feline.by.design

A lazy, warm deep green scent with a thick aquatic undertone: Spanish moss, evergreen and cypress with watery blue-green notes and an eddy of hothouse flowers and swamp blooms. Bayou was something I thought sounded really interesting. I like the way spanish moss looks, so I was curious to see if I would like the way it would smell, combined with things such as described by Beth. So I was pleasantly surprised to find an imp of this included in my order. I put the scent on, and I'll give it one thing: it's STRONG. I only applied touches from the imp vial to my wrists and the fragrance was kickin' for a good fifteen minutes before it calmed down. I sniffed something that smelled sort of lemony, and it reminded me a bit of nail polish remover (I know, that's horrible, maybe my nose is messed up). Wet, the flowers and blooms were too sweet for me. After a while, the lemony scent went away, replaced by something that reminded me then a bit of earth tones, which I assume is the spanish moss and cypress. This wasn't as bad as the previous phase, but still, just not my thing. For those of you who like to gravitate towards the heavier scents, Bayou may be up your alley. I might try and see if Bayou works better on my boyfriend or roommate before I swap the fragrance, since it seems like something maybe a guy would wear. Bayou's not something that I'd really want my house to smell like, so I won't be using it as a home scent. But cheers to the Lab just the same for sending this to me! -doreen (edited to change "interested" to interesting.)

LADY LUCK Used to placate and venerate the fickle Goddess of Fortune. A must for all adventurers, risk-takers, gamblers and scoundrels. First reviewer! Woot! *ahem* Anyway, I used Lady Luck in order to obtain a "lucky sale" for the little moped gang we're trying to start up. I had annointed my hands and rubbed the oil in, as well as rubbed my boyfriend's hands with the oil when he was distracted ("Let me see your hands, Brent."). And, in this instance, it worked well. The gentleman who was selling the "one scooter and two mopeds" turned out to have five mopeds altogether, which we purchased at $250. Two of the mopeds were very close to running, one needed a lot of work but was still in decent shape (despite a hornet's nest being in the seat) and the other two would be used as parts bikes. It's quite a nice haul for $250 bucks. Two recruits now have mopeds that probably only need air filters and a bit of tweaking before they're functional, and the third will be working on his soon. Score! Now, to describe the scent of Lady Luck. The two notes that were prominent to my nose were fennel and peppermint. Fennel was present in the beginning of the oil's contact, while peppermint was noticable while the oil was drying down. There were other notes as well, but since the oil was on my hands, and because I was using Lady Luck with an intent, I didn't focus too much on discerning what notes were there. It did smell nice, though. When I need to use Lady Luck again, I'll modify this review if any other notes pop out at me, but for now: fennel, then peppermint. Perhaps someone else may use Lady Luck for a bit of a boost, and pick out other notes, or perhaps dispute mine. -doreen

This is an interesting scent, probably not one I would have picked out for myself. On wet, The Grave-Pig smells of patchouli-dirt. The fig makes a sweetness to the dirt smell, like a sort of honeyed dirt or a wet earth smell mixed with juice or fruit. As it dries on my skin, the patchouli becomes less dominant, allowing for the sweetness of the fig to assert itself, but the undertone of earth still remains--perhaps that's the mushrooms. It's a very dark scent for me, and I could see this being actually quite a sexy fragrance, especially for someone who really wants to smell as if they've fallen asleep in a forest overnight. It has quite an allure to it. In the end, though, I'm not really sure if it's my thing. I don't really wear patchouli-based scents often enough for me to want a bottle of this instantly, but I can see this really working for someone else who would like a dark scent that maybe isn't so spicy. I may try and test it once more, because it does smell quite nice on me and it has potential to be one of those fragrances that sort of grow on you. It could be a scent that I didn't know I needed, especially since my box is so vanilla, leather and amber heavy. Hmmm. Again, this one, really interesting. It'll probably take me a while to make up my mind. Edited to add: I could see this scent being sort of unisex. This would probably smell amaaazing on a fella, especially if somehow he has my identical skin chemistry to make it smell like it does on me. Because, it smells pretty damn good on me.

Hunh. Copulating Mice at first swipey-swab was a roaring nutfest. The pecans were having a little pecan-party, but then the party was crashed by the lavender, making it smell as if the florals were taking over. It came across as a very 'generic perfume' scent for a hot minute, which was really perplexing! Within five minutes, however, it morphs into a creamy-spicy fragrance that reminiscent of a very bold chai tea with milk, and then my skin kicks up the cloves like it's going out of style. Copulating Mice eases back into the feisty chai tea territory, or maybe 'punk-ass gingerbread man' territory. It's sweet without being cloying; instead, it's a cosy scent--like if Sudha Segara had a baby with Three Witches. Ah, I smell edible! Nomnomnomnomnom!

It's an older thread, but this might be helpful for you: Cinnamon girl: Cinnamon discussion from A-Z. I was going to recommend trying Hamadryad, but I didn't realise it was discontinued! Oh, the things I miss from being out of the BPAL loop for a while...

While wet, Burning Vulva smells very lush and fruity. It reminded me of peach cobbler, although it didn't spell really peach. Just sweet and bright, like a sunny day. I suspect the peru balsam and orange blossom had something to do with that, coupled with the vanilla to accentuate the sweetness of these notes. After it dries down, the scent loses its initial wetness and moves from being something quite nice and very lushly flowery/fruity to something less bright, nearly powdery. After thirty minutes, ah, the vanilla asserts itself. It isn't particularly creamy--more like vanilla dust or powder. After around forty minutes, it's vanilla-beeswax I mostly smell. Although slightly powdered on my skin, the fragrance still retains a bit of warmth, though not anywhere near the level it initially was at. More like sunset peeking through translucent curtains as you're eating honey off a spoon before sipping a vanilla chai latte, with most of the chai bit covered up by the vanilla, but it peeks out periodically in a gingery form after an hour's wear, keeping the scent warm and cheeky. Such a difference trying BPAL on the skin makes! It's as if the fragrance and my skin have been discussing on how to mutually express the scent. Burning Vulva: "I'm going to be sensual and bright and sweet and fruity! There's no fruit note listed, but I wanna do fruity!" My Skin: "Okay, sure, that's great... but I'm gonna need some vanilla." Burning Vulva: "Oh, okay, well, here's some vanilla then." My Skin: "That's good... but I'm gonna need more vanilla." Burning Vulva: "Oh, oh sure. But I'm gonna have to lose a bit of the lushness I've got going on. Is that okay?" My Skin: "Fine, fine. Just give me more vanilla." It's like the Saturday Night Live Cowbell skit with Christopher Walken. Just replace "cowbell" with vanilla. But STOP PRESS!! After an hour's wearing it on my skin, the amber seems to wake up and shoves aside the cowbell... I mean vanilla! I now have a fragrance that seems more like The Lion from Mad Tea Party than The Mouse's Long and Sad Tale. In this case, The Lion is drenched in beeswax, but it's still a bright and warm scent. Whoa. How'd it do that? Burning Vulva is an interesting one to try, as my skin seems to take notes like vanilla, leather and amber and push them up to the forefront. In this three-for-all note match, it seems that vanilla, along with beeswax, wins the Prominent Note of the Scent award for the first hour, but then in the second the amber sort of yanks back the vanilla and comes into the forefront. It is a nice skin scent, and as I am quite the connoisseur of BPAL vanilla and amber fragrances, Burning Vulva has earnt a place in my collection as a vanilla/amber fragrance that's fairly distinct from my usual selections from the general collection. Quite happy with it!

In the bottle, A Golden Idol is very prominently a lush vetiver scent. I actually happen to like the note, so I was interested in trying it. On my skin, however, the most prominent note is the amber, with the rose overlaying it in an interesting embrace. It almost smells leathery on me--sort of smoky, yet sweet and glitteringly earthy. If the vetiver is present, it's adding a certain amount of dampness to the amber and rose. The lavender doesn't come through at all on my skin, but I'm not fussed either way. The rose adds a bit of modesty to the amber/vetiver mingling, which I find quite a sexy, saucy combination. It's a very golden bright scent on me, more suited to hot summers than cold winters. It's so amazing the difference one's skin chemistry and what one's nose tends to pick up more. I happen to like how A Golden Idol is interpreted on my skin. It's a good rose scent for me, especially since my bottle of Bearded Lady is on the other side of the Atlantic.

The Soldier was something I worried might smell too foodie/gourmand, as I've had previous experiences in the past with some scents that were just a bit too buttery for my tastes. I bought a bottle of The Soldier during Yule 2010, and hadn't tested it until just now. When I read the description of it, I knew I had to try it, being a general fan of leather scents (Torture King, Severin), tea scents (The Dormouse, Dorian) and vanilla scents (Antique Lace, The Mouse's Long and Sad Tale). On first application to my skin, The Soldier smells like a man who went AWOL in a cookie factory--butterscotch, powdered sugar, a slight hint of a buttery rum? I couldn't stop sniffing my wrist, trying to decide whether it was a pleasant sweetness or if it was something that was a bit too much. About five minutes on, the butterscotch smell faded, leaving a nice vanilla smell grounded by a more solid note or group of notes in the background. Ah, the leather becomes more prominent now on my skin, and The Soldier has become more stern, standing at attention... but there's still a slight sweetness to the fragrance still that tempers The Soldier's stern manner, as if he's still got a few cookie crumbles clinging to his uniform. This is a reminder for me to never judge a scent by the bottle. As it was in the bottle, The Soldier seemed a bit borderline as far as wearability for me goes, but once I applied it and let it settle for about five to ten minutes--leather cookies! Or a sugar-coated whip. Whatever you wanna go with.

The OCD listmaker in me has been loving the last hour and a half I've been puttering with this new feature. Whoa. And, um, if you're looking for scents to add... couldn't find Hakkotsu on the drop-down list, and I actually have a bottle I'd like to add to my list o'stash. This is a wonderful feature, and especially liked that we could import our reviews. That saved me so much time trying to hunt down all the reviews I had.

It's not just skin chemistry. I have a tendency to recommend scents that are in the same "mood" as other scents, thinking that they smell alike, when in reality there are some differences. Red Phoenix smelled very similar to Blood Moon to me. When thinking of non-LEs though, my mind is sort of drawing a blank. We need a spicier Scherezade with cinnamon, perhaps. -doreen

Scherezade is my pick, with Silk Road on the sidelines. Scherezade is actually what I wear with a head shop vibe in mind. I'll put it on the plug-in oil heater and my boyfriend will think I'm burning incense. Anne Bonny is also a good pick if you like patchouli with personality. -doreen

Twilight smells nice. It smells similar to some blends in the Somnus collection. Perhaps that may be why it isn't particularly remarkable to me. The fragrance is nice, but it doesn't make me go "Hey, Martha!" or have me bowled over. It's a nice scent, and I could see why someone would like it, but I have enough scents that are similar in mood and feel to hold onto this imp. Definitely good for those of you into clean floral scents, though. -doreen

I received this as a free imp from the Lab, and I'll be buggered if I can find it anywhere, so I guess it's something that's unreleased. Because it's a three-letter word, I was unable to do a search on the forum's search engine. I looked through about half of the likely candidates of the categories that might have something called Tum, and, well, no luck. Hence, with some trepidation, I bring you... Tum. Tum goes through seemingly eight or nine different scent notes before settling on some sort of "burnt wood" smell. I sniff again, and the intense smokiness has lightened up significantly. I smell woods and sap interwoven together to create a crisp autumn majesty. The scent is getting sweeter, almost honeyed, and this is all happening within the course of a mere couple of minutes. Do I smell fruit? Oranges? I'm not so sure. The hint goes away when I try to pin it down. Then I get the scent of an extinguished candle. It's faintly, faintly sweet, like sugar water, and a touch smokey. I think there was a little bit of a berry fragrance in the mix as well. Maybe raspberries? It smells like a fantastic autumn fragrance that I would likely wear at any and every time. -doreen

I smelled the almond note before I was knocked away by the cinnamon. Whoa! This scent is the closest one I've found to resemble fireball candies! The cinnamon is sweet, almost syrupy, which could be the influence of the almond. Inferno isn't something I think I'd wear, but it makes me have a craving for some Red Hots right about now. I think it would irritate my skin too much, as I've been noticing some cinnamon scents have been doing lately. Definitely something for the bold! -doreen

Tiger Lily is a beautiful, light floral. The sweetness is barely there, and the flowery element isn't pounding you over the head. Excellent for the summer heat. I really don't get the soapy quality mentioned in other posts. Just light flowers with a twinge of green and sweetness. I'm quite fickle with florals, so I don't know if I would get a bottle of Tiger Lily in the future, but for now, I will keep my imp. The florals I am normally attracted to are the lighter blends, so this one is definitely worth considering. -doreen

This one came out too fruity and sweet to me. A friend of mine and I both came to the consensus that I smelled like a candle store. I couldn't tell that there was a green tea note in this one; it was cloying on my skin. Another analogy was that of a melted piece of candy. Not for me. -doreen

Mouse's Long and Sad Tale is more like a powdery vanilla. Are you familiar with Dorian? Think of it as its lighter, dustier cousin. That being said, I wear Dorian and Mouse's Long and Sad Tale on a very regular basis. I wear at least one, if not both, once a week, if not more. -doreen

The initial reaction to the first sniff of the oil on my skin: "Whoa... smells like bubble bath." Actually, it doesn't, though this is a sweet floral without being too cloying or heady for me. There is a sort of bubbley note that seems to make the whole oil giggle, but it's quite a feminine scent. I like the way it smells, but I don't know if this is a fragrance that would suit me. It reminds me too much of bubble bath for some reason or another. However, I do have a friend who loves rose scents, and I think this might be her cup of tea. I'll pass along this imp (which was kindly passed to me) to see if Marie and she will make friends. -doreen

This is interesting. I smell something at first that smells a lot like... soap?! Not something I quite expected from an oil that contained leather. After about a couple of minutes, though, the leather gains its ground. This smells nice, but I have many, many leather scents from BPAL, and this one so far doesn't strike me as notable nor particularly desireable. There's a definite sweetness to the fragrance I'm sort of ambivalent towards. I give it a moment and there it is: Perversion. It's leather and coconut mingled together in a happy union. A-ha! That is what makes you different, my pet. Coconut works for me in some scents and I've had it go horrible on me in others, but this works well. I don't know if I need to add to my retinue of leather scents that I already have in bottle form, but I will surely keep the imp to see if it will suit me. Perhaps in the future I may invest in a bottle, but for now, I will enjoy this lovely imp. -doreen Edited to add: Who am I kidding? I love leather, so I'll likely wind up getting a bottle of this, too.

Khajuraho is, on my skin, a very soft, powdery vanilla with sweetened woodsy tones. I had tested from a decant at a Meet n' Sniff I had with Fyre and though I liked it quite a bit. So I went out in search of my own bottle to buy. The vanilla is probably the strongest note on me, and it smells lovely. It's a light, airy vanilla dusted by the petals of flowers and tamed by the sandalwood I can barely smell. Quite enjoyable! I'm glad I found a bottle with the forums. -doreen

Whoa! This is sharp! At first, the swab of skin is revealing a pine forest. It's incredibly evergreen, with an astrigent tang to it, kind of like the witch-hazel mentioned in an earlier post. As the scent mingles with the skin chemistry, it loses some of its sharpness, but it's still an incredibly crisp scent. Dublin's actually quite boozy; this smells like a potent drink with gin in it! Or is that just me... I can see this being very refreshing on a hot day. I saw aedes' comparison to Snow Moon, and I'm getting that, too. The same bright, cold florals are in this as well. I can see why this was called a good Christmas/Yule scent. It's as if snow has fallen on the evergreen. All in all: Dublin's not great, but not bad, either. I'll keep my imp for days when the Florida sun gets to me, but for now, unless I sell or trade my bottle of Snow Moon, I think I'll hold off on getting a bigger bottle of Dublin. -doreen

It smells a little like toothpaste that's lime-flavoured. I kind of like it, but it's making me a little queasy. Sometimes I get a little queasy with mint. The Star Tarot oil was one I liked, but the second or third time I wore it, I got this queasy feeling, and I couldn't wear it again. Spooky sort of got me the same way as well. But The Mock Turtle's Lessons smell clean and nice. Something tells me there should be a soap of this fragrance: a nice, green soap scented with lime and mint and a little vanilla lurking around to sweeten it up. This is a good fragrance for hot weather. It's quite gender-neutral as well; I can see a man wearing this just as easily a woman. I don't know if the Mock Turtle is big-bottle material for me. It's likely going to be one of those where I hold onto the imp, but I never feel like wearing it. Hmmm... -doreen

Whoa, when wet, Coyote smells like some sort of tea. Definitely a grassy scent, but absent of clorophyll. The amber comes out, though, rich and roaring. There's a note that smells a touch like soap, but in a good way, preventing the amber from being too cloying. It dries down a bit to a softer amber-musk fragrance that I'm loving. Very pleasant. Wait... is this test spot itching? I really wanted to try this scent because of my enjoyment of many of the amber blends the Lab has. The fragrance doesn't disappoint in the least, although I can't shake how the test spot on my skin seems a liiiittle itchy. I'll have to try this again to make sure there's nothing that's irritating my skin. It's not like the burning sensation I had with Spooky; that was a true allergic reaction to something or another. With Coyote, it doesn't burn, but it itches a little. Hmm... I'll have to think about this longer. Scentwise, though, it's an ace. -doreen

Whoa! Super pine! I like it! I love the smell of pine needles, and this is that fragrance amped up 100% when wet. Yew-Trees is quick to dry on my skin, but it still smells lovely. It's a very clean smell, and I enjoy its crispness. But wait... what's that in the background I smell? Maybe it's the berries... there's something that smells kind of waxy and warm that's killing the Pine Chill party I've got going on with Yew-Trees. These aren't sweet, fruity berries, but more like green berries with a hint of sweetness and a coat of wax. Yew-Trees is starting to smell more like a candle on me than the fresh pine it was before. Peh. It's not bad, but in the end, it wasn't for me. If only it was just straight pine, which is a strange complaint considering those who got nothing *but* pine from this. Oh well. I'm sure this imp will find someone who will love it. -doreen

Gah! :::sniffs arm again::: Gah! :::sniffs arm again::: Gah! :::makes a face::: I've got it. When wet, it smells like the inner mystery of a spitoon. Off the bat, I'm glad I didn't get the Great Sword of War in a 5 ml format, as I did with Death on a Pale Horse and the Bow and Crown of Conquest (and as I wish I did with the Scales of Deprivation). But, being the good little BPALer I am, I wait patiently for the oil to mingle with my skin and hopefully produce a more pleasing fragrance. :::waits five minutes, then goes in for a sniff::: Oh, no, honey. The spitoon smell is gone, but now I get something that smells like Pepto pills. Seriously. Maybe mandarin doesn't work for me with out other scents, or maybe it's the saffron. I don't know, but it's like weird Grandma candy that came from a different decade. It smells sweet, but it also smells dusty, and not something you'd want to put in your mouth. Well, the Great Sword of War is certainly a very unique fragrance. It doesn't work for me, but that could be due to a bad combination of my nose and skin chemistry. I don't really want to smell like Pepto-coated Granny candy, and that's what the Great Sword's givin' me. Maybe it senses I'm not much for war. -doreen