maize" on me when I wake up.

Wet/in imp - Sharp, herbal honey, somehow 'clean' smelling Freshly applied/five minutes in - Sharp/clean herbal honey (heavier on the green herbs than the honey), that I'd swear has citrus in it were it not for the fact that citrus notes generally smell like cleaning products on me and this just smells fresh and clean/bright. There's also a hint of something acrid/dry/hot, like burning (checking the notes, this is probably the ash resin or wood, and my brain subbed in "burning" for "dry woodiness" because the word "ash" suggests burning). I'm a fan of warm/dry wood scents and"fire"-themed scents like Djinn, so I actually really like it. Half hour - after about 30-40 minutes, the ashes and herbs fade into the background and the honey comes to the foreground. It's a fruity-smelling honey, which I guess is the "ambrosial" part. The fruity honey stage lasts about 2 hours before fading (but might have made it a little longer if I hadn't put on sunblock at that point). . Overall this is a lot like an Apiary scent, except I actually like it better than I do several of the Apiaries. It's a good spring/fall honey, first clean and herbal and then somehow fruity and crisp rather than sticky and sexy. A shame it's discontinued.

Now I'm even more impatient for Act 4.

If you like leather + vanilla, you should try Bow and Crown of Conquest. It's a snuggly vanilla-leather with a bit of carnation/sage.

Roses, Pearls, and Diamonds is all rose/crystalline musk on me, and I don't get coconut from Brown Jenkins or Death Adder at all. Giljagaur and Obatala are amazing, though. Creamy/warm foodie winter coconut and clean summer beachy coconut. Between those and Black Pearl and Hidden Pearls' light, orris-y coconut for spring, I just need to find a good fall coconut and I'll have all the seasons covered.

In the imp/wet - sweet/juicy red fruit. Freshly applied/just starting to dry - the sweet red fruit has become dryer, and I swear I smell leather somewhere in there as well. It's a very sophisticated smell, the the kind of thing I expected Red Rider to smell like (instead of the single-note tack-room leather Red Rider actually was on me). I don't get any of the sweet grape Manischewitz the red wine note in some other blends becomes on me, just red/burgundy-colored leather and warm fruitiness that's somehow sexy rather than overtly foodie. After the first fifteen minutes or so, the leather note (or whatever it was, since leather's not actually a listed note) vanishes and the amaretto comes forward to complement the fruit. At this point, the sophisticated bordello where people drink dry red wine while sitting in plush leather chairs turns into a cozy kitchen with bakewell tarts cooking in the oven. The sexiness is replaced by sweet/warm/slightly-foodie coziness, and instead of burgundy leather, it now makes me think of a soft/fuzzy red sweater. Over the course of the drydown it gradually gets softer and less fruity until a couple hours later, I'm left with a warm/soft amaretto scent with hints of something amber-y.

This smells lovely in the bottle (sweet strawberry liquor with a hint of white chocolate and just a bit of tingliness from the pepper), but once on my skin, it gradually morphs into a dead ringer for the scented plastic of a 1980s Strawberry Shortcake Doll.

In the imp/wet - Pale florals. Not a heady white floral like honeysuckle but something slightly harsher/more green and less sweet. As it dries, the honey starts to come out, but the floral still dominates. I feel like this is in the same honied-floral scent family as Skuld and The Bride, but less sweet than either. There's something fresh about it, not exactly soapy, but clean. Five minutes in - The floral note has overpowered the honey (or maybe it's just that the Redoul Honey I'm testing at the same time is so overwhelmingly honeyhoneyhoney that Daphne Honey seems like all flowers in comparison). It's a lovely, outdoor-in-the-late-spring scent, like freshly blooming flowers with hints of greenery. Florals are not always my thing, but this is a relatively wearable one. Having looked daphne up, it's apparently an evergreen shrub with pale pink flowers, which fits the strong/sweet fragrance. It smells similar to a white floral in intensity, but fresher and without that cloying indolic edge. Half an hour in - No honey remains - Daphne honey is all flowers on the drydown. I'm liking the floral scent a little less as time goes on, but that may just be because it's so strong/intense. There's an almost citrusy edge to it, which might be why it smells fresh and a little like something a soap or air freshener ought to be scented with without actually being at all soapy. This is much more like a classic floral perfume than any of the other three apiaries. Like, I could give this to my mother, the lover of things like White Linen and Marc Jacobs Daisy, without her making a face at it. One hour in - This scent doesn't morph much on me. An hour after application, DH is now a soft classic floral with just the faintest hint of underlying honey. I like it more at this point than I did earlier in the drydown, but I may in fact give this imp to my mother the white-floral lover, who I suspect will like it better than I do.

This is my favorite of the Apiary scents and one of my favorite BPAL honeys in general, but I've never reviewed it before. Time to remedy that. In the imp/wet, it's basically a single note honey. As it starts to dry, an almost berry-like note starts to emerge, with a base of sweet, foody honey beneath it. Then, the magic happens. By five or so minutes in, the honey smothers everything else and becomes dominant, just like it is in the imp. You can still catch a hint of the sweet berries, but Redoul Honey is indeed pretty much a honey single note. This is late summer honey, the kind that's super dark. Thick, rich, sweet honey, with that delicious honey-pollen almost crunchy sweetness that warm, partially-crystallized honey or freshly extracted honey being strained and processed can sometimes have. Sadly, this glorious hyper-realistic honey phase only lasts about a half-hour before morphing into a more general sweet/thick/rich scent, with hints of floral and berry notes still lurking in there somewhere. It lasts another two-three hours, getting gradually softer and more powdery over time. I wish the "stick your face in sticky, just-used honey extraction equipment" phase lasted longer, but the later parts of the drydown are still sweet, sweet goodness. I'm pretty sure that if I wore this at home around my parents' beehives, I'd be attacked.

In the imp/wet - cherry cough syrup. Freshly applied/just starting to dry - The cough syrup has transitioned into a cherry/cherry blossom scent that's relatively pleasant, but not really me. Sweet, but I don't really get much honey from it. Unfortunately, after about five minutes of pleasant-smelling cherry, the cherry note starts to morph into something plastic-y and faintly chemical-smelling. One hour in - No honey at all, just a cherry scent that is somehow both chemically/plastic-y, cool, and cloying. Fail. Cherry is apparently not a note my skin chemistry likes. You know that cherry-flavored gritty plaster/rubber/paste substance they used to use to take impressions of your bite in the orthodontist's office back during the 1990s? The drydown of Chokecherry Honey is unfortunately reminiscent of that stuff. This is not the sweet cherry-pie-filling scent I'd hoped for nor even the fruity cherry blossom I got for the first few minutes. After over an hour of cloying, plastic-y fail, Chokecherry Honey started to improve slightly around the two-hour mark as the cherry note finally began to fade. It was entirely gone by three hours of so, and I was glad to see it go.

I can't wear hair gloss in my hair, alas, because of how fine/thin it is, but sprayed on my skin like a dry oil body mist, this moisturizes well, absorbs quickly, and smells amazing. Warm/sweet fig with just enough dry sandalwood to keep it from being overly fruity. The smell is very light, but has relatively good throw, and lasted for at about an hour and a half after application. It would make a good moisturizer base for fig-scented perfume oils like Amicitia and Daruma Doll.

If you like Kumiho and Shanghai, then (provided citrus works well on you), you might also like Aizen-Myoo (three citrus notes, black tea, and cherry blossom) and Baobhan Sith (grapefruit, white tea, apple blossom, and ginger). Both of them felt like citrus-y scent-cousins to Kumiho and Shanghai's tea/ginger and tea/cherry blossom combos to me. ETA: And I see someone's already recc'd Baibhan Sith. Consider this a second endorsement for it's Kumiho resemblance.

Mommy Fortuna's combination of salty gunpowder and sticky-sweet honey is pure sex, to me. Something about the animalic quality of honey is very female and sexual in general provided it doesn't lean too sweet/foody/gourmand (Cockaigne, for example, smells like dessert, not sex). Also sexy: The Lotus Tree, Skuld, O, Saw-Scaled Viper, and apparently Antikythera Mechanism. Personally, I think Antikythera Mechanism smells cozy and comforting and cuddly rather than sexy, but the first time I wore it to work, three different people complimented me on it.

I don't know if this applies evenly to all scents (since different components break down at different rates, with top notes generally being the first to go), but at least some BPALs can stand up to heat. I discovered yesterday that I'd left an imp of Jezebel in my purse at some point this spring, and said purse has been exposed to temps in the upper 90s on a daily basis throughout June/July. I put the last of the oil in the imp on my hair this morning and it smelled the same as always. It's still detectable now four-five hours later. Other forumites could likely confirm this for certain, but IIRC oil-based perfumes like BPAL have different throw/sillage/wearlength profiles than alcohol-based perfumes. With the exception of a few strong basenotes like vetiver, most BPALs only last a few hours on me, including the ones I've ordered and had shipped to me in the winter; I put it down to how quickly my dry skin absorbs the oil, because if I put bath oils from the trading post directly onto my skin, the scent has much more staying power than the exact same scent does in regular perfume oil form (ex: the chocolate notes from El Dia de los Reyes, various 13s, and Boomslang vanish into my skin quickly, but the same chocolate note in Marshmallow Cookie Pie bath oil lasts overnight and is still detectable the next morning).

Light, sweet floral honey. Lotus, it turns out, is a floral note I can wear, and this is a very good lotus, heady and sweet and honied without being cloying. It's like a lighter version of one of the Apiary scents, perfect for wearing in summer. Sadly, after about two hours the lovely honied floral fades to a more powdery/watery floral, and shortly after that it fades entirely.

A lethal poison bundled up in a dainty, innocent little package that was oft times found in ancient witches’ flying ointments and astral projection balms. A warm, soft, ruddy scent, earthy and mild. Wet - A dry, paper-y scent. Freshly applied/five minutes in - Papery gardening shed. There’s some note in here that smells damp and alive, like growing plants or wet soil. Still a hint of something sharp and papery, and maybe a touch of sweetness. I don't smell the sweet/warm coconut a lot of people seem to get from this, unless that’s the touch of sweetness. I’m not sure I like it, but it's definitely complex and evocative. Not very death-like, though. Half-hour mark - The wet soil/growing things notes have faded into a soft, slightly sweet scent, and yes, I can now see how people get coconut out of this. Unfortunately, the papery note has started to morph into something that smells almost like BO and sweat. Fortunately, it doesn’t have much throw and already seems like it’s starting to fade. And the sweaty BO note is fading the fastest. Three hours - Actually, it lasted longer than I expected - at least another hour worth of low-throw skin scent. The sweaty note did indeed vanish the quickest, and at this point (three hours on) what's left is a barely detectable skin scent that's dry and slightly sweet. I want to say 'powdery,' but it doesn't smell at all like baby powder - just like something that should have a finely powdered texture.

2016 version I originally tested this fresh from the decanting circle in May and didn't like it - I'm not a fan of Snake Oil in general, and there was a funky "aftersmell" (like the olfactory version of an aftertaste) that was impossible to identify but distinctly unpleasant (like, objectively unpleasant, not just "I don't like Snake Oil"). After a couple months of aging, I'm retesting. Wet - Snake Oil with smokey vetiver. A more pleasant Snake Oil than the usual funky-medicinal SO wet phase, though. I can't detect any coconut. The throw projects several inches out from my skin; I'm testing Death Cap on my other wrist, and had to literally hold my Death Adder arm behind my back while I sniffed the Death Cap to get a clean read on it rather than Death-Cap-vetiver-Snake-Oil. Freshly applied/five minutes in - The vetiver has vanished beneath a cloying haze of Snake Oil. Maybe there’s a hint of dryness from it? Still no coconut, but I’m not getting the rancid oil after smell I got from this back in May, either. At ten minutes a hint of the “aftersmell” appears, but weaker than last time. Aging seems to improve Death Adder. Half-hour mark - The Snake Oil is already starting to fade, and I keep getting hints of something sweet and fruity as the coconut struggles to emerge from beneath it. It’s gradually changing from mostly cloying Snake Oil to mostly fruity coconut/smokey vetiver, and I like the coconut/vetiver aspect much better. No more unpleasant aftersmell, either. If it was like this from the beginning, this would be bottle worthy for sure. Sadly, it’s already starting to fade, and I bet it will be gone within an hour. Three hours - I was wrong. Death Adder is much longer-lived than I expected, and is now all delicious, smokey vetiver with a hint of sweetness. No trace of snake oil left (yay!) just vetiver. I have to put my nose directly against my skin to smell it at this point, but that’s still a longer lifespan than any snake has had on me yet. And everything from the half-hour mark on out was good, and from the hour mark outward, great. 6-8 hours later, I can still catch faint whiffs of vetiver when i put my nose directly to my skin. Mmmm, vetiver. If I didn't have to suffer through a half-hour of Snake Oil dominance to get to the good part, this would be bottle-worthy. There needs to be some other scent with coconut/vanilla and vetiver but without Snake Oil, because basically Death Adder starts to gel and be lovely once the Snake Oil notes are gone.

In the imp - I was expecting something vetiver-heavy and smokey, but instead it's fruity and sweet, with something hazy/clean that might be musk. Wet/freshly applied - Fruity and sweet with hints of amber. For a few seconds here and there I can smell something hated and dry, the 'fire' of the description and title, but it never really emerges from beneath the fruity amber. On the drydown - Still fruity and sweet amber, no smoke or flame or heat at all. I think I like it, though. It reminds me of a less cloying Tamora. By a half-hour or so in, sadly, my left arm has started to develop a 'clean'/'soapy' vibe, though my right is still slightly fruity amber. Noooo. Don't go dryer sheets. Don't go dryer sheets. ... but alas, my prayers are in vain and it does go dryer sheets. Close to my skin, it's lovely tart-fruity amber with a sort of haze of musk over it, just like the in-the-imp scent promised, but the throw is solid eau du dryer sheet for a good two hours until it fades into nonexistance.

Aquatic notes don't do well on me, but I desperately want to be able to wear one of the Innsmouth-themed blends, and several people up-thread have mentioned that this was the rare aquatic that worked on them when most aquatics didn't, so I decided to take a chance on it. Wet/in the imp - Dryer sheets soaked in citrus-y cleaning solvents. Not promising. As it dries, the dryer sheet/cleaning solvents top notes fade quickly into a sea breeze shower soap/glade plug-in type scent that isn't unpleasant, but is still definitely Not For Me. For a few minutes during the early part of the drydown I could smell a pleasant amber-type note trying to fight it's way through the soap smell, but alas, the soap won. Why does the great Dagon withhold his favor from me? Admittedly, it does work better on me than some aquatics, but not well enough for me to really want to wear it again. It also lasts for over 8 hours on my skin because of course it does. Why can't the blends I love ever last this long?

The oil is a dark orange-ish color, and in the imp it smells like citrus-tinged men's cologne. Wet - alas, once it hits my skin, the citrus amps and takes over, and it's not the pleasant orange-creamsicle-like effect the citrus+amber creates in the wet phase of Titus Andronicus, either. I use an environmentally friendly dish washer detergent called Citraclean (valencia orange scent), and just-applied wet Aelopile is a dead ringer for it. As it starts to dry, the CitraClean effect diminishes slightly, and the throw gets more pleasant as the sweet/warm/dry amber/wood/resin notes start to emerge. Close to my skin, however, it's still an unpleasant sour citrus note with something about it that's almost like a hint of BO. Dry-After an hour or so, the citrus top notes have mostly burned off, and I'm left with a pleasant warm, dry, masculine scent that reminds me a little of No. 93 Engine without the beeswax. I don't like it as much as I do No. 93 Engine, but I like it a heck of a lot more at this point than I did earlier in the drydown. By three hours in, everything had faded to a pleasant warm-and-dry-resin-y skin scent, only detectable when I put my nose right against the skin. I reapplied it at lunch, and this time,with the base notes from the first application still lingering, the unpleasant citrus oil dish detergent phase only lasted about twenty minutes before becoming a pleasant resin-amber with a hint of something tangy an sharp brightening it up. This is probably what it's supposed to smell like on people who's skin doesn't hate citrus notes. (Looking at the notes again, I see that in addition to "citrus" there's also verbena, and that's likely what starts out so utterly awful on me. Orange and lime can be okay on me, but lemon in any form and verbena invariably head straight for horrible cleaning solvent territory.)