Inventrix

I love this scent so very much. This is my second day wearing it in a row, which I never do except with my favourite scents. Sniffing directly from the imp and on first application, it's mostly a sweet incense-like clove scent - the incense feel probably coming from faint hints of the brimstone and the labdanum resin. That's for the first couple of minutes, at least. Then it's BAM, FIRE AND BRIMSTONE. It's like you're walking along minding your own business, maybe smoking a clove cigarette or something, I don't know, and then suddenly a giant chasm appears at your feet and opens a portal into Hell with all the smoke and acrid sulfur just pouring out. After about ten, fifteen minutes or so, the belching flames of the underworld calm down a bit and leave you with a delicious dark coppery smoky scent. I described it on Twitter when I first tried it and really loved the imagery, let me dig it up again... "You know, I don't get copper feathers so much as I get copper wings. ... It's like a pair of dark coppery wings closing around you with swirling tendrils of smoke, drawing you into the portal to darkness." Yeah. It's an amazingly wonderful scent, I just need to make sure I put it on at least twenty minutes before I expect to be around people to get past the brimstone stage. I don't think most people appreciate someone smelling like acrid sulfur smoke!

I'm still mulling over my opinions of this, but I shall post this now and update it later as needed! And just as a note, I have to say that I was extremely excited about this blend solely for the concept. My first impression on sniffing the bottle was that it was a lot richer and warmer than I had expected, conceptually. A lot warmer. It's a warm sweet scent with what I think is florals but doesn't have that typical floral feel. When I put it on my skin, a very sweet floral immediately popped out at me and the whole blend took on a cooler, lighter feel, more like what I had been originally thinking. Very quickly, however, the scents started shifting around like crazy. I got something warm and creamy, then the chypre started coming out more. The whole scent felt... white but dark. It took me a long time to place the feeling - it's like the color of someone's white dress as they run off into the dark moonless shadows of the night. Later on it settled down into a very well-blended scent that I had trouble pulling specific notes out of, with a deep purple-black color with white mists and dark shadows. It took me a while to pick out the adjective that I wanted for it which I felt made it a bit "off" as the scent for a black butterfly, but finally I settled on solid. It is a warm, rich, solid scent. It has strong sweet florals, but the warmer woods and resins and whatnot give the base feeling for the scent. It doesn't feel quite light and airy enough for a butterfly to me, but I may try layering it with things. It's really nice but a bit too, well, solid for me normally. Especially in the summer!

I put the scent into imps/decants, if it isn't already. (Seriously, I do, unless I'm just testing.) On a more helpful note, when applying from a bottle, I roll it (there's a description of what that means and why one should do it in detail around somewhere) and then flip it upside down for a couple seconds, open it, and use the little knobby thing inside the cap as an applicator. I think the scent icons are in a subforum somewhere around here... let me see... ***EDIT: Found it! Directions to find: Community Gallery > Scent Icons & Minis

This is the aquatic that I've been hoping for - no soap and it lasts! It's light, cool and sweet, without even the faintest hint of florals (aquatic white florals always go soapy on me). The gold, which I recognized from Phoenix Steamworks, is sharp, bright, crisp, with a faint metallic tang. The aquatics soften and mellow it beautifully, and they last surprisingly long on my skin for aquatics. This also doesn't morph at all between sniff, first application and long wear, which is also unusual for me. I get a really strong mental image from this, even without reading the description. It's like a fast-flowing stream bed with amazingly clear, sweet water - if you've read the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it's like the water as they're nearing the edge of the world. Incredibly, beautifully clear, and deliciously sweet and clean and utterly untainted. But instead of the ocean this is a deep stream, the smooth brown soil of the streambed acts merely as a counterpoint for the smooth, glistening solid-gold stones lining it. The water runs over it, rippling and sparkling in the clear sunlight. I really love this one. I might have to buy a second bottle after all, it's such a perfect hot-weather scent.

Finally getting around to reviewing this... This is one of my all-time favourite blends! It's definitely strong on the vetiver, but it has a completely different feel from other vetiver blends. Normally, vetiver gives the whole blend a dark, earthy feel, distinctly green and mossy (although, like everything else on me, any damp feeling in it dries up after a little while). In this, however, it still has that dark earthy feel, but it's much lighter and drier. More like soft fluffy garden beds than the mossy forest earth I normally get. I keep forgetting about the teak, so now I'd hypothesize that it's the combination of vetiver and teak that makes the difference. And then there's the "spiced satsuma orange". I have to admit, I've never encountered a satsuma orange before, specifically, but the spiced orange scent is wonderful. It lies on top of the darker vetiver base in all of its spicy orange goodness, giving it a bright sweetness. I have to really focus to pull out the licorice note. It isn't very strong and my nose tends to mix it into the general spices with the orange. Overall it feels like warm light spicy orange and vetiver, lasts for a while, has decent throw, and makes me very very happy.

Crumbling paper and ancient cracked leather with a touch of tobacco leaf and incense. On first application, it smelled like old book pages and a whiff of tobacco and something sharp, which I finally identified as leather. The paper and tobacco smell fade (the tobacco fades fastest), and leaves behind the smell of old leather bindings and a hint of old book papers. It's like you open an old book and flip through the pages a bit before sliding it back onto the shelf, then wander through the room - which is filled with old, worn, leather-bound books. I can see how the leather can come across as "cologney", as I get a bit of that feeling too. However, I realized it's just because it's a scent I'm wearing, so my mind tries to fit it into a category of scents that can be worn. When I think of it objectively, it's exactly the smell of old leather bindings. If I spritzed it onto my bookshelves, it would be right at home. I wish it smelled a bit more like paper and a bit less like leather, but it makes a great subtle scent for that old library feel. I'll probably end up using it as a room scent (or maybe a Victorian librarian/historian cosplay, like an acquaintance suggested ).

Cookies! Delicious buttery sugar cookies made with a splash of lime juice and dipped in rum. That is what I smell like, and it is good. Interestingly enough, I don't get even the faintest sense of tobacco in this. It's just delicious buttery limey rum-soaked cookies. (Well, maybe not rum-soaked.) *edit: I was wrong! After about... four or five hours, there is a definite tobacco note in the throw. Up close, the cookies still drown it out.

A Click 'n' Ship refers to the email that gets sent off when BPAL has your order all packed up and prints out the shipping label, which usually means they're going to ship it out in a couple of hours or the next day (depending on the time in PST). The most important bits of it are the tracking number for the shipment. The order time (referred to as TAT, turn-around time), varies wildly depending on how busy the labbies are and what you ordered. Since it's just GC, it'll probably get packed up faster than if you were ordering some of the LEs. Anyway, the TAT ranges from a couple of weeks to, if you're lucky, a couple of days. You can get a good idea of how long it's taking them to pack up orders currently by reading the CnS sticky.

I have to say, this smelled exactly like I'd hoped it would. It initially smells like a smoking camp/bonfire on/to me, which made me squee with delight. I absolutely adore the scent of a campfire (haven't experienced a real-life bonfire, really), and this pegs that warm smoking wood quality perfectly. The end result I would describe, if I had to do so succinctly, as a sweet incensy fire. I don't know if I can pick out the bay rum as I've only smelled any kind of rum twice and never the bay rum note for the Lab. The sweetness I decided the other day to blame on the rose, but it really doesn't smell like a rose scent. (And it certainly doesn't smell like alcohol.) It just gives an overall sweetness to the blend. The woodsmoke seemed to disappear after a while, but it didn't really. It just would come and go in fragrant puffs. It's like... You start out standing next to the smoking flames before walking off a ways to the ceremony itself. The fragrant scent of frankincense wafts around you and is accented by the sweetly fragrant roses(?) decorating the area. There are some gentle breezes, and an occasional shift in direction will send a plume of wood smoke back over you every now and then. It's very strong, particularly the smoke. I only used a little bit and it was almost as strong as my normal application.

I know this is a somewhat odd thing to ask for, but from what I've seen of the BPAL community I doubt I'm the first by a long shot. So, here's the deal. Sometimes I'll catch a whiff of just the skin on my arms which I actually really like, but is so faint and which my nose is probably so accustomed to that it's hard to really get a good sense of it. I generally think of it as a sort of warm, almost nutty kind of a scent. Like, hm, hazelnuts & peanuts or something. Emphasis on "or something". My boyfriend, on the other hand, has commented once or twice that I smell like honey. I still don't really get it but hey, I'm not gonna argue with smelling like honey! I suppose if you take the acidic tang out, I can sort of see it... maybe? Does anyone know of a blend or two that might potentially have a nutty/honey smell that I could try and compare?

I just recently told my sister-in-law about BPAL (yay for enabling! Two converts in one weekend!) and she asked me if I knew of one that smelled like Eternity by Calvin Klein. I have no idea what Eternity smells like, of course, so I said no but that I'd ask around. I did a little research and pulled up the following info from the internet. (I went under the assumption she was talking about the "For Women" version, since she's, you know, a woman.) One site said: "Eternity is a very nice floral scent that includes notes of mandarin, sage, freesia, patchouli, amber, and sandalwood. It is a very soft, yet still is able to pass as an evening fragrance." Another site said: "It starts off on a fresh and slightly citrussy note, followed by a middle note of rosy violet and lily of the valley. The spicy carnation gives the perfume a peppery nuance. Smooth and gentle, it ends on a note of powdery heliotrope and rosy sandalwood with a lingering hint of musk." The second place also listed the following as the notes: Freesia, Mandarin, Sage, Violet, Muguet, White Lily, Heliotrope, Patchouli, Sandalwood. Muguet is apparently lily of the valley.

I have an imp of Oblivion, and while the smell of it fits the notes and the reviews fairly well, it's a completely different color! A lot of the reviews comment on it being a murky olive green, but mine is sort of a light amber... I also just noticed as I just got around to testing it that the oil level seems a bit lower than normal from the Lab. If I recall correctly, it was a lab frimp and there are/were no apparent leaks.Most of the reviews for Oblivion describe it as a really unusual green, but mine is a light golden amber. A couple of reviews I saw in the thread mentioned their oil being a golden color, but most are mentioned as green. I think I'm going to have to order an imp (this was frimped) and see if I get a green one, and compare if so.

At first sniff in the bottle, it just smelled very fresh and green. And then I dabbed some on my skin. I swear, it is a vegetable garden in a bottle! I don't know if I just don't recognize a tomato leaf smell, but tomato plants didn't pop into my head. The first image was of large deep green slightly fuzzy leaves, (which I thought were the tomato leaves, but realized were squash when I checked the notes), and string bean vines with the first crisp pods poking out. I didn't smell "dirt" specifically, but it wasn't just vegetable plants. It was a vegetable garden. I was so giddy and excited! It brings me back to the garden we used to grow when I was a child. Two hours later, I casually sniff my arm to get some of that lovely garden smell... wait, soap?! I tried it again this morning and got soap again with much less of the amazing wonderful garden-in-a-bottle scent. I could cry! I'm going to give it one last chance this evening, but I think Planting Moon and I just might not be meant for each other. Maybe I'll try a scent locket type thing instead and see if that works.

This one came to me as a magical frimp from the lab. I never would've picked something so dark and seemingly woody on my own, particularly not having ever tried vetiver. This starts out as quite possibly the most evocative scent I've worn yet. The first sniff of it on my wrist vividly brought back the memory of the little garden back at my elementary school, with the dark shade of the low-slung evergreen over the rich soil and moss. It smells like dark pine-like evergreens, lush moss, and damp earth for the first fifteen minutes at least, slowly drying as if the sun is rising and drying out the wetness from the nighttime rains. At the thirty minute mark, the vetiver (which I now loveloveloveloveLOVE) and lemon rind have separated out a bit, no longer blending to make that crisp evergreen scent and instead just a dark earthy green with a dash of lemon. The scent of charred woods are coming through now, along with a softness from the sandalwood. While it isn't nearly as evocative anymore it still smells wonderful and intriguing. I think it smells more like the description now. This is one of my new favourites, for certain. If I can find enough opportunities to wear it, I might even get myself a bottle.

This definitely has no surprises; sandalwood and dragon's blood the whole way. The first sniff of the imp was intriguing, soft and sweet with a subtle hidden sharpness. It made me think of a cat's paw, with all the claws sheathed. Directly on wet, the sharpness really came out more - like the cat suddenly put out all its claws at once and hissed at you. It also smells much more like incense. After a little while, it turns almost entirely into the scent of burning dragon's blood incense. Aaand... that's it. I get a bit of a woody scent poking back up again at around the half-hour mark, but that quickly goes away again and it turns into just... smoky dragon's blood incense. It was really disappointing, actually.

This is so disappointing. I thought from the first sniff from the bottle that maybe, MAYBE this is a cool wet scent that'll work with my chemistry...! It smells like a litter box and air freshener. Only from 6+ inches away, though. Up close it's the typical uninteresting floral soapy scent I get from aquatics. But.... hurgh! I'm going to leave it on for a while in the hopes the cat waste scent goes away... I'll edit this if so. I have little hope at this point.

I dare say this is the first scent that smells like a "normal" perfume that I've actually liked, probably ever. After trying both Robotic Scarab and Galvanic Goggles, the first sniff from the imp was surprisingly sweet. I mostly got the sage, with a subtle background of incense. Wet, it was sort of cologney, with less sage. I think the cologne smell I got at this point was something about how the incense and the metallics interacted. The cologne stayed for a while, very elegant, with the incense gradually separating out and going more to a background kind of scent. After a while, the cologne smell changed into an equally elegant perfume, very formal to my nose. I can feel the metallics - warm and glossy, instead of shiny. The sage is nearly undetectable and the sweet incense gives it a smoky backdrop. It's like sitting in in formal evening attire, in a room lit only by yellow candlelight that reflects warmly off of highly polished brass, while wisps of sweet smoky incense trail through the air. This is definitely a formal occasion only scent for me, which means no bottle. I go to so few formal events that this one imp should last me at least a year.

Much to my disappointment, it turns out that I am somewhat allergic to Scarecrow. The first sniff made me want to sneeze, and then when I put it on I felt lightheaded and a little dizzy. I left it on in the hopes that the feeling would fade, and I really liked the scent, but it didn't go away. I am so sad. And unfortunately, Scarecrow doesn't have much in the way of listed notes, so I don't even know what I might be allergic to!

I got this as a frimp, and honestly had no idea what to expect/whether I'd like it when I decided to try it. First sniff: Dry, a little grassy, and spicy. It made me want to sneeze, very badly. Wet: Dry, like hay, and very spicy. VERY spicy. It's like a bale of hay in the summer, with some sort of spices dumped all over it. It's also very strong and makes me feel lightheaded... I also still want to sneeze. I hope I'm not allergic... Drying: Still very dry hay, although the spicyness fades somewhat. It's got quite a decent throw, too, becoming more noticeable as time passes. I also started getting a smoky incense smell. Amber, maybe? I don't know, practically everything has resins in it to me it feels like. I'm finding myself liking it for some reason, although the lightheadedness is still here... Drydown: A bit... sweeter, maybe. Still very dry and hay-like, though. However, I still feel lightheaded and my last sniff made me sneeze. I think I am definitely allergic to something in this. I think that I like it. I don't know why I like it, but when I ask myself "what's your opinion?" it's "I like it!" Which really stinks, because I can't wear it unless I like my nose itching and feeling dizzy. Does anyone have a good sense of what the actual notes in this are, so I can keep an eye out for potential allergens in other scents? ***edit: If you do, feel free to send me a PM and let me know. Thanks!

In the bottle, it was pure dark chocolate liqueur. I would almost have been willing to swear that it WAS chocolate liqueur if I hadn't known better. The drop of syrup oil I put on my arm to test was a surprisingly rich brown, which fit well with the chocolate smell. Wet, it turned into a much more dry, cocoa-powder scent with other undertones that I finally placed as those scratch'n'sniff things I had when I was a kid. You know, scratch the chocolate bar, smells like chocolate. It smelled like that, with some cocoa-powder and a teeny bit of cherry. Not very impressive. After a few minutes, though, the scratch'n'sniff feeling went away and it smelled like a box of chocolate covered cherries rolled in some sort of yummy spice powder. Still mostly the chocolate, but the cherries were getting stronger. A while later (half an hour, maybe?) as I was going over to the boyfriend's, I got a sudden BURST of cherry! The dark red kind, not maraschino. It was like someone went and broke the chocolates open. Drydown is about the same; dark chocolate rolled in spices, cherry liqueur and deep red cherries. I can see the resemblence to Tootsie rolls, although it's not what I would've thought of on my own. There's a hint of some sort of musks and maybe wood right up against my arm, but otherwise it's just the chocolates. I haven't yet decided how I feel about smelling like food, but I can see myself wearing this for special occasions or when I'm in an odd mood. The throw on this is impressive, though! For me, at least. I seem to get pretty lousy throw in general with the ones I've tried so far, but I was getting wafts of this from my arm - inside my sweatshirt sleeve. The forearm, mind you, not the wrist, so it was making its way down my arm, out my sleeve, and up to my nose. I am impressed.

In reference to using other oils to help wipe off the unwanted scent, would jojoba oil work? I mean, it isn't really an oil, so I was curious if it shares enough characteristics of an oil that it would still work. Also when people mention using baking soda, how would you do that? Just sprinkle it on the offending area of skin, or mix it with something, or...?

My spreadsheet is still a WIP, honestly. At the moment, I have three sheets. The first has each of the scents that I've actually tried so far. The first column I put an x in if I own a 5ml of it, the second and third are the name and the notes, and the next few are my review of the main stages of the scent (first sniff, on application, after a few minutes, after a while, after a few hours). Then I have the color associations, my general impression of it, and any specific comments about the scent. The next page is more listy and less informative. I have a list of names of scents I've tried but didn't like, a list of scents I've seen recommended around the forums but haven't looked at the notes/reviews yet, a list of scents that I want to eventually try (with the notes descriptions), a list of which scents I intend to get to try in my next order (with notes descriptions), and then any pending order(s). The third page has any specific notes that I've found are either uncomfortably amped or turned bad on my skin, any notes that tend to disappear on my skin, anything I might be allergic to, and a lovely column which checks the notes in my 'to try' list for anything that might not work for me and which note(s) it is that could cause the problem. They sound so much more complicated/difficult to read when I describe them this way than they actually are! I'm not big on color coding, because colors aren't searchable/sortable.

I got this as a frimp with my first order. I wish I could comment on the effectiveness of this for dreams, but I couldn't leave it on. The first sniff wasn't bad. I didn't smell any lavender, just a sort of clean lemonycitrus smell. A couple days before I would have shrugged and recapped it, but the citrus in Aelopile has totally swept away any prejudices I had against citrus so I gave it a go. The moment it touched my skin, however, it was just LEMON. Real lemon scent, too, all acidic and sharp. I just dabbed on a little, but the lemon scent was incredibly strong. Hurk. I gave it a few minutes to see if it would improve, but it didn't. It got a sort of green grassy tone to it, and if anything it got even more acidic! No lavender at all, anywhere. After about ten minutes I finally gave up and scrubbed it off. Even if I'd had the dedication to wait this one out, I can't imagine falling asleep with it so testing its dream-enhancing abilities would be futile.

Summary: I LOVE IT! It's fresh and citrusy and warm and fuzzy and HAPPINESS! The first sniff of the oil was warm, clean and very citrusy. The moment it touched my skin, BAM! The cedar virtually exploded in my face. Fortunately, I like cedar. Even more fortunately, that only lasted for a minute or so, as the citrus quickly came back. The delicious citrus. I have no words for how amazing this citrus scent is to me. I smell all kinds of citrus, mostly grapefruit and lime. Even more mostly lime. I am in love with this lime. Over the first hour or so, a very pleasant warmth grew under the citrus and cedar. It was overall warm and citrusy and sniffing my wrist made me giddy and gleeful like a little girl. My boyfriend said I smelled like "a really nice scented candle - not one of those cheap icky ones". I'm taking that as a good thing. After a few hours, it ends up mostly a warm soft amber woody scent, with random whiffs of cedar. I smell something vaguely incense-like which I suppose is the oud, but I haven't a clue! It could just be amber+cedar. I still love it! This is going to be my first full bottle, I am certain.

Summary: It makes me smell like an expensive tobacco pipe! And no, I don't mean expensive pipe tobacco, I mean the pipe itself. It smelled very much like vanilla to me in the imp, which was surprising from the description but nice. I do like vanilla. I feel obligated to mention at this point, however, that I have absolutely no idea what teak smells like. Hence, the lack of it being mentioned below. The tobacco jumped in almost immediately after applying, with a big HEY LOOK AT ME! I was (pleasantly!) surprised by the way the tobacco smells, although it was somewhat overpowering at this point. It's like a high-quality pipe tobacco smoke, which I've always held is a wonderful smell and puts those icky cigarettes to shame. A wonderful woody smell started coming out after about a half hour, and the tobacco ran away again (to my surprise) before coming back much more sedately (to my even greater surprise) and partnering beautifully with the vanilla. There was something almost spicy in the overall feel, which I think was the tobacco. The vanilla and the tobacco combined to make a delicious creamy smoky scent, which clung to the wood smells. Much like the scent of smoke might imbue the wood of a pipe after much use. It is a somewhat masculine scent, but not to the point that I feel awkward wearing it. I absolutely adore it, and if I can convince myself that it won't drive all of my acquaintances away with looks askance then I shall have to purchase a bottle.