jehrichardson

This starts with a beautiful lavender. Mmmm! I like it so far! Hmm... this pretty much stays lavender on me... any lime and mint are very well blended. Luckily I like it a great deal as it is.

Happy fifth birthday to the bpal.org forum! To commemorate five years of camaraderie, love, and unbelievable kindness, we present a scent comprised of notes that encapsulate the essence of friendship: carnation, apple, sweet pea, vanilla cream, passionfruit, sugar cane, tonka, and guava. Ack! Um... yuck! Wet, it's butter flavoring and fruit candy. Freshly applied, the butter goes away quickly... thank heavens! It stays sharp and sweet and fruity for a while. Okay, this is better now... sharp and crisp apple. Very nice... this is growing on me. Right then, I suppose I do like it. The first couple of minutes are, to my taste, awful. Gross even. Luckily a fresh and tart apple scent quickly swoops in and saves the day

WOW Loves it. It's a blue and fresh aquatic, with some spicy pungency. It's very woody too, almost lavendery. It's fresh and clean and wonderful! :thud: :thud:

A new year's blessing! Peony, China's national flower, with bamboo for flexibility, plum blossom for perseverance, courage, and hope, tangerine for wealth, orange for happiness, lychee for household peace, pine resin for constancy, golden kumquat and quince for prosperity, narcissus and King mandarin for good fortune, peach blossom for longevity, oakmoss, plum, and tobacco for stability, and a splash of blazing red of dragon's blood... to help you scare away the rampaging Nian. Wet this is melon/cucumber, and fairly enthusiastic about it. Freshly applied, it is much the same, with a sweet fruitiness surfacing, must be the lychee. Smells like a bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans. So far, no likey, but I might be getting a hint of some of the deeper notes appearing. Hoping they take center stage soon. With ETA with an update.

Wet, this is sweet and a bit floral and light. Very pretty, but a bit soapy. There's also a strong honey/amber note. Freshly applied, the scent doesn't change much - it's still very floral... that must be the lavender, spikenard, and narcissa. The honey-sweetness must be the ambergris, golden amber, and vanilla caramel. I'd been worried about this, because 'caramel' notes often turn to butter flavoring, 'muffin' candle scents. As the scent matures on the skin, the deepness of white sandalwood, peru balsam, pale musk, and woodmoss start to balance out those floral and sweeter notes. This is a bit soapy, but very light, fresh, and pretty. Can't exactly say it's evocative of the hottie on the label, but I predict the overt femininity of this fragrance would catch one pretty easily. All in all, I like it - for those days when I just want to smell clean and girly.

This is gorgeous - a beautiful light floral, with a touch of bitter honey depth. The gardenia is almost spicy, and definitely recommended for those of you, like me, who are floral-phobes. Three thumbs up!

Hmm.. I'm not sure about this one. I love the concept - a light springy floral, a green earthy moss, and the warm sultryness of musk. Yum! However, in the bottle it smells a bit plasticky and soapy, and is very unpleasant for the first couple of seconds on the skin. Then, it does get all lovely - warm, mossy, musky. Mmm! Not much cherry blossom, but that's okay. After a while, it gets a bit plasticky again - plasticky and soapy musk. It's lovely when fairly freshly applied, so we'll see. I'll try again at another time during my cycle.

This is stupendous! Wonderful! Delightful! Sophisticated! This blue and fresh and bright and pungent. Reminds me a TINY bit of Polo (Ralph Lauren). I'm also liking that this is a nice contrast to most of the bpals I like - the tonka/copal/tobacco/woods/vanilla-y ones.

Lovely! Laundry - clean and fluffy. Overtones/undertones of melon/cucumber, but they fade pretty quickly. Yum-my!

Excited to try this one - the label cracks me up. Wet and in the bottle, it's musky, smokey, and honey. There's a little bit of a soapy cleanness to it. Freshly applied, the ambergris is strong - this is really well blended. If you were trying to figure out how tonka/musk/ambergris/honey/sandalwood all smelled differently, then this ISN'T the blend for you. I do get that sweetness of daemonorops (which Google tells me is a form of dragon's blood), but again, this is amazingly well blended. Don't worry... doesn't smell like the picture on the label might

In the bottle, it smells like an expensive beeswax candle. Freshly applied, the vanilla flower appears with a strengthening of the honey notes. Given a few minutes to calm down, the sweet richness of the copal and the skin musk predominate. This is sexy and rich and smooth and amazing!

Dry and crisp indeed! Cedar on top, with a bit of herbal bitterness. The sandalwood turns up later and rounds things out a bit. Very interesting - I don't think this is going to go into the daily rotation, but it's lovely and I like it a lot.

In the bottle, all I get are lovely sharp blonde woods. Wet, on the skin, it turns into slightly boozy blonde woods. After a few minutes I get the barest breath of apricot - it's just this rich round sweet and tickling lightness. This is very nice, and fairly masculine. It's well blended, and quite simple - almost refreshing. This might be a good one for all you boys out there who want a bit of a whimsical take on classic woods. Mmmm! Going to have douse husband with it.

This is lovely! It does start a bit fruity, and that usually makes me worry, because purple fruits in bpal frequently turn to koolaid on me. Not to worry though, the plummy fruitness rapidly gives way to a very light floral, and vanilla/sandalwood. I can't say I get any of the nuttiness of wild rice, and that would remind me more of my home in Minnesota rather than Japan, but no mind. I don't think I register any of the nutmeg either, but I think it might just be well blended into the vanilla/sandalwood. This is charming and has a light sort of innocence to it, sweet and rich and playful. It's a win.

This is sophisticated and really nicely blended. Gentle citrus (mandarin-yuzu-lime peel) and black tea seem to be the top notes, but the labdanum-tonka-ambergris give it this lovely depth and complexity. The neroli layers over all of this. It's strong, but well balanced with the other notes. This is another good floral for the floralphobes out there (like me). This is NOT what I was expecting - I expected sharp citrus and treacly tonk-danum-ergris with a bit of tea's bite. This is better - lighter, cleaner, and completely lovely. Likes it!

In the bottle... bubblegum? Really??? Weird. On the skin... bubblegum. Ah, good. Fading a bit now... Let's see... musk with some rich floral underpinnings. Nice! Musk is so often used to go dark, go deeper, this is refreshing! It might actually be a floral I like! Can't say I smell Beth's metal note... maybe that's just the crispness and sharpness coming through. This isn't my favorite, OMFG scent, but it's really really nice. Clean and fresh... like awesome laundry. Mmm! Likes it! Loves it!

Fresh, green, clean, and light. Has a cucumber/melon overtone and some aquatic back notes. This is really lovely, but tends to get a bit soapy and a bit too melon-y for my tastes. Likes it. Does not loves it.

I have not generally had good luck with BPAL's water scents, but this is gorgeous. It smells blue and clear and clean and rich. Really spectacular. It reminds me a *bit* of Polo, by Ralph Lauren. Not that it smells like Polo, just is reminiscent. I'm wearing WP today, and it's got pretty good staying power, and doesn't morph much on the skin. It's well blended - I don't really get a sense of any of the notes standing out. I'm thrilled. Loves it!!!

In the bottle it's got the same flat herbal lavender. Ugh! On the skin it transforms... the lavender brightens up and the lychee appears. It's a wonderful fruitiness without the over-ripe, wineyness of many of BPAL's berry/fruity notes. This is sharp, clean, a bit soapy, sweet with lychee, bright with lavender, just a bit floral and cool. This isn't my favorite looney, but it's good. I can see myself wearing it on days when I don't want to smell BPAL-y, just fresh and clean. Full Disclosure: I put it on, then climbed in the car with my husband. He then started sniffing himself and the car saying "What smells weird??". I did *not* fess up

At first, caramel and mint. Caramel scent in BPALS does this odd thing where the scent makes my lungs feel airless... very odd and disconcerting. I should also note that I'm not a fan of caramel scents to begin with. Now my wrist smells of caramel, mint, and burnt plastic and makes my lungs feel like they're collapsing a bit. In a word: No.

This is sexy amber and complexity. There's a whiff of herbal astringency, and spicy complexity, all rounded out with vanilla and labdanum's sweetness. There's a strong tone of honey and amber in there. This is velvet sheets and warm soft skin. Sexy, but not naughty. Comfort, with boldness. In a word... yes.

Teakwood, oak, black vanilla, and tobacco. This is the sweetest, warmest, richest scent. Deep and glowing, satiny and bold. It smells like sophisticated man-musk, book-lined studies, antiques on the sideboard, and a well travelled life. For being soft and sweet, this is incredibly masculine. I love it desperately and passionately and I think I'm going to trade in my husband and marry this instead.

In the bottle it's amber and cedar, but on the skin this explodes into soft and sweet lemon and cedar. Wow... it's wonderful! It seems like it would be so simple - cedar, lemon. Yet it seems really complex - that must be the labdanum and amber. You smell the bold and clean top notes, and then it just keeps going, like the aftertaste of scotch. Yum-my!

Dragon's blood always makes me think of Shalimar, by Guerlain, and this is no exception. It must be that Guerlain's extravagant use of vanilla and the extreme sweetness of dragon's blood resonate. I have a hard time, like with jasmine and BPAL butter (as in all the pumpkin scents), smelling past dragon's blood to the other notes. In this case, amber may be so complementary that to try to do so is an exercise in futility. This is just soft, sweet, rich, velvety, delicious dragon's blood. There's a tiny and refreshing bite of bitterness in there now (amber?). All in all, simply outstanding. I'm not sure I need a whole bottle of this, but I'm inspired to pull together all of my dragon's blood fragrances and do a little sniff test to see if I can learn to smell around the major scent. Hmmm...

This starts with a juicy burst of lilac. I'm not a huge fan of lilac - I live in a place that is filthy with them in the spring and the scent is either not there at all, or overpowering like jasmine. Here, however, the cedar resonates nicely with it, and the musk adds depth to what would otherwise be an overly heady sweetness. Lemon and green tea are unnoticable, or rather, the things they add to the blend are not smelling-of-tea or smelling-of-lemon. Thinking about their characteristics, they'd add herbal depth and a bit of brightness. Hmm... still can't say I'm getting it. This is a delicate, complex lilac. Very lovely indeed, but as I'm not a florals gal this is not one for the rotation.