marared

I didn't look at the notes before I chose this, just remembered it coming up as a popular scent. I smelled the cocoa right away, and the metallic tang of blood behind it all, but it's been overwhelmed by the rum and particularly the wine - I'm amazed it doesn't go sour on me (must just be only certain booze notes), but the wine is really too strong - major throw for just one little swipe of the wand. In fact, it reminds me a rather lot of Blood Kiss, which I like, but can also get in your face. This one's destined for the swap box, I think.

This initially smells to me like those after-dinner mint candies that are very powdery on your tongue - it's a nice fresh pale mint, but not cold and biting. The herbal background gets stronger as it dries, and the black musk is marching in like Darth Vader looming over Princess Leia, and turns it into a bitter mint that ... isn't bad, but isn't a suitable perfume for moi.

This was spicy plum goodness right out of the imp, but it's dried to craftstore plum soap. I still like it, but I liked it better in the imp.

I was curious to try this - honey isn't precisely one of my amp notes, but it agrees very well with my chemistry. O doesn't really call to mind any bodily fluids, let alone sex, but it does remind me strongly of a (much) less sweet, less boozy Mead Moon. It's a nice mellow scent that's sexy, but not "you will take me now on the nearest horizontal surface or vertical I don't care" sexy. I'd blame the amber; we are pretty apathetic to one another.

Newly applied, it's fruity lilac and a bit of leather. It was very nose-wrinklingly acrid right out of the imp, like it's probably lab fresh and needs some time to sit and age. Once it's been on my skin for a while, it becomes a lot more leathery, a lot more masculine, with just a bit of plum and lilac. It's pretty interesting, but leather and I move in entirely different circles - we don't disagree, but we aren't meant for each other.

Hm. This one morphs a little bit. It started out fruity and powdery amber - where the fruit came from, I don't know, might be the carnation. Either way, it smells kind of like old chewing gum to start. After ten or fifteen minutes, though, the fruit impression evaporates, the vanilla musk comes out, and the powder hangs in the background. It's nice, but it's not anything I need to have in a bottle.

This started out very spicy-figgy, but it loses the fig as it dries, and it's picked up something that I don't like very much. I want to point my finger at the amber, but I don't think it's the amber alone; possibly the myrrh is the other culprit. Whatever it is, Aeronwen starts out nummy but turns to powdered carpet deodorizer on my skin. Not BAD, but not something I really want to smell.

This is probably the spiciest thing I've tried from BPAL - the overall impression is of black tea and a whole lot of black pepper and clove. I can't even pick out the *patchouli* (let alone the carnation), which is unusual. It also doesn't have a whole lot of throw - it loses most of its kick within about ten or fifteen minutes and subsides to spicy tea. I'm glad I went with a decant instead of a bottle, because while I do like it, it's a little too dry for my tastes. I like warm and spicy, but on my skin I think it really needs a dab of fruit to balance it out.

Decant! I was well aware ahead of time that this wasn't going to work on my skin - sugar notes never do - but I love pomegranate, so I wanted to give it a sniff. I'd never be able to pick it out specifically as pomegranate or currant, let alone the pear, but it is definitely super-sugary red/purple candy in the imp. On my skin, it doesn't turn sour as sugar often does, but it definitely smells a bit stale. It doesn't have a lot of throw, but it's very strong regardless; it's overwhelming every other test on my arm within six inches.

Witchfrimp! If there's one flower whose scent I know very well, it's lilac, after living in upstate NY for seventeen years (where the Lilac Festival in the spring is frequently snowed out), and this is a very good lilac. I don't get any of the foody impressions, just lilac with a hint of that Glasgow blackberry bush in the background. Not a bottle purchase for me, but I'm going to love this imp for all it's worth.

Wishlist frimp from my witch: Oh, this is wonderful. It's so nicely blended that nothing in particular really stands out - I can tell the orange blossom, mint and a wee bit of rose are there, and kinda the sandalwood too. It starts out just a touch flowery, but it dries down to a warm and bright scent that is definitely of a masculine nature, but is pretty darn nice on me. I will be considering a bottle purchase, but I do want a male to smear this on and sniff...

While this is certainly quantifiably a masculine scent, it's not as dark and heavy as I thought it would be based on the notes - I smell the musk and the patchouli, and the saffron to a lesser degree -- I think it's the saffron that keeps it from being really dark. It's very warm and sensual, but not outrightly sexual. Spicy and just a little sweet. It gets a little woodier as it dries, but still pretty awesome. (And the oil is a pretty typical gold, not the olive green others have mentioned.) I really like this one - if it doesn't go sour in the next half an hour, it's going on my bottle wishlist. I need to try this one on a guy, too.

Resurrected: *huff* oh. *huffs some more* oh man. While this smells nothing like Dionysia, it has the same scent vibe - resiny and spicy with a good dark tart fruit to it, that's so finely blended that neither really takes over. If it's this good now, I can't wait til it ages. I'm so going to buy at least one more bottle, possibly two, before it comes down next month.

Oh wow, this is quite a fuck-me-with-my-heels-on scent, isn't it. It's all musky honey on me with a bit of the tuberose - I'm sure the patchouli must be coming into play too, even though I can't smell it (blended with the musk, no doubt), because patchouli invariably turns to sex on my skin. It just gets warmer and richer and *delicious* on me as the minutes pass. The more I sniff this, the more I'm certain that it's going to be a bottle purchase. Good job, labbies! Edit: oh man, it went sour. CURSE YOU BOOZE NOTE WE COULD HAVE DANCED SO BEAUTIFULLY AND YOU RUINED IT.

Imp: straight up dark red apple with a bit of herbs in the background. On my skin: juicy red, super-sweet apple at first, and then it gets lighter and less sweet as it dries, and it turns more of a white floral that must be the oleander. This is very nice, but it fades rapidly - less than five minutes on a swipe and it's nearly gone. The starter whiff is pretty awesome, though.

LOUD chocolate. It's so loud it even drowned out the floral four inches away on my arm. It's definitely very foody compared to some of the other cocoa blends, to the point that I have a sudden craving for brownies. Yum.

Lavender and poppy are the strongest notes right off the bat, but the other flowers join in after a bit for a dark floral arrangement corralled by amber. This is a floral mix that I really like - I'm usually not too big on heavily floral blends - that calls up embroidered satin corsets and long skirts. I might consider a bottle of this one, if only to have something so *different* from my usual likes.

I'm going to have to go with "yuck" on this one. It *does* smell like car freshener - like white flowers swiped on cardboard. I think the cardboard for me is what other people are calling almond - it *is* a vaguely nutty smell, but almond is straight up vile on me, and this isn't almond. Editing a year later to say - yep, still yuck. It smells lovely in the imp, but it turns to rotten coconut on me.

Creamy peppermint, yum. Loud peppermint, too, although the vanilla note that doesn't exist in this gets stronger as it dries.

Fir and mint - natural mint like the herb, not the sugared mint in candy and chocolate. I kept wondering why I smelled mint when there isn't any in the notes listed, and thought maybe I'd gotten a bit of Lick It on my finger from sniffing it just before testing this, but obviously I'm not the only one! Fir, mint, and just a whiff of berry. There is a bit of cedar and sandalwood when it's wet - but it fades almost immediately into mint.

Rain and dust. Not cold rain, though - warm rain, on a path somewhere in Thailand, Vietnam, etc, with a vague hint of incense in the distance. I can see how the scent translates into grapefruit for some people - it does have a mild tang to it that's almost citrus, but it's part of the rain scent to it. It's a very pleasant and mild scent, and I think it would be best for evocative purposes - meditating, sitting down and writing, activities along those lines. Oof, gotta edit - it ended up going sour on my skin after about an hour. Very sad.

Glasgow is my favorite berry scent, although it is not especially blackberryish eight months after purchase - fresh, though, it's like walking past a blackberry bush.

Frimp from the lab, which sent me several fruity type things this time around. I liiiike this one. I wouldn't say it smelled like a martini so much as a pomegranate *soda* -- I don't really get any booze in this scent (which is good, because booze and I generally don't get along), but it has the dry sweetness of a good pop that hasn't been overwhelmed with sugar. I almost even smell lime in this. I'm not suuure I want a bottle, but it's going on the tentative list.

Man, I was so disappointed - I had such high hopes for this and it smells terrible on me. It's a very bitter woodsy smell, and it isn't the balsam, so maybe it's the cypress or the artemesia -- the latter of which is described on wikipedia as also being "bitter," so that might be the culprit. It's also very hard to wash off - I still get a whiffs after scrubbing. I'm going to let it sit for a few weeks, as I do with all scents that don't work on me right away, but I'm pretty sure this is going to hit the swap pile.

Fresh decant. This is leather and sage and no Snake Oil that I can detect yet -- it's definitely an *evocative* scent and calls up lots of interesting images, but not really a *perfume* scent for me, and consequently not a bottle purchase. I've read many comments noting that this gets substantially better with age, though, so I'm going to hang on to the imp and check it again in a few months.