joiedecombat

I fell completely in love with Holiday Moon. On me, it's a smooth, soft, extremely pale green, with no astringent sharpness. I think I can recognize the bamboo in the sort of woody smoothness the scent has. It's a very subtle, light scent which I adore and must get more of somehow.

Follow Me Boy has turned out to be one of my very favorite scents. To me, it smells like... powdered sugar, maybe a little vanilla, a little lemon. It's very creamy-sweet and, yes, powdery, and very Southern to my way of thinking. Like a perfumed powder a Southern belle would dust on for hot summer days. Since I'm a Mississippi girl myself, it's great for me, one of those oils I can tell is good because I keep sniffing the air when I wear it. Also, it has the best name ever.

Yum. Xiuhtecuhtli is one of my absolute favorite BPAL scents thus far. When I wear it, I keep sniffing my own wrist. It's primarily lush tropical blooms, with a trace of something like citrus, but there's a smoky background note that gives it depth and an exotic edge. It's a very vivid scent that makes me think of bright warm colors, scarlet and orange and gold; perfect to wear out dancing on a summer night.

The honey in Skuld absolutely leaped out the moment I put it on - it's all I could smell from this oil, no matter how long I let it dry down, and while I do like honey, it alone at this strength is just too sweet. Unfortunately, the other notes never did come out to cut that sweetness at all.

The Tibetan goddess of love and wealth. Her scent is a harmonious, sweet, enchanting blend of three lotus blooms and three roses. Kurukulla served as my introduction to lotus, and I must say that it made a good first impression. In the vial, it smells bubblegum-sweet with almost no trace of rose at all. It's only after it's on my skin that the rose begins to come out and the lotus settles out of the bubblegum stage and into something that's more juicy sweet. Eventually the two scents meld together into a rich, ripe fruity scent. Unfortunately, rose remains something I prefer to smell on other people than wear myself, and it's recognizable enough in Kurukulla that I traded my imp away and gave my love to other scents which are more me. Nevertheless, it's a very lovely fragrance, and I'd recommend it to people who get on better with rose than I do.

After trying Tamora and Aglaea, I can only conclude that my skin grabs hold of peach and runs with it, because both fragrances worked out very similarly on me. The peach note leaps out immediately, golden and juicy-sweet to the point of being a little too much. With Aglaea, the amber comes out as it dries down, warming it and tempering the sticky-sweetness a little, but the peach remains predominant and it's very hard to differentiate it with Tamora, save that Tamora has more staying power and its florals add a bit of something that Aglaea lacks.

Plumeria seems to be one of a relatively few florals that really works for me, and Thalia is no exception. It's a very sweet and fruity scent, but the champagne note lightens it a little, keeping it from being as crawl-up-my-nose sweet as the initial stage of Tamora, which strikes me as similar to Thalia but more golden. It's springlike and girly, and it is indeed a lighthearted scent... although too much of it in one dose might get a little cloying.

In the bottle, I smell the almond very distinctly, and it's smoother and more pleasant than I remember almond scent ever being. On my skin, however, the cinnamon takes over and turns to red hots. And then prickles and stings, making it one of the very few BPAL scents I have ever gone so far as to wash off. So it's just as well the scent didn't work out on me very well. On the bright side, realizing how much I liked the almond scent from the imp has inspired me to try out Dana O'Shee and Eclipse. Hopefully I can find something that retains that scent.

My initial impression of Amsterdam was lovely - sweet flowers and clear running water and a fresh green hint of grass, which soon faded and let the flowers take prominence. Unlike many florals, it never went at all acrid on me. Unfortunately, it had no staying power at all. Very soon after I'd applied it, it was simply all but gone. A little too light and subtle for me, I'm afraid.

Neo-Tokyo is a wonderfully complex scent, so much so that it's hard for me to pick out any one thing that it smells like. It's a sharp scent to start with - fresh-clean-sharp, with a tang like sea air and a sweetness of fresh water and a hint of green that might be bamboo. As it starts to dry, I begin to catch whiffs of something sweeter which must be the florals... teasing little breaths of them adding a little bit more sweetness to the sharp cleanliness of the initial fragrance. It has good staying power on my skin, and the longer it lingers on me, the sweeter and richer the scent becomes, until finally the air and water and bamboo of the initial stage are gone, and it smells like some kind of rich, luscious fruit.

I don't generally like spicy scents. Morocco's spices, however, are very smooth in their warmth rather than being heavy or nose-prickling. The result is that it's a very comfortable scent - the kind that keeps me sniffing my arm. Unfortunately, as wonderful a scent as it is, it's not something that's very me, and I can't imagine wearing it as a perfume for myself. I've heard, though, that the spices in Snake Oil are very similar but with the addition of vanilla and sugar. I'm hoping to try Snake Oil out sometime and see if it's as comfortable a scent as Morocco is.

Smells like... Christmas. No, really. In the bottle, it smells like a bayberry candle, berry-sweet with a hint of smooth waxiness. Once on, it smells like nothing so much as mulling spices with whiffs of evergreen, which eventually came into the forefront as it dried down. It went through a number of interesting variations once it hit my skin, but at all points it smells like Christmas. This is an oil that, if BPAL oils were less expensive, I'd be tempted to put in a light bulb ring around Christmastime. Not so much something I'd wear, though, except perhaps to a Christmas party.

In the bottle and the early wet stage, it's the peach that's most prominent, with some added sweetness from the vanilla - peach syrup, golden and sticky-sweet. Almost too sweet. It's certainly potent. As it dries down, thankfully, the amber and sandalwood come out, giving the fragrance depth and smoothness and calming the sweetness of the peach. It turns into something that's very warm, sweet, and comfortable. I'd like it better if it weren't so crawl-up-my-nose sweet at the start, but applied carefully, it's very appealing.

The Apothecary surprised me. In the bottle, it smells appropriately green - a deep, juicy wet green, not at all dusty or earthen. On and wet, it still smelled green, with a bit of an astringent note that I'm sure is the tea leaf, but the other notes kept it smooth enough to keep it from being too sharp. Somewhere within the first two hours, the scent grew deeper and a little sweeter, losing the astringence... and eventually turning into a fruity scent. Not a very sweet fruit; it's a warm scent, still a little herbal, and a little spicy... I can only assume this is the fig and the ginger. It ceased to be a green scent at all. It's very pleasant, though.

In the bottle, and freshly wet on the skin, the cherry is most prominent, sweet and juicy. Once it's on my skin, the florals come out and soften the scent with powdery white. As it dries, though, the florals change into a strange scent which makes me think of the beach more than anything. I can only assume it's the lilies; Seraphim did something very similar. The cherry lingers in the scent, making for a very odd combination, not one I really care much for.

The March Hare, for me, is a very straightforward scent: apricot and clove, just like the description says. Unfortunately, I don't really care for clove. Although it dried down into a nice apricot, with most of the clove scent disappearing, there are other fruity scents which have wet stages I like much better, so The March Hare really isn't a scent for me.

The Lion was the first amber scent I ever tried, and it was the one which encouraged me to try more. I didn't get any of the grassy notes that other reviewers have gotten. For me, The Lion is a rich warm golden amber spiced prominently with cinnamon and ginger to the point that my initial impression was of gingerbread warm from the oven. It's a foody scent on me, and while it's a wonderful and very comfortable scent, it's not one I care to wear as a perfume. It's more the kind of scent I'd want in a scented candle, one that would fill my apartment with lovely warm golden fragrance.

Kumiho, to me, strongly resembles Embalming Fluid. Both have the clear, juicy freshness of white tea as their primary note, but where Embalming Fluid has the citrus of lemon and some white musk and aloe to help smooth it out, Kumiho has ginger. It's a sharper scent, lacking the sweetness and the smoothing undertone that Embalming Fluid has. I like it, but I like Embalming Fluid more.

Brisingamen is my favorite of the several amber scents I've tried. The notes blended in with the amber strike a good balance, making it neither as foody as The Lion nor as dry as Cairo, warm and spicy-sweet. Wet, the spices are a little too prominent for my tastes, but as it dries down it becomes a little smoother and is a very rich golden scent that I'm quite fond of.

Black Dahlia started out very promising on me, all creamy, heavy flowers, a very lush scent. If you can call a perfume secretive, this one is - it's a scent for a sophisticated, confident woman who is powerful in her femininity. ...And then the jasmine kicks in and, as it always does on me, goes acrid and powdery and commercial-perfumey. Sigh.

In the bottle, Seraphim is very floral. I didn't get any rose from it at all, or any other specific type of flower I could identify; it simply smelled of many, many white flowers. Almost immediately upon application, though, the scent went from a mass of white flowers to flowers and soap to flowers and... the beach. Not the aftershavey salt tang of Lightning, but the actual scent of a beach. What the hell? I assumed that was the frankincense I was smelling, but more recently I tried The Queen of Hearts and got a similar effect, so it must have been something in the florals - the lily, perhaps.

I wanted so, so much to like Sea of Glass, I really did. I love clean scents, and the descriptions I read of this blend made it sound perfect. And in the bottle, it was - a lovely crystal-clear scent, sweet without being cloying, fresh without being sharp. On my skin? Air freshener. Acrid and nose-wrinkling. All of the predominantly aquatic oils I've tried so far have done this to me. It's very disappointing.

In the bottle, and freshly wet, Lightning really does smell fresh and aquatic, with a certain clean salt-air tang to it. It reminded me a little of the ocean-themed sachets and candles that I'm very fond of, but a truer and clearer version without any commercial perfuminess. I like that kind of scent a lot, but the marine and ozone tang made it a bit masculine for my tastes - to wear, I'd want something sweeter and clearer. And unfortunately, once it began to dry down, it took on a distinctly weedy scent that I really didn't care for. I've since tried Tempest, Sea of Glass, and Szepasszony, and all three of them had the same disappointing reaction on my skin. I want to love BPAL's aquatics, but they just don't love me back.

Wilde definitely struck me as a masculine scent. It's a fairly traditional men's cologne, just as other reviewers have said. It's certainly a pleasant one, though - the lavender makes it fresh and clean without ever being quite recognizable to my nose as lavender. It makes me think of hot water and soap, of just-out-of-the-shower freshness. But it's simply too masculine for me to wear myself, and I don't have any convenient men to try it on.

A lovely eBay seller whose BPAL auctions I've patronized several times threw Leanan Sidhe in as a gift in an auction that ended on St. Patrick's Day. It wasn't an oil I'd given much through to trying, but when I put it on, it reminded me of how much I like fresh, clean herbal scents. Which is what it is, on my skin. I don't really get much of the florals from this blend. Instead, it's green, like fresh herbs, with a certain astringence to it, but with enough delicacy that it's never acrid or overpowering. The florals sweeten it a little without ever becoming quite recognizable on their own. I quite like it. I haven't quite made up my mind whether or not I'll want a larger bottle, but I will definitely use up the imp. Leanan Sidhe and I get along quite well.