filigree_shadow

Hmmm. I'm not sure about this one. It's a little too hot for me personally. Plus it goes powdery on me. Hot powder. I don't think this one will work for me. I like the patchouli and moss in it, but they're buried down too far under the other notes.

Mmmmm! Sugared violets! I didn't really like Hope, but I like Faith a lot. The sugar seems to be just as strong as the violets -- very well-balanced. This is lovely.

Bay rum and cologne with a hint of bourbon. I'm not sure if I can smell the tobacco. It's a little sweet right at first, but as it dries down the bourbon comes out a little more and makes it smell interesting. I guess I'm not very good at describing it, but I know I like it. I gave the imp to my husband to try.

I didn't like this very much when it was wet because it smelled too much like mossy earth. That dirt kind of smell is pretty strong, and it smells a little odd with the caramel. However, a couple of hours after putting it on, I like it. It smells like caramel, but kind of a masculine caramel -- which sounds strange but works. I'm not sure if I like waiting through the wet stage to get to the good part, so I'm still undecided about this scent.

I almost won a partial bottle of this on eBay many moons ago, and I'm glad I didn't. I like the scent okay, but I don't love it, so I'm glad someone else got the bottle. It mostly smells like a soft citrus scent on me. As it dries it becomes almost astringent. There must be some herbs in there too. But it's really soft, and I don't think it's offensive at all. It's just not my thing.

Hmm. A pink oil. I bet I will like this. Well, whaddya know. Yes, I do like it. The almond is pretty strong at first, but as usual the almond isn't quite so strong after it's dry. A previous reviewer said that it smells like a spiced creamsicle (orange and creamy with some spice), and that's what it smells like on me too. I like it. When it's released I'd like to get some.

This one has that sharp, herbal lavender in it. It reminds me of cleaning products or medicine you might take when you're sick. I'm not sure what's supposed to be peaceful about this blend -- it doesn't smell very peaceful to me. (But I'm not a fan of scents like this, either, which is probably why it doesn't smell comforting to me.)

I've been wanting to get my hands on this for a long time because I suspected I would like it. A generous BPALer let me try her imp, and I was happy to discover that I do like it. It has quite a lot of lavender in it, but it's a soft creamy lavender rather than a sharp herbal lavender. I'm REALLY picky about lavender, and this is the kind I like. It blends nicely with the violets. I don't like lavender enough to wear it very often at all, so I'm not too sad about not having any of this oil. But I'm glad I got to try it.

Smells floral. Kind of a powdery perfumey floral. It's not roses, and not jasmine either. I think it's a gardenia or some flower like that. It's not a bad scent, but also not one I'd go out of my way for. There are other florals in the BPAL catalog I like much better than this one.

As soon as I saw the imp I knew I was going to like this one (the oil is a dark reddish color). I was right. It reminds me a bit of Sin -- it has that dark, musky, powerful scent. I thought that with civet and grape it might smell a bit like Puck, but it doesn't. The grape just gives it a sweetness and prevents the blend from smelling too musky and too strongly of civet. I don't seem to be getting nearly as much grape as other reviewers got -- this is really musky on me. I'm not complaining! I like musk MUCH better than grape. If this scent were ever resurrected I'd be tempted to get a bottle. (But it seems to have been pretty unpopular, so I doubt it'll be resurrected.)

Awww. It's so cute and fresh and snowy-smelling. It smells like one of the pretty Yule blends. Cold and crisp, but sweet and lovely too. There's something almost perfumey about it that I like quite a lot. I'm not sure if I like this better than my "cold" scent, Snow Bunny, but it sure is a shame that one of the components prevented BPAL from selling this for Yule 06. I bet it would have been a hit. I'm glad I got to sniff this one!

I got to try a sniffie of this one from a generous BPALer, so I didn't do a full test of it. Just sniffed. It smelled kind of hot at first, but then I realized that was some sort of smoky incense note. It smells like wood and incense, kind of a churchy scent, but not nearly as sweet as Cathedral. Much smokier. It reminds me a little bit of Penitence. I'm glad I got to sniff it, but if it were still around I probably wouldn't buy a bottle. I'm very picky about incense + wood scents, as they tend to go too sweet or too woody on me.

This one smells like vetiver and woods. It's a really nice, almost powdery vetiver, not that dark dank kind. It's the smokey kind of vetiver that I like. I'm pretty sure that the wood in it is cedar, because the scent reminds me of Tombstone. It really warms up after it's been on the skin for a few minutes and becomes almost creamy and sweet. I like it. I wish it were still around -- I'd probably buy a bottle of it, and I'm generally not usually all that keen on the scents of the Voodoo Blends. This was a good one.

A sweet minty wood scent -- I think the sweetness is from some kind of mint. It seems like there's a wood underneath it (maybe pine?) giving it a nice grounding, but mostly it's a sweet minty scent. I got to try a sniffie of this from a generous BPALer, so I didn't do a full-out test of it. Just a sniff. I'll probably try an imp of it when it's released, but I don't like the sniff enough to want a bottle of it when it comes out.

This was the scent from the Trick or Treat Inquisition that I wanted the most, largely due to the red musk, vanilla bean, and leather. The red musk and leather smell great together and they aren't overly strong in this. There's something else in this that makes it smell perfumey, but I'm not sure what it is. I guess the skin musk? I can't pick out any ginger in it, but it has a very subtle spicy quality. It reminds me a little bit of a cross between Dark Delicacies and Mme. Moriarty. I like this so much it's in my Top 10 BPAL scents. I love wearing it.

This smells like Snow White + mint (or at least something that smells minty to me). The mint dies down as it's drying, and it ends up reminding me of a colder version of Snow White. It's soft and pretty. I think I like this better than Snow White. The creaminess of that one was a little overwhelming for me. I like the extra coldness in this one.

Wow. Not what I was expecting. I thought this would smell like an odd, confused jumble. Instead it smells like a deep earthy patchouli, and the Balsam of Peru smells great with it. It's so unusual. If I smelled this on someone I would probably stop in my tracks and turn my head toward the scent. It smells almost exotic to me, and definitely alluring. I would love for my husband to wear this. (I have a feeling he won't like it, but I'll convince him to at least try it.) I also think women can wear this just fine. It reminds me an awful lot of chypre scents, and I've always liked those.

Good gravy, that's a lot of whiskey. You know how you're getting ready to take a drink of some alcoholic beverage and your nose gets into the little glass as you take a sip and all of a sudden you get a big whiff of the alcohol and your only thought is "Flammable! FLAMMABLE!!" Uh, no? Hmm, maybe that's just me. Anyway, that's exactly what this smells like when it's wet. Just like that. Not for long, though! This has the shortest "wet" stage of any BPAL oil I've tried. Usually I can tell where I applied an oil because it's shiny for several minutes while it's still wet. This one is dry and not shiny inside of 30 seconds. When it's dry, it smells like a lot of oak, strong and dry, with some whiskey remnants. It smells like what I imagine the inside of a whiskey barrel smells like after it has dried out. Except there's something that reminds me of wood ash in this, too. Dry and wispy, and very slightly acrid. Very interesting. It's not something I'd wear, but I'm glad I tried it.

Berenice was the only "pretty" scent in the Maelström series, and it is indeed quite pretty. When it's wet it's a little too green for me, but when it's dry it's a great clean-smelling softly floral scent. The lily doesn't overpower it, and I think the aloe and linen combined make it smell kind of like clean laundry. It also went through a stage where it seemed like it was trying to be creamy, but that could be the Birthday Cake tart I'm smelling from the other room. Hee. I bought a bottle of Berenice when Maelström was up, but I swapped it because I thought it was too green. I still had a decant though, and when I tried it on today I was kind of surprised to find out that it seems to have mellowed a bit. It seems like it's less lily and more aloe than I remember. I like it, but this isn't the kind of scent I'd wear often enough to have a bottle of it. I hope that bottle I bought is somewhere getting lots of love now.

I have versions from 04, 05, and 06 on various parts of my arm right now, to compare them all. 04 version: Wet, it's sweet, only faintly floral, and it has a dry scent that I think is from tobacco? It's quite different from the 05 and 06 versions. It smells full and deep, and it's entirely pleasant. I can smell the chocolate in it. A very comforting scent. It does get a little smokier when it's fully dry, but it still has that wonderful rich scent underneath. 05 version: Wet, it's sharper than 04. It has more of a planty scent to it. It also smells like it has more incense in it than the 04 version. I think the reason I don't like this one as well is that it doesn't seem as complex as 04. It smells like a very even sweet, dry incense that doesn't morph much. When it's dry it has a pretty floral overtone but I'm not really a big fan of the floral + incense combination. 06 version: Wet, it's very similar to 05 but sweeter. Dry, it's not as floral as 05, but still quite similar. This one seems the most perfumey of all of them. Although I think they're all great artistic interpretations, the 04 version is by far my favorite, and I'm not surprised at all that it's more popular than the more recent versions. 05 and 06 kind of have an over-the-top sweet incensey scent that's a little too much for me, and 04 doesn't. Maybe 04 just works best with my skin chemistry.

As far as I can tell, I've never written a review for Smut, which is weird because it was one of my first BPAL loves. When I first had a bottle last year, I overdid it. Think high school boys who bathe in Polo every day. Yeah. That's what I did with Smut. I burned myself out on it a wee bit, and as a result I don't wear it that much any more. But whenever I do put it on (I wear it specially for my husband because it's his favorite BPAL scent on me), I still love it. It's not really very sweet on me, it mostly smells like boozy musk. Emphasis on boozy. I know vanilla isn't in the description, but I'd swear there's something creamy in it like vanilla. It's smooth. It smells naughty and sexy. It's freaky strong and lasts forever, too. I used to put it on before going to bed, and when I woke up in the morning it was still there. I got a decant of the 07 version to compare it to my 06 bottles, and it's different. Maybe it's just the decant I have, I don't know. But 07 isn't nearly as strong and is creamier and a lot sweeter than 06 -- it's so sweet that when it's wet it doesn't even smell like Smut to me. The 06 version is so boozy it's almost murky, and 07 isn't. When it's dry I can tell it's still the same scent, but if I had gotten this oil out of one of my 06 bottles I would think there was something wrong with it. To be honest, I think I kinda like the 07 version better because it's not so bold. But I got used to 06 and that's what I'm expecting when I smell Smut.

Resurrected version: Some cinnamon from a distance, but close up it's all clove and pepper. It has a weird, almost bitter twang at first that I don't find entirely pleasant. I'm guessing that's the pepper, which usually doesn't smell great on me. I don't usually like the spicy scents, and this one's ALL spice. I'm glad I got to try it, but I'd never wear it. Nothing against the scent, I just prefer the softer comforting ones. Original version: I have the original version on another spot of my arm, to compare, and the original one doesn't seem to have that odd twang when it's wet. It's just straight-up spice, and it seems like more cinnamon than clove.

This is really well done. I can smell yellow flowers and a slightly bitter weedy scent. Underneath it all is something smooth and milky, but it's only barely there. I appreciate this oil for its artistry, because I'm really impressed that this is such an accurate scent. Unfortunately my nice comforting childhood memories of the scent of dandelions are long gone. Dandelions are a contributing factor to what makes my yard the scourge of the neighborhood. I smell this scent now and I start looking around for my gardening gloves and that corkscrew tool that uproots dandelions. I refuse to use chemicals on my lawn, so I have to pick the buggers by hand, and it's a chore.

Jeepers. Very herbal and green, and more than a little sharp. This isn't the gentle lavender that's in some blends, it's the in-your-face kind. Luckily the lavender fades out pretty fast, and what's left is a soft, almost bitter herby scent. Not my kind of scent at all, really. It smells kind of angry to me.

When it's wet: This smells like pine-scented cleaning products on me. Bleah. And then the chestnut scent comes in, and it turns into nuts & cleaning products. I... uh... I don't think this smells right on me. I can smell a tiny bit of butteriness underneath it, but the pine part is so overwhelming that I don't fancy having my nose right up to my skin to smell this. When it's dry: It's a little more buttery, but it's still mostly pine. I'm really perplexed by this. I tried this a year ago and liked it so much that I swapped for a bottle of it. It's been one of those ones that sits in my BPAL box but for some reason or another I never reach for it. I decided to get it out and try it again tonight, and I'm really surprised that I ever swapped for a bottle of it. It doesn't smell like I thought it did. Odd. ETA: All right, I rescind my earlier comments. After it's been on for more than 30 minutes, the pine scent isn't nearly as strong, and it has a lot more of that "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" scent that I remember. I actually do like this now. But, urgh. That initial stage was not pleasant.