Kytha

This smells like a dark, spicy raw honey to me and I couldn’t be happier. Leather, honey, and patchouli are scents that play very well with my skin chemistry in oils, and that’s true of this hair gloss as well. Medium throw — mostly enough to catch as I move around — but gosh it is gorgeous.

I received an imp of this recently and couldn't remember any of the notes, so it turned out to be quite a surprise! Grass is the first impression I get peeking out of this, something very crisp and sharp, but it warms up quickly (and produces quite a bit of throw) into something almost sweetly herbal and maybe even a little minty -- the aftershave, I presume, warmed with leather. I can't really pick out the tobacco or bourbon individually, but to my nose at least this is a close cousin to Sherlock Holmes, which is a blend I enjoyed quite a bit. It makes sense since they share leather and tobacco as a common element. This one does strike me as a more masculine scent.

I miss Blood Countess! Does anyone know another scent (or layered scents) that might produce the same result?

Buttery notes are a nightmare on me -- when they're part of foodie scents, my skin seems to like to pump it up until that drowns out whatever other notes were in the mix, and then also promptly go rancid. Insult to injury, the damn stuff then lasts forever... Original Knave of Hearts on my skin is just yuk. For that reason, Frostbitten Knave of Hearts is wonderful for me. It feels like it cools down the warmth of the original blend (I recently got an imp to compare it against, so super handy!) to a point where it's actually wearable -- snow-covered fruits and a touch of flowers that comes out as it dries off. I think the snow note here is a minty marshmallow (so, not the sugary snow that's in Frostbitten Dorian). It's still a rosy tart, but it's more of a frozen tart, now, with a gentle throw that means I'll catch whiffs of it as I move my arms around. I can still sniff the butter trying to do its thing from time to time, thought, which is truly frightening. Glad I picked this up -- my normal comfort zone for foodie stuff tends to be restricted almost exclusively to fruits, and I didn't realize the original scent had such a buttery component to it, but this is a great change of pace.

This is quite an aged oil by now, but what's surprising is how strong this still is! I make this review with the note that I'm trying it just as my period's starting, so I'll have to test it again to see how different it is without hormones coming into play. In Bottle: A slightly screechy floral -- the gardenia and neroli come out on top, and not much else. Wet/Early Dry-down: More gardenia, more neroli. Its a cold, bitter and sharp floral at first -- almost a bit metallic, I'd say -- but as it warms up, it develops a fair bit of complexity. Hard to pick out what's going on, but the bitterness fades rather surprisingly quickly, and a bit of fruit peeks through. Dry: I'm shocked, after the cold and floral start, how the heck this manages to dry down to something that's almost a little ... vanilla cookie-y, without the butter? It's hard to describe, but 'warm vanilla' would be most apt, I think. This stage lingers for a while, and is fairly stable. Start to finish, it takes about four hours to need a re-application. I'd consider it to have medium throw -- might have had more if I'd applied a larger amount!

Wet, I smell pencil shavings; dry, it's smoky pencil shavings. 😕 Aging hasn't done this imp any favors, regrettably.

I don't know what it is about this particular blend, but it's literally a 'here and gone' for me. It's the same faint, distant scent it was when I acquired it as it is now, aged a year later. I get the barest wisps of honey musk and juicy peach on me for ten minutes, and then poof! Nothing but dusty illuminated pages. If you're looking for a juicy peach, I would recommend 'Alleviate the Frenzy' would be my preferred blend over this.

I received a partial bottle of this, so it's had a bit of time to age and settle (getting shipped around aside). In the bottle, it's a painfully sharp green scent, with immense throw, smelling almost akin to pine. On the skin, it's much more mellow. This one starts out tart and grassy for me, a freshly-sliced Granny Apple with a hint of leaves. Apples grow juicier about thirty minutes in, and then it mellows out into something I can only really describe as a warm, honeyed milk (the beeswax and vanilla?).

This one plays with my heart. It starts with a sharp, green smell, like you took a tumble through grass and broke the all the leaves along the way. Then all the fun and games become something darker: something truly rank comes out to play (that cat-pee smell another viewer mentioned!) that almost made me wash it off. Yet I was determined to see this through, and through some truly inexplicable alchemy, the scent shifts like a change in the wind -- that nasty animal odor gives way to warm, soft fur with a hint of honey, like a kitten that's gotten their paws covered in the stuff. And just when I think it's settled down, it's up and bolting through the grass again. TL;DR: this scent goes between frolic in the woods, 'oh god what is that smell', and 'let me cuddle you forever, sweet creature' for me. I 100% agree with "honey fur" and "sweet furry musk" descriptions. I honestly kind of am in love with it, though the nasty animal smell means I'll be putting it on early before I go out, to make sure it settles. ETA: re the greenness, it took me a long time to place it, but it has something reminiscent of tea tree (and/or citronella) as it mellows out. I like that sort of scent, personally, but if you dislike that for any reason you may want to try and sample this first before committing to a bottle.

As some have commented, this has the 'soft' quality of a Lace, but with a fruitiness I'd almost describe as bubblegum-like, without being so artificial. Feminine for sure. The rose doesn't come out to play for me, it's just a vague background floral. I don't get anything I could pick up as the currant at all, besides a generic 'juiciness.' Juicy as it may smell, though, it somewhat lacks in staying power (ETA: although it dries down to a lovely Antique Lace-y sugar). This doesn't last on my at all, even with re-application. I'll have to look into testing how it lasts on the ends of my hair or something.

This reminds me of a slight floral apple cider slush — less like a scent of emerging spring and more like the last hurrah of fall, a state fair’s grounds caught by a surprise early flurry of snow. It starts clear and brisk with a lot of yuzu’s bitterbright grapefruitiness and then settles down to a sweeter, faintly boozy apple against the skin. How similarly this settles on you may depend on how much your skin loves to amp up apple and snow, which mine does. I like it! It probably won’t be a go-to scent, but on the dry down especially it’s a fine complement to my Eve’s Big Apple III, which I’ve been skimping on. Looking forward to how this changes.

Ellocentipede described this as sparkly and perfumey, and I would have to agree. On me, someone whose skin LOVES to pump up sugary notes, this turns into what I can only describe as peach champagne, like something a ingenue might keep in her dressing room (along with her perfume). It isn’t light stuff, either — I walked out of the room I initially applied it on and walked back and boy, the peach hit like a punch of lovey goodness to the nose. The amber just rides the edge of turning powdery without tipping completely over — just enough to evoke the image of a pale, creamy thigh. It is *exuberantly* feminine, with a lot of throw to match, though the lightness of the scent keeps it from being overpowering. I don’t know how Beth got ‘moist’ in a bottle, but it’s most certainly there, like a refreshing mist. Obviously, I’m smitten. Glad I took the chance and wandered from my usual beloved apple scents for these!

We do lie beneath the grass In the moonlight, in the shade Of the yew-tree. They that pass Hear us not. We are afraid They would envy our delight, In our graves by glow-worm night. Come follow us, and smile as we; We sail to the rock in the ancient waves, Where the snow falls by thousands into the sea, And the drownd and the shipwreckd have happy graves. Thomas Lovell Beddoes Yew berries and cypress boughs, ropes of kelp and sea spray. I haven't tried any of BPAL's other sea/themed scents, so I can't say how this stacks up to them for comparison. I tried this at New York Comic Con with no plans to make a purchase, but I ended up buying a whole bottle because I couldn't think of any BPAL scents I've tried that smelled like this! In the Bottle: saltwater. Wet: Salt and cut greens. There's an astringent quality on the edge of the salt that immediately reminded me of The Beer from the Marshwoman's Brewery -- which made sense when I looked up the notes, because they both have yew berries. Dry: The cypress comes out here, but it's wood drenched in salt water -- like standing at the edge of a dock in the winter, or being underway on an old galleon. If you've ever been to a maritime history museum which recreates historical boats and their construction, this will immediately put you in mind of that. For lack of a better word, it smells nostalgic. In Sum: A unique scent that stands out for me among all of BPAL's products that I've sniffed over the years. I would recommend it more as a room/atmospheric scent than for use on yourself, but it's immensely refreshing and bracing. If you want a little bit of the sea to keep in a bottle, this would be the scent for you.