pkthunder

Beaver Moon is really delicious! I can't differentiate between the cherry and the strawberry, it's just all sweet and juicy to me (but then I have been fighting a cold all week). The vanilla cream puts this at a close relative to Monster Bait: Closet, at least to my nose. It does stay close to the body, but when freshly applied, my neighbors were guessing cinnamon and apple cider, so I do think there is a fruity cake component to this.

I decided to bust out my little imp of Jack in honor of the upcoming holiday, and boy was I really surprised at how this scent turned out. In the bottle it was all butter. As soon as it hit my skin it smelled really herby and then spicy, so I figured that was the clove. Then it became a little pumpkiny and the nutmeg came out to make it smell more like apple cider. Then for the next hour or so it was really strong peach. And I don't like peach perfume. Jack won't be coming out again.

Hope smelled really yummy on me when wet, not to sweet and certainly not an overpowering rose. Unfortunately upon drying, it made me smell like play doh. I'm keeping my decant just in case, though, because it was so good wet.

All the scents blend wonderfully on my skin. The orchid is lovely and reigns in the rose, and the musk is heavenly, making this a very sexy floral. The cream sweetens it to the point that I definitely will wear this.

This starts out all lily and cedar on me. As it dries the lilacs and bergamot come through, but unfortunately I won't wear something if I don't like it wet, and lily drives me nuts. It's a nice floral, but not sweet enough for my tastes (I like my flowers dripping with honey and sugar and fruit juice).

When I first put it on, Oblivion was a yummy, woodsy musk. At first it even smells like a familiar department store cologne, but I can't place it. Unfortunately, my skin eats it up to the point where my nose has to be on my skin in order to smell it. Too bad.

The dominant note is forest - not straight-up pine, but woodsy and earthy. There is an sharpness to it that I guess is a snow note, as it reminds me of other aquatic fragrances. The sweetness of the apple and almond are in the background.

I don't like this on me, and I don't think it would be great as a room fragrance, either, but I think a man would smell delicious in it. A flannel-wearing man with an axe over his shoulder.

Whoops, as my skin soaks it up, a pine scent stands out. Not a keeper.

Jolasveinar for Christmas Eve and Haloa for Christmas Day. Jolasveinar makes me giggle when I think of "pilfered Christmas pastries" - and Haloa (how do you make the circumflex in BB code?) reminds me of marathon holiday baking sessions, feasting and laughing.

That would be Alt+147 (reference: http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/ALTchrc.html )

Halôa

I didn't get any of my Yule decants in yet, so I wore Gingerbread Poppet to any Christmas parties.

I love scents that have a creamy base to hold back sharp florals and other notes. This blend is well done and is one of the many "sweet florals" I've fallen in love with.

I didn't get any of the candy-bubblegum scent that everyone else seemed to. To me, this was a fruity white wine, very boozy. I felt like I could get drunk breathing my wrists. The florals came out at the end, but for the most part, this was a soft pear scent DRENCHED in white wine.

Oh, and by the way, I totally loved it! I'm so glad it was resurrected and that I bought two bottles.

My first impression sniffing out of the bottle was "mouthwash", and indeed when I first put it on I felt like I was wearing Listerine. But the harsh mintiness comes off in about two minutes, and after about ten minutes it's the perfect cool mountain air and flora, one of the many reasons I moved to Colorado.

And even though the mint is quite minty, it's a very good rendition of the cold harsh air that enters your nose when you're standing at 12,000 ft.

In the bottle, I could smell [most] all the notes blended together. Once on my skin, the jasmine popped right out, and then settled down into those yucky little pink soaps shaped like seashells.

The florals are fading fast, though, and the vanilla musky scent that is left behind is nice.

I sampled this on my right hand and Pulcinella & Teresna on my left, and not surprisingly, when put together, the puppet mistress and her puppets blend well.

This is a lovely scent. This is how I want my home to smell one day... of oiled wood; on the bannisters and trim, wainscoting and hardwood floors. For now I'll just have to deal with musty carpet and boring plaster walls. I'm not sure this is how I want to smell. It does turn into a nice "walking through the woods" scent, but once again, better as a room fragrance than a perfume.

I sampled this on my left hand and Melsande on my right, and not surprisingly, when put together, the puppet mistress and her puppets blend together well.

In the vial: Musky fruit. Yum!

On wet: this is so delicious, and very heady. When I take a big whiff of my skin, I feel like I might almost "faint dead" in my chair.

Drydown: Um, this smells like the very old Monopoly set that belongs to my mother that had little painted wooden pieces and was in a cedar box. I have no idea where that came from, but it takes me back to when I was eight years old playing board games in my brother's room. God, that is so weird! I keep sniffing and it's still that box! It's not a bad smell. Still yummy, just strange, that's all.

Wet, and in the vial, the tobacco smoke speaks out violently to me. It may be accentuated by the sharpness of the pine. For the first few minutes this kinda stings my skin; must be the pine. After drying down, I smell more of the almonds and sarsparilla, but the scent overall has become very faint. This scent has some nice things going on, but just not the right combination of things to make me love it. And the smoke drives me nuts in the beginning. I kick my husband out of bed when he smells like that.

This was a lot of lemon at first, but as it dried down it became very diabolical. Evil. Dark. Spicy musk. I'm not getting any vanilla and coconut outright; they must just be there to reign in the musk. And I am learning that I love anything opium.

Verra nice.

I don't get a lot of cherry from this. It's the first BPAL oil to sting and turn my skin a little pink. I like the overall spiciness on the drydown, but I don't think this is going to work for me in the long run.

The clear winner from Act I. This is just like walking into the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Now I just have to get myself used to smelling like food. I do so much better with florals as an everyday perfume, but I love this so much I'll have to change my thinking.

To me, this is nothing like the original Midway. Midway has the oily doughiness of funnel cakes, butter and caramel popcorns, and the salty taffy.

This is exactly what it says it is, a little sweet, a little incensy, and quite floral.

The soapiness is going back and forth for me a little here, but now that I think about it, it might be due to the beer I'm drinking while sniffing. For a moment, I could have sworn I smelled passion flower, but I'm not sure and I don't even know if that's a night-bloomer.

This would be great if I can just make it stop being kinda soapy. I will try it again in a few days.

I've decided that florals are the easiest for me to wear, and this is a very sophisticated floral. It immediately brought the image of black orchids to mind. It's a mature scent; I feel older wearing this (but not necessarily old like grandma ). I love this. As I only have a decant I'll have to save it for special occasions.

When I first put this on, it smelled so... foreign. It was just so different than anything I've smelled before. I'm still new to BPAL, but this still seemed incredibly unique. As it dried down it turned into a sexy, dark spiciness with a little sweetness, too. Luckily the wet smell is not too off-putting to keep me from wearing it. And I think it would be lovely to layer it with Black Moon.

My first review...

In the bottle, this was lots of gardenia. On my skin wet, lots of gardenia. As it dries down, the gardenia fades a little, but still overpowers the other florals. I think my nose just isolates the gardenia. Someone above mentioned Lady of Shalott, and I'm not a fan of that either but I thought it was because of the aquatics.

I thought I had escaped gardenia when I moved out of the South. I'm going to try to swap this one...