joseybird

From what I've heard, the lab makes more money per item on bottles than on imps. I guess they could just sell pricier imps of LE scents, but honestly I don't know much about BPAL's business model. Personally I find it hard to believe that *every single LE blend* is LE because of its ingredients, but frankly they're not marketed as if they were, so I don't care too much . Notes lists aren't recipes. Very, very far from it. Look up any perfume on the internet and you'll find a note list to go along with it, many quite detailed. Notes =/= ingredients. I also highly doubt that one of us could just buy a bunch of BPAL single notes and recreate Beth's blends. First of all, I strongly doubt that she made available *every single ingredient* she used in her blends when the single notes were available. Second, mixing oils is more than just dumping several nice-smelling ingredients together. I have a few very lovely books on creating one's own perfume oils, and it isn't an easy task for a beginner, especially if you want to create something that actually smells nice. Makes me wish I'd tested my brand-new bottle of Dracul (before I sold it) and compared it to my old 10 ml. And it might simply have been a batch difference. Take Morocco, for example--there's a standard creamy "Antique Lace-esque" variety and the occasional "OMG CEDAR" variety. Just batch differences.

A grassy field with scattered heather and wildflowers and an aquatic note that indeed smells like mist or dew! If I had to name this scent, it would be called Avalon it really does capture that spirit.

o_o This has honey in it, and I like it! A gorgeous, ethereal current wine touched with honey and the tart grassiness of dandelion. It really does smell like a sort of fairy wine Pity it doesn't last very long.

Sappy, fresh damp leaves with something warm, earthy, smoky and spicy in the background. This really is gorgeously atmospheric. It's like a fresh day in autumn, walking in the woods. I miss scents like this. My first favorites were scents like Samhain and Lughnasadh--scents that really paint a scent tapestry. This isn't quite as complex as Samhain, Lughnasadh, and Mabon, but it's still gorgeous.

Spicy lilac resin. My imp is a couple of years old and very mellow; at first huff, this is all mild Dragon's Blood, but the cinnamon and pepper appear in the "after-huff" (so to speak)--scintillating but not sharp. Definitely less "wrathful" than when it was fresh!

I love clove, but I'm used to the sweet variety, so I wasn't sure what to expect from Smiling Spider. I just saw CLOVES! and had to get a bottle =) Spider's bitter clove note lives up to its name. It has some natural sweetness, but it also has a sharpish medicinal note not present in sweet clove. The black musk quickly appears after the initial blast of clove, its dark sweetness making up for the clove's sharp tang. The spicy patchouli appears next, blending with the clove. I can't smell the wood. This blend captures the look of the picture perfectly. Texture-wise, it's a haze of black smoke.

This smells like a tart, cinnamony Corazon, so lovers of that lon DC'd scent, take note! Juicy, lemon-tart mango over a bed of soft, subdued red musk and a touch of cinnamon. There's there barest hint of woodiness here, which keeps the blend from being too fruity. I recognize a sweetish note that must be sugar cane, since I remember it from Shango, but it's difficult to describe.

Chalky wintergreen and cheap vanilla candles >_< I thought I'd love this so much I bought 3 ;-;

I just adore the lab's masculine scents. All BPAL scents have something of a muddled murkiness to me, which plays out better with some kinds of blends (earthy, incense) than others (florals, which I feel require a more delicate touch and structure to the composition). However, the BPAL "style" works gorgeously with masculine scents, and I honestly believe that BPAL has the best "stable" of masculine scents on the market today (big claims coming from someone whose favorite perfumes cost $200 or more =P). Wilde is no exception. It is a fougre, like Villain, with a fresh, aquatic, "green" feel, but it's also wistfully sweet--more so than any of the other masculine BPAL scents I've tried. The muted patchouli-tonka base is immediately discernible, with the lavender and thyme adding the freshness (and bergaot blunting the herbs' medicinal tang). I think it's the jasmine lending the sweetness, though to be honest, I wonder if this is a different jasmine note than the ones Beth usually uses. Jasmine amps like CRAZY in *every* blend I've ever tried with it, but not this one, and I would never think there was jasmine in here at all had I not read the note list. Wilde is masculine, but it's also sweet an endearing and romantic. A lovely scent indeed.

Warm and spicy patchouli with maybe a touch of something herbal and resin-y. Very deep and mysterious and lovely <33

Citrus and grassy with a touch of earthy spice. Very fresh, sporty, and green tea-esque. Definately unisex, and unfortunately fleeting.

HOLY CRUD 0_0 RED GINGER LIKE WHOA. Then the cinnamon comes forward. Some spice in the background but...WOW. Pungent .__.

This is gorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgeous!! This is a beautiful ambery vanilla with a very subtle earthiness underlying the sandalwood note. The lily adds a touch of sweetnes, but it's otherwise in the background. Gorgeous. I need a bottle.

This is really lovely! The berry is the dominant note--very fresh and tart and not juicy at all. The Snake Oil is very much in the background, and the other notes just serve to soften the berry. This is very, very nice

A sugary, sandalwoody Snake Oil with a bit more vanilla. Very nice, very yummy, but I'm content with Boomslang =)

A lovely, floral vanilla musk! The vanilla musk is the most prominant note; the most prominant floral notes are the honeysuckle and stargazer lily. This is a very soft, pretty, innocent, yet "traditional" scent. Beautiful =)

The lily *kills* this for me =( Without it, Vampire is a warm, musky leathery scent--my sorta BPAL!--but something that smells just like lily adds a strong clean, slightly soapy floral note, and I really can't stand that sorta thing. I am sad .

A creamy, slightly spicy fruity floral candy scent. It smells disappointingly generic on me ;_;

Soft Snake Oil+ Coolaulin (Lush's yummy) coconut-and-vetiver conditioner). Slightly earthy and smoky, this is one of my favorites of the Snake Pit!

For anyone unable to afford/track down Pinched with Four Aces, El Dia de Reyes is similar enough to hunt down instead =)

Of the ones mentioned, I've tried and disliked all of them (ie they went sour/soapy) except for Morocco (there's flowers in that? o_o), Dracul, Peitho, Desdemona, and Grandmother of Ghosts. I haven't tried Rose Moon or Lyonesse yet, but I'm now tempted too.

Sooo... Nearly every BPAL floral note goes horribly soapy on me, which makes most of the catalogue unwearable on me =( However, some blends with floral notes work nicely on me: Alice, Bagdad, Dracul, Snow White, Bearded Lady, Victoria, just to mention a few. Also, stargazer lily, lavender, and carnation are fine on me, thank goodness. Can anyone rec any blends with floral notes that I might be able to wear, based on the ones I listed above? Especially blends in which the florals seem to have been "infused" into another oil instead of being added as their own note (like the rose in Baghdad). Thanks!

I can't imagine how underrated this scent must be. It hadn't even occured to me to seek out Agony of Loss. The notes, while pleasent-looking did not grab me with the same wild desire Ecstasy of Passion did. Still, it intrigued me, and when I saw it up for a great price on the forum, I went for it. I am SO GLAD I did! In a way, this is the "cool" to Passion's "warm." While Passion smells like, fresh, sun-warmed skin, Loss smells like a soft breeze against long-cooled sheets. The lavender is increadibly wearable, melding perfectly with the wood, with the citrus lending an unexpected and lightly juicy freshness to the composition. The smoke pervades the entirety, but so softly that one might not even guess the note was smoke without looking at the notes. An absolute treasure, and completely unique

OH!!! And if you want the milkiness to go with the chai-ness, definitely search out Milk Moon 05 to layer =)

Spooky smells exactly like thin mints, but it's a fairly old LE, so good luck finding it x___x;; Dorian smells like sugar cookies, though <33 I think you'll like it =D