Butterflies, Flowers and Jewels Attending

[nineveh]

Inspired by the moment in time frozen in this photo - my fairy child, laughing and playing amongst gargantuan flowers. An ethereal, iridescent, twilit scent, sparkling with mystery and innocent joy: white patchouli with provence rose, delicate freesia, pink tuberose, jasmine sambac, orange blossom, butterfly musk, vanilla orchid, and delicate spices.

This shouldn't work on me at all. My typical experience is that rose takes over anything and turns into olive oil, jasmine turns into headachey perfumey soap, and orange blossom goes chalky and sour. I didn't consider buying this one at all until I read the reviews, but now I'm glad to have a bottle.

It's sweet and playful and girly, three adjectives which I definitely am not, but sometimes I get in the mood to wear perfumes that are antithetical.

It's very well blended. I can't tell what I'm smelling, though I'm getting hints of the musk and soft spices of Morocco. The flowers give an overall impression of sugared strawberries.

And yes, it does smell more like a mainstream fragrance than the typical BPAL. The closest I've experienced was Flowerbomb, but whereas that was way too sweet for me, BFaJA is wearable and lovely.

[tinyvulture]

This is beautiful. Reminds me of a commercial perfume I used to wear - Sensi by Georgio Armani. I don't smell the rose at all. Instead, I get a mixed floral bouquet, softened with powdery musk and sweetened with vanilla. I wish I could identify more individual floral notes. Suffice to say, I love it.

[Ajila]

In the bottle - A ball of white florals

 

Wet on me - A soft slightly green, slightly powdery floral

 

Dry on me - For 5 hours nothing but a slightly meh white floral. Then suddenly we have musk and sugar and it has that powdered floral sweetness of Hope and Faith

 

Overall - The dry down equals love, but the first 5 hours less so

[milo]

This smells *really* good on me. I'm a loss as to what the notes are, it smells kind of perfumey, but in a good way, a touch of musk, maybe amber that's meshing very well with my skin chemistry. Slightly florally, a bit musky, it does smell like something a child would wear. Delicate, kind of ethereal, airy and just lovely. It smells like an expensive perfume that my daughter wears. I've asked her what it is, but she hasn't gotten back to me. I'm pretty sure it's something by Chanel that she wears. Very nice, and I'm going to try and track down some more.

[Balame]

I'm going to echo the other reviewers in saying that this feels more commercial than most of BPAL's blends, but it's like the rare good find. I get a wet rather than powdery floral musk (for which my sinuses thank me), with what smells like an airy cotton candy behind it. It's pretty, endearing and playful, like the image it's supposed to evoke.

[Aviatrix]

This reminded me instantly of Ava (Only Lovers Left Alive)! The flowers blend together most beautifully, if slightly heady. I think I'm able to mainly distinguish the vanilla orchid and the tuberose, but it's hard to make out individual flowers. Thankfully I'm not getting the patchouli (could definitely be because it's categorized as "white patchouli", which I've never tried before….?)

Butterfly musk just sounds so beautiful and evocative, but I'm not really getting much musk from this. Overall, it's a very pretty floral with a really dreamy feel to it.

I can't stop sniffing my wrist!

 

I would definitely look for a full bottle if I didn't already have Ava, because they are so similar to my nose. Likewise, it reminds me a bit of The Girl.

 

Highly recommended - if you like florals, of course. If floral is not your thing, you should probably steer clear

[Blood onmy hands]

Perfumey, musky, unbearably sharp white floral. I get tons of sharp, musky, white tuberose mixed with sharp, fresh (almost soapy) freesia and white musky vanilla orchid.. this is like a mix of so many of my least favorite flowers and sharp musk.

[celestia]

♔ Butterflies Flowers and Jewels, Attending

 

Ah, BFJA! Amoraexcena, my beloved twin, suggested I get this as my first scent upon returning from my many years of hiatus. Only it was kind of hard to find, and I resorted to buying Ava first which proved to be a lot easier (and more affordable!) at the time. I was lucky in finding a bottle before it saw another price hike, though!

 

In the Bottle: BFJA smells like an effervescently dusted, intoxicating, fae bouquet of slightly sugar dusted (but not candied) pink, purple, blue and silvery florals.

 

Wet: To the untrained nose, it smells almost identical to Ava, and before Ava entered the picture, BFJA was *the* comparative dupe for Viktor and Rolf’s Flowerbomb. They both have a similar, take on effervescent fae dust over florals. BFJA smells sweeter compared to Ava, is a touch more complex when wet, and has more of a floral bouquet going on with its medley of notes. Sometimes I get a hint of an unlisted citric blossom like honeysuckle, but that (thankfully) burns off rather quickly. Often, I do prefer this stage of BFJA to Ava because of its afforded complexity and sugariness.

 

Although I can confirm Ava and BFJA are similar, like other reviews, Ava veers more towards a pale pink and silvery, creamy-white olfactory colour- whilst BFJA dips towards the pinky, periwinkle and silvery end of the spectrum. Both have pale musks, some sort of floral vanilla- and tuberose. BFJA has a sharper freesia note (I wouldn’t call it delicate as per the description) and equal strengths of tuberose (and even though the description is different, it smells akin to the sharp-ish tuberose note in Ava). It is also similar to other effervescent, fae florals, such as Midnight on the Midway, Fairy Market, Juliet, and Muse of Fire- though MoF has a much more explosive burst of citrus, with a spectrum of reds, oranges and fiery, bright yellows; Fairy Market is shades of light green and pastel with a more boiled-candy and fae grass; MotM is shades darker, with cotton candy incense with warm, Fairy-Market like air, and Juliet smells like a creamy white, tinges of pale pink and soft green with its choice of pale florals and effervescent, almost crystalline, sugared pear. They all reside in the same relative family, but each have their own nuances and evoke a different spectrum of colour.

 

Drydown: A lot of the listed florals blend well into each other- too well, even. I can’t pick up the jasmine sambac, nor the orange blossom. Likewise, white patchouli, provence rose, vanilla orchid and delicate spices don’t really translate into individually identifiable notes on me, though I can pick distinctive aspects of each note. BFJA might easily be mistaken for, and can be passed as a fresh, effervescent. commercial floriental perfume. I’m so fortunate that my chemistry loves both BFJA and Ava. Some days it likes one more than the other, and so both are heavily rotated with each other. I do get less vanilla with BFJA than with Ava on the drydown though, so I often preference Ava a little more when favouring something a little creamier.

 

 

TL;DR: Fae, sugar-dusted, effervescent bouquet of pink, purple, and silvery white florals

Edited April 24, 2017 by celestia

[LizziesLuck]

So, I thought this would be bad on me because of the jasmine, but then Ava was randomly magic on me (who would have thought??) and I heard this was similar (and way cheaper) so I snagged it.

 

 

Wet: Oh ya. Very like Ava. So, basically, GORGEOUS. Glittering musk and sunny florals, that's what this is. Stunning.

 

 

Dry: I will have to do a side-by-side, but right now I can't tell the difference between this and Ava, and that is really exciting, as I only have a half bottle of Ava and was sad about that. This is the sweet pale musk and floral scent of all our dreams. <3