sarada

My friend told me to get a bottle of this unsniffed because I love wine scents, like Lilith, and I've had a good track record with honey lately (Honey Moon, Litha, etc). I just have a partial bottle of this now but wow, she was right! This does wonderful things on my skin. In the bottle my first thought is "raisin bread", though. I don't like to compare things to baked goods, because I hate foody scents, but I put this on because I know it will change. The grapey, raisiny wine scent is probably just the sweetened, spicy honey, mingling with woody myrrh, which also has a touch of spice to it, I've found. It's a dark red-purple with touches of rusty brown, in my mind. From across the room, someone says I smell fantastic. I think that the cassia is picking up and giving a sort of cinnamony incense ambience to the room. I was worried about lemongrass taking over, but I don't smell it at all. Don't really smell the palmarosa either, it's mostly wine and honey streaked through with spicy myrrh. If you like the lab's honey but don't generally go for "foody" scents this is a good compromise between the glowing, radiant golden honey and a mix of woody, spicy, incensy and deep grapey wine that really stands on its own.

Most of my friends around here share my tastes and hate foody scents and are not wild about perfumey florals so I generally do well with my own favorites when I'm enabling, which include stuff like Urd, Anne Bonny, Cathedral and all that. Of course most of my friends locally are male, and they think EVERYTHING smells like Play-doh. I've converted one heavily into some of the smokier and woody scents (Devil's Night, Sri Lanka, and all of the resiny scents) though. So I don't know if I am any good at enabling any people who don't have the exact same tastes as me!

I tried this a long time ago, probably about two years, and remember enjoying it but not keeping it. Now smelling it again is like a weird nostalgia-fest of my early days of BPAL. I seemed to have tried and liked a lot of mint blends back then. Actually what it reminds me of is Frost Moon. It's almost a dead ringer for Frost Moon in my memory and I get a vivid picture in my head of Christmas 2004 or thereabouts when I smell this, because of it. Weird. The mint in this is a bit more strong and mentholy...perhaps it's kicked up by the juniper. Lotus is an unsettled and slightly nauseating note in aquatic blends like this and as it did in Frost Moon it puts me off a bit. Still, for its curious ability to cause me to time travel back about two years I think I'll hang on for it for a bit. As has been said before, it's a strong aquatic mint, and I don't know if I like it as a perfume, but I enjoy the overall experience of sniffing this one!

I've spent the past month wondering what on earth this would smell like, since there's so much going on in it. Although autumn is my favorite time of year I don't much go for autumn scents -- I am not fond of apple, cider, spice or pumpkin scents...in fact I can't stand most of them, but there's enough in this that I do like that it's worth a try. Light, crisp apple is at the forefront here, inspiring my officemate to remark that it smelled a bit like apple fritters. Not what I was hoping for, but still, it's more like a fresh apple than a baked apple to me and that's OK. As it dries it does remind me a bit of last year's Harvest Moon with its faint, light apple aroma and a dusting of tawny flowers. A sweet, dusty spice -- a natural scent, like an outdoor market in autumn with piles of apples and bushels of mums, and the distant smoky scent of pie crusts cooling. But it is not sickly-foody. The tart fruits and musky mum scent keep that apple/sugar sweetness at bay. I catch a single glimpse of the bamboo shoot and tea leaf at one point, as if amidst all this autumnal wonder someone in a kimono drifts by holding a potted bamboo plant and a cup of green tea. That succulent glowing green contrasts nicely with the sunset oranges and golds that this evokes. Happily, I don't smell hazelnut, which is a bad scent for me when it is strong. Maybe it's contributing a bit of that spicy quality to the blend. I am enjoying how dusty and smoky this gets on me as it dries. This is truly the traditional autumn scent that I can wear. When the air gets crisp and pumpkins start to line roadside stands, the inside of craft stores turns orange and black and I start to get cravings to buy notebooks, pens and giant stacks of books on literature and philosophy -- this will be the blend I reach for!

Truck stop sleaze. Weedy dandelion and hops with a whiff of tobacco and hemp and a swirl of booziness. I was afraid of Roadhouse, early on on my BPAL obsession. I was terrified of tobacco back then, thinking it would smell like cigarettes (I was wrong and it's now one of my favorite notes!!), and afraid of hops (I hate beer) ... and not too sure dandelion or hemp would work as a perfume either. Just now, reading the ingredients to my DH he winced and asked why anyone would want to smell like that. But of course, I've since learned that I love tobacco, like non-rum boozy scents and I like dandelion and other crisp green scents -- particularly that bitter green stem quality, it really adds a strange and memorable dimension to any perfume. This smells largely of dandelion at first, both that succulent green stem that makes your mouth pucker, but also the musty soft golden dandelion. It gradually dries into more of a hopsy scent which I'm not as fond of...again, the association with beer, which I loathe... But in the end it all comes together as the tobacco warms on my skin and it becomes warm, sun-baked dandelions and aromatic smoke in a grassy field. I think the imagery has been well-described throughout the review thread, but if you have skin that warms to tobacco it might come out very nicely in this blend. Definitely a summer scent, but since it's summer right now I can't wait to wear this on my next walk through a park! If I don't wind up drowning it all in bug spray and sunblock that is.

This smells very perfumey at first...I think rose geranium is the only thing that is really catching my attention, and it's not really a note that I like. But almost everything else in here, I love, because it's so resiny....ahh but I don't smell them! Ylang ylang can come across as a cloying, chemical scent to me and while I don't get that from this blend I think it might be contributing to the overall perfumey floral aspect. Fortunately though it dries down to mainly the frankincense and copal with wisps of powdery floral incense. Like several of the other Salon blends it makes me think of handrolled, fresh incense that you'd buy in an occult store, but not any particular scent, just a generic mixture of everything. In fact, if you've ever gotten a whole bunch of imps in bubble wrap in the mail, this is almost the scent that winds up lingering on the bubble wrap after you've put the imps away. I love that scent actually! This doesn't seem to have enough personality on its own to grab me...but I think the complexity of the Salon blends probably deserves a few more tries for me to get to know them.

III Previously reviewed by darkling. I can't believe that there's such a gorgeous woody, sweet, smoky CT, that it's number 3, and that I managed to get it! She actually described it perfectly in her review: it reminds me of the resins in Cathedral, but it's slightly sweeter, and as it dries there is a wisp of woodsmoke. The smoky wisp reminds me a bit of the Henri Bendel "Firewood" candle, when it's not burning. Not the acrid smoke of something like Djinn, but a soft smoky log cabin sort of wood. I really love those sweet glistening resins...definitely reminds me of Cathedral or Pit and the Pendulum at first but it goes in a completely different direction as it dries, as though it's having a conversation with my skin. This is just the perfect scent for me. Chaos works in strange ways! ETA: I realized what it smells like on the drydown...kinda like Torture King without the orange/lime citrusy notes. Ooooh baby!

I've long hoped for a truly murky deep dark green aquatic and Isle of the Dead appears to be the answer. That's great because it's also one of my favorite paintings. I love the sense of foreboding and mystery that it evokes. Cypress, junpier and I guess yew are very strong in here, almost to the level of a sort of paint thinner scent with a murky, swampy, mossy shadow. On my skin it is nice and strong and not quite so turpentiney. Deep dark damp green woods, and a solemn veil of faint floral incense. I think the lily and rose are giving this some of the kick that really throws those dark greens out into the stratophere. Oddly, this one ALSO dries down a bit like Sheol, which is what I also thought about Satan and Death. Weird. Medicinal dark green woods, faint resins and a spooky glow of funeral flowers. This is probably the perfect aquatic-based scent for me, even though it's really barely aquatic -- doubt I'll need a full bottle but I love having a sniff.

Upon first sniff I thought I smelled something citrusy over resins, and figured this must have been the one with lemongrass in it. But no, none of the ingredients in this match what I am smelling! Assuming my sample is labelled right I just have to wait to see how it develops. It's actually beginning to make sense as it dries on me. The citrusy scent is tea, now that I think about it -- one of the pale teas like in Dormouse or Spirits of the Dead. It takes a bit of a golden-orange glow from orange blossom, but beneath this spike of sharp, bright scent is a warm valley of spicy resins. It really smells a bit like Sheol to me as it dries. It has the same dignity and calm, and a very similar resiny drydown. I couldn't figure out what this one would smell like based on the description and I'm surprised and somewhat delighted. I don't think I need more than a sample of this to wrap my head around it but so far all of the Salon scents are fantastic, regal, refined and beautiful. Later: Several hours later the Sheol similarities have faded and the vetiver is coming out a bit. It reminds me of the non-leathery part of Two Monsters now! At least the woody/vetiver part of it with that spicy resin undercurrent. Mmm mmm.

Oh my. It's funny that in reading the ingredients to this I didn't really put together the fact that frankincense and myrrh, amber and sandalwood were all in it...along with, well, pretty much everything else in this is a favorite of mine. How did I not think to just buy a bottle unsniffed? I think I was completely dizzy and disoriented by the update that day! To put things simply, this smells like walking into Mystickal Tymes, a store in New Hope, Pa. This smells just like it -- a combination of every possible type of resin and complex, powdery incense blend, all in one. It's incredible. I get a wave of nostalgia smelling it...kind of like the nostalgia I felt when I first smelled Tisiphone, though this does not smell quite like that (since it shares none of the ingredients!). It has a similar powdery incense store feel to it, but this is a bit lighter, more resiny, and refined. I don't specifically smell the red musk, which normally really comes out on me, and the honey seems to take one of its more light and powdery forms -- I wasn't sure if the cardamom and saffron would spice it up too much but it's just like a faint layer of golden dust. The sandalwood and resins come out the strongest on me, but they are more like sunlit motes of incense dust floating through the air, than the smoky, dark incense of the "churchy" blends. Great, another bottle I need to get! I am afraid that all of the Salons are looking like bottle scents at this point. They're just SO good.

What they said! Scherezade and other things with red musk are very headshoppy to me without having any nag champa in them (Lust, Fenris Wolf). Red musk is awesome. But Urd and Hellion are the twin gods of nag champa I think. And Two Monsters if you don't mind taking a chance on a Salon scent! Oh god it's so wonderful. Oh how I love smelling like a hippie. Death Cap is another great one for an earthy/dirt incense smell.

... Offerings of ginger candy, sugar cane, smoky vanilla and rice wine mingle with a ghost’s perfume of white sandalwood, ho wood, ti, white grapefruit, crystalline musk and aloe. This scent is tapered by the presence of seven herbs, woods and resins used in the purification of the spirit and the purging of earthly concerns from the soul. There are so many notes in this blend, and from so many different scent categories, I had no idea what to expect but was kind of thinking it would be a smoky, sugary grapefruit with a bit of sourness over a soft wooden base that kept it from being too fleeting. This is pretty close to my guess, but it's even nicer than I expected. I love wood, resin and herbal scents, I like grapefruit and I'm open-minded to the smoky vanilla and sugar notes as well considering that I love Devil's Night but I am really taken on a journey by this scent. It opens with the strong fruity, tangy sweetness of grapefruit, backed up by a resiny wooden core. It fades very fast on my skin. But, in my hair it sticks around a bit and I keep getting hits of this grapefruit candy scent with just a slight swirl of warmth and smoke. As for similarities, if you like grapefruit used in surprising combination with other scents (as in Cheshire Cat) this might be another good one to try. And if you like the citrusy musk of Enraged Bunny Musk this is a different take on that kind of combo. I know that this is a bit lighter and fruitier/sweeter than my tastes typically lean but I really like like having a growing collection of unusual, atypical scents like this to fit every mood and whim.

Snake Charmer was actually a wearable Snake Oil to me, since it's the vanilla in Snake Oil that turns me off...but I only like Snake Charmer in the fall apparently since I haven't worn it since then.

some of us bathe ~and~ wear patchouli!

I never tried this before because, well, the vanilla scared me and also the word "priapus" sounded a little intimidating! But pine, juniper and rosewood -- what was I thinking, to not want to try this sooner? And amber too -- it's a bit like Black Forest without the musk, and with a slightly more clear, biting, brisk pine. This is a sharp, sharp, bright green pine scent. This is probably the most piney that I have tried thus far. I'm sure it's also the kind that might make people think of Christmas candles or air fresheners, but for me this kind of bright, fresh green pine scent is paradise. Vanilla? I don't smell it. Well maybe a little as it dries. A gentle warmth that keeps the pine from vanishing too soon. Yes, it warms up on my skin a little as it wears, along with the sweet amber, but it's always dominated by pine. I don't know how I can possibly get a bottle fast enough. I like this more than Nocnitsa, I like it probably on a par with Black Forest, and I wish I had discovered it a long time ago when I was tearing my hair out looking for more piney blends. Here it is! I'm really glad that vanilla doesn't seem to be standing out in this for me, because that would have been a dealbreaker. Pure fresh scent of forest air and pine needles.

It's taken me all day to try to figure out how to describe Lotus Moon and I'm still not sure, but here goes... First, a little about me and lotus: it ruins blends for me. It smells like little banana candies to me...like the ones in a pack of Runts. And in my mind it is always a large, pink, blobby shape that eclipses everything else. That's the story of me and lotus. Opium is also iffy, since opium poppy turns out to be the awful nail polish remover scent that I dread. So, aside from my fears about those notes, let me just tell you how much I love pine resin, rose otto and amber. A lot. And what do I smell in Lotus Moon? I don't know, but it's wonderful -- and there's no pink blobby lotus hovering like a malevolent jellyfish in the corner of my vision and no opium screeching across like nails (with the polish freshly-removed) on a chalkboard. I smell a wonderful soft fresh clean resin, something like that pure sap scent I get when I smear the resin from a pinecone onto my skin, but also something that just clears the air with a pale green, almost aquatic breeze. The rose otto seems to incorporate very well, so I don't really smell rose, but a sort of incensy hint of it. Amber sort of ties it all together but doesn't reveal itself as an individual note. Refreshing but soft and comforting, is what I'd say about Lotus Moon. The lotus itself only bobs along faintly in the distance like a pink will-o-wisp on the edge of the pine forest, hovering over clear green waters. I'm glad I took a chance on it and I like it so far. There's a little bit of a piercing headache note in there for a moment, which might be opium, might be rose, but it fades before it bothers me. What a surprise -- I never expected to like a lotus blend!

If I didn't know anything about BPAL and I was presented a vial of perfume marked "Blood" that was this delicious dark red radiant color I would immediately be in love. While dragon's blood scents only rarely win their way into regular rotation for me, the fact that it's paired with clove instead of cinnamon really makes this blend work. This is the closest to an almost pure clove incense scent in the lab's repertoire and I'm seriously considering a bottle just so I can get that clove scent to surround me without having to cross the border to PA to buy a pack of them (which I wouldn't smoke anyway, but ... I like the scent a lot). Dragon's blood, while present early on my skin, gives way to a dusty dark clove, very much like the Airs clove incense that they used to sell a long, long time ago (10 years or so). This is almost exactly like what I remember of that, on the drydown. Myrrh doesn't always work on me. Neither does dragon's blood. And I really don't like cherry most of the time. But they all bow down and make way for that smoky spiciness and it comes out on top. If you're looking for the definitive clove scent, give this a try. Some day I might need to lay in a supply of this one.

With such a wide variety of components -- sweet, floral, resiny, herbal, boozy -- I had no idea what direction this would go. The direction it took is gorgeous, though, and it's going to take me a few wearings to make sense of it! I'm immediately overwhelmed with that gorgeous honey wine scent. A touch of a fruity booze -- rather like Fortunato in concept, in the way that these notes are all suspended, retaining their individuality -- but the honey and thyme definitely remind me a bit of Honey Moon. Meanwhilte that boozy scent and the ivy remind me of those elements in Fortunato. I don't specifically smell the frankincense or copal, which are favorite notes of mine, but the way that the blend warms and radiates belies their presence. If it was only honey, herbs and mead then it would probably dry up to something powdery and light almost immediately. But I think the resins cause it to stick around and help it to project and last on me. The honey-thyme combination is so appealing to me, that that alone would win me over to this blend. But add in those complex resins and the green ivy and oak and this is just heavenly. I don't know how long it will last on me because I'm testing so many things today...but my first impression is just absolute love. I don't know if I'd wear it outside of spring, summer or early autumn but I can see giving this a lot of wear up through October.

This is the other of the Salon scents that screamed my name. Having recently tried the Redwood single note (which is the perfect fresh-cut forest wood scent for me), previously tried the Frankincense note and generally loving any kind of sandalwood or tobacco, I could just cry with joy for reading the notes in this blend. In the bottle: strong woods, but light-colored woods, rather like an amped-up Yggdrasil with a bit of Penitence thrown in. The wood is so vivid and real, it really smells like you have your nose pressed to a tree. On my skin, a spicy frankincense develops, while the reddish woods linger in the background. I'm walking through a forest of tall redwoods, my bare feet sinking into a bed of dried pine needles, while swinging a censer of frankincense to and fro. This is pretty much a perfect blend for someone who loves very true-to-life wood smells, and resins. I couldn't ask for anything more. I can't believe this is actually in the catalogue and I can get it whenever I need it! This is the fresh wood scent I've been dreaming of.

Peony, plum blossom, water reeds and soft Asian woods. I didn't order this because florals don't do anything on me except disappear -- and I'm not into pink things, so I waited awhile to get a decant. Wonder of wonders though, there is one pink flower that I like, and it is rose -- and this smells like a very very soft pink rose with touches of greenery. It it fresh, damp and tender. Peonies are my mom's favorite flowers and her yard is full of them. However, I never found them to have a strong smell. I buried my nose in them this spring hoping to be able to tell what Peony Moon might smell like, but all I got was a nose full of water...and ants. If peony essence smells like a perfect fresh wet tender pink-green rosebud, though, I'm totally there. Unfortunately it dies on my skin almost immediately and gets a bit of baby powder scent in it as well. I think it would work better in a locket, so I will happily use it on rainy, springlike days when I need a nice wet pink slap on the face to get me motivated. Surprisingly lovely, even for someone with flower-eating skin like me. I'm glad to have a decant.

I've wanted to try this since it first came out, because I love dirt and moss scents, but I'm not so sure about the boozy or floral notes. I'm glad that I did though because this is lovely -- a bit cloying at first, with the floral notes really at the forefront, as thick and sweet as if they were filling the air on an oppressively humid day. But the slightly sour wine notes (it's not boozy so much as winey on me), combined with the loamy soil and fragrant moss, really remind me a lot of Nosferatu. It's not as sour as Nosferatu and the moss is somewhat eclipsed by the sweet, almost fruity floral blooms, but my skin insists on making this morph into a Nosferatu-like scent. It still stays a little bit too perfumey for me to want to wear this all the the time, but it's a surprising variation on the dirt/moss theme that I love so much. I've never been to New Orleans and have only driven through Louisiana once so I can't say that this conjures up any memories for me, but a humid, sticky warm summer day in a New Jersey cemetery doesn't smell too far off from this if I use my imagination. And on a humid, rainy day like today it really cuts through the thick, murky air with the sharp, white incisive bite of gardenia and almost rose-like Spanish moss...but stays grounded in sweet, soft, gritty earth doused with wine.

Hard to believe it took over two years before I came across an imp of this older blend -- I wasn't particularly interested in trying it, but I do like the Wicked Witch associations it conjures up and I just got a copy of the book "Wicked" so maybe I'll wear this while reading it. In the imp, it's a very ... yes, acrid is the word, jasmine. Kind of offputting, I'm not too fond of it. But I tried it on, and it's a warm, humid day, which is the kind of day that I expect florals to really fill the air around me with a thick, heavy, cloying scent. That's not a bad thing really, I normally can't even smell florals. It becomes a little bit better on. The rose slowly strengths, and I like the way it mixes with myrrh. The jasmine does its usual unpleasant things...it starts out acrid and then gets an almost sweet, grainy quality to it. It dries down a pleasant memory of myrrh and a powdery dust of rose. It wasn't as bad as it smelled in the imp but it's still not the kind of thing I'd wear. I might keep it around for that book though. And it never hurts to have some heady florals around for the odd summer night now and then.

Tweedledum is my favorite that I've tried of the new MTP scents but I'm not quite sure how to describe it. As a color, it's orange and green in my mind, not too surprisingly -- the mango and green tea play off each other nicely. As someone else stated, it reminds me of a sort of Pier 1 candle scent, but without that artificial, waxy smell. At first it's mostly mango and tea with a bit more strength and earthiness to it than such a light scent would normally have. I chalk that up to the patchouli though I don't really smell it. Gradually the fig starts to chime in, a very distinct, gritty and slightly sweet scent. I don't see where I'd wear it a whole lot but it's definitely a unique scent in the lab's arsenal and would work well for anyone who likes that fruity candle sort of scent. Good room scent too perhaps? Nice pairing for Tweedledee. I'll definitely try to wear it around this summer and see if it grows on me even more.

A lot of my favorite notes are in this one -- except cherry, which I don't care for, but I'm ready to try anything. In the imp, lavender and cherry. A very sharp, astringent lavender. The cherry fades very quickly on my skin and what I think is rosewood comes out a bit more. It goes through an amazing stage where it resembles Dee or Old Scratch (the rosewood in Dee, the musky lavender of OS) briefly then dies down a bit, becomes a bit like soap and a faint swirl of lavender incense smoke. I really love red musk and rose but I smell neither in here, and the oil is clear, whereas red musk always lends a deep, rich blood-colored tone to most oils so I'm a bit surprised by that. Ultimately I think I'm set with Old Scratch as my smoky, musky lavender scent but this is a nice one to keep in the arsenal. It makes me feel like my mind is clearing and focusing ... must be the lavender. I feel like I could really get things done wearing this, freshly scrubbed, well-rested and ready to go.

Vanilla, two ambers, sweet pea and white sandalwood. This was very faint in the imp...almost didn't notice it. Who's that little mousy in the corner? Oh don't mind him, he won't be any trouble. This went on very light, with the sweet pea at the forefront, and I thought it was very much similar to the other sweet pea blends in the catalogue, though I haven't kept any...it's a unique and pleasant fragrance even if it's not my typical type of scent. But then it goes NUTS on me and becomes incredibly strong and wafts up in the air around me. It's still soft and mournful, sweet pea is still strong, but it gets an almost incensy quality to it. Call me crazy but for a moment here it makes me think of nag champa. I think that it's the sandalwood coming to life on my skin, along with the sweetness of amber and vanilla. Although I'm still not a sweet pea wearer in a big way, this is really surprising and a nice, unique little blend. I have a feeling that people passing by me when I'm wearing this might identify it as incense or nag champa because that's what my skin does to everything. I don't know if other people would amp that quality quite as much as I do.