bookishgrrl

Lovely! I snagged the mad bunny

Yes, yes, yes, boys love vanilla! Regan (orchid vanilla) and Mouse's Long And Sad Tale (amber vanilla) are my top day vanillas... in fact, I think I have to get a 10ml of MLAST before they go poof, I love it so much. The daytime LE I get the most boy reaction to is Enraged Bunny Musk. Not vanilla, but it's a lovely light musky scent. Mmmm...

My long and (not so) sad tale: I ordered Mouse's Long and Sad Tale when I saw the MTP update, it sounded heavenly! However, while waiting for my order to come in, I tested two imps heavy on sweet pea that smelled absolutely dreadful to me (Aeval and Juliet). Because of that I was filled with sadness, assured that I'd hate MLST when it finally arrived. Sweet pea? No thanks! When the order arrived I set it aside. After sniffing everything else I reluctantly cracked it open and braced myself for the horror... it smelled soft, sweet... almost candy-like! I dabbed some on and it was the sweetest smell. Vanilla, but not heavy vanilla. The 'candy' smell I'm getting from somewhere. A light, sweet barely floral. Sweetpea... who knows? I can't figure out what the f&*# sweetpea smells like (or it's in here just a trace, or it's a different source/batch). All I know is that this has become my go-to sunny-day-in-a-skirt scent. More, please!

Tried it on both myself and bookishguy... is was delicious lemony sugar cookies (with a light base of sweet pale musk at the end) on both of us. Delicious! Though slightly disconcerting as we're both large, robust sorts and thought it felt far too blonde, delicate and fey for our personalities. We still huffed our wrists like crazy, though. I might try it as a summer linen spray.

Seraphim ended up falling into the "rather nice floral" territory for me. Wearable (i.e. no crazy rose or jasmine amping) but I'm typically not a floral girl.

Very fresh... lemon and tea with the aloe adding astringency, almost to the point of medicinal. Stays true throughout, decent wear and throw.

What a wacky little scent... At first it was all bracing mint. Then, the mint dissapeared and the oddness began. Smelling my skin directly it smelled like... oregano. Dried oregano. Someone else said basil, either way it was a dried herb smell. BUT from about 6 inches out, it smelled insanely delicious. Sweet, earthy. It took a bit of time to figure out what was going on. I would be sitting there, wondering what smelled so great, and lift my wrist up and get only oregano. After a few hours the oregano smell went away and left only the deliciousness. It must be the ambergris in the base. I might have to hang onto this and further experiment. Hmm.

I bought an imp of this for bookishguy, and stealth attacked him with the imp wand when he was preoccupied with playing Sid Meier's "Pirates!" Yar! His review: "Yo ho ho. Oh, you need more than that? Uh. It was good. Kinda smelled oceany." Uh, yeah. Thanks. My thoughts: Lighter than I imagined. Smelled like sea-spray soaked wood and leather. Light throw, but his skin sucks up oil & scent very easily. I'm going to make it into a spray, and I think it'll do well as a lighter summer scent.

Morgause smells like a lovely blended classic floral perfume on me. Most florals are difficult for me to parse, the majority get lumped into either "eh, it's a nice enough floral." or "gack! jasmine/rose overdose!" This falls in the first category. It's nice... but not quite me. Still glad I had a chance to try it out, though.

Thank you so so very much, whomever packed my last lab order, for including Perversion as a frimp It has instantly become one of my favorite scents! Wet: in the imp and on initial application it was attractive smelling, but jumbled so I couldn't really tell what was what. Initial Dry: immediately I can pull out sweet sweet tobacco, a slightly alcoholic tinge (thank goodness the rum is behaving... I can have issues with rum going too rummy), leather rounding out the body of the scent and a creamy vanilla-ish base. I feel dead sexy, even though I'm in my scrubby PJs. I could totally see myself wearing this to a fetish event. Later: mellows into a complex but very sweet scent with tobacco and coconut (hello! nice you joined us!) making up the most easily recognizable notes. Here's something I've learned from Perversion: I adore tobacco scents. I wasn't sure what was in Red Lantern that made it such a favorite during the drydown, but apparently it's the tobacco/coconut. To my fairly new nose Perversion is very similar in the middle stages, sweetly smoky but not as foody as the caramel-rich Red Lantern. AND it's General Collection! On bookishguy it is less sweetly tobacco, and more deeply leather and spice. The best BPAL I've smelled on him so far There will be a bottle (Or two. I'd hate to fight over it with the boy) in my next order, and it might even beat Red Lantern as my favorite smoky evening blend. (edited for minor spellin' issues )

Thanks, lab, for the lovely lagniappe! Off the bat: Butter, toffee, and pineapple. It really is butter AND toffee, not just buttery toffee. Like a buttered popcorn jelly belly after you've bitten it, the sweetness underscores it. Definitely has fruit with it. There may be cherry, but my nose is horrible at picking out cherry, and mostly picks up pineapple. Mellows into a buttery sweet cake-y scent with a hint of spice. Mmm... Pineapple upside down cake!

This stays so true on me that it's almost like it's a single note... I'm not sure if it's just so well blended there aren't obvious stages or if this imp (from a lot off ebay) is just old and some of the notes have gone poof. Either way, I love it! Wet on skin: a sweet, sweet, floral. But not like the 'florals' I usually avoid. This is clear, green-smelling. Very early-summer-sitting-in-the-backyard-in-the-sun. Initial Dry: My floral-amping skin goes to work, and I'm sitting inside a cloud of sweet deliciousness! This is my favorite floral note I've smelled on my skin to date. It's bright and fresh. Puts me in a good, sunny mood. Later: Still the same scent, just lighter. It lasts a few hours before I need to reapply. And I don't hesitate to reapply Final Verdict: Yeah, I love this. I can totally see this as a signature spring/summer daytime scent. ETA: the other day I had just finished dabbing some on and somebody went, "hey... what smells like beer?" Me: "Prob'ly me!" Everyone gathered around and 2 of 5 did get a beery smell, but as the one said, "But, like... *expensive* beer." :-P So, apparently I love both beer AND tobacco notes! Go, me!

Wet on skin: Delicious! I can pick out many of the individual notes, and the musky sugary sweet fruit is swoon-worthy! I love this from the starting gate. Until... Dry on skin: (10 minutes later)... strawberry incense. When I was about 12 or so my teenaged friend constantly burned strawberry incense from Spencer's. Though I'm not opposed to a little trip down memory lane now and again, it's not the scent I want to project, so I'm heartily disappointed in the way my skin morphed this. On the plus side, it stayed true to the dried down scent and lasted *quite* a while. Hours later I still smelled like I just walked out of my friend's smoky bedroom to head home at the end of the night. Final Verdict: Strawberry incense... humph. Grrr, chemistry.

Hmm... first applied, it's minty and sweet and the faintest hint of cigarette smoke (???) I don't see that in the notes, but it's what I get (corroborated by an independent sniffer). I'm not sure about mint scents on me, but I do well with sugar and booze, so I keep the faith. Dries down quite quickly to a sugary sweet scent. The booze is fairly tame and the mint has gone from top note to very subdued. I can barely smell it at this point (the mint), but it does lend an almost 'clean' feeling to the sweetness. There's a depth/spice that I can't really place under all the sugar. Nice enough, not in my top 5 or anything, but a nice sweet scent. Gone almost immediately. Peaked between 10-30 minutes. Barest traces remain past an hour. This imp's of unknown provenance so I'm not sure how old it is and if that's affecting the potency. I like the sweetness though, so I think it's going in the pile for spray/lotion experimentations... muahaha!

Tested on bookishguy and myself simultaneously. Wet: so well blended I can't really pick out any notes. A fleeting whiff of leather, perhaps, but it was only a moment... Initial Dry: Here's where we split... on him it's developing into a lovely masculine scent, still very well blended so it's hard to pull out any specific notes. On me? What I think will soon be labelled, "my white sandalwood problem" occurs, and I smell like nice cologne on top of harsh, bitter wood. Later: On him, it's quite delicious smelling, but *poof* scent eaten by his skin (as all scents are wont to do) inside of an hour or so. On me, the bitter wood has overtaken everything. Final Verdict: Good on him, if I can manage to make it stick around for any appreciable time.

Started off similar to other scents I like with a strong liqueur-y cherry (almond) note, but when dry developed a scent underneath it all that jumped out and jarred my nose. I'm assuming there's some base note (dark patchouli is often a culprit) I just don't agree with... Verdict: What's good about it (and there is a lot of yumminess going on) I can find in other scents without having that slightly dark/bitter base note. Glad I tried it, though!

Oh, my. Hades makes me feel like an obscenely wealthy older woman, the kind who is dressed impeccably, speaks her mind with brevity and exquisite ruthlessness, and plays patron to a passionate bohemian artist who gladly comes running to be 'at her service' *wink wink* at merest arch of her flawless eyebrow. When I first applied Hades, I was enveloped in a cloud of flowers. There was something rich about it that felt very much like an expensive perfume from a snooty boutique... but about a million times better than anything one could find in a traditional store. As it wears it settles into a forceful, spicy floral. I don't find it to be masculine on me at all. Rather, it's a very mature woman's floral... to be worn by someone who knows the score, not little girly or sweet or innocent in the slightest. It's sexy in a 'well, are you sure you can handle me?' sort of way. It's a bit wicked. The throw is quite good, and stays around for a while. I'm not the sort of woman that Hades advertises, but I can dream, can't I? This is for special occasions, when I want to feel powerful and in control. I swear, my spine straightens and I start throwing 'the look' when I apply it. Maybe I need to put some more on right now. Or, better yet... You there! Boy! Be a dear and rub this BPAL on my pulse points... yes, just like that... *arches eyebrow*

I'm not familiar with those candles, but I checked on Amazon, they list the top notes as: Apple Blossom, Mandarin and Island Orchid with Pikake and Frangipani, and then later describe the scent as apple blossom and orchid. I also saw it grouped with 'orchid' candles on another site. You can play around with the search engine on the BPAL site to search for scents by notes if you recognize what the predominant ones are, and then click on the name of the result to get to forum reviews to see if it sounds appealing. A few I saw that had one or two notes in common were Phantom Queen (Black orchid, apple blossom, meadowsweet, and rue over Irish moss, hawthorn and red clover), Neo-tokyo (Urban metallics and an ozone-tinged breath of electric light mingled with reedy bamboo, crisp mountain air, cherry blossoms, delicate orchid and a splash of playful, wet fruits), and Shadow Witch Orchid (dusky orchid, subdued and ethereal). Good luck

Oh, Magus, I'm sorry I waited so long to test you... Wet on Skin: woody with faint citrus and sweet dust on top Initial Dry: Sweet citrus and dusty/piney/cedary woods underneath. I'm wafting a delicious sweetness from farther away but bringing my wrist up to my nose the woods come back and I can feel a high sharpness in the back of my throat. Mmm i really like the scent of the throw on this. It's far more 'incense'-y than I thought I would like but ... something about it is just right. Later: One hour in most of the underlying sharpness is gone, leaving a simply divine sweetness. I can't stop sniffing my wrist! ETA: Decided to try some on bookishguy... all cedary blah on him. Whee! More for me!

Hmmm... I was nervous about the roses involved in Jezebel, considering my bad track record (i.e. they amp to cloying levels) with rose notes, but was enthusiastic about the honey and orange blossom, so gave it a go! Wet on skin: Um, orange chocolates?! I know 'orange blossom' isn't the same as 'oranges' and there's no chocolate notes, but for some reason I get orange chocolates... the kind you whack on the table and eat the slices! Initial Dry: Hmm. Now, of course, the rose kicks in. Orange liquor pretty much dominates the rose, though, with a sandalwood base. Where's my honey? *stamps foot* Later: Hmm. Orangey-rosey powder. A bit sweet and sour smelling. I don't *hate* it, but I don't *love* it. Final Verdict: Try again another time? Maybe it's an off-chemistry day.

...Her scent is striking and bold with a delicate yet dark undertone: five roses with soft jasmine, warmed by vanilla, fig, tonka bean and mahogany, spiced with a drop of coffee bean. Wet on Skin: Er, roses and... mothballs? odd. Initial Dry: WE ARE ROSES HEAR US ROAR. And still a twingy moth-repellant background. Maybe it's the mahogany. Bookishguy: "Yes, that's it... you smell like old lady's closet!" OK, whew. the mothballs are gone by the first 10 minutes. I can sense some sort of sweet vanilla-esque scent in the background trying to come through, but the rose notes are just beating everything else senseless. Later: The jasmine, jealous of my skin's love of amping rose has decided to pick a fight to see who can be stronger; ROSE v. JASMINE, fight of doooooooom! Final Verdict: This was a morpher, but in the end, jasmine won. However, it apparently scared away the fig, coffee and every other note (besides the early dominant rose) I was hoping would come out. I need to pick my florals very carefully, it seems. And I was really hoping for a nice complex scent. Grrr, skin chemistry ETA: lab description

Wet on skin: At first Red Lantern is a bit aggressive: sweet syrup. wood. various sweet spices. some peppery flowers. Bookishguy walking in the room: "what smells like Luden's cherry cough drops?" Initial Dry: Ah, now I can smell the most complex, sugary spicy smell wafting up from my wrists as I type. I can't really pick out any notes, it all blends so well now that it's dry. Maybe sugary caramel first, the rest rounding it out into yummyness. Wow. Later: Oh, dream... this has all of the edible sweetness I liked in Hellcat, and hoped for in Gluttony (which was a disaster on me) but much better. I prefer caramel to almond or buttercream it seems... and the absence of boozy notes are not missed at all. Even Later: After about 4 hours later most of the complexity is gone, but I can still catch faint whiffs of what I've seen described as a 'skin scent' by some: it smells like me, only way better. Sugared me. When bookishguy comes in close to hug he huffs and says, "MMM. you smell good" Final Verdict: More please! 12 hours later and I'm pressing my nose to my wrist for the the last sweet trace of it.

Source: Imp of Snow White labeled "decanted by ______ Summer 2005" Wet on Skin: A very fresh cut flower, stem and everything... hmm... lily? Crocus? Grrr. wish I could place flowers better. Cold air. Seriously, like a still, chilly morning/evening. Arguing with the chill is something creamy underneath. Not milk, just... soft and creamy. Hmmm... not very me. But I really want to give this a try... Initial Dry: Wet, fresh flower married with soft creamy sweetness. The chilliness has mostly disappeared in the drydown, and the mildly sweet creamy has developed. I can see how people might be thinking coconut, but to me it's a very very dilute, watery trace of coconut that is so integrated with the flowers that I can't quite tell where one ends and the other begins? It's very beautifully done, I can see why there are so many fans. It's just not... me. Later: Pretty much the same. Mild throw, but seems to have a nice staying power. Final Verdict: This is a very pretty, soft, creamy, flowery scent... that I'm happy I'm not in love with, since it's an LE

... Luxuriant amber, warm Egyptian musk, fierce saffron and soft myrrh, almond, cardamom and golden lotus. In the imp: odd, I think I smell honey? Hard to say because most of the 'honey' scents I like also have almond in them... maybe my sniffer is cross-wired Wet on skin: Honeyed almond. The kind with the faint whiff of maraschino cherries about it... Initial Dry: The almond/maraschino cherry smell heads back almost immediately, and a super sweet floral and some musky spices start making their way to the forefront. This is the first thing I've tried with amber in it, so I'm not sure if the spicyness is amber or the egyptian musk. Either way it smells nice. Later: Soft sweet musky spice. A hint of powderiness develops at the bottom of this, but it's not too offensive. Final Verdict: This is a very soft golden girly scent to me... good for days I feel quiet and snuggly. Don't think I need a bottle, but the imp is definitely going into the rotation!

OK, I had a lot of built-up expectations for Smut. I mean, really, almost all of the reviews I write say, "well it was ok at first, but about an hour in the musks bloomed and it became amazing..." So, the thought of a mainly-musk blend? I got my hands on a decant and was ready to be wowed. Sniffing the closed imp: Wow. Sniffing open vial: Gah. Amazing. Sugared musk liqueur. *refrains from dumping entire imp on self* Wet on skin and initial dry: Close-but-not-quite smell in vial. I actually prefer the aggressive in-vial smell Wow, good throw... a little dab'll do ya. I'm not sold on the booziness, but there's enough sugary musk to keep it on the good side. I can tell unless something goes majorly weird this will be one of my top 5 scents. Later: Yeah, keeps getting better and better. Musky, boozy, glazed in sugar: that's how I smell. Hours into it the booze retreats and I'm all sugary musk, which is even better in my book. Huh. Really does smell like after-romp. Top 5, definitely...