Kostnice

[puck_nc]

A celebration of the Bone Church of Prague. Frankincense, rosewood, lily, and geranium rose.

Anything that has rose listed in the notes is a must-try for me.

Origin: A frimp from a kind BPALer on LJ

In the Bottle: dry and dusty, definitely like an old church

Wet: incense and more incense. My hate affair with musk continues.

Drydown: *sigh* The rose never blooms, nor does the lily. It's all musky incense.

Verdict: Sold off.

[Cesare]

Kostnice is one of my favorite blends. It's wonderful on its own, and it also layers well.

 

It's simply a clean, wonderful wood and resin smell... like a polished, unvarnished wooden table. You can almost smell the grain of the wood. There are incense and floral tones to make it spicy, sweet and deep, but they blend in perfectly to complement that fresh, wonderful wood aroma.

 

I once had a very expensive soap which had a delightful spicy scent. Kostnice reminds me of that soap, but even better. I used this one a lot when I was travelling; even when I was tired and bedraggled, putting on Kostnice made me feel cleaner and more fresh.

 

When you layer it with other scents, it adds that clean woody note. I find that particularly works nicely with heavy florals. They contrast beautifully.

[Eros]

In the imp, dark, spicy florals. On skin, gorgeous dark rose sitting in the middle of a beautiful, dry cedar. It's a bit light, but I only applied a dab to each wrist. Liking this one quite a bit.

[Babylon]

This is nice! When I first apply it, it smells a lot like Anne Bonny to me and soap to my boyfriend. After about 5 or 10 minutes, Anne Bonny dies. She's resurrected as a ghost, a whisper of her former self, surrounded by soft and somehow sad flowers. If you haven't tried Anne Bonny, then I'd say it's the smell of faded incense or bone, melancholy flowers, and a tiny bit of sweetness. Boyfriend also noticed the smell of soap went away when it dried. I'll have to take his word for it, as it never smelled like that to me to begin with.

[CapricornSister]

This is one of the first bottles I ordered and I'm finally getting around to the review!! I love this one. It is very woody, but with a bit of sweetness. I love Frankincense but have found that several of Beth's blends that have it don't work well on me. This is blended perfectly. It's hard to pick individual notes out. I'm guessing that the 'wood' smell comes from the rosewood, but the Frankincense has a big part in rounding it out. I don't get much in the way of flowers from this one, but I adore it!

This has good staying power on me and stays true to the bottle (but a little less sharp) when dry.

[maewitch]

There's something a little off in this. It smells floral and incensy all right, and I really like both rosewood and frankincense. But there's something in this that smell pungently green somehow, almost like vetivert. I don't really like this smell - it's like green things rotting and dusty,closed-in rooms. It could be the lily, since I've tried another perfume that had a similar smell, and it did have lily as well.

 

Meh.

[wingedcorset]

In the vial this is kind of rosey and woody. Like mature roses, mama roses. As it dried on my skin, the rose note stayed prominent, but mellow. This is SO unsusual for me, as my skin amps anything rosey to unwearable very quickly. A keeper.

[Fefferbella]

This blend is wild roses, pine resin and a woody incense notes blended to perfection.

I love this scent!

 

It's rich, comforting and very pretty. The frankinsense is gorgeous!

 

 

This is one of my favorite blends.

[AliBabble]

another free imp from the lab (thank you!) and i love it. reminds me a lot of cathedral, but with fresh, supple roses added in. it is woody and churchy, and a bit of that stone or "wet cement" smell that i adore. a spiritual and quiet scent - it's actually what i thought "rose cross" might smell like. kostnice is really meditative, peaceful and grounding.

[Katinka]

This was a gift from a friend, and my first BPAL scent transportation experience!

 

At first, Kostnice smelled like a vase of drooping roses in the foyer of a musty church...with a faint whiff of pickle juice. Roses aren't usually my thing, but I found myself inexplicably drawn to it. After gluing my arm to my wrist for 15 minutes, I finally realized why...it smelled *just* like the Orthodox churches in Kiev, Ukraine, where I once lived for over a year.

 

All of a sudden, I saw cobblestones, green and gold onion-domes, aged doors, dim interiors, endless gilt-embellished icons, candles that had sputtered out, priests in heavy robes...the works. Very cool!

[Thursdae]

There is something in both Kostnice and Séance that doesn’t settle comfortably on my skin. This note, whatever it may be, keeps parting the velvet curtains of incense, disrupting my reverie by squeaking, “More pickle relish?”

 

I know this doesn’t happen to everyone, but it makes me want to go all Hamlet on this Polonius. “Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!”

[grrrlennyl]

at first: all i can smell is a salty wood and frankincense.

on: salty. i think that my skin just turns frankincense into salt. weird. there's some flowers in the background, but it's mostly salt.

half an hour later: this doesn't even smell like an oil from bpal to me; it's too conventional.

2 hours later: salty flowers.

3 hours later: soft and floral, but with that persistent salty note.

overall: obviously, this doesn't work for me.

[arabella]

First Impression: Sour Sawdust.

 

Dries down to: Changes to soapy sawdust with a hint of lemon.

 

Additional Comments: This is that smell of unwashed feet covered up with a citrussy cologne that's not fooling anyone. It's not too bad at the very end when it settles down to a very light lemony cream but that only lasts for about 5 minutes before it disappears entirely. I have a feeling that it's the geranium rose and lily that are causing the problems for me.

 

Lasted: 1/2 hour.

 

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

[Rhowan]

*~* KOSTNICE *~*

 

 

In the bottle: Yum smells woody with a hint of floral - more geranium than lily.

 

Wet: More frankincense now with a hint of woods and a slight breath of floral

 

Dry down: Soft, warm, lily. This is very spring to me!

 

Conclusion: Kostnice goes once again to show the magic in Beth's oils and how I should never discount certain blends because of notes that usually don't work for me. I saw the words lily and rose in the scent description and knew this wouldn't work for me - WORNG!

This is the first lily I have been able to wear. It is soft, warm and feminine and I will definitely make this a keeper!

 

ETA: good throw and good wear time...

Edited January 18, 2006 by Rhowan

[Thaleia]

The first thing I think of when I smell Kostnice in the vial is 'old church.' It's not the incense, or the flowers - it's the rosewood, old and slightly damp from the years. Of course, there are the flower and incense offerings that indicate that mass is still said here, but this church is OLD, man.

 

I smell incense on my skin, which I didn't smell in the vial, but it's not incense that warms the scent up. It's incense that hasn't been burned for a while, and just hangs in the air like it usually does after masses are done for the day. What is making this scent so cold? I thought this'd be similar to All Saints, which was an incensey rose on me, but it's far colder, greener, and emptier than that. The geranium combined with the rosewood is turning this into sawdust/pencil shavings on my wrist, which I hoped wouldn't happen ... but alas, it did. Sweet, floral-ish pencil shavings, but hey, the pencils could have been made of rosewood.

 

I also realised that in my last couple of reviews, I didn't give ratings ... this gets a 4/10.

[ancilla_morte]

this turned to all lemon on me.

A shame, since I have been searching for the perfect incense smell that doesn't go acidy on me.

[septima_pica]

I must admit to having a complex about florals, in that I normally can't stand to wear them even if they smell wonderful. I don't feel like I can take myself seriously in them. This is similar to my unwillingness to wear anything pink.

 

This, though? Even though it's floral, it's still got dignity. Kostnice is not the cheery pastels of most florals; rather, it's the pale yellow colour that white roses and white bones take on when you dry them. It's not a posy, it's an oblation. 16th-century sacred vocal music comes to mind, oddly enough - Byrd, Victoria, maybe Lassus. As this is some of my favourite music, I'm a happy sniffer.

 

Upon re-reading the above paragraph, I find that I've half-consciously used several words that evoke the Kostnice Sedlec. I wonder if this is a property of the scent itself, or whether I'm just very suggestible?

 

I suppose the note that's giving that dignified impression is the frankincense, now that I think about it. I tend to like incensey notes in almost any blend, and this is a good example. Probably won't run through this too fast, as it's still much lighter than anything I'll wear frequently, but I should get another imp. It's a nice scent to have around, on the off-chance that I might want to smell like a Palestrina motet.

 

D*mn synaesthesia. Silly business.

Edited February 3, 2006 by septima_pica

[brownbear]

The rosewood hits pretty hard. There is also a bit of the frakincense in there. As it dries it is hard rosewood with a little floral. In the end it's mostly rose and rosewood. Not sure how I feel about it.

ETA: now it's soap

Edited February 7, 2006 by brownbear

[niter]

Imp

Spicy, dark rose. There is a bitter quality to the rose scent.

 

Wet

The frankincense is the most powerful note and it is well complimented by the rose. The other floral scents just blend gently to taper the note of the rose off gently. Wet, this smells very well rounded and feminine woodsy.

 

Dry

Upon the dry down, the rose scent peaked and turned a bit soapy on me. Roses tend to do that. However, this is a fantastic rose based blend and very tempting to keep. I just have so many options going right now or I would....for any rose lover, this is a must try.

[Diva Urd]

In the vial: Mainly frankincense, with rosewood a distant second. I can't detect flowers so far.

 

On me, it's mainly a mixture of frankincense and rosewood, with the wood keeping the incence notes from simply floating away and grounding the fragrance. I think I catch some whiffs of the flowers once in a while, but in general, they seem to hide from me.

 

After wearing this for a while, on my wrists, the mixture turned to...BASTET?! Okay, that is a surprise - I don't think those two share any notes at all, but on my wrists, it's a dead ringer, and I haven't used the kitty goddess in a week! On my neck, it still smells like Kostnice, even though the florals peek out a little more often now and the frankincense has gotten a little softer.

 

I like this - it made it on the big bottle list, even though there is probably a bunch I'll have to buy before it.

Edited February 14, 2006 by Diva Urd

[sthenno]

The drydown to this smells remarkably similar to Goneril. At first, I thought it was the cedar, but that's not listed as a note. Perhaps it's the geranium, since that's a note both have in common? (I have no idea what geranium smells like.)

 

This is dry and woody and yet gentle at the same time. It's a very calm scent. I don't smell any incense, but there's a faint grassy floral underneath the woodiness. This gets a bit soapy after a while and reminds me of dryer sheets.

 

Overall, I like this, but not enough for a bottle. I also like it better than Goneril, which is a bit sweeter.

[storme]

In the bottle: hmm, musty woody florals. Interesting.

 

On my skin: started off as a slightly powdery, floral scent. Dried to an intensely soapy sharp scent. I guess that's the frankincense. Straight on the swap-pile.

[Nekomata]

I got this as a frimp. All I can smell is the frankincense, which is unfortunately a scent I don't care for. Hoping to pass it along.

[Abbie]

In the bottle: Odd. This is dill. Not a pickle... there's no vinegary scent of the brine. Underneath I can smell lily and frankincense striving to be smelled, but failing under all the dill.

 

First on: Maybe what I was smelling as "dill" was in fact the geranium. On the skin there's much more frankincense than anything else. I wouldn't have thought "rose geranium" from this scent at all, but now that I know to look for it I believe I am picking up a geranium scent...but more the spicy geranium than the sweeter rose geranium. This is actually quite nice! Very soft and mellow, but not at all soapy. Not a religious scent at all, to my mind, though I have never been to Prague.

 

Dry: As it dries, it goes to a purer, sweeter rose. Nothing too out of the common, but that drydown? Mmmm. So this one's a keeper.

[batsy]

Vial: old rose. That's the best I can describe.

 

Skin: There's a distinct smell to geraniums, and you either love it or hate it. Yeah. Cut with the rosewood and lily, it's very adult, very sophisticated. The backnote of frankincense deepens it and ages it. I'm particular about rose scents and this just isn't me. But very a lovely scent.