Ravenclaw79

This one smells really powdery on me, but in a nice way -- it's heavily powdery with a hint of fruity sweetness underneath, almost like the much softer, gentler cousin of Midwinter's Eve. I guess I can get a bit of the honey if I look for it, but what I get most is just a very soft, sweet powder. Funny, 'cause rose and honey usually both amp on me. This is nice, though, a good all-occasion sort of scent.

Drat. I got so excited by this thread title, 'cause if there was a dog-be-gone BPAL, I'd be all over it. (I really, really dislike dogs, and there are way too many of them out in public these days, many of them all too eager to come sniff and slobber on me.)

Very leaves-y at first -- it took several hours to stop being a harsh, dry, bitter sort of scent. Now, it's more of a linen-y floral, not bad, but not necessarily worth the wait. (I always hope that leaves will blend with other notes, but no, they always seem to hog the spotlight.)

In the bottle, this is perfect -- vanilla cupcakes with buttercream, yum! But on the skin... well, it's still nice, but it's more mellow, sweetly subtle, and yes, a bit Midway-ish. I'm sad that the strong cupcake scent I got in the bottle didn't stay. Maybe this is my excuse to finally buy a locket?

I was hoping for dark berries, but what I got is just dark, very dark, hardly any berry at all, at least on me. Pass.

Did anyone mention Dungeon Crawl? It's what I wore to the last two midnight movie showings, 'cause I'd imagine it smells a bit like Hogwarts.

In the bottle: Fruity Charmkins with a hint of perfumeyness underneath. Wet: Lilacs? Not quite, but reminiscent of them a little. Flowery, but in a really, really nice way -- where usually, floral BPALs smell "floral" to me, strong, sorta fake, this smells real, light, pretty, like actually going out and smelling a flower garden on a spring day. Nice work, Beth -- I'm impressed. Dried down: Needs to be slathered a bit, I think. Really nice, though, definitely the best BPAL flowery scent I've smelled, and it's still not soapy at all.

In the bottle: Delicious! This smells like a candy I ate when I was little, these chalky-sugary lollipops they sold at the pool. Yum! Wet: Zomg, I want to eat my arm. Fizzy, lemonade-y, sugary, nom! REALLY strong throw, too -- I can smell it without lifting my arm at all. Dried down: Strong as hell -- I can't believe the throw on this! It's delicious, though. This is gonna get heavy wear, I just know it.

Having worn Metal Tiger yesterday and Metal Rabbit today... I'm sad to say that they really are almost identical. I got a touch more orange from Metal Rabbit in the bottle, but that's about it, and even that could possibly be attributed to the ages of the oils. This makes me sad, especially since Earth Ox actually does smell different from these two -- I had hoped that Metal Rabbit would be a distinctly different scent, but it's just not.

This one morphed a bit on me. At first, it was harsh and masculine and pretty awful, but that faded off pretty fast. Then, it was almost like a cooler, less-thick sibling of Ivanushka, with an air of furriness that was nice. But after that, it went to something that's a whole lot like Lady Lilith, and it seems to have stayed there. Mind you, I like Lady Lilith well enough, but they're so similar (I just had LL on last night, so I can tell), it's almost not worth having both. Unless this one ages differently, which it may.

My hand smells like toilet paper. It's not a yucky potty smell -- it's the smell of huffing a new roll of toilet paper right out of the package. There's a hint of juniper berry in there every once in a while, but for the most part, TP. Sadness.

Fizzy! It's fizzy out of the bottle, ginger ale-y, with a brief moment of "cookie?" and then "no, nevermind, not cookie." It's nice, though the sharp fizziness tones down after a while and it softens into something much more subtle.

Right out of the bottle, this is sweet and plum-y, but it very quickly goes to a really subtle mix of musky somethingorother. The fade on this is awful -- no matter how much I slather, it's gone in minutes. But what I do get, when I huff my hand really hard, isn't bad. I'm sort of ambivalent on this one.

THE CHAINED PHANTOMS The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever. Purgatorial wretchedness and despair: ice-limned white wine grape, balsam of peru, and chamomile. When wet, this is somewhat similar to Shivering Boy, but not cold (not minty at all, not to my nose) and more sweet. Dried down, it goes a bit less sweet and more... perfumey, if that makes sense. I was hoping for the smell of a wild grape arbor, and this is.... well, it's close, but I'm not sure if it's close enough. I'll probably need another try of this in the spring, when I think more of that grape arbor.

Ooh, yum! I was so worried that the cheesecake note would smell funky. But instead, this smells like pastry cream, like the strawberry tart I made this summer, sweet berries and cream. As it dries down, the sweetness fades down a little, but it's still a really nice strawberry scent.