Avery
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Everything posted by Avery
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I am not a big chocolate scent person, but Boomslang showed me that it can and does work sometimes, so I opted for a decant of this. mexican hot chocolate? Yum! This is a true chocolate scent on my skin and lasts and lasts and lasts. I can see this being an amazing holiday room scent, and will wear it occasionally when in the mood to smell just like a spicy candy bar. The spices do lend some depth to this that Bliss just didn´t have for me. However, smelling like a chocolate bar really isn´t my thing, so I doubt I will ever need more than an imps worth. Boomslang remains my one true choco/cocoa fix. ADDED July 4: I just had to buy a bottle of this. My boyfriend huffs me like nobody´s business when I wear it (granted, he´s had some mean cravings for chocolate lately, but he NEVER huffs my perfume). It does in fact smell like spicy Mexican hot chocolate on application. Reallllly chocolate-y but never plastic-y on my skin, with traces of cinnamon and pepper. On drydown, it smells like chocolate campfire incense. It is wonderful. I am trying to stop buying perfumes that I don´t LOVE and don´t wear all the time, and am thinking of culling my BPAL down to my precious favorite bottles, but this will merit a place among the "must have" bottle rankings. MMMMM...
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I am not a fan of this one. After being heartbroken to smell lovely pillowy marshmallows and green apples on a friend of mine, I got another decant to try in a scent locket. But I was underwhelmed and then my boyfriend asked me why I smelled like playdough. I think Snow White demands the right chemistry to come out and play right... as for me, it´s a light a fluffy scent that goes plastic-y. Not my style. I suppose that means more for the rest of you luckies with the right chemistry! It truly does smell amazing on my friend.
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I got an imp of this, and while I don´t know that I will ever need more than its contents, I love it! A little goes a long way. The ingredients to my nose are, currant cake and incense. As this dries down this develops into the most realistic sort of altar or church style incense that I have ever smelled in a perfume. Literally like someone burning incense, but it is yummy! There´s a berry fruit undertone to the dry smokiness, and if you really sniff after drydown you can still smell the cake. A little goes a long way with this, so I think my imp will last. If I use it up and find myself missing it, I might get another imp or a partial bottle. It´s good stuff! Reminds me a little bit of Urd. ETA March 2009: I can´t locate my imp of this, so decided to buy a partial bottle. Nothing in my collection is anything like this. I am finding that I love currants and incense, and they love me back. Besides, since Beth is getting ever more creative and exploratory in her holiday blends, who knows when (or if!) we will see this one again. Yay for the sale boards! In response to the reviews saying that this is faint: YMMV! It´s *very* strong on my skin. As I mentioned above, just a drop goes a *long* way for me, with waft like woah.
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This is one that should not work on me, but does. I would never have tried this if left to my own devices, so... thanks to the lab for the frimp! and for further confusing me as to which notes work and which don´t... vetiver usually *hates* me. I have never had it smell good, and have never tried a blend with it that even remotely works. This, however, smells good! it is an indolent, slow, leisurely lay around and indulge yourself type of scent. it´s dark and heady, it smells earthy and velvety without smelling musty or sharp. Good stuff! I don´t think it works so well that I will need a bottle, but am definitely hanging onto my imp. Yay for surprises... I may warily tiptoe back towards the world where vetiver can live. hmm. Maybe only when Myrrh is co-hosting, though... am finding that myrrh likes me. *noted*
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Well, the Evil Mistress of Toast strikes again! She included a sniffie of Temple Viper in my decant package (thank you!!! ) and, well, I´m toast. These snake pit blends have me head over heels. I actually didn´t think that I was going to like this one from its wet presentation, but... once it´s on my skin it transforms! The champaca flower must be the nag champa scent. The snake oil makes this blend slinky and smooth (in a powdered but not *powdery* way) underneath a fuzzy purple nag champa slightly grape-y vanilla sex. OMG. Yum. I am soooo glad I have a bottle on its way. These snakes are a serious surprise hit for me, since snake oil itself is (aging in my box with high hopes, but as of yet...) way too powdery for me to really wear. wahoo, snake pit! I´m so glad they are sticking around for awhile, I need to figure out which ones I need more of then stock up!! ETA: the fizzy purple quality I'm describing actually would be like a . . . silvered violet/plum velvet effervescence. Aww yeah.
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I absolutely love this one. I bought a bottle after my impage elicited some positive responses from teh boy (who´s verrry finicky). When it arrived I sort of regretted getting a whole bottle as it did get a little overly sweet and a bit powdery (like snake oil itself does), not to mention that I somewhere along the line decided I´m not a cocoa/chocolate girl, so I ignored it for a couple of months. And then I tried it again... I don´t know if I´m having a really good luck streak with my skin chemistry but this smells utterly fantastic on my skin! It´s soft and somewhat subtle but raw sexy power! And it lasts allllll day. The scent at the end of the day is a sultry vanilla cocoa that literally makes me want to nibble at my own skin YUM. When I put some on the other night the boy pounced me and accused me of just smelling FANTASTIC, but didn´t want to credit it to perfume. I don´t think I can smell this good without it, but man it makes me happy that it´s a "me" enough scent to smell like a candied me on a good day. This has skyrocketed into my top5 and makes me need to try more snakes... Summer is coming and Green Tree Viper is going into my shopping cart unsniffed! I wish I loved Snake Oil as much as this... hopefully aging my bottle will turn it into a similar delight. ETA: This has throw like mad, and I apply quite sparingly. just a teeny dot from the cap on each wrist and spread it around lasts upwards of 12 hours.
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Well, being an Alice in Wonderland fanatic, I of course wanted to love her as so many seem to do. And she´s nice and all. She´s a sweet little girl. But... I am not a sweet little girl and don´t really want to smell like one. Alice was very soft at first. I´ve had bad luck with honey and milk before, but these stayed sweet and subtle on my skin. But this faded from a soft and pleasant scent in the first few minutes to the barely detectable skin scent of a baby washed in milk and honey scented water. Um. Not for me--I like stronger, darker, and more womanly scents. Maybe I´ll have to give Queen Alice a shot. So far, I´ve had a very low success rate with the Wonderland scents, and that makes me sad!
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I thought that I would like this one more than Death of Autumn (because vetiver is usually heinous on me) but it's the other way around. I'm thinking that there has to be some black musk in this, because as far as I can tell black musk goes the horrible way of the musty bandaid on my skin and I just cannot wear it. urgh. I don't get grass, "juicy" anything, smoke, sap or trees. Bummer. anyway, that's pretty much enough said. I get some leafy hints in this one, but it really is just weird man cologne and bandaids. Death of Autumn actually smells more like "October" to me, but I don't think need more than a decant.
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This is an amazing morpher that I had to try but didn't expect to love. But... wow! Okay, so it starts out aquatic on me (kind of like Snow Bunny... but a little salty and more generally "aquatic", more summer less juniper), and while I have a poor track record with aquatics (they all too frequently just go to soap, or cologne--I'm looking at you, Kingsport) this one stays just this side of the aquatic but ocean-y enough I don't need to wash it off. I don't get gunpowder, or patch, or sasparilla (which I was really looking forward to--Tombstone is my favorite!) at this stage. So, it's a nice hot weather scent (good thing I'm entering summer down here in the S. Hemisphere) and I decided to wear it out. Then I forgot about it. About two hours after application I sniff myself and am just stunned... this is GORGEOUS. As far as the notes go I'm not sure how they are translating into this: the smell of a hot (steam) sauna that is made out of driftwood. The sasparilla is lurking just under that sweet wooden surface to make it creamy. Oh, and in this stage it also also smells like someone was just toasting marshmallows in the sauna, or maybe threw one on the hot rocks and it melted (but didn't burn). This is AMAZING and I absolutely love it. Most times I curse my odd skin chemistry, but there are occasions like this one where I have to appreciate it. 5ml. yum yum yum. Oh, and the boy likes it too! Double bonus.
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Hmm... not sure what to make of this one. I was hoping for the incense and paper, but instead I get a bit of moldering books (dirt-y smelling) and musk. Lots of musk. And the musk (I keep wanting to write must, I think that´s Freudian ) is cologney. The dirty smell with musk reminded me a LOT of Penny Dreadful, so I put her on my other hand (hers is a favorite rainy day/humid smell for me, very earthy and spicy) and I see a LOT of similarities. However, as Penny remains spicy and dirty and wet smelling, lurid library is colonge musky and fades extremely fast... leaving a ghostly reminder but nothing more in about 20 minutes. So, I´ll keep my bottle of Penny and probably trade off my decant. No harm no foul.
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It´s interesting to read other interpretations of this scent, and know how vastly different a scent can be skin to skin. My skin has the unfortunate habit of amping flowers, so that is how the Mama reads on me: spicy flowers. It´s unfortunate because, aside from the rare exception for the rare mood, I hate smelling like flowers. I´m not a girly girl and despise smelling like one. I wish I got more of the nutmeg and carnation (okay, I know it´s a flower, but it not... flowery, you know?) and more of a chai in a spring field full of flowers kind of way, but this is heavy. In my mind´s eye it´s a very pretty color, though, a dusky burgundy tinted purple. But the perfume chokes me and makes me feel a little nauseous. Oh well, I´ll keep my spices separate, thank you.
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In the (2005) bottle this smells interesting, and I can pull out little wafts of the components listed in the description. On my skin, I get serious bouquet with some foody/tobacco/chocolate hints floating around the edges. I get no autumn air, nor smoke of any kind. The flowers smell heady and purple. This is a "dark" scent, which I like. Unfortunately, I don´t like florals and my skin amps them (of course). In addition I never get to experience any of the elements that are conceptually so cool. I never wear this. I have tried over time, and the flowers just seem to get stronger, so I have finally decided that this is going into my swap pile. Boo...
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I was kicking myself for ordering A Bold Bluff and not ordering this, once I realized that BB wasn´t as cherry tobacco as I´d hoped. But the Evil MIstress of Toast ( ) included an empty bottle of PwFA in my decant package, and... I´m so glad I didn´t spring for it! It´s nice, but... the sweetness is a bit cloying to me, and doesn´t really smell of "coffee" so much as the idea of coffee. It is really a bit too sweet for my tates, and something also rings false about it that I can´t put my finger on. Anyway, I luuuuurve Miskatonic U, and will be happily sticking with that (and ordering a new 5ml soon) as my sweet coffee perfume fix and no longer have to kick myself OR lust over this one.
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Mme is a wonderful example of what aging can do (and gives me hope for my bottle of snake oil that´s tucked away in a dark corner...). I met her in imp form, and was sufficiently intrigued that I decided to order a bottle. But when the bottle arrived, it seemed that my skin chemistry made the plums sing soprano in a duet with baby powder. Ugh. no! So, I tucked her away for awhile, having faith that the original perfume I liked would come out to play... eventually. And she did! I tried her again (I think my bottle is now over 6months old) and the plum dances with darker winding notes, all under a blanket of delicious vanilla. I don´t smell the pomegranite or the patchouil specifically, but can tell that they´re there. This is a deep purple with a mauve tinted scent on me. It´s very sensual and womanly and I love it! SO glad I hung in there (I think I learned my lesson after giving up on Snake Charmer one day in). I think I´ll order a second before the carnival leaves town.
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I am disappointed. From the moment I discovered BPAL and that there were cherry tobacco scented oils, I knew I had to have one. But none that I have tried so far have worked on me... not Hearth 2004, and certainly not this. This doesn´t have any cherry to speak of that I can tell. It´s all tobacco and hops, but not a good tobacco and not the fresh hops that I get from a blend like Roadhouse. I had Bold Bluff on one arm last night and Sugar Skull 2005 (which I reviewed today as well) on the other, and my boyfriend came in and almost gagged, telling me that I smelled like a stale glass of wine with a cigarette butt in it. Lovely! I washed off Bluff and turns out that was the culprit for both the stale and the butt. Bummer!! Maybe Herr D will do it for me for the cherry tobacco, or the next one that Beth releases... should have just the right amount of cherry. A girl can dream, right? Will try aging this one for awhile... if there´s no improvement it´s off to swaps. I could kick myself for not ordering Pinched with Four Aces.
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This review is for Sugar Skull ´05. I first got my bottle and was underwhelmed by smelling just like maple syrup. My boy didn´t like it either, and it had MAJOR throw, so I put it into a box and forgot about it. Fast forward to June 2007. I just received said bottle in a package, and decided that in spite of my initial dislike of the scent I would try it again. So I put it on, and it has completely changed! It is not maple syrup anymore... rather, it smells a lot like I wanted Samhain to smell after I realized Samhain was too bright for me (I do love layering Samhain with Dead Man´s Hand to deepen and darken it, but that´s a different thread altogether). So, Sugar Skull. There´s a berry/wine note that is buried under a brown sugar and cider scent. It´s warm and round and sweet, and I like it so much more than I liked the fresh version from the lab. I still don´t know if I *love* it, but time will tell. For now, it´s been taken off my swap list. Yay!
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I was reeeeally excited to get my bottle of Bloody Mary--I adore the concept behind the Monster Baits, love sweet cherries, and had a childhood fascination with her, so I was reeeally hoping that she wouldn´t steer me wrong (my skin loves Kabuki, but turns the Red Queen to plastic). When I first applied I went the sparing route... and initially thought I was disappointed. She did start off sweet and then dried down to the famed Strawberry Shortcake plastic doll skin smell. Which is novel, for sure, but not bottle worthy. But I wasn´t ready to give up yet. I think Bloody Mary is a slatherer (which I usually am not, but... hey, duty calls, right?). So I upended the bottle on my wrist and then again on my other wrist, dabbed the cap on my shoulders, blotted off the oil around my arms and neck and got ready for bed. And I slept in a candy cherry powdered sugar dusted cloud, which was still wafting around me when I woke up this morning. Mmm! Not an every day scent, but a comfort and girlie scent for sure.
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I like Mr. Nancy. He's fun, and made me realize that I absolutely LOVE lime in perfume. The tart green lime has me enchanted. And he does last, oh does he last and last. However, my boyfriend despises him. He says that while it's true he loves the smell of maple syrup when he's about to eat it, he does not like it on me, and requests that I do not invite Mr. Nancy over when he's going to be around (it was this same reaction that made me eventually swap off Sugar Skull). I think he'd rather I called in Mama-Ji. Ohh well, you can't please everybody all the time! I'll just have a secret little fling and let that be that. (curry?? now I know someone has even stranger chemistry than I do! )
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Okay, I love the smell of whisky. I knew that if there was a chance that I would be able to find a PERFUME that smelled like delicious, high-quality whisky, BPAL was the one place that I could count on. The only real question was my skin chemistry, which can be distinctly funky and ever so not normal. To my delight (I actually made a surprise noise), when I opened the imp and smelled, as other reviewers have described, nose-hair singing hard whisky smell. It smells deliciously like top shelf whisky for several moments on my skin (I think my chemistry tends to burn right through the first phases of any given scent) and then starts to settle down into a whisky, smoky, spicy, woody deliciousness that I am COMPLETELY IN LOVE WITH. Like the previous reviewer, Lit Chick, this is what I had hoped for from some of the woodier, smokier blends. I agree also with LitChick that this is hot, fragrant fire. An incredibly comforting scent that I find to be sexy and warm and enveloping and intriguing all at the same time. Normally a scent has to be with me for awhile before I proclaim love HG status and start waving the banner, but Mad Sweeney has me in his spell, and he´s without a doubt in my top 3 scents. I resisted physically running to order a bottle. How awesome is that. Thank you Beth, and thank you eviltemptressdq for getting me a decant all the way in Argentina!! ETA: it´s evil Temptress,not mistress
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Three white cakes, vanilla, and red and black currants. I guess I like being whomped upside the head with bodaciousness, since Beaver Moon is one of my favorite scents (one of the only multiple bottles I hold, alongside Tombstone and Gomorrah). I had high hopes for Eat Me as I *adore* all things Alice in Wonderland, vanilla, and have come around to enjoy the berry that is currant--thanks, Gomorrah! Comparisons to a more vanilla snake oil had me intrigued (SO goes to baby powder on me) so I picked up an imp, expecting to regret not buying a bottle unsniffed. Oh, how wrong that would have been. Not that Eat Me is BAD on me, by any stretch. It´s a little strong at first... kind of puffy candy stale vanilla. But that fades out and it does indeed resemble the spicy crusty cheesecakey goodness that is the belov´d Beav. I thought that I was liking it. However, after about an hour of the yummy currants adding their juicy berry-licious-ness to the mix, it just got a little... bland. then faded to a sweet powder scent. *sigh* I might continue to use this in conditioning treatments for my hair, or MAYBE as a room scent, but definitely don´t need more than the imp. Between the two, I prefer Drink Me, as it´s a little more fun.
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I just got a shipment of new bpal goodies and I am happily trying them all. As vanilla and I get along swimmingly, I have a list of all the vanilla BPAl that I want to try and Death Cap was a variation I was very intiruged by. Most scents I'm happy with just an imp to put on once in awhile, but I always know when a bottle is due... and I think Death Cap calls me to the slathering depths that only a bottle or two can fix. In the bottle I can smell the mushrooms. On my skin this shifts into a less humid dirt note than the one I love in Penny Dreadful, but instead of the gingery perfume that lurks in PD I get a soft, earthy coconut vanilla. Wow!! This one feels like ME. I love it. Thank you BPAL, there's another GC that I can swoon with. love it love it.
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Dee was a frimp that I was joyful about because I had been wanting to sniff, enticed by the reviews, so: thank you labbies! Ahem. however, we didn't get along as well as I'd hoped. he didn't much like my boyfriend either. I got none of the yummy notes listed, just an acrid sort of cologne smell. Not good, and way too "masculine" smelling for either one of us. I was hoping for tonka and leather and parchment and incense, but we got alcohol soaked linen, both of us. Anyway, I guess that this can all be chalked up to skin chemistry. I was sharing the BPAL love with some friends, and whipped out a couple that don't work so well on me but that I was hopeful might be better with other skins. and MAN were they. On my friend Daniel's skin this smelled *magnificent* - succulent and warm, yet strong and virile. I think the tonka base sweetened it up, but it was a delicious "man" smell on him and I was happy to finally smell what the fuss was about. Needless to say, the imp went home with him (and his girl was quite happy about that)!
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Limited editions equivalents in the general catalog?
Avery replied to Absinthe's topic in Recommendations
I posted this in my review, but Organ Grinder (at least the parts of it that I like) are duplicated in a slathering of Tombstone + a drop of talvikuu. I know, talvikuu is LE too, but... hey. It's worth mentioning. Mme. Moriarty on my skin smells oddly like Vixen! YMMV on my recommendations, since I have strange skin chemistry, but maybe it's worth a try! -
I had high hopes for the Organ Grinder. In my mind, it was perfect--patchouli (which BPAL taught me to love), sasparilla, pine... the almond milk had me nervous, and I guess for good reason. In the first stage on my skin (wet, about 30 minutes) it was reeeaaaally good too--sweet, smokey, piney, and delicious. I did not get strong patchouli. But funny, through experimentation I had already happened upon a layering combination that smells *just* like the stage of Organ Grinder that I really love, but it dries down better: Tombstone + (just a drop of) Talvikuu. I swear it is the same sweet piney deliciousness, but instead of turning into kind of a sour milk acrid smokey smell on the drydown, it's honey vanilla pine (on me)--I feel like I'm in a different time and place, a magical forest, a safe palce. Funny how scent can transport you that way. YMMV with this combo, but I will definitely stick to the Tombstone +, and save my money for buying another bottle of the beloved (tombstone is definitely in my top 2 of gc scents) instead of the OG. I still can't wait to try Golden Priapus! Oh well!
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Penny Dreadful! It's like the damp earth has come to embrace you. You're not damp, like, "I can't wait to change out of these clothes" but like a second (warm) skin. Love it! It's raining today and that's what I chose. Clio is another fresh natural rain scent for me.