Little Bird

Fruity scents usually smell very youthful to me, reminding me of something that a young energetic girl would wear (especially if they have grapefruit). So I expected this to have that young/juvenile feel to it. But this is fruity all grown up. It is so well balanced. Like a sophisticated older lady's perfume, but with energizing grapefruit and plum slathered over it. The result is rather elegant and sexy, and I can pick out all of the notes as they swirl around each other. It's not one of my all time favorites (I have trouble loving fruity blends so it seems)... but I like it. A lot.

This is a very boring and fake/synthetic smell to me. It is very sweet and fruity, but something about it bothered me. Then it hit me, this smells exactly like Bath & Body Works' sun-ripened raspberry fragrance. That same sickly sweet candied raspberry that always made me gag. Nothing like a real tart raspberry smell. My sister loved this and agreed that it smelled like her favorite B&BW lotion.

I agree with those who have said this reminded them of any commercial perfume floral. You could get a similar cheap floral scent in almost any department store. It is a light floral, I guess would be good as a summer scent for those people that like safe florals. I just have a hard time warming up to floral blends, and this one is lacking anything unique or striking that would make me want to work with it. BPAL has so many unique and wonderful scents that I can't find anywhere else, so I would buy a hundred other oils before getting around to a 5 ml of this one. It's just boring to me...

I so thought that I would fall in love with this one, dew-covered grasses and crushed herbs <3. Unfortunately, this is another BPAL that just turns into that awful baby powder smell on my skin. I left this one on for about 5 hours, hoping that any other note would come out, but the baby powder smell just kept getting stronger and stronger. So... while I hate the scent... this one has great staying power.

Yup. Smells just like Dior's Pure Poison fragrance (which also goes musky and overwhelmingly sharp/bitter on me). This is such an amazingly strong and overpowering scent. Reminded me of the 80's, big hair, and shoulder pads. The kind of fragrance that wears you rather than the other way around. On me it started smelling like funky throat clogging hairspray. I didn't get any berries or lime out of this at all, it was sort of sharp and musky. And it's so long lasting... it stuck around even after repeated furious hand washings as I attempted to get it off of me. I definitely want to leave this one back a few decades... it frightens me with its power.

This smelled wonderful when I first put it on, the lemon and vanilla came out strongly and it was such a wonderfully creamy scent. However, after about five minutes, the musk took over and smelled like nothing but baby powder. I hate it when a great BPAL scent turns to baby powder on my skin. Boo.

Juke Joint would be completely heavenly to me if it were only warm bourbon and sugar, minus the mint. I never have been fond of anything with mint in it. For about the first half hour after putting this on, it smelled like a minty lime bathroom cleanser. After that it begins to soften and get sweeter as the sugar and warm bourbon come out (which I love), but they are still dominated by mint. It is definitely interesting... but still too bathroom cleanser for me to want to wear it as a perfume. The mint itself is very sweet and light, I just (sadly) have trouble wearing anything minty. If you like mint at all, this is very lovely.

Sampling Hecate was an odd experience for me. It smelled very strongly of Cherry Dr. Pepper for about five minutes... then, nothing. I seriously had a moment of confusion where I wondered if I had somehow lost the wrist that I applied the oil to. This was the most quickly vanishing fragrance I have ever tried before in my life. It was like my skin ate the fragrance o_O. I reapplied and really slathered it on, same result. I'm going to have to try this as a room scent and see what happens...

This scent smells so amazingly dry. The kind of dry chemical smell that makes me feel like I'm getting a nosebleed (does anyone else ever get that feeling or am I just strange?). At first it reminded me a bit of Lush's Cosmic Dreamcather massage bar, sort of dry woods and peppery spices. Then it quickly took on a scent that reminded me of a car repair shop . All of the oil, rubber, gasoline, and grime... I don't know if it's just my skin chemistry, but this was a horribly foul fragrance on me. I'd say it was more masculine, but I don't like this on my boyfriend either.

Kali sounded so good. I was so lusting over the blend of wine, tobacco, and honey... and it was PERFECT when I first applied it. It was delicious tobacco and honey, sort of smelling chocolatey. But this stage was gone in about five minutes and it was completely taken over by rose and lotus. Thus turning Kali into yet another boring floral blend on my skin.

Given this one's description, I really *should have* loved Gluttony. Dark chocolate, vanilla, buttercream, hazelnut, and caramel are all favorites of mine. And I ADORE foodie scents. Sadly, this turned out to just be way too much, even for me. "Bloated with sweetness" is a perfect description. The problem is that it smells kind of fake, like the overpowering sweet synthetic smell you get from candles. I smelled just like my favorite Bakery Hodgepodge candle. Thus, this makes a wonderful room scent... but it was just too much for me to wear on my actual body. A tiny drop on my wrist lasted for hours and was so strong that it was migraine inducing. But it's heaven in an oil burner <3.

Intrigue was my first 5 ml bottle after I fell in love with an imp of it. I never would have imagined that I wanted to smell like fig, but BPAL's fig blends work so well with my skin chemistry. Intrigue is a lovely blend of fig, woods, and chocolate. It isn't exactly a sweet fragrance though, it is very subdued with the dry wood notes. But it's still foodie enough to me that I want to eat it . There isn't anything sharp or off in this blend. This is my nice calm scent that I wear when I need something unchanging and reliable all day, lol.

I've never understood why Snake Oil is so popular in the bpal fandom. I don't think that it smells anything like vanilla. To me, it smells like a sweet-ish, cheap, headshop incense and somehow a funkiness that really reminds me of sweaty, dirty hair. It dries down with a slight, ashy smokiness. I've tried to wear this scent out on many different occasions and have never met anyone who liked the scent on me (I've actually had a lot of people tell me to never wear it again and/or to go and wash it off :/). My husband always just says that it smells like 'sweaty person and cigarettes,' which kinda horrifies me. I'm also always confused when fans of bpal say that this smells so much better/different aged, because I have samples of Snake Oil from 2004, 2007, 2011 and 2012 and they all smell pretty much the same. It's one of the few Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab oils that doesn't seem to have been wildly reformulated again and again. The only difference I can tell is that as this gets older, it actually gets lighter (the samples that are 2+ years old only last about an hour total on my skin and don't have much throw at all) and it turns slightly plasticy smelling. The oil itself also thickens up, and I find myself hating the motor oil feel that it leaves on the skin. And it does leave dark smears on skin and clothing, so be warned. Nothing about Snake Oil really appeals to me, and I have kept re-trying it over the years. I'd like to smell this on someone who really likes the scent and see if it really does smell different on them.

Whenever I first put this on, it reminds me of Intrigue - with the fig dominating everything. Then a bit of patchouli comes out and offers a nice earthy background for the fig. And then it is all gone in a matter of minutes and all I can smell is the honey. There is a spiciness lingering around the honey, and a metallic, bitter edge from the ylang, but mostly it is just a funky honey smell. It has a bitterness to it rather than a natural sweetness. Reminds me of poisoned honey or honey gone bad...

Depraved is the first scent I ever loved from bpal. I carried my first imp around with me in my backpack and applied sparingly as I wandered around my high school. It finally broke in the bottom of my backpack and my books & everything smelled awesome, lol. It's a nostalgic scent for me now. The description says patchouli and apricot, but it always reminds me of leather and blueberries. The patch in this is very dark, cool and sexy. I thankfully have a couple bottles of this hoarded from before about 2008. After that, the patchouli in this started to smell different to me (more ashy, dirty and gritty) and the fruit note used is more sour & bright and less sweet & dark. It must have been reformulated with different notes, which is sad, because I haven't liked any variation of Depraved in the past four years or so. My old original bottles from 2005-2008 are awesome, though.

This is a very wet floral, but it is unlike any wet floral that I've ever smelled before (in a perfume bottle at least, in reality it reminds me of some of the areas I've gone camping in). The wetness reminds me of still muddy waters, covered with a vivid green layer of swampy plantlife. Then the florals are rich tropical blooms, bursting and dripping with the heat and humidity. Very swampy. Somehow it is a sexy swamp though. Bayou was one of my very first BPAL imps and it was one of the oils that was so unique and lovely that it made me want to try more from BPAL. It is wonderful and unlike any fragrance that I have ever tried. Swamp in a bottle - but in a great way .

I just wanted to add that I love Bliss with every fiber of my being . This is pure and simply chocolate on me. Reminding me of thick melty chocolate. Warm and good enough to eat. I was always looking for a great long lasting scent that was 'just chocolate' with no other notes in there to mess it up. Bliss is it.

For the first hour that Nefertiti was on my skin, it surprised me by smelling very wet and aquatic. It was also very masculine, I felt like I was wearing one of my boyfriend's colognes. In the drydown it is more of a powdery floral and I can see it being a feminine scent... which I find rather boring (florals have a hard time impressing me). I'm going to use up the rest of my imp on the boy, since it works better on him - I just won't tell him that I think this is a powdery floral, lol.

This definitely did not spark desire for me and my lover. If anything, it had the opposite result. Never before has the boy ordered me to take a bath -alone-, lol. This blend went very musky (in a bad way) on my skin. Amazingly strong and dirty smelling. I thought that it smelled a bit like wood smoke after a while, but that might have just been my crazy brain associating the scent with the 'fire' in the oil name. In the drydown (several hours later... I retried this without the boy, so he wouldn't have to smell me)... this reminds me of a peppery version of Snake Oil. Snake Oil turns very powdery and gross on my skin. So, Fire of Love = peppery baby powder after a few hours. ...I'm definitely going to not try this ever again...

I've tried Paris several times now, and it just plainly doesn't work for me. This scent went horribly awry on my skin. I thought that I would love spicy lavendar, and I'm usually okay with lotus... but this just turns into a strange bubblegum mixed with chemicals scent the second it hits my wrists. It was so sharp that it made my throat feel like it was closing . I never really made the connection between bubblegum and Paris either (unless it's Paris Hilton?)... this one perplexes me, lol.

The Wanderlust series has been very good to me... this is another one that I'm in love with . I have no clue what heather smells like, but it is apparently one of the few florals that works very well with my skin chemistry. Very sweet and wonderful along with the blackberry. I am very familiar with blackberry, and this does have a definite berry scent to it. I want to say that it is slightly musky as well. A lovely blackberry musk. For the first 3 hours, this was all wonderful blackberry and floral sweetness... it gets more herbal and green smelling to me in its final stages, like it has been mixed with Kostnice. Lovely all the way through <3.

Wow. This one is overpoweringly candies. Like cherry sweet tarts, tart banana candies, and bubblegum mixed together. It even has the powdery feel you get with sweet tarts and cheap bubblegum. It makes me think of deviant prepubescent girls with sticky hands. Which is why I probably don't like it, I don't want to smell like little girls with sticky hands. Overall this scent is too much for me, too sickly sweet and too strong... gives me a headache. I just bought it because I like the name 'Jailbait' The smell does definitely fit the name... and the blend is rather unique (as are all BPALs <3)... but I sadly just don't like the smell of bubblegum or sweet tarts.

This is nothing but cinnamon on me. Cinnamon notes seem to love my skin... unfortunately, I am not exactly in love with cinnamon. This one scared me quite a lot, because it kept getting stronger and stronger with every passing minute (threatening to take over my very soul). Well into hour 2, I had to wash it off. It smells just like fiery cinnamon red hots candies. Very overpowering on me. My boy also isn't exactly in love with cinnamon, so I don't think this turned either of us on. If you ever wanted to smell strongly of red hots candies... this is your dream perfume.

So far this has been the only voodoo blend that I really like (you might say I even love this one, but then I seem to love so many BPALs that I'm beginning to sound promiscuous). Everytime I try this one, I am overwhelmed by the scent of jasmine. Pulsating and warm jasmine. It reminds me quite a lot of Lush's Flying Fox shower gel actually. This stage lasts about an hour on me, and I am sort of 'eh' about it. But then the most wonderful creamy notes start to come in around the jasmine. It's a sweet cream, toning down the jasmine. If I could describe the fragrance in just one word: sweet. Thankfully, I don't get any lemon or dirty diaper when I wear this, lol.

This is one of the only rose scents that I have ever *loved*. It doesn't smell bitter or sharp like most rose notes do to me. It smells like dark wet roses bleeding over a strip of leather. The leather is definitely a perfect background scent. ETA: Whip smells totally different now compared to how it did in 2005/2006. I get powdery, light rose from this and almost NO leather now. My older bottles aren't and weren't ever this powdery, and had an equal partner in the leather. My 2011 bottle and latest frimps smell like powdery rose and blah, and fade within about an hour. A lot of scents that I loved years ago don't smell at all the same now...