blueroses

Coral Snake is so different from what I was expecting, but definitely a keeper. I'd never be able to tell that this was a Snake Oil variant from sniffing the bottle. It smells like bright, fresh apples and cinnamon. On, Coral Snake retains the spicy apple smell, but the plumeria is the next-strongest note, and it sweetens and brightens the scent. Ordinarily, I'd consider a spicy apple scent to be more appropriate for fall or winter, but this can be worn year-round without feeling like the scent is odd for the season. I get just a hint of gardenia, and I'd never be able to tell that there's citrus in this. Overall, a grown-up, tropical apple perfume.

In the bottle, Bakeneko smells like musky, spicy tea. It's darker than I anticipated. On, the cardamom is the most prominent note - it usually is with me. The cherry blossom and tangerine are just the merest hints that brighten up the musk and tea. Gorgeous. Cardamom sometimes makes me feel slightly ill; it's just a scent reaction that I have. The citrus and cherry blossom in Bakeneko smell almost bubblegum-y, and I personally don't like this sweet smell in conjunction with the cardamom. I really adore this scent, but might not be able to wear it. ETA this is starting to smell like cinnamon gum on me. I like it.

This one's hard for me to describe. In the bottle I can smell sweet flowers. I can definitely smell linden blossom, but I'm not good with florals - the rest were a blur. When applied, it's Snake Oil with sweet floral incense. There's an odd note (narcissus, I think) that peeks out later and sort of sours the scent for me. Cottonmouth is nice and pretty much what I expected, but I don't think I'll wear this enough to keep the bottle.

In the bottle: milky Sugar Skull, like ice cream with burnt sugar on top On: Zarita really does smell like Sugar Skull, but with milky cream. Luckily, the cream is wearable for me, a hater of very foodie scents. The spicy carnation is very prominent, and there's a sharper note of iris lurking in the background. I do not get much orange blossom. Later: Zarita retains the sugary cream and carnation, but the iris fades a bit and there's a hint of a soapy smell - the orange blossom? This is a very pretty scent and reminds me of both Sugar Skull and Alice, two of my favorites. I do prefer, however, those two scents on their own to Zarita. It's not one of my favorites, but I think it will appeal to both Sugar Skull lovers and fans of florals.

I have been looking forward for Hope and Faith since they were described as "sugary florals" at a long-ago Will-Call. I love sugary scents, and even though I'm not really a floral person, I love both rose and violet. In the bottle (which was labeled Hope, by the way): Soft, sweet rose. A wearable rose - I can't do the heady rose blends. On: I can discern the difference between the sweet and the rose - the rose becomes sharper and fresher, and the sweet just tinges the scent, as if the rose petals were edged in sugar. Later: Faith lasts a fairly long time on me. After a time, the sugar is less apparent, but you can still catch it if you sniff a little more carefully. Faith is a little less sugary than Hope, but I do love rose so. This might edge out Havisham as my favorite rose scent, and that's a good thing, because I can get more of it! I will definitely have to get at least one more set of the twins before they go away. Also, I wanted to mention that I love that Hope and Faith are relatively simple blends. I love the complexity of BPAL, but with these I won't have to worry that a certain component will come out more on one day, or that other people will smell something completely different. Hope and Faith will be great everyday scents for me, and will go well with many others. This review is really for Hope, as you can tell from the bottle label. Moved from Faith's review thread. --Shollin

I have been looking forward for Hope and Faith since they were described as "sugary florals" at a long-ago Will-Call. I love sugary scents, and even though I'm not really a floral person, I love both rose and violet. In the bottle (which was labeled Faith, by the way): Sugar! I'm not even sure I could have identified the violet if I didn't know what it was. On: Soft, powdery violets heaped with masses of sugar. So much sugar that it overtakes the violet a bit and makes it simply a very sweet violet scent, almost creamy. Later: Hope has medium longevity and throw on me. The scent stays pretty true the entire time. Can you tell that I love this? I prefer rose over violet, but the sugar is so intense in Hope compared with Faith that it evens the playing field. I adore this. Several bottles are required - and I just don't buy multiple bottles of scents (I've only done it once). This review is really for Faith, as you can tell from the bottle label. Moved from Hope's review thread. --Shollin

In the bottle: A delicate, watery mint. I held it to my nose for a while, trying to get the Snow White similarity - and finally, I got it. There's a hint of sharp, strange floral (for some reason, I remember speculating that this was narcissus, but I really don't know) that made Snow White unwearable for me - it turned to burning plastic. On: I think this is what Snow White would have smelled like if the burning plastic smell hadn't taken over. There's a minty-snow smell and a perfume-y note - a floral that turns soapy on me. Later: This one keeps changing. At times, it becomes a perfect winter scent - that cold air note with softened flowers behind it. And a minute later, it smells like soap. This one looks like it's shaping up to be a disappointment, but I'll test it a few times before deciding for certain.

I love the smell of blackberry, but this is the first BPAL bottle I've bought that has this note. In the bottle: It reminds me of the teas I drink. I tend to drink fruity and herbal teas, and always with honey. It's much more herbal (lavender) in the bottle than on my skin. On: Blackberry, a very deep, pungent (in the good way!) blackberry, made sweet by the honey and a little more adult by the lavender. On me, it's not a classical perfumey scent, but very natural and well-blended - I can't pick the notes apart once applied. I don't smell the carnation - or if I do, it's very different from the regular spicy carnation smell. Good throw, and lasts a long time, too. If the scent were a color, it'd be the deep pink on the label. This is my favorite of the Lupercalias and I've tried almost all of them.

In the bottle: Pink pepper, faint woods, and berries. Very promising. On: Well, so much for that! Trick #2 smells very nice, but it is overwhelmingly masculine on me. I don't get any vanilla, pomegranite, or berries on my skin. What's left is pine, patchouli, and pepper. Pepper is a note that I have trouble with, and here it adds a nauseating (I mean this literally and not to offend; the pepper makes me queasy) note to what would otherwise be a nice, if masculine blend. Drydown: Trick #2 fades into a nice woodsy patchouli blend, but it's still too manly for me to wear. Very odd. I was expecting to love this one, hoping I wouldn't get Trick #1, but I like that one worlds better.

f_s, your post was brilliant. I hope lots of people read it. And see Beth's response. This forum is for BPAL. It is linked to from the BPAL website, sending BPAL customers this way. I can't fathom the logic that says that any perfumer is not in competition with BPAL. They are both perfumers. They are competing. The "feel" of the company doesn't matter. LUSH and The Body Shop don't have the same feel. They are still competitors. The fact remains that shrieking_violet has proof that Michele tried to get around the forum's rules by creating duplicate accounts. That is so outrageously sketchy to me. She's abusing a competitor's website to read BPAL customer feedback and get product ideas. Honestly, I think the admin and mods here are amazing to not ban her outright, but then, I have always found the admin to be amazingly impartial. I haven't tried H&EE, but I do sometimes post in the thread of retailers I haven't tried if I have something to add. I don't do it out of a desire to stir up drama, but to either post a comment of my genuine reaction or to offer information. For example, I have never purchased anything from feMaledictions, but I posted when I had a comment about lost packages. Forumites aren't creating drama out of nothing. There's a reason the H&EE thread has drama, and that's because Michele creates it with her sketch business practices.

I'm surprised that I don't find this much like Dorian. There's the similar tea note, but this is definitely a masculine scent on me, because of the fougere. It dries down to a musky, leafy tea scent that is reminiscent of traditional colognes. I think this will appeal to many.

In the bottle: Sparkling white musk and lavender, mostly, but I can smell verbena in the background and vetiver lurking. I like vetiver, but it tends to overpower everything else in a scent on me. On: Musk and vetiver. A wee tiny bit of fig! Coconut never seems to show up on me unless it's one of the primary notes. Drydown: This dries down to a light creamy musk with vetiver. Occasionally I get a whiff of lavender. Pretty nice. I find it more gender-neutral than the other masculine scents so far.

In the bottle: Almonds and pine. I like the way this smells, and it's pretty gender neutral. On: Okay, the pine is much stronger. The almond fades, and the sarsparilla takes its place. I don't really smell tobacco, but there is a smoky note in there. It reminds me of being out among the trees in the late fall. I love the way this smells. It's my favorite of the masculine CD blends.

There are a lot of "firsts" for me in my Carnaval Diabolique order, and this was my first masculine scent and leather scent, so bear with me. In the bottle: Musk and fir. I like it. On: LEATHER, leather, leather. Drydown: Smoky, musky, leather. I'd like this on a guy, but not on me. My skin is amping the leather like crazy.

I ordered this one because I was surprised to be a fan of Parlement of Foules. I'm not usually into rose perfumes, and resins can overpower me, but I liked that one and this sounded similar. In the bottle: Roses and wood. And something else that is not cedar, so I'm guessing it's the labdanum. On: Similar to Parlement of Foules, but more woody. I don't get much cedar at all, but I am getting labdanum. This is the first perfume I've tried with that note, and I don't think I like it. It smells like musk or leather to me. But if you like that, and you liked Parlement of Foules, you'll love this.

In the bottle: very cherry. On: When it's still wet, it does smell something like soda. It reminds me of Island Rose Long Island iced tea, if you've tried it. When it dries, the cherry goes away and I'm left with cardamom and cassis. There's something vaguely medicinal about this. As it wears, it gets spicier - it sort of reminds me of Three Witches. It smells like Red-Hots. Verdict: I really don't know. I don't like the cherry cola stage, but I do like the spicy cassis drydown. Hmm.

In the bottle: The sugared incense of the description. On: The florals have totally stamped out the sugary incense. I will admit that I don't really like heavy florals to begin with, and can't even tell most of them apart, since they usually smell soapy to me. I think I smell jasmine here, but my nose may be having a scent memory of Melisande. In any case, Midnight on the Midway ends up smelling like floral perfume. Actually, it reminds me a little of Bearded Lady - that kind of sweet-plus-floral smell. The sweetness of Bearded Lady was also overpowered by florals on me, but people who were a fan of that scent will probably love this.

In the bottle: Mint-lemon-honey. On: The mint doesn't even make an appearance. Poof, it's gone. This is lemony green tea with a dab of honey. Somehow, the presence of the honey doesn't make this blend sweet. It's all pure tea. The honey grows a little stronger as the scent fades. I like this because it's different from the usual sweet or citrus tea blends.

In the bottle: LEMON, with a bit of rose and the opium, I guess - I'm not really familiar with that note but it's a dark, smoky, spicy smell. On: More of the same. Smoky, musky lemon. I normally love lemon, but the smokiness here is sort of taking away what I love about lemon. It's a nice, complex scent, but I have other lemon scents that I like a lot more.

In the bottle, Candy Butcher smells just like a dark chocolate truffle. It smells better in the bottle than the other BPAL chocolate blends I've tried. And yet, I can usually tell by sniffing the bottle if there's a note that's going to go funny on me, and that was unmistakeably present here. So ... The Candy Butcher smells just like Bliss and Lump of Coal on me. I get a very strange plastic smell with an almost floral edge. It smells nothing like what it's supposed to on me. It doesn't surprise me at all; I ordered this on the chance it would be the one chocolate blend to work out. No harm, no foul.

Bottle: Musky jasmine. On: Whoa, jasmine. This is a very perfume-y scent, a very heavy floral. I do get some violet, but it's pretty much drowned out by the jasmine. Funnily enough, even though I can smell musk in the bottle, I don't get it on my skin. After wearing for a while, a little sweetness comes out - I suppose the vanilla bean. I'm one of those people who normally can't wear the Lab's vanilla bean note, but here it just smells sweet, not like plastic. It's a shame, because I'm not a huge fan of jasmine, so I'll be passing this bottle along. This would be very nice for floral fans, though.

Mme. Moriarty is a redder, plummier Snake Oil. I love patchouli, and here it prevents the scent from being too fruity and makes it a little darker. After a few minutes, though, I have the same problem that I do with most vanilla bean scents: it gets a plastic, chemical smell. The red musk almost overpowers it, but it's still there. I do like this enough to keep it around to age, to see if it gets better. ETA that my mother loved the way this smelled on me and didn't pick up any vanilla nastiness. My mother normally is not interested in perfume at all and never thinks about it, but she could smell Mme. Moriarty as soon as I got in the car. I think you can only smell the plastic-y smell if you smell my wrists. So I think I'm holding onto this one.

In the bottle: very sweet. Remember the impression people at Will-Call had of this, that it smelled like cherry blow-pops? It's not so far off. It smells like a sweet apple lollipop. On: This is perfect! It's a bright, sugary apple blossom scent. After a few minutes, the apple wears off and it smells of pepper and guava. This reminds me (unpleasantly) of Tweedledee, which I really didn't like. After a half-hour or so, the apple came back a little and mixed with the other notes. If I can get past the peppery-guava stage, this is a keeper. The initial stage of apple blossom and sugar is to die for, and when it fades, it's subtle and more complex. I wore this again and didn't get the funky stage - it stayed the same as it faded, and only got softer. All of the notes were there, but none of them dominated. The only downside is that it fades quickly, but it's definitely a keeper.

Snake Oil has had that label for a while now. My bottle from February has it. While some of the different GC categories have special labels, a lot of them don't.

In the bottle: Apple and sweetness. I am not an expert at apples, but this is very much a red fall apple. Just my impression. On: This turns into a perfect fall scent. The apple is not as prominent on my skin, the wheat is amped, and there's definitely an herbal element to this. I don't know if my skin is just eating the bamboo or if it's mixing with the other green components, but I'm not getting any. The plum makes Harvest Moon smell wine-y one me. Like other people have mentioned, this evokes autumn leaves and reminds me of picking chestnuts in the fields in the fall. I like this more than last year's HM, and even more than Samhain, I think.