UberAlice

This came to me as a frimp from a very sweet forumer (Thanks Nursekins! ). In the imp and wet it is a cold, dry mint; definitely the slightly smoky smell of forests in the middle of winter. It soon picks up a sweet undertone and becomes more like a mint breath...errr, mint as it dries. When it's finally dried out on me it's almost a mint candy. It's a nice smell, but not for me. I smell like my toothpaste tastes.

Straight out of the imp, onto my skin and hours later it is the same smell: fresh dong quai root. Not pleasant in the least on me. It's a slightly peppery herbal ickiness. So sad. I kept hoping it would morph at least a little to soften the olfactory blow but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

In the imp: Kind of astringenty wood to me. Slightly cedar-y? Wet: Strangely, I get a whiff of mint from this, but the cedar smell has deepened and patchouli has started to come out. Dry: This has become a type of creamy, cinnamony wood on me. Oh, it really is lovely. I was told by a date that it smelled nice. (And then we put it on him and it was not so nice, heh.) Does it work? Not sure yet. But I do like it very much.

Wet: this smells like very acidic flowers. It smells like sweltering hot gladiolas at the height of summer when the blooms have opened. Dry: This is quite surprising! The flowers have calmed down a little and have melded together into one. The gladiola that was front and center has faded into the background. Still quite pungent on me but much more subdued and a little "darker". Overall: Sweet and strangely dark but a little too pungent for me. Off to swap!

I was so excited for this imp, and based on the name alone I really wanted it to work on me. Alas, it did not. Wet: very bright, juicy orange and mimosa. It has two of my favorite scents in the world, clove and bergamot, which I cannot smell but hope for them to come up in the background. Dry: And again, there's the damn WINDSONG. Which is funny because it has only one note in common, bergamot, which I know works on my skin. It's slightly sweeter and has a distinct orange middle note. I think it's the neroli going crazy on my skin because The Caterpillar did the same thing on me and it's a common note. So sad, but now it needs to be rehomed.

This smelled lovely, rich and ambery on me when it was wet. Dry it turned all sugary sweet heliotrope and went hypersugary on me. Sad, as I love amber. Off to the swap.

In the imp: Oh, my! It's the sea! It smells so lovely and clean and almost green. What a beautiful smell. Wet: Still smells grand, but the salt has started to rise up. Dry: The leather note has come up quite a bit on me and is making my head hurt. The aquatic note is amazing still and I definitely will shoot for something with those notes but the leather is just too much for me. Off to swap!

In the imp: Musty and slightly incensy yet pungent. Wet: OMG. WINDSONG PERFUME. The infamous perfume that gave me headaches all through my childhood. My mom used to dump such quantities on herself that I can't smell it now without thinking of my mother. Or looking for the Advil. This does not bode well. Drydown: Okay, it's chilling out a little bit now. Must have been the jasmine on my skin because it smells like sweet incense with a slight floral backdrop. Definitely okay. It does smell quite a bit like a head shop but hey, it's better than Windsong. It has picked up a slightly sour, tangy smell; maybe the vetiver? Whatever it is it tempers the jasmine very well on me. Verdict: Not sure. If my body can manage to pull this incense note out in the next few tries I'm all about it. If it retains that overly cloying scent though I'm passing it right on to my mom.

In the imp: Uh, guys, whats burning in here? Wet: Smoke, smoke, smoke, the kind that chokes me a little bit in the back of my throat. But I like that. Let's soldier on. Dry: Pine has started to come out. This smells like how my grampa's lawn used to when he was burning brush. The smoke smell has died down and now it just smells like lovely sweet, warm burning leaves. Beautiful! I do wish I hadn't put so much on and also lit a room warmer in "Fireside" from The Body Shop though...I'm sure my housemate thinks I'm sitting up here lighting things on fire...

Wet: Let it be said that in the imp this is not a pretty scent. Steffanina described it as urine and she's not far off. It smells like pee, soap and flowers. Ugh. On skin, a few minutes: Uh, cocoa butter? Where did YOU come from? Pepper has taken a step back to a creamy deep scent. Chasing soon after it is the green scent I pinned down earlier. Thankfully the pee-pee smell is gone. Dry: This dries down so beautifully on me and it radiates pure power. Cinnamony with an undertone of green and lush honey scent. It goes slightly musky on me after a few hours but it still has a lot of throw so take it easy with this one! It has remarkable staying power: I put it on around noon yesterday and at 7AM it's still on my skin. Overall, I love this scent but need to put it on right out of the shower lest I smell icky for a few minutes. Scents seem to always go amber, vanilla and musk on me no matter what is in them, and I'm sad the pepper note didn't stick around more on me. I could see this easily entering my weekly rotation of scents. ETA: The first time I put this on I applied it to my inner wrists. For the review I tried it on my inner elbow, and I got a tingly tickly feeling like I do from clove oil. Looking back on it I think the cocoa note may in fact be cloves.

In the bottle: At first whiff my initial impression was "Ugh. Yeah, that's dirt." This reminds me a lot of Hamadryad at first smell. It is as it is described: the exact smell of dirt. But I want so badly to love it, so I kept going. Wet: The dirt gets super-amplified on me right off the bat and it smells like I rolled in a mud puddle. But strangely, the soil note seems to lighten and warm up. It goes from stale musty dirt to fresher lichen and peat moss. And then out come the roses. Sweet and delicate but musty, still scented from the earth. I can, on me, actually smell this change happening within a few minutes. Dry: The soil has taken a step back and now I smell those dried roses. This smells like a long-neglected florist's shop. The scent is soft and light, the kind where you never really know where it's coming from, but you know you smell it. Overall impression: This is the first scent that made me go "Holy mother of God, this chemist is brilliant." Zombi is a kinetic scent. The image it was named after is perfect. But this is no shambling, rotting corpse; this is the mournful, heartbreaking scent of a beloved put in the ground and rising before decay sets in. The progression from soil to flowers is astounding. This truly is a creepy scent on me. I put it on while I was moving into my big scary turn of the century house and it definitely fit the atmosphere. Will I wear it? Probably not often. It makes me want to put on a lace shroud and walk around. But I will keep this imp for sure and probably apply it every so often just to appreciate the craftsmanship. Kudos! eta: The boy really likes this one. Apparently all he can smell from it is roses, no dirt. Damn noses!

Just got this in a swap today. I think it is my destiny to love the scents that don't work so well on others. In the imp: HELLO pine! I get a sharp sandalwood smell in my nose a few seconds later but this smells straight-up like a pine tree to me at first whiff. Wet: Still some pine, a little more sandalwood and within about a minute I get a little bit of mandarin, bright and high. Then a slightly incense-y smell, but as someone mentioned, it's like dusty incense. This smells like a freshly cleaned antique store to me. Dry (3 hours): there's the good stuff. A deep, rich, almost fruity scent with a sharp edge, probably the sandalwood. On me it first smells like a sweeter incense and then the mandarin tone comes back around with a wallop. One of my best friends smelled it after it had been on me a half an hour and said "You know what that smell says to me? It says 'I'm so pretty...don't touch me or I'll f*ck you up.'" The throw is not very strong and this scent faded on me within about 4 hours and needed some touch-up. I do believe I like smelling like a Chinese zombie!

At first try, this smelled just a little too much like fake strawberry to me. It kind of smelled like a strawberry air freshener. I don't think I gave it enough time on my skin though, because I tried it for the second time and LOVED it. As someone else described it is the smell of something beautiful burning out rather than fading away. LOVE IT. In the imp: very strong strawberry, and a tiny bit of musk, and something else that I can't name....saccharine sweet with a dark undertone. Wet: A little bit of vanilla starts coming out and mixes with the strawberry, but the musk keeps it from being sickly sweet. My best male friend applied at the same time I did and he got much stronger sweet musk than I did. Individual chemistry is amazing. Dry (3 hours): The musk and what smells like incense have definitely come out while the strawberry has taken a step back. It's now a very creamy, slightly spicy fruit. I had to reapply after around 4 hours and the throw is medium level but it is a lovely smell and definitely a keeper.

In the imp: oranges, a slightly darker fruity note (must be the fig), with a very very slight unlit incense note...you know how the perfume is sweeter on an unlit stick versus the smoke? It's kind of like that. Wet: Definitely smell the oranges, and a little bit of the fig. It's a little bit overbearing though and starts to smell slightly plastic-y. Dry (3 hours): Wow, that plastic note came out of nowhere...it's almost slightly minty now but doesn't settle well on my skin. The oranges are still quite lovely and the fig is just a whisper now. Not much throw at all. Sadly the incense note has disappeared. I didn't hate it, but I wasn't crazy over it either, so I swapped out.

This was actually the first BPAL scent I tried, as I received the imp off of eBay. I really loved the description and grew up in a very rural area surrounded by forests. I was gearing myself up for a lovely nostalgia trip with this one. Oh, my, not in the least. In the imp: Maybe I got some of the strangely proportioned batch that everyone else is describing, because I got very, very strong mint, quite a lot of the lovely Ben-Gay smell, and a tiny bit of dry moss/lichen scent. Wet: Yep, that's mint. Still. And there's a little floral peeking out, but not enough to stop the burning in my nostrils.... Dry (2 hours): Mint has faded a little but now it just smells chemical. This is not pleasant on my skin. I washed it off with alcohol soon after because it gave me a headache. For someone with different skin chemistry I'm sure this will be lovely, but I immediately swapped it on the LJ BPAL community after getting it off my skin.