tielan

Has anyone ever had trouble travelling with BPAL in their luggage? I'm planning to come back from my trip to the US with lots of the lovely in my baggage, all padding-wrapped, and I'm just wondering what baggage check are going to think when they x-ray it and discover all these little bottles...

Chaos Theory V - Snake Oil - DL This was confusing the heck out of me until it hit me like a bottle of soft drink: this smells like Dr. Pepper! In the bottle, there's aniseed, some kind of fruit (almost verging on the tropical - like one of those tropical juice mixes), with a dash of something stringent lurking beneath. Hm. At least one of the fruits is cherry - the tropical garnish kind, not the rich black cherry to eat with whipped cream and chocolate cake - but overall, this one really really smells like Dr. Pepper. Of course, in supreme irony, the Dr. Pepper burns away after fifteen minutes to leave...Snake Oil with a whiff of cherry-and-herbs. I must remember to compare this with the regular Snake Oil.

Got a bottle of this today! It smelled faintly pine in the bottle, went cinnamon and gingerbread wet, then pear and spices in the drydown, and is now smelling like a kitchen in which gingerbread was cooked (and eaten) several hours ago, with the balcony windows open and the scent of fresh-chopped pine boughs over it all. Definitely intriguing, although it seems to burn off really fast. I'll have to try this solo next time. (I've got Egg Nog Latte on my other wrist, and the coffee is amping all over my skin.) eta: and now it's gone back to pear and spices! *shakes head* Seriously chameleon!

The scent of sexual obsession, slavery to sensual pleasure, and the undercurrent of innocence defiled utterly. Amber and honey with a touch of vanilla. O is what turned me to the vanilla side of the force. I purchased a bottle of aged O, curious about the obsession that so many people seemed to have for it, and opened it up with a little trepidation. Would O work its magic on me? One sniff, and I was lost. It sashayed up to me with the rich overtones of vanilla and honey, oozing sensuous amber undertones, and seduced my scent preferences. I used to like the rich floral scents; now, I'm all over anything with honey, vanilla, and caramel. And I blame O! It even likes my skin! I put some on for my mother's birthday dinner last night, and this morning when I woke up, it was still there! O for the staying power! (Someday, the lab is going to put out a vanilla-honey-caramel-dark red rose scent and I will buy bottles by the bucketload. Until then, there's O.)

CIX: Snake Oil base, on top of which I got honey or skin musk while wet, with something delicately leafy and green in the drydown stages to finish at a pleasant plummy fruitiness that hasn't gone bad on my skin. Hooray for fruit that doesn't go overripe! It reminds me of one of the Odes - Makhanitis. CXLVII: Snake Oil Base. This one's a chameleon. I picked up ambrette, tonka bean, and champaca in the wet stages, with sandalwood in the drydown - red, I think, but it's hard to tell. Still, even the sandalwood vanishes when dry, and what's left is the ambrette and champaca. A very delicate scent and quite lovely, not one for me.

ACK. On Sunday night, I did my first big slather instead of the delicate application of imps, as I've previously been doing. The oil was Fire Pig - a lovely fiery scent, rich and bright. Except that on Monday, my inner wrists were red and itchy. Scratching them brought out white hive-y looking lumps. I applied sorbolene, cooled them on damp paper towels and didn't apply any BPAL. They'd faded by Monday night. Tuesday night, I tried a dab of 'Pepper' on the back of my wrists. This morning, the backs of my wrists are a flaming red. *sigh* I'm beginning to think it's the curse of BPAL. The lovely bright scents that I love the most (and which last the longest) are the ones that wreck my skin. Actually, perfume oils as a general rule tend to dry my skin out unless I moisturise carefully. But that's manageable. I was okay until I slathered. Then it all went pear-shaped...

Belated, but thanks for the update! All of those are in the spreadsheet I link in my sig.

I'm not sure why I purchased this - possibly because I hadn't yet learned that woody scents don't do so well on me? Anyway - the review: Sandalwood and Cedar duke it out for dominance on my skin! Who shall be the winner? Cedar deals Sandalwood a right hook to the jaw in the wet stages - hard like grandmother's furniture and with the same slightly musty smell, but Sandalwood shakes it off with a one-two to the torso! This is one sly note in the nose! He might not come on strong at the start, but he knows how to bring a good finish. Back and forth! Uppercuts and jabs! Oh! It looks like Cedar's folded in the drydown stages - and Sandalwood's gotten another solid hit in! It looks like Cedar just doesn't have the staying power! He's down for the count! Sandalwood wins! (Pity I don't much like sandalwood...) This one's going in the sale pile, I believe...

Bottle: roses, roses, roses - is there actual leather in this, because I'm not getting any! Wet: More roses - the rich, dark red kind, mysterious and fragrant. Still no clear sign of the leather, although I suspect the heaviness of the rose scent is because the leather is giving it oomph. Dry-down: still mostly roses, although the leather is beginning to come through. Dry: now we've got the leather, lightly overlaid by roses. I'm not sure about this one - the roses are gorgeous, and I'm all for non-powdery roses, plus the scent has a very 'heavy, dark' feel to it - I'm just not sure that I'll use it that often. It's a dating/seducing kind of scent IMO.

I thought it smelled chemical in the imp - sort of pine, although not quite. Must have been the benzoin. I wasn't going to try it at all, to tell you the truth. The smell completely put me off - pine and a hint of cleaning fluid? Ick! As fate would have it, while opening the imp, I got a smear on my thumb. Never being one to waste oils, I spread it over the back of my wrist (the front still having the last, lingering candy-drift of Jailbait on it). Wet, it's...weird. Benzoin still, and...other things. And then in the drydown... ROSES. OMG. ROSES LIKE I NEVER EVER GET THEM. NO POWDER AT ALL AND NO OTHER SCENTS LAYERING IT. MUST. HAVE. BOTTLE. *ahem* Ten minutes later, there's a fruity note in there, too. I can't tell what, but I'm willing to go with plummy, as others have said. It's still sweet on my skin, and quite strong. This one is definitely a morpher, and if people are hesitating over trying it because of the smell from the vial, then try it anyway. But for a smear of oil on my thumb, I wouldn't be hankering after this stuff. Because OMG ROSES.

I'm on the 'soapy cola' side of dry, too. Although the imp itself started off like dishwashing detergent...then the incense suddenly presented itself...then vanished again. Now that it's dry on me, it's pure detergent. Strong detergent, too! Eek! Looks like this one is going in the swaps/sells/gifts pile for me!

I tried this today. In the bottle, it was divine: amber, spicy, dark, rich and full of flavour. Wet, it's got a strong amber scent to begin with, but goes honey in the dry-down with a faint musk and light powder close, before fading to a general powdery scent. I might have to pass on this one as a perfume. Oil burner is a possibility, although I don't know. When I dabbed a bit on a tissue, it promptly went to babypowder - honey babypowder, but babypowder all the same. It's so lovely in the bottle, though! Oh well, my Switch Witch wants for some Jacob's Ladder. Looks like she'll be getting some!