The Gladdener of All Hearts

[sleepflower]

Honeyed milk, baby powder, lavender, orris root, sage, carnation, angelica, frankincense, and rose otto.

In the bottle, it smells faint, but sharp. A light purple--maybe the lavender?

Fresh on skin, this scent is like the concept of childhood. I am not getting rose, but I am getting baby powder and a mixture of other scents, none of which I can quite separate and pick out (partially because I have no idea how some of this stuff smells!). I assume the honeyed milk adds to the creamy feel of the scent, and it plays nicely with the other notes.

It is less about that than the images I get while wearing it, though. I see a nursery with plush toys, I smell the taste of those juices for children that is nothing but sugar water and dye, blankets, crayons and colouring books...it really does smell like a young child's world to me. There is a slight sweetness, not terribly foody-sweet at all. Has anyone ever gotten a handful of those hard candies shaped like fruits from the quarter machines at the entrances of stores? That kind of off-sweetness.

It does not morph much on my skin; after a while everything but the 'juice' component fades a little. The throw is excellent, though. It is not a favourite, but it is a keeper. Edited November 8, 2008 by Shollin

[hlinspjalda]

In the bottle: Mostly angelica and a hint of the baby powder note. Smells very ethereal.

 

Wet: Wow, it really does smell like a baby! I get baby powder, baby shampoo, and milky sleepy baby. There's also something else quite pungent; it will have to develop some more, I'm sure.

 

Half an hour: More lavender and angelica now than anything else.

 

One hour: I don't like this one as much any more; the angelica and lavender have outnumbered the frankincense, rose, and carnation (none of which have shown up yet on my skin, sadly). But when I let my daughter sniff it, she said "it smells like dirt, and rain, and Lothlorien. Do want!" She elaborated that it was definitely a Tolkien scent. So I guess it won't be going to waste if I keep it in this house instead of trading it away. Since I love the bottle art so much, that's probably what I'll do.

 

Three hours: It is a gentle but very distinctive fragrance: baby powder, angelica, lavender, orris root. How can the rose and resin have failed to put in an appearance? Sometimes my body chemistry really frustrates me.

 

Five hours: Still gentle and distinctive. I feel vindicated that I guessed correctly it was not going to work on me, but I'm also happy that my daughter likes it so much. She says it smells like Rivendell now.

[plunderparlour]

This truly does smell like a baby. very soft, powder but not the usual powdery smell, this is a nice one. Burts bees comes to mind as well.

 

This lasted well over 14 hours. I love this and wish i'd ordered more.

Edited December 8, 2008 by plunderparlour

[hypatia]

In the bottle: honey, slight fruit overtones, and florals.

 

Just on: All the lavender appears with a WHOOSH! And then vanishes in a few minutes, leaving that "baby aspirin" note someone else noticed.

 

Drydown: Milk and honey with a bit of fruity-floral mixed in, but mostly milk and honey. Very comforting. I don't usually wear BPAL to bed, but this would be a nice scent to wear if I did. Maybe I'll experiment with making some linen spray.

[Phaedra]

Wet this is lavender, sage, powdery violet and a sweet rosy note. When first on this is very soft sage, a woodsy lavender and rose; delicate and feminine. This is much lighter than in the bottle. This really doesn't change much at all on me. It is mostly a very soft, almost wispy floral blend with hints of floral notes and an underlying earthiness. This is deceptively simple but it's really a lovely soft, feminine blend. Quietly beautiful. Thank you Beth and family!

[yeahbutnobut]

The Gladdener of All Hearts

 

In the bottle: milky and spicy…it smells a bit like a milky spicy lavender with lotus?

Wet on skin: lavender, spices, powder and sweet milk.

Dry on skin: whoa, that’s powerful lavender! I also smell orris, powder, maybe some carnation (that’s probably why I’m getting a clove vibe here) and sage, a bit of milk too but this is not like Milk Moon, this is more like a warm sweet milk scent, not sour at all. At first it reminded me of the Wanderlust scent Paris, with it’s lavender and spices and lotus-ish sweetness, but now it’s a bit more complicated. This does indeed have a hint of clean baby to it, there’s definitely a baby powder note to this as well as well as something like camomile. This smells like a really good quality natural baby bath product, it’s a very soothing and cosy scent.

After a while: there’s a moment when the baby powder note really amps like crazy, overwhelming the scent for some time. But then it settles into a much nicer stage, a soft floral milky scent almost like a younger version of Alice, with added delicate herbal notes like sage and lavender, and a bit of orris for that pale soft skin scent. there’s powder, but it’s much more muted. This is the perfect baby skin scent now. Very tranquil…an olfactory lullaby.

Verdict: at first, this starts as a lovely blend of lavender and milky carnation-rose, with a dusting of powder. This scent is really motherly, it captures the moment perfectly. It brings to mind the image of a new mother cradling her newborn baby so lovingly, this scent is gentle and reassuring and tender. There’s a very endearing quality to it which I really like. I’m tempted to keep the scent just because it commemorates such a precious moment even though it’s not as lovely as Lilith Victoria on me. There are times when this smells weird on me-it’s milky and rich but not sour but the milk note does smell a little odd (in that cloying sweet way) and there are times when the powder notes amp up to high levels. But even so, it’s a very pleasant scent with a beautiful concept behind it.

Emoticon rating:

Is it a keeper? I think so. Sometimes it smells strange on me but I love the sentiment behind it.

If you like this, try: Milk Moon (any), Alice, Katrina Van Tassel, Paris

[lunaticana]

well, this old lady pushed over Katrina she totally did.

I looooooooooooooooooooooooooove this. I really completely do

this is totally turning into powdered flowers on my skin and it's delicious!

this is THE scent I was looking for, so after trying more then 200 different BPAL's I found it. finally

it has all those flowers in it and now on my skin, it smells like a dream

lavender, violets, roses.. it's all there, amazing

if I ever get married this will be my scent of the day!!!!

Edited January 6, 2009 by lunaticana

[ljaylh]

I was scared to try this, because of the rose, but a dear forum friend said she thought I would like it and sent me a half-imp.. and I'm so glad she did!

 

I can't really describe this any better than those who have posted before me.. but I know many people like myself find rose a difficult note to wear - on me, it just amps up and drowns out everything else (like with Alice, which really upset me because I sooooo wanted that to work but it was ALL rose) - but this is a lovely creamy musky rose, as others have said - very powdery and soft and a good stayer.

 

The rose is there, but on me it ended up being more of a berry flavour than a rose, but that's very soft underneath the creamy baby powdery feel, so overall I'm really happy with it and will now have to stalk the sales thread until I can find a bottle.

[Miss Lynx]

Wow -- in the imp this smells exactly like baby powder, to an unnervingly accurate extent. And very, very sweet. On, it's still quite sweet, but quickly becomes much more complex and multilayered.

 

The lavender, as a lot of people have commented, is pretty strong here, but on me at least, not enough so to really dominate the scent. There's a strong note of something that smells almost bubble-gum-like, which is often how lotus goes on me, but since this doesn't have lotus in the list of notes, I'm not sure what it would be.

 

Thankfully, the rose and orris aren't too strong at all -- rose I like, but it usually tends to amp up big time on my skin, so it's rare to find it well-balanced with other notes. Orris I usually don't like much at all -- too cold and dry and a bit nose-tickly -- but here it's barely noticeable, though the scent does have a faintly cool feeling overall.

 

I can pick up a trace of the "milk" note from Alice, to which this scent bears at least a slight resemblance (though the idea of a milk or cream note in perfume always confuses me, since actual milk and cream don't smell like much of anything). There's a faint hint of carnation spiciness, much less than in Alice, and a gentle earthy/herbal scent from the frankincense and sage, grounding it all.

 

All in all, a really nicely complex, multilayered scent, which shifts and changes considerably from one moment to the next. Sometimes I quite like it, other times it seems -- not unpleasant, but not really me either.

 

Grade: B

[zankoku_zen]

I think the baby powder is too much for me... and this smells like a pretty baby, very floral, very powdery.

 

Not overwhelmed.

 

I guess me and babies aren't a good match.

[crebbsgirl]

I will be the first to admit I thought this was going to be a massive fail on me. Roses? Yick. Baby powder? Ugh. Anything resembling soft? Gah! However, I tried this, because I try almost every scent that comes my way, regardless if it seems to be made of fail. This is my perfect sleep blend! I've tried favourites like TKO etc and nothing. This however is powdery and soft lavender and sweet milk that manages to put me out like a light! A sweet blend overall, but the wet stages contain a strong lavender component.

[Ajila]

In the bottle – A sweet green herbal (actually I think it’s the angelica I can smell) with a hint of lavender

 

Wet on me – Slightly milky lavender

 

Dry on me – Soft, powdery lavender with just a hint of cream

 

Overall – A good ‘sleep’ blend I think, but not something that I would wear during the day

 

[Victory]

I understand where the people who say this smells like Sweet Tarts are coming from- I've never eaten them, but I think that's what it smells like, too! It's a sort of smashed powdered candy/Tums sort of smell. I don't smell any lavender at all, nor any honeyed milk, which is what I was really hoping for. Aging hasn't changed the scent at all since I got it in mid-November, which I admit I was hoping would happen. I don't dislike this scent, but it's just not what I had hoped for. I will say that sometimes, the baby idea enters my mind and I think it smells like blankets with lingering baby-scent. It's sort of a white scent with just the very faintest flushes of pink.

[asciident]

Wet: Sour body odor. Don't want to put it on.

[sprocket21]

Wet, all I get is lavender lavender lavender.

 

On me, lavender is still the dominant note, but it sweetens quite a bit. There are a lot of other notes floating in the background that I can't quite identify, but they're combining with the lavender in sort of an odd way. Yes, I think one of the deeper non-sweet notes - maybe the orris root or sage? - is really making things weird.

 

Side note: My boyfriend came into the room while I was testing this and the scent drove him out of the room . I guess it should be renamed Gladdener of All Hearts But Sprocket's Boyfriend's. (He's one of those who says all of my BPAL smells like either candy or perfume ).

[cuervosueno]

There are some notes I really like in here, but there is also one of cuervo's banes: lavender. So I didn't get a bottle, and even declined to swap for a full imp. I ended up getting a sniffy from a very kind swapper, and it is a good thing that's all I got....

 

It's not awful...it starts out clean and powdery, and yes, kind of baby-like. But then lavender throws open the door and comes stomping in, yelling "I'M HERE!" As if I couldn't tell.

 

What this ends up on me is lavender baby powder. Not My Thing.

[ShadowsDance]

So, I took a risk and ordered a bottle of this. 95% of the time florals will turn into baby powder on me, and this actually has baby powder listed as a note.. Eep!

 

In the bottle.. yeah, there's the baby powder!

On my skin it's not quite as powdery at first. I get nice hints of milk an honey, and the sage also stands out quite a bit. Unfortunately, after about 10 minutes the baby powder comes back to the front, and anything else that might be there is drowned out. I actually do not mind the smell of pure baby powder.. it's just not something I really want my perfume to smell like. Ah well..

Edited April 24, 2009 by ShadowsDance

[stellans]

This scent was instant love for me, because it called forth all the wonderful memories of my babies: soft powder, milk and honey with a light overtone of lavender and a couple of other herbs. It's just perfect...as a lovely memory. As a perfume, it is softly sweet, barely there at all and then it disappears quickly. The honey does not overpower, the milk does not curdle, and the powder does not go all dry: it is a lovely, lovely blend. It just doesn't last very long. But it's so pretty while it does last that it's a keeper for me. Well, that and the part about it reminding me of when I had little ones still.

Edited May 4, 2011 by stellans

[Gin]

The Gladdener of All Hearts

 

Most of these note are iffy on me, but they come together rather nicely. The lavender is agressive in the bottle, but on my skin, I smell the honeyed milk and... apples? And sweetness and a touch of powder and florals and spice. For as much as I was like, eek! baby powder! eek! rose! eek! lavender! eek! orris! I *really* like this. And I really do think it smells somehow like apples.

[tragedy]

This is a lovely blend of rose/lavender/dirt on me... with a touch of milkyness and a bit of sugar.

It smells very childlike... but more of a toddler than an infant smell... like my lil girl.. who loves to eat dirt <3

 

[Invidiana]

This makes me think of something spicy and fruity--like a sort of a light spiced punch, except without any boozy notes (not that I'm opposed to boozy notes ). For those afraid of baby powder, I'm not getting any prominent baby powder at all; maybe it just adds to the sweetness without invading my nostrils. The honey is definitely a plus; it gives a "golden-sweet" feel to this blend. Yum!

[theseagrows]

thanks to a lovely switch witch, i have a bottle of this now this is a soft, beautiful scent- i don't get much carnation or lavender at all. it's like a creamy, sweet slightly candy-like baby powder scent on my skin, but not baby powder in a bad way, like i've had happen with other scents. very light and sweet.

[CitizenBree]

In the bottle, smells delicious. A lot of sage. Sage makes me think of Thanksgiving stuffing, so that's what I think when I smell the bottle.

 

On the skin, that completely changes. Very fruity. Apples? I don't get any lavendar or honeyed milk. Maybe the honey is what makes it so sweet.

 

There's something that does make me think of a baby though. It's not the baby powder we all hate that some scents turn into when mixed with our chemistry. Still fruity, but the fruitiness of a baby.

 

Since I'm a fruity/floral person, I like this, but not enough to keep searching out extra bottles.

[gingiemay]

This is a creamy, powdery milk scent with a soft rose/sage note on top. The cream is a little bit sour on me, but that's my skin chemistry freaking out about milk/cream notes. It's pretty, soft and innocent... so not me at all.

[ravenscanary]

Source: bottle, secondhand purchase

 

In the bottle: Baby powder with a touch of spicy carnation

 

Wet: I get the creamy milk and rose otto entering the picture. It's almost musky in tone; I think that might be the carnation/rose combo to my nose. It's not very sweet at all, surprisingly. Unlike many other reviewers, I only get a tiny bit of sage.

 

Dry: Soft but earthy. Still giving me a musky floral vibe. Not unpleasant, but not what I was expecting, either.