greylen

I'm leaning into cherry recently. I've always loved to eat cherries of all kinds but fruits are hit or miss notes for me in perfume. I know Dragons Milk lists no cherry but I love the cherryesque honeyed sweetness of it and also loving the Cherry Incense Luper scent (hey, I should review that!) and Fairy Lobster Foam starts with a big blast of that screamy delicious maraschino cherry. I also get the condensed milk in the can smell at first when I open FLF but it calms down into powdery soft vanillic marshmallow that I smell in TKO and the rare AF Marshmallow Poof. The milkish smell is popping up here and there and it's not a note that I love so much. I'm sure it will settle, but this is a like, especially around my one lover who favors cherry scents, but not a hoardable love. Cherry Red and Cherry Incense are absent of the milky-syrupy note so I favor those.

I'm not a prototype chaser generally. They feel "incomplete" largely to me as they are by their very nature, but sometimes it's fun to experience the BPAL creative process this way by getting to smell a "rough draft". I wasn't able to get this when it came up but it came up on FB for sale so I nabbed it. I am a slut for lavender especially with vanilla so I was all about this. I would eat this. I want to make lavender buttercream frosting now. It's not as foody as TKO. I find TKO to be poofy lav vanilla with a bunch of marshmallow, which this blend lacks. Lavender Buttercream starts herbal, goes through a little powdery phase before the vanilla buttercream shows up to smooth it all out. I can see how this was going to be a Lilith, especially when they were younger, the scents were very simple and childlike, but their love of lavender has continued. Is this something super unique and special that you should sell your soul for and chase down? Not in my opinion. Is it nice? Yes! It will stay happily in my sleepy lavender subcollection of bottles near my bed, I sleep with a CPAP so I can't really smell while drifting off, but I try to make it a habit to dab some on and/or scent my pillows and stuffies to calm my brain for sleep. Doesn't always work, but smells great!

Confession--- I did NOT love this way back when when I ordered my first imps. It smelled sickly sweet to me, like a very specific air freshener used in the bathrooms of a specific restaurant. Yuck. And then I let it age. And it smoothed out from cherry-bathroom-air-freshener to this vanillic resiny goodness, so sweet and creamy and wafty. Honey and I can be a bit difficult of a relationship sometimes, it goes musty on the drydown in some blends but not in this one. I'm not entirely sure what dragon's blood comes from but it's divine. Big fan of the hair gloss too. Current bottle is a cobalt from 2005 and it's exquisite. I hoard this stuff and hope the dragon's blood components are available again soon.

Six year old Snake Oil in all its glory, but with SPICE---- cinnamon, cardamom, musk, and that super aggro red ginger found in Saw Scaled Viper and Lovers With Rutting Cats---- I mean, it just pushes its way to the front and is like IT'S GINGER, BITCH! but this diva calms herself and settles in to the rest of the notes and mellows beautifully. This is definitely different than Snakes In The Pumpkin Patch, too!

This is 10 year old Snake Oil in all its glory but with the creamy/buttery pumpkin note added. That note and I are tenuous friends but here it mixes with the vanilla in the Snake Oil and is delicious.

With Tom's review challenge, I plan to skip around and review whatever the spirit moves me to---- I thought I would start with this absolute treasure. It helps me to read reviews of rare things to satisfy my curiosity and this will be the first review here since 2016! I have just under a half bottle and I wear it once a year, on Halloween. I wore it for my wedding. I built it imp by imp on eBay I think. It's been awhile since I've seen it pop up for sale bc not many bottles were made and no one who has it wants to sell it. And rumor has it Beth has lost the recipe for this. Pumpkin King is the MF holy grail. I've physically handled one other bottle and some of you know where/whose it was. I dearly hope it found a loving home and is treasured. My bottle does not leave my house. I did put a couple drops in a decant for Meet and Sniff purposes, back when we had those. Pumpkin King is the only pumpkin that ever really, REALLY worked for me. Not a hint of butteriness or squashiness. Just impeccably blended fall spices and a sweet patchouli. The cinnamon is dry and so beautiful-- cinnamon is usually cheap craft store candle on me and/or burns my skin. And I guess owing to its age, nearly 20 years at this point, it lingers and has the most amazing sillage. The closest I've smelled to PK is Pumpkin Spice Silky Bat HG and Pumpkin Spice Antikythera Mechanism perfume, so if you want the next best thing, try to find those!

It's very old so it may be hard to find, but Shill is a spot-on buttery pocorn smell!!!

It's very old so it may be hard to find, but Shill is a spot-on buttery pocorn smell!!!

Oooh... recipe plz?? :: end hijack :::

here's a challenge......... are there any BPALS that smell like the dearly departed FLORABUNDANCE ballistic? and what do folks wear with CREAMY CANDY/ROCK STAR?