Little Bird

This doesn't smell anything like I had imagined it would. When I first applied it, I thought that it smelled very green and white. Like standing next to a crystal clear stream on a bed of mossy rocks with ferns growing all around. Perhaps it is the mint and white musk? It smells more of ozones and aquatics than the earths and woods that I was expecting. I'm not getting any vetiver or patchouli at all. Overall this just smells very clean. After a half hour... this one has really sank into my skin. I can smell a faint trace of something powdery and clean lingering on my wrists. It's strange because I don't feel like I'm really smelling any of the notes that I am supposed to. I really like this one though. I'll keep my imp around to re-test on a later date and see if any of the earthiness comes out. ETA 2012: Got a recent imp of this and it still smells very faint and soapy-clean, but also kinda like pineapple. Weird. ETA 2016: This still doesn't smell like it should, lol. The new frimp I have of this smells like a smoky, incensey, warm, slightly powdery amber (the vetiver and sandalwood? maybe?) with a bit of an ashy, warm vetiver undertone.

Mmm. I really am liking this blend. It's the sort of scent that would drive me crazy if a man were wearing it, but that I would also love to wear myself. I'm not really smelling any lemon, sage, or vetiver. I think that it is the labdanum that I am smelling the strongest, with it's golden amber-like sweetness. The sandalwood is powdery and woodsy in the background. I keep thinking that this, on me, is like a spicy-golden men's cologne. In the drydown, more lavender comes out in the background, but this is a very grounded blend. It's a smooth and sweet lavender on me, not herbal or astringent. This is rather light after about an hour on my skin, drying down to something pleasantly powdery and sweet. Strangely, it doesn't smell gloomy to me at all. It's actually rather warm and lovely.

I have never tried Dark Myrrh, so I can make no comparison where that is concerned, but Light Myrrh is really rather heavenly. It starts out spicy and a bit peppery, but also with a sort of syrupy sweetness that holds the scent together. It smells golden and deliciously spicy. The fragrance gets a bit more wooden in the drydown, and it takes on a sort of dusty quality. Spicy-dusty-sweet-dry woods. Myrrh always smells wonderfully sunny and warm to me, and this is a wonderful myrrh. I really like the spicy peppery bite here. I probably won't be keeping my decant, as I don't ever see myself wearing a straight myrrh perfume, but I still really love this one.

Cherry Blossom is all pink and white florals on me. I was surprised by how sweet this one actually goes on my skin. It reminded me a bit of powdery cherry flavored sweet tarts for the first half hour or so. There was a light soapiness lingering in the background, but it wasn't strongly soapy at all. After about an hour on my skin the soapiness disappears and I am left with a lovely, sweet floral. It's pretty strong, but not overwhelming at all. Cherry Blossom singlenote isn't something that I really feel like I can wear, but it's a pleasant/simple floral with a nice bit of sweetness to it. It's just not 'me'.

I was really afraid to try this one on. Tuberose, ylang ylang, and white musk have great potential to give me a migraine... and white musk often turns to a cheap hairspray smell on me, so it's worrisome that other people have been saying this smells like hairspray. I sniffed this in the bottle and it had a very mind numbing sort of quality to it. It made me dizzy to inhale it. First on. This is hairspray and PAIN. Oh God. It makes me cough and one quick sniff of my wrist sent my head reeling with a sharp jolt of stabbing pain. It's so sharp and thick. Perfumey and harsh. 5 minutes later. I feel nauseous and shaky. It's calming down a bit now and I can smell a bubbly boozy sort of champagne smell, but the initial sharpness and lingering hairspray scent in the background... this one is really and literally making me sick. It's so strong too. Overwhelmingly so. I'm going to have to go and take a bath to wash this one off. This is, as I had feared, an instant and intense migraine for me. I pretty much never sell full bottles of BPAL (I collect the different labels and bottles), but I'm seriously considering just getting rid of this one.

Hm. I'm not getting anything green or floral out of this one. First on it was very aquatic, reminiscent of melting snow and dripping icicles. There is a definite menthol bite under the aquatic. I don't really like mint, but this doesn't strike me as minty exactly. Definitely not peppermint. I don't know what wintermint smells like, so perhaps that is what is in this blend. It morphs into something like a watered down mint fragrance and it reminds me of brushing my teeth on mornings when the hot water isn't working at all. The menthol/mint bursts in after a few minutes and then lasts on my skin for about 15 minutes before disappearing entirely. After that there is a strangely sweet aquatic scent left behind. It turns into a very light aquatic that clings close to my skin. I like this one, I think I'll save it for days when I don't really feel like wearing a perfume. It has a subtle, clean sort of feeling to it.

I almost didn't order this one because I have a fear of any fragrance that mentions 'blood'. This is ironic given my fascination with blood in real life... but dragon's blood is my scent-enemy, so I feared that The Cracked Bell would be dragons blood-ish. Thankfully, no dragon's blood at all, but it didn't work on me as well as I would have hoped either. When I first put this on, I thought that it was a bit citrusy, but it was hard to pin down. This is like a blend of many wonderful things, and the best way that I could describe it would be to say it is spicy and incensey. It reminded me strongly of "Alone" when I first put it on, so I wonder if it also has red sandalwood or some like ingredients. I was really enjoying it for those first 15 minutes, and then it started to go very perfumey on me. It had that cheap hairspray smell and started to give me a headache. I wonder if this has some sort of musk in it? Musk often turns to hairspray on me . I'm happy to have my bottle of "Alone", because it is pretty close to the first stage of The Cracked Bell that I was loving. This one just gets way too sharp and perfumey in the drydown for me.

I've put off getting Rose Red for a long while now. I didn't get it last year because I didn't think that I liked rose scents last year, but I decided to give it a try after realizing that I actually love a few BPAL rose blends (Whip, Marie, Alice, The Haunted Palace, and such). Sadly, Rose Red is one of those roses that doesn't work on me First on this is oddly sour and pickled. It actually reminds me of pickled beets. The sour juice and earthy soil smell. And it remains a strange, sour rose on my skin. BPAL's rose scents are also usually pretty strong and long lasting on me, and Rose Red fades away within 2-3 hours. I completely adore The Peacock Queen, and it smells more like a true rose scent to me than this one.

I love this one . Lump of Coal was the naughty scent that I was desperately hoping for, and it has not disappointed me. There's not much to say about this one except that it smells like taking a perfect pan of dark chocolate brownies out of the oven. I smell this and can practically taste them. This is my new favorite chocolate scent from BPAL, and I can't wait to try layering it with all of my other foodie scents.

Mitzvah makes me incredibly hungry. I love BPAL scents that smell like they have salt in them, and Mitzvah has a wonderful foodie saltiness to it that makes my mouth water. This smells of melted butter, gooey caramel, and salt. I actually kept thinking of caramel popcorn whenever I sniffed my wrist, but Mitzvah also has a wonderful creaminess to it. It is rather light and fades away completely after only about two hours on my skin, but it is delicious while it lasts. And it is also swoonworthy when mixed with Lump of Coal ETA. I wore this one again today and was surprised at the staying power. I had it on for 8 hours before taking a bath, and it stayed strong for the entire 8 hours. I wonder if my nose was just having an off day before, or if I didn't apply very much when I wore this initially, because it was very strong and creamy today. I'm really loving this one too. Foodie-heaven.

I was not sure what this would smell like, as I don't believe that I've ever smelled chamomile before. Surprisingly, this reminds me quite a bit of lavender though. First on it was very similar to the way that Lush's angels on bare skin facial cleanser smells to me. I usually find lavender very bland and unimpressive though, and I am loving Roman Chamomile. It's herbal and comforting. Herbal in the same way that good lavender is, but with a honeyed sweetness and something else that makes it so much better. I tried some of this on after getting into a fight with my mother and it really helped to calm me down and fall to sleep. I woke up a few hours later and it was still strong and comforting. After a few hours I noticed that there is also something faintly lemony about this on me. Like a barely there drizzle of lemon and honey underneath the herbal scent. I love this one. I would get a big bottle if I could, but I'll definitely be saving my imp for days when I am feeling stressed out and overwhelmed.

I wish that my experience with Plumeria had been as pleasant as other reviewers seem to have described. I so wanted to try a creamy coconut-ish floral. I've never smelled real plumeria or been to Hawaii, so I wasn't sure what to compare this to. On me, Plumeria singlenote is a very strong and soapy white floral. It has a creamy sweetness at first, but it quickly dries down to a sharp laundry detergent sort of soapiness . Apparently this one doesn't work well with my skin chemistry.

First on my skin this was incredibly strong and sweet, while also being incredibly tart. It reminded me of the dried apricot candies that I used to get at a lovely candy shop, they had a sort of sour/sugar glaze over them to make them more flavorful. This has the sugared sweetness, dry apricot, and tart sour glaze. In the drydown this singlenote loses a lot of its sweetness, but starts to smell a lot more musky. Musky, tart, dry apricots. After an hour it isn't very sweet at all anymore and has taken on a slightly wooden smell. Interesting. This never strikes me as a true/fresh apricot, it is something more artificial and perfumely. It's nice, but not one of my favorite singlenotes. I'll be swapping my decant.

Wisteria is not one of my favorite florals. It has a harsh, herbal astringency that I find rather unpleasant. The singlenote is very strong on me, and it did remind me of cleaning fluid. After about an hour on my skin it mellowed out considerably, but still had a strange chemical undertone that made my throat burn a bit. It is a cool, waxy floral with an herbal background and an overall feeling of harsh chemicals and cleaning fluid

Wow, the label art seems to get more and more beautiful with every update . The Phoenix labels and Snow Moon are just gorgeous. I'm so glad that I ordered all of them. I want a t-shirt or such with the phoenix on it now

Tears actually makes me think of the wonderful time I spent in Key West a few years ago. I woke up one morning and the weather was perfect. There was a sort of warm mist hanging in the air as I stood on one of the ship docks. The salty water splashed up around my feet and everything was oddly quiet and still in the early morning. And that's what Tears smells like to me... warm mist, salty walter, and calm. After about 15 minutes on my skin it does get a bit soapier than I would have liked, but the fragrance is pretty light on me so it's not that bad. This is more of a calming blend to me than a grieving one. Though it does sort of depress me to think about Key West and know that I'm stuck in Illinois for a crappy winter...

First on this was, as others have mentioned, very lemony and green. The ivy isn't as dark green or cold as it usually is on me, it is lighter and fresher smelling somehow. I get a hint of sharp rootbeer-like sassafras at first, but it fades away after the first fifteen minutes on my skin. Dissipation is very light and only lasts a total of about one hour on my skin. In the drydown it is all green ivy with a sweet floral in the background. It's pleasant enough, but nothing that I will ever need a full bottle of.

I originally purchased this one just because I think that the label art is so beautiful. For the last few days it has been sitting on my desk and I just studied the artwork and admired. Today I decided to try it on... and there is a very sharp, jagged edge on my bottle lid. I sliced my palm open when I tried to open the bottle and was bleeding everywhere. That said, Evening Star smells beautiful enough that I forgive it for trying to kill me. This is a very enchanting sort of fragrance. It is very potent, so I dab this one on carefully. A few strategic swipes on the backs of my knees and collarbone makes me feel like a princess though. For me, this is the embodiment of a romantic night on the town. The expensive candlelit dinner, slow dancing, and star-gazing on the terrace... it makes me feel like the submissive, elegant young lady that deserves the protective adoring male and... yes, very much a fairy-tale romance scent for me. I am awful with floral notes, they usually smell horrible on me and I have trouble identifying one flower from the next. When I smell this, I think of beautiful creamy flowers that are shimmering and glowing in the moonlight. Rays of moonlight are filtering down into a beautiful garden and it looks like everything has been dusted in diamond powder. It's elegant and beautiful. I'm really surprised that this floral blend is working out well on me. It's not going soapy or giving me a headache. It is powdery, but it's a good sort of powdery. Best way I could summarize this one: Powdery night-blooming flowers with a sweet edge and cool night air. I love it ----- ETA. I cannot get over how much I am loving this one lately. I wore Evening Star again today and my mother complimented me a million times on my fragrance (she is a very picky woman). I'm going to buy another two bottles of this one, another one for me and one for my mum. I hope that more people will give this blend a try, because it is surprisingly lovely, even for someone like me who normally hates florals.

Spirits of the Dead is definitely my favorite of the 'A Demon in My View' scents (next to The Evening Star, of course). BPAL does such beautiful things with tea scents, and this is a very smooth green tea fragrance. There is a burst of tart lemon after a few minutes, like slicing into a fresh lemon, but it fades within the first half hour on me. Then for an hour after the lemon fades, it is wet green tea and what smells like creamy white musk. Nothing about this really smells dry or woodsy on me at all, just chilly and green. This one has completely faded on me within two hours, but it is a wonderful green tea scent while it lasts. I'll use up my bottle (it's one that I'll really have to slather on) and rely on Shanghai or Embalming Fluid for a similar scent.

Herr Drosselmeyer was very odd on me. It reminded me of one of those candy shops that is trying to look sort of old-timey, with wooden barrels and classic hard candies and such. I definitely smell cherry pipe tobacco, and that stays constant over the hours that I wear this. I never smell anything that I would call clean linen though. I actually kept thinking that I could smell red licorice and lemon drops when I was wearing this one. 2 hours later this had faded into a sweet cherry pipe tobacco smell, with that candied lemony/licorice tang in the background. There is a light, sweet leather in the background as well, but it's so subtle that I forgot it was there. I didn't realize that I was smelling leather until I reread this description and thought that it *should* be there. So it's subtle, thankfully. This only lasted about three hours on me, but it had a lot of throw for the first couple hours. This fragrance really isn't something that I can see myself wearing very often. It has a sticky, tangy sweetness. Maybe I will pass it on to one of my male friends.

I thought that Snow Bunny had the cutest label of the yule blends, but The Rat King is my new favorite . I am also very pleased with the way that this one ends up smelling on me. My first thought was that this smelled like an expensive men's cologne, but with a cruel/chilly edge, more autumn than winter chill. It doesn't smell overly perfumey or generic at all, a unique men's cologne. It also reminds me of a specific place from my childhood. My family owned a lot of land in Missouri when I was younger, and there were several old barns on the property. There was a field behind one of the barns where the grass was always strangely soft and dry. I can smell those grasses here. There was also a small stagnant pond in that area, with acres of pine forest behind it all. The Rat King is that entire area in a bottle. The barns, the meadow, the pond, and the pines... the pine isn't very strong at all though, as it has been in a lot of this year's yule blends. It's just a lingering whisper in the background. In the drydown, I get more of a dusty woods scent mixed in with everything else. The Rat King has a lot of staying power. I had it on for ten hours before I took a bath and washed it off. It's not an overwhelmingly strong fragrance, it's rather soft, but it does have a good deal of throw. It's the sort of scent that I would want to put on my boy if we were going to spend an evening just cuddling on the couch. I really like this one. It's probably not something that I will ever need more than one bottle of... but I'm definitely happy to have my one bottle

I love patchouli when it is paired with something sweet (as in Imp or Depraved) and I enjoy vetiver in small doses, but Typhon is definitely more patchouli and vetiver than I can handle. Typhon smells dark, earthy, dirty, and smoky. Vetiver has been smelling cold and ashen on me lately, and I'm getting that scent here. After about ten minutes, the dark musk comes out a bit in the background. Unfortunately, black musk also tends to go bad on me. It smells sharp and smoky. This blend is very strong... it continued to cling to my skin even after repeated hand washings and intense scrubbing. Overall it is just too earthy and cold for me. It's the sort of perfume that makes me feel like I got beat up and dragged across a dirt road, then my clothes were set on fire. The scent of earth and ash. And I'm not fond of it.

Mint and grapefruit are usually awful on me, and I don't usually do well with boozy or aquatic scents either. That said, Shattered isn't as bad as I imagined it would be. This starts out as a very chilly aquatic. Like mint, menthol, and snow slush. It tingles a bit on my skin and makes my eyes water if I inhale too deeply. After a few minutes the grapefruit comes out a bit, and I'm getting that dirty sharp citrus scent underneath the mint. Shattered is sharp, chilly, and energizing. After an hour this has softened considerably and lost a lot of its bite. Smells like sweet tarts (grapefruit?), bubble gum (lotus), and light spearmint. Sort of like a boring candy shop. It's interesting. I wonder how well this would layer with a chocolatey scent like Bliss.

I never really got any of the pepper in White Rabbit. It was more of a clean linen and used teabag sort of scent on me, with a light honeyed drydown. A lot of the reviews say that they didn't note any pepper either. It's a really soft/comforting scent to me... one that I actually bought a 5 ml of yesterday .

Has your friend tried any of the tea/herbal blends? Some of the green herbal blends have characteristics that make them smell both clean and spicy to me. Maybe something like The Dormouse, The Apothecary, Mantis, or Kumiho...