edenssixthday

Chaos Theory IV: CDXCIV (494) - This is loaded with lots of wet, crisp, green cucumber. Beneath that is what I think may be a bit of coconut and some vanilla? Maybe a faint trace of amber? It works amazingly well.

Liberty - This is a pretty floral. I don't smell any of the gunpowder or smoke at all. It's mostly magnolia, chamomile, and the sweet, silky smooth scent of olive blossom. The beeswax and frankincense are present behind the more dominant notes, wrapping a ribbon of a gritty sweetness around the florals. As it dries down, something in the blend goes off and begins to smell a little dusty and odd, and based on past experience with apple blossom, I'd finger it as the culprit. It's not wonky enough to ruin the blend, but it smells odd up close. I'm a little on the fence about this one because overall, it's very pretty, but between that odd dusty note and the trace of magnolia (which is a note I usually dislike), I'm not sure I'd ever choose to wear this over some of my other similarly pretty florals. The throw and staying power are both fairly light.

Cat Allingham - This is a really beautiful blend. It's highly resinous, dark yet classy, heavy yet sweet. The myrrh, champaca, black musk and benzoin are the strongest notes on me with the patchouli and frankincense creating a second level of depth. I'm delighted the cumin doesn't turn to b.o. as it has been known to do. The sand note is definitely present, but rather than give the scent a dry desert type feel, it balances out the sweetness of the benzoin and musk. There's a hint of woodiness to the blend, but it's not remotely masculine. This is a really well-blended scent, and each note obviously adds to the overall beauty of the blend, yet it's so well-blended that they harmonize perfectly. It's quite strong when first applied, but once it dries down, it's got a lower-than-average level of throw and doesn't last as long as I'd expect with all those dark and heavy notes in it. It's beautiful and I can't wait to see how this one ages!

CT V (O): CCCXVIII (318) - This is O with orange. Amber, honey, vanilla and lots and lots and lots of orange. It may be mandarin orange. It's really gorgeous, but fades from my skin super fast.

CT V (Dorian): CCCLXX (370) - This has previously been reviewed first here and then here. I get something fairly different from both of those reviews! On me, this is gorgeous. It's the lovely creamy tea scent of Dorian along with a faint trace of anise, but also the gorgeous floral of tuberose. There may be a hint of fresh lemon zest in this, too. Overall, it's a really lovely scent, and I keep catching wafts of it around me and am so glad I got to try such a beautiful CT that has kept its Dorian-ness and just added to it. Lovely.

Floater - This is definitely an aquatic. It starts off salty and has that wonderful murky feel about I love in aquatics, but then something in it goes terribly awry and it turns into a very strong soap scent. Extremely soapy and detergenty, as much as the blends that are supposed to be soapy.

CT IV: LXII (62) - This starts out with the sweet, delicious and spicy scent of gingerbread. I am so excited to get a delicious-scented CT! But then it quickly starts to morph and the gingerbread fades and something slightly floral, slightly musky, and totally cloying and uber-sweet comes out. I can't place it, but I know I've smelled it before...it's driving my crazy that I can't put my finger on it. It's kind of sweet in a bread-like way, but sour in a sourdough bread-like way. This has to be washed off.

Occurence at the Diner - Very, very green scent. Lettuce and cucumber. Fresh, green, fun. I imagine people who really enjoy "green" scents would like this one.

Manus Dei (or the Typewriter Incident) - Wow, this scent takes me right back to high school and learning to change the ribbon in a typewriter. It's amazing how much it smells like typewriter ribbon! I can't get over how that scent has been duplicated! The other notes in the blend definitely make it a wearable scent, so much more than if it were a purely ink scent. I think the steel is probably the second strongest note. The dirt is not strong, but I do think I smell the distinct scent of red clay, which I'm just loving! I really love this scent. I don't know if I'd choose to wear it over my other favorite blends, but it's really fun in a nostalgic, scent-memory kind of way. I also think it would smell awesome on a dude.

Thorns - This opens up with the sharp bitterness of vetiver and something else that's dark and heavy. As it dries on my skin, the vetiver lightens up significantly and I can distinctly smell dragon's blood resin, which becomes the dominant note. There is something really strong and rubber tire-like in this scent that reminds me of the tarry, pine-pitch scent of scotch. It could be an additional ingredient or it could be the vetiver blending with the dragon's blood. I'm not entirely sure what is causing the bad odor since vetiver usually dries down quite nicely on my skin, but on me, this definitely has a dark, thick, heavy, tar-type odor about it that is far from pleasant.

Giallo - This is a strange scent on me. It wants to be a dark and beautiful, but the orange blossom keeps getting in the way and turns it into something dark and slightly off in a powdery sort of way. Beneath the orange blossom, I can smell gorgeous red musk and tobacco and patchouli and a hint of lovely jasmine and a hint of smokiness and sweet, dark plum...but the orange blossom keeps ruining the scent and giving it a weird powder-and-canned-green-chilis vibe to the scent, which just doesn't work with the other notes. I can wear orange blossom sometimes, but not other times. This time, the orange blossom is a fail.

Nepthys v3 - This is a very perfumey and musky scent that's got resins and the arid quality of sand about it. It's a very desert-like scent. It's not particularly pleasant to me -- the musk has too sharp of an edge and the overall effect is cloying.

Vishpala v2 - This is a very perfumey scent. There may be a lot of musk and flowers in this, but the strongest note is something heavily woody, almost like sandalwood, but I think it's pine -- not like standing in a forest pine, but like standing a cabin newly built of pine wood. There's a bit of a snow/slush scent, but I could be confusing the pine scent for that, too. No wait... it's winter flowers that I'm smelling! There's something super fruity-sweet in there, too, almost citrusy, but not quite. It's a strange one. Overall, I'd say this is a perfumey-musky-woody-piney-floral and I honestly have no idea if I like it or not. I think I do, but maybe more for a room scent than a personal fragrance.

Aphrodite v4 - This is a white floral with a bit of greens, but more than anything, it's soapy.

Vrishka Rajaya v2 - Unlike the previous reviewer, I smell absolutely no dandelion in this. BPAL's dandelion note is one of my nemesis notes, as it's very green and bitter on me, and I don't get a drop of that. Instead, this is a sweet fruity-floral to my nose. The fruit is something I definitely recognize, but I'm not able to identify it -- perhaps peach or pear or even a combo of the two? I feel like there may be a honey note in this, and maybe that's why I can't identify the fruit notes, because they've been honeyed-down. The floral is soft and gentle, and while I can't tell you what it is, I can tell you what it's not: it's not jasmine, gardenia, magnolia, lily of the valley, tiger lily, stargazer lily, rose, lilac, carnation. The more I smell this and the more I think about it, the more it reminds me of a fruity version of Selkie. ETA: Silly me. The fruit is apple. Red apple. Maybe honeyed red apple with a tiny hint of sweet pear.

AF25 - Really bright, sweet floral, but not quite as sharp or heady as some of the other AF* prototypes. This one opens with a huge blast of ylang ylang, which I'm not really that keen on, and has the distinct presence of gardenia behind the ylang ylang, and gardenia is another note I'm not a big fan of. I know there's more in this -- maybe woods or resins -- but I can't really discern any of the other individual notes. It has a definite Southern Belle quality about it, as if it may have been intended for the District line of blends.

Butter Arsenic - Oh God, I love this! It opens up with a really strong blast of almost chemical-like resins, but that calms down immediately upon drydown, and then I keep catching wafts of the most amazing dark and warm scent around me. It's amber without being powdery, and there may be a bit of sandalwood in it, and maybe some opoponax, but I'm not sure about that guess at all. It's just warm and resinous and so beautiful. I am so glad I had the chance to try this out, but I'm so sad that there's not much chance of finding more!

Nagarjuna v2 - Unidentifiable resins, an overly-sweet musk (maybe a vanilla musk of some sort?), and something really soapy. I don't find this scent enjoyable at all.

Hearth v2 - This is gorgeous. It's got tons of fir and evergreen notes, maybe a hint of hollyberry or something else very sweet and berry-like, and a thin layer of crusted-over snow beneath it. There may even be a hint of cherry tobacco in this, as with the released version of Hearth, but that could just be my brain making things up as it tries to process and decipher the various notes in this. It's really gorgeous, but sadly, it fades super fast on my skin. I put some on and less than an hour later I can't find it on my skin at all.

Ares v3 - This opens up with a ginormous blast of medicinal wintergreen and eucalyptus. It's really, really powerful. As it dries down, it becomes predominantly a dragon's blood scent, with a nice level of that wintergreen/eucalyptus scent behind the dragon's blood. I'm also guessing perhaps a hint of cypress and maybe some thyme? (I'm totally guessing on those last two!) While it opens up with a huge blast of nauseatingly medicinal odor, it settles into something really beautiful. When I sniff close to my skin, I think, "Nice, but not for me," but when I catch a random waft of it around me, I'm really intrigued by it. I think it's absolutely perfect in it's current form, so I'm guessing the reason it hasn't been released is due to component issues, because as far as the blend goes, it's perfect.

PPGC580 - I smell cedar and other blonde woods. I do get the faintest trace of a sharp, medicinal type scent that I think is coming across as eucalyptus for some -- and maybe it is -- but it's faint on me and disappears within the first few minutes of wear. Mostly, this smells like freshly sawed blonde wood. It takes me back to 1983 when my dad spent a significant amount of time sawing wood in our garage as he built my sister's and my bedroom sets that summer. This smells like the wood shavings on the cement garage floor.

Mouse's Long & Sad Tale v5 - I was excited about the lemon & cake descriptions this was getting, but what I smell is more of the lemon-sugar icing that's often served over a bundt-type cake. It's very sugar and lemony and there's not much else to it, with the exception of something faintly sour in the background, as if it's about to turn on me, but it never does. It remains the scent of slightly sour, sugar-sweet lemon icing throughout the life of the blend.

Imperious Tiger-Lily - This scent wasn't remotely as floral as I anticipated. In fact, it's mostly frankincense and an earthy, rooty scent (must be the ginger root?). As it dries down, the neroli really comes out and it becomes a frankincense-neroli scent. It a resinous herbal fragrance, and nothing like the lily fragrance I was anticipating.

XCDW5 - This is a melange of melon, lime, grass, dirt, and cucumber, as well as possibly a little pear. It's very fruity, very green, and has a hint of earthiness, but mostly is a sweet mish-mash of green fruits and plants. I love it, but sadly it fades from my skin very, very, very quickly.

P08 - I seem to be the only reviewer who likes this! This is really bright, booze-soaked cherry -- a maraschino-like, cherry-cordial-like cherry. There's the tiniest hint of chocolate in the background, not enough to turn really foul on my skin, but enough to be highly reminiscent of a chocolate-covered cherry cordial. It dries down to something significantly less sharp, boozy, and sweet, and becomes more of a softly-sweet, subtle cherry scent. If this were a shot, I'd drink it down in about .0001 seconds.