binkin

In the bottle, this smells sharp and sweet and apple-y. On my skin, it goes through a boozy phase, and then it just starts to smell like Suave apple shampoo. I'm starting to think that apple just isn't something that works on me

2009: Hm. Jasmine is one of my Notes of Doom, and I don't get jasmine at all from this. Instead I get an incensey, complex floral with cocoa and tobacco. Definitely tobacco. It's the most perfumey BPAL I've ever loved, and all I have is decant remnants, so I think I'll be trying to swap for a full bottle. While some of the other Halloweenies smell to me more like they would make great room scents, this is definitely a body/hair scent to me, and it's evocative of its name somehow. Not a very helpful review, but I'll wear it again and give better details later.

Hm. My impression of this, out of the imp, was something soapy, like hotel soap. Floral, maybe a little herbal, and it is well known that my allergic nose doesn't tolerate those types of scents well. Unfortunately I didn't detect anything else, so I didn't give it a skin test. Now I'm wondering if my sniffer's broken!

Pink Kitty smells, to me, like boozy sticky sweet candy. Strawberry flavored candy. It doesn't smell like gin so much as it does like... well, like making out with someone who's been drinking. Ahem. That may sound kind of horrifying, but I like it. It goes on strong and STAYS THAT WAY. I could still smell it the next day, and even a little bit the day after that. It stays pretty true the whole time; sugar and fruit and a liiiiitle alcoholic. I keep wanting to wear it again but it's so strong I keep putting it off. I think I'd like this best as a shampoo or body wash fragrance rather than as a perfume. 3.5/5 stars, here.

I wish I could give a more coherent review but this just smells like heaven to me. Plus I adore the name (maiden name + Arthuriana/Scotland = yay!). This is one of my top 10 and was from the second I opened the imp. It has amazing staying power on me and I don't have much to add to anyone else's review except it's like lightly floral vanilla amber ocean love. To me it's really evocative of the place it's named for.

I don't know if it's the musk or the sage or what, but this is SPECTACULAR. I got a decant yesterday, slapped it on, and went out of town for the day and I kept catching whiffs of myself and thinking "what smells so FABULOUS?" I described it to a friend as smelling the way I want my BPAL box to smell; it smells like a box full of precious resins or something similar to that. It stays pretty true on my skin, though it smells more currant-y in the bottle and more incense-y on me. I want to order about 15 Le Mat sets to get bottles, though I know this is not practical. Bells and liliripes above the other two Fools, though I like them too!

Oh, this is intimidating... First post.... I'm not sure how to get the descriptions! I had to order Planting Moon because it's for the full moon nearest my birthday this year. The label art is just gorgeous, maybe my favorite of any of the bottles I have so far. In the bottle: It smells like dew-laden spring. Maybe with a hint of soap? On, wet: I am torn between "spring" and "soap" as a descriptor. There's definitely something savory going on on the background, which I would say is the smell of squash blossoms. The tomato leaf is there but not very loud. Dry: This smells like a garden. It really does. It smells like spring, although maybe more June than May for those of us in Michigan On me it still has a slight soapiness when it hits the middle of my sinuses, but if I get my nose close to my wrist and breathe deeply it's a relaxing sunny day puttering around in the garden. I think it's more airy than I expected it to be, which might be why I am perceiving it as "soap" -- I was expecting a heavily earthy smell. It might still morph into one. Overall, 4/5 -- it's not one of my top 10 but I'll certainly be keeping it, and I think it will be absolutely perfect for days when it's too rainy to actually be outside in the garden.

This, somehow, was not even on my radar, but I got an imp today via swap. I opened it, sniffed it, went "hmmmm" and stuck some on the back of my hand just to see. Now I need my husband to come home from work so I may apply it liberally to him and then have my way, ahem. This is warm and manly-sexy to me... the first reviewer said she wanted to curl up in her palm and go to sleep? That's kind of right. Only with, you know, ACTIVITIES before the sleeping. Holy cow. This is on the bottle list effective IMMEDIATELY.

I'm hoping I got the right forum for this. I need someone to help me figure out what note smells like old-school chemically hairspray, because today I was deeply saddened to discover that whatever it is, it's in Black Rose. The only other scent I've had this with is Santa Muerte, and on both occasions I have actually gagged a bit while trying to scrub the scent off (which is next to impossible). The thing is, they don't have any LISTED notes in common. Maybe someone else has had this reaction/sense and can give me some ideas? I'm fairly new to BPAL so I'm having a hard time narrowing things down a bit, still. Black Rose has amber, black musk, roses. Santa Muerte has lovers’ roses, solemn chrysanthemum, dark vetiver and dazzling cactus flowers. Help? I put this in the wrong forum earlier -- I mixed up Suggestions and Recommendations

OK, found another that turns bad: London. Tea rose, perhaps? I guess I'll just have to keep ordering and sorting through what works and what doesn't. At least now I know better than to put them on my skin! I don't really need recommendations -- I was more hoping someone could wave the magic Rose Wand and tell me which particular of the 100000 rose notes it was that wasn't working on me. Alas. Oh, and Flowering Chyrsanthemums is lovely on me, so I guess it's not the mums. It is, as they say, a mystery.

Richly crowned. Antiqued amber, frankincense, pomegranate, myrrh, rose absolute, and bois de rose. Wet, this makes me go "whoa, cologne!" As it dries I can smell the rose, then the lavender. And then our friends the resins come out to play, and they're not kidding around. I put maybe a drop of this on my wrist and I could smell it all day. Pleasant at first, but as the day wore on my skin amped the frankincense and myrrh more and more and more and MORE, to the point where 12 hours after application they were conspiring to give me a terrible headache. Alas. This scent seemed really capricious, changing every hour or two. It's got considerable throw, and it's interesting. I'll be keeping my decant to see what happens as it ages; perhaps it will mellow out more. It may also be that spring is springing, and this seems more like a heavy, cold-weather scent.

In the bottle this reminds me very much of El Dia del Reyes, which is good, because I love El Dia. As it dries down, something about it makes me crave delicious, delicious bacon, which feels kind of wrong. Then the caramel comes out, almost overwhelmingly, and finally it settles in to something that's a little too smoky right now, but I still can't stop sniffing it. I'm glad I got a bottle, and I have been told that overly-smoky scents can mellow with age; I think once this does, it's going to be pure win. The throw is a little less than average but my honker's also a little stuffed up from allergies. Overall 4 out of 5, for me.

My skin turned this to straight up anesthetic cloves, which is really too bad, because in the imp it smells wonderful, spicy and rich.

I wanted to love this, but as it turns out, it's the rose that turns to chemical hairspray acetone smell on me, and I could tell when I opened the bottle. Sad. Off to the swap pile.

I love this scent but it's one that I'll probably never wear outside the house since it turns to straight up honeyed sex on me. Very nice but also something to keep for myself and my husband. I'll likely end up with a bottle though. Naughty!

I've tried this twice now, and both times it fades on me within half an hour or so. At first it's a burst of fresh greenery with dew and almost a clean/aquatic feeling, then as it dries something more floral comes up, and then... nothing. It's gone. I really like it while it's around, but my skin seems to eat it. I'm going to try again soon, with more slathering.

I am surprised, but this is probably my favorite of the Bards. There's a little sweetness, some honey... but it's all grounded. I don't love musks as a rule, but this is subtle. I'm curious to see what will happen to it as it ages, and tempted to order a full bottle (I only have the remnants from my decant circle). To my nose, on my skin, none of the notes overwhelms any of the others, so it's just sort of a warm deliciousness.

At first it's cucumber, like real, crisp clean cucumber, but after it dries it gets that weird sweet edge to it. I love cucumbers but I cannot wear most cucumber scents because something about them makes me nauseated. Sadly, this has that something... whatever it is. Off to the swap pile.

The Rose Lilium Inter Spinas The Temptation Epitaph ... that's a lot of florals. I NEED to try Torture Queen. Hm, wasn't there a circle going....

I had been so very much looking forward to trying this and was frimped it in a swap/sale. Sadly, I haven't tried it yet on my skin, because in the bottle I'm getting that rose that turns to chemical hairspray/nail polish on me. I could cry. I may stubbornly test it anyway someday.

I got an imp of this yesterday from moonarcana and it's LOVELY. I was out of other testing spots so I tried it on the ol' cleavage, and it kept wafting up and I kept going "man, I smell GOOD." It's very vanilla, to me, and I think the more subtle notes were getting whack-a-moled by everything else I was wearing, so I'll be trying it again soon. I think it's going to end up on the bottle list, because though it's definitely vanilla, it's a very interesting vanilla.

In the imp, this reminded me a lot of The Rose; it had that dewy, green, fresh-cut young blooming flower thing going on. It smelled like that on my skin at first, too. As it dried, it got headier and headier, and now I feel kind of like I'm lazing around on the grass surrounded by plants heavy in flower. So basically for me it went from spring to summer in a really vivid way. This is a 5 for me; I have to track down a bottle.

Making spreadsheets of my BPAL is at least 30% of the fun. I keep mine in OpenOffice, color coded and sorted by scent, collection, rating, notes, blah blah blah. I have decided that now with >100 scents in it, I need to build a relational database instead, so have been working on that. There is nothing I love quite so much as making lists, except possibly making lists while SMELLING GOOD. I will have to check out Hackess' sheet when I'm not on Ye Ancient Laptop, because I also adore looking at other people's lists.

Spicy, sparkly, and fruity -- I like it. The fruit fades quite a bit on me as it dries, so it just makes a luscious round amber scent. I've used almost all my imp now making sugar scrubs, and I think it's a perfect scent for those. Definitely going on my bottles-to-buy list.

In the bottle: Slightly sharp -- not what I was expecting. On me: It warms up to a nice, musky, beeswaxy honey scent with... something else going on. Sadly, it faded after about two hours so I think I will have to try it again to get a better idea. I really expected to LOVE it though, and I just don't.