tajana

In the bottle, this smells delicious. Like the most delicious hot cocoa in the world! On my skin, though te cinnamon-sugar edge to the hot cocoa flattens out a bit. The coffee comes out more strongly and the delicious hot cocoa aspect is diminished. As awesome as this is to smell in the bottle, I don't like smelling like a walking mug of a delicious drink. I'm tempted to keep my lil' partial bottle just to sniff it, but the last time I sniffed it I gobbled up more than a few dark chocolate cookies! Oops.

Sweet, bright fruit at first, almost candy-like... I thought of apples and pineapple, lots of canned pineapple syrup. After a minute on the skin lots of other notes come out to play. Flowers, accompanied by a twinge of something that is indeed "cologney" are the first to appear... lilies, I think, and other flowers in the same scent family. There are some herbs mixed in there too to give the vaguest medicinal twist, which is just about the only witchy, Baba Yaga-esque thing I can feel in this scent. When it's dry, I get mostly canned fruit syrup, mashed up with heady florals (the kind that aaalmost give me a headache), overlying some herbal/green notes and light musk. Strange but interesting!

I thought this could be my signature scent. Tea, spices, and patchouli! But with such high expectations, of course Clémence let me down. She's not bad by any means, but it wasn't the orgasmic experience I was predicting from the listed notes. This is mostly black tea with a hint of citrus, like maybe the tea's got a bergamot element. There's nothing milky or creamy about this, so I don't think of chai. But there are certainly spices, they're just strangely demure... cloves, mainly, with a bit of crushed black pepper, soft carnation, a subtle dash of cardamom. The patchouli acts as a base, but doesn't really take charge. It's a simple scent, and the coolness of the tea balances the spices to make this an all-weather scent rather than one suited specifically to any one season. Nice, but I don't think I'll be needing more than my decant... not that the decant itself will last me for a particularly long time, as I need to slather this one a bit.

I snagged a partial bottle of this off the forum, 'cause I'm having a major love affair with chocolate scents. Yep, this is definitely a bottle you have to roll around before applying to mix up the cocoa with the rest of it. Wulric seems really striking to me, it's really different from anything else I've tried. The chocolate is deep and dark, and it's spiked heavily with sharp, wild, herbaceous notes, lots of sage and lavender. There's a hint of charred, burnt wood here that gets stronger as the chocolate note gets subtler. The notes are all on an even level, the chocolate-vanilla is there but it doesn't take over, it's well blended with the smoky burnt, earthy wood and herbal notes. The sharpness of the lavender and sage calms down after a while, and the musky base is more apparent. This perfume is definitely fitting for a wolfman, somehow! I find myself reaching for Wulric often: I'm contemplating buying a full bottle at some point. It smells really unique, I love it more with each wear. I tried this on my boyfriend, and it's significantly chocolatier on him.

I definitely get the Snake Charmer comparison (not so much Snake Oil), but this is smokier and fruitier than Snake Oil. Patchouli leaf is very prominent. There's a dark, juicy red feel from the pomegranate. Mme. Moriarty is a bit sharp, raw and a touch herbaceous. That aspect gets smoothed over by the other notes later, but the patchouli is wonderful, and definitely more prominent than the musk. It's very smoky, which is definitely the key word for this scent. Not like burnt black smoke, but the fragrant smoke of the best incense you've never smelled before. It dries down and that dense and dark smokiness is infused with lots of vanilla and dark red/purple fruit. It has good lasting power and throw. It's strong and it is dramatic, and also definitely not a summer perfume, as it's heavy enough to be cloying in the heat. I really liked this when I first tried it, but since then I've sort of... fallen out of love... I swapped away a back up bottle I got, and I'll probably swap away the bottle I have now, too. It might be a skin chemistry thing, as sometimes it just smells sharp-powdery, like the fruit is going a bit too noisy and the vanilla just isn't sitting well, but I think it's also a taste preference thing.

I Boomslang! When I tried Snake Oil, I wasn't really blown away or anything. It was nice and wearable, but it wasn't amazing... I figured it needed some aging to get good. But Boomslang... Boomslang was divine fresh from the lab. Rich, dark, delicious chocolate with a delightful twinge of delicate white rice milk (I love rice milk!), spiced with Snake Oil goodness. When it dries down the rice milk disappears and I get a lovely hint of wood that really meshes well with the Snake Oil. The chocolate tones down with wear... the initial burst of dark and rich chocolate melds into the spiced dark vanilla patchouli-musk-magic of Snake Oil, elevating it to a new level of decadence. The medicinal twinge of fresh Snake Oil smells great here, gives it an almost tea-like touch that gives this even more character. The extra notes are working some real magic here, because it never gets powdery like regular Snake Oil does on me. The lasting power is superb, the throw is just right. It feels like a more complete Snake Oil to me. It's warm and comforting, but still a touch sensual. I love it! Edit: I often go back and reevaluate scents after my initial glee, don't I? Well Boomslang is one of those scents I really have to be in the mood for. The first hour or so of wear is great, its sensual and decadent, like I said. But Boomslang has major lasting power, and after the complexity evaporates I'm left with a whole lot of chocolate and vanilla... delicious, but I feel strangely displeased, almost nauseated, after I've spent hour after hour smelling of almost straight-up vanilla and chocolate. I think I'll keep the decant I have, but I can't see myself using up a whole bottle.

Wet, it's a delicious blast of rich cardamom... makes me crave some kheer or some chai. The most cardamom-heavy perfume I've ever tried. As it dries around, it gets, most appropriately, wierder. It's a mix of very dry and very, very creamy. There's sweet golden hay and wood, over ridiculously creamy base spiced intensely with cardamom, along with other notes I simply can't identify... a bit herbal/medicinal. Really fascinating. It's not something I want to smell like, but it IS something I like to smell, if you can understand where I'm coming from. I wondered whether or not to keep my imp, but after about an hour on my skin the hay really took over... the other notes were still there, but there was just too much hay. I tried it twice, and Bezoar developed the same way both times.

When I first dabbed some on I got a ton of frankincense, which surprised me for a moment: I forgot about the frankincense! I was thinking all about the patchouli and sandalwood. But this was oodles of frankincense, with patchouli and sandalwood rolling around in the background. Now, frankincense usually strikes me as churchy when it's very dominant, but it isn't here. The earthy patchouli and dry, strong woodsiness of the red sandalwood tone it down in equal parts, and as the scent dries and wears for a while the three listed notes blend together. Unfortunately, the end result doesn't have enough pizazz to keep me interested. I love some good sandalwood, incense, and patchouli, but this smells a little too straightforward, almost crass, in a piratey sort of way.

This is really nice when it's wet: clean bright coconut, reined in by some musk and light incense. As it dries down the incense peeks out, and the overall effect is nice and furry. But in less than an hour, I was left with nothing but a powdery coconutty musk... not the best musk, either. It smells awfully similar to a note I got in Devil's Night that went strangely foody and almost rancid on me. I'll stick with Goblin for my coconut fix.

Uruk was hearbreaking on me... all nasty jasmine! Salomé, too. Uh, the same thing happened to me with Salome and Uruk! It was terrible. The other notes sounded good, and I expected almondy goodness, but got nothing but jasmine. That said, on *me* Eclipse turns out to be close to the skin but surprisingly almondy for ages... last week I dabbed some on at after breakfast, and when I offered my wrist to my boyfriend to sniff late in the evening... I was wearing a completely different scent further up my forearm that I had applied much more recently, but he immediately said I smelled almondy with a bit of cinammon and incense!

Wet, it's beeswax, like a just-starting-to-melt candle, strongly scented with light orange blossom honey and a faint drizzle of olive oil. The olive oil note adds an unexpected twist, it keeps the fragrance spare and elegant in its simplicity, but keeps it from being too straightforward or unsophisticated. I can almost see the flickering candlelight and feel the warmth of the tiny flames. While it's a nicely done scent, in its early stages it doesn't really grab me as deeply as I expected: I think I've simply come to realize now that I don't really like smelling like honey. When it dries down, it's delicate and beautiful: bright creamy beewsax and a curl of smoke. Earlier on the beeswax seemed to be coated and floating in honey, but by the drydown it smells like an expensive candle, sparingly scented, with another candle somewhere in the distance just blown out. At the beginning and the end (a few hours later) there is very little throw and it's close to the skin, but the area in the middle, when it's drying down and settling and morphing, is when the throw is actually quite strong. It's a beautiful scent, but I'm not sure about how often I'll wear it... I feel like I would have been better off with a decant than with a bottle. This would be the ultimate scent for someone who wants to smell like a pure candle, or like beeswax. EDIT: I'm so glad I clung to this one instead of hastily swapping or selling it away. I tried it again and it's just gorgeous. The excessive honeyed sweetness that bothered me last time is gone... Hanerot Halalu dries down to this amazingly pretty orange-flavored beeswax, evoking the warm glow of a candle. Close to the skin and appropriately natural smelling. Light and lovely, appropriate for almost all weather. Awesome awesome! Proof that if a scent doesn't quite seem 100% right the first time, you should revisit it a little later before making a final judgment. I LOVE this so much.

I was excited to try this. It sounded great! Woodsmoke, ginger, autumn "night", a bit of sugar? Sign me up! But on me... a tiny dab turned into... a roaring Halloween night barbecue. Greasy breakfast sausages (well, perhaps not sausages, but something about this smells like food to me, and I mean savory food, not cake/candy), transplanted to an autumnal campground, drizzled with maple syrup and a HEFTY dose of caramelized sugar, roasting over the smoky open flame. The woodsmoke note would be beautiful if it wasn't for the fact that it was melding with that disconcerting food smell. A bit of lovely ginger and spice is detectable inside the swirls of caramelized sugar, giving me the impression of lots of candy, and there are crunchy leaves being stepped on near the fire. There's a splash of cheap booze, which completes the rowdy backyard Halloween party imagery I'm getting in my head but doesn't help this smell any prettier. I guess the "thuggish" musk may be going berserk on me? Who knows! I suspect that if I had tried this in a locket I would be all over Devil's Night, but since my skin is hellbent on ruining it I'm hoping to find it a more appreciative home!

I was excited to try this scent because it sounded similar to my beloved Intrigue (black palm [reads as coconut to me], cocoa, fig, and woods). Eden has some similarities, but even the shared notes express themselves differently. It smells bad (kind of funky, really strong) in the vial, but on the skin, at least at first, it gets better. It's figgier, creamier, and sweeter than Intrigue. Lovely almonds, sweetened with a bit of soft honey (a softer and more delicately applied version of the honey I get in White Rabbit) are most prominent near the beginning, but after a while it's just a general honey-sweetened, milky/creamy coconut. The impression of color I get from that is a creamy beige rather than a clean white sort of cream, and it's drizzled all over a bunch of sweet figs, served on a bed of fig leaves. The fig leaf not is subtle but it is a distinctive sort of green note, and I catch little whiffs of it now and then. But... I do not get much woodsiness out of this... the sandalwood acts as a grounding note rather than as a central element. Unfortunately this goes kind of gross, cloying, and sour BO-ish after a while.

Anubis is pure, strong golden honey for a while. The strongest honey scent I've ever smelled, as soon as I opened the imp I felt like the whole vicinity smelled like honey. When it dries down the honey is blended with a bit of smoky myrrh and herbs. Not foody at all.

This was a lab frimp. I tried it right after I tried Gluttony (another frimp) and was struck by the similarity. Grog is really candy-like too, but it's just pure BUTTERSCOTCH, flavored with coconut and drowned in buckets of rum. Stays really constant and incredibly sweet and STRONG for about an hour before losing intensity. It changes from rum-flavored candy to rum, rum, rum, alcohol and all. All in all, it's too sweet and simple for me.

Wet, it's pure almond! Yay! I love a good almond scent. (Back when I had no BPAL to sniff I'd just open up bottles of almond extract and inhale.) For the first few minutes Eclipse reminds me a lot of Hecate, but as this dries I get a hint of vanilla that blends into and changes the character of the almond to something very creamy. The cinnamon is barely there, and just adds a subtle note of warmth that is pretty much gone before an hour is up. After a while this is very subtle and close to the skin, and it's a lot like a frankincense-infused sibling of Dana O' Shee. I'll keep my imp but won't need to upgrade it to a bottle.

Does anyone have any recs for a scent that's got a lot of smooth and "buttery" as opposed to "dry" sandalwood? I just want a scent that's got a ton of sandalwood, without any notes I find objectionable muddling around in there (no jasmine, opium, other heavy florals, no wine or exceedingly sweet fruits). I LOVE Plunder after it's been on my skin for a few hours and turns to pure, buttery sandalwood, but I strongly dislike the first hour, the tobacco is too strong and sweet.

Weee! I'm so glad I got to try some of this! Wet on the skin, I get wet dirt. Not as fungal as the one in Graveyard Dirt, more like the dirt I get in Penny Dreadful. The flowers pop up out of it very quickly. There's something sour in a tangy candy sort of way about this, and I think it must be coming from one of the flowers. And there are lots of them! I think I can smell honeysuckle, but I can't be sure, I'm absolutely terrible at identifying most floral notes, there are about five that I can pick out accurately. The florals here are light and sweet, and even though this is named after a cemetery there's nothing somber about it. As far as dirty florals go, I found Crossroads to be much, much, much darker and reminiscent of the night. Ol' Roswell Cemetery, on the other hand, is bright and fresh and reminds me of mid-morning, when there might be a little bit of dew still left on all the petals. It's really pretty as far as florals go, and I'm usually not a floral kind of girl! The dirt note acts as a base to the blanket of flowers, though, it's not as prominent and loamy as I would personally have liked. Still, this is surprisingly pretty! Unlike a lot of pale florals, is NOT soapy at all. I am not sure yet what the ultimate fate of my decant will be. I like it more than a little bit, but it does not last very long on my skin before it turns into a faint, light bouquet of gentle florals. Right now I'm really tempted to layer with Graveyard Dirt!

Wow, I really like this. I rarely ever drink soda, and have only had really good, natural root beer on a few occasions, but this strongly reminds me of that! But I don't really get "fizziness" out of this, its texture is actually buttery. From start to finish I get a very subtle butter not that is as much about "texture" as it is about actual scent, if you get what I'm saying. Mostly, though, it's warm sassafras sweetened with vanilla. It smells almost like it has leaves and twigs mixed up with it, there's a natural, woodsy, vaguely herbal quality to it. The sassafras is really at the center of this scent at first but later on the oak leaf gets oakier and leafier and more prominent. I really like it! My imp is a keeper for sure.

Holy crap, this is appropriately named. The foodiest scent I've ever tried to date. I got this as a frimp. Now, I really love cocoa and chocolate notes when they're blended with some non-edible elements (Tezcatlipoca and Boomslang, I'm looking at you) but didn't think I'd want to smell like a straight-up cookie/candy/cake. Well the lab sent me this as a frimp (they sent me three foody frimps at once, hehe) so I went ahead and tried it. It smells overwhelming in the imp. I almost feel bloated just for having smelled it. The dark chocolate is prominent at the outset but the other sugary notes clamor to the top, and while there are still chocolate covered caramels here there's a TON of butterscotch and sticky toffee, vanilla flavoring, rich buttercream. The scent description is true, and this is NOT a morpher on me, it stays the same from start to finish, and it is long lasting and quite powerful. I still feel strangely drawn to my imp... probably more because it smells edible, not because I actually want to smell like this. It actually makes me feel LESS hungry rather than inspire cravings... perhaps I'll keep it around just to fend off urges for late night sugary snacks, perhaps I'll swap this along to a foodie lover. No point in wearing this, because then everywhere I go people will ask me to share my candy stash!

This is actually the first aquatic scent I've tried because they've never interested me. In the imp and fresh on the skin, it does indeed smell like ocean water! Aquatic and a bit salty. The seaweed note comes out as this is drying down. But it doesn't take long before I stop thinking "ocean" and start thinking of something between light masculine cologne and liquid hand soap. There is nothing sweet or frilly about this and I'm thinking that this might smell better on a man. It's just not my thing.

Oh man this stuff is STRONG! HUGE throw! When it's wet, and for some time after that, it smells like a jar filled to the brim with golden honey, sprigs of herbs suspended within. When this dries down a good dose of lovely smoky myrrh tempers the honey smell. It really fits the name of "Anubis" very well, it does smell religious and ceremonial and... well... funereal. This is actually really beautiful and evocative once it's had some time to rest on my skin, but I'm not sure if I'll keep this because it is so viciously sweet and strong at the outset.

I got a bottle fresh from the lab on the same day I as I got a bottle secondhand from the forums! I tested the older bottle first. Yes, I bought this unsniffed: the hype was just too massive to let me ignore it! When I first dab it on, it is a whole lot like Snake Oil! A dark, resinous musky spice. As it dries down, though, it becomes its own thing. The vanilla smells a little less "burnt" than it does in Snake Oil on me, and the Egyptian amber comes out in a big way. I also get a pleasant whiff of creamy coconut. Plums have tended to take over other scents for me, but the spices, amber, and musk keep it in check here, so it adds a pleasant, plush tinge of fruitiness that makes Snake Charmer smell special. It has an "incense" feel to it which is rather appealing. So, in the end... it's nice. But I feel underwhelmed. It's a nice smell, but why settle for "nice"? With the talk of how wonderfully this ages, I'm still tempted to hold on to it and check back after another year or two to see if a switch flips and I become more completely smitten.

I'd imagine that the wait times are a bit longer than usual lately because the recent introduction of the tons of Lupercalia LEs, and the vanilla component problems for Snake Charmer slowed down a lot of people's orders.

At first, this is awesome! Cherry-almond, layered over something richer and darker, some kind of wood, perhaps sandalwood. There are almost certainly other notes hiding out somewhere, but I really can't sense them. After it dries down, the delicious cherry-almond floats away, and I'm left with something remarkably similar to Seraglio on my skin: an unpleasant, domineering sort of rose over warped, soggy sandalwood. Disappointing.