Nia

On the imp tihs smells intensely of flowers with a slightly citrussy-spicy note. I can't really tell the difference between the three flowers in the lab's description. On me, this smells extremely floral, so intense that it's almost unpleasant, like rose-scented insecticide or air freshener. After a while, it smells a lot like roses, maybe because I identify strong floral notes with them. I only swap away things that absolutely don't work, and I'm undecided about this one.

in the imp: coconut, but slightly acidic, like coconut yoghourt. There is something intensely sweet, like burnt caramel, too. Wet on skin: the burnt note is accentuated. Dry: The burnt-ness doesn't improve, but after a while the coconut comes back. I like the scent, but I wouldn't want to smell like this myself.

There is a combination of herbs that Lush uses with some modifications in all its relaxing range. For example there's Deep Sleep, a shower jelly; Sleepyhead, a massage bar, and my favourite, Dream Time temple balm. Maybe because of the chamomile, Rome smells on me like Dream Time gone wrong: bitter, and too strong. After many minutes it smells like Dream Time gone floral. It does smell more Mediterranean than Dream Time, but there's something in it that doesn't work with me.

I had no idea what lotus smelled like, but now I guess it has to be close to apples, because this smells to me exactly like caramel, candied apples and lavender. I can attribute the candied aspect to the spices, but the intensely sweet appleyness is a mystery. I would have never thought that a lavender scent could be anything but soft, soothing and relatively simple. This does smell sophisticated and decadent. Like lavender tea with tarte Tatin.

On imp: Hmmmmm! it wakes up my nose. Is pungent the right word? it smells a bit citrussy. On me: Man's cologne; I can never detect leather as a note, but it makes things smell of man to me. Oddly enough, I feel bitterness in my mouth when I sniff this. The weirdest thing is that it makes me sad.

The rich scent of wild blackberry breezing over gentle rosy heather. I needed this one to work, as I have a long-standing love affair with the city of Glasgow. To me it smells quite differently but this was a complete success. I smell the heather a lot more than the berries. In the imp I couldn't really smell anything fruity. On my skin it warmed up, literally. I applied it a minute before going out and it had so much throw that it felt as if all the town was perfumed. Not bad at all for a gentle floral. The blackberries came out, eventually. Yum. I could easily get a bottle or three of this.

I have not tried this on myself but on a volunteer, my boyfriend. On imp: I say it's very cologne-y, a typical floral. He asks, what's exactly wrong with that? On him: I think the roses are very discreet, the other flowers come out better. His opinion: "This smells exactly like a garden, but not an ordinary one but something out of Edgar Allan Poe. Yes, I know the book was French and Poe American, but it smells like a garden in Poe should, right?" He said it's a shame it doesn't smell as a man's perfume at all, as he loved it. I must try it soon to see if he likes it on me.

The blend in the imp is too complex to pick up any distinct note. It's strong, perfumey, and original. It is definitely a deep, woman's perfume -not a light floral or anything of the sort. My skin doesn't like this. the odd thing is that to me it smells "French" -I associate with French commercial perfumes. Something floral, sweet and heavy by Guerlain or YSL. I agree with the powdery note others feel.

in the vial: eewwww, this is too strong. Too concentrated, a slap on my sinuses. Wet: Maybe I'm traumatised by yesterday's failure with Txadikim Nistarim (a blend that should have worked but turned synthetic on me), but I detect a similar, supermarket-fruit-drops note. Five minutes later: I've been lucky. The fruitiness is either self-suggestion or the raspberry leaf. The cedarwood and the vetiver aresitting on top. It doesn't smell angry, but serious. Schoolmistress-y. But in a good way. I would wear this to work.

I sniffed without reading the description so that I wasn't conditioned by it. From the description, I should love this scent because I like apple blossom, ylang ylang and honey. in the imp: Fresh, but at the same time fruity and caramell-y. Edible but not cloying. On me: Apple? There is something a bit nutty, like sweet almond, but bpal almond goes wrong on me so it must ne something else. The honey? It is a very balanced mix of the fruity and the floral, but it dies very quickly on me.

To me this smells of aloe vera, mint, and eucaliptus. It is very green and fresh, a little bit bitter, and a little bit medicinal. An advantage: it smells on me exactly like it does in the vial. the disadvantgae: it irritates my skin. Actually, I think it works better as a man scent. If my boyfriend likes it, I'll give it to him. I like other "men's" scents like Casanova, but this is too serious and sober for me. ETA: The Boy loved it. After I got used to smelling it on him, I feel a pine note that comes and goes.

As others have said, this does smell of pineapple. Unfortunately, it is very fruity in a very synthetic way, like a supermarket air freshener, or fruit drops. Few things have gone so bad on me.

in the bottle: Floral. Wait a second: floral and pear. Someone put a diced pear in a bowl of roses. Wet: My skin amplifies this! It is fresh but intense, which is good but weird. In my mind "heavy" scents have throw (not true: Bliss is very discreet) and fresh scents stay quiet (not true, at least in this case). After a few minutes, the fruit goes away and the flowers form a very good balance. Roses tend to smell like cheap rose air freshener on me, but this rose stays under control, with all the other flowers telling her to be quiet. Still, it is a bit generic. I would love it if the smell on me was just like it is on the imp.

A few bpal blends with different notes had gone soapy on me. Dragon's hide was the worst, but I had tried no other Ars Draconis blend, so I thought this one would help me figure out if the problem was the dragon's blood. Wet, in the imp: perfect red apples. It smells very real and very fresh. So far it's the bpal oil that most smells like a thing, not like a perfume. Wet, on skin: it does funny things. It cannot make up its mind. The apples become sweet, then there is a tiny hint of a soapy undertone. Skin, ten minutes later: this has settled to a lovely mix of flower and apple.

I got this as a surprise from Moonarcana (whom I will never tanks enough). This is real chocolate. That's all. Like black chocolate, or rather, like reeeeeally good quality milk chocolate. If you know Green & Black's, that's what I mean. Bliss lasted nothing on my skin and to me it smelled like Lush cosmetics chocolate products: very sweet chocolate blended with orange. This is a lot purer. I'm tempted to lick myself, seriously. This sounds wrong, but it smells chocolatey and perfumey at the same time. It is as if I had applied something floral, and then Candy Butcher on top. Still, it is terribly addictive.

wet: oddly medicinal, and a bit like glue. And a bit bitter. On my skin: for a few minutes it's veeeery sweet! Then it becomes a subtle, fresh, lemony floral. This smells quite a lot like the gently uplifting and energising scent I have been craving for lately. It smells as if it is meant to be aromatherapy. The only flaw I find in it is that it's a bit too mild, in the sense that it doesn't seem to have much throw. I will probably use it for aromatherapeutic purposes. For example, on pulse points when I have to study and concentrate. I would even buy a bottle if it continues to work for that.

This is one of the few BPAL blends that have gone very soapy on me. I'm lucky, I guess, that they tend to work. Like most other reviewers, I get the mint/eucaliptus first, and after a while, it warms up and the violets come and say hello. The problem is that the violets go soapy. So it's: Stage one: Eucaliptus. Stage two: five minutes of eucaliptus and violet. Stage three: an eternity of eucaliptus, with soap on top of it. Blah.

wet, it smells... sour. Acidic. I thought "i'm not going to like this". Once on my skin, it smelled too strongly floral. One of those "old lady scents". But there was definitely no soapiness, so that's good. After a few minutes, it smells as if God had come back to Earth and improved jasmine. On me, the scent doesn't change much. It is moderately long-lasting (maybe a few hours) but it's discreet.

I got this one from a massive collection Moonarcana has sent me (thanks dear!) and I didn't even remember the description, so I sniffed without any particular expectations on how it was supposed to smell. On the imp, it smelled very gentle and sort of aquatic, like flowers would if they were drenched in dew or rain. My friend said that it smelled sweet, which surprised me. On my skin, I could detect flowers and a fruity, sweetish note. The disappointment is that it lasted very little, for about an hour or so, and that Icouldn't really detect individual notes.

I think that it would go well with Eden, which is fruity and interesting. To me, Bliss doesn't smell of chocolate but of Lush's chocolate products: whipstick, Sonic Death Monkey. Bliss lasts nothing on me so I poured 3/4 of an imp on a Xmas massage bar and now the chocolate smell is amplified! yay! Jailbait and Rockstar doesn't smell exactly alike but it is as if rockstar was one of the ingredients in Jailbait. They go well with each other if you want that sort of candy overdose.

I have one word: soap. No, actually, I have more: cheap, bad soap. The scent on the vial is a beautiful exotic floral-y thing, the reaction on me is sad. Another leather blend (Casanova) works very well on me so I can only blame the dragon's blood. ETA: fifty BPAL blends later, I have figured out that my skin amplifies leather, and that some lillies, but not all, become soap on my skin. So maybe the "floral-y ness" was lilly. Still, a nasty one.

I don't know what to do! help! I want my first BPAL order to be six imps, probably all of them from the Illyria collection because I'm such a fool for anything literary. I'm curious about Iago because I like the character so much, and the notes in the lab description sound as if they match what I think Iago should be like. I love Casanova, which has leather, and it's great. But Dragon's Hide smells strong and not very nice, and on me it goes sour, like cheap bad soap. It is leather gone bad. Has anyone tried all three blends, or at least dragon's Hide and Iago? are they at all alike?

I think it is the vanilla that makes me think of this as a candy smell. You know, some sort of candy that comes in red colour so you assume a strawberry flavour but the taste is actually vanilla-like. My first impression was of a strong candy scent with a berry undertone. Once dried, it smelled of a combination of strawberries and orange/citrus with a third, more serious and sober companion, which must have been the sandalwood. But this third, not-sweet scent was just there to say "hey, this is not all fun and games here", just to contradict a bit the candy overall impression. This "older brother" stays long after the strawberries have abandoned me -I applied about seven hours ago and there is still a hint of it on my skin. ETA, November 2007: Aged Tamora smells like a less sweet O. They share amber and vanilla; O has honey and Tamora doesn't. The sandalwood is almost gone and the peach is easier to detect. This scent loses with aging.

I have already read comparisons of this to Amaretto. Amaretto is sweet and slightly hazelnutty. Black Phoenix has covered my need for an Amarguinha scent! Amarguinha ("little bitter one") is a bitter almond Portuguese liqueur which is only a tiny bit sweet, with a slight citrussy scent and aftertaste. On the vial and wet, Black Phoenix smells _exactly_ like Amarguinha. Yummy. When it dries, the smell becomes earthy, smoky, more subtle and more complex. This is almost like a female-to-male impersonation! It's not bubbly and edible anymore although the almonds are still there. It's only now that I get a hint of that licorice other people felt. After having sniffed a total of 15 imps, I am considering this one for my first bottle!

I have done a search to see if this very anal question was already answered and it looked as if I'm the first to make it. I'm very new to BPAL; I just have a handful of imps. The way I apply it is by running the open imp fast along one side of my neck, or accross it, rubbing it on the skin so that it leaves a trace. When I use a BPAL perfume to give new life to my "normal" ones, I just use a rub of the cap's wand. How many uses do you think I can get out of one imp that way? about 5 or so?