Miss Lynx

The one I have is from a swap, and is labelled Old Dublin, so possibly it's changed since then, but I didn't get anything masculine, or strongly piney from this. On me, it's very floral, and sweeter than most scents that I like, but at the same time not so sweet as to be overpowering or put me off (I usually dislike intensely sweet scents). There's definitely foresty undertones to it, but they're decidedly in the background, and stay there even on drydown. The floral component is what stands out most on me. I don't get rose as such so much; it seems more like a mixture of flowers. And there's something about it that makes me think of wildflowers more than domesticated ones. The scent doesn't change much over time on me, just slowly fades down (and, unfortunately, disappears completely within about six hours). Overall, it's got a soft, light, misty feeling, and is gently sweet without being overpowering. like catching the scent of wildflowers on the breeze while walking through a forest on a summer's day. I don't know if it's "me" enough to warrant a big bottle, but I can definitely see myself using up the imp.

I really thought from reading the reviews that I would like this one, but I was wrong. I normally like patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood, and earthy/incensy scents in general, but this one really did not work on me. I think that in fact, it ranks as my least favourite BPAL scent yet, and the first one that I felt compelled to scrub off before more than an hour had passed. In the bottle, as many people have commented, it smellled exceedingly bitter and nasty, but I wasn't about to judge by that, because I know how much scents can change on the skin. When I opened it, it splattered and sprayed into my eyes, which in retrospect I suppose I should have taken as an ill omen. But I persevered and dabbed some on, thinking it would probably change on my skin. Alas, it didn't seem to change much at all. If anything, it gradually got more bitter, and I wouldn't have thought that possible. I got no trace whatsoever of anything sweet, smokey, lemony, resinous or any of the other things people have mentioned. Just dark bitter sludge, like some kind of toxic industrial waste. It actually reminded me a bit of the bitter note that rises at a certain point in Belladonna as it wears, but while in Belladonna the bitterness is balanced by other things and eventually sinks into the mix and becomes just a faint undertone, here it stayed intensely dominant, and inside of an hour it was making me slightly headachey and nauseous, and I had to wash it off. So, into the swap pile it goes. It's funny - I never thought there would be a scent that was too heavy/dark/un-sweet for me. Usually it's the overly sweet scents that I dislike the most. I guess life, and BPAL, is full of surprises.

This caught my eye before anything else in the new pack of imps I just got (thank you, Minouska!) because of its colour - as others have commented, it's very, very green. In an almost luminescent sort of way. In the bottle, it smelled very herbal and woodsy and a bit spicy, very enticing. I didn't get any of the Eucalyptus/Vaporub scent others have commented on. I liked the way nearly all the imps in this batch (all but Malediction, to be precise) smelled in the bottle, so it was hard to decide what to try first, but I ended up deciding that this one appealled to me most (which probably means I have very strange tastes). On, wet: balsam fir seemed to jump out the most. At least, I think it's balsam fir - a sweet, resinous, piney scent. But there were all sorts of other scents vying with it, too, coming forward and dropping back so quickly it smelled different from one sniff to the next, even seconds apart. Some kind of flowers, but not too overly sweet. And some really acrid, bitter undertone that came out for a bit, but then mercifully dropped back into the background. Various kinds of herbs. I had a really hard time identifying the different notes in it, but it seems like there are a lot of them. It's a very complex scent. On drydown: the different notes are all blending together nicely now instead of jumping all over each other. There's definitely a strong floral component to it, but it's well-balanced with other things so that it doesn't overwhelm the scent or make it too sweet. And the balsam fir-ish scent is still there, a bit like Black Forest, but more... bittersweet, somehow. I don't really find it earthy as the lab description said, but haunting... yes. I think I've sniffed myself about 50 times in the past hour. Overall, I think I like it, though I could definitely see how some people wouldn't. I would have to say that this is not a scent for the unadventurous. I will have to wear it a few more times, though, before I know for sure if it's a keeper. Right now I could see it going either way. (Edit: about 6-7 hours later, it's dried down to kind of a smoky sandalwood with just a faint bitter herbal edge to it. Very nice.)

Lots of good recommendations there - thank you! I've added a few things to my wishlist, and bumped up the ranking of some of the ones that were already there. Hexennacht sounds amazing - I wish it were still in the catalog! Well, maybe I'll find some on eBay or something. I do usually like evergreen scents - one oil that I wore for a really long time was a blend I made myself with oakmoss, amber and balsam fir. But I kept the balsam fir down to a minimum so it wouldn't overpower everything, so maybe it's just a question of quantity. Oakmoss is one of my favourite notes and I notice it's in a number of the ones people have recommended, so that bodes well. I don't mind rose - it's one of the few florals that usually works fairly well on me, at least as long as it's balanced with something not so sweet, so Zombi and Burial are definite possibilities. Actually, Burial is getting pretty close to the top of my wish list right now. Omen sounds really good too - hadn't noticed that one before. Aaaah! So many possibilities. Must make more money!

Interesting that this idea should come up - I was just thinking of the same thing a few days ago! But the song I was thinking I'd want to smell like was "Introit 2" by Aesma Daeva. I'm not sure what a scent based on that would be like - it would need to be really complex and intense, with strong highs and lows and a sense of depth to it. From the descriptions, maybe something like Nyx?

This was one of the first batch of four oils I received, from a forum purchase. And I almost didn't try it at all, because it smelled so scary in the bottle, but I'm really glad I did. I have never had a perfume change so much on me when I applied it. Like someone commented earlier in this thread, it's a real shapeshifter. When I first sniffed it in the bottle, it smelled horrifically sweet, like grape candy. But as soon as I put it on, the sweetness seemed to drop away almost immediately. Within a few minutes, it was down to smelling more like real grapes, and then more like the wine it was supposed to be, with all the other notes starting to assert themselves too, though not yet blending together. At that stage, it reminded me of a lot of the ritual/devotional oils I've used from my local occult shop, which are blended more for their spiritual/magical properties than their scent. I could smell all the individual components, but they just weren't coming together. But the cloying sweetness was completely gone, and I found myself compulsively sniffing my wrist every few minutes to see what strange new transformation the scent had undergone. But then as it settled into my skin, they did come together, into a rich, complex, resinous scent that I began to really like, and from that point on I was sniffing myself just to enjoy it. I still don't know if it suits me enough to order a full bottle of, but the imp is definitely a keeper. Edit: after trying it a couple more times, I ended up deciding to swap it away after all, thought not without a few regrets. It is a really interesting scent, but somehow it's just... not quite me.

This was one of the first batch of four oils I received, from a forum purchase, and it's by far my favourite of the four. I've always liked amber, and this is one of the nicer amber scents I've tried. The musk gives it depth, and tones down the sweetness a bit, and the scent seems to blend into my skin over time so that it smells like a sort of warmer, sweeter version of my own skin-scent. It's very... not quite sexual, but sensual on me, and it works nicely in the summer heat because it's such a warm scent, and blends into that slight sweat scent that everyone has during weather like we're having now. Every person who smelled it on me said it was really nice, and that's taking into account that the various friends I extended my wrist to to sniff have widely varied tastes in scent (so to speak). But they all agreed it suited me. I suspect I will eventually have to order a big bottle of this, though I think I'll wait until I've tried more than just four scents... But this is definitely a winner so far.

Well, I have finally received my first small batch of BPAL, and one of the oils in it was Black Forest, which I had been looking forward to ever since my first visit to the Lab's site, but I ended up being disappointed in that one - it just didn't smell like a forest, at least not on me. You can read my full review of it here, but basically it was way too sweet on me, and the pine smelled kind of fake. So now I'm looking for recommendations of other foresty scents. I've seen a number listed - Hamadryad, Nocnitsa, Yggdrasil, Skadi and others - but it's hard to know what would be best for me. I need something less sweet, and more earthy, than BF. So tell me: What smells most like a real forest to you?

This was one of the first batch of four oils I received, from a forum purchase. And I really, really wanted to like more than I did. The very first time I visited the Lab's web site, this was the first scent that caught my eye and made me think from its description that I absolutely had to have it. So even though I already had an imp of it coming in my first official lab order (which should be here sometime in August), I ordered another via the forums because I just couldn't wait. And yet... *sigh* I knew I was probably in trouble from the first sniff of the bottle. It was so sweet. I really wasn't expecting that. Maybe it's the ambergris, but this was really cloyingly sweet to me, and the pine in it smelled artificial, like air freshener, not like an actual forest. On my skin, it didn't change much, not even hours later. Still smelled like sickly sweet fake pine. Considering the hopes I'd had for it, that was practically heartbreaking. My partner did like it, though. Not on me, but on her. Even though her first reaction was "Wow - Pine Sol!", she liked it better on the drydown, and periodically throughout the day she'd sniff her wrist, declare "I am Tree Girl!" and strike a tree-like pose with her arms spread out like branches. So while it doesn't work on me, it may not end up getting swapped either... Though she did say later she thought it was stuffing up her nose. I still hope there will be a foresty scent out there that will work on me... I don't know - Nocnitsa? Skadi? Hamadryad? Just have to experiment, I guess... Edit (a few days later): Actually, it's starting to grow on me a bit. I tried it a second time yesterday, and the sweetness didn't seem so overpowering. I think maybe at first it was just really jarring because I wasn't expecting it to have that tone to it, but once I knew what to expect it wasn't so bad. The sweetness really does seem to fade after a bit, though I'd still call it more incense-y than foresty. So - still not what I was originally expecting, but I'm thinking I might end up liking it after all. Edit the Second, six weeks later: Having let this one languish on my imp shelf for a month and a half, and consigned the second imp that arrived with my Lab order to the swap pile, I just tried it again, after having finally had the opportunity to try out Nocnitsa earlier in the day. Nocnitsa was, as I was warned, sweeter than Black Forest, but I quite liked it. So I decided to try BF again, having a better idea what to expect now, and... ta-da! I love it! It doesn’t smell fake at all to me now, and now that I’m used to the sweetness (and have made peace with sweet scents in general to a somewhat greater degree than before), it’s actually really nice. So, I've pulled the "extra" imp out of the swap pile and off my swap post, and am now contemplating a big bottle. Funny how these things can grow on you over time... Revised grade: A - originally B

This was one of the first four oils I received, via a forum purchase, and it's the first one Im reviewing because - well, it's what I happened to be wearing today, so it's fresh in my mind. I really liked the description of Black Lotus, but unfortunately I don't like the actual scent nearly as much. My first impression of it in the bottle, like a lot of other people have posted, was a cloying bubble gum/candy sweetness. I really, really, really dislike overly sweet scents, but I know how some scents can change on your skin (Lilith most dramatically, for me), so I tried it anyway. Once it was on me, the sweetness did begin to gradually diminish, but it took a while -- it wasn't the sudden drop-off I got with Lilith. About 15 minutes after I'd put it on, the scent was still strong and sweet enough that my partner wouldn't stand downwind of me and wrinkled her nose if I came too close to her -- and this outside in the open air. Not an auspicious beginning. It took a good few hours before the sweetness faded to a point where I could regard the scent as fairly pleasant. The lower notes do come out more over time, and eventually it was relatively nice, but still definitely not me. Now, 9 hours later, I'm almost liking the scent that's left, but that's too long to wait. This one will form the beginning of my swap pile, I think.