dronzeka

THE LITTLE WOODEN DOLL "My little Vasilissa, my dear daughter, listen to what I say, remember well my last words and fail not to carry out my wishes. I am dying, and with my blessing, I leave to thee this little doll. It is very precious for there is no other like it in the whole world. Carry it always about with thee in thy pocket and never show it to anyone. When evil threatens thee or sorrow befalls thee, go into a corner, take it from thy pocket and give it something to eat and drink. It will eat and drink a little, and then thou mayest tell it thy trouble and ask its advice, and it will tell thee how to act in thy time of need." So saying, she kissed her little daughter on the forehead, blessed her, and shortly after died. Little Vasilissa grieved greatly for her mother, and her sorrow was so deep that when the dark night came, she lay in her bed and wept and did not sleep. At length she be thought herself of the tiny doll, so she rose and took it from the pocket of her gown and finding a piece of wheat bread and a cup of kvass, she set them before it, and said: "There, my little doll, take it. Eat a little, and drink a little, and listen to my grief. My dear mother is dead and I am lonely for her." Then the doll's eyes began to shine like fireflies, and suddenly it became alive. It ate a morsel of the bread and took a sip of the kvass, and when it had eaten and drunk, it said: "Don't weep, little Vasilissa. Grief is worst at night. Lie down, shut thine eyes, comfort thyself and go to sleep. The morning is wiser than the evening." So Vasilissa the Beautiful lay down, comforted herself and went to sleep, and the next day her grieving was not so deep and her tears were less bitter. Gently carved wood warm with a maternal love that reaches beyond death: rose-infused amber and soft golden sandalwood. Wow, I sort of hate to be first on this one, but here goes... This is not at ALL what I expected. I'm guessing golden sandalwood is a scent that I can NOT wear, because wet, this is acrid and harsh like varnish. It smells kind of like wood, but just varnished, as in still wet and stinky, wood. Really not pleasant. Drying down: Is that rose? I catch a glimpse - but mostly it's drowned out by the shouty wood. Maybe the amber is too fresh and therefore harsh? But wait... further into the drydown, it's suddenly HI I'M ROSE! There's maybe a little hint of the amber, tempering the sweetness of rose. And a little smoothness of sandalwood, maybe, finally. I don't think this works for me at ALL - I like rose, but it's a relatively generic one, and I can't do the varnish smell that dominates for a good half-hour before you get to the rose. I really don't know what's causing that, though - others who have more luck with woods may do better with this one!

I haven’t tried Snow White in ages, but it and other “snow” notes went plastic-y fake vanilla unpleasantness on me, so I’ve stayed away from most of them. But I love TKO and lavender so much that I had to try this, and I lucked out - it’s mostly a stronger TKO, and dies down to TKO with a soft sort of coconut in the background. It is a bit cooler feeling than the original. If this kind of sweet lavender scent isn’t hugely your jam I don’t know if you’d need this on top of TKO, but it’s a lovely variant if, like me, you’re a fiend for lavender sleep blends.

This is so delicious. It’s pretty much what is says - lemon, honey, and sugar. The lemon is fresh and sweet and very much NOT lemon pledge - it smells like actual homemade lemonade or sweet lemon tea without the tea. It’s a little hard to distinguish between the sugar and the honey, but it’s a lovely sweetness - I don’t get wax specifically from the honeycomb, but a kind of wildflower honey - the light sweet kind, rather than the deep musky sort of sexy-times honey. It’s very lemon-forward to start and then the lemon seems to die down/meld with the sugar cane a little more. It feels very spring and summery to me, though I’ll happily wear it all year round. I may even consider a second bottle (I have way too much perfume as it is but I Iove this).

This scent is so gorgeous. Pretty much does what it says on the tin - honey, amber, and a hint of smoke. In the bottle, it smells like it’s going to be that really animalic, various-Vulvas-kind of honey that gets a little too funky on me, but on my skin the amber (and maybe some kind of vanilla element) saves it for me. Very warm and comforting, not too foody. I’d have probably bought this anyway given the notes but I’d never seen this poem before and it’s so amazingly vivid and glorious, it makes the scent that much better. “Wet bread” is so incredibly accurate. The poem cements this as a winter scent.

Like everyone else, I get lots of lilac from this one. Maybe a little muguet in the background, and I'm sure the vanilla and amber ground it a little, but yeah, almost SN lilac. It's a lovely lilac scent. For me this is something I'll wear almost exclusively in the spring - I grew up with lilac trees in our backyard and the scent is absolutely anchored in those fresh green spring days for me. If you like lilac, this is a good option for you, but if you want a vanilla-amber scent, look elsewhere.

This is going to be the world's most unhelpful review but this is a beautiful sweet scent where the notes meld together enough that I can't really distinguish them at all. On me it's creamy and not especially foody, just sweet and light. I guess I'd say primarily tea rose (soft and mild) with a non-foody vanilla. I think on me the amber and skin musk just work to blend everything seamlessly.

This is really lovely! At first, I get a little bit of coffee (it's nice that it's not more b/c sometimes BPAL's coffee notes take over on me), with a tiny bit of sweet resinous/incense-ish (not woody) smoke underneath. As it dries, I get mostly the cardamom, although very much softened round the edges/smoothed out by the other notes. If I huff it deeply, in the back of my throat I get a tiny little wintry hit of fir. I don't really get a lot of vanilla or identifiable spices, I think they're blending almost indistinguishably with the cardamom to lend depth without being quite identifiable on their own. It's mildly sweet but to me doesn't really read as foodie (despite the cardamom being so strong - probably b/c I don't cook with it very often) - it feels more like a light/fresh woody scent. If you don't like cardamom very much, or really wanted coffee and vanilla, this may not be the scent for you, but I'm enjoying it a lot. ETA: Okay, as it's dried down further, the loveliest, lightest, almost marshmallow-y vanilla has emerged! ETA 2: Further morphing, and I *swear* this dries down to the same vanilla as Antique Lace, or very very close (with a little cardamom edge). I'm really pleased b/c I bought it probably almost more for the label than for the scent, which didn't work out so well for me the last time I did this (looking at you, Autumn Landscape with a Flock of Turkeys).

First try: Initially, so so so so SO much woodsmoke. (I have to admit to not being in the right headspace for woodsmoke right now: I spent Friday night through Sunday night without power or heat, the temps dropped to the low teens (Fahrenheit) and stayed there the whole time, and we got through it by keeping a fire going in in our fireplace pretty much non-stop. But we used up the good firewood and starting burning windfall from our backyard, which was pretty damp, and by the end the house reeked of woodsmoke. It's not really a time I want to revisit through my perfume, but if you're feeling better about woodsmoke than I am, you'll like this). I caught a really brief whiff of pink pepper (which I loved) and as it dies down the resins are coming through as a slightly sweeter woodiness, which I like. Once the woodsmoke calms down a little, it's pretty nice - a kind of quiet scent. Eventually the woodsmoke vanishes almost entirely leaving a resinous-y base (though I still don't get really get any peppercorn). I guess it really does mirror a bonfire/burn pile - starts out with a big conflagration and dies down into something quiet and gently glowing. A serious morpher.

This is VERY VERY sugar plummy on me, which for me, is a very sweet juicy fruity kind of scent (it really just feels like purple candy - not grape, but purple). I get a hint of lavender underneath (I want moar!) and weirdly I get a little more marshmallow on the throw than close up? It's not as soothing as I'd hoped, mostly because I don't find very sweet fruit very soothing. It's certainly not bad, and it may mellow out a little, but at least so far, it's very strong.

THE EMATHIDES The chosen Muse here ends her sacred lays;The nymphs unanimous decree the bays, And give the Heliconian Goddesses the praise. Then, far from vain that we shou'd thus prevail, But much provok'd to hear the vanquish'd rail, Calliope resumes: Too long we've born Your daring taunts, and your affronting scorn; Your challenge justly merited a curse, And this unmanner'd railing makes it worse. Since you refuse us calmly to enjoy Our patience, next our passions we'll employ; The dictates of a mind enrag'd pursue, And, what our just resentment bids us, do. The railers laugh, our threats and wrath despise, And clap their hands, and make a scolding noise: But in the fact they're seiz'd; beneath their nails Feathers they feel, and on their faces scales; Their horny beaks at once each other scare, Their arms are plum'd, and on their backs they bear Py'd wings, and flutter in the fleeting air. Chatt'ring, the scandal of the woods they fly, And there continue still their clam'rous cry: The same their eloquence, as maids, or birds, Now only noise, and nothing then but words. Gleaming eyes, screeching voices, glistening wings: black amber, black orchid, black currant, olive blossom, wood violet, lavender, blue musk, rose attar, and cedar. Eek, I'm first, how exciting! I'm also probably not going to be very helpful since I'm in the midst of packing hell, and am currently dripping sweat, but FWIW: In the bottle: GORGEOUS. Soft, cool, slightly powdery, and I can smell the lavender. Wet: More gorgeousness. I can definitely smell the black amber, like that in Faiza - oh how I love your sweet powdery goodness! And still the lavender. The orchid, rose, and wood violet are there, in the background, blending together into a dusky sweet purple scent. Dry: so far (and I'm writing this as it dries, so things may change), this seems to remain pretty true to the wet stage. The lavender, as it tends to do, backs off quite a bit as it dries. I'm still getting a lovely blend of purple florals - they're not at all heavy and juicy and rich, though, they're sort of twilight purple. On the one hand, it seems to diedown quite a bit on my skin, but on the other, I get wafts of it as I move - it seems to smell stronger the further away I am from it! (So I guess what I'm saying is it has very decent throw.) I was going to say that (hooray!) I don't get any cedar (NOTE OF DOOM), but as it dries longer and I huff harder, I get a little tiny hint of woodiness underpinning this, blending beautifully with the amber. I can handle this much cedar; I just hope it doesn't grow! But it does seem to get a little less floral-y and a little more wood-y as it continues to dry. I really love the florals of the earlier stage, and I'm a little sorry they've gone away. Still, this is a really gorgeous blend, cool like a summer night is cool when you don't have to wear a sweater but can enjoy sitting out beneath the stars. (Umm, perhaps I've been influenced by the Stardust scents lately, because this feels a teeny teeny bit like Yvaine crossed with Fairy Market, without the incense of the latter, and I'm getting serene lovely twilight from this, no screeching anything! Though I suppose it could be that time of evening when the crows call to each other from the branches. In any case, it's lovely!) ETA: If you don't like amber, this might not work for you; to me, it's not as obvious dry as it is wet, but I love amber, so I might not notice it as much as someone who hates it. The amber definitely ties everything together here, I think. If you hate lavender - well, this might not work for you either, though I find that the lavender backs way off. But again, I love lavender. I only get the rose as an element of the beautifully blended rose/orchid/wood violet notes, it's not at all overwhelming (but it is there). I don't get anything that I can identify as olive blossom (not that I'm sure what that smells like anyway) or black currant (which is a bit of a bummer) - this isn't at all fruity to me. The blue musk is probably there with the amber tying everything together - I think there's blue musk in Possets's Ultramarine Blue, and these two share a kind of cool musk base (which I always find funny because I think of musk as very warm). There is a tiny hint of similarity between this and Ultramarine Blue, given the blue musk and lavender, taking into account the difference between the two companies, of course. If, like me, you hate cedar, you might want to give this one a chance! And if you like amber and/or purple florals and/or lavender, this is definitely something to try! All in all, I'm so pleased I got the bottle.

One to Tie, Two to Win, C.M. Coolidge.Dewy grass, summer breezes, and dandelion clocks. In the bottle: fresh, green grass, and dandelions! On: green! I'd kind of been thinking it would be sweeter, because I think I had mown grass in mind. It's very fresh, that kind of fresh damp grass. And the slightly spicy scent of dandelion. It's a cool, almost chilly grass. I'm not quite sure what I think of it - it is beautifully done, that's for sure. I'm not sure it's me, but it is a lovely scent. By the time it dries down, though, I think I really like it - it's all spicy airy dandelions. I'm going to have to try it once or twice again to see if I can get used to wearing it, but it is a really lovely, fresh, kind of refreshing scent. It will be lovely in hot weather.

I know this is behind the times, but FWIW, from that list, I don't get a lot of tea from Herbert West, Cheshire Cat (which I do love, just not for the tea), Baobhan Sith (though it's been a long time since I tried that), or Tweedledum. Kumiho especially is almost straight green tea on me, and Maiden is also strongly white tea (light and fresh), edged with florals (I just got this and like it a lot). Secrets of the Dead is also very very green tea on me. (and F5, too!) For black tea, neither of these are GC, but Severin is pure black tea on me, and Eight Views of Actors in Their Dressing Rooms dries down very similarly to Severin on me (starts with a big blast of mandarin).

Oooh, this is nice! (And a relief, because my other Yules have sort of been busts so far. ) The vanilla is quite warm and creamy, not super sweet (sadly, it does go a bit plastic as it dries down completely, but not too terribly - and it's lovely wet - scent locket time?) Fir needle and black pine bark are a bit warmer than other pine scents on me - they avoid the sourness that I sometimes get from evergreens, and do not smell at ALL like cleaning products! (my other problem with some evergreens.) I can see how people get mint from this, but I don't find it terribly strong. I like wearing this, and think it's extremely wintry. It would also be something that would make a great room scent, I think.

Sigh. I was really hoping this would be mostly amber, lavender, and tea rose, with a wee bit of vetiver. And of course, instead, it's vetiver vetiver vetiver vetiver vetiver. As it dries I get wee wafts of lavender and tea rose around the edges (unless the rose is from Rose Red which I'm also testing on this arm!) - it's kind of like they're there, but they're standing behind a thick screen of vetiver. I don't get any amber (but I frequently can't identify amber unless it's a really really central note - otherwise it's kind of like musk, a general kind of binding scent that blends things together). The vetiver is kind of smoky. But I'm way too much of a sweet fiend to like this. If you like vetiver, give this a try; it seems like a kind of neat blend. For me, it doesn't work (but I probably should have known that!).

This is lovely and Christmasy, but I agree with others that this might work better in my oil burner or as a room spray than as a scent I would wear. Wet, I got a lot of cranberry (which was lovely), but as it dries down there's a lot more bayberry and pine, sweetened by honey. I get nothing I can ID as pumpkin pie, and I also don't really get any amber (but I'm very amber-neutral and often miss it in scents). It is nice and bright and festive! I also think it would smell really good on my husband (I tend to read bayberry as a little bit unisex or masculine).

Wow, this REALLY smells like a fresh-cut rose! It begins VERY green, like you've just got roses from the florist and you're cutting the stems to put it into water. It's almost too sharp, but it's amazingly evocative. The greenness tones itself down eventually, and you're left with the rich sweet smell of a red rose. It makes me think of the roses in my aunt's garden in England. It's maybe a little one-note for me to wear it all the time, but I do love how very realistic it is, and I bet I'll put it in my oil burner when I want to sit in an English rose garden.

Sigh. I really wanted to like this, because, well, THE LAST UNICORN! But for me, the white chocolate is a deal-breaker. I can get that there is something pale and ethereal behind it, but I'm just getting white chocolate and that paleness - no lilac, no orris, no lettuce. As it dries down completely, the sandalwood seems to come to the fore, but blended with the white chocolate it's a sort of slightly murky blandness. It's very much a skin scent on me, too - very little throw. (That seems appropriate to the Last Unicorn to me, though, since she's such a secretive, hard-to-pin down creature!) The final dry down is actually pretty nice, but it isn't very distinctive on me, either, and I find it hard to get through the white chocolate to get there. ETA: Okay, I didn't really wait long enough on this one - once it's really truly dried down, it turns into this lovely ethereal kind of scent - very close to the skin, but long lasting; kind of airy and sweet, a little bit of floral, a little bit of lettuce greenness, blended together in a kind of misty quiet scent. It does become quite lovely, ultimately. I'm not sure if I'll wear it often because I don't love the opening, but it ends up much closer to my idea of what the Last Unicorn should smell like!

Oh, wow. I've never really tried earth scents before, but thought this might be a good chance to do so, so threw one into my Yules decant circle order. And, um, well, I've discovered that my instinct warning me away from earth scents was probably a good one... Actually, this starts out awful on me, but gets a lot better. In the vial and wet, I find this incredibly[/] dank and sour. (You know, I'd figured "dead weeds" in the description were one of those things where Beth makes it sound really horrible, but in fact it smells wonderful. Actually? It smells like dead weeds...) As it dries, though, it really does smell like dirt and (less noxious) weeds. The dirt is still slightly sour for my tastes, and I guess I'm not sure that I, personally, will ever quite feel like smelling like this. But that's more about my tastes than about this scent. If you like BPAL's dirt scents, I think you will like this. (I can't compare it to others in terms of lightness/heaviniess - it's just straight up dirt to me.) So, yeah, pretty much how it was advertised!

These different categories of vanilla are really interesting to me, mostly because a few of the scents other people bring up as VANILLA on them give me no vanilla at all... For instance, I got no vanilla from Tombstone at all, although it's probably because I dislike cedar (so of course amp it). And Lyonesse was pure acquatic lily on me, no vanilla. I don't even get much vanilla at all from Snake Oil - mostly the red musk and spices. Morocco is vanilla-ish on me, but mostly warm spices (I don't even get any floral from it). Love's Philosophy went to plastic on me, Boo was all burnt sugar, and Under the Harvest Moon is gorgeous, but doesn't read vanilla to me at all. It's just funny how different noses and chemistries are! I do agree that Antique Lace and Black Opal have a similar kind of vanilla feel to them. I got that vanilla very strongly from Morocco when it was brand-new-fresh, but not so much now.

I wore Pumpkin Queen for Thanksgiving. I love her, but don't have very much, so tend to save her for this time of year!

You might want to check out the essential oils/carrier oils thread, somewhere under BPAL FAQ, maybe? There's a fair bit of debate about whether BPAL even includes carrier oils. Here I'm defining carrier oil differently from "component of perfume oil." That is, I'm not sure that BPAL is blended by creating a scent and then cutting it with a scentless carrier oil, rather than blended to be a particular strength from the beginning - rather than blending as with essential oils and then diluting the final product, the components may be made differently, then blended. So the entire thing would be "perfume oil," rather than X% perfume + X% carrier oil. (If that makes any sense?) ETA: This is the thread I'm thinking of, Are BPAL blends all-natural? - it gets at the role of carrier oils vs. other stuff. This may not seem sufficient, but, can you imagine putting (for instance) "myrrh, red patchouli, cognac, honey, and tuberose and geranium in a breathy, panting veil over the darkest body musk" on a 5 mL or imp label and still having it be legible? EDIT: Actually "Through sunlit caves of ice, roses unfurl amidst dancing waves of serpentine opium smoke and amber tobacco, golden sandalwood, champaca, tea leaf, sugared lily, ginger, rich hay absolute, leather, dark vanilla, mandarin, peru balsam, and Moroccan jasmine" is a better example. (Khubla Khan) Also, some scents do not have ingredients listed at all, even on the site. Oh, you misunderstood me, or perhaps I wasn't clear. Why aren't the non-fragrance components listed, for example: jojoba oil, almond oil, fragrance. I think it is important to know the carrier oil components, especially for people with allergies. I've been wondering about the carrier components since I get skin reactions to some BPALs and not others. Curiously, my skin reactions don't seem to have anything to do with common skin irritants such as cinnamon, cassia, clove, etc. because I avoid scents containing those fragrance notes. Listing carrier components is required for food and cosmetics. Ingredients that make up less than two percent of a food product can be listed under a general term, such as "spices," but I don't know what the rules are for cosmetics. ETA: Many of the cosmetics I use have a list of ingredients on a separate piece of paper that is enclosed in the packaging, or the ingredients are listed on the web site of the manufacturer.

A reducer is a plastic kind of plug with that fits into the bottle opening - it has a sort of narrow funnel that dips into the oil and pours out through a single small opening, and it functions as a kind of dropper - you can turn the bottle upside down and instead of all the oil pouring out, it will come out slowly, drip by drip. Some people like them a lot because you never run the risk of knocking over a bottle and losing all the oil, and it dispenses oil in nicely consistent amounts. A wand cap is a regular bottle cap with a rod attached to it - either plastic or glass (glass is better for BPAL because oils can eat plastic). When the cap is on the bottle, the wand extends down into the oil. People can then use the wand to apply the perfume. Some people like these because they don't like sticking their fingers in oil, or feel like they get better control over how much oil they dispense, or to avoid contamination of the oil - if you clean the wand after every application, your skin never comes in contact with the oil in the bottle. (This isn't the same as a dropper cap, which is a cap that serves as an eyedropper, and sucks up the oil - the wand only collects the amount that clings to the outside of the wand, like with an imp, and doesn't actually draw up oil like an eyedropper would.) I don't think BPAL uses/offers reducer caps any more, though I could be wrong (I've never asked them); Arcana and Possets used to use them, but don't now, either. (I think something about the reducer cap makes it harder to keep bottles from leaking during shipping, although there's no problem with leakage at all if they're sitting in your house.) It is possible to buy them individually, though. (like here!) You can get wand caps from BPAL, though - they sell them individually here (scroll down to the bottom), and I think you can request wand caps instead of regular when you place your order. Personally, I quite like reducer caps (not enough to buy them and put them on my bottles, but I like the ones I have), because I like the greater control over how much perfume comes out (and the reduced risk of spillage). I don't really like wand caps, because I always worry about getting the wand caught up on the bottle and knocking everything over! and I don't mind sticking my fingers in my perfumes or care about contamination (since it's all my skin). But it totally just depends on what you like. Hope that helps!

Why did it take me so long to try this?? This has shot up to one of my top ten scents! I'm very bad at identifying any kind of incense notes, but I think I do get quite a bit of copal in this. It's very citrusy on me, not quite orange, but I think the combination of the orange and the plumeria turns into a more citrus-y scent. So far, I haven't got any smoke out of this (although I suppose incense smoke just smells like incense, not smoke?); it's lovely, well-blended bright citrus with a copal base - it feels quite bright and dry overall, and lasts very well on me (again, the copal, I think; it's a very strong base for me). Like the poster before me, I find that this has a grapefruit vibe - it reminds me very strongly of something I used to wear pre-BPAL, I think Guerlain's Acqua Allegoria Pamplelune (the grapefruit one). It's also nothing like what I'd have pictured from the description - I see "incense" and I think dark and heavy, and this isn't at all! It's so lovely!

Oh dear... I hate to be a downer, but this smell like cheap pina colada on me. I don't even get florals - just some coconut, fruit, and booze. Such a shame! (The comparisons to Snow White are telling because Snow White doesn't work on me, either.) Glad the Princess is getting more love from others!

I find that anything with red musk in it (the Snake Oil variants, Crawdad Dream, Mania) has great throw and wear on me. (Almost too much, in fact!)