All Souls

[marietta]

... An incense blend that invokes the higher qualities of mercy and compassion, mingled with the soft, sugared currant scent of offertory soul cakes.

So, this scent is my very first LE. I got it 'cause my birthday falls on All Souls Day . . . wasn't sure I'd like it, but I just had to try!

In the bottle: Eeep. I'm not sure exactly what I'm smelling, but the impression I get is essence of Hot Toddy. It's very very strong, and frankly I am a bit spooked.

Wet, on: The same scent wafts initially, but fades pretty quickly, to be replaced by a sharp currant scent, mixed with a slight rose note. Incense is peeking out.

Drying: Eeeeh! Roses (I must admit to a bit of rosephobia . . . )! But only if I sniff my wrist. All that's wafting is plump, juicy, warm currents! At this point I'm really starting to enjoy the scent . . .

Dry: Um, yum? I can smell the scary note from the bottle occasionally, only it's not scary anymore, it's sort of like brioche, all golden and buttered. I'm also still getting juicy currants ! It's all very grounded by perfect, soft, incense! It has a lot of depth, and is quite changeable.

Verdict: I love this. It's just beautiful.

[charmingdetails]

All Souls' Day is one of the most significant days in the Church calendar to me, so I was really hoping to love this blend. And I do! It is truly lovely.

 

I was wary of the strong buttery-cakey scent of All Souls upon initial application, but within seconds, that intensity fades to give way to sweet, mellow incense and currants with just a hint of cake. This blend is mild, soothing, and comforting. As I wear it, I find that the incense notes seem to waft around me, while the cakey notes stay closer to the skin. The incense grows more prominent after about an hour and a half, and even stronger after yet another hour. It's creamy, smoky, and sweet, with a fair amount of throw. Wonderful.

[kraken]

In the Bottle: A sweet and spicy incense.

 

Initial Wet: It's all resiny incense, very aromatic with a lot of lovely throw.

 

Initial Dry: The incense slowly blends with the cake sweetness so it becomes like a spice cake. (If you were eating a spice cake in a room scented of incense.) It's a yummy scent, but not overly foody.

 

Drier Dry: Awww, the currents have gone sour on me causing the rest of the scent to turn into stale cigarette smoke and sweat

 

*stompsfoot* I wanted this to stay like a sweet incense. It was so very lovely (and it still is on my sleeve). But it's gone all rotten on my skin Maybe I can turn this into a room scent on a diffuser...

[sookster]

straight sniff from bottle is very sweet cake with some hay and dried flowers

 

once applied the florals amp up hugely...this reminds me a *lot* of harvest moon 2004...but where HM04 turned into wet band-aid, all souls stays incredible with a

terrific foody edge ...a wee bit o' incense that i cannot quite put my finger on

 

i can understand the association with eat me but this is entirely different with my chemisty...i adore the hay-like, dried flowers too....mixes perfectly with the with each note....

 

this will be just perfect for my haunted hay ride this upcoming weekend!!

 

a wickedly fun and scentsational halloweenie blend....love,love,love it!!!

[edenssixthday]

All Souls - The other day, I posted that Creepy was my favorite of the 2006 Halloweenies. I discovered just how extremely wrong I was when I tried All Souls. This scent is simply divine. I honestly can’t begin to put into words how gorgeous it is – it has all the soft smokiness of a gorgeous incense scent, but add to it the scent of fresh-baked cake and the hint of juicy currants, and I’m in BPAL heaven! I can’t believe that my two favorite Halloweenie scents are “foody” blends, because I normally despise food-scented perfume oils! How does Beth do it?

 

All Souls has a lovely level of throw and it lasts all day long -- my skin really, really takes to this blend amazingly well. I honestly would have never guessed it!

I put it on in the morning and about 12 hours later, I was taking my puppy to the vet for his booster shots, and several of the vet techs asked me what perfume I wear, since I always smell so good when I go in there. I told them about BPAL and told them I'm always wearing a different perfume when I go in there. They said that this time, after I held my puppy, he smelled like incense. That’s All Souls for you -- a good 11-12 hours after I applied it in the morning! This is an amazing scent and, of course, I ordered a bottle and it will be veeeeery well-loved.

[SultryWolf]

This review is for the 2006 version.

Thanks to evilmistressoftoast for running the decant circle which allowed me to try this before committing to a bottle. I was concerned that it might be too foody, what with the cakes, and I found that my instinct was (for once!) correct.

 

Imp: Sour honey cakes.

On: Much the same; the incense does come through much more strongly on the drydown, and it's a bit reminiscent of Resurrection of the Flesh.

[Shug]

Out of all the Halloween scent this is the one I was most looking forward to.

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All Souls hates my skin. All I got out of this was soap. I so wanted to smell cake and lovely incense!!!

[akabob]

I tried this one on yesterday and I was surprised by how much it smells like incense! In the bottle I could really smell the cakes more than the incense, but when I put it on, the incense swirled its way to the front. Every time I got in my car, I could smell this gorgeous, faint sweet and flowery incense. I hate florals most of the time, but this one is just sweet and smokey enough to kick the cloying scent out of the floral and really gives it a sweet, gentle incensey smell.

 

Very comforting and gentle scent.

[hologhost]

In the bottle - buttery and oat-y.

 

On me - mostly oats. I don't really like this. I don't get anything else.

 

This may be one that needs to age. So I'm setting it aside for another sniff in a month. If it hasn't improved I'll have to find it a new home.

[PilotKitten]

Incense alright... this reminds me a lot of Catherdral actually. On drydown, I get an almost bitter, dried out cake note. Like not a good one. Boo... I was hoping more of the sugary sweetness would come out and smell delicious. But instead I get incense and dried out leftover birthday cake.

[AliBabble]

in the bottle, this smells a little weird - mellow dried fruit at the bottom (the currants) with something sharp and almost medicinal. intriguing...

on my skin it's sharp, flowery incense - a little intense at first, it begins to mellow and hits a plastic phase which morphs into something a bit like dusty carnations. once all souls settles down some, it becomes a rather pleasant incense scent, reminiscent of incense found at indian groceries. i never seem to get much of the offratory cake smell. an interesting scent, for some reason it evokes indian sari fabric breezing around inside a temple...but i think it's just so-so on my skin.

 

eta: i don't know if my chemistry has changed or what, but this scent has really grown on me since i first wrote this review - it's still primarily a dry, dusty, rose-y indian incense - but i can smell more of the cake and fruit now, and i've come to really enjoy this. very sugary, feminine - almost sultry, i always picture a beautiful rose-pink color. i like this a lot.

Edited November 6, 2006 by AliBabble

[TrailerTrashPrincess]

to begin: i *heart* this.

i knew i'd like it, but i didn't realise how much.

this could easily be a Monster Bait, or a sibling of Eat Me & Drink Me.

 

at first, it smells like those butter cookies (the flower shaped ones with the holes in the middle? the ones that fit nicely on fingertips?), but there's a richer, sweeter, almost perfume-y-er (perfumier?) note in there, too.

i'm not sure i get anything traditionally incense-like, but there are the occasional wafts of something that smells like Midnight Mass, so maybe there's catholic church incense.

 

a few hours later, there's something vaguely powderrific creeping out -- and reminding me of Berenice.

[vividdreamer]

I was a little leery of ordering All Soul's unsniffed, but decided to go ahead and take the plunge.

 

And I'm SO glad I did!

 

In the bottle, I do smell the cake and currants. It smells like a foody blend there, which is great, because I love Beth's foody scents. However, I ordered this primarily because of the incense, because I've been wearing foody/gourmand oils and lotions for the past year or more, and I'd like to get back to what first attracted me to BPAL: the resiny/incense/spicy blends.

 

Anyway. Back to my review.

 

The second All Souls touches my skin, all traces of cake disappear. It's astonishing, really, because (as I've wondered a million times) how on earth does she do that? Magic, I guess. Now all I get is incense, a bit of smoke, and a trace of dust. (Someone earlier mentioned hay, and I can see that.) I can't decide what type of incense, but it's definitely the good stuff--not those 10 for $1 sticks of crap. It stays very close to my skin, and I can't pick out any distinct notes. Hell, I can't even decide if there's any florals in this or not. I don't get any fruit or honey either, so maybe my chemistry is wacky. It's gorgeous, whatever it is.

 

Like I said, this scent stays very close to the skin, even when I slather it on. There's very little--if any--throw after just a few minutes, and it doesn't last very long on me. After about an hour I can smell traces of it if I press my nose to my wrist, but it disappears completely shortly after that.

 

So even though I wish it were a bit more potent, I still really, really like this blend. It's not really evocative of fall to me--Samhain will always hold the top spot as my perfect fall blend --but it's beautiful, and I'll definitely be looking for another bottle through the Sales page.

 

ETA: I've used nearly half the bottle of this (yeah, I like it) and this morning I applied some to my wrists. I've been trying to place the dry, dusty note that I keep getting, and until now, I couldn't figure out where I'd smelled it before. But I just had an *AH HA!* moment, and realized that it's the same (or similar) note that's in Intrigue. That's the note that led me to purchase a 5ml of Intrigue after my first imp. Now, All Souls doesn't necessarily smell like Intrigue (it lacks the berries, for one thing), but there's a definite relation there. What is this note that I'm smelling? It reminds me of something from my childhood that I can't place, but I like it very much. Certainly not something that I want to smell like every day, but it's comforting in an odd way. Can someone help me figure out what the similar note is?

 

Edited again to add: Duh. Cedar. It's cedar that I'm smelling in both blends, which makes perfect sense regarding the childhood memories. My dad owned a lumberyard back then, and his favorite wood is cedar, so he'd always take me out to let me smell it. He even built a houseboat when I was in my teens, and he made all the cabinets and woodwork out of cedar. Some of my happiest memories are of spending weekends on that boat on the lake. I can't believe I didn't recognize the scent immediately.

Edited November 5, 2006 by vividdreamer

[blackfelicula]

In the bottle: The concentrated scent is more-foody-than-foody: almost overwhelmingly butter-and-sugar, with a light floral hum beneath it.

 

Wet: Like Pumpkin Queen, the over-foody aspect has quit once it hit my skin. It still has a sweet and foodlike aspect, but it also has a perfume-y side.

 

Drying down: Sadly, this combination is pushing into the realm of soapiness. I had really wanted to like this one.

 

Dry: The soapiness has calmed down somewhat, but it still is not the incense-and-yum that I thought it would be. It is an interesting hum of a scent, but is not one I would wear often.

 

Later: What wafts up from my arms is pleasant enough now, just not enough to be a favorite.

[Heavenlyrabbit]

Kind of like "MonsterBait Closet Goes To Mass On Sunday".

 

Or maybe a bit of Eat Me layered under All Saints.

 

I do seem to find a bit of smoke, giving the impression of lit incense.

 

There are definately some florals as in All Saints.

 

The foody quality is very slight and dissipates almost entirely on my skin.

Edited October 24, 2006 by Heavenlyrabbit

[nancybridget]

I get a pretzel note from this one - maybe it's the cakes and the incense combined.

 

I have mixed feelings. I like it, but there's something off about it to me.

 

 

There's a very woody base note that blooms after some time and mellows the sweet note down. I don't think I'd repurchase, but I'll hang onto my bottle.

[Babylon]

Shoot. This was what I was most looking forward to out of the Weenie batch. Incense and cake? Two of my loves, in one scent, together. It was not meant to be, however.

 

Wet: Incense and the cake from Eat Me. Oh god, it's absolutely perfect. I need multiple bottles! This could easily be my signature scent. It clings to the skin, with no big nauseating throw. It's foody, yes, but deeply grounded by the incense.

 

5 minutes later: Oh no!!! It smells sour now. It's a weird sour wood note. This must be the currants? Whatever it is, All Souls no longer smells a bit like incense or cake. Yuck, so sour! It smells like rancid sweat.

 

15 minutes later: Gone. It vanished already, and has done so both times I tried it. That's ok, though, since the scent went so oddly awry. Never have I gone from so high to so low with a scent before!

[gaai]

Yes.....cake and incense......

 

I like it enough to keep the bottle around.....it's perfect for when I want to wear a foody blend ( which isn't very often ), but I don't love it.........

I'm just not that much of a foody girl and this *is* rather cake-y, the incense grounds it enough for me to be able to wear it though.

[tempestteapot]

Sweet sugary cakes straight out of the bottle

 

Wet there was a sweet almost berry scent that came out. Quite lovely.

 

Dry: wow the current pop up with a really nice throw. still very sweet but not foody.

[QueenFae]

This is a most unique BPAL blend indeed! I was attracted to the description because of the sweet cakes in it, but I had to wait for the dry down to figure out what it smells like. This is funny, but it smells exactly like the inside of the health food store I shop at!! No kidding, it's that same blend of herbs, spices, veggies, and sweetness that I smell behind the counter where I order my sandwiches . Not that this is a bad thing, because I actually quite like the smell of health food stores, it's just not something I want to wear on my skin. An interesting scent, nonetheless.

[maijasu]

Hmmm...where's the cake? All I smell is a light, sweet incense. It's nice enough but not what I was expecting.

[Monster]

Than you to the lovley Miss Rowhan for providing me with my beloved Soul Cakes

 

Out of the bottle I smell sweet, berry smothered cake with incense lingering in the background. This is exactly as I imagined it would smell. There's a warm, woody scent to this as well. Not sure what kind of wood, maybe a gentle cedar?

 

On my skin, wet, this turns into all woody, earthy resins with just a hint of sweet white cake. As it dries down the incense morph into something that reminds me a lot of Cathedral (which I love) but sweeter and a bit more sugary.

 

This is absolutly gorgeous. On the final drydown, as I wave my hand away from my face this smells EXACTLY like the inside over of Madonna Immaculate Collection when it first came out. I'm not sure if any Madonna fans remember or not, but she had the inside of the Cds scented with her favorite perfume. Maybe the woody scent I'm getting is the smell of her perfume mixed with the paper the CD booklet was printed on.

 

All Souls is a PERFECT blend of woody resins and sugar sweetness. If you like Cathedral, foody but not-too-sweet scents, Urd or anything along those lines, you'll love this one

 

Edited October 27, 2006 by CourtneyLynne

[Jettcat]

In the bottle: it's that weird pickle like note I no longer dread!

 

Wet: Goodbye vinegar pickle and hello RESINS!! It's slightly ironic that I started out a hardcore foodie, but it's the resins and incense that appeals to me out of this bottle.

 

Dry: So glad I waited for reviews so I didn't skip this one. It's only when it dries down that I get faint cakey undertone. Which is fine with me, because I love my smoky incense!!

[euterpe414]

Ah! this scent is simply perfect for me! two things I love- church-like incense and cake! And it really is a perfect marraige of the two of them- almost like they are two separate entities in the same room (or, uh, on m skin), but still create this one fabulous scent!

 

It does take a while for the balance to get there, though, at first on my skin it is very strong incense with a hint of sweet, and in the bottle as well, I smelled primarily incense.

 

Anyway, this is such a great scent, I am so glad I got two bottles!! I think it is great for foody types and non foody types alike, since it does not scream "bakery", but simply implies that the sweets are there.

 

This is definitely moving in on my LE top 10!

[lookingglass]

Wet this is very currant cake, quite like Eat Me. Then it gets veeeerrrry woody on me, and I get a little scared. I want incense! Dried out, it is all there and one of my new favorites: not too sweet, not too dry.