inkaddict

This is gorgeous Templum Victoriae does indeed smell like a temple to me, specifically like church on Palm Sunday: beeswax candels, wooden benches, olive branches and wafts of incense. This is what I wanted to get from Midnight Mass or Cathedral instead of all incense all the time. It's a wonderful bedtime scent for me -golden, soft and well-loved. Just a spritz on the pillow and I'm drifting off with a smile on my face. And boy does this have staying power! I used it yesterday before bed and I can still smell it tonight. I'd buy a big bottle in an instant. Scratch that, I'd *hoard* a disgusting number of bottles if they were ever made available.

...I couldn't say it better than Gin did. Only, I'm left with patchouli and generic spices, giving this the dreaded autumnal pot-pourri feeling. No second date for us.

Clean and spicy, for the first few minutes this was a wonderful scent. I didn't get the bergamot or leather but the tea, jasmin and ginger played well toghether, making Mulan a very getle spicy floral. Unfortunately it turned soapy on the drydown, a very good soap but soap nonetheless, and honestly this was a bit too clean and gentle to be a very "me" blend anyway. Mulan was going to the swap pile but my mother snagged it before I could even add it to the swap page It's the first bpal that she's loved enough to actually ask if she could have it, and on her it's much less soapy. She said it made her feel clean and fresh and pampered, like she'd just showered.

I had such high hopes for Tomoe Gozen, but to my nose this is way too sweet. At first sniff this was all tart, yummy berries, but the moment it touched my skin the honey jumped out and turned the wonderful berries into...berry bubblegum. Honey covered bubblegum. I suspect the amber made things worse, but the usual powdery feeling I get from amber was lost in the sticky, cavity inducing sweetness. Zob. Off to swaps.

I usually amp booze, but if it's in the background it should work...to be honest you had me at "tweed" scent ...and now this moon (Falling Leaf! Sometimes it feels like they can read minds at the lab) will have a couple of imps to keep her compay on the long journay to Italy!

Oh, thank you so much for the links! I love the idea of a "tweed" acent, all warm and cuddly. I'm a bit worried about the booze, is it strong in Perversion or just in the background? I forgot about the Buggre Alle Bible, that one has been in my to-try list for a bit. Maybe it's time to find a decant

Until two days ago it was ridiculously hot here (over 30, and usually in Turin you can smell Autumn in the air in the second half of August) but now it's cooler and breezy so I've taken out my Chant D'Automne to celebrate. Layered with a tiny bit of apple oil it was pure Other fall favs are Fearful Pleasure (my first BPAL bottle! *cuddles*), Mama-Ji, and Morgause -and I can't wait for my bottle of Lambs Wool and my decant of Shattered Pumpkin to arrive. L'Autunno was a spicy candle fail on me (I'm starting to think I amp patchouli, see the epic Mme Moriarty fail. Not even ageing helped) which makes me a bit worried about Samhain, but I heard so much about it that I had to order a decant. I'd like to try some more autumn scents -something a bit different from my usual apple+smoke combo/spicy scents- I was tinking something with soil or leaves. An outdoorsy scent. Or maybe a warm library scent? I have Dee, and I like it, but it's a bit too sweet for my taste. Any suggestions?

Ever since discovering BPAL the idea of a bonfire scent fascinated me, so I started stalking the recs thread and the sales page in hope of finding the perfect one. Bonfire Night seemed like the most promising (back before I accepted that my skin will turn caramel and normal sugar into cloying burnt sugar, so treacle & co are out of the question) but I could't find even a tiny partial and had almost given up when I stumbled acoss a bottle of the spray at a reasonable price and went for it because, really, for all I love them smoke and fires are more something that I like to smell than something that I want to smell like. Boy, am I glad that I took this leap! My first experiance with the Lab's spary was a complete success This is the most yummy smoke, sweet but not heavily foody, and mostly it makes me think of a beautiful forest, the kind with centiries old trees that make you feel really small and part of something much bigger than yourself at the same time. Great staying power, and none of that obnoxious "I just covered the stale cigarette smoke and the ferret smell with with a thon of air freshener! Doesn't my house smell good???" feeling I usually get from these spays. I Bpal, I do.

This is absolutely perfect, hands down the best pomander inspired spray I've ever tried -and I've tried a lot, I've been in love with pomanders since I was a kid Drying orange spiked with cloves, put in a bowl and covered with powdered cinnamon and a touch of ginger to help it dry. Trips down memory lane aside I just adore this smell; why, oh why can't I find an orange scent this good in perfume form? I've managed to get my grabby hands on two botlles (and a decant ) of this wonderful Goblin, one for me and one for my mother who loves it as much as I do, and for the first time since getting into BPAL I can understand exactly what other forumites mean when they say they don't want to be without a certain scent *ever*.

I love the idea of a bonfire scent and bay rum+frankincense+rose= me floating on a happy smoke cloud, should everything work as I hope. Only, vetiver and rose? Doom potential (oh pleaseplease let this rose behave on me, pretty please!). Decant: Yessss, no death by vetiver! The smoke is sweet and spicy, but still clearly fire smoke, not incense. On skin: Wet this is very spicy, and the vetivet lifts his head up for a few seconds, then goes back behind a curtain of smoke. It sweetens again as it dries and the rose comes out to play (and behaves! Huzza!), almost a dried rose...dried rose petals tossed on the fire? I have the Bonfire Night atmospheric spray and while I love it I'm glad I couldn't find it in perfume form since the tracle makes it much too sweet and rich for me to wear, but this is perfect. It doesn't exactly make me think of a live bonfire right in front of me, more like smelling the smoke in the distance...

The lab's honey mixed with flowers and/or herbs is one of my fav combinations, so I couldn't pass this up, but Litha has so many notes -and some of them are possible notes of doom: gardenia (perfumey doom but I love, love, love this flower ), chamomile, parsley- that I decided to try a decant before risking a bottle. Decant: Woot, it's my kind of honey! It feels close to the one in my beloved Flower Moon, not cloying like the one in O. Beneath that I can smell parsley, and soft greenery. On skin: Keeping in mind that I amp sweet notes a bit this is a wonderful fresh honey scent. There's def. parsley, honeysuckle and...other green things. My nose's not good enough to pick them up underneath the yummy honey. Maybe a bit of gardenia, adding to the sweetness? Litha is a soft, golden scent with a herbal background that is not at ll sharp or medicinal, it just gives you the feeling of open spaces and living things. Don't ask me why but this sort of makes me think of a group of ladies from the Renaissance in their wonderful dresses eating lots of sticky honey pastries under the trees, listening to a ministrel and daydreaming

CCXCVI (Um. Maybe )- Dorian I'm not a big fan of Dorian -too sweet & vanillay for my taste- but this was described as "Dorian in Italy" (tomato vines, citrus leaves, orange blossoms) and I couldn't resist. In the bottle the vines are prominent, with a sweet citrus background. On the skin: NonNomNom! Dorian in Italy indeed. I'd go even further and say this lucky little Chaos landed in Sicily around the beginning of may He rented a house in the country and spends the days lazying in the garden eating vanilla icecream, and sometimes he closes his eyes and smiles as the breezes bring the spicy smell of ripe tomatoes from the neighbour's garden, whiffs of the first lemon blossoms buried in their shiny green leaves form an orchard down the road, the fresh salt of the sea twinkling in the distance. The vanilla is very quiet and understated, just a cremy sweetness to keep the scent together. It has a definite spring feeling, gentle green and spicy trapped between the blue of sky and sea, and none of the scorched heath of Sicily's summers. Know'st thou the land where lemon trees bloom? And oranges like gold in leafy gloom; A gentle wind from deep blue heaven blows, The myrtle thick, and high the laurel grows?

No number? I'm kind of disappointed because so far I've loved the lab honey note, but this is a different honey -heavier and cloying. It's floral, but while I was hoping for something similar to flower moon the honey here just eats the flowers and leaves behind a sticky foody mess After a (long) while the sweetness fades a bit, but this is still not a scent for me.

The first few times I tried this I was disappointed: to my nose it was a strange thin blend, with the gardenia on the wrong edge of perfumey, amped rice paper (the culprit for the "thin" feeling, I suspect) that hid the (wonderful, yay a sweet note that works on me!) honey. Off it went to the sell box where it was still sitting last week, when I dug it out to try it again on a whim. And WOW age did wonders for this scent! The honey is much more prominent now, the perfumey edge mellowed and there's an almost perfect sweet gardenia wafting from my wrists. Well, a golden gardenia if there were such a thing... I used to go on holidays on Lago Maggiore when I was little, and there were gardenias hedges there. Hundreds of gardenias blooming under our windows, the scent getting stronger with sunset, and stronger yet as the night deepened...that's the scent. It was a clean, pretty thing before, but now it's heavy, humid, heady and almost overwhelming sweet, the rice paper is just a murmur in the background now. Floral lovers only, I'd say.

At first I was going to pass over this moon because my experiences with strawberry scents had all been of the cavity-inducing-chemical-candy kind, but the more I looked at the notes the better it sounded as a summer blend and in the end I took a gamble and ordered a bottle. I'm glad to say it paid off: I find Strawberry Moon a bit too sweet in the bottle -kinda like a bowl of sugared strawberries with something almost boozy...alchermes? Not the fake bleargh sweetness anyway- but on my skin the sap comes out more and this turns into a perfect outdoor scent, all grass, a touch of pungent sap and the strawberries in the background. It's laying in the garden under the sun, half asleep, the above mentioned bowl of srawberries waiting on a table nearby, their sweetness carried by the breeze so that it's there one moment and the next all you can smell is warm grass.

White chocolate and sugared violets. Ugh. with this update I discovered that chocolate and I do not mix. This is even worse: white chocolate to my nose translates to foody chocolaty death + the sickening burnt rubber smell I seem to always get from cream/sugar. The violets don't even bother to say hi before running away screaming. I had high hopes for this and Faith (which is much better, due to the lack of chocolate, but still too heavy and creamy) but...total failure!

... Flower Moon embodies the unrestrained bliss, energy and color of the season: a bouquet of vivid, sexy blooms, coated in thick, golden honey... wisteria, swamp jasmine, honeysuckle, daffodil, rhododendron, phlox, and a mix of California wildflowers. In the Bottle: Honey, flowers, a hint of spiciness. Not bad, but not really exiciting either. Wet: As soon as it touches my skin the flowers start to bloom. The honey is clean, light and pale. Excellent throw, too.Now that daffodil and honeysuckle peek out from behind the jasmin Flower Moon makes me think of a pool of pale golden honey, hundreds of flowers dotting its surface. Dry: This scent keeps evolving, growing. Perfect for sping, really.There's wisteria now, wildflowers and the honey is different too, it reminds me of a milk&honey candy I used to love as a child. No trace of the dreaded soapyness, pot-pourri, or old ladies in there: it's vibrant and alive, it's sipping herbal tea with honey one morning, looking out of the window and smiling at the first flowers in the garden. Verdict: I love sweet flowers, but I've discovered that most sweet notes -cream, caramel, most sugars with the exception of cotton candy- tend to either be cloying or turn to burnt rubber on me. Or both. Pherhaps honey is the answer? It worked well in Tissue too. And I'm squeeng because I can easily pick out daffodil, one of my fav flowers and one that -like calycanthus- it's underused in perfumes.

In the imp: spicy sweet resins. Wet: Rich and incensy, but with something almost...alive? It's difficult to explain. It doesn't smell like something that comes out of a bottle, it's like finding yourself in the middle of an ancient ritual: smoke and incense, golden masks gleaming in the candlelight. A deep, mysterious scent. Dry: Incense and powder No more mysterious temple, this now smells like an old shop full of rubbish nobody's bothered to dust in a long while. To be fair amber amber on me almost always turns into nondescript old things. Verdict: I love it for the first ten minutes or so, but I don't want to smell like a dusty attic. Mep.

Frimp from a forumite. In the imp: sweet, bright, green. Wet: Wow! Sweet (a tad too sweet, perhaps?) berries with a lush, deep, wet green background. Like a bush full of ripe berries. Dry: Stong, with good throw. The berries settle down a bit and I can smell the cardamom, it's just perfect! It lasts a good while too, which is unusual since my skin seems to eat oils. After a couple of hours something a bit powdery comes out, I guess it's the amber in SO. It's pleasant though, you can still smell the berries and spices. Warm and soft. Verdict: Repeat after me: I don't need a bottle, I don't need a bottle...who am I kidding, I do!

In the bottle: Too sweet. Cough syrup indeed. Wet: Still too sweet, the orange seems a bit "fake", more like orange candy than sugared orange. Meh. Dry: Much better! Still sweet orange, but more natural and subdued. The pepper comes out and gives it a bit of a kick. It's still very much an orange candy scent, but not cloying or syrup-like. Verdict: I'll keep my partial, but I won't be looking for more. With more pepper and less sweetness it could have been love.

Thanks for all the recs So many rose scents that I hadn't thought of, like Jezebel and White Rose. Moon rose has been on my wish list for a while, but I was afraid of the evil greenery, and the same goes for The Rose. I'll give them a try. Ooops! I checked, and luckily I have the right twin on order

I've been on a quest to find a bpal rose I can wear, and I've finally hit jackpot with Peacock Queen. Other blends that I've tried are: 2,5,7: sharp and green, almost no rose at all Rose Red: just like 2,5,7 -just worse. The best description would be "thorny". Zombi: all dirt, no rose Helena: soapy, no rose Hymn: soapy&sharp Silentium Amoris: not bad, but not much rose that my nose can detect Bess: the roses worked, the grape spirit not so much Apparently my skin either makes the rose disappear or turns it into a sharp green monster -especially if there's even the tiniest bit of greenery in the blend Any suggestions for other rose scents that may work? I'm waiting for Faith (hoping that the sugar will make the rose bahave) and london (no greenery for me to amp hopefully, and I love tea rose).

I included this in my first bpal order back in November, then evil customs blocked the package and it was finally delivered yesterday, with sping already knocking at the door. One sniff of this and I'm back in autumn: wet soil, dried leaves, a touch of sweet smoke from my father's pipe. Everything's still, waiting for the first snow. In the bottle: Sweet. Not at all what I was expecting, I guess it's the nicotiana. Wet: Oh, wow! Leaves and soil! Nothing sharp to my nose, it's a lush, deep, wet scent. Humid. There's a faint cologney smell when I first put it on, but it's the best cologne ever so I don't mind Dry: A little spicey, no more cologne, still deep, brooding, humid. I wouldn't mind a touch more of smoke (apple and smoke are what autumn smells like to me, and it's my favourite season) but I like this. A lot. That's how I want my forest scents to smell like: no pine, no sharp greenery. Dark and mysterious and still. Notes: For the first time ever my mother nailed the concept behind a bpal bland without suggestions or prompts. "It's the first snow. No, it's waiting for the first snow". Verdict: Def. a keeper, probably worth a back-up.

2007 Version In the bottle: Rose -pure, rich, smooth rose. Wet: Yes! It stays true! A tiny bit sharp, but it looks promising. Dry: Verdict: The first BPAL rose I've tried that my skin doesn't eat nor transform into a sharp, green thorny monster. It's perfect and regal. So glad I got a bottle even if I had to wait 4(!) months befor customs released my package this was completely worth it! *cuddles her precious cobalt bottle*

2008 version In the imp: cool and green. Refrigerated flowers indeed. Wet: SharpsharpGREENsharp. There could be a faint smell of rosebuds hiding behind the greenery, but a moment it's there and the next it's not. This is going the same way of 2,5,7. Only stronger. Dry: Sharp, cool, green, thorny. Like somebody tore all the petals out and I'm left with a scary bouquet of frozen rose stems. Verdict: Really glad I only bought half a imp of this. I had hopes for Rose Red since so many people love it, but I've learned my lesson: every rose that's "freshly cut", "with a bit of green" or "true rose" turns into an unpleasant sharp smell the moment it touches my skin. Only greenery with absolutely no rose that my nose can pick out. Sob.