Little Bird

I was a bit afraid of the citrus, chamomile, and ylang ylang in this (all notes that don't do well for me in perfumes), but this is mostly a beautiful, sugared carnation scent. It smells like dry, spicy carnation dipped in sugar, which I'm guessing is the vanilla bean adding some sweetness. It actually reminds me of one of my favorite trading post perfume oils - Very Slightly Haunted Dollhouse. It's also a bit reminiscent of Hod for me. I get a little burst of sweet, bright lemon at first, but it quickly mellows down into sugared carnation with hints of tart citrus giving it a bit of a cheery lift. After about an hour in my room, the lemon-y aspects have faded and it's carnation spice plus sweet, creamy vanilla. Gorgeous.

Most of the lovely orchid scents have sadly been discontinued. You might want to try some of the other tropical floral type blends - Pele, Santo Domingo, Machu Picchu, Manila...

I was hoping that this would be like Snowblind in bath oil form, but I don't get any vanilla or much sweetness from this. It smells like snow, ozone, and a hint of minty evergreen. It's clean smelling, but a bit too sharp for me.

I'm so glad that Snow White was offered in so many different products this year. It's such a perfect bath fragrance. Snow White is mostly a sweet, frosty sort of vanilla to my nose, but unique and hard to really describe. It's both clean and sweet smelling. Being able to literally bathe in it is so decadent and soothing <3. I'm really picky about oils and moisturizers. If I use the bptp bath oils in the bath, I can't get my hair or face wet, or else my face breaks out and my hair turns into a greasy mess. And I find them a bit too heavy and overpowering to use as an after shower moisturizer directly on my skin, as many people here do. I really love pouring these on to my legs before I get out of a shower though (or as a body soak in the tub with my hair up), and rinsing them off a bit before getting out. That leaves me moisturized and with a nice sheen on my legs. The scents always linger nicely as well. That said, this bath oil is awesome. I don't think that my partial bottle will last long, and I should probably stock up before this is no longer available...

I love Snow White in any form <3. The soap slice that I got of this one is more strongly scented than most of the bptp soaps I've tried. I can smell the cool, frosty, vanilla-y awesomeness that is Snow White. The soap itself has great lather. I find it to be a bit drying (but most bar soaps are drying to my skin, and it's nothing an application of lotion doesn't take care of). The scent is clean and pretty in the shower, but doesn't really linger after the bath.

:love!: I picked up a bottle of The Waltz of the Flowers from the sale forum here, just because I liked the label. I wasn't expecting much, because I don't usually like florals, and jasmine tends to be especially awful on me. But wow... this scent is amazing on me. I slathered this on when it came in the mail and didn't remember too much about the notes. I thought that it smelled like the most gorgeous, soft, honeyed, creamy lily note ever with hints of clove warming it up and a sweet vanilla edge, all wrapped up in a clean, girly dusting powder. It's a dreamy, realistic, non-soapy lily. I don't pick up on anything like bpal's usual jasmine notes, though I can see the similarity to LUSH's Alkmaar/Silky Underwear scent. I just can't even begin to explain how pretty and decadent this smells to me. It's like sweet bubble baths, old hollywood glam, decadent dusting powder... it smells expensive and feminine, but still youthful and innocent to me as well. And my husband kept complimenting me on my perfume choice all night <3. I need more bottles of this for sure. I think that this is actually my favorite of the 2010 Yule blends.

Like the released version of Apothecary, this scent is really light and fades quickly on my skin. This scent has the green feel that I always expected to get from the released Apothecary. I get green herbs, maybe some citrussy tea, and a background of soapy, dry, floral laundry sheets. It dries down quickly to just a barely there, green, soapy smell.

The released Hua Mulan is a clean, slightly soapy white floral + a bit of sugar on my skin, and this is more of a clean, slightly soapy white floral + touch of citrus (kinda lemony). It's slightly less sweet & delicate and more fresh smelling & heavily floral on me.

Something in this smells soapy and masculine to me, like cologne-y musk turned to men's shaving cream, plus a hint of powdery (amber?) mint...

I usually like the lab's orchid notes, but this proto just has that sharp, generic, chemical, perfumey floral smell to me. This blend is also a bit smoky, like woodsmoke + drugstore floral blend. It has a lot of throw and is really strong on me, but unfortunately just gives me a headache.

I'm actually not getting the mint or candy cane smell from this, which I'm okay with, because citrus + mint fragrances tend to gross me out and make me think of cough drops or cleanser. This is mostly fizzy, tart, bright lemon on me, with a drydown that shifts more to a strawberry hard candy smell. It would probably be too sweet for me, but the lemon has a clean, sour edge to it that cuts through the otherwise cloying strawberry. After an hour, I'm left with a light, sweet strawberry that doesn't have much throw. It smells girly, playful, and nice enough, but I don't think I need to track down more of this, as it's not all that unique smelling on my skin.

Fern Frost goes soapy on me, which makes me wonder if there's ozone in this somewhere. I get a hint of grassy greenery at first, but the drydown is just minty and sharply soapy. After fifteen minutes, I'm left with a light touch of sweet mint and a hint of that clean soapiness. I didn't have much of this to test, but this fades super-fast on me.

I don't have much to add about this that hasn't already been said. This starts off pleasant, sweet, tart, and fizzy, like raspberry lemonade with a splash of gingerale. I'm not getting a boozy smell from it. It smells juicy and fizzy for about the first twenty minutes, and then dries down to a dry, sweet berry candy smell on my skin. It kinda reminds me of a lot of the Atomic Luau scents, but lighter and more simple on me than some of my favorites from that category.

Chestnut Honey has a bit of a smoky/roasted quality to it. The most floral honeys, in my opinion, are Yellow Jessamine Honey (strong jasmine + honey smell) and Oleander Honey (clean white floral + honey). A lot of other people got a fruity-floral feel from Daphne Honey. I definitely found Tobacco Honey to be more of a clean tobacco flower scent that a sweet, smoky pipe tobacco. The other honeys all seemed to be oddly green and/or soapy smelling on my skin.

I tend to like deep, rich, sweet resins. The resins and incense here are more bright, perfumey, and sharply smoky. I would have guessed that there was grapefruit in this, because I'm also getting something bitter, unpleasant, and sort of citrussy (comes off like an undertone of bitter grapefruit peel, sweaty body odor, and soap). The drydown is like that unpleasant tang, sharp white floral drugstore perfume (the narcissus?), and a hint of sweet myrrh. I love most of the notes listed for this, but it just goes all sharp and wrong on my skin. I had to scrub it off after about an hour, because it was making me ill.

I usually get along well with metallic blends, but the metal/iron here is masculine and somewhat sharp and soapy, which I'm not loving. I get a slight green feel from the blend at first, but it's like a bright, high pitched, soapy green. I think that I catch whiffs of the woody oak every once in a while, but it's a dark, bland, dry, wooden smell that I'm not crazy about. Mostly this is like a sharp, aquatic, men's aftershave sort of soapy smell on me...

In the bottle and on my skin for the first couple minutes, this really does smell like chilled white grapes. I'm not getting any booze or wine; it's more like a glass of white grape juice. It's delicate, frosty, and so pretty. Unfortunately, as it settles, the scent starts to smell oddly of a clean jasmine and then like a dusty, cheap, spice potpourri :/. I don't smell the chamomile or balsam, or even anything fruity as it dries down. And after a half hour, there's just a hint of something perfumey-powdery and blah left on my skin. The Chained Phantoms has pretty much no throw or staying power at all on me. I think I'll try this one out in a scent locket...

I can't pick out any apple blossom with this one, which is fine, because apple blossom usually turns to soap on me. I get tons of sweet honey at first with a hint of soft, sweet mint (like peppermint on me, but gentler). The drydown after fifteen minutes is all honey all the time. The honey has a powdery edge to it that isn't quite like baby powder, but just makes this smell like a decadent honey scented dusting powder on my skin. It's very sweet on me, but the powdery/creamy edge keeps it from being cloying, and it's light enough that it doesn't really bother me. Valse Finale et Apotheose doesn't have much throw at all on me, but it's pleasant. This scent reminds me of a lot of Wylde Ivy's honey blends that have a dusting powder sort of feel to them. I'll probably keep my decant of this'n.

I get a burst of citrus and smooth green tea at first, which is really energetic and clean smelling, but the drydown of this is all powdery violet on my skin. This is nice enough that I'll probably keep my decant, but won't really need more of this one. I wish that the tea stuck around for longer and that the mandarin was a stronger note, but I do like the violet. I actually can't pick out any wormwood, which is okay with me, because wormwood does bitter, strange things on my skin.

I was sucked in by the leather, but I can't pick out any leather in this blend. Heroine is mostly fruity, clean, and musky/perfumey on my skin, with a powdery drydown. I get hints of dark, earthy patchouli every once in a while, but it's mostly tart, fruity rhubarb, perfumey musk, apple blossom (which is like a fruity shampoo smell on me) and baby powder on my skin. Heroine is a lot lighter than I was expecting from a scent with amber, patchouli, dark musk, and leather.

This starts off as something like sweet citrus and green grass on my skin, which I liked, but it quickly dries down into sharp white floral perfume smell + tons of soap. After five minutes, it's like sharp floral and greenery crammed into a bar of soap. It's strong, sharp, and way too soapy for me. My throat feels tight when I smell this, like it's choking me.

BTPU2 is kinda reminding me of Whoop at first (though I think I'm the only person who got a heavily cloying, boozy, juniper-y gin smell from Whoop). It has that fizzy evergreen/juniper smell that I get from bpal's gin notes, but this is boozier and cloying on me. I can see where other people picked up on the champagne, because it has that intensely boozy, pukey feel for me. As it dries down, it's less cloying and I get the dust/earth note that others have mentioned. Overall this is just really strange on me, and not quite in a good way...

This smells more lemony than orange to me, though I kept flipping between the two when I wore this oil. It's like fizzy, clean, lemony soda that dries down to lemony soda + lemon dish soap. This doesn't really remind me of the released version of Floating Brain at all. This isn't super-sweet on me; it's more of a clean citrus blend.

This smells like sweet citrus, clean & cool metal, and sharp white florals on me. I don't like sharp florals, but the sweetness of the fruit and smoothness of the metallic notes are really nice, and the sharpness fades on me over time so that I'm left with clean, sweet metallic note. My husband is a fan of fruity-floral and clean type scents, so he really likes this on me.

Released Harlot is in my top three for least favorite bpals ever (soapy, bitter rose, something rotten, and with the added delight of a major burning reaction to the cinnamon). Harlot v2, thankfully, isn't that bad on me. I'm not getting any spice or burning from this. All I can smell here is a perfumey red rose. It's a bit sharp, dry, and cheap-drugstore-floral-perfume, but not something that I need to scrub off immediately. Just a simple rose perfume.