Ailgwyn

This was...eh, so-so for me. Quite sharp, nice and gingery and the way it's supposed to be in the bottle. On me, it turned...a little sharper, and a little tarter. I could have used some more sweetness at that point, because it was only ginger. Still not bad, but...only eh. But ginger doesn't much care for me, I've found, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. I took LongsToFly's advice and layered it with Egg Nog-- THEN it was quite nice. Still gingery, but with the sweetness I needed to enjoy it more. Now I can finish my imps of both scents with a clear conscience.

Holy god. Why do I have to fall in love with a LE scent? It's so...cruel. *sob* I was worried, when reading the description, that it would be too sweet for me. I mean, five sugars with candied fruits. That's an awful lot o' sweetness, ne? But my fears proved to be unfounded, because smelling Sugar Skull was like opening up a sunbaked bag of brown sugar and taking a long heavenly whiff. There was fruitiness there, very faintly in the background, enough to give a very slight tartness to even out the flat sweetness of sugar. And lucky me-- when slathered on my wrists, it seems that Sugar Skull likes me well enough to smell pretty much exactly like it does in the bottle. Maybe the fruit is just a touch stronger, but not much. It's still the same wonderful scent and it stays pretty much the same as it dries on me. I guess I lucked out on this one-- a shame I didn't get a large bottle. I don't know what I'll do when my imp runs out.

The scent of warm, glowing jack o’lanterns on a warm autumn night: true Halloween pumpkin, spiced with nutmeg, glowing peach and murky clove. Oh Jack. Oh Jaaaaaaack. Jack II is one of the first scents I've ever tried that has actively brought back memories. It smells EXACTLY like my mother's tzimmes (that's sweet potato, apricot, prune, raisin, and beef stew to you)...that's a good thing, too. In the bottle I can smell the pumpkin and peach almost simultaneously, a fruity yet mellow scent, and the cloves are like an aftertaste, coming up behind in the sniff. On me, it's exactly like in the bottle at first. The cloves come gradually more and more to the top as it dries, which is great because I love cloves. A couple of hours down the line, it's become all cloves to the point where there's a distinct green edge to the scent, which reminds me of what it feels like to chew cloves (or, heh, smoke them), but it's not bad. That would be the point I'd refresh it, though-- I much prefer the first stages. On my cousin, it smelled like warm apple pie. That said, mmmmmmmm. I can see why Jack is so popular; it's a delicious scent.

Eve disappointed me in that I was expecting someone completely different from what I actually got. What I WAS expecting was something that reminded me of Rosh Hashanah, with the apples and honey that I love so much. What I GOT was a nice sweet floral, with a hint of honey in the background. Pleasant, but not what I was hoping for. Nevertheless, I gave it a try, but on me it turned into Just Plain Rose, and while I like rose, if I wanted to smell like Just Plain Rose, I'd have gotten a single note of it before they were discontinued. A pity. *sigh* Ah well...it really is a nice scent-- would be perfect for spring. It reminds me of when the flowers are just starting to blossom outside and going for a walk to smell them mixed with the sun. It just ain't for me.

Ahhh, Kali. I wanted so much to like you. And I did, just...not in the way I wanted to. What a complex scent in the bottle, deep and heady and floral. The wine and honey seemed most prevalent to me, with the chocolate an undertone in the background. On me, however, it was pure red wine/honey. EXTREMELY heady, dizzying, even-- I felt like I did the time my mother and I made wassail (and she added extra wine when it was done simmering, so it was alcoholic) and I drank three glasses of it. It was. So. Bloody. Sweet. Nice, but SWEET. Too much like wassail for my peace of mind (or stomach-- made me slightly queasy). No Kali for me. Happily, I traded her to someone who will appreciate her.

Now why is it that all these scents with chocolate in them end up smelling faintly of tobacco on me? Eh, regardless, Velvet smells heavenly. In the bottle in smells like drinking a cup of hot chocolate while being wrapped in a quilt and sitting before a fire; this lovely warm cocoa scent with a hint of the vanilla and sandalwood in the background. On me, it started out pure chocolate. Oh bliss. Oh heaven. The sandalwood came more and more to the surface as time went on, and about an hour after I applied it, the tobacco-y scent emerged. Happily, it was only a faint tobacco scent and still delicious. Velvet is one of my new favorites. I like to slather it on and rake in the compliments (which are mostly people wondering out loud "Mmmmm, is someone drinking hot chocolate?").

In the bottle: It smells very much like melon, like a cantaloupe mixed with a watermelon. My first impression is that it reminds me of babies, of young girls. It's the kind of perfume a little girl gets to wear and is all excited about. Very fresh and very clean, like soap. Very innocent. On me: It smells much the same, except for a slight baby powder-esque tinge that turns me off, as it screams "little girl" at me. I'm not liking baby powder much nowadays. It's not sensual enough for me, and on days I want to smell innocent, I don't want to add "little girl" to the equation; enough people think I'm a little girl as it is. o_O It's pretty. It's a nice sweet floral scent. It just isn't me. So it will be swapped.

I'm with the cherry cough syrup-black licorice camp on this one. We got this as a freebie from the Lab (thank you muchly) but after one whiff in the vial, I'm afraid I got a little biased. It smelled sort of like Red Queen to me-- that is, pure Robitussin. Smelling it a little further yielded a faint anise in the background, which made it not so bad as before, but though I love me some black licorice whips, it's not something I like in my perfume. On me, it turned very licorice, and like I said, in my mouth it's good, in my nose it ain't. So Kabuki...off to the swap pile with ya. I'm sure someone will appreciate you more than I.

Unfortunately, I have to work on Halloween...I'll probably end up wearing Lightning since it could pass for a nice-smelling soap (we aren't supposed to wear perfume), but if I had my druthers, I'd be wearing either Lust, Gluttony, or Harlot.

I guess I'll be the minority here in that I tend to match my perfumes to the weather when it's rainy out. It gets foggy here a lot in the mornings, and I almost always choose Lightning or Moon Rose to go with it. But then again, I love the way fog smells. I live where Hurricanes Ivan, Charley, and Jeanne decided to flood (western North Carolina), so it rained an awful lot, and I still almost always chose Lightning or Moon Rose. Water-smell matching water-smell. They kind of make the dreariness into something more pleasant, gray with a nice tinge of blue or pink. Actually, it's drizzly today, and I'm wearing...tada....Lightning. *not predictable, no*

I can attest that anything with lots of lavender in it should do the trick. I have a bag of French lavender that I dive for whenever I'm having trouble sleeping or the beginnings of one of my pseudo-migraines, and it calms me down nicely. As for BPAL scents, I haven't tried any with lavender in them, so I can't recommend any, but of the ones I've tried, Jezebel, Gluttony, and Nyx all make me feel calm and happy, and Lightning and Moon Rose make me feel calm and cool and collected.

As all the other reviews have said, Moon Rose's description is PERFECT. It's rose with a dewy scent at the end, rose and water and air and light. It's like Beth combined mist and rose in a bottle, cool and quiet and sophisticated. On my skin, at first it was about 50-50 mist and rose, pale pink and soft. The mist-smell faded after a while until it was mostly rose, maybe slightly baby-powderish, but I like babypowder, so that was all good. This is what I would wear if I was in a quiet mood, calm and ladylike, or trying to get there. Man, I love rose. This scent makes me want to wear pearls and lace and drink tea from a cup and saucer.

I like patchouli, I'll admit it, the many times I've smelled it. The only problem is that most of those times it's been mixed with B.O. (as I go to school in a hippie town). so it's not got a positive association with me. Lust has renewed my love for patchouli. It was...sweet, but spicy. I can't tell which notes are which, because other than patchouli, I have no clue what any of them smell like. It smelled like a spice cookie, and oh man do I love spice cookies. A warm red-brown smell that put me into a very good mood. This is what I want my house to smell like someday. Didn't seem particularly lustful to me, and Boyfriend didn't give an overwhemlingly enthusiastic response to it other than "It's okay," but I don't care. I will definitely be using up the imp.

I've been SO curious to try this one. I have no idea what lightning or ozone actually smell like, but I could picture it being metallic, and electric of course. I love trying out scents that don't list the specific notes or are full of notes I have no idea what they smell like. In the bottle: sharp, sharp, SHARP. A biting green scent, very much like the smell of a storm where I used to live ont he coast. On me: Greener, like cut grass or freshly-cut flower stems. I can definitely smell the marine notes. Maybe it's now more like the herbs dipped in salt water I have at Passover. Still pretty biting, but clean, fresh. Like smelling cold air. Later: Well, it's not bad. I can see what people mean about the bathroom freshener...sort of like a good clean-smelling cleaning fluid. Not something I'd want to smell like, but interesting nevertheless. I'm not sure if I will keep this one. I actually layered it (accidentally) over a swipe of Moon Rose that I apparently hadn't washed off well enough, and it's really pretty nice layered that way on my skin, like rose with a kick. I think I'll try it again layered and see if I actually like it like that, and if not, then off to the swap she goes.

I got Gluttony in a swap today(!!), so of course I had to try it out: In the bottle: My first impression was vanilla mixed with nut with a slight herby undertone (the hops, maybe?)...didn't strike ME as being terribly foody, but my nose is weird. Mmmm. On me: I could see what people were saying about the coffee/tobacco-y smell they were catching. The herby, green smell came forth for the first few minutes or so-- I was worried that the hops would become predominant, because I'd rather not smell like beer, but it's faded and mixed with the vanilla, nutty, cookie-like, buttery....mmm. Still green, but sweeter. Less biting. Not bad at all. Twenty minutes later-- it's weird. The smell wafts easily-- the wafting smell is all cookie, buttercream slathered cookie with a slight hint of that chocolate (there it is!). But when I put my wrist up to my nose, I get half cookie half green herb. Weird. But fun. I've been subjecting my boyfriend to every scent I've gotten thus far, much to his dismay. Most of the time he'll say things like "That smells nice," or "That's nasty" or "It's alright"... nothing too enthusiastically, because he couldn't really care less about perfume. However, when I showed him Gluttony, his eyebrows jumped and he said, "Oh, I like that one. What's in it?" I'd say him liking it enough to care what's in it is a stamp of approval. Verdict: I'll probably use this imp up. It doesn't blow me away or anything, but it's pretty nice. Good comforting scent. Would be good for the home.