elphaba

Morocco was my most-anticipated scent in my very first order but, a month later, I still have mixed feelings about it. My first sniff out of the bottle I got musk, which immediately turned my mind to more commercial perfumes, and I was bitterly disappointed. I put it on anyway and was surprised that the musk didn't give me a headache, but really, musk is a scent that just doesn't appeal to me all that much. Perhaps it's the memory of all the headaches from commercial perfumes. About four hours after putting Morocco on for the first time, I was walking out to my car and the most gorgeous aroma came drifting through the air--something sweet and spicy and warm. I actually looked around to see where the smell could be coming from before I realized it was ME. Wow. When I put my nose to wrist to confirm, I got the musk again, sitting close to my skin. Damn. Everytime I put Morocco on, I relive the same scenario. Gorgeous smell wafting through the air, icky musk next to my skin. I suspect that if I liked musk better, this one would be a true winner. As it is, I'll use up the imp and try to remember to just enjoy the throw and resist the temptation to breathe deeper.

Sugar Cookie has taught me what people mean when they say that a scent has gone to "Play-Doh." Sniffing it from the bottle, it was...interesting. Actually, from the bottle, it was amazing from a technical perspective. How did she get the smell of sugar and flour into an oil? It actually smells like baking cookies. On my skin, something immediately goes horribly wrong. It smells like the devil left the butter and eggs out of his cookies and, instead, made them with a terrible, gluey, flour and water dough. It is homemade play-doh, sprinkled with cinnamon and it doesn't smell at all edible. It takes a couple of hours for the icky glue scent to go away, but eventually Sugar Cookie becomes a nice cinnamon roll sort of scent that hangs close to my skin and is actually quite delicious. I had high hopes for this one, but the glue phase is too long for me to want to wear it again. I'm still intrigued by the scent and happy I got to try it. I'm just glad I traded for an imp instead of buying a full bottle.

The complexities of Lady Macbeth simply failed to come out on me. In the bottle, it smelled like grape bubblegum, sweet and juicy. On my wrist, it smelled sweet and juicy. After an hour, it smelled sweet and juicy. After six hours, yup, still sweet and juicy. Despite that, the imp still calls to me every now and then. If nothing else, it's a scent that beckons to you and refuses to be turned down. Ambition, covetousness and manipulation, indeed. When I give in to the calling, I usually apply this one with a drop of Three Witches. The spices add the complexity that Lady Macbeth doesn't seem to have on me and turns it into much more of a rich, wine scent. If Three Witches hadn't been discontinued, I would definitely be buying a bottle of each so I could wear them together all the time.

I have to preface this review by saying that I always wear a pile of rubber bracelets on my left wrist. I apply perfume on my bare right wrist and then push the bracelets back to rub some scent onto my left wrist. Usually, the biggest difference I notice is that scent lasts much longer under the bracelets, but the warmth and moisture seem to have made a bigger difference with Old Kathmandu than with most scents I've tried. In the bottle, Old Kathmandu smells much like the description. I can imagine walking up the steps of a temple deep within a fir forest, smelling wafts of incense intermingled with the resin from the trees. It is a very ancient sort of scent, that of a place untouched by time. As soon as the oil touches my skin, it's cedar cedar cedar. It's not the subtle smell of the blocks I put in with my winter clothes, either. This is fresh-cut cedar. I can smell the wood shavings. I also get a hint of incensy smoke. It's nice, but I'm not sure it's me. On drydown, I start to notice the difference between my two wrists. The arm with the bracelets morphs into a sweet, light scent that I'm guessing is the lotus flower. It's really beautiful and has convinced me to try more blends with lotus. My right arm retains the cedar and incense along with the lotus, but the whole mixture is much lighter than what I'm smelling on the other side. I guess, for me, lotus tends to be more assertive in a warm, moist environment. Unfortunately, because I really like it, I live in Colorado where cool and dry is much more the norm. As nice as it is, I don't see Old Kathmandu becoming a favorite. The initial cedar blast isn't my style and the drydown seems too unpredictable to count on in my climate.

Mmm, I didn't think I liked florals, but Chaste Moon definitely smells like flowers and it's absolutely lovely. Actually, it doesn't just smell like flowers. It smells like sucking on a butterscotch candy while sitting in a night garden with my nose buried deep in a thick-petaled white flower. In the bottle and at first application, the creamy/buttery note is most dominant on me, but as it dries, everything comes together together in a soft, white breeze of a scent. Pressing my nose deep into my wrist, I can catch a whiff of something that smells like tea to me, but could be another dried herby scent. My nose isn't very experienced yet. Everything in this oil smells both very familiar and not-quite-placeable to me and the mixture is comforting because of that. The only thing keeping me from tracking down some more of this is that my husband's reaction was, "Enh. It's not bad," which was a little less enthusiastic than I was hoping for. I might try to get another imp...just for me. Who cares what he thinks? Mmmm. Update: I find myself reaching for this more and more. It's moved into my top three.

This one was love at first sniff for me. I was ready to order a big bottle before I even finished opening the rest of the imps that came along with this one. In the bottle, it was almost straight cinnamon, but on my skin, the clove started to come out more and result was a straightforward, but deliciously spicy mixture. Even better, though, was when I added a swipe of Three Witches over the top of Lady Macbeth. Where Lady Macbeth had been grape bubblegum, it became an amazing gluwein with the addition of Three Witches. Three Witches, in turn, gained a depth that it didn't have on me initially. I can't wait for the reformulation.

I have to admit, I bought Port-au-Prince for my husband and had absolutely no intention of wearing it myself. I have no desire to smell like rum but, on a guy? Piratey goodness! My first sniff of the bottle was almost pure rum. Okay, maybe a bit of almond, but mostly rum. Instead of waiting for my scent-phobic husband to try it on so I could smell the rest of the notes, I decided to give it a shot myself. You know, in the interest of science. Mmmm. The rum faded quickly and this was an amazing clove on me. When I was a child, my mom would put clove oil in the vacuum cleaner bag before cleaning on Saturdays and the scent of Port-au-Prince was that smell, straight out of my memory. It wasn't just clove. It was clove and heat. I'm sure the sassafras played a role, but I couldn't isolate it. Perhaps it's fortunate that the oil faded entirely in fifteen minutes because I would have had to have my wrist permanently attached to my nose. Nonetheless, I was disappointed. This one had no staying power at all on me. Slathering it on helped slightly, but it was still surprisingly short-lived. I also tried using Port-au-Prince as a room scent in my oil burner, but it didn't seem to really take off. The scent hung close to the burner, refusing to pervade the room. It stayed much more buttered rum-like in the burner, which I didn't mind. I just would have liked it to be way more aggressive. I wish I could scent my life with Port-au-Prince but alas, it wasn't meant to be. I'm still working on scenting my husband.

What was it that I hated in this when I first sniffed it? I can barely even remember because it is so so good now. I think it was that I couldn't smell the tea. I wanted the strong tea I saw in the description, the wonderful aroma of a tin of loose dry tea, and it wasn't there at all. In the bottle, I smelled strong linen, sweetened with honey. The mixture was overwhelming to me, sickening, even after I put a small amount on my wrists and closed the lid. Then, as it dried, something magical happened. The linen faded into the background like a proper teatime tablecloth and a sweet mixture of honey and milk came up with a whiff of black tea. The last lingering scent before it all went away (it lasted from morning until mid-afternoon) was sweet vanilla. Now, when I open the imp, I can smell all those things, but it's still not until about an hour in that I'm really in love with the scent. I keep reaching for it in the morning, though, so there must be something there. It is comforting. I didn't immediately order more, but I think I will be. White Rabbit feels more right each time I wear it. (Edited to add: This scent reminds me a lot of Lush's Butterball. I smelled them both side-by-side and, while not a perfect match, they complement each other quite well.)

My husband lived in Holland for several years so my first move, on applying Amsterdam, was to shove my wrist under his nose and say, "Do I smell like Amsterdam?" He smelled and said, "No, Amsterdam smells like piss. You smell like a flower market." It does smell like an outdoor Dutch flower market on a May morning. At first, the scent is very green like the cut stems of spring flowers but, as it dries, it mellows out into the light scent of tulips. I love both phases. It's gorgeous. I'm new to BPAL, but I can't imagine finding a springy scent that I love more. The order for a big bottle went in yesterday.