orata

Gorgeous light waxy honey, amber, and clean Arabian musk (smells like Egyptian musk to me). Vaguely like O, but much lighter and cleaner, or The Lights of Men's Lives, but again lighter and without the smoky note. I really like it, but sadly, I can only smell it if my nose is practically touching my wrist--it's so faint! My color-impression would be a pale milky white tinged with the faintest drop of gold.

So gorgeous. Starts with a huge wash of delicious, flowery blueberry. The orangey bergamot and lemony white tea get stronger as it dries, and the blueberry fades back a bit so it starts to smell less like BLUEBERRY! and more like a pretty blended perfume. The lilac and orris provide a soft, fluffy floral background to the brighter, fruity notes of the citrus, tea, and blueberry. It smells like a creamy floral watercolor in pastel colors. Light and clean.

Wow, this is such an interesting one. Like Juniper Hairstreak, I expected this to be awful from the description, but it's actually fascinating and pleasant. The beeswax, pink pepper honey, and pimento are the strongest notes: my overall impression of it is spicy, peppery honey. It feels cool and light, though, not crushingly thick, cloying, or heavy. The saffron and cardamom make it smell a bit like visiting the Indian grocery store, and the tomato leaf/geranium/cajeput (tea tree) give it some herbal freshness. I like the mixture of the spicy and herbal notes, which keep the honey and beeswax from coming across as too sweet. I think it might smell a bit too headshoppy or Indian-foody for me overall, but I can see a lot of people loving this one.

Reminds me strongly of a Rappaccini's Apiary blend--if you like BPAL honey, you will enjoy this; it smells almost like a beeswaxy, slightly powdery single note honey on me, with just hints of dragon's blood, gingergrass, vanilla, and gardenia. They're not strong presences, though--this is more like honey from a beehive that's been gathering from those plants. This is pretty, but probably not unique enough to me to warrant a bottle.

Full set (slightly blurry, sorry) of the Metamorphosis 2012 scents, Absinthe and Lace, and Strawberry Moon 2012. I'm not a bottle art collector since most of my bottles live in a plastic fishing tackle box most of the time, but these tempt me--goddamn are they pretty, especially as a set!

Omnomnomnom. You have to be in the mood for a sweet scent to wear this, but it is gorgeous if you're in that mood. It smells very similar to Strawberry Moon 2009, of course, but side by side, 2009 has much more dandelion/greenery, while 2012 smells almost like pure, sweet strawberry and vanilla to me. The strawberry has a wild, almost floral complexity. Sometimes I buy these frozen fruit bar popsicles that are basically just frozen sweetened strawberry puree, with some large berry chunks, and this smells to me like those taste. I was thinking "strawberry ice cream!" at first, but it's not that creamy. Today was about 75 degrees and sunny, and I had Strawberry Moon 2009 on one arm and Strawberry Moon 2012 on the other and went biking around. I sat down in the sunshine by the lake and watched baby ducklings paddling around and felt like I was wearing just the perfect scent for the day--the sunlight on my skin warmed it and I kept getting these delicious whiffs of sweet strawberry.

A pleasant surprise: this smells like a big glass of lemonade! Or lemon meringue pie! The anise, coriander, and cilantro were the notes I was most iffy about, but I don't really smell those aside from a soft greenness and the sense that the scent is more complex than just plain lemon. Somehow, from the description, I didn't think it was going to be so lemon-heavy, but it is definitely the most prominent note, with red currant as a close second adding a tangy red-fruitiness. Smells really delicious, and the lemon is sort of light and watery, not sharp. If I still had my decant of Lemon-Scented Sticky Bat, I'd want to deathmatch them, but I swapped that away a while ago and can't compare side by side.

I was totally sure I'd love this one, but actually kind of recoiled when I opened the bottle. The jasmine is really super stinky! This is not a tame or mild jasmine, but a feral, wild, strong one. It calms down a bit on the skin--you can smell some light tingly citrus from the blood orange and some dark greenery from the moss, but if you're a jasmine hater, stay far, far away from this one. I'm still trying to make up my mind. It gets lighter and prettier as it dries down--vanilla and orange with heady jasmine floating around above, making me think of hot summer nights--but the first heavy, thick whiff of jasmine when you first apply it is kind of alarming and offputting.

Intense heavy citrus scent--the strongest note to me is the somewhat green/herbal-smelling petitgrain, with mandarin and grapefruit also brash and out front. It's a fairly bitter scent. A little bit of creamy amber and copal emerge as the perfume dries down, but the petitgrain remains as the key player. I grew up in California, and it reminds me of the smell of fresh lemon tree branches with the shiny leaves and fruit on them. Green and bitter from the bruised leaves, but citrussy and fragrant from the fruits. If you like orange blossom, you'll probably like this. I was hoping for more of a juicy sweet citrus rather than a neroli-like citrus, but it's still really nice.

This is great, like the fanciest, most expensive chocolate-orange perfume you could imagine. The tobacco, ebony, and non-edible orange give it a certain complex something that makes it not quite a foody scent, though it's definitely notes of choc + orange on the skin. It's definitely a gourmand perfume rather than a realistic sketch of a food. The tobacco is a fairly sharp tobacco leaf and pretty prominent. The coffee gives the whole thing a dark grounding. Something about it smells almost spicy to me as it dries down, some slight hint of a note like cinnamon or clove. The Osage orange note is beautifully long-lived for a citrus note. The throw and lasting power are very intense (I'm typing and can smell a powerful cloud of Ruddy Daggerwing wafting up from my wrist; it's unusual for me that I can smell a scent that strongly from that far away), so I think this could certainly become overwhelming or cloying after a while. Really, really beautiful.

I thought this sounded HORRIBLE from the notes, but it surprised me by actually being one of my favorites from this update. It's very fresh and green, especially at first; the top notes are a sweet melony cucumber and clean, slightly fizzy-smelling mint and ozone. As it dries down, the brown musk emerges as an identifiable note. That plus the juniper and mint give it a slightly WILF-like vibe to me. I feel like it's a pendulum swinging between opposite poles: super clean, freshly showered skin tinged with the smell of shower gel, or the same skin after working in the garden in the sun--slightly sweaty, dirty, and earthy. It's so weird, but I like it!

I agree with Absinthetics--this is mostly a soft nutty patchouli like the one in Banshee Beat. I did a side-by-side test of the two, and this one has an almost sharp freshness to it (I'm having trouble picking out individual notes beyond the patchouli; maybe osmanthus and tobacco?) and lacks the super sugary/creamy sweet vanilla and soft hemp notes in BB. But they smell really, really similar in the far drydown. I used to violently hate all patchouli scents, so it's been a shock to me how many patch scents I've actually wound up liking, this one included. Banshee Beat was my gateway drug

So my credit card just got declined for an order because Fraud Services said CCNow was providing really vague info and they thought it was a scam or a stolen card number... the automated call I got said the payment was for something along the line of "computer services," which didn't sound right at all, so I had to call them to get the details on the amount and who was actually trying to charge to the card before I realized what it was for. Apparently CCNow tried to charge it twice on the same card, once with "computer services" and once with "specialty retail goods" and were denied twice. Annoying. On the other hand, when I got the notice from CCNow this morning, I put it through again using the other credit card I have from the same provider, and it went through fine, I guess because I usually do all my online shopping with that one and it seemed more normal to them? I'm glad they're keeping an eye out for me, but it was still kind of frustrating, especially with that vague "computer services" designation for the payment.

Earthy and rooty with a certain clean sharpness to it from the ginger, ginseng, and hay. I actually would have said it had lots of vetiver, which I guess must be the hiba wood and/or mushrooms. It seems strongly related to Entangled from the same update, but less creamy/sweetened than that one. As it dries, there is something slightly sweet and herbal coming up here through the vetiver that reminds me of carrots, anise, and mint.

Wet: this is one of the worst BPALs I've ever smelled. The "rotting cloves" description upthread seems apt--there's something about the combination of the musty patchouli, pungent cloves and pepper, indolic white flowers, and weirdly savory caraway that makes me almost nauseous--it smells like corpses or something. Sharp, stinky, awful. It improves as it dries, getting more rummy and less rotten, sort of like Perversion with cloves, so if you like Perversion and clove, it might turn into something you would enjoy. But it still smells kind of like diapers overall.

This stuff smells so awesome. I got decants of the Honey and Frankincense glosses before, but swapped them both away since I liked them but didn't love them, and felt a little overwhelmed with hair gloss when I looked in the cabinet. If/when I use up my decant of the Snake Oil version, though, I might consider a big bottle. I use two squirts rubbed in the palm of my hands and smoothed over towel-dried hair. I don't know if it does anything particularly fantastic for my hair, which is usually pretty well behaved and shiny by itself, but it smells like Snake Oil Bath Oil (i.e. like aged, vanilla-incensey Snake Oil, gentler and more vanilla-ish than the fresh perfume, which can smell overpowering and medicinal sometimes) and lingers gently. I do notice that even after I shake it a little, when I dispense it, it has sort of orange globules floating in a clear medium, so I'd advise shaking/rolling before use.

Looking through my spreadsheet, here are a bunch of honey scents or sweet florals I would recommend: The latest Pink Moon, Jezebel, Defututa, Against Idleness and Mischief, Agrat-Bat-Mahlaht, Beautiful and Adored, Meliai, Gennivre, The Gaoler's Daughter, The First Encounter, Blooming Rose, Harikata, Ninon, Spirit of the Komachi Cherry Tree, Itaso Kansei Nenkan Joro no Fuzoku, the latest 13, Fairy Bites, Pink Snowballs. Plus definitely look through the reviews for all of Rappaccini's Apiary (my favorite is Deadly Nightshade Honey, but I haven't tried all of them).

This is very similar to Hungry Ghost Moon 2006, so I did a side-by-side comparison of them. They are most alike when wet, a mixture of fresh, tangy grapefruit and sweet rice wine; however, Tanuki no Yudachi is much more citrussy and sharper than HGM--almost fizzy. Dry, they diverge more--the drydown of Tanuki no Yudachi still has a bitter grapefruit peel tang, undertones of lily, and a clean, freshly-washed skin vibe, while HGM has a weirdly strong, sweet buttercream vanilla note to it in comparison that I think is a mixture of the ginger candy and smoky vanilla. This is a very pretty scent, quite light and clean in the drydown. I'm considering a bottle and getting rid of my HGM because I think I like it better than HGM, but I might need to deathmatch them again to decide. It's also possible that with aging they will become more similar (the citrus oil fading and the vanilla coming out).

Mmm. This smells like almond ice cream when wet! I've never really found a BPAL almond scent that works--have tried Dana O'Shee, Eclipse, Queen of Sheba, Love Lies Bleeding, etc., and I think this is the first that wasn't horrible. The slight bitterness in the almond keeps it from smelling too plasticky or sweet. A slight spicy note seemed to come out on my skin as it dried, making it smell faintly like cinnamon almonds. Very nice.

Juicy red apple, with red currant and champaca coming out a bit more as it dries. It's nice, but almost an apple single note on me--doesn't smell as complex as the description would have made me think.

I don't really enjoy wearing melon scents, but this is a beautiful ripe honeydew melon scent--very sweet, but it gets a slight sharp, citrussy tang to it as it dries down (must be the green musk) that makes it much more interesting to me than just plain sweet juicy melon. If I were a melon fan, I'd be stockpiling this!

This was an odd but compelling scent--like many others, I was hopeful for a Black Opal type of vanilla stone note, but it doesn't smell much like Black Opal to me. It does have a cool, stony, inorganic quality, but mixed with a green, dry vegetal scent and a hint of rose. I liked it, but couldn't quite picture when I'd ever be in the mood to wear it.

On me, this is a warm, lovely apple cider with a touch of fizzy ginger beer. It's a really nice autumn cider scent, but it feels a little odd to be trying it in May.

If you were looking for a scent to evoke giant, sweaty Tanuki balls, this is pretty much it. It has this strong, sweaty, savory cumin note that reminds me of a cross between B.O. and cooking Indian food, laid over a fairly pleasant airy sandalwood incense note. I just can't get over the cumin, though, yuck.

This is mostly a soft black musk that reminds me of Playful Wooden Mallets, with a sort of powdery, soapy, green aspect to it too. Pleasant and inoffensive, very much a clean, close-to-skin scent on me.