Elspethdixon

Mommy Fortuna's combination of salty gunpowder and sticky-sweet honey is pure sex, to me. Something about the animalic quality of honey is very female and sexual in general provided it doesn't lean too sweet/foody/gourmand (Cockaigne, for example, smells like dessert, not sex). Also sexy: The Lotus Tree, Skuld, O, Saw-Scaled Viper, and apparently Antikythera Mechanism. Personally, I think Antikythera Mechanism smells cozy and comforting and cuddly rather than sexy, but the first time I wore it to work, three different people complimented me on it.

I don't know if this applies evenly to all scents (since different components break down at different rates, with top notes generally being the first to go), but at least some BPALs can stand up to heat. I discovered yesterday that I'd left an imp of Jezebel in my purse at some point this spring, and said purse has been exposed to temps in the upper 90s on a daily basis throughout June/July. I put the last of the oil in the imp on my hair this morning and it smelled the same as always. It's still detectable now four-five hours later. Other forumites could likely confirm this for certain, but IIRC oil-based perfumes like BPAL have different throw/sillage/wearlength profiles than alcohol-based perfumes. With the exception of a few strong basenotes like vetiver, most BPALs only last a few hours on me, including the ones I've ordered and had shipped to me in the winter; I put it down to how quickly my dry skin absorbs the oil, because if I put bath oils from the trading post directly onto my skin, the scent has much more staying power than the exact same scent does in regular perfume oil form (ex: the chocolate notes from El Dia de los Reyes, various 13s, and Boomslang vanish into my skin quickly, but the same chocolate note in Marshmallow Cookie Pie bath oil lasts overnight and is still detectable the next morning).

Light, sweet floral honey. Lotus, it turns out, is a floral note I can wear, and this is a very good lotus, heady and sweet and honied without being cloying. It's like a lighter version of one of the Apiary scents, perfect for wearing in summer. Sadly, after about two hours the lovely honied floral fades to a more powdery/watery floral, and shortly after that it fades entirely.

A lethal poison bundled up in a dainty, innocent little package that was oft times found in ancient witches’ flying ointments and astral projection balms. A warm, soft, ruddy scent, earthy and mild. Wet - A dry, paper-y scent. Freshly applied/five minutes in - Papery gardening shed. There’s some note in here that smells damp and alive, like growing plants or wet soil. Still a hint of something sharp and papery, and maybe a touch of sweetness. I don't smell the sweet/warm coconut a lot of people seem to get from this, unless that’s the touch of sweetness. I’m not sure I like it, but it's definitely complex and evocative. Not very death-like, though. Half-hour mark - The wet soil/growing things notes have faded into a soft, slightly sweet scent, and yes, I can now see how people get coconut out of this. Unfortunately, the papery note has started to morph into something that smells almost like BO and sweat. Fortunately, it doesn’t have much throw and already seems like it’s starting to fade. And the sweaty BO note is fading the fastest. Three hours - Actually, it lasted longer than I expected - at least another hour worth of low-throw skin scent. The sweaty note did indeed vanish the quickest, and at this point (three hours on) what's left is a barely detectable skin scent that's dry and slightly sweet. I want to say 'powdery,' but it doesn't smell at all like baby powder - just like something that should have a finely powdered texture.

2016 version I originally tested this fresh from the decanting circle in May and didn't like it - I'm not a fan of Snake Oil in general, and there was a funky "aftersmell" (like the olfactory version of an aftertaste) that was impossible to identify but distinctly unpleasant (like, objectively unpleasant, not just "I don't like Snake Oil"). After a couple months of aging, I'm retesting. Wet - Snake Oil with smokey vetiver. A more pleasant Snake Oil than the usual funky-medicinal SO wet phase, though. I can't detect any coconut. The throw projects several inches out from my skin; I'm testing Death Cap on my other wrist, and had to literally hold my Death Adder arm behind my back while I sniffed the Death Cap to get a clean read on it rather than Death-Cap-vetiver-Snake-Oil. Freshly applied/five minutes in - The vetiver has vanished beneath a cloying haze of Snake Oil. Maybe there’s a hint of dryness from it? Still no coconut, but I’m not getting the rancid oil after smell I got from this back in May, either. At ten minutes a hint of the “aftersmell” appears, but weaker than last time. Aging seems to improve Death Adder. Half-hour mark - The Snake Oil is already starting to fade, and I keep getting hints of something sweet and fruity as the coconut struggles to emerge from beneath it. It’s gradually changing from mostly cloying Snake Oil to mostly fruity coconut/smokey vetiver, and I like the coconut/vetiver aspect much better. No more unpleasant aftersmell, either. If it was like this from the beginning, this would be bottle worthy for sure. Sadly, it’s already starting to fade, and I bet it will be gone within an hour. Three hours - I was wrong. Death Adder is much longer-lived than I expected, and is now all delicious, smokey vetiver with a hint of sweetness. No trace of snake oil left (yay!) just vetiver. I have to put my nose directly against my skin to smell it at this point, but that’s still a longer lifespan than any snake has had on me yet. And everything from the half-hour mark on out was good, and from the hour mark outward, great. 6-8 hours later, I can still catch faint whiffs of vetiver when i put my nose directly to my skin. Mmmm, vetiver. If I didn't have to suffer through a half-hour of Snake Oil dominance to get to the good part, this would be bottle-worthy. There needs to be some other scent with coconut/vanilla and vetiver but without Snake Oil, because basically Death Adder starts to gel and be lovely once the Snake Oil notes are gone.

In the imp - I was expecting something vetiver-heavy and smokey, but instead it's fruity and sweet, with something hazy/clean that might be musk. Wet/freshly applied - Fruity and sweet with hints of amber. For a few seconds here and there I can smell something hated and dry, the 'fire' of the description and title, but it never really emerges from beneath the fruity amber. On the drydown - Still fruity and sweet amber, no smoke or flame or heat at all. I think I like it, though. It reminds me of a less cloying Tamora. By a half-hour or so in, sadly, my left arm has started to develop a 'clean'/'soapy' vibe, though my right is still slightly fruity amber. Noooo. Don't go dryer sheets. Don't go dryer sheets. ... but alas, my prayers are in vain and it does go dryer sheets. Close to my skin, it's lovely tart-fruity amber with a sort of haze of musk over it, just like the in-the-imp scent promised, but the throw is solid eau du dryer sheet for a good two hours until it fades into nonexistance.

Aquatic notes don't do well on me, but I desperately want to be able to wear one of the Innsmouth-themed blends, and several people up-thread have mentioned that this was the rare aquatic that worked on them when most aquatics didn't, so I decided to take a chance on it. Wet/in the imp - Dryer sheets soaked in citrus-y cleaning solvents. Not promising. As it dries, the dryer sheet/cleaning solvents top notes fade quickly into a sea breeze shower soap/glade plug-in type scent that isn't unpleasant, but is still definitely Not For Me. For a few minutes during the early part of the drydown I could smell a pleasant amber-type note trying to fight it's way through the soap smell, but alas, the soap won. Why does the great Dagon withhold his favor from me? Admittedly, it does work better on me than some aquatics, but not well enough for me to really want to wear it again. It also lasts for over 8 hours on my skin because of course it does. Why can't the blends I love ever last this long?

The oil is a dark orange-ish color, and in the imp it smells like citrus-tinged men's cologne. Wet - alas, once it hits my skin, the citrus amps and takes over, and it's not the pleasant orange-creamsicle-like effect the citrus+amber creates in the wet phase of Titus Andronicus, either. I use an environmentally friendly dish washer detergent called Citraclean (valencia orange scent), and just-applied wet Aelopile is a dead ringer for it. As it starts to dry, the CitraClean effect diminishes slightly, and the throw gets more pleasant as the sweet/warm/dry amber/wood/resin notes start to emerge. Close to my skin, however, it's still an unpleasant sour citrus note with something about it that's almost like a hint of BO. Dry-After an hour or so, the citrus top notes have mostly burned off, and I'm left with a pleasant warm, dry, masculine scent that reminds me a little of No. 93 Engine without the beeswax. I don't like it as much as I do No. 93 Engine, but I like it a heck of a lot more at this point than I did earlier in the drydown. By three hours in, everything had faded to a pleasant warm-and-dry-resin-y skin scent, only detectable when I put my nose right against the skin. I reapplied it at lunch, and this time,with the base notes from the first application still lingering, the unpleasant citrus oil dish detergent phase only lasted about twenty minutes before becoming a pleasant resin-amber with a hint of something tangy an sharp brightening it up. This is probably what it's supposed to smell like on people who's skin doesn't hate citrus notes. (Looking at the notes again, I see that in addition to "citrus" there's also verbena, and that's likely what starts out so utterly awful on me. Orange and lime can be okay on me, but lemon in any form and verbena invariably head straight for horrible cleaning solvent territory.)

Obatala - to me, it smells clean and fresh and beachy, but in a pleasant, sweet way instead of the soap-and-dryer-sheets clean you get from aquatics. I wear this one to bed a lot in the summer, when our window-units-only/no-central-air apartment is always humid and warm and I just want to feel cool and clean. Halfling - Fresh oatmeal raisin cookies. For pleasant weather/weekend morning lounging. Chicken-legged Hut - Like a less sweet/slightly more savory Halfling. This smells like hay and sweet feed to me, and reminds me of barns and tack rooms, especially when layered with just a hint of something brown-leather-dominant like Red Rider. No. 93 Engine - cozy balsam and beeswax and a hint of something smokey. This one is a good fall scent. Dark Chocolate, Black Tobacco, and Vetiver - cozy, dry, warm, and reminiscent of the smell of hot wood and warm coals in a fancy sauna. This one is my favorite for rainy/grey days or cold, damp weather, though Smokestack is a decent GC substitute because it has a similar vetiver note. Anything with smokey vetiver + warm/sweet notes (vanilla, chocolate, tobacco, coffee, brown sugar) tends to last well on me and smell warm and cozy. Seven Word Story: Sloth is probably amazing for cozy/warm "it's cold and wet outside" snuggling as well going by the reviews and listed notes, though I haven't tried that one.

I would definitely need 5 bottles of this! Yum. I have a mild skin allergy to cardamom, but amber/vanilla bean/cardamom would smell so amazing that I'd probably buy two bottles and wear it anyway.

In the bottle: No noticeable aquatic notes, but I can distinctly smell both lavender and iron. Wet: Cool, herbal lavender and a hint of iron. It smells just like my grandmother's porch garden when I was a little girl - she grew lavender in pots there, and the porch furniture were these heavy, slightly rusty wrought iron things. I love it! Dry: The first half hour was all lavender, gradually getting less cool/metallic-tinged and more soft-fuzzy from something I suspect must be the oude. Then, alas, the ice/aquatic notes start to make their appearance and do what aquatic/ice/ozone always does on me: turn everything into dryer sheets. An hour and a half after putting it on, Ganymede is all dryer sheets and fresh laundry. On my hair, the top notes last much longer - two and a half hours in, I can still smell lavender and metal with only a hint of dryer sheets. If aging doesn't help reduce the dryer sheets effect on my skin, I may wear this on my hair and pajamas at bedtime.

Australian Copperhead Having patiently let my snakes sit and settle for a full month, the testing may now begin. Cracking open the imp, I can smell the fruity-tart acai berry, as well as a hint of sweet vanilla and an underlying musty note. Once it's on my skin, the musty note becomes stronger and dominates. Curse you, patchouli, my eternal foe. After a minute or so, the mustiness starts to morph into a medicinal, almost mentholated scent, and I can feel the cardamom stinging on my wrists/forearms, although there's no redness. The menthol/camphor-like note is strongest directly over the pulse in my wrists, and while there's a hint of freshness from the acai that makes it a lot more pleasant than straight Snake Oil (which smells like 50% medicinalness and 50% "a vanilla cookie rotting in a incense-filled brothel" to quote Nicnivins immortal description) it isn't the acai dominant scent I smelled in the imp. Come back, acai berry! After about fifteen minutes, the cardamom sting goes away, the medicinal blast starts to fade, and the smoked vanilla becomes stronger, but the acai berry is still in hiding. When I tested this fresh from the decant circle a month ago, it was all acai. What gives, Copperhead? You are now milder/less musty snake oil with extra vanilla, and not fruity goodness. After about an hour or so, hints of acai berry do come back. Now it's vanilla with a hint of acai, and the funky/musty/medicinal snake oil is entirely gone. Still not as acai-forward as the imp or my first testing, but worth keeping the decant. Not bottle worthy, though.

Seconding the Initiation (which shares the red wine and vanilla notes with Lisbon Seaport). The coffee note is a little harder - there aren't nearly enough blends with coffee in them - but you may want to try layering Miskatonic University, which is a very gourmand GC that smells like Irish coffee, with something that has patchouli and vanilla or berry notes. There's also Centzon Totochtin ("Bittersweet Mexican cocoa with rum, red wine, and a scent redolent of sacrificial blood"), which I've never tried but which definitely sounds both gourmand and pirate-y.

I'd be more worried about the Hay absolute, to be honest. A lot of people are allergic. I've never been allergic to a BPAL (totally surprising, I'm allergic to everything else!) so I can't speak to the allergy factor, but it's actually the combo of hay and beeswax that makes me LOVE Bunraku so much! So glad I got a bottle. I know I will wear the heck out of it in late summer and early fall. My only bad allergy experiences were with the Dead Leaves notes (which I think was probably psychosomatic - I'm allergic to leaf mold, not leaves themselves, but the dead leaf smell was so realistic that I must have subconsciously expected leaf mold) and the weed/hemp note in Ask the Nearest Hippie.

I agree with everyone else that you may want to give a selection of imps or decants if you're not already familiar with what kind of fragrances each of them likes. The Bride is beautiful and appropriate (I wore it for my wedding), but if she doesn't like honey/doesn't like vanilla/doesn't like white florals, she may almost never wear it. Better to give either a bunch of small, fun samples, or a 5ml bottle of something you're already pretty sure she'll like. I like the idea of either pairing the imps in themed sets (Elf/Rogue, Queen of Hearts/King of Hearts, Anne Boney/Calico Jack or Mary Read/Jolly Roger, Persephone/Hades, Lilith/Old Scratch, etc.) or giving them a selection of Ars Amatoria blends with romantic or sensual names, as SophieCedar suggested.

Did you have any list of your personal favourite for floralsl? ;D I love most of your vanilla list so I think this couldnt go wrong I'm wary of florals because I don't really like jasmine, and because rose is an iffy note on me (rose blends that smell good in the bottle can turn into sharp green stems or a sort of rotting flower petal smell), but some that have worked on me are: Skuld (horrible funky wet phase, delicious honeysuckle-like drydown) Paris (sharp, herbal lavender with sweet/crisp/juicy lotus) The Bride (very soft, not at all the heady sweetness of Skuld despite also being white floral+ honey) Jezebel Blossoms in Springtime (really a vanilla scent, but the wet phase has the same yummy lotus as Paris) Adrastea (best foodie/honeyed rose ever, like rose turkish delight combined with walking into a kosher/middle eastern bakery) Elf from the RPG line and Tenochtitlan from Wanderlust are both fresh, clean-smelling florals (but a good "clean," not like dryer sheets or soap) - though I just checked the notes on Tenochtitlan and it's mostly herbs (sage, hyssop) and amber, with "mexican poppy" as the only floral note, it smells like a fruity floral to me. Faiza from Carnival Diabolique was also a very nice, sweet/sophisticated white floral, but unfortunately I got a red/stinging skin reaction from the cardamom. Anathema was nice once the vetiver calmed down and stopped clashing weirdly with the honeysuckle, but that took at least an hour.

omg omg omg steeeeekkkkkk!! Oooh I was also considering volcano in springtime!! (i derped and read blossoms as another blossoms haha) I was debating between stale chick and stekk and stekk won before deep down I wanted to believe I had matured... but now i wish I got it because my daughter's favourite colour is purple and the label is purple and it is *SO* her kind of scent. Though I didn't detect any florals in any reviews for stale chick- maybe ill have to track a bottle down afterall! haha Yeah, I meant Blossoms in Springtime but was too lazy to type it out on my phone. Volcano in Springtime is more of a clean/fresh vanilla than a sweet/rich/creamy one, maybe because of the white sandalwood. Stale Marshmallow Chick doesn't have any florals, but it's a nice creamy-vanilla marshmallow, if not quite as good as Stekk (though I maybe biased because Stekk was my wedding-night perfume).

I have a set of the twins before the carnival went dark, gifted by my twin years back . I do have them down for back ups too though because Faith is just so lovely. Finally enough I also have muse of fire thanks to some easier recommendations. And you're right, Jezebel is not my kind of scent , unfortunately... But everything else was a bottle worthy win! Though none had the same honey quality I got from blossoms in springtime which I'm currently obsessing over. Blossoms in Springtime is amazing. My initial Lupers vanilla cream pick was Volcano in Springtime, which turned out to have a laundry/linen note I wasn't a fan of. So I made a last-minute purchase of Blossoms and it's the sweet, slightly fruity vanilla cream of my dreams. My current vanilla/cream list in order of wonderfullness is: Stale Sugar-Crusted Marshmallow Chick Giljagaur Blossoms in Springtime ~*~Stekkjarstaur~*~

I was going to suggest Jezebel when I saw honeyed florals, but that has a lot of orange in it (to the point where it smells like sweet floral orange juice in the imp). You might want to track down decants of Hope and Faith if you can find them - sugared rose and sugared violet. Also Muse of Fire, one of the past couple of years' Liliths, which is "rainbow flower petals and sugar." Blossoms in Springtime confirmed me as a lotus fan, so I'm currently on the lookout for scents with lotus that don't feature any of my hated notes. Most of the GC blends tend to pair it with things I don't like.

Giljagaur is probably my favorite overall coconut blend, but Lovers and a Fan is a close runner up - and it's just about time to retrieve it from the back of my scent cabinet now that it's summer again.

For another GC suggestion, one of my favorite honeyed florals is Jezebel (orange blossom honey, rose, and sandalwood). I get no sandalwood at all from it, just the first two notes, and it's one of the rare roses that works well on me. I've also heard good things about Round Dance as far as vanilla/strawberry/florals go, but I haven't tried it myself because carnation is not a good note on me. Faiza from Carnival Diabolique might fit the bill for a "deeper" floral scent. It's sweet and gentle but complex, and one of the few white floral-heavy blends I really like, possibly because of the inclusion of vanilla and black amber, but be warned if you're sensitive to cardamom - while my nose couldn't detect the cardamom in it, my skin sure could and went all red and itchy.

I had high hopes for this blend based on the listed notes (custard! Vanilla! White rose!) but I can only assume the bottle I got hold of didn't age well, because it's all consternation and zero delight. Consternation is, in fact, probably too mild a word for the horrible cleaning solvent reek that greeted me on opening the bottle. I was prepared to get very little chocolate and lot of lemon-custard since my bottle is one with no chocolate sludge, and was a little worried about the lemon element. I should have been a lot more worried. This is Little Bird's "funky smelling skin musk and sour lemon blossom floor cleaner" grown vast and powerful with age, with an added helping of windex on top of it. I have no idea if it morphs on skin once dry, because I washed it off within three minutes, it was so bad. I guess I at least now know to avoid any form of lemon note like the plague.

I used this as a moisturizer on my skin rather than in the bath. On first application, I just got chocolate and (when I put my nose right to the skin) the faint scent of the shea oil and other carrier oils it's made from. But after a few minutes, once the oil' absorbed into my skin/warmed up, the throw is all chocolate/ marshmallow/ graham cracker pie crust/cookie. Pure foodie heaven. And it lasts for hours - I put it on before bed and could still smell traces of it this morning. And the texture of the oil itself is really nice - it absorbs into your skin without being greasy.

In the imp: Roses, with a hint of honey and something thick and syrupy. Wet: More of the lush roses with a touch of honey - the oil is somewhat runny, and I ended up applying slightly more than I intended to. On the drydown: Within the first minute or so, I was already fearing that this would be one of the roses that doesn't work well on me, and that impression turned out to be correct. You know when you're a little girl and you make "perfume" by mashing up flower petals and adding a tiny bit of water, and then your "perfume" sits there in the sun in the humid 90-something degree heat and starts to rot? My arms and wrists are covered in a stronger, thicker version of that smell. Overblown honey-touched roses starting to go off, with a hint of sour rot. 20 minutes in: O Rose, thou art sickening. The unfortunate note, that instigates sneezing and tickles the throat: has once again ruined my BPAL joy: as a lush, lovely blend does its destroy. The rotting flower petals have taken out an option on morphing into soapy green stems, and the combination makes me want to sneeze. At this point I gave up on my normal procedure of wearing whatever I'm testing for a full day and/or until it disappears on me, and washed Hedylogos off. One more stuck off the list in my search for a GC rose blend I can wear.

My parents keep bees and have for years, so I love all things honey-scented for the nostalgic associations (my mother, who likes all decorating to have a theme, buys honey-scented, soap, lotion, etc. to go in the cutesy little beehive-shaped soap dispensers. There are bees on the kitchen curtains and tea towels. Everything is bees!). My all time, holy grail honey scent is Boots Royal Jelly/Pure Honey (actually a bubble bath oil and shower gel), which alas, can only be purchased in Boots drug stores in England. I do not currently live in England. Short of begging people in the UK to ship me bottles of it, there's no way for me to get it in North America I've tried many different BPAL honey blends (O, Redoul Honey, Chokecherry Honey, Tobacco Honey, etc.) but so far nothing has been quite the same, though most of them are awesome in their own right. (Lush's Honey I Washed the Kids isn't quite the same, either, though also awesome). Any UK forumites familiar with my beloved drug store shower gel have any suggestions for what BPAL (or BPTP) blend to try next?