Dandelion

In the bottle and wet on skin, it's sharp, tart plum with a bit of cream and grassy wildflowers to tone it down. Once it's on my wrist and dried the plum lets up a bit and the cream and flowers come through more. It's lovely - sweet and girlish, but there's something about those plums. They don't smell like a BPAL plum note I've tried before. This note seems deeper, sweeter, maybe even a bit spicy. They're magic witch plums! Love this scent! It reminds me a bit of La Bella Donna Della Mia Mente, one of my go-to early summer scents. They both have the same dark fruit-floral thing going on.

Another rec for Tiger Lily here... it has lily and honey notes, and seems to get a lot of compliments when I wear it. Also you may like Pink Moon 2007 and Poisson d'Avril - both LEs so you may have to do a bit of looking to find them. The first thing I thought of was Tamora - very sweet, almost <i>too</i> sweet for me, but you may like it! La Belle Au Bois Dormant also fits the bill.

I like Silk Road and Harlot for cinnamon in the summer - Silk Road is sweet and spicy but light and (I think) damn sexy. Harlot is cinnamon with roses. Chimera has been mentioned as a summery cinnamon blend, but it's also strong and foody enough for cold weather.

I'm gonna third the rec for Hymn to Proserpine and second Yerevan - I love Yerevan! It has a really nice plum note and is a bit sweet, but more tart on my skin. Also (because I love pomegranate) I want to mention Persephone - which is very juicy and dewy, not sickly sweet at all - and La Bella Donna Della Mia Mente (although that may be too sweet for you).

THIN MINTS. That's the only way to describe Tokyo Stomp. Is it girl scout cookie season yet?

Try this thread. Just to put something here, though, Vasakasajja has what smells like a pineapple note to me and, it seems, a lot of other people who tried it. It's lovely.

In the imp I get a lot of amber with some overripe fruit on top. I don't know what "darkening" amber is supposed to smell like, but it doesn't seem dark to me - it's the amber I loved when I got my very first order from the lab. It smells like the amber in Macchu Picchu, but instead of being just a hint of amber, it's amber. It's lovely. The fruits develop into pomegranite, and maybe a bit of apple and grape, and plum that seems to burn off pretty fast. As the amber grows stronger, so does an interesting spice scent that comes out of nowhere. It's a subdued spice, but still all I can smell in the throw for the first few hours of wear. It's only when I get up close to my skin that I can smell the fruit and amber. It's not unpleasant, but not what I was hoping for. I really like the wet fruity scent better.

Ooh, Arkham is a gorgeous woodsy-green scent with a hint of florals but no pine, at least not on me. Neo-Tokyo is light and fresh and pretty. Tweedledum isn't exactly green, technically, but it just smells somehow green to me. It's kumquat and very soft (usually I don't like the note) patchouli on me. Smells earthy and fresh.

I've been on a tropical kick lately - must be the freezing weather outside. Macchu Picchu is one of my all-time favorites, Pele is great but fades to nothing on my skin, I like Santo Domingo a lot, but Manila isn't one of my favorites. Any suggestions for what I should try next?

Very soft and pretty, cool and fresh, except for a slightly astringent note that is cloying to my nose on first application, but calms down a lot later. I think I'll be saving this imp for summer, as it has a refreshing smell. It's a very green scent, too, but not sharp, which I like.

My skin hates these roses. Ugh. Roses, OMGROSES, and smelly socks. I hate you, skin. You normally do so well with rose! Whyyyyy?

Spicy, full, fruity honey. I really can't pick out the notes other than honey (my skin AMPS THAT SHIT), but they're definitely there and add life to the scent. I like it. It's grown up, not sticky or girlish like some other honey scents. I'll be keeping the imp around, although I don't think it's going on my bottle list.

Perhaps it's because I ordered this scent in the worst time of the year for apples (it came to me at the end of July), or maybe it was because of the stifling weather it was mailed in - can heat damage some oils?, but something in my imp smelled pretty rotten. To me it smelled like rotted apples. I got none of the woods, and no crisp fall goodnes. Still, I tested it, and although the rotten smell faded some and the woody scent came out a bit more, there was still some of the grossness that turned me off to it. I ended up throwing the imp out - I wasn't going to use it and since I felt the problem was with the imp and not my skin chemistry or nose, I didn't want to pass it along to some unsuspecting person. Perhaps I'll order another imp this winter and the weather will be on my side this time!

Wow. I get, oddly enough, *plum* and amber as the top notes. With a hint of something spiced-orangey, although that may be just my nose's citrus obsession. It's gorgeous though - spicy, sweet, and deep. Perfect sexy going-out-at-night scent.

Huh. Lotus? I didn't smell it at all, and it's a scent that usually jumps out at me in all it's bubblegummy sweetness. I didn't notice the ylang ylang either, or the green tea. I did smell a bit of sage, or "green part of strawberry plant", as my nose interpreted it. ^^ I did get strawberries and cream, though, and lots of - on my skin, it's pretty much all sweet strawberry. My skin does love fruity notes. Gorgeous, but I like my scents to have a bit more noticeable complexity - I'm sure the other notes are there, but I can't tell when I sniff my wrist!

herbal-floral-green... it smells like sprite. Maybe I'm just on a soda kick after wearing Black Phoenix (DR. PEPPER!), but I definitely get sprite from this. Oh, it doesn't scream "fizzy beverage!" or anything, it's just the combination which somehow smells limey-lemony. Huh. Not really my thing, and it doesn't smell like a perfume at all, but for some reason I want to wear it out. It seems like it'd be good for these really hot days, and, after all, I have to test it's voodoo properties now don't I?

Very herbal. Even the flowers smell herbal and green. Pretty, but not my style. (Hooray for one-line reviews!)

Banana, greenery, and heady lush florals. I really like the BPAL tropical blends I've tried so far, but this one isn't as nice as Machu Picchu or Pele. It doesn't seem to have the sweetness of either of them. Or... to use a horribly conceited metaphor ( ), Manila actually smells like a tropical island. Banana, faint tropical flowers, jungle greenery, dirt from the roads. Whereas the other two are like the romantic idea of the tropics. Manila smells like the Dominican Republic - the nicer bits, not the poor barrios. Pretty and tropical, but still real. And I just want the fairytale. ^^

Eep! I think my expectations of this one were a bit too high... it does smell good, but not nearly the holy grail of BPAL I had expected it to be. I get a spicy, incensy vanilla with, yes, the tiniest hint of playdoh. That goes away within half an hour, though, leaving a very nice smell behind, but... it just doesn't capture me the way my favorite BPALs do. Huh. I'm going to keep my imp around, though, try it aged and all... perhaps it will grow on me.

Jasmine. Boo. Hate jasmine. Shame, as I think I would have loved this without all the jasmine. Underneath it I catch whiffs of a sunlit garden. Amber and roses. Gorgeous. It's definitely a grown up sort of scent, though. Nothing innocent about it, and nothing of the sweet, sexy Snake Oil-style blends we all know and love. It's the perfume of a very poised and confident person.

Milk and honey base, yum. Hint o' rose, huh. Wish there was more. Carnation, yay! Bergamot, DOMINATES. Ugh. Apparently my skin loves bergamot, but unfortunately I love milk, honey, rose, and carnation more. I was really looking forward to Alice. Oh well.

I wasn't going to try this on originally - I got it as a frimp and neither of the notes are for me. But it turned out to be one of those imps with the broken caps, and since it was already open I figured I might as well check it out. Gritty. Very very gritty and dirty. For some reason it puts me in the mind of dirt. Not rich garden dirt, but just... dirt. It's sharp, bitter, and pungent. Not even the tiniest hint of sweetness or mellowness. Definitely not my favorite BPAL. Still, I think I wouldn't mind smelling it on someone else, provided the scent is "them".

Nice, pretty, lovely vanilla and dried flowers that smell a bit like potpourri. I don't get any linen, but that's likely because I don't know what linen would smell like in a scent. The florals are a bit perfumey, and would be headache-y if they weren't so soft. The vanilla smells powdery, almost like a vanilla cookie. It definitely isn't the liquid straight-from-the-bottle vanilla extract smell I was hoping for. Still, something in Antique Lace just does it for me, and I'll probably be using my imp up.

Mmmmmmcinnamon. The cinnamon in this blend is good enough to eat - I'm sitting here trying to contain myself and avoid licking my wrist. Very foody. Not for those who don't like foody. I feel like a cookie, or a candle, or the perfect grandmother's kitchen. You know, lots of cookies in the oven, and maybe a cake, and she's going to let you eat as much as you want. Still, I don't want to go around smelling like baking all the time. I think this one may be a room scent.

Yay spices! Definitely cinnamon, but also lots of other stuff. The cinnamon is pretty subtle on me. I also smella twinge of florals and something like candied orange. Alltogether it's a medium-light spicy and a bit sexy scent that's perfect for late summer and early fall, or even winter.