serafina pekkala

This is like Snake Oil entwined with Rakshasa, except the vanilla keeps peeking up.

Peonies are one of my favourite flowers; I love the way they look and smell. So this scent does not disappoint: gorgeous peonies at first breath! When I apply it, it morphs into something I can't quite put my finger on. It reminds me of the loose, resin incense they used to burn in a store where I worked upstairs. I've never gotten this in BPAL scent before. I think this would make a very nice room scent.

Rose rose rose! Lovely wet petals of pale tea roses. I don't get any franckincense at all - it just goe powdery after a while. Still, a very beautiful rose oil. I get a bit of a sad vibe from this scent - but that may be just me.

In the imp, this is sweet, a circle of amaretto, plum and blackcurrant. I can't detect any wine. Gosh, amaretto is really different from almond! What does this remind me of? Leather, a soap The Bodyshop used to have? No, it's Saint-Germain! In the way the perfume is built op: all the notes have become one. This is sexy, but not at all vulnerable, sweet, but not sugary, and tart up close. I like it.

I expected this to be quite strong, but it isn't at all. The dragon's blood note turns into the 'shampoo' note I remember from Blood Pearl on me. Then it becomes very faint, changing into the cinnamon-clove fase. I like those spices very much, but in Wrath they disappear soon. Only a trace is left. Er, maybe because I'm not a wrathful person in general?

Now, this one is really interesting. At first it smells forest-like, vaguley similar to The Hesperides. Oh right, wet wood = ghostly old houses? (I love these, by the way). Then there is something like a... toothpick - and I mean that in the most positive of ways! It's wood, with a wisp of something sweet.. oh, it's the rose! It flows to the top when I apply it, just like spirits would. This scent is unlike any of the BPAL's I've tried before, and utterly beautiful. It's a pity it doesn't last longer on me than it does, but Séance is definitely one for the 5mls.

Almonds almonds almonds at first, yum! Then I get wood, very strongly. After this stage, it turns into a weak, somehow standard, oriental note. I'm very sorry this scent dissolved in such an unimpressive way, because I wanted to like it. I would like to know what base note it is that collapsed in a feeble dusty poof on me in other scents as well.

The combination of violets and cinnamon is delightful at first, so original! And not at all masculine. The vetiver(?)-tinged frankincense that appears after, unfortunately, is.

What Sudha Segara reminds me of is natural fabric, India cotton or gauzy silk shawls. It utterly lovely, light, dry and warm as someone else said.

In the bottle it's very strong and musky, and not very 'me'. It reminds me of an old Lancome perfume sample of Black Musk. Hoo boy, is this strong when wet, I'm not used to that! But after that it mellows beautifully into a cosy amber. Haunted smells like the colour amber, golden yellow, warm and autumnal. A keeper.

In the bottle it smells like chipolata pudding. Nice, sweet and yellow but I don't know what it is. Yellow exotic fruit? Iris? Cherry? Honey? It probably has ylang ylang and jasmine in it, come to think of it. It lasts a few hours. I don't like this one for wearing so much, but in an oilburner mixed with beeswax it's terrific, very good for dreaming.

Aqua, grass .. this is light, it stays only for about an hour or two. This is real grass, as opposed to airfreshener, long and green like a field right before the hay will be made. It does burn a bit, but that might be because I applied it too vigorously with the plastic thingy. Hmm, peonies . It smells like my local flowershop! I get more of a tulip and grass in the other places I applied it. It's sweeter in my cleavage. Then the water becomes more apparent. I associate this grass with late summer, but the tulips and peonies with spring in flowershops (you don't see them growing much outside, peonies). This is calm summery rather than happy summery. Slightly like the suntan lotion we used to have when we were kids. Old Amsterdam is a nostalgic, unisex scent then, good for introducing people to bpal because it's very good, but not wildly different from more common scents (only better).

This smells so sweet in the bottle, there is something similar to Noir and Queen Mab in Old Venice. It's is very rich and mature. I get red candyrock, and something very concentrated reminding me of cows at a farm: not a bad smell, like trampled-on grass and straw. Then I get a heavy, fruity redcurrant, completely stripped of tartness. Err, it makes my eyes teary. Wait, I know what it smells like: the taste of dried cranberries! After a while this complex scent gets spicier. It smells like the colour red, and rosepetals. The next morning I can still smell that heady red rose. Old Venice still smells like somebody else's perfume though, like her scent rubbed off on a dress she fitted in a shop, and then I tried it on. Too sweet for me.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got this one, a freebie, because I had just been to Egypt a few weeks before. In the bottle: bubblegum found at the bottom of plastic icecream cones. Bubblegum with a smoky spicy undercurrent, that is. This becomes sweet candy with a lemon sherbet twist, but I also get currants. Then it dries down to a crumbly incense, which is alright. The wine is much clearer in a burner, with the incense smoldering behind, but I got kind of nauseous of it. This is too heavy for me. Me and wine scents just don't mix well, I've noticed. I'm sorry I didn't take to it, because it *does* remind me of Egypt, I just can't pinpoint why.

At first it's woody, an astringent white with some kind of spice. I get a scent close to carrots. You could compare this too Queen Mab and Phantom Queen, only greener. That could be the osmanthus, then. There's is cedar wood in the background, and wisteria perhaps? This is understated and classy, a spicy musk, job interview stuff, not too strong. Another one I wouldn't have chosen myself, since it's utterly unlike anything I would pick, but I found myself really liking it. On second application it stuck to my clothes and I got the cloying flower that Queen Mab gave me as well, this way. I'm not sure if I'll keep it or not.