sunshinedaisybliss

Tiki King reconfirms that black coconut is magic on my skin. I love the black variety because it isn't too sweet (like, say, the coconut in Tiki Princess) nor too milky like in Obatala (although I do love the milky coconut too!!). On my skin, black coconut delivers a lovely natural coconut smell that's fresh and fragrant without smelling like Malibu liqueur. The black musk merges beautifully with the coconut, making it seem more deep and rich. On my skin, the lemon blossom is the topmost note - sweet, but very natural smelling - I would prefer it to be a bit more subdued as it's amping a little over the other notes for me, but it's not unpleasant. The bark is as it should be - a nice bottom layer, adding to the overall natural feel of this blend. I think the King is my favourite of the Tiki royal family - it's rich and intoxicating but not overwhelmingly 'tropical' smelling. Big thanks to lamenteuse for the frimped decant!

This is a strange mix of notes to my nose! On the surface, it seems very green and fresh with the pine and spruce.. and the moonflower is quite bright. If I sniff a bit deeper, I find the crab apples. The cherry never really shows up on my skin, nor the camellia (which isn't a particularly fragrant flower anyway, to me) - mostly Halloween: Brooklyn is green, pine-ish and slightly woody.

This definitely is very ethereal and otherworldly - it's.. misty! Overall it has a floral feel, but it isn't FLORAL as such.. it just has that way about it. Surprisingly, there's nothing in this blend that's really jumping out from my skin - even the magnolia is very subdued. It's staying very close to my skin with very little throw - it's the kind of perfume you'd dab behind your ears for someone to discover at an intimate moment.. not the sort of perfume you'd slather on for a big night out. Very delicate and pretty, it's absolutely spot-on for its name and beautifully blended.

Wow.. this is really nice! I'm finding it to be a mentholated mint.. not like that muscle-ache relief cream type menthol, but a lovely natural and clean menthol. So overall it smells minty, but not in an obvious way like you'd get from peppermint or spearmint which always smell a little artificial to me. This somehow smells very natural and clean. I got the same thing as ZZ though.. my skin ate it up very quickly so what started out as a blast of refreshing mint dried down very quickly to a soft, faint mint. The smell didn't really change as such though - it just got a lot less intense.

Big to Dark Alice for sharing a tester of this one with me!! So usually honey is a no-no on my skin.. it generally goes all powdery/funky/cloyingly sweet. But not this time! Actually I probably wouldn't have noticed that there's honey in this blend if I didn't see it as a listed note. Now that I know it's there, then yeah - I can smell it, but perhaps because it's a mix of eight different honeys I'm getting a very different result from the usual BPAL honey note. The pomegranate is clean and fresh and sweet - nice and red. The apple is also red, I think (rather than green) and that too is fresh and clean. The hyssop is providing nice balance to that fruity sweetness, its gentle smokiness is present but not overwhelming. Overall this is fruity without being too fruity - it's soft and gentle, very pretty. This is a lovely blend and I'm glad I got to tr it.

Thanks to Dark Alice for sharing a tester of this with me!! The only other one of this round of Champagne blends I've tried so far is Champagne and Opium, which had a really strong champagne note.. and champagne typically delivers a sour, dry, alcoholic hairspray-like smell on my skin. So when I went to try this Party Hats one, I expected the same thing to happen.. but it didn't!! There's definitely a cake lurking in this one.. but where others have said white cake, I'm saying chocolate cake - yep, there's something almost chocolate-y in here. I mean it's not a chocolate blend as such, but it has a chocolate-ish smell to my nose. And creamy icing, like buttercream.. there's a sweetness but it's not overly foody in feel, which I guess is because the champagne is cutting through the cake smell. The champagne is there, but it's very soft and sweet rather than dry and sour as it usually is. So for me, this is a surprise hit!

I need to preface this review by stating up front that champagne usually does not play nice on my skin (it often produces a bitter, sour, nasty hairspray-like smell).. but I had to give this one a try, because I do love me some opium!! So when first applied, yep - there's the champagne. And yep - it's strong, and very boozy, and not playing nice on my skin as usual. Checking again 10 minutes later and the champagne is still sharp and dominant, but I can smell the lovely sweet smokiness of the opium breaking through. This reaches its best point for me after it's been on for 20 minutes - now the champagne has dried off a lot.. it's still there, and it's still got that boozy/fizzy dry/sharp top note, but the opium has now come to the fore. And it's exactly the opium that I love - soft, sensuous, smokey and slightly sweet. The longer I leave it on, the less noticeable the champagne is, which is exactly what I was hoping for. I agree with the breakdown VioletChaos mentioned - it's about 60/40 in favour of the opium. Like others have mentioned, perhaps the champagne note will lessen its intensity after a bit of aging. So I'm putting this aside for a while and will re-test in a month or two.. right now, the pong of the champagne is a bit too much for me but ohhhhh the opium is too lovely for me to give up on it completely just yet

So as a hard core Snake Oil fan, it was kind of a no-brainer that I was going to love this In the spray bottle, it's a caramel colour - it looks just like Snake Oil but the consistency is far more liquid. When I first spritzed it on my arm, the waft of alcohol was strong and a bit sharp - I could smell the SO, but the waft of alcohol was a bit overwhelming. It took about 10 minutes for that to disappear, it gradually got less and less alcohol-smelly until eventually it was completely gone and now I can't smell any alcohol note in there at all. Now what I have on my arm is the Snake Oil smell that I know and love. It's not as intense as a slather of the actual oil would be - it's a bit more soft and mellow, but definitely the same fragrance. I'm finding that the muskiness and spices are more dominant in this spray version, where the vanilla is a major player on my skin with the oil, so that's probably the only real difference I can tell apart from the spray being more soft/mellow as I mentioned before. I think the advantage of the spray over the oil is that it allows me to spritz a mist of it over more skin area rather than having to do the dab-dab thing in various places. I just did a spritz in the air and walked through it, so it's landed in my hair and on my shoulders, arms and chest which leaves me walking around in a little cloud of delicious Snake Oil fragrance! And bonus.. what didn't land on me has gone on to the floor so that my loungeroom also smells of Snake Oil If you love Snake Oil, I would highly recommend you try to track this one down - it's definitely worth a try. And if you're one of those people who find Snake Oil a bit overwhelming, this spray might suit you better as it's less intense. I love it, and would definitely buy some if it ever becomes available

2007 version Well.. usually any mention of rose in a BPAL means certain doom for me. Usually rose amps badly on my skin, to the point of domination over other notes, or if it doesn't do that then it goes all old-lady-potpourri on me. The Peacock Queen is lovely though - it's a real rose, just like a velvety red rose in the garden. It's quite soft, but still very rose-y. This is exactly the rose smell that I do love - I've always said that I love the smell of roses in the garden but not in my perfumes. This isn't enough to make me change my mind about rose - I've had enough bad experiences to know that wouldn't be smart - but I must say this blend really is quite beautiful.

2008 version I don't like these 'ice' blends much generally.. they're just not my thing. This one is cold - in the same way that I find Snow, Glass, Apples to be cold - and it has quite a bitter/sharp tone to it (quite ozone-y) for the first hour or so. Eventually that dies down and leaves behind a cool, minty fragrance. I can see the attraction here - if you love those cold, desolate blends that BPAL do so well then this is a definite must-try

This is a fresh, sweet and fruity scent - it does have a 'wet' feel too. Thankfully I'm not getting any pitch-stench or fungal lichens.. but I have no idea where the black incense is hiding.. there's nothing black in here at all for me although there is something lurking behind the sweetness! I'm thinking this has grapefruit in it, and some apple. Possibly a little bit of lemon or lime, and there's a slight saltiness to it. Surprisingly pretty - if you love sugary citrus blends, definitely give this one a try

I really had very few expectations for this one - I wasn't quite sure how it was going to smell! I get the beeswax, which is quite soft and ever-so-slightly sweet, and the woods which are really gorgeous. There seems to be a lot going on in here - there's a touch of saltiness, and something very golden, but most of all it's the beeswax and warm woods that are winning here.. together they're just lovely. This blend reminds me a little bit of Wezweenie/Hold from the Salons - it's much less rich than W/H, but it has the same kind of feel to it. I also love the way that it's settled in to my skin - it's not on my skin, it's in it - like it's my skin but better smelling. I won't be surprised if this becomes one of the big hits from the 2010 Yules - it has a lovely complexity without being too fussy, and a gorgeous warmth that's very comforting.

Mmm.. this is a pretty one! The vanilla is soft but not overly sweet, and the orange blossom is gorgeous - subtle, but definitely there. I can smell the carnation - it's warm and slightly peppery, but the most dominant note for me is the white sandalwood. There's something very berry-like in here, which may be from the red tea, and also a slight herbal quality which is probably the mate. Overall, this is a lovely scent which has a kind of 'feel good' quality to it - warm and kind of sunny.

Wow.. this is just gorgeous! It never snows where I live, so I haven't really gotten into many of BPAL's 'snow' blends but I thought I'd give this one a try. So glad I did! When first applied it had a slightly sharp or medicinal note that reminded me a bit of Tulzcha, but that very quickly disappeared. There's a beautiful softness about Winter-Time - it smells clean and fresh, but also slighty sweet and ethereal. It would be interesting to know what's actually gone into this blend - I suspect there's a light touch of vanilla, and something green-ish, but it's hard to pinpoint things because the overall smell is so smooth. If I take a big deep sniff, I can detect something slightly mentholated right at the bottom - not eucalyptus, not pine, and not mint.. just that menthol kind of smell. But that just adds an interesting dimension to the scent, rather than taking it over. I'm not sure how much I'd actually wear this.. as lovely as it is, it's one of those very close-to-the-skin blends and I like my perfumes to have a bit more oomph.. but it sure is pretty.

2010 version I had to try this, it's really one of those legendary BPALs and I had never sampled any of the blends from previous years so this was my chance! What I'm getting is a dry, dusky sort of incense blend. I think there's some dark rose in here.. not fresh/live rose but more the smell of rose petals that have been dried. There's also a slightly sweet, slightly waxy/woody thing going on in the background. It does evoke images of old empty churches. It's not unpleasant, but it's not particularly swoon-worthy either - it's a nice blend, but I have other incense-y BPALs that I much prefer.

2010 version Wait.. what's this.. florals? Yes, yes it is! What's going on?!? If I didn't know this was supposed to be dust, wood and musks, I would have said it has jasmine, orchid and hyacinth. Seriously! So I have to say.. The Rat King is a huge disappointment, given that I really don't dig floral blends. Having said that, it's actually quite a nice smell.. soft, flowery, slightly sweet... but that's not what I wanted! Poop, I say. POOP!

Yeah.. I agree with previous reviewers - there's just too much going on in here. The fruits are all mashed together in a way that produces a slightly bitter, unpleasant smell that's a bit too strong for my liking, and I can't separate them at all except that the red currant is doing a cat pee thing and the lemon peel is sharp. The cedar is lurking around, adding a touch of strange dullness. And the herbal fragrance from the balsam just seems to be misplaced. I can barely detect the French vanilla - it's there, but sooooo faint - which is a shame, because I think that vanilla could have saved the fruit mush from being too bitter. Overall, this is a big no for me. It definitely had potential, but I think the mix of fruits in this particular blend is just off-key somehow and it's just not working.

This is extremely pretty, and very winter-y.. as you would expect. It does have a light, 'dancing' quality to it - quite soft and graceful - but it has surprising depth to the fragrance as well. As others have mentioned, this reminds me very much of Snowblind and Snow White. So I actually layered those two on one arm, and applied Waltz on the other, and yep - this is *just* like a mix of Snowblind + Snow White. There is a slightly mint element, but it's more the bracing winter-y freshness of the fir needle rather than straight-up mint. The vanilla is soft and musk rather than candy-sweet, and the snow is fresh but not sharp. The pine bark is providing the depth that I mentioned earlier - it's present, but not obvious. For me, I'm happy with my beloved Snow White and won't need a bottle of The Waltz - there's not enough of a difference between the two on my skin and I'm not loving the pine note in here all that much. But if you're one of those people who found Snow White to be too floral/sweet or if you get the dreaded 'plastic' smell from SW then I'd recommend trying The Waltz. A lovely, lovely scent indeed - beautifully done.

I'm also getting a sort of aquatic/ozone thing here! That's not what I was expecting, but maybe the water content of the fog is higher than I thought it would be I was hoping for warm, old wood.. and something a bit smoky.. but instead I have something that's quite clean and fresh. It's not horrible or anything, but it's kinda un-interesting on my skin.

Ooh.. interesting! When first applied, I got a blast of cologne-like fragrance but with a slightly sweet and almost fruity top note. That soon passed, and the dark sinister side of Scrooge came out as soon as it started drying down The leather here is fresh and a bit sharp - that smell of a leather shop. The tonka bean sits atop the pepper and cumin and vetiver so that none of those come out too strong.. I can smell them, they're definitely there, but no one note dominates. I'm not sure where the oakmoss has gone - there is a slight fresh/greenness here, so maybe that's it. The leather does soften up a bit after it's been on my skin for a while - that 'new leather' smell has gone, it's warmed in nicely and lost that fresh/sharp edge. I think this one would have been right at home amongst the VILF blends - it has that same sort of sinister quality with a sexy edge. If you're scared of vetiver - don't be.. it isn't nasty here at all. And cumin haters can also relax.. it's not dominant here. I think this will age nicely, and it definitely suits its namesake!

Phew! So glad I don't love this one, now that it's discontinued!! Mr Fezziwig starts off all mince pie.. quite spicy, slightly sweet.. and a hint of beer. So I leave it to dry down for 10 minutes, lean in for another sniff.. and where'd it go?? It's almost completely disappeared!!! What's left on my skin now is a faint smell of beer and mince pie. Just a vague kind of spicey foodiness. I'm going to pass my decant on, because clearly there's no ball to be had on my skin - Mr. Fezziwig apparently left early.

On my skin, this isn't as smoky as I was hoping it would be.. mostly I can smell the sherry and something vaguely pastry/cake-ish. When I first applied it, I could smell a really sweet fruit - almost a bubblegum - which turned into more of a sweet apricot-like smell and eventually dried down into the sherry smell. There's really nothing remarkable about this one for me - it's nice, but not really nice. I have other 'hearth' type BPALs that I like better.. and the fruit in here is just too strong in the blend, if it had more of the smoke/wood aspect I'd be happier but alas.. nope.

I was curious about this one, and ordered a decant - I'm glad I did! As it turns out, it's not at all like I was expecting.. I had in mind a dark, dusty, slightly sinister smell.. probably more for the name of the blend rather than the notes. So what a surprise - on me, this feels very warm and sort of golden/glowy - not dark and deathly at all. The frankincense here is beautiful, smooth and slightly sweet, and as others have mentioned the black cedar is really lovely - it still has that 'wood' feel to it, but it's not doing the soggy sawdust thing that regular cedar sometimes does. Strangely enough, I'm getting a slight plum tinge to the fragrance.. almost Hellion-like - weird, since I don't think there's any fruit in here!! I'm not sure where the dust comes into play.. usually when dust is a listed note, I can smell.. well.. dust. Perhaps that's what is giving the blend a light and airy feel - again, a surprise since I expected dark and heavy. It is resinous in feel, but not in a heavy way. Overall, this is a really lovely scent and judging by the low number of reviews perhaps it wasn't one of the more popular blends in this year's Yules? I wouldn't be at all surprised if this turns out to be a sleeper hit - one that people end up looking for later - it will almost certainly age nicely, and it's one of those 'every day' blends that I could wear regularly when I just want something warm and comforting that gives me the nice incense smell without being too heavy.

Wow.. this is SPICY when it first goes on! Spicy in a boozy Christmas pudding kind of way. Into the dry-down, I can smell the fig but it's not coming out sweet and rich as it usually does for me (in things like Miller vs California) - the spices are still dominant and they're covering the fig. Once it fully dries, the spices mellow out a bit and everything turns into a slightly incense-y smell but still retaining the pudding element. At this point it's reminding me of Bread & Butterfly. Unfortunately this holds a slightly bitter/burnt smell on my skin which makes it a bit unpleasant. It's just not working for me, I'm left with a burnt spice kind of smell that's quite faint but strangely pungent.

This is one of my all-time-favourite BPTP sprays, and I must say I'm surprised it doesn't get more love!! Out of all my atmo sprays (and I have quite a few of them), this is the one that people comment on most favourably when they visit. I get pretty much the notes as listed.. the wood is dark and warm, the herbs are mysterious and dark - adding a 'fresh' feel to the fragrance, the olibanum gives a slightly smoky sweet edge, the sarsparilla adds just a touch of earthy sweetness and the bay rum is simply divine.. not boozy as such, just kinda.. err.. sexy but in a snuggly and cosy way. I could have sworn there's a touch of leather in it, but I see there's no mention of that in the notes so it must be just my imagination. With this one, I only need to do a little spritz and it lingers for ages, not in a way that makes you go "eewww something smells in here" but in a way that makes you go "oohhhhhhh what's that gorgeous smell". It's not overpowering, it's actually quite clean and refreshing. It's also divine as a bed spray - I've taken to spritzing my pillows with it at nighttime If you enjoy the more 'dark' BPTP atmos like Mahogany Hall, Bah! Humbug, and even the Thriambus or Lair of Nefarious Misdeeds sprays, then I think you'll like this. I don't like it, I freakin' LOVE it