squidhearts

I use a plastic drink stirrer like that; I would love a thin enough glass one but haven't found one. But the plastic stir stick is free from Starbucks, so... It really has the perfect size teensy circle at the end, though, to dab just enough oil on your wrist.

I've been wearing Czernobog for years and it's probably my all time sleeper bpal hit. It's musky but clean, and clean but deliciously dark. On my skin it barely morphs and just dries down to a slightly quieter version of itself. This is one of those wrist huffers, where hours later I'm still burying my nose in my own wrist and breathing deep. Of the musks, the one I smell most distinctly is black musk. The myrrh in this is my perfect myrrh, and in no other blend does it work as well. The mullein is the only real change the scent goes through, very present when wet and then receding into the background. I'm kind of shocked I haven't reviewed it before? I don't like wearing this in the dripping high summer heat, but any other time, it's lovely.

I tried this on at an event on Saturday and decided, foolishly, that I didn’t need a bottle. The staying power was INSANE and until Tuesday night I could still smell the scent on my wrist, and now I want it. Wet it’s vaguely minty—cool, wintery, crisp. A little green. Definitely suggestive of a dark clear night with stars. There’s a brief powdery perfume-y moment on my skin, and then Canis Major dries down to this amazing sweet, snuggly musk. I agree that something about it smells like how snuggling a dog *feels*, which is, of course, wonderful. It doesn’t smell like literal dog—or at least not like my dog, who smells like frito paws, lavender baby shampoo, and whatever grass he’s rolled around in recently. But it’s that really nice musky BPAL note that’s a clean sleepy cuddly smell. I don’t think the sweetness is vanilla, though I love vanilla, so I would be fine with that. Maybe beeswax. It’s a very subtle sweetness. The musk note reminds me of Wulric, but softer and lighter and...nicer? Haha. Simpler, cleaner, lighter. Gorgeous.

2015 version. A full year after purchase, I've totally changed my mind and love it. Before, it was suffocating and unpleasant, like a bad fall themed air fresher heavy on the fake pumpkin spice and apples. No sugar. NOW, it's wonderful. Was it the passage of time? Skin chemistry change? I have no idea. Sugar, sugar, dark and burned sugar, mmmm. Burned sugar as in caramelized (upthread mention of crème brûlée is spot on), and also a tiny whiff of something almost like smoke. No fruit at all, glory hallelujah. I can see this being VERY wearable--the sugar isn't cloying, and not too sweet, if that makes sense. For me, it's not at all heavy anymore. It's a very sophisticated kind of sugar. Really does remind me of crème brûlée, without the crème part.

Hahah, oh god. I just saw my prior review for this. A full year later, this is AMAZING. Wet: ...fresh! apples! actually apples! like biting into a crisp, beautifully tart apple. ohmygod. Dry: a hint of that fresh clean apple smell (clean, but not at all soapy), and a lovely soft goat's milk with a hint of hay. Light, but not insubstantial. Seriously amazing. I want to eat this. I want my laundry to smell like this. I want to bathe in this. Mmm. I don't know if it's time or if my skin went through some radical change in the past year, but all three weenies with apples that I was formerly complaining about all smell absolutely wonderful.

I've waited a full year for this bottle to mellow out and make sure I wasn't judging it too quickly. In the bottle: bell peppers. On my skin: bell peppers, but heavy "perfumey" bell peppers, not a single whiff of vanilla, nothing powdery, no incense, just heavy, heavy, almost aquatic, oddly unnatural but still bell pepper bell peppers. I need to sell this. On me, it's absolutely unwearable. Sigh. The search for sophisticated vanilla goes on.

I can't believe I haven't reviewed this one when I bought a full bottle ages ago. For me, this is ALL DIRT, no roses. I'm very okay with that. Wet: Damp, green, mossy, but with an edge of something a little too typically perfume-y, but only for >30 seconds. Dry: Still smells damp and green and like fresh rain--not the white florals of perfumes with names like rain, but the actual smell of wet dirt. I agree that this is strangely sexy and like being in an underground passage with roots hanging above you. Not dusty at all. However, I think what I call "dirt" is really the Spanish moss. Every other BPAL dirt note I've tried hasn't work at all for me, but this one does...which makes me thing it's actually the moss. hah. Overall, this is one of my favorite scents ever. It needs to be aged, though. When I bought my big bottle of Zombi I was SO disappointed, but I suspected it was just a matter of time and I was right. Like a month later it was wet and gorgeous.

I bought this the day it was posted because I love, love all the notes listed. On my skin? It's pure IN YOUR FACE peppercorn. It makes me sneeze. I can smell nothing but pepper, but the kind of pepper that kicks you in the skull. I am so sad. Maybe I should appreciate this on a thematic level--like, the phoenix is SUCH a powerful and inspiring creature!--but I really want to wear this. Of course, because it was painful to smell, it had some of the best sillage and staying powder of any BPAL oils I've tried. C'est la vie. Amber + cocoa is my favorite thing; I'm wearing Gelt right now. Vanilla, cedar, neroli, and frankincense are all also things I like, and usually play nice on my skin. Peppercorn is one of my favorite things in a blend, too, actually, when it's less present. Maybe this will mellow out. Maybe. Here's to hoping.

Airy minty freshness with a beguiling sweetness and something nice sinister and dark lurking around the edges, licking its teeth. Love at first sniff. If I hadn't been betrayed by SO many bpals that I love as fresh imps from the lab that then turn on me when the full bottles I splurged on are a few months old...I would be buying this IMMEDIATELY. Lavender usually goes sour on me, which is a shame, because I love lavender. I tried a few of the lab's lavender scents to see if they could work their magic somehow, but after several failures, I stopped trying. Then, however, I got Mad Hatter as a frimp... In the Imp: sharp lavender with an almost unpleasant bite; meh. I was not feeling this. Wet: there's a definite clean gentleman thing going on as an opener, which is the citron mostly, but also the citron and lavender in combination. Lavender manly scents definitely have an old school genteel vibe to me, so this works. I think the creamy sweetness is the pennyroyal, but I have no idea. If that's what pennyroyal is like, I want to drown in it. There's just the barest hint of the black musk playing at the edges, which just makes me melt. It grounds the blend and also adds some sweetness, but not sugar toothache sweetness, not food sweetness at all. Delicious. LOVE ME ALL NIGHT LONG, MAD HATTER. Dry: Mmmm, black musk with a creamier calmer minty fresh sweetness. Black musk is my favorite musk by far, and it always makes me think of something wild and powerful. Often I find black musk very comforting despite that, like a big looming werewolf that's all teeth and claws but just wants a bellyrub, even if he's too polite to ask for it. But there is something feral about it, too, and I feel like the description for this blend is right on. Seriously, I ADORE this. For context, German Expressionist Horror is one of my tried and true all time favs and so is Czernobog, both of which are black musk blends and have a kind of similar freshly scrubbed werewolf vibe going on. Mad Hatter is more refined than that--thank you, citron and lavender and whatever minty freshness is happening--so it's kind of like the evening wear incarnation of black musk. It's black musk wearing a tie and cufflinks. If this still works from me a month from now, I'm getting a full bottle--caution be damned--and wearing it ALL THE TIME.

I have the worst luck with weenies. To date, none of the weenies I've ever gotten have remained wearable. Samhain (2014) was wearable a handful of times and then never worked on me again, and has remained awful and headache inducing. 2015 Sugar Skull smells like Samhian on me, just less so. I wonder if there's some common autumnal note that my skin amps to headache levels. Apple I seemed SO promising. I love hay. I goat's milk. I LOVE vanilla. My Baby and a Baby Goat has hay and goat's milk as well, and smells amazing on me. And yet... In the bottle: APPLES, fresh apples, so tasty and perfectly...apple like. Something nice and fresh and green underneath--the hay? Wet: Apples! Sweetness--the honey? Going a little shampoo, but still nice. Dry: AUTUMNAL POTPOURRI HEADACHE, amped to highest heaven and lowest hell. No apples. No hay. No apologies. Whatever I can't stand about Samhain is here in full force. Is it red apple itself that my skin hates? Is it? Is buying a full bottle of this untested a really dumb move on my part? This apple definitely seems like a red apple and Samhain has red apples and oh god I don't know. I love Halloween, I love BPAL, but seriously: not a single weenie has worked out for me yet. Alas. Mope. I'll try again in a month or so, but I might just have to get around to figuring out how to smell my bottles on here.

Vibrant with the joy and sweetness of life in death! A blend of five sugars, lightly dusted with candied fruits. 2015 bottle-- This smells SO exactly like Samhain on me that I'm kind of concerned? And I don't actually like Samhain...? I'll try again in a week (I WANT TO LOVE IT), but right now it smells like way too strong and artificial autumn spices.

I can't believe I've been using this stuff for a year and never posted about it. Gelt was my sleeper hit of all the LEs I bought last year. I stopped wearing the weenies I bought within the week, but I keep coming back to Gelt. It layers BEAUTIFULLY. 2014 Gelt Bottle: Ominously plastic-ish chocolate. Wet: REAL CHOCOLATE OH MY GOD. milk, not dark, but still. Dry: Mmm, the drydown is my favorite. The amber plays off the cocoa note and the smell is less in your face chocolate bar and more...sophisticated cocoa dusted something or other. A lot of time amber doesn't work on me, but here it's just soft and gorgeous. The amber keeps the chocolate from getting sickly sweet, and the whole thing stays well balanced and...seriously, sophisticated? Like I knot it smells like chocolate, but this is chocolate that has its life in order and gets its dresses tailored. Gelt is chocolatey without being super food smelling, if that's a valid distinction. Many hours after application it's this faint whiff of mellowed sweetness at my wrist. I think there might be a touch of vanilla, but Gelt is lighter than all the other food type BPAL scents I've tried, and it's never oppressive or headache inducing to me. I like layering it with masculine scents for some reason. Gelt + Loup Garou = Werewolf Valentine. Gelt + German Expressionist Horror = Sinister Chocolate in Spooky Woods. Gelt + Czernobog = Clean but Serious Business Chocolate with Masculine Haircut. etc etc.

So, for Christmas this year, my boyfriend got me a latte maker. Because I'm basically a child, the latte maker is a glorified milk frother. I make my delicious foamy morning beverage with milk, sweetener, cinnamon, cocoa powder...and instant coffee. Specifically, cafe bustelo, because, like the cinnamon, I'm keeping in Latina up in here, and it actually does taste like coffee instead of freeze dried sadness. 2014 Dia de los Reyes smells LIKE THAT. And that's one of my favorite things ever, so I'm thrilled. Wet: Chocolate, but definitely a Latin chocolate, with kick from the cinnamon and also the bite of something that resolves itself into coffee. Dry down: the chocolate calms down a bit and the coffee surges up. There is also something butter/cream/creamer in there, somehow.

summary: I LOVE THIS I LOVE THIS I REALLY TRIED TO NOT LOVE IT. So, background: I'm pretty passionate about my D&D. I also play dark male characters pretty much exclusively. I still miss the dread necro from 3.5, I really do. And there's nothing I hate more than showing up to a pick up game and not even getting to look through the pre-gen characters because the DM just hands me a sheet all, "so here's the healer elf princess." I swear, this has happened to me multiple times. So over the years, with my usual group, there's something of an in joke/tradition of my characters hating on elves. This slowly seeped into real life to a fascinating/weird degree. Which is a needlessly long explanation for why I was like, "fah! an elf scent! why bother testing." But eventually I did test it. Oh. Still--those dumb elves, man. Who cares about them and their themed scents! Buuut-- Apparently I DO! I care! I care so much! Elf is woodsy without being screaming medicinal evergreens, and without ever becoming sawdust. It's berries but never sickly sweet berries that remind you of girls dousing themselves in raspberry body mist in the locker room after soccer practice. It's clean without being soap--it's fresh and lovely and *perfect*. This is the scent that singlehandedly taught me that I like golden amber, when I was very anti-amber before on the grounds that it smelled too perfumey/powdery on my skin. I blew through my frimp. It's not so much that I wear this scent on my skin during the day, though sometimes I do, and it has a discreet throw but good staying power. The thing about this scent, for me, is that somehow...it's the scent in all THREE of my scent lockets*. It's consistently what I want to get whiffs of during the day. I find something about Elf incredibly, consistently soothing. It's the only scent I'll sometimes wear at night, just a dab on my wrist so I can curl around and press my nose into my arm to smell it. Anyway, eventually I accepted that I'm a filthy elf loving traitor and got a big bottle. It's a little sharper than my first frimp, possibly just because it's so new, but the scent settles into something very familiar to the scent I love, so I';m pretty sure this blend is going to mellow beautifully with age. Life everlasting smells delicious. *my three non BPTP scent lockets, since they're impossible to buy and rare even on e bay. Plz fix, Puddin'?

Frimp. One of those wild love at first sniff frimps that make you think of putting in another order immediately even though you JUST got your last order...but I'm cautious about those. Scent flings can end abruptly and never pick up again. And because this isn't the sort of thing I usually wear (I like sexydangerousdark or clean and oddly masculine), I think I miiight get suddenly over it. But until then, oh man. This is white flowers and lemons--not lemon cleaner, not lemon dish washing soap, but real lemons, the fresh green smell you get when you bring an actual lemon right up to your nose and breathe, or the scent that drifts up while you're grating lemon peel. I don't usually like florals, though I do love actual fresh flowers. The lemon (or whatever) keeps the jasmine in check so the blend doesn't go too sweet, and the gardenia shines through. No tea rose on me. I don't think it's a wallflower scent at all. It wants me want to wear a white cotton dress and run through a meadow barefoot. Spring! It's a very spring sort of scent.

In the imp, sweet sweet cherry with a hint of spicy clove. It reminds me a little of the Baron Samedi scent, which I love so much it was once my every day wear for two months straight. All right, let's do this! (slather, slather) Wet, it stays sweet, but the punching power definitely lessens. The clove is still there but it's a very laid back, soft clove, more like cloves in yummy baked goods rather than, say, clove cigarettes. I like myrrh, but it's largely absent from the wet stage. Overall, I like this a lot--it's very pleasant. Dry: this is when things get interesting. The myrrh peeks out coyly, then disappears again, taking all but the barest wisp of clove with it. The cherry mellows even further...and then BAM, blood. Seriously. Tangy, coppery blood. Have you ever shoved your nose up against a fresh scab, and gotten a whiff of (hopefully) clean skin and blood? This smells like that. EXACTLY like that, with a hint of sweetness behind it. I think--*think*--that the myrrh and the clove eventually combine somehow to appear to disappear, making the metallic note, but really, I have no idea. This might as well be magic. Brilliant! I want a big bottle. I thought I hated dragon's blood, but this blend is convincing me to give it another try. Oh, and I'd say this isn't really a dark scent. At least, most people won't read it as dark. Someone who knows what blood smells like, however, would get it... edit: I've been meaning to try this forever, and ended up getting it frimped! yaaay, labbies!

Mmmm, perfect. Cider and autumn spices and apple. Clean rather than heavy on my skin. Absolutely delicious. Somehow the clove and the pine stay very quiet, making the scent just mellow and golden and perfect. Very well blended/rounded. It's the kind of scent where I keep pushing my nose into my wrist as I type, to take another hit. I bought this untested because of all the hype, and I have no regrets.

Woe and heartbreak! I wanted to love this so much--I bought a big bottle blind. In the bottle it's fine, a little green without being sharp, and a whiff of smoke. Promising! Exciting! I love smoke and hay! On my skin, though? Musty, dusty, charred food that you have to scrape off the grill. No hay scent at all. No green. No burning vegetation, just old burned things. Oddly heavy. The dust reminds me a little of the dust note in Erik, if you've tried it--except that I LOVE Erik and it's one of my favorite scents ever, and the dust retreats there. Tattie bogle goes oddly "perfumey" on me, which is puzzling. I'm going to age it and see what happens because I really do want to love it, but I may have to swap it off.

My first BPAL ever was a gift and of course it was Cthulhu In Love. It was SO good that I immediately bought a few more BPALs...and I had no idea what I was doing so it was terrible. Now I know a bit more and I've sampled more of the catalog, but is there anything like Cthulhu in Love? For me it's a blast of beautiful SALTY dark chocolate and seaweed that dries down into a smokey murky/dirty aquatic scent. Someone on here described it as a umami chocolate and I definitely agree. A lot of the incense notes seem to not work on me, but whatever gives Cthulhu in love the faint smoke/burning at the end totally works. I tried Tlazoteotl for some reason thinking it might hit the dark chocolate/cocoa craving, but no dice and it went all plastic on me anyway. I doubt there's anything that's dark chocolate AND seaweed AND salt AND murky/dirty water, but I'm willing to layer. I only have a third of a bottle left! Help me out, forumites!

I posted a mini-review of this on amazon and Beth responded, so it was basically the coolest thing ever. I think this was the first scent that made me really "get" the complexity of BPAL. This is a very personal scent to me--it's very personal even conceptually--so I was thrilled that it worked. So, liberally taking from my insta review-- Here's what I have to add that most reviewers don't: I know what an ofrenda to Elegua smells like. I grew up in Miami, and attending santeria and later voodoo ceremonies was the norm. My mom had Los Guerreros set up in the garage, and every Monday the altars were tended to, and the smell of coconut and tobacco and rum and that buttery/greasy substance I don't know the English word for that everything is anointed with--this is intimately familiar to me, even a decade later. When this stuff dries on my skin? IT SMELLS LIKE THAT. IT SMELLS EXACTLY LIKE THAT. IT IS AMAZING. Wet it smells like buttery coconut rum. Delicious--yet straightforward. The complexity unfurls from here. Drying, it goes through a stage that smells like the coconut flavored clove cigarettes that my friends smoked while bumming around goth clubs in my baby bat days. It goes through a phase that smells like the beach at sunset, which is my favorite place to be. Many hours later the light, sweet smell of pipe tobacco lingers on my wrists, and it reminds me, faintly yet insistently, of my dad smoking a pipe on the porch when I am five years old. This stuff is like a timeline of my life in a bottle. I love it more than I can possibly convey. PERFECTION. So--buttery rum; clove; coconut; pipe tobacco, to summarize. But seriously, this is gorgeous. Elegua must be proud.

Baron Samedi smells like cherry coke and sex. And so does this blend! (rimshot, etc.) Really, though. This is a blast of cherry and ashtray when it hits my skin, and then it quickly mellows out into a sweet smoky spice. It's very *fun*, definitely a party scent, and therefore perfectly Baron Samedi appropriate. in the bottle: boozy spicy cherry. wet: cherry coke now, and a quick explosion of vetiver that smells like ashes--not like burning, but like ashes; specifically, cigarette ashes. The wet phase is over VERY quickly, I promise, but even at full smokiness, it's surprisingly pleasant. dry: BEAUTIFUL--masculine in a very clean way, not musky. The cherry is less specifically cherry; now it just lends a mellow, pervasive (and persuasive) sweetness. The smokiness is very slight and just enough to keep this from going squeaky clean--it's a scent that's slouching sexily against the wall and winking at you, not a scrubbed clean, stand at attention kind of smell. And speaking of sexily, this is very, very sexy. Toe curlingly sexy. Suggestive of the act and not the prologue. Fun! Like I said--this is a party. I think it's an incredibly fitting tribute to the Baron, who is a notorious flirt at ceremonies. It would be easy to go, "oh, the loa of death?" and just do a textbook dusty somber scent. But the Baron is a very different flavor of death deity, and a somber scent wouldn't do for him at all. This one is perfect. For me, this is everyday wear. It's masculine but not the super manly enough to seem incongruous. It's the kind of masculine that looks good on a woman. My boyfriend has NO IDEA what this scent is, but he consistently really, really loves it--and this is a man who hates nearly all fragrances. This is by FAR my most worn bpal. I've blasted through two imps and just ordered a big bottle. May it always be part of the catalog, forever and always, aaaamen.