Little Bird

I wanted the amber, cream and tea, but all I get is the wool and dead leaves notes. The wool is dry and a little dusty/powdery and smells like freshly cleaned, soapy laundry while the dead leaves smells more like men's cologne and green leaves than dead leaves. It's fresh, clean, cold and masculine leaning rather than the cozy gourmand that I was hoping for.

My skin holds on to spice notes and often amps them up to a screeching level. This has a super sharp cinnamon in it that irritates my skin and I don't know what is going on with the other notes. It's like cinnamon and a really sharp, sour, citrus scented household cleanser of some sort.

Mostly this is a dusty amber and glowing, warm, perfumey scent. It doesn't read floral or fruity or gourmand to me at all. It reminds me of blends like Morocco and The Girl. Amber and warm, soft musk in a powdery, dusty, perfumey cloud with a little nondescript spiciness. Drydown has a hint of dusty, baked earth and clay scent on my skin. Maybe a hint of sultry jasmine? I only had enough in my decant to wear this once, alas.

I think that the Fire Down Below series is one of my favorites ever from BPAL. A'Rovin, Leave Her Jonny, and Haul on the Bowline are all so wonderful and The Wellerman is like a refreshing little palette cleanser. This isn't really boozy to me at all, but I do smell a caramelized tone that makes me think of creme brulee, and then there's this freshness like sugar water and lemon zest, with a note that's like fresh cream in the drydown. Gourmand yet clean. Settles into a fresh cream and lemon zest scent after about an hour and it's really lovely.

I should have gotten a bottle of this because I got a decant recently and I love this so much. Blood Kiss is one of my favorites and it really holds its own against the pumpkin spice. This smells like a slice of creamy pumpkin pie, crust and all, stuffed into a bottle of Blood Kiss, not just the dry, overwhelming spices that I was expecting. Blood Kiss is such a great scent with the honeyed vanilla, rich red wine and cherries, and the spicy, earthy, dark mix of vetiver and clove. It kind of gives off Samhain/Samhainophobia vibes when it's mixed with the pumpkin. A whole sexy vampire mood. If anyone has an unloved bottle of this one, I would definitely love to purchase a full bottle. So beautiful and sensual.

Le Lethe smells like honeyed, super sweet chewing tobacco and is actually too sweet for me, but Frostbitten Le Lethe is really lovely. It's sweet, warm tobacco behind a veil of ice covered evergreens and I can smell the chill, the pine needles and the evergreen sap. It has a sharp, crisp iciness to it, almost a little mentholic. In the drydown, I can pick out the resinous, amber-y labdanum as well, which I couldn't in the original Le Lethe.

I didn't try this until today, so it's aged and in a decant, but it smells very faint and has almost no throw. I get sweet plum candy, a hint of rose, and something slightly soapy, but it's so very light.

Perfumey rose with dry, flaky, buttery biscuits and cold, slushy snow (like snow melting with a hint of evergreen sap - I do love bpal's snow note, but not paired the way it is here). I think that this could have been really beautiful if the Frostbitten was Snow White and not just snow note, but the combination of musky rose, stale biscuit and snow is pretty weird to my nose.

This is sinus clearing at first. I smell it and can kind of feel it stinging all the way up into my eyes. Good old eucalyptus and a very bright, chilly mint. I also smell something lemony and sweet, which is maybe the variety of frankincense used, and it goes just a wee bit soapy and aquatic before settling into the drydown. The drydown isn't soapy on me at all, but more creamy, smooth and cool toned. I was worried about the white musk being sharp, but the musk has a creamy, mellow, cool feeling to it. Over time, this is a really pretty, chilly, clean yet sweet type of scent that makes me think of frozen ponds and snow on a quiet day. The blue musk and white mint reminds me of the discontinued blend Silence and the feeling that Silence gave me. This is very spa-like, cooling, creamy and serene and I actually think that I want a bottle of it, which is surprising because I was sure that it was going straight to my giveaway pile based on the notes list.

This totally has that 90s Hot Topic smell with the slightly grape-y, slightly powdery, hazy, nag champa incense and dry sandalwood. I feel like I can smell the way all of their new clothing smelled with the belts, buckles and leather (fake leather?). Usually bpal's sandalwood goes to pure baby powder to my nose, but this actually smells like good sandalwood incense, especially in the drydown. Good sandalwood incense, nag champa, and Hot Topic clothing. It makes me feel very nostalgic.

I love bpal's plum notes and still hope for a wild plum single note, but I'm loving all of the plum scents that have come out lately. The plum and fresh astringency of the tea reminds me of Velvet Void, which is another bpal that I tried and loved recently (except Velvet Void is sweeter, richer, and deeper with the resin notes). First on, the black pepper was a little too sharp, but it quickly settles under the plum tea and the woody, sweet, slightly coconutty fig scent comes out more. It winds up smelling like a lovely, creamy, fig dessert and a cup of clean, plum flavored white tea. A bit sharp, but still very good.

Kobold Barista is a dark, dry scent, more like smelling a hint of roasted coffee beans and lots of dried spices rather than smelling like an actual drink. The spices are also a lot stronger than the coffee, especially on my skin that amps spices. It reminds me of mixing together spices to make gingerbread cookies, so mostly dried ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon. I think I can smell the cream after about a half hour, something like a hint of buttermilk in a bowl of spices with the toasty warmth of coffee beans. I actually really enjoy this layered with vanilla scents, though it isn't my favorite spice or coffee scent overall.

As you come to the final stage, you see a spotlight focused upon a large pile of pitch-black ashes on the center of the floor. A parchment scroll has been tacked to the foot of the stage. It reads: Now I will believe That there are unicorns; that in Arabia There is one tree, the phoenix’ throne; one phoenix At this hour reigning there. You catch a whiff of burnt cinnamon, and a whirlwind begins to form within the center of the cold pyre. The ashes rise, condense, and coalesce into the dusky form of a woman. She shakes her body gently, tossing her hair, and the ashes fall from her skin. She is perfect, radiant: not a single cinder mars the flawlessness of her countenance. Her body seems to cast a shadow shaped like a triumphant bird, wings outstretched, onto the blank taupe canvas behind her. Her eyes are closed, and her head is bowed; her expressionless face is enigmatic. Her dark eyes begin to glow, and her mouth turns up in a secretive, intimate smile. She throws back her head and extends her arms, and suddenly the scent of smoldering myrrh assails you. Within moments, the woman explodes into flame, and you see that her face is now a vision of passionate ecstasy. The turbulence of the conflagration whips around her violently, and gouts of flame burst from her body, igniting the canvas behind her. She raises her arms in exultation, and through the flames, you see both the outline of her scorched black skeleton and the shadow of the phoenix triumphant. Three deep, dark myrrhs, smoke, cassia, and cinnamon bark. The original Priala went through two bottle variations for me. The first couple bottles that I purchased when it was first released were warm, sultry spices and sweet myrrh, and the couple bottles that I purchased near the end of the Carnaval's initial run were harsh, smoky, charred vetiver that I didn't care for at all. First on, this reminds me of the first few bottles I went through of Priala, but sharper and spicier, thanks to the added cassia. I am sensitive to spicy blends and they can give me a headache when they smell too much like a cheap holiday candle or aggressive & sharp like red hots cinnamon candies. Priala 2016 ventures into that red hots cinnamon candy territory, but I do enjoy the sweet, rich myrrh and the woody qualities that cassia and cinnamon bark have. The drydown starts to become smoky on me, but it's kept in check under the spices and myrrh, and the spices are a bit sharp. I will probably wind up rehoming this bottle. I don't love the ashy vetiver/woodsmoke hint in the drydown, and the spice is a bit too sharp and strong (it does start to make me feel headachey and queasy after a while)... but I do really love myrrh, and this reminds me of my very first bottle of Priala, with the spices amped up. I want to love this for the myrrh and woody edge in the spices, but it's probably too much spice for me.

A child of summer, the woodnymph sips moisture from the sand and flits through grasses and wild buckwheat. Hay and grasses with two eyespots of cacao and tonka. Great Basin Woodnymph is lovely, and I can pick out all four of the listed notes. I enjoy green grass fragrances, but they are difficult for me to wear, as they usually take on a too green, slightly sour, sharp edge. The toasty hay with its soft, lemony scent and the sweet creaminess of the tonka and cocoa are wonderful, though, and take the sharpness out of the green grass. I always get this lemony scent from bpal's hay notes, like in Hay Moon. The toasty notes, lemon and vanilla-ish tonka swirl together and smell like having a decadent little lemon cream tart on a bed of dying grasses. I like the fresh, outdoorsy gourmand feel.

Someone sent me a decant of this one and I really like it. There's a good dose of cinnamon sugar, but with tons of sugar, so the spice doesn't feel overwhelming, and I get the toasty warmth of an actual gingerbread cookie. In the drydown, a hint of cocoa dusted black licorice is discernable, which makes the gingerbread feel more complex and a little darker without ever being too much. This is the sort of thing that smells so good that I want it as an actual dessert. I really enjoy whatever part smells like sugar granules.

I tend to enjoy bpal's wine fragrances, but not this one. The rose is very sour, dry and crumbly smelling, which makes the red wine feel unpleasantly sour overall. Then the incense is very dusty. The whole thing feels like smashing old roses into a powder and throwing them on a dusty stone floor, then spilling red wine over it, and then this is the scent of it all dried and covered with more dust. No pear or clove for me.

The golden amber, brown musk and sandalwood give off this warm, dry, powdery-musky scent that I'm not loving, and it kind of reminds me of some "cozy sweater" type blends that I've tried. I like the hints of sweet, resinous, dark myrrh and touch of herbal, green scent, but together everything smells a bit muddled and perfumey/powdery.

GOOD FRIEND FOR JESUS SAKE FOREBEAR, TO DIGG THE DVST ENCLOSED HERE. BLESTE BE YE MAN YT SPARES THESE STONES, AND CURSED BE HE YT MOVES MY BONES. For years now, whenever Lilith is in a cemetery, she has felt compelled to leave little presents… flowers, beads, toys… graveside, especially at the graves of long-gone children. This moment was captured at the Collegiate Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon, the site of Shakespeare’s baptism and burial. Soft riverbank soil, winter daffodils, fog-damp grass, curled pondweed, and frankincense. I grew up in Missouri and this reminds me of all of the ponds and forest pools scattered throughout our property. It's cool, chilly water with ice just starting to form, hints of dying greenery and soft, vanilla-sweetened earthiness (like in Death Cap). Holy Trinity goes a little soapy around the edges, and I normally can't stand soapy, but I'm loving this. This really smells like all of its listed notes, and maybe the warm frankincense is giving me that sweet, resinous vanilla impression. Fans of blends like Death Cap and Bayou should enjoy this, but this is more complex, smooth and easy to wear than those blends are to me. This smells very much like fall to me, even though the sweet, airy daffodil should be making me think of spring. I'll be getting a full bottle of this in my next order.

This.. isn't my favorite Thirteen. Actually, it might be my least favorite. This feels like someone took good chocolate, herbal lavender, bone dry parsley and a little sour lemon and rosemary, and whipped it up with some sticky, overly sugary goo, and then poisoned the whole thing and crammed it into your mouth. Sticky, poisonous herbs that someone tried to cover up with chocolate and sugar, and now it's stuck in your mouth with all of those dry herbs. It had a mid stage that reminded me of bitter, green dandelion and dandelion sap as well. Poisoned chocolate and lots of dried herbs. A little sour.

On me, this is sweet gummi peach rings with a tangy, slightly sour edge and an undertone of what smells like a clean, freshly laundered blanket. I get nothing like London Fog (no milk or vanilla syrup), but I get a lemony bergamot feel that makes me think of bpal's crisp white tea note. It's like eating peach gummi candy while rolled up in a clean blanket on the couch. It has that clean, generic, "spring fresh" scent that's clean and sweetly, tartly floral, present in so many laundry products. I haven't tried Dirty in a long time, but that's what this is reminding me of. Snuggly, clean laundry and sour peach gummi candy covered in sugar crystals.

I don't get any cookies from this. It starts off like the lab's melty snow note, cold and refreshing and slushy, and then dries down to a slightly soapy, clean scent with a tiny hint of peppermint.

Strangely, I don't get a burnt or bakery sugar from this at all (no creme brulee or baked goods). Burnt Sugar & Blackberry reminds me a lot of bpal's Sugar Moon series of scents. I wear this and I'm instantly transported to being 6-years-old and my mom picking me and my cousins up and setting us on the kitchen counter so that we could "make Kool-Aid." We would mix berry and cherry kool-aid and then sneak in extra sugar so that it was hyper-sweet and the sugar granules couldn't even dissolve and the sugar was still crunchy while you drank the mixture. Super sugary, very juicy, berry-cherrry Kool-Aid. This smells like that Kool-Aid tasted.

The cardamom here is spicy, bright & sweet and the sandalwood is powdery and softly woodsy. The overall impression is like rolling out holiday spice cookies on a floured wooden cutting board with sweet powdered sugar glaze at the ready. I was surprised at how complex and gourmand this actually is on me. The cardamom doesn't smell quite like itself and actually reminds me of last winter when I was obsessed with making lebkuchen spice cookies (which was a mix of cardamom, clove, allspice, cinnamon and ginger). I love cardamom and I smell the cardamom, but it almost feels like this is a more complex blend of spices.

I'm surprised at how much I love this one. I expected the "Scorched" part to equal some smokiness, but this isn't smoky or burnt at all. This definitely leans masculine (but I wear a lot of traditionally masculine scents and love them) and is all sorts of warm and snuggly, like a sexy lumberjack fantasy in a bottle. Scorched smells like soft, cuddly, brown leather, freshly cut oak, sweet tree sap, and earthy sweetness from the tobacco. Warmly woody. No green notes and no ash or smoke. In the drydown, the tobacco note does have a hint of astringency and a metallic, gold glint to it, but only a hint of something sharper. It feels comforting and casual.

Woods, mushrooms, moss and honey combine to make this swampy, off, slightly sour scent. Makes me think of mud, algae and rotting plant matter.