doomsday_disco

The birch bark is the strongest note when first applied, and it is kind of like wintergreen bubblegum, but more woodsy, to be honest. At first, it's backed by the frankincense and smoke, but those notes end up gaining strength and manage to take over the birch by the time the scent is dry. Those notes reign throughout wear for me -- I don't get any sweetness from the beeswax, just a dry, resinous scent that isn't all that snowy after all.

I wish there had been more snow and that I had gotten some sweetness from the beeswax!

This smells like a bright, clean (yet not ozonic) snow note made even brighter by the lemon peel note, and with some welcome sweetness from the sugared almonds. The amber ends up emerging gradually over time, so that it's mostly the snow and amber notes with what remains of the lemon and the sugar from the almonds after a few hours of wear. I was never able to pick out the clover.

I like this and will definitely be keeping my decant, but I'll need to spend more time with it to determine if I need more than that.

I could have just blind bottled this, but I decided to go the decant route, since I didn't know how how the Rose Red aspect of this would play on me.

I won a bottle of Rose Red 2005 on eBay back in 2014, but I didn't enjoy it as much as some other rose-centric blends in my collection, so I swapped it away for a second back-up bottle of Snakes in the Pumpkin Patch (no regrets).

I did, however, end up purchasing Rose Red Hair Gloss when it was first released back in 2014, knowing I would appreciate it more in my hair than on my skin.

As for Snow White -- I adore it and own many different vintages of it.

Treaty of Thorns starts off heaviest on the Rose Red, but the Snow White component helps to smooth over the rose so that it doesn't have the citrus-like bite I got from the 2005 vintage. As time goes on, the Snow White aspect of the scent grows stronger and eventually casts a blanket of snow over Rose Red's bright red rose note.

I'm going to need more of this before it goes away, as I don't have much Pink Snowballs left and enjoy this more than some of the other rose scents mixed with Snow White's sweet snow note that have been released over the past few years.

I concur with FloridaFledgling's review. This is a spicy, peppery gingersnap scent that gives off a Red Hots vibe. Although it didn't leave any welts, it did give a burning feeling when applied to my wrist, so I'd only recommend this to those that don't have sensitive skin and love spicy scents. Otherwise, be very careful where you apply it.

Rapture entwined with terror, ecstasy braided with horror. Faces twisted mid-vision as serpents -- ancient, merciless, intimate -- thread through them; an epiphany of awe, dread, and bliss shattering the senses and cleaving the mind. Snake scales flickering across a shock of incense resin, as sharp and biting as prophecy. Bitter almond and bruised fig flesh, ash-dusted orris, and red-glowing labdanum.

The shortbread note is one where the shortbread is either made with and/or covered in powdered sugar, and I think it is reminding me of A Breathless Chuckle, of which I think I only have a half-bottle remaining, so I'll be needing a bottle of this in my collection, too. (And it's a cat scent, so there's another reason to get it!) I do get some cardamom with the shortbread, as well as a really lovely lightly smoked vanilla note. I'm not getting much cocoa at all, just a very faint dusting, which I'm happy about, because that means the other notes get more of a chance to shine. The cream is not super buttery, and I only get a hint of the pink pepper, which isn't bubblegum-y, nor does it have a kick to it like it does in some scents.

A decant will not be enough!

I agree with Leopard403. The clove is strong in this one.

It's a toasty, sweet porridge scent, but someone might have tipped the jar of ground cloves into the bowl on accident. It's much spicier and more wintery than It Was But the Wild Blast As It Sung Thro’ the Trees, which also features oats and clove.

I do enjoy clove, so I like this, but it's not my favorite of the sweet scents from this batch of New Year's Creepers and Oddments, so I don't think I need more of this. I'll be hanging onto my decant and will probably retest it before it departs just to be sure, though!

This is a scent that's definitely for fans that like to wear Beth's on point, highly realistic lipstick accord. The powdery, waxy lipstick is present throughout wear, with the musk and blood-slicked fangs gaining strength over time, but only the musk ever gets to be as strong as the lipstick. I believe the blood in this is a slightly spicy, resinous dragon's blood as opposed to a floral variety. It smells unexpectedly alluring with the musk, which is not one I can remember coming across in another BPAL scent.

I don't need more than my decant, but this is a fun scent experience.

I'm not familiar with bloodroot and have only tried one other scent containing the note (The Huntsman from the 2025 Yule collection), so I may not be the best person to describe it, but here's what I got from this scent when I tested it on my skin: something akin to a lemon-y, ginger-y cough drop backed by a light evergreen note.

I personally was hoping for a stronger evergreen scent from this one. I look forward to reading future reviews and seeing what other folks' experience with this were like. 

I, too, get mentholated snow from this, along with the oak, which isn't as sharp as it sometimes tends to be in other blends, but certainly isn't smoothed over by this sort of snow. This cold, mentholic, dry scent.

I was really hoping for a sweet snow note in this one. Alas.

A diaphanous, nocturnal blend that shimmers between airy radiance and shadowed warmth. A silvery wash of moonflower and white heliotrope drifts over cool iris and gossamer musk, while golden amber resin and benzoin glow softly beneath like the living heat of beating wings. Threads of honeyed beeswax and tobacco flower lend a faint, feral sweetness, and a dusting of frankincense ash and myrrh smoke curls at the edges, recalling the dark from which she rises.

Amelia Jane Murray, Lady Oswald
 

Macabre domesticity; a little warmth for a long eternity. A tender absurdity of frozen grins reflecting in the sooty iron of a merrily-aflame stove. Banked coals of labdanum pulse with amber flame, while a dusting of clove, coal ash, and brittle vanilla scuffs the hem of dusty patchouli linen.

James Ensor
 

Vanilla Incense and Roasted Tonka Bean.

Spiced Honey and Raw Patchouli.

Palo Santo and White Amber.

Desert Sage and Palo Santo.

Cacao Dust and Ashes.

Brown Sugar and Oak.

When I was a child in the 1970s, I lived in a newly built neighborhood in Los Angeles that bordered land still undeveloped. The city thinned out behind my house and gave way to open hills. Wild horses thundered past, roadrunners darted through the chaparral and tumbleweeds, and at night, the coyotes sang. Some of my earliest memories are of lying awake and listening to their voices rise and fall in the distance, a wild and communal music that became a comfort to me.

At pivotal moments in my life — initiatory moments — I would encounter coyotes crossing my path. These sightings were never casual. They appeared briefly and decisively, always coinciding with periods when something in my life was shifting or about to transform.

Coyotes are among the animals closest to my heart, not simply for their presence in my early life but for what they represent. They are creatures of the in-between, thriving at the margins, adapting where others cannot. 

(Or will not?)

Across cultures and throughout history, the coyote has been revered as a sacred being: Trickster and Creator, a deity of dance, song, storytelling, and celebration. Coyote is the bringer of change and chaos and a figure who embodies duality itself, at once helpful and harmful, wise and reckless. In myth, Coyote carries the wisdom of foolishness, acts as a benign prankster who has the singular power to defy and reverse fate, and becomes the unlikely bearer of gifts to humankind. Through disruption and mischief, Coyote teaches that survival depends on adaptability and that transformation often arrives disguised as disorder. 

Coyotes inhabit liminal space, and to embrace them is to embrace uncertainty as a companion. A spirit of defiance, resistance, and persistence, they should be venerated as an icon of our times.

A scent for the coyotes of my childhood, sun-bright, resilient, and quietly feral: amber fur, white sage, chaparral, smoked palo santo, California sagebrush, clever sparks of white pepper, and sweet tonka bean.

(Featured photo: the author with her first coydog, Chico. No, we didn’t know he was a coyote mix when we adopted him. A neighbor’s standard poodle magically gave birth to a litter of electric-amber puppies and I fell in love. Chico was beautiful to me: lava-orange fur that was shaggy like his coyote sire, but curled sweetly at the ends like his mother’s. He was strange, ridiculous, and delightfully clownish. I loved him so very, very much. In true Southern California form, Chico was not my only coyote mix. Arthur, my second coydog, was a shepherd/coyote, and I miss him equally. RIP, my wild boys. I love you forever.)

Roselight is a gentle love-bonding oil crafted to help fortify partnerships and relationships during challenging times. A balm for frayed nerves and sharp words, it coaxes remembrance of shared laughter, of private language, of the sweetness that first took root.

Anoint the wrists, the pulse at the throat, or the space above the heart before speaking hard truths or making heavy decisions. Wear it to bridge divides and bring comfort. Let it serve as a promise to protect what is tender, to fortify what is faithful, and to keep choosing one another with patience, warmth, and deliberate grace.

Contains: three rose oil variants, heartsease, violet blossoms, angelica root, orris root, benzoin, lavender, ylang ylang, jasmine sampaguita, and a touch of warming spices.

Cool-toned brown jelly with silver shimmer & shifting blue and green micro sparks.

“Well, Mrs. Dean, it will be a charitable deed to tell me something of my neighbours: I feel I shall not rest if I go to bed; so be good enough to sit and chat an hour.”

“Oh, certainly, sir! I’ll just fetch a little sewing, and then I’ll sit as long as you please. But you’ve caught cold: I saw you shivering, and you must have some gruel to drive it out.”

A fireside chat over a basket of sewing, as snow falls outside Thrushcross Grange. Hearthsmoke and smoldering clove-dusted firewood, rivulets of beeswax dribbling into snow flurries.

“I have no pity! I have no pity! The more worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething, and I grind with greater energy, in proportion to the increase of pain.”

A feral and unrepentant animalic musk slick with heat, tangled with smoked birch tar that clings to skin like soot and desire. Refined cologne masks a deep, grinding base of dark resins, cracked leather, and vetiver root; earth torn open, roots exposed. An elemental fury, a wild, fanatical embrace terribly alive in its darkness.

“Oh, I’m burning! I wish I were out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? Why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills. Open the window again wide: fasten it open!”

An incandescent amber storm. Strata of glowing ambers piled deep and restless, molten and honeyed, threaded with dark, resinous veins that pulse like blood under skin. Free, wild, elemental: the storm at her heart, beating against the glass until it shatters.

Angelica archangelica has long been associated with protection, purification, and blessing. In European folk practice it was carried against illness and misfortune, burned to cleanse spaces, and planted near doorways as a ward. In hoodoo and rootwork it is used to break crossed conditions, guard against harmful influences, strengthen women, and reinforce spiritual authority. The root is often carried in a mojo bag for protection and luck, added to floor washes to clear negativity, or dressed with oil and kept on the altar as a standing guardian.

During the great plague years in Europe, angelica was regarded as a life-preserving herb. Physicians and herbalists recommended it as part of protective cordials and vinegars, and it was chewed or worn to guard against contagion. Paracelsus, the 16th-century physician and alchemist, praised angelica as a powerful remedy in times of pestilence, viewing it as a plant marked by divine intent for the preservation of life. Its reputation as a plague herb strengthened its identity as both medicine and spiritual safeguard.

Its scent reflects that history. The root is dense and fibrous, with a sharp green opening that quickly settles into dry soil, resin, and a faint sweetness reminiscent of sap and old wood. There is a subtle heat to it, peppery without being hot, and a clean bitterness that reads as clarifying rather than harsh.