meaganola

Another vote over here for Falling Leaf Moon. It smells like the afternoons I spent walking in a certain park in Portland last October/November after the leaves had been falling for a couple of months, but there were still some leaves on the trees, and it had been raining about the same amount of time, so you have rain, leaves, dirt, and slightly-decaying leaves. If there was a Halloween: Portland scent, this would be it, although it's missing the way-too-pervasive-for-my-allergies woodsmoke, which actually makes it *perfect* for me since, well, allergies.

Nilla wafers dunked in dragon's blood. Maybe with some caramel sauce (but not the burnt stuff like I got with, um, one of the Yules whose name is escaping me at the moment) on the side. But somehow not foody. These are all very, *very* good things. I first tried it very early in my BPAL experience, probably two and a half years ago, and wasn't really wowed by it at the time, but my tastes have changed, and now I *love* it. In fact, I think it has overtaken Tanin'iver as my favorite Ars Draconis oil. Tanin'iver is still awesome, but Dragon's Milk is a more year-round scent. I'm not a huge vanilla fan because I have this weird olfactory blind spot when it comes to that note (it doesn't even smell plasticky to me. There's just usually *nothing* there), but I can sure smell it in this, and it's *wonderful*. And I tend to have problems with honey, but this is the apparently one of two honey scents I can wear (the other one is Josie). The strange part, though, is that I apparently turn this to nag champa. Or maybe my coworker's nose just interprets certain BPAL florals as champa since she's also said this about Panther Moon and the Harp of Cnoc I'Chosgair. She thinks they all smell amazing on me, so I'll keep wearing them. Anyway. This one is *fantastic* to swipe on my left wrist at about 1:30pm on a busy day at work. I have noticed that I tend to start propping my chin on my left hand at about that time (most of my current job is 10-key data entry with my right hand, so I don't really need my left hand for typing), and having a good scent like this on my left wrist makes me feel calmer. My current job is a temp gig, but if I get hired (as was presented as the plan when I interviewed for the assignment), this is going on my celebratory finally-got-a-real-job bottle order along with Morocco and Dorian (also awesome scents to swipe on at 1:30pm on a crappy afternoon. If this turns out to be a permanent job, I will be keeping rollerballs of each of these in my desk for emergency aromatherapy!). As a side note, I have some mixed with perfumers' alcohol, and I sprayed it on my cleavage yesterday. Burning like whoa. That doesn't usually happen to me, so I'm not sure what's going on, but at least I don't have that problem with straight-up oil on my wrist.

Dominant, passionate, devastating. Dragon’s blood and five deep musks. Wait, where's the dragon's blood? This one goes all musky pretty much instantly, and it's mainly red musk, which has unfortunately been setting off The Quease the past couple of weeks. I had to wash it off after about half an hour because I just couldn't handle smelling it any more. I mixed this one with perfumer's alcohol in a sprayer quite some time ago, so it isn't off to the swap bag. I'm hoping that I'm just more sensitive to red musk right now and will be able to give it a better test in the future, though, so I'll have to try to remember to try it when I'm doing better on the red musk front.

I'm headed through a dragon's blood phase, so I dug this one out of my stash. If straight-up DB is a 10 on the strength scale, the DB in this one is turned down to about a 2, and then we have melons set at about 4. Salt? Nope. Very much not my sort of thing at the moment, although I can see myself wanting something like this for a family gathering (although those are few and very far between). Back to the stash, because it's good enough to keep this on hand (plus it's mixed with perfumers' alcohol in a sprayer, so it's not exactly the sort of thing that I would pass on to someone in the BPAL world anyway), but future imps that come my way will go into the swaps bag.

Depraved goes different ways on different people. It's definitely a love-it-or-hate-it scent. I love patchouli and apricot, but Depraved has an added earthy note. I'm starting to like dirt notes as well, but this combination turns to moldy apricots on me. Be very, very wary. Sin is a good spicy patch. I tend to stay away from amber (it goes powdery) and sandalwood (can sometimes be a headache trigger), but the cinnamon and black patchouli drag it back into wearable territory for me even though I do still have to be wary of the sandalwood at times. Man, I wish I could wear it today, but I'm already dealing with a sandalwood-induced headache and don't want to make it any worse. I'm also a huge fan of Phantom Calliope and Tanin'iver, which are very, *very* similar to each other to my nose. The latter was discontinued due to component issues, but the former is still available. Unimpable since it's part of the Carnival Diabolique, alas, but *awesome*. Black cherry, patchouli, verbena, cassis, and cardamom. Fruity spicy patchouli wonderfulness. The funny thing about Snake Oil is that I didn't even realize there was patchouli in it. It reminds me a whole hell of a lot of Guerlain's Shalimar, which was my mom's scent.

I picked up this imp because I love orange blossom, and, based on a coworker's repeated comments, champaca is a good note on me (and/or I turn other things to it, since she's commented on the champaca in the Harp of Cnoc I'Chosgair and Dragon's Milk. If you're thinking, "Wait a second, neither of those things have champaca," *exactly*). I'm trying this one today because I will be able to wash it off and change my clothes immediately if it turns out to go horribly, horribly wrong. In the imp: Orange blossom and pretty much nothing but. Wet: The orange blossom is still there, but as it's warming up on my skin, the spicy sandalwood is starting to come out. I'm hoping that it doesn't get too out of control because sandalwood is one of my problem notes. Drying down: A little bit of sweetness is coming up. This is a good thing. Dry: Not much more sweetness. Pretty much just dry spicy sandalwood. Verdict: Nice enough to keep the imp, but not enough to put in a rollerball and collect more imps of. I'm headed to my brother's this evening, and I think it will be okay to not wash this off or reapply it and instead layer Panther Moon over it. *Love* Panther Moon. Except as a side note, pretty much as soon as this settled in for the day, I started craving something sweet, like Dorian or Dragon's Milk. Aaaand four hours into this, the sandalwood is driving itty bitty spikes into my brain. Washing off now, *and* moving it from the keeper stash to the swap stash. I knew this one was dicey. Here's hoping the sandalwood in Fledgling Raptor Moon behaves more like the stuff in the Harp if Cnoc I'Chosgair and Perfumed Garden!

I must have acquired this one as frimpage somewhere along the line. Wet, I get a sort of spicy dragon's blood and bubblegummy lotus. Both are favorites, but as soon as it hits my skin and starts drying down, I get something... earthy? Rooty? I can't pin it down, but it reminds me of something. Depraved, maybe? High John the Conqueror? Whatever it is, this one is not for me. I couldn't even wear it two hours.

I also think that a lot of things have to do with associations. For a lot of people, it's not so much that something is wrong in hot weather but more that, for example, someone wore something heavy to a music festival and got sick (food poisoning, heat/sun stroke, just got pissed off at the crowds, etc.), and the scent hasn't been *ruined* for them, but now they can only handle it when the weather is cool so they have a bit more of a distance from the Weekend of Porta-Potties from Hell. Or they wore it on a cooler day, had an awesome experience, and now wear it when they want to recreate that feeling, and the weather has to be *just right* (this happens to me a *lot*, most memorably with Falling Leaf Moon). I also have problems with hot weather in general (I've had them my entire life, as did my mom, her sisters, and their mom, so it's definitely a family thing), so I have to be careful about what I wear during heat waves so it doesn't set off a headache or similar nastiness. I've had many scents ruined by headaches even without hot weather. If you don't have these problems, you can probably ignore all of my "this is not for hot weather" rules and make up your own.

Common Jezebel. It's spiky pears. Not spicy pears, not prickly pears. Spiky pears. Like dry sticks shoved into a pear. I don't know how else to describe it or how I get *pears* out of its notes. And most of the notes are things that usually cause me pain and nausea, not near-obsession. A very odd combination, but I'm finding myself really digging it, although it's headed to the do-not-wear-this-one-at-work section of my collection.

Le sigh. This one is all white sugar and cardamom to me. Mostly white sugar. It's like smelling a bowl of sugar that has one lone cardamom pod in it. No vanilla, tonka, or musk, so, sadly, not for me. On the up side, if I have any left after decanting, it should be easy to rehome.

This should be bottled Quease. Red currant goes straight to gummy bears, and it is a note I can't deal with after wearing Eat Me while watching _Cloverfield_ at Cinerama (*giant* curved screen with an amazing sound system. *The* place to see action movies in Seattle). I tend to amp coconut to the exclusion of everything else, and it can turn so sweet my teeth ache. Last year, I had a broken decant incident with either Velvet Tiger or Velvet Panther and had to *leave my apartment* for a few hours because the vetiver made me sick. And speaking of sweet, lemon sugar. Apricot can be okay (March Hare!), but if it's combined with a problem note, things can go very, very wrong (Depraved). Based on the notes, I should avoid this one at all costs. But. I got this one for a decant circle, and out of all of the Moths'n'Butterflies, this was the one I found myself thinking about with alarming frequency. Yesterday, I crossed my fingers (hoping that I could make it through the day without *too* much of a problem) and tested it. The best way I can describe this one is spiky pears. Not spicy pears. Spiky. Like pear slices were mixed up with a bunch of spicy sticks near a campfire, although I don't get smoke. I'm not sure why I get *pear* out of this, but I do. I've only tested three so far, but this is my favorite of those three (and the other two? Monarch and Gypsy), although it's not really an early June scent to me. It makes me think of late August weekends. And, hey, August will be here fairly soon!

Have you checked out the Lab's Shiny and New page to see what they were priced when they were originally released? That's where I would start for LEs. Or go to the Lab's Announcements section here on the forum and search for the specific name. Hmm. I really should start keeping track of how much stuff costs when I buy it considering how many partials I end up with after decant circles.

I finally got around to trying this one today. There's something in here that I strangely turn to a sort of dried chili pepper sort of thing. Not hothothot spicy. Just... *warm*. And there's something celery-like happening, too. And it's powdery. *So* not my sort of thing. I blame my skin chemistry, though, because this is most definitely not what it smelled like in the vial. On the up side, I'm not at work today, so I'm not sitting here thinking about whether my coworkers dislike it as much as I do, and I waited until well after 11am (I've been up for more than six hours already). The down side is that my skin really hangs onto this, so I'm going to have to take a shower and scrub this off, but I've got tiedye going in the bathtub, so that's going to have to wait a while. As a side note, this is the first perfume oil I've ever tried that has caused the kat to stick his head down my shirt and sniff. I'm glad I tried it so I can stop wondering, but I'm even more glad that it was just a testable sniffie left over from a decant circle so I don't feel compelled to keep on trying to convince myself that I like it.

According to hackess's spreadsheet (see her signature), there has not.

I can't remember the last time I wore something that morphed as wildly as this one. In my Clocket, it's pretty much all coconut husk. On my skin, it started out all coconut husk, but then the licorice came out, and then everything else just kind of hung out in the background. Every once in a while, the tonka pops out to remind me that it's there. Overall verdict: It's very pretty and subtly spicy, but while I adore the spices, "very pretty" is not my sort of scent. I'll keep a decant for the archive, but the rest of the bottle will not be a keeper.

Huh. I don't get metal, ozone, cologne, or any of the other things everyone else seems to get. Once upon a time (read: the version with this name now isn't the same scent), probably about ten years ago, Bath & Body Works had a Stress Relief shower gel, lotion, and linen spray. The gel and lotion had little green blobs in them. Tin Foil Fat smells exactly like how I remember that shower gel. I think the notes included clary sage, spearmint, eucalyptus, and maybe lemon verbena. I loved that stuff, so I'm very happy to have this oil. It won't be something I wear frequently since it's not really my day-to-day style, but it will be awesome for those times when the craving/need hits.

How does the actual mailing label look? I have random strings of numbers (for example, 4-87204493) on mine, but they come after my name, not in the street/city part both in the CnS notice and on the shipping label.

I gave this one a try today because I woke up thinking about it. Couldn't remember a single thing about it other than the name, but my brain locked on it and wouldn't let go. *So* glad that happened. I ended up with a full bottle of it left over from a decant circle, and this may very well be my keeper of the batch. White amber and white musk rarely play well with my brain (white musk in particular can do headachey things for me), but this is all lemonade cotton candy on me. Very creamy, and a *soft* lemon, not a harsh LEMON. It specifically reminds me of something I can't identify (some sort of candy, probably), which is annoying, but overall, it's wonderful. Zdravetz has a tendency to go all HELLO I AM GERANIUM on me, but in this one, I don't smell it *at all*, which is a welcome development. I think I just found my spring hand lotion scent! (Now it makes me want a lemon float -- vanilla ice cream with fizzy lemonade, or vanilla ice cream with Sprite/7-up and lemon juice -- but I don't have any ice cream. This makes me sad.) ETA: Just figured out what specific candy this reminds me of. Lemon Pez. Haven't had them in years, but my memory of them is exactly what this oil is like. Also, when I put fresh oil on top of a dried-down application, I get vague hints (so vague I can't name anything specific) of herbs that weren't there the first time around. I'm fascinated at how double-dabbing like this (that is, putting fresh oil on top of the same dried-down oil) can bring out things that I don't otherwise smell in an oil if I'm just smelling the wet or the dry phase.

When I'm in the mood for a fruity floral, something with a fruit blossom (that is, not necessarily something that contains fruit *and* flowers as separate components) frequently does the trick. A few of my favorites: -- Carnaval Diabolique (lemon blossom) -- Katharina (orange blossom) -- Tamora (peach blossom) -- Khrysee (orange blossom) -- Lovers in a Ricefield (plum blossom) -- Spell of Amorous Love (plum flower *and* cherry blossom) -- Voyeurs Among the Cherry Blossoms (oregano! Just kidding) -- Vampire Tears (neroli) [Edited because I didn't like the way the list looked at first.]

Irredeemable non-exclusives and C2E2 exclusives!

Ooh, Witchblade labels!

There's a certain BPAL oil (can't remember which one at the moment) that does this weird soapy thing on me: It doesn't *smell* like soap, but when I wear it, the back of my throat feels and tastes like it's coated with soap. Little Bird does that, except with the added non-bonus of smelling like soap (some sort of facial soap, like Camay or Dove or something else along those lines). I don't get the berry thing other people are getting *at all*. Very much not for me. And I have a feeling it will turn out to be long-lasting and impossible to scrub off since it disagrees with me so much, and very possibly a headache trigger, too, since that's what usually happens with anything involving wildflowers. On the up side, most of the bottle went out in a decant circle, so I didn't pay for the whole thing, but I still have a *lot* left over, which has been moved to the sales box.

I don't have a picture, but I just pulled out my bottle, and the numbers were written in the dark space between "RECURSIVE SELF-SIMILARITY" and "THE SNAKE OIL SERIES." There was probably a number on there -- in the past tense. The pen used to number the labels rubbed off extremely easily, so unless you wrote the number on a sticker for the top of the bottle as soon as you received it directly from the Lab, chances are high the number would rub off, even with minimal handling. My guess is that you just got a bottle that had the number rubbed off through normal handling, not an unnumbered bottle (as a side note, my barely-handled bottles have lost their numbers, too, although I did write them on cap labels).

Ah, skin chemistry. This is why I don't usually test on my arm: On my arm, I get a creamy floral. Nothing too thrilling, nothing too offensive, just kind of pretty. But I usually wear scent on my chest, not my arm, so that's where it went today. It turns out that I amp narcissus to the point where it might as well be single-note. No violet leaf, no orris, no vanilla. Narcissus. I resniffed the decant to make sure I wasn't misremembering what it smelled like. Nope, creamy floral in the vial. I like narcissus -- so much so that I bought a bottle of First Soft Snow, which this smells almost exactly like. *And* it fades quickly. A couple of hours later, and I can't even smell it on my shirt. Oh, well. One less bottle on the to-buy list. And I *really* wanted to get this one for the name alone!

Metal and incense! It makes me think of the cash register area at an import store my aunt used to work at: The incense was right next to the little metal sculptures of, like, elephants. And then as it dries, a sort of a hint of something almost WD-40-ish comes out -- sort of like the oil on metal pieces of things you would buy at the import store and have to take home to assemble yourself. Hmm. The longer it sits on my skin, the more the WD-40 comes out. Very odd. I like it (I even kind of like the WD-40 thing), but there are so many other oils I like more that I think I'll just stick with the decant and not bother getting a bottle of this one.