rawgirl75

Wow! I'm so glad that I let my decant settle down a week from postal shock. Batty Maiden is glorious! I so love a bold carnation & rose blend and am thrilled to find another scent to replace my aging Love in the Asylum bottle. Maiden greatly benefits from the added indigo musk and leather here. On me, I get mostly carnation and rose (brightened by tea), with the musk and leather just hanging around in the background rounding it out beautifully. This scent to me also reminds me a little of Three Brides (Salon I) and Moscow. I've slathered this a couple of times now and just love the cloud surrounding me while outside shovelling snow, or running errands. I think scent is best suited to colder weather. Might be too much in a hot humid summer. Another solid winner in the Batty series and a bottle upgrade is going in on my next order.

I'll be up front and say that I don't care for regular Perversion. I've come to realize recently that tonka doesn't work well on me, and I think I remember getting a very forward tonka note in the original when I'd last tried it years ago. However Batty Perversion is REALLY good and I barely notice the tonka in it. Everything else just comes together amazingly. I slathered this for work yesterday and I could still detect it wafting into the evening. I smelled sexy. Even my best friend's Frenchie loved it - he kept smooshing his muzzle into my cleavage to huff it and tried to dry hump me several times. Upgraded to a bottle!

Nicotiana IS the genus name for tobacco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotiana I LOVE tobacco flower, and have all of the above recommended scents (and more). These are the ones that I have/tried that fit the 'pale' theme. I missed out on Hag Grey Hair Gloss when it was released, sadly :'(

For nicotiana: Smoky Moon 2009: Tristesses de la Lune (Soft sandalwood, nicotiana, and velvety orris drifting over lustrous pale musks, stephanotis, elemi, and cyclamen.) Door (Golden honey, nicotiana, blue chamomile, and cistus) Mysterious Warning (A scent evocative of poisonous family secrets: dry lavender-infused amber, battered leather, nicotiana, osmanthus, and jasmine tea.) Long Night Moon 2017 (A bouquet of night-blooming flowers, petals dusted with frost. Cereus, datura and moonflower accord, night phlox, honeysuckle, silver thyme, nicotiana, pale tuberose, white mint, and blue musk.)

When I first got my bottle fresh from the mailbox, the rose note was strongly forward. But soon after a few days or so of settling the rose note stepped down and now it's subtlely there but hangs around in the background. I will add to what the others have said that this scent has a 'classic bpal' smell, reminding me of the smell of my bpal stash in the early days (circa 2007). I have no idea why (because they don't smell alike), but somehow it kinda reminds me of my memory of Kubla Khan (which I don't own anymore). I stopped by my bestie's house today to drop off some snacks and asked her to sniff me. She sniffed and her eyes rolled up into the back of her head and said "Wow! What is THAT?!"😍 "Oh it's called The Serpent in the Roses" 😁 So of course I then needed to immediately go home and order another backup bottle - which I just did. 😉

I'm going to give this one more chance in a few weeks to see if I get anything else other than creamy sweet cardamom coffee, because this scent is just too gourmand for my preference. Where's the dry woods?

As soon as I tested out my decant for a lunch date, my best friend insisted I upgrade to a bottle. On me, it's a skin-but-better scent. Going on wet, it smells powdery and rooty, but that quickly fades and then this blooms on my skin to something that smells like fuzzy warm sweet cashmere. The wooly sweater notes or cashmere notes of other blends have gone afoul with my chemistry, so I'm so pleased to find my own snuggly comfort scent. I don't get smoke (hmm.. okay maybe it's 'dusty'?), nor peanut butter from this. My only concern is "Should I have bought multiple bottles?" Gender neutral. If myrrh is your jam (it certainly is mine!), then don't miss your chance to try this.

I've never been to the south, but these sound nice: Jazz Funeral Hell's Belle Josie Orgy with Nine Women

I decided tonight to randomly test this blindly from my frimp stash. Sniffing the vial, it smelled clean and fresh so I just went for full skin test. I immediately noticed the white musk and juicy lime - yum. But as it dried a pretty floral note came out and became the star player. I proceeded to wash it off immediately because something about that flower note disturbed me, but I couldn't identify what it was. And then I came to the forum and found it was lilac. I have an aversion to lilacs from childhood, so no surprise there. Very pretty but very lilac. Not for me.

Beautiful crisp clean white floral with a touch of brightness and sweetness from the neroli. While I do smell the scent of lemon, this doesn't react on me like lemon oil does. It's a simple floral with no lemon pledge. Very very pretty. If you loved the lemon flower note in Carnival Diabolique, you will love this duet too.

After a year of constant chemistry fails on all my blind bottle purchases, I am relieved that Smut 2021 is a winner. Although I'm not new to Smut, it's been many years since I last purchased it and it's formula does vary from year to year. My bottle of 2006 is too strong for daily wear, my 2011 is almost empty, and my beloved 2012 cherry amaretto version is too rare to use up. (I have only decants of '07, '08, '13, etc). I was afraid that buying this years version would be problematic as Snake Smut was one of those recent catastrophes. Fortunately I was worried for nothing. I sniffed 2021 alongside my 2011 and both are quite similar (with 2021 obviously having that usual slightly plastic-y note of fresh Smut that goes away with age). It's still yummy fresh anyways and by next year it will be totally amazing. (This year does not smell wine/port like some other years. No honey or brown sugar either.) Super happy with my purchase. 😍

I'd previously avoided Bright Red Dildo because honey notes usually overwhelm and drown out every scent I test with it. BUT WOWZERS! I sure was missing out all these years - Bright Red Dildo is stunning and I've been wearing it regularly for weeks now. It definitely reminds me a bit of Snake Skin (which I also love). The leather here is soft and comforting, and I think the honey is similar to the one in Door. The honey note does still amp on me (as expected) but BRD smells so good that I just don't care. I've upgraded to full bottle. No contest.

Well gosh darn. I love several SO variants. I love Smut. I'm obsessed with leather notes these days. This was supposed to be a guaranteed win. And yet something has turned very VERY wrong on me with this. All I get is a blast of single note angry powdery cardamom. I can't wash this off fast enough. Total chemistry fail. I guess I'll cellar this bottle for a year or more and try again later. So disappointed. EDIT: a few months of aging and now Snake Smut is incredible and I love it!

The Witch/Strega is another reminder for me that perfumes need time to settle down from postal-shock. I didn't care for it at all when I'd first smelled it straight from the mailbox. The initial blast of oud then was way in my face and the beeswax note was all over the place. I'd initially thought I made a mistake blind-ordering this, but.... What a HUGE difference a little bit of aging/settling makes for this blend. The scent in the bottle now has calmed down significantly. It's still a little bit odd when wet, but as it dries down, it really comes together and that hint of beeswax gives it a nice touch of sweetness. I totally love this now and am wondering if I should find another bottle. Edit: Months later, this has moved to possible swap pile. Honey notes are problematic for me (over-amping), and it looks like this one isn't an exception.

I'm getting that gorgeous golden amber note from Jacob's Ladder but without the olive note that made JL not work for me. The Lion was also too much for me (caused migraines) but all these lovely deep resins in IWJAC keep everything in check. I told my boss I "smell like a black cat having a snooze in a sunbeam". This perfume also triggers a strong scent memory of the smell of a former Wiccan shop that used to be in my city 20 years ago that closed down. The memory is so strong, I can't bear not to order more of this. I really wish it didn't fade so fast on me, however. Freshly applied it's so yummy, then it shortly disappears for awhile, then it comes back faintly hovering around me in an amber and resin cloud for a couple of hours and then it's completely gone again. It lasts a long time on my clothes though. I might need to find a locket...

I'm really torn right now. I'm not a fan of vanilla heavy scents usually, and this is heavy on the vanilla. But on the other hand it's also in the same family of slightly floral pretty feminine scents like The Girl, Black Lace (but way lighter and brighter), Ava (but less floral), and Zorya P - and I have and love those. This reminds me of when I tried Black Lace for the first time (when it was first released and hadn't aged at all). At the time, I was feeling 'meh' about the scent and thought "It's okay enough but not something I need" but then 18 months later I retested it and BL had aged into the most incredible blend and I needed eleventy billion bottles of it. Flickering Lights Fluttering Curtains is giving me those deja vu feelings (of what happened with BL). I think this is going to be highly sought after by everyone once aging smooths out that white amber note. edit: it's probably closest to a creamy smoked vanilla Antique Lace, but my memory of AL is from a long time ago.

YES!!! This is exactly what I was hoping it would be: something less sweet than Dorian, with the best parts of Theodosius. Bottle upgrade! (darn. never mind that. see below) Edit: I was wrong about it being less sweet than Dorian. It appears to be a different kind of vanilla, a very marshmallow-fluff type vanilla. This failed my slather test - too sweet for me.

A strong, clean and fresh, lavender fougere cologne for the first hour or so. Then that took a backseat to the dark resins, a touch of motor oil, a sprinkle of sawdust, and some metal, which got stronger with time. Unisex. I am a little heartbroken because I picked this up because I love lavenders, Schwarzer Mond, light woods, Streets of Detroit, and sometimes a bit of metal. What I didn't expect was the fougere note, which reminds me of one of those CK colognes that was popular in my youth which I didn't like.

ACK! GET IT OFF ME! I apparently amp clove. The clove note stomped all over everything else. All I could smell was CLOVE, some red roses, and the barest hint of black musk. It smelled great in the imp, so if you love clove you'll probably adore this.

At first I thought it was Steampunk... but then again, I don't smell any leather. Then I thought it was Dystopian... but that doesn't quite fit it either. And then it came to me: It's Dwemer. Like a Dwemer ruin. Old dust, rusted metal automatons, damp musty caverns, decaying wood. I want to spray it around my computer during gaming sessions, and simply experience it. I like it.

After letting my package settle down from the mail for a few days, I decided to properly test this today. Whoa.. this v2 Prototype version is really foody on me. Cream, sugar, coffee, dusty tomes, and a little bit of woods - in that order. I recognize the cream and sugar notes from blends like Egg Nog and Boo, and the dusty tome note from The Lurid Library. The throw isn't huge, but it lingered all day on me. The cream note might verge on plastic with some skin chemistries, but it didn't go plastic on mine. As someone who has/had all the known versions of Miskatonic University (GC, v2, and v3), I think I can reasonably compare the other two against this: The GC version has prominent creamy Irish coffee and wood polish notes. And the v3 prototype version has lots of coffee, liqueur and some dusty books. As yummy as this v2 version is (and it is really good), it's just too foody for me. The v3 version remains my favourite as it's only a little gourmand, and not foody at all.

Oh wow.. this is so soft. As soon as it dried, the lavender almost disappeared and what remains is mostly rockrose (aka cistus), some herbs, and pale woods. This is a light, gentle, safe for work type scent. Although I'm struggling to recall which scent this reminds me of, it seems like it could easily fit into either of the Illyria or Mad Tea Party categories. Fans of Mouse's Long and Sad Tale, Seance, or aged Brisingamen might also love this. I'm sorely tempted to buy a bottle, as it's gorgeous and I have nothing else like it. I'm worried however that my personality might be too strong to pull off wearing it.

It's been years since a scent captured my heart so deeply that I find myself wearing the same scent over and over again everyday. I just have to catch a whiff of leftover Secrets on my jacket sleeve and it's caught me up again and I feel compelled to slather this all over me. Even my best friend rolled her eyes in the back of her head when she sniffed the decant. The question I asked wasn't "Should I get this?" but became rather "How many bottles do you think is going to be enough?" I've fallen hard for Beth's coffee note. I'm starting to collect all the coffee scents. But this one takes the cake for me. I can't normally do honey scents at all, and this one is on the sweet side of gourmand (almost foody), but dammit it's yummy coffee berries fuzzy suede and sugar cookies. And I want to eat my arm everyday. The only scent I can think of with the same feel on me is (Not So) Penitent (Mini) Magdalene (which failed me in the end because beeswax is no go- but this honey is total win). Don't miss out on this before it leaves - you might regret it.

If you're scared off by worrying about the vetiver in this - don't be - it's not that heavy bacon-type vetiver, not in the slightest. In fact, I found The Scarlet Horror to be surprisingly beautiful and womanly. It's a 'skin, but better' type scent which will age into something incredibly sought after in the years to come. And although the throw is close to skin, I recognize a certain skin or golden musk (or possible a golden amber?) note that I've also smelled in some very popular bpal past releases, which is the note that is lasting the longest. I applied it early in the morning, and I could still smell it the next day. (Sadly that same popular note is a migraine trigger for me, so I have to let this beautiful baby go to someone else who can love it properly as it deserves.)

A Multitude of Dreams was a last minute decant circle leftover add-on that I tossed into another order for something to keep it company. I certainly never expected it to become my surprise hit Most Favourite Scent of 2018 Winner. Annemathematics was right - it really IS " one of those 'little black dress/favorite jeans' perfumes that has me smelling elegant in any situation from fancy to casual " Right from it's smoky wispy intro, to it's pointy lavender edges, and smooth sweetened resin exit - this scent is SUBLIME. I roll my eyes back into my head everytime I wear it. I only wish I hadn't blown my holiday budget before I discovered this gem, otherwise I would have been able to stockpile it.