magpiedee

I despair of my nose this week. I'm not sure if it's because when I get an order, I start out trying the ones that appear most promising and save the rest for last, or if it has something to do with PMS, but I haven't had a "keeper" this week. Today it's Succubus, which just smells like lemony laundry detergent on me. I'm not getting any oranges or bergamot or neroli or almonds or violet, all of which I would love to smell. I'm just getting detergent. Since I felt pretty similar about Morella yesterday, I think I might just save them up to try at a different time of my cycle and stick to foodies this week. *sigh* It's all my fault. My chemistry. Ugh.

Curses! Foiled again!!! Worth a try, though, eh? I hope it all works out to y'all and BPAL's satisfaction; it must be very frustrating on both sides.

Hallows_Eve, this isn't your order, is it? Marie Spell bound The Raven Old London Saturnalia Anne Bonny Les Fleurs du Mal Cathedral Black Rose Wings of Azrael Ultraviolet Oneiroi Because this one arrived to "Amanda" on the Lush forum, who said she didn't place an order and had no idea why she would receive such a package... ...or do I just read too many forums and like playing Sherlock Holmes? Verrrry interesting.

...but I don't *whhhanna* kill anybody.... and there's always blood spots on my gowns..... why can't you be more like Hamlet?....whiiiiiiiiiiiiiine..... Hehe.

Wicked... Thanks so much for letting us know! We know how busy and frazzled you are, so it is much appreciated when you personally take time to abate our fears and scratch behind our preciousssss covered ears. I'm in the Lady Mac group, too... SQUEEEEEE.....

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Morella, on me, smells like lemon Pledge before drying down gently to *ass*. There is some note that hits my skin and just turns to... ass. It reminds me of the smell of an old pool float, like when I was little and swimming in the lake and left my raft out in the rain and it dried with water and lake gunk in it. I totally blame my own chemistry. Whatever this secret note is, I think it's in Cheshire Cat, too. I wish I smelled what y'all smell. What is wrong with me? Damn my skin! Damn it all to hell!

Oh... my.... I received Gluttony in a swap with 3 other oils, but the smell reached out to me like odors reach out to characters in the shapes of come-hither hand gesture in Bugs Bunny cartoons. I dabbed a bit, then a bit more. Now i'm pretty much iced with it, like a pancake covered in syrup. It's sleepy and decadent and sweet and delicious, like a nasal quagmire of down blankets that you could just drown in forever. Even my similes are goopy. I love Gluttony. I want more. It doesn't make me feel sexy or fierce or beautiful or happy... it makes me WANT MORE. It makes me decadent and ravenous. It makes me forget about other people and just want to curl up in the dark and sniff myself. Truly, Gluttony is a perfect capture of the idea of the deadly sin. I can't help myself wanting more, heading back to the cabinet for another square of dark chocolate, reapplying, sniffing. Utter, sinful, delicious perfection.

Baobhan Sith is *AMAZING* with a little Figs n' Leaves on your skin. Yum. Also, after taking a bath with Skinny Dip, epsom salts and coconut oil, I doused myself with Wings of Azrael. It was like sleeping on a gigantic furry violet. Delightful!

I am utterly unable to pluck out different notes in Old Cairo. It is honestly one of the most exotic scents i've ever known, and I can't find anything familiar in it. If I had to paint it, it would be a desert whose dunes are made of bright yellow couscous studded with sparkling little carrots, secretive little dates and swirling precious herbs. It is curvaceous but dry to me, like the belly of a cobra. It is sun on stone, 100-year-old smoke, fragrant ashes on a cat statue. I would wear Old Cairo to the Met to sit by the temple and meet a mysterious man of my dreams. If I wasn't married, of course. Unusual, subtle, exotic, warm, dry, brilliant. Love it.

When I was little, we had a little flower tree in the front yard-- the one with pussywillows that turn into big, waxy, pink-and-white, tulip-shaped flowers. I remember waiting each year for the first flower to appear so that I could break it open and smell it before it blossomed. Baobhan Sith reminds me so much of that broken flower's smell that it nearly sends me swooning. To me, it is a crisp and clear scent, like a spring morning after a rainy night. I see pastures with dew on the grass and black horses grazing, with every leaf outlined by sunlight reflecting off waterdroplets. Definitely a spring/summer scent for me, but it's so lovely and comforting. Another masterpiece!

Oh, but I *adore* Old Glasgow, as I knew I would! This oil is my first taste of the Venerable Cities, and I can see that these scents are not just a one-stop-shop, but an entire city experience, moving through the area with different layers of meaning. Old Glasgow does not last as long as I would like on my skin, but pleasant travels never last long enough, do they? Just as I return again and again to the places I love, I can apply Old Glasgow again and again to enjoy its subtle nuances and delicious dry-down. The first smell rolls in from the sea, sparkling and bubbly and sharp, with the tang of salt on the air and gray, billowing skies. Next, the scent moves into the city, with a twist of alcohol, manliness and a metallic zing. Lastly, it saunters down a dirt road onto the moors, with the heather spread pinkish beneath a billowy sky. I enjoy the three separate moods I feel in Old Glasgow-- it reminds me of reading Hound of the Baskervilles in middle school and imagining the lonely, endless, sad, mysterious beauty of the moors. OG is all soft and blurry, the color of a rainy day in between spatterings, the dusty gray of heather and artemesia, the softness that only comes when plants are pelted with water. An evocative new favorite.

We're going to see our accountant [the one who bailed me out of my tax mess this year] on Thursday. Basically he's going to help us figure out how to switch from CcNow with minimal grief, and he's going to help me see if its at all feasable for me to quit my day job so I can do the Lab full time. Here's hopin', right? =P The new FAQ is about 75% done. If all goes well, the update can go live tomorrow night. Just wanted to add... GOOD FREAKIN' LUCK! I hope you will be able to do what you love full-time, because it feels great to quit putting your dreams second in line. We will all be here with our credit cards to make sure it is a success for you! I, too, will have appendages crossed in your favor. Oh, yeah... workin' at home... barefoot, eating bonbons... in the bubble bath, watchin' the soap operas... (it's only like that for the first 3 days, though.)

Welcome, Nella, you lucky, lucky girl! I have a feeling you're going to be very popular... for many reasons! Thanks for making Beth and Brian's lives easier, and thereby insuring the continual production of the oils to which we are addicted like crack.

Oh, I'm so excited! I've been waiting to post my review of Maiden until I figured out what smelled so familiar, and now i've got it! Maiden is the smell of having a buttercup pressed to your chin to see if you like butter. I swear that is the exact smell. I went outside and found the dandelion buttercup, and pressed it to my chin, just to make sure. Guess what? Not only do I like butter, but I like Maiden. It is a lovely, springy, sproingly, bouncy, pure, beautiful scent that just encompasses a spring morning. I never liked flowery smells until BPAL, but these oils smell like the actual flowers themselves, or in this case, the flowery lightly dusting your chin as you expectantly wait to see whether or not you do, in fact, like butter. There is a certain reticence and anxious feeling to Maiden, like it will gallop off at the slightest provocation, a frisky colt chasing butterflies. Another keeper.

I'm amazed at all the different ways this oil is interpreted! It's like asking 5 different people what a person is like-- their husband, best friend, mother in law, worst enemy and grand mother will each paint a very, very different picture of them. Phantom Queen in the bottle, for me, was very sharp and clear and pointed. Like a spike of ice hanging from a branch. On my wrists, it is very sharp and strong, with almost a tinge of metal to it. Reminds me of the ice queen in Narnia, or of a tall, celtic amazon of a woman in silver armor striding across the moors to challenge someone to a duel. It is floral, but no-nonsense, aggressive, strong, confident floral. It brings to mind a metallic blue-green color, and morning dew before daybreak. Sorry to speak in metaphors, but I don't know the floral notes. I just get impressions. I would wear this one for a job interview that I really, really wanted, or when meeting someone to break up with them, when you know they're going to draw the whole thing out and beg you and cry. This scent says, to me, "buck up and kick ass, don't take no for an answer, you're a woman, dammit!"

I think Queen of Hearts is the "cleanest" scent i've ever smelled. My husband loves it because it smells like his favorite detergent, so he say. I also think Rosalind smells quite clean in a fresh, grassy way, and I would consider Kitsune-Tsuki to be clean in a polite, purply sorty of way. Hope that helps, and you might also use the search function for "clean" in the reviews board only to see what turns up. Good luck!

Alice and Veil are both very dreamy and relaxing for me. Wonderful for that last touch on the pillow before dreamtime!

Another one to add to the "keepers" list. It's funny-- I can never guess which BPAL scents will rev my engine, and i'm surprised by the ratio of "can't live without it" (over 20) to "meh, swap" (less than 10). That's a heckuva success rate! But Rosalind. I love it, DH loves it, the cat loves it. I put it on and said, huh, grass. Then, after a few minutes wondering about the house, I felt like Maria on the hillside in the Sound of Music, and I wanted to wear a dirndl and twirl about while music crescendo'd. This is what grass *should* smell like, what it's supposed to smell like. As Veil is dream violets, Rosalind is dream grass. Then the dry down sets in, and it has soft bits of berry in it, just as someone else said. Reminds me of those tiny red strawberries that grow in Georgia, that aren't really strawberries or even edible, but they dot the spring grass like little dimples. And another point-- my husband has no sense of smell, really. I have to stick both wrists up his nostril to get him to notice a scent, and then he usually just shrugs. Rosalind, however, struck him upside the face. He smells it better than I can, and even when I can't smell it anymore, he picks up whiffs from across the room. It is very lovely and fresh and clean in a springtime freedom sort of way. Like Diana before she caught Actaeon spying on her, bathing in her innocence and joy at springtime and being surrounded by green things. A very springtime scent. I can't see myself wearing it in fall or winter. It matches the leaves outside. It has nothing sweet or powdery or cloying to it, which makes me love it all the more. If you're going to skip your classes/take a day off of work, buy some Rosalind and take a quilt into a grassy meadow and roll around a bit.

Just wanted to add that following a Bon Bomb with Veil is the ultimate cocktail for me. Soft and dreamy! Not sure if they have anything similar or just compliment eachother well, but it's lovely and great for dreaming.

Honesty is the best policy, eh? Okay then, and this is not a complaint, merely an explanation. As I always say when an oil doesn't work on me, I can tell how good it is, how complex and well-formed and amazing, it just ain't for me. Anne Bonny on my skin smells like the cage of a ballsy old male guinea pig kept on cedar bedding. There, i've said it. I'm sure it's the fault of my own skin chemistry, but I just can't wear this one. The lusty broad beat me down, and i'm going to wash her piratey musk off my skin. I've been hornswaggled, bushwacked, scallawagged and forced to walk the plank. To the swaps with ye, lass!

Dammit, woman, you're just too good! Elizabeth, I mean you! I had a long day of work (painting), took a long Bon Bomb bath, slapped on some Veil for the first time, hopped into bed with a wonderful book... and found myself reading the same paragraph 7 times because I was so buy sniffing I kept losing my place. I received Veil in a swap, and I did not even read the description or reviews... more like, that sounds nice. I give you imp, you give me imp. Since Elizabeth's gift imps were better chosen than the ones I chose myself, i'm pretty much going on chance now. And holy of holies, it's one of the most wonderful things i've ever smelled. I've been blown away by several scents so far, and this one is way up there. If I didn't already have two orders in, I would be demanding a 10 mL of this amazing elixir. ... Oh, you wanted a review? Imagine a moment in a childhood that you never had, in which you're alone in a field, utterly safe and completely, deliriously happy. Everything is fuzzy around the edges, everything is blooming, little dandelion puffies are dancing in circles with you. You have eyes the color you always wanted, which is clear sky blue for me. You're wearing a dress so soft that it's about like being naked, but without the splinters and goosebumps, and you're barefoot on the soft, deep grass. And you've built a tent out of white sheets, and you're lying inside on a purple bit of carpet, with the wind and the beauty of springtime billowing the sheets, and you've picked a bunch of violets and are laying them on your eyes and lips because they're softer than velvet. These are dream violets, and they actually smell of real victorian violets. That is what Veil smells like to me. I had to get out of bed, put down my book, tediously turn on my laptop and start writing about it. It's that lovely. It's perfect.

Curioser is right. This one is an enigma for me. At first, all I can smell is Orange Julius... you know, those orange creamsicle milkshakes from Dairy Queen or the Varsity? And then it dries down to a dream. So subtle on me that I really have to sniff hard. It is a smell of peaches floating in a bowl of cream under a willow tree, it's Alice at the tea party buttering her bread and adding a perfect dot of marmalade. Somehow I think this is going to be my sleeping scent. After my bath each night, Alice will be on my throat and wrists, to waft my dreams into a sweet sort of place. Very hazy and gentle, like a child's breath on your shoulder as you carry them to bed. Lovely. Edit/ Wait! I've got it!!! Alice is Skipper to Jezebel's Barbie.

1. Price change? Fuhgeddaboutit. You're worth every dollar. Anybody who complains can either go back to Charlie at Eckerd, or can have my extra imp of Bloodlust up the batoot. 2. Shroedinger's Cat? My god, you are brilliant. The update looks amazing. 3. When I saw the bit about "bring on the Red Bull", I thought you might have come up with some Last Unicorn oils and I'd have to order again. Red Bull, Amalthea, Molly Grue, Schmendrick, Harpy... *drool*. 4. Does that mean that orders claimed by CCNow to be "awaiting shipment" won't be out for quite some time? I may have to buy fake fingernails to chew. 5. Finally, it is in our best interest to put your happiness and sanity over our own immediate needs, because if you crack up and Brian goes Hulk, we don't get any more oils. We'd rather pay more dollars and wait more days, secure in the knowledge that you'll be kicking ass for years to come. Yeah, we're needy and fanatical, but we also worship you and spread your gospel, so hopefully it's a symbiotic relationship, eh? Keep up the good fight!

This one is... just... wow. A complete surprise. The first time I sniffed the imp, I said, "meh". The second time I sniffed, I said, "huh". Then I put some on my wrists, and said, "eh". Then I sniffed my wrist later, and said, "wuh?" I find it so seductive and sweet and clean. It keeps luring me in to sniff some more, even though I was quite sure at some point yesterday that I didn't like it. But now I do. It isn't insistent or aggressive, it isn't obvious or open... it's just subtle and sweet and quiet, and begs gently to be appreciated in a very proper Japanese way. Aside from its personality, to actually describe Kitsune-Tsuki... it is far off and clear, like tinkling bells echoing over water. It is indeed a white scent, but a cold white, tinged with bluish-lavender, like the purist white part of an orchid. It's like everything about snow except the cold. Words I would use are pure, clean, soft, clear, concave, subtle, background. This scent would never shove, it would quietly wait its turn and say "arigato", and you would see just a peek of beautiful white skin as it bowed. It's hard to say in the juicy vs. dry category, but it's juicy like panne velvet, or like watching water plants rippling underwater. I can't actually distinguish any particular notes, which amazes me, but the entirety is delightful. Another drop of genius in my life, thanks to BPAL.

Oh, yeargh, just reading this post makes me ache in empathy! You poor darling! If we could all divide up the pain and take 1/50th of a giner dilation for you, rest assured that we would! Nothing below the belt is ever fun when it involves paper gowns and speculums. I hope it went okay for you, and wasn't too painful, and that you do something lovely and selfish tonight to help you feel better, whether it's of the pizza, ice cream, new lip balm sort or the sadistic and alcoholic sort. Here's a kegel of support! Nuugh!