calivianya

I have discovered that I must hate the smell of lotus, as I really do enjoy amber, myrrh, and sandalwood. The lotus must be the sickly-sweet candy smell I picked up at first. After about 15 minutes, when I sniff my wrist this is the kind of floral that makes the back of my nose ache. This is definitely not for me. I was going to see if I could make it to the drydown since that seems to have promise, but I washed it off because I couldn't take it anymore. Edited for spelling fail.

I have two scents that I would love to find similar scents for, Black Opal and Nefertiti. Most of my favorite blends are red musk heavy, like Snake Oil, Infernal Lover, Scherezade, etc., so Black Opal surprised me to death when I loved it and I'd love to try other things in the same family. Also, I love Nefertiti to death - I think the scent is so interesting! The problem I have is the wear length. Nefertiti fades severely after half an hour, and is usually completely gone within an hour. Is there anything that smells a lot like Nefertiti that last longer?

I smell lemon, lemon, and lemon. Maybe I amp lemon? I also smell something boozy, a lot like the boozy smell in Athens. I much prefer it in Athens, though - the lemon smell ruins it for me here. I do like the smell of lemons, I just don't want to smell like them myself. Lemons always remind me of floor cleaner and lemon Pledge, so scents with them do strike me as clean, just not attractive. I feel like I've spent the morning cleaning my kitchen while drinking some wine, and some of the smell of the cleaning fluid stays on me.

This scent is beautiful. It is much sweeter than I thought it would be, but it does have sugar cane notes in it, so I'm not sure what it was exactly that I was thinking it would smell like. Tropical is definitely a good word for this blend. I'm not usually a fan of tropical, but I am right now! I have a bottle in my cart right now... so we'll see if I check out with it still there or if I put it off again, like I usually do.

Mme. Moriarty is a very interesting blend. I received a decant from a wonderful forumite! Wet, Mme. reminds me of the shavings small animals live in in pet stores... I'm not sure what kind of wood flakes they are. This made me raise my eyebrows quite a bit, but it isn't necessarily a bad smell. It's just not what I was expecting. Maybe this is the patchouli I'm smelling - I'm still not 100% certain what that smells like. After about 5 minutes, I start to smell the red musk, and I love it. As it dries, I can pick out something that smells fruity - there comes the plum. It still smells faintly of animal cage shavings to me, so it's not a favorite, but I will definitely use up the imp.

I received this as a frimp with my last order. I agree with the person who said "candied lemons," for the wet stage, that's what I'm getting from this even though no lemon is listed. I have no idea what verbena smells like, though, so maybe this is my uncultured nose showing itself. When it dries down, it doesn't smell any different to me. This is very different than any other Black Phoenix scent I've tried. It is a pretty citrusy scent, but I don't think it's a bottle purchase for me. I'd be happy to keep the imp, though.

I received this as a frimp with my most recent order, and I was very glad because I wanted to try this anyway! I must say that I did come away disappointed. If pink musk is that sweet smell coming off of this, as the reviews seem to hint, then I officially hate pink musk. This smells sickeningly sweet to me, which is strange because I really love some sweet scents, like vanilla scents. This is just a different kind of sweet - cloying and powdery and quite frankly, nothing I'd ever like to smell again. Whenever I start swapping or selling, I'm getting rid of this one.

Weirdly, I couldn't smell the pomegranate at all. Something about this smelled like soap to me. I'm going to have to try it again later - I think my nose is broken today. Edit: Yep, my nose was broken two days ago. I'm having completely opposite reactions to everything I smelled two days ago. I can definitely smell the pomegranate. It doesn't quite go into the soap range for me today, but it does smell vaguely artificial.

Oh wow, I love this scent! I wasn't entirely sure what red musk smelled like before, but now I know that it smells just like my own skin if I rolled around in some beautiful spices beforehand. I LOVE red musk. This scent is very demure and quiet on me, because it really does smell like my own skin. It really doesn't smell like I'm wearing perfume, just that my natural body odor is amazing. I bought a bottle unsniffed and I'm very glad that I did, but now I'm toying with the idea of getting a second one just to make sure I don't run out anytime soon.

I love, love, LOVE The Infernal Lover, so I thought I'd love this too since everyone talks about how strong the red musk is in both, and that is a note that just smells like my skin rubbed in beautiful spices on me. However, I wasn't feeling this one. I guess it's the rose - I apparently need to steer clear of scents with rose in them. I'm still scratching my head in puzzlement over this one.

This is very interesting! It really does start out as straight dirt in the imp and when wet, but the rose starts to peek out after about 10 minutes for me. This scent, combined with the fact that three of the other imps I received today had rose in them, convinced me that rose is not for me. It just doesn't play well on my skin. However, the dirt note is very interesting, so I'm definitely going to try some other dirt blends and see how they go.

I will try this again later to see if my initial bad reaction may have been a fluke, but something about this really turned me off. I don't know if it was the wine note or what, but this smelled sweetly spicy in a very bad way. I didn't have time to let it dry down on my skin and see what it smelled like later, though, so it's possible it will get better on me with time. I hope so - I really thought this was going to work for me. ...Two days later, I have to say that my nose obviously was broken. Though Athens is very harsh at first to me, it mellows out into a beautiful spicy wine scent that is slightly addictive. This may be a bottle purchase.

I think that Haunted smells like Shalimar, too... which is one of the reasons I got an imp of it in my first order. My mother, who has been wearing Shalimar for 40 years, disagreed.

My first try at this had me turning my nose up at it. It smelled wonderful until I noticed one note that made it almost sickly sweet. I'm still not sure what I was smelling, but it put me off this scent. I decided to try my imp in an experiment since I was thinking about making perfume sprays with several of my BPAL oils, and I wouldn't miss this one too terribly if it turned out awful. I mixed it with Everclear and let it sit for five days, then gave it a shot. Now, I am blown away. Whatever that sickly sweet smell was is totally gone, and this brings out pretty floral notes rooted by deeper, incensey smells. I'm guessing that's the opium. Either way, this was 10x improved by mixing it with the alcohol and I like the resulting scent very much. This may be a bottle purchase now.

I was hoping I'd really get the sandalwood and frankincense out of this, but I can't smell anything but the florals. I get mostly the lily and jasmine out of this blend. It's a shame as it smells nice, but pure florals just don't suit my personality, and it's starting to give me a small ache in the back of my nose. Oh well, I'll try to find someone it gets along with much better.

This reminds me of something I've smelled before - some kind of men's cologne, maybe - but I can't put my finger on it. It is a very strong, woodsy, masculine scent to me. It's not really my thing. I wanted to smell this on my boyfriend to see if I'd like it better on him, but he didn't much care for it either. Oh well, I tried.

I received Hemlock as a frimp from the Lab, and to me this was just gross. I didn't like the smell of the imp, and I definitely did not enjoy the bit of it that got on my finger while I was opening the imp. It is a very green, bitter, herbal smell. My mother said it smelled like Christmas trees, and while I did smell a pine-ish sort of smell, to me there was an undertone just below the pine that smelled like unpleasant body odor. It was very faint, but I found it enough to be distracting. I could see how people who like pure herbal/wood scents could like it, but I need a sweetener in there for these to work on me. I'll pass on this.

This is such a beautiful scent. I have trouble picking out any particular notes when wet as it just seems very well blended to me. After it dries, I just smell "clean." I attribute this observation to the fact that I often use a frankincense based soap, and as olibanum is very close to frankincense I feel like this is the smell I'm picking up. It is a very gentle scent which stays close to the skin and doesn't have much throw on me, but this is exactly the kind of scent I am looking for to wear at work. I like to smell elegant without being overpowering, as I am not allowed to wear perfume at work (though I do anyway). This is definitely a keeper and I have a 5ml headed my way.

I love this scent! The first word that came to my mind when I smelled it in the imp was "unusual." I can't say I've ever smelled anything like this. The vanilla is a beautiful, sweet vanilla but this does not smell like food because of the spices. It just smells soft, sensual, and beautiful. It also has amazing staying power on my skin, as well as great throw. I was testing out four different scents on my arms, but unless I smelled the others up close all I could smell was Snake Oil. I could also smell it on my wrist the next day - after I had taken a shower. I'm ordering two 5mls right now, so I can have one to wear now and one to age.

I wanted to love Veil - it starts out so pretty in the bottle. After about 30 minutes, all I can smell on my arm is the violet and I'm not a huge fan of florals.