LdyKnight

It's been a long time since I've smelled fresh Snake Oil in any form (like, mine is the bottom third of a 10ml bottle long), and so I can't really say if the sort of cherry cola vibe I'm getting from this is mostly that or if it's the gingerbread being weird. This is a very sort of bright and aggressive perfume right now--I don't get any of the notes strongly on an individual level except a bit of patchouli, once the initial sort of cherry fizziness dies down. It doesn't last super long on me either. I don't get a lot of spice, or vanilla. It's not bad, just not very interesting. I'm basically going to tuck it away for at least a year and see how it goes.

I'm circling back to this one a year later to say it's settled down into basically an Earl Gray SN. It smells exactly like sticking my nose into a jar of loose-leaf earl gray. It's impressively realistic, better than my earlier BBQ experience, but not ultimately very interesting.

Wet on me this is an aggressive sweet almond and basically nothing else. Once it dries down the spices come out, and a little bit of vague non-almond nuttiness. Eventually it settles into a nice, fairly simple creamy spice. A good, fairly unobtrusive sort of scent.

This is very much a pumpkin scent on me--it's extremely similar to bobbing for jack-o-lanterns on me. I'd hoped for a little more apple, but it's certainly nice and falls squarely into my comfort zone. It's warmly spicy without being aggressive. I'll certainly wear it a lot next fall.

2022 version! Oh, this is SPICY! I get a lot of sandalwood and then CINNAMON! CLOVE! OTHER UNIDENTIFIED SPICES ALSO. And then a tiny little bit of pumpkin underneath. It reminds me a bit of Morocco, which is my sandalwood+spice reference point, but the spices here are much brighter. Once dry, it balances out a bit-the sandalwood tamps down the spice a touch, and I think that as it ages it will get a lot more harmonious. So far this is my runaway favorite of the Weenies this year--warm and spicy is all I really want from cold weather scents. If I get a backup of anything it will be this one.

On me, this is pretty much straight-up Samhain. There's an initial burst of dead leaves, and a nonspecific spiciness when it's wet, but it settles very quickly into a Samhain that's just slightly less complex than that blend often is--it's quite similar to my 2010 bottle, specifically. The ginger isn't individually apparent on my skin, though it jumps out of the bottle. Overall it's nice, but if I'd known how very similar to Samhain it was I probably would have skipped it.

I can't really pick out any individual notes in this. Wet it's very creamy and extremely sweet, with a sort of generic fruitiness. The drydown includes a prolonged bit of artificial berry car-air-freshener nastiness before it settles into a too sweet foodyness close to the skin. It's pretty similar to Eat Me, but the chemical fake sweetness keeps it from being actually nice on me. I don't get any almond or any of the tang I'd associate with mascarpone. I'll try it again in a couple months and see if it's settled some, but right now this is a bit disappointing.

I wish I could find my imp of Jack to compare this to, because this smells very very similar to the apple-free version on my skin. I don't get a lot of obvious spice up front, just an aggressive pumpkin blast. Once it dries down it's spicy sort of in the back of my throat more than my nose, with a tiny bit of peach coming out from behind the pumpkin. I still can't pick apple out on its own, or any of the individual spices, but there's a sort of Lambs Wool-esque warmth that suggests them. I was hoping for more apple--I think I could have just stuck with Jack the GC and not noticed much of a difference, but it's not a bad scent ETA: Retested a week later and it's already changed quite a bit--I do now get apple when it's wet, and the drydown is almost pure, delicious brown sugar, but in a much nicer way than anything with a listed brown sugar note ever smells on me. It's going to be really nice on snowy days, I think.

In the bottle this is all bright, juicy apple. Wet on my skin the apple vanishes immediately and I get a blast of something dry that I suppose is pink pepper. It settles down after a couple minutes and the fruit starts to come back out. Apple, mostly, with something else sweet underneath it, blending with the pepper. Pomegranate is one of those notes I don't really have a good scent memory for, but there is a not-apple sweetness that must be it. Once it's dry it's returned to mostly apple, with a slight dry-spicy-almost floral base. It's not particularly foody, and I'll probably make this more of a springtime perfume than a fall/winter one. It's pretty and quite subtle.

Wet on me this is straight-up barbeque sauce, which is so hilarious I can't even be upset about it. I smell like I'm ready to go on the grill. Once dry, I do get a little bit of tea and floral-leaning bergamot, but it's not at all creamy, which is a shame. It's pretty and wearable, after the BBQ stage passes. I do want to try layering it with some other creamy things to kind of round it out a little.

In the bottle this smells like what I can only describe as "Easter basket". Like, jellybeans and easter grass. There's a sort of sweet citrusy note that I can't pin down as anything specific, over a sort of generalized spice smell. Maybe a little bit of tea? I am not great at picking out tea on its own. Wet on, sharp sweetness turns into LEMON. Very loud lemon. Much brighter than Lemon Scented Sticky Bat (though that may just be because my bottle is so old--it might have been brighter fresh). It passes through a very clean lemon soap thing (so many scents turn to soap on me lately that I really should have expected this). Right before it's fully dry I got a burst of ginger that didn't stay nearly long enough. Once dry it's still brightly lemony, but with a warm spiciness underneath that's quite nice. A little of this goes a very long way--I kind of hope it mellows a bit as it ages, since I'd love more tea and spice out of this. Overall I like it! I'm trying to expand my summery scent collection, and I think this will work nicely. ETA: I've had a chance to do a longer test now, and I just wanted to note that this vanishes really fast--two hours in I could smell basically nothing. Even in my hair it fades very quickly.

I really love this! It's all cardamom on me--I don't really get any vanilla, and I can't smell the lavender as its own thing at all, but I think it's there contributing to what I can only describe as the feel of really nice clean laundry. It somehow has the feel--not the smell at all, but the feel--of going to bed in sheets that just came off the clothesline--there's a sort of sunny smell to this scent that is really soothing and warm. The only downside for me is that it fades really fast. It's delightful.

In the bottle, this smells like something specific, but I have no idea what. It reminds me ever so slightly of fruitcake, but as if it's gone off a bit. It has none of the butter or spices, but there's a hint of dried fruit and wine, but like the wine is slightly vinegary maybe? It's hard to pick out any one note, but I find it slightly off-putting. On and wet it's very similar at first to what was in the bottle, then very quickly goes in to an AGRESSIVE bandaid/plastic/medicinal scent that lasts long enough that the first time I tried it I just washed it off since it was so nasty. I toughed it out longer for my second test, and eventually the hardcore bandaid smell does fade, but it never really smells good. It's just sort of musty, with a slightly medicinal quality underneath. No spice, no oatcakes, no fruit--hugely disappointing. I'm sure there's someone out there who will get everything I hoped this would be, but my skin absolutely hates it.

I have a hard time picking out individual notes in this one. In the bottle I get almost-peach with an edge that just smells...sharp? The wooly sweater, I think, but it mostly just reminds me of smelling my grandma's old perfumes, bottles that had sat for decades and lost everything but their base notes. Not bad, but not the tea and fruit I was expecting. Wet on my skin it's another bright PERFUME!!! blast--again, impossible to pick out much of anything individual. I don't know if I'd identify peach if I didn't know it was there, but after a second I think I can pick it out. I get a few minutes of laundry smell, and then it sort of settles into something that is clean smelling without being detergenty. After a few hours it's just sort of subtly clean smelling, with a slight whiff of tea finally coming out. I never get any bergamot, vanilla syrup or, really, much in the way of lasting peach. It's not quite what I was expecting, and I don't think it will be a go-to, but I don't dislike it. It's a bit more--I don't know, formal? than a lot of BPALs I have, and probably a good addition to my collection.

Ivory soap. Just straight-up pure, clean Ivory soap. I have no idea why or how, but it goes on soap and dries down as milder soap. Not bad. Very clean, but not really something I'm looking for.

This smells a lot like a jar of bubble mix on me. A lot of scents go soapy on me lately, and this is a specific type of soap I guess--sort of sweet and reminiscent of childhood. Not bad, but nothing like the description, and not anything I'm excited about.

In the imp and when it first hits my skin I smell something almost like turpentine? It reminds me of painting with oils, sort of woody and chemical. As it dries it gets more spicy--there's a cinnamon and clove thing under the turpentine smell, and it's a little sweeter. Once dry there's a bit of bandaid/rubberness, lingering turpentine, and spice. If I could stop it at halfway dry I think I'd actually wear it, but the final result just isn't great on me. Ah well.

Wet on me this is straight-up cherry chapstick--sort of nostalgic, but not really something I want to smell like. Drydown brings out a little bit more complexity--the waxy chapstick smell fades a little bit and I can smell something sort of buttery, but there's still a lot of very fake cherry on top. I tend to have trouble with a lot of fruit notes, and while this is nicer than some, it's not really something I can see myself going for.

This was one of the first BPALs I really fell in love with, fifteen or so years ago, but every bottle feels like a gamble--it's like there are two versions of this scent (in my brain they're the good one and the bad one). The good Chimera is a sweet almost candy cinnamon with just enough depth to stay interesting and is my go-to winter comfort scent. The bad one has almost no cinnamon and smells sort of sour and dusty. The difference is immediate and apparent in the bottle--I wish it were a skin chemistry issue, but historically every fifth bottle or so I've gotten has been "bad". I got a bad one a year or so ago and hoped that maybe it would somehow age out of it, but it was still nasty this fall and I decided to replace. The new bottle is the bad version again. I'm really bummed.

This smells super sweet and sparkly in the imp--other people have said Sprite or 7Up and that's pretty much it exactly. Wet on my skin it smells very clean, like expensive handmade soap, and then once it dries it smells exactly like a bottle of bubble blowing liquid. It's a really specific and nostalgic scent, but not one I necessarily want on me. I might try this just in my hair on a hot day, because I really do like it wet.

I just got an imp of this in my Lupercalia order, randomly enough. In the bottle it's woody and reminds me of ...I think Foundation of Fortune? It smells very familiar, and I'm pretty sure it's reminding me of a TAL money blend, but I'm not 100% certain which one. On my skin it's sweet amber, which I tend to amp to the exclusion of anything else.

In the imp it's a very masculine stone/metal smell. On me it's all leather, as I have come to expect from any scent with any amount of leather. My husband is currently running an all-dwarf game, so I gave it to him for~inspiration~.

In the imp it's a bright POP of cherry with a slightly herbal undertone. I tend to amp woods, so wet on me is all rosewood--nothing else even coming close. Unfortunately, once dry this is straight-up original scent Avon Skin-So-Soft. It's not unpleasant, really--it's a sort of nostalgic childhood smell for me. It's not something I really want to smell like though.

I haven't tried this one for years--probably since I got it--and it's been lingering in what was my swap/sale bag back when I was still active enough on here to have one of those. I pulled it out on a whim and gave it a test. In the bottle it's still a sort of dry almost-spice that doesn't really do much for me. On my arm though, it's all musky vanilla and sugar and smells almost exactly like Dorian does on me. I don't get any spice at all, but it's perfectly pleasant. I think it's going to move back into my keep box.

In the bottle this is very sweet, I mostly get wine and some sort of fruit, and some lily. On, I immediately start to amp the balsam fir and cedar--I was so, so hoping for spices and fruit and leaves, but I knew it was a risk with the fir and cedar. After two minutes this is all nasty cheap car air freshener on me. So sad.