Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'Yule 2014'.
Found 81 results
-
Gingerbread with red musk, lemon peel, sugar cane, cassia, white sandalwood, mango, and agarwood. In the bottle: It's lovely, and sort of bready with fruits. I feel like they either blend really well, making it hard to distinguish individual scents; or I am not knowledgable enough on what they should smell like. Wet: Gingerbread comes out. Maybe a bit of the red musk. Mango pops through occasionally. Gingerbread fades quickly, and I amp the musk. Dry: Sandalwood and musk play in the foreground. Gingerbread has mostly faded. Husband describes it as: it's more a perfume smell, less of a foodie smell. It's ever so slightly fruity. Definitely a more modest scent, not a lot of throw.
-
Hot buttered rum with a touch of molasses, lightly spiced and swirled with a touch of cream. Oh WOW. This is incredible and in no way as boozy as I was expecting it to be. I mean, there is booze there but it's tempered perfectly by the cream and molasses and (very subtle) spice. The butteriness is also there and I might be wrong here, but I'm almost sure there's a note in this blend that might also be in Mother Shub's Pumpkin Pecan Treacle Tarts and I am guessing it's the treacle note. It has a sweet, nutty edge to it that is totally delicious. All of these notes marry perfectly and it has an evocative feel to it - even upon the first sniff I was thinking 'Christmas!' Absolutely divine!
-
In examining and reporting these cases the witnesses averred that certain people, whom they called “materializing mediums,” had the strange physical gift that they could put forth from their bodies a viscous, gelatinous substance which appeared to differ from every known form of matter in that it could solidify and be used for material purposes, and yet could be reabsorbed, leaving absolutely no trace even upon the clothes which it had traversed in leaving the body. This substance was actually touched by some enterprising investigators, who reported that it was elastic and appeared to be sensitive, as though it was really an organic extrusion from the medium's body. —Arthur Conan Doyle, 1930 A luminous, viscid blend of white amber, lemongrass, white oakmoss, and davana. This is everything I hoped for. I'm not the world's biggest fan of lemongrass but I knew Beth would do something beautiful with it, something magical to take the harsh edge away, and that's exactly what she's done. This is a bright, juicy lemongrass that is tempered by the white amber. It has a sharpness when wet that completely disappears on the drydown. When dry and settled on my skin, it turns into an ethereal citrus that is uplifting and moreish. I adore this.
-
Black Phoenix's Christmas Pudding is loosely based on a medieval recipe, and is crafted, as tradition dictates, from thirteen ingredients (representing Christ and his apostles, natch). Thick with treacle, smoky with suet (suet accord, sillies - there's no mutton fat in this perfume!), and sweet with stirred custard. I don't really get much Christmas pudding from this, but it certainly *feels* Christmassy. I get a lot of plum in this - probably from the historical plum pudding recipes. It's actually quite green, like freshly sliced, slightly under-ripe plums. The suet is in there - a slightly savoury, fatty scent - but it doesn't smell like lard. Almost like pie dough with less flour. Oddly, the treacle is quite understated. I normally amp things like treacle, but this one is playing nice. I am just faintly getting the custard, but I'm hoping it will come out more with wear. Unexpected, given the description, but very Christmassy.
-
Sugared patchouli, snowy vanilla, and snowflakes. So I would name original Silkybat as not just my favorite HG, but quite possibly my favorite scent of all the BPAL/BPTP I have tried. So when I saw this, I knew I was grabbing a bottle. In the bottle, it smells like Silkybat and something lemony, to my nose. I'm not familiar with the lab's snow scent, but that may be it. Once applied, it's mostly what I believe is a snow scent. Silkybat is there, but it is definitively under a pile of snow. It's less sugared than Silkybat, to my nose. So I find this more reminiscent of snow and patchouli than anything else. I can tell it's related to Silkybat, but they are definitely more cousins than siblings to my nose. It's the snow smell that lingers in your nose when I take a whiff. It's definitely pretty, but I don't know if I would reach for it when I have the original around. I would say it was probably my Silkybat expectations that are keeping me from full-on loving this. If you live for the Lab's snow note or haven't tried Silkybat, I can't imagine someone not liking this.
-
Honey absolute, honey myrtle, and white frankincense. I dies. This couldn't have been any more perfect for me, beautiful honey and frankincense. This one is not too strong in scent, good for layering with just about anything, resins, foody stuff, flowers... This is The Perfect Blender. Also the formula is a nice light spray, so I can reapply even on dry hair, and I don't look like a cow licked me.
-
Peppermint candies dropped into a flute of champagne. Another winner! It's a winter party in a little spray bottle. Buttermint candies melting in Champagne, not foody at all, but a little sweet, and above all, it's very pepperminty and very bubbly. Definitely a palate cleanser for after all the smells of Christmas and perfect for that time heading into New Year's Eve.
-
The perfected winter rose, dew covered and freshly cut. :-) i LOVE Rose Red. I have not lit the candle yet, and i might not ever because it throws its scent so well! I have had it sitting on my coffee table for atleast 2 weeks and it is so pleasant to sit down, catch a whiff, move my arm to grab something, get a waft, and it seriously makes me smile. BPAL hit it out of the park with Rose Red and i am thrilled to have the candle...even though i may never even light it. :-D Eta: I just wanted to add that I still haven't lit this candle and it still throws scent wherever I put it. Great scent.
-
With Himalayan cedar, violet leaf, and cade. Ok, i will review it since no one else has! I love this...but it has a specific niche - it evokes one of my favorite spots at Point Defiance Park in Tacoma, WA in late summer, purely because it is the only place i have ever been surrounded by chestnut trees and a chestnut once fell and hit me on the shoulder (ow). So, when i am feeling nostalgic, i will spray this. It is a great scent but very masculine with a touch of sweetness. I don't know what cade is, so there's that. The violet leaf might provide a hint of tart greenery but the cedar (creamy cedar, not sharp pencil cedar - i love both) overshadows it. The chestnut is very present (and is not spiced!) and the fig must be the hint of sweetness. I love chestnut, it even smells chewy to me and am glad to have it in perfume oil and atmo spray this year! Good stuff!
-
Fragments of a hellish distorted mirror: glassy lily, muguet, and mugwort. Shards of Looking-Glass hair gloss really does smell reflective and bright. I'm getting golden lilies, a touch of ozone, lilies of the valley, and mugwort—which I think is what's giving it a subtle herbal, camphorous edge. But mostly this smells like golden lilies with a bit of water. It's a lovely floral and the kind of hair gloss that, at least on me, makes blow drying my hair an absolute pleasure but then doesn't announce itself overmuch. This is very light about an hour after application, and I can only smell it if I bring my hair to my nose. When I do, it smells great. I'm so pleased to have another gloss that I can wear to work! This makes my hair smell like clean lilies and winter sunlight.
-
Wine grapes, pomegranate, myrrh, frankincense and olive leaf, and the warm scent of offertory cakes. In the bottle: There's a hint of all the notes, as though they had been mixed into a white wine (non-alcoholic) from those grapes (green, I suspect). Wet: Now the pomegranate comes bursting through, with the gentle olive leaf in its train. The cake note is rounding this out, so it's not too fruity. The dry-down: The myrrh and frankincense are present, but only in a mild fashion, and the grapes are combining with the pome for a lovely light fruit note. If you don't want to smell like winter holiday sweet heavy food and drink or snowy woods or the Christmas tree, but still want a lovely light scent for the winter holiday season, this may be a scent to try. ETA: It's a rather elegant scent.
-
The perfected winter rose, dew covered and freshly cut. So. I never could wear Rose Red as a perfume oil. There is something in it that mixes with my skin chemistry and turns bad. I lose that sweet rose top note, and am left with despair. I ordered Rose Red HG hoping that the top note would stay, and was not disappointed. I now have the perfect HG for all my rosy needs. Rose Red is beautiful, and very strong. Rose lovers, buy this, hoard it. It is lovely.
-
Open daily. Lessons in cunning, derision, and scorn: vetiver smoke and acerbic incense. WOW. I am terrible at reviewing, but this scent needed some props. I was frimped a sample with a swap, and instantly ordered a bottle. Normally I can get by on a decant, but no. This baby needed to be big bottle and nooobody is touching it... This smells *exactly* like fresh burning nag champa incense, with smoldering smoke..Which some may say "Hey, I can just burn incense", but for those of us with asshole cats, or little kids who like to play with things they shouldn't be (DEVIN MOMMY IS TALKING TO YOU) it is amazinnnnng to have it in spray form. I have been spraying this non-stop and the hubs even adores it. 10 out of 10 and all that jazz.
-
An almost ridiculously adorable scent. I'm a little hesitant to write this review because I want to buy about elebenty more bottles and have a hoard of them for life! All mine! None for you! (Just kidding, I'll leave you a FEW bottles...teehee!) Sugar Plum and Vanilla Bean Atmosphere Spray is absolutely AMAZING. It's sweet, with an almost candy like quality, but not cloyingly sweet at all. It's got that creamy vanilla backing the candy-like sugar plum, so it has a soothing quality as well. I just spritzed my entire house before bedtime and it is sheer HEAVEN. I'm going to have visions of sugar plums dancing in my head tonight It is very slightly reminiscent to my nose of something. I'd say it is allllmost in the Candy Phoenix realm, but more purple if that makes sense? More plummy and vanillic than Candy Phoenix. This is just SO freaking good. It will be the perfect scent for my daughters room. I haven't spritzed it in there yet, but my girls are going to flip for it. Thank you for such a splendid holiday atmosphere spray, Puddin'! My home is going to smell so lovely and sweet all season long! Please bring this back every year? <3 ETA: I just spritzed this again and realized what that plummy note reminds me of. This is totally closer to Bordello than Candy Phoenix. I don't have any other scents with the sugar plum note, so that's the closest thing I can compare it to. I ADORE Bordello, so no wonder I'm madly in love with this!
-
A scent that glitters with the coldest white musk; hollow, sharp, and brittle. A challenge! I rise to the occasion to try to figure out this white musk scent! Wet, piney, slushy, Beth's snow note (Cloister Graveyard, etc). On, definitely a strong burst of juniper, which rapidly steps a bit aside as not to be overpowering, and then maybe a hint of ozone, and then, magic, it's a less intense Nuclear Winter, it's the snowdrift of Talvikuu without reading first-forward as a pine scent, it's the snow cresting the slopes of Snow Bunny, it's Skadi's breath of cold ice without the berries... Close to Ice Queen, in terms of how it glistens. On drydown, it adopts a very tiny smidge of that beautiful Dorian white musk sweetness, but by no means is this sugary-sweet. The wintertime needles and plant notes behave masterfully in this and unlike things like Winter-Time (too spearminty on me) this stays smooth, close to the skin but remarkably wearable, so very pretty. This is so much more than just a white musk single note (but it is also NOT a single note white musk), and it is perfect. DEAD. ON. Winter.
-
Perfect red roses, warm amber sunlight, and the sweet honeyed carnation of friendship. Wow! I totally ordered this thinking it was a perfume, but it is totally not. However, still awesome. This is a very beautiful, intensely sweet and quite amber-y mid-range rose floral. Spicy carnation, kind of like a richer Maiden. This does veer towards stronger territory and is a touch powdery, but bizarrely when I spray it, I get LUSH Alkmaar as my recurrent 'I know this scent!' deja vu. On a piece of fabric, I can detect a rich, deep lush rose, balanced very well by a sunny amber. I don't get much orange or citrus so the 'sunlight' is maybe still just the amber, and in terms of sweetness it's likely that a well-blended honey note is what is sending this into sugary-sweet territory. The carnation is detectable on drydown as an exquisite spicy sweetness and depth, which tingles at the last whiffs of the spray. The pretty 'Spanish Red Carnation' vibe is present, in that the carnations I smell are the rich, very spicy type (not the slightly sharper 'pink carnation' that I recall from other carnationy things). It's very nice. Very sweet, floral, spicy tea rose without being "tea rose" SN, similar to Maiden, but with hints of things like Lugubre Gondola for the rich amber. Definitely something I would see myself using more in the summer or fall.
-
With a touch of juniper and cypress. Blue Spruce and Snow-Capped Pine is like a snowy forest scene in a bottle. Definitely blue spruce and pine, and heavier on the spruce, with light touches of juniper and cypress, and then a big dollop of the Lab's snowy accord which smells a little ozone-y, a little minty, a little lemony, and a little eucalyptus-y (at least to my nose). I spritzed this in my office fairly liberally and now it smells just like Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". Perfect for this time of year!
-
The roar of the wild wind, the howl of winter wolves, the screams of night-winged crows, and the moon shining, clear and bright: juniper and white musk with white tea extract, oakmoss absolute, white lemon rind, and tobacco. Okay. This is amazing. Everything is blended together so beautifully that it's hard to pick out individual notes. It smells to me of old-school Lunacy notes, circa Snow Moon 2005. A little chilly, a little powdery without being cloying. Some freshness that gives me a visual of soft snow and cold air. There is also a little of the oakmoss and tobacco which just softens it without being overpowering. Buy it. Or two. Seriously.
-
A chilly, bright perfume: flurries of virgin snow, crisp winter wind and the faintest breath of night-blooming flowers. Yay! This is my first BPTP hair gloss, and I'm so glad it's Snow White, my one true BPAL love. Opening up the bottle I am hit with the Snow White I know and I love. I stopped and smiled for a moment- Snow White just kind of evokes happiness for me. This is a mist spray, not a pump or a squirt, which is good- I prefer mists. As a hair gloss, I will definitely want to spray it on my hands first and smooth it over my hair for better, more even distribution. Spraying it directly onto my hair can cause some strands to be way oilier than others. I am really quite pleasantly surprised- this really does make my hair soft and shiny. My hair's quite long (little below tailbone length), wavy, and prone to being frizzy with stubbornly coarse ends. I don't remember the last time they felt this soft. As far as smell goes, this is wet-out-of-the-bottle Snow White, all beautiful cold snow and a hint of florals. There also seems to be some other faint scent in there that I'm not familiar with- I don't know if it's this year's Snow White as I haven't gotten a bottle of the perfume from the Lab yet, or if it's just the hair gloss itself. I can't put my finger on it- it's a little sharp, maybe a little...earthy? Kind of...vegetable-y? My husband described it as "chemical-y." It's fading though, as the gloss settles onto my hair, leaving behind just pure Snow White. I bought two bottles of this on blind faith and love for Snow White alone. If I can't extract a promise from Puddin' that Snow White will reappear next Yule in hair gloss form, I may have to buy more. I don't ever want to be without this. :heart: :heart: :heart:
-
Ashes, glowing embers, and tobacco absolute. This smells just like a cozy wood fire burning in the fireplace. It is a smoky-sweet scent, with the tobacco adding a touch of sweetness, like from a chewy sweet cigar. It lingers just long enough to leave a warm cozy scent in the room, as if your blankets have absorbed the woodsmoke. It's just beautiful and not overpowering. If you don't have a fireplace and wish you did, then this spray is for you! As a comparison, Bonfire Smoke Home & Linen Spray is the smell of an outdoor bonfire with autumn leaves burning and a slightly acrid ash smoke. They are different enough from each other than I'm happy to have both.
-
The Home of the Giants, the World Beyond the Fence. A vast, anarchic, and mighty wilderness of dark, wild forests and sharp, toothy mountain peaks where winter reigns eternally. This candle is nothing short of stunning. It reminds me of my all-time favorite atmosphere spray Krampusumzuge, with the fir and snow- cool, sparkling, forest. The candle, though, seems to be more airy and clean and crisp and beautiful. It doesn't have the dirt and chains that dirty up that atmo. This is a glittering, gorgeous, enchanted dream forest.
-
Kitchen herbs and rosebushes streaming with snow peas and fluttering petals. Wow, this smells like spring! Kind of a weird experience to spray this when there's snow on the ground outside, but I'll happily indulge in anything to distract me from winter's chill. A Triumphal Arch of Leaves and Flowers atmo spray is really equally split between the herbs, the snow peas, and the roses. The herbs and snowpeas make a kind of phantom note that reminds me a bit of seaweed—in a good way! There's something very green here to balance out the rosebushes. After spraying, my husband walked in and said "Roses!" so clearly it's not rose-light, but the greenery is prominent. After a bit, this smells, somehow, like a green rose. It's fascinating! I'll definitely keep and enjoy this one, especially since spring is a ways off yet. ETA: This morning the room I spritzed this in smelled mostly of roses, with just a hint of green. I love rose and am so glad this note won out and lingers.
-
As sweet as can be: spun sugar strawberries. Nice is not nearly so fruity and juicy as I expected, which I like. It's a similar sugar to spun sugar spectre, but it's more like the soft, sweet note I recognize as the lab's snow note. To me, this smells like what I imagine something named Strawberry Snowballs would smell. Soft, sweet, delicate, pale pink, and utterly gorgeous.
-
Terebinth pine, fir balsam, frozen sap, blackcurrant, and vetiver. This was exactly what I was hoping it would be! A dark, woodsy forest scent brightened up by juicy sweet blackcurrant! Everything works so well here. It reminds me of the most inviting woods you can imagine, like when you hug a tree, it hugs you back. Actually that might actually be a terrifying thing to happen so never mind. I was debating between this and Blue-Spruce and Snow-Capped Pine for the pine scent I knew for sure I was getting this Yule Season, and I couldn't imagine being happier with my choice. EDIT: Oh snap I'm the first one! Take that, middle school gym class.
-
Snowballs of poppy-red musk, tangerine, blood orange, and mimosa blossom. In The Bottle: Wow! I get the strong-but-distinct citrus notes of both tangerine AND blood orange, plus the red musk (which, at this stage, is NOT like the red musk of Smut). There's also something unnameable in the background. It's floral, but...in passing. Like, when I'm sniffing it's not present- until I start to take the bottle away from under my nose. I assume it's the mimosa, being the only note left, but it's most unusual. Wet On Skin: The mimosa is WAY stronger at this point. In fact, it's all mimosa and poppy musk, no citrus at this stage. Dry Down: The mimosa has calmed down some and now the musk is on a more level playing field, so they're pretty neck-and-neck. In All: Medium throw and the combination has a powder-floral thing going on, with something sugary bringing up the rear. It reminds me a bit of the cherry blossom note in Hanami. I honestly don't know what I think of this. I am a huge fan of the Lab's citrus notes and I'm disappointed that my skin seems to have eaten them up in one fell swoop, as I feel they'd lend a roundness to this scent. Without it, it just seems to be all powdery on me I will let it settle and retest in a few days. I might even add a drop or two of King Mandarin SN to my arm next time to see what that does. But if it stays as is, then off to the swaps it goes!
