inkmonkeys

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself. Refined, elegant, and lovely, with a noble bearing and seemingly gentle air. This blend is an artful deception: a sweet gilded blossom lying over a twisted and corrupted core. A Victorian fougere with three pale musks and dark, sugared vanilla tea. Water, Saponified Organic Palm Kernal Oil, Coconut Oil, Soy Oil, Macadamia Nut Oil, Sodium Lactate, Jojoba Oil, Caster Oil, and Dorian. My Snake Oil, Carnal, and Dorian soaps just arrived today, and Mr. Dorian is the first I've tried. The soap itself is a lovely nude-peach color, and when unwrapped and left in the shower it scented the entire bathroom (in a subtle way - occasional whiffs of Dorian) within 30 minutes. The soap itself smells just like the oil, but more subtle and less sugary. Very slithery with lots of little bubbles when wet & lathered. It left my hands soft enough to forego lotion. The scent doesn't have much throw after my hands have been washed & dried, but when I sniff my skin the most lovely veil of Dorian wafts back to me. In sum: I adore the Dorian soap. Absolutely. It's the perfect amount of fragrance and a pleasure to use. I'll definitely be purchasing more of this! ETA: The Boy loves this, as well. When someone's using it in the shower, it makes the *entire apartment* smell incredible. Wow.

Bold, bright mandarin paired with the sweet, sensual earthiness of fig. Water, Saponified Organic Palm Kernal Oil, Coconut Oil, Soy Oil, Macadamia Nut Oil, Sodium Lactate, Jojoba Oil, Caster Oil, and Carnal. BPAL's fig blends turn into absolutely *amazing* bath and body products - when I put Gomorrah directly on my skin, my chemistry amps it so that I walk around smelling like Evil Fig Newton. However: a dropper in a bathtub, or a few drops in unscented lotion or hair goop? Figgasm. So I couldn't resist the temptation of Carnal soap in my hedonistic suds-buying frenzy this month. Poor, unappreciated Carnal - don't overlook this beauty in favor of the more hyped blends like Shub or Snake Oil (right now Carnal is stomping her feet in my soap dish, and I can hear the faintest echoes of "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!"). This is lovely - a warm (not bitingly hesperidic) orange whose glow is deepened by the Lab's gorgeous fig note. It's subtle and soothing in the shower, and layers gorgeously with other fruity, figgy scents. You wanna plotz? After a Carnal bath, try a few drops of Nemesis blended into body lotion and slather it on. Seriously. You'll plotz. I'm not kidding.

In short: this is Sherezade and Delphi having a drink together at the Chrysanthemum Moon tavern. Incredible, and transporting. Yes, you need a bottle.

Just used this stuff in the bath, and I can't add much to what's already been said, except for this: Here's what you need to do. You need to go into the bathroom prepared with the following implements: 1 bar Snake Oil Soap 1 bottle Boomslang, aged Snake Charmer, or Mme Moriarty Misfortune Teller 1 exceptionally fluffy towel (one of the big beach ones) Several pumpsworth of unscented lotion 1 box tissues Step 1: Place Snake Oil Soap in shower soapdish. Step 2: Disrobe. Take shower, using SO Soap liberally. Step 3: Step out of shower. Use fluffy towel to towel off. Step 4: Put 2-3 drops/swishes of Boomslang/etc. in palm of hand, pump 3-4 pumps of lotion on top of oil, mix, slather on self. Repeat so that all limbs are lotioned. Step 5: Use tissues to swap tears of smell-induced joy from face. That is all.

This one is a total morpher on me. For the first 30-40 minutes: green bamboo and tea, sharp and sparkling notes very much like Holiday Moon with a faint cherry blossom in the background. After that: No more sharp green notes - these are replaced by a soft and heady mix of dragon's blood, sandalwood and something flowery that I want to say is cherry blossom. Really lovely. I like it even better than Holiday Moon!

Oh my goodness. This is a gorgeous rosewood-lavender-cherry on my skin, lightly fragrant but persistent. I LOVE it. Big bottle for sure. My favorite of the new Tea Party scents so far!

Despite having a very slight reaction to the cinnamon in this (unusual for me), I love it. It's definitely a sister to hamadryad on my skin, if you mixed in a light note of baking Central Asian flatbreads, drying tea leaves, sun-ripening grapeskin. I research the history of silk road medicine, so I had to get a bottle of this unsniffed. It's very spicy, light and gorgeous. I want to dab some of this on, wave it through my hair, curl up with Susan Whitfield's _Life Along the Silk Road_, a cup of tuocha tea or Mare's Teat wine, and imagine walking with Xuanzang. Lovely and evocative. Thank you so much, Beth.

This is an incredibly lovely evergreen scent. I've been looking for exactly this kind of fragrance for a very long time. Thank you so much to the Lab for frimping me this, which I would not have picked out on my own and which I now adore, evergreen-loving Aquarian that I am. It begins with a very distinct melding of juniper (I think?) and eucalyptus (think: walking in Palo Alto, California on an amazing warm and breezy day). It softens to a piney wood that is just meltingly lovely. Although I found this wonderfully cooling on a hot day (this is by no means only a winter scent), make no mistake: this is not snow-on-the-fir-tree evergreen. This is a warm, alive, wolves-nestling-nearby evergreen. The initial cool feelng warms up (and becomes richer) over the development of the oil. The only drawback is that, on my skin at least, it fades to almost nothing in 30-45 minutes. I say drawback because the scent is so gorgeous that I'd love it to hang around for hours. No worries: I'm definitely getting a 5 ml of this in my next order, then I can slather it on at will and not fret about it fading from my senses too early. If you are a lover of wood scents, of piney-evergreen scents, of a different take on a cooling summer scent: try this one. It's really beautiful.

As soon as I put it on, it's all vanilla and a waft of rum. 5 minutes in: The rum disappears and it's a slightly more vanillic Dorian on my skin. Really lovely. After 45 minutes: The saffron appears just in time. That very distinctive dry and spicy note cuts the sweetness so that it's not too overpowering. It's absolutely unmistakeable when I sniff up close, but the saffron is very hard to detect from a distance. 1 hour in: There's the sandalwood! Rounds out the composition in a nice way. In all, I really like this one, and I don't often wear gourmand scents. Lovers of Dorian (which is, like, everyone) should definitely try to snag at least an imp of this to try.

Slathered directly on the skin: Didn't work - the spicy almonds were overwhelmed with something that turned nasty on me. BUT. But but but. Diluted with unscented lotion & slathered all over the body: YESSSSSsssss yesyesyesyes. Here are the gorgeous spicy-cinnamony almonds I was hoping for! Absolutely incredibly delicious. When worn as a lotion with a couple of tiny dabs of oil on the pulse points, this oil blossoms on my skin and makes me feel gorgeous. Yay. One more lesson to me: experiment with different forms for some of these scents. Try this one diluted a bit in a bath or in lotion if it smells off directly on your skin, folks.

Ok, so I've had my bottle for a little under a year, since last summer's carnival rolled into town. When I first got the oil, I have to honestly admit I was underwhelmed. Where was all of this melty vanilla-y goodness that everyone else seemed to be sniffing? Ah well, I thought - I'll hold onto one bottle, gift the other to my sister (on whom it smelled DIVINE), and put it away for a while. Cut to today. Holy crap. All I have to say is: if at first it doesn't work well on you, age those bottles, folks. Because several months in a cool dark place and Snake Charmer is now the incredible, spicy-vanilla, only-a-wee-bit-coconutty, was-that-a-hint-of-plum? gorgeousness that I hoped it would be initially. Lovely. Thank you again, BPAL.

Amor, to my nose, is like the love child of Seraglio and Love Me. You know the delicious almondy-orangey-rosiness that appears for the briefest breath at the beginning of Seraglio and then morphs almost immediately? I love that scent and wished it stuck around longer, and to my delight here it is in Amor. It begins with the lovely almondy-orangey-rose, then I get the kind of spicy almost-cinnamon of Love Me, and it continues wafting throughout the day as a lovely, soft rosey-carnationy-almondy scent. I absolutely adore this scent, and thank you so much to Beth for creating such a beauty. I've felt full of happiness and love and warm fuzzies during the day as I wear this. This is a winner, my first TAL and I'm thrilled with it. ETA: Since receiving this I've worn it several times, and it has become my most favorite of Beth's blends to date. Huge thanks for this one!

I will edit this later to add a more complete review once I have this back in my hands, but I feel compelled to say now: I got this as a frimp and would not have thought of trying it based on the notes. This was the single most evocative and transforming BPAL scent experience I've ever had, so much so that despite the fact that my BF hated it I need to have a bottle and experience this scent again and again. Something in Delphi transports me and connects with me and I have no idea what it is. It's haunting and compelling. Definitely one to try.

I get a very woodsy piney blast up front, then it settles down to a rich black musk. I'd consider a bottle, but since I already have Dracul (this is very much like it), I won't need a Black Forest bottle yet. This is like a much less complex Dracul, and I would have enjoyed it more if the pine hung around somewhat longer!

I can only add another ringing endorsement of this scent to the mix. Gorgeous apples and spice with a hint of fresh pumpkin on my skin, wears beautifully and lasts forever. Autumn coziness in a bottle. No butter in sight, for those who are scared of potential buttery Jack-ness. Brava!

This is a delicious, gourmand mix of cocoa and pumpkin with some nuttiness hovering over. Fantastic, tons of throw, and it's been going strong for 4 hours now. Also elicited a compliment from the boyfriend. Thumbs up!

This is only the second DimV scent I've tried, and I'm truly stunned by how gorgeous these have been. Something in the Poe poems triggered something phenomenal for our beloved scentstress, because these scents are astounding. Lenore is strangely like a vital, mature Snake Charmer, without the vanillic voluptuosity, but much deeper, more thoughtful, brooding, dark and beautiful. I definitely get the saffron that is so lovely in Scherezade, as well. Once again, absolutely stunning. Brava.

This blend is absolutely lovely. At first I get a round green note, almost citrusy but not quite, that I'm guessing is the linden blossom. It smells like sunlight in early green leaves on a cold, breezy spring morning. The wood is definitely light-colored and the tea leaves are dry and fragrant, but this is not heavy black tea by any means. I can already tell that this is going to be a blend that seems to fade, then catches you with a gorgeous "What IS that? OH! It's me." surprise throughout the day. I think the "dew-drop on the grass" from the poem is spot-on. There's also something almosy milky lingering beneath all of these notes. As the blend morphs, the dry woodiness comes into play more. Brava, Beth. This is pure gorgeousness, and I may have to break down and order another couple of bottles before the Demon moves out of view. I could wear this every day. Thank you for this blend.

I will keep this brief. I love this blend. LOVE. I get parchment, I get incense, I get woody-grassy-smoky. This is not for you if you need to smell Objectively Girly in a peaches and cream sort of, lalalalalaswinginginthegarden,ohlookattheprettybunnies way. However. If you are like me, and you grew up watching Indiana Jones movies and lusting after his library, if you watched The Mummy 2 and thought, holy crap I love their house and library and that is so ME I would sooooo be in my element there, if you went out and bought Paleontologist Barbie.... Get at LEAST an imp of this. You will not be sorry. This smells like the inside of The Coolest House In The World, an open structure with no walls and zebra (really) running in and out and a pet leopard (really), which I visited when I lived in Kenya, while they had a fire going in the living room. It smells, specifically, like what the library int hat house would smell like. I have a 5 ml and there will be much more in my future. I love you, Beth. I love you, lab. Thank you.

Tobacco and amber is one of my favorite combos, too. Just in case you'd want to check out a non-BPAL scent to complement all of the wonderful recommendations here, you might also want to try "mutation no. 1" by next guru now. I think it's actually on sale right now at beautyhabit (I'm totally not affiliated with these companies, btw). It's a lovely tobacco-amber blend, with a smidge of tarragon I think, that dries down to a delicious, soft amber-vanilla-tobacco. Really great!

Can anyone recommend a catalogue scent that is reminiscent of Medicine Show? The green, woodsy tobaccoey goodness is amazing. But I'd like to find a rough equivalent that is replaceable without doign a bank-breaker on ebay! Thanks so much, Carla

Indeed, lemonheads immediately upon application. ... BUT. If you give Cerberus 5 minutes or so, it morphs into a really lovely nutty-figgy-chocolatey scent with a lilting note that keeps it from diving into too-heady, too-foody territory. My advice: give this one a chance, and for the first 10 minutes, don't commit any wrist-sniffies. The first stage of this puppy (no pun intended) is best when it wafts up to your nose. You'll suddenly start to smell something light, chocolately and delicious, will wonder where it's coming from, and *now* is the time for direct skin-sniffing action. The Verdict: The first 5 minutes worried me, but this one is definitely a keeper!

I finally feel like I can review this scent after living with it for the better part of a year. When it first arrived in Autumn 2004, I had very little BPAL experience and slathered myself in the stuff, effectively over-applying and bringing on The Migraine From Hell. The poor bottle got relegated to the back of my closet and I didn't touch it again in fear of a return of the Heady Floral Monster. Fast forward to this week, when I decided to revisit all of my BPAL's and pulled All Saint's out from its hidey-ho. I don't know whether it's chemistry or seasonality or California or what, but it's a completely different experience now. I apply a couple of tiny drops to my skin, a few run through my hair, and I get an opening that very much resembles the nutty foodiness of Dia de los Muertos, which morphs after a few minutes to rosey incense. Gorgeous. Like most of Beth's oils, it does morph while being worn, so there will still be occasional moments when the HFM peeps out, but those are vastly outweighed by the beautiful wafting incense that lasts all day, into the next day. I wear this to bed and wake up with the most beautiful soft powdery rose petal scent lingering on my skin and hair. I like Samhain a bit better than this (the woods/apple in that blend act similarly on my skin to the incense/floral in this), but it's one of the most gorgeous Autumnal florals out there.