Elf

[ResinManiac]

Pale golden musk, honeycomb, amber, parma violet, hawthorne bark, aspen leaf, forest lily, life everlasting, white moss, and a hint of wild berry.

 

Berry lilly, lilly berry, soft and sweet but ultimately just not for me.

[Lunasariel]

In the imp: I would call this a clean, fresh scent, but not like "industrial cleaning fluid" fresh. In fact, right now it's conjuring up a startlingly clear image of a stream of clear water in a forest, surrounded by very green grass and a few wildflowers.

 

Wet: The floral and berry notes are more prominent, but the base of clean running water, grass, and trees remains, at least at first. Alas, this stage doesn't last long, and the honey shows up in a major way to turn this into a regular fruity-floral, although a hint of citrus stays around and keeps things interesting. At this point, I can kinda see it as an elvish scent, but more of the "tra-la-la-lally" elves of The Hobbit than the majestic and honestly kinda terrifying Firstborn. TBH, I was afraid of Elf going this way - sweet, light, and pleasant, but with very little real character to it.

 

Dry: Amber swoops in to save the day! Amber generally makes my skin go "I LOVE EVERYBODY IN THIS BAR," so it settles down into an amber-based honey-floral, with some woods still hanging around, albeit much more subtly. I'm looking forward to layering the hell out of this - it has the basis to be the powerful, mysterious scent I want for an elf, but it needs the kick of, say, Mage or Ranger to give it that extra something.

[unxolve]

Quite good! Berry and violet with a woodsy feel (almost pine) that blends in seamlessly to something light, fresh, and pretty. Definitely enjoying this one!

[Veronica]

Very pretty, bright floral. Smells like something from LUSH! Lily is the key note in this, but is well behaved. Shining white lily over a bed of forest greens and a hint of sweet forest fruit.

[DiesMali]

In the imp: Green! Fruit!

 

Wet on my skin: This starts out a little bit shampoo-like due to the berries and violet, but doesn't quite make it to soap territory once it begins to dry.

 

Dry: This is a bright, green-gold, berry-touched forest scent. I can distinctly pick up the aspen leaves (living in the Colorado Rockies gets one used to that scent!), violet, honey, and lily. It's pretty but not yet stand-out. Thankfully, this is the one of BPAL's honey notes that doesn't go rancid on me. After it's been on a while, I start to get some light musk and a fainty woodsy-ness from the moss. I suspect this will smell great when paired with my imp of Paladin. I didn't order this, but I'm glad they included it so I can do that RPG layering thing.

Edited April 28, 2015 by DiesMali

[Malaena]

In the imp: I smell christmas trees!

 

Dry: At first there is a balsam scent with some backing sweetness. After about 15 minutes the most prominent note is sweet berries. 30 minutes later the berry has calmed and there is a floral note I can't identify with a woody backing.

 

Verdict: I love this one. At first I thought it would be a winter thing but I would wear this any time!

[Poenari]

On my skin, this is a perfume version of Fae Forest room spray. It's lighter than Black Forest, but very much in the same family. I definitely would never wear this during the day but this is the kind of scent that I periodically like to use as a sleep scent. Going to drop this one into the nightstand drawer.

[marilyn eyre]

My nose is not yet sophisticated enough to pull out specific notes, so all I can say is that it smells like a sparkly forest.

 

That's not a bad thing at all, I love this scent.

[Jeni Mullen]

Just a note on my own personal tastes, my nose, etc to give you an understanding of what's shaping this review!

 

My favorite blend of all time is Mme Moriarty, followed by Captain Lilith and her First Mate, followed by Gingerbread Snake, Ivory Vulva, Druid, Blood, Strawberry Sufganiyot, Snake Charmer Resurrected, Loved to Death, Eat Me, Beaver'Versary, Dana O'Shea, and Bastet. I usually wear Mme. Moriarty or Captain Lilith, but mix it up from time to time with the other blends or for special occasions.

 

Death notes: Cedar, mahogany, oak, all florals except rose and violet, frankincense, vetiver, civet, chocolate, cream, cardamom, leather, tobacco, sandalwood, dirt, wine, anise, saffron, almond

 

Notes I adore: red musk, vanilla, coconut, apricot/peach, plum, black currant, dragon's blood, rum, cake, orange, Middle Eastern spices, Asian spices, amber, pumpkin, strawberry, cherry, sugar

 

 

Imp: Floral-paluza...ick.

wet: I'm actually not getting much of anything. I smell the other test areas over this...weird.

dry about 25 minutes: honey and musk are there, I smell my lovely violet...and honestly, it's very underwhelming. I know RPG scents are made for layering. I'm going to add this to Druid during a full body test and see how that goes! I'll report back. But by itself... Nah. I never smelled the hair gloss but I'm not sure I missed out either.

[TriGirlJ]

Wet: lots of pine. Almost Pine-Sol levels of pine

 

Dry (10 minutes): smells like Skadi in the summer. Definitely a wood elf scent

 

Two hours in: I keep asking what smells like hair spray. Oh, it's the perfume

 

I'm bummed. It was lovely when it first dried, but it's morphed into something very chemically and acrid.

[rix]

Pine. Wet pine. Then...candy? Yes, candy-coated marshmallows (do those exist?) An hour later, it's strawberry.

 

What a weird series of changes! But I kinda like it. Just have to decide if it's what I want on my skin on a regular basis. So far, a definite maybe.

[spikyfairy]

Wet: Balsam & berry. Fresh & clean. I don't know if Cinta brand shampoo is an Australian-only thing, but I have childhood scent-memories of it sniffing this. That's not a criticism. Florals coming out as it dries.

Dry: Lillies and berries, with a background of leaves and moss. Touch of musk. Light, and sweet, but not overly so. Very pretty, but gets too floral for me unless I wear it at a specific 'time of the month', when the woody-leafy-balsam notes stay more predominant. Fades pretty quickly on me to just a hint of berries 4+ hours after application.

This one has grown on me the more I've worn it, and I will continue to use up this imp, but I don't think I need any more. Wish it kept the balsams of the wet stage, but that's my skin doing its unfortunate sweet-loving thing. I have not tried any of the Fraggle scents, but apart from the initial phase, this smelt more like a Fraggle to me than an elf! (Once again, that is not a criticism!).

[freyasfae]

Reminds me of a lot of the other musky green scents from BPAL (not a bad thing as I love those scents), but this one works for me better because those green scents often have a deciduous green of some sort that my skin tends to not like. These greens are less assertive with a sneaky little touch of lily and berry. This strange mix definitely has a sense of elf to it - mysterious and shifting, a complex mix of natural and supernatural.

[Casablanca]

Bottle: Pine, and another wood, probably aspen, violets and yellow grasses on sunlit hills.

 

Wet: Pine, aspen, green hay and violets. A heavily pollinated meadow of wild grains, sun-baked woods, and yellow and purple flowers.

 

Dry: Lilies are opening in the field, just detectable at wet but blooming once dry. They seem to blend with the violets. A few berries of different colors come out. This is aridly sweet. Later on it’s mostly a dry, light floral.

 

The smells are woody, dried green and violet, and pale yellow sunlight. I feel sunlit, mischievous and fearful for my allergies. I want to try layering this with my only other RPG scent, Chaotic. Why didn’t I get Ranger?

[Soupy Twist]

Aspen and pine in the bottle. Goes on as mostly pine, shortly dries to wood, which turns soapy. Quite boring. None of the floral or berry notes I was hoping for. I probably ended up with Finarfin and not Glorfindel.

[PrinceofcatS]

This is a rather complex and interesting scent! I think I'll end up wanting to revisit this.

 

Wet, this was SUPER piney (well, I guess according to the notes list and reviews it's aspen, but...), and then some berry scent came out. It had a very winter-perfume scent, and it was easily very comparable to The Snow Maiden. Then some honey came out, making it similar but distinctly not the same.

 

As it dries, it hits a golden point where it's strongly damp forest smells, but not too masculine leaning (while still being fairly unisex), with the flowers somewhat recognizeable but not dominating the moss and evergreen notes, berry and honey still predominantly on the top. Unfortunately, that time doesn't really last, and the forest part of it seems to recede. It's still beautiful, but the forest feel was the main thing I purchased it for. (I got a frimp of Ranger and I also got an imp of Arkham during my purchase so I might have more luck with them.)

 

The berry and honey and musk all remind me a lot of Lady Una, even though that doesn't have any forest scent to it. I've planned on buying a bottle of that scent, so I'm going to test my decant and Elf against each other soon to see which one I love more and how comparable they are.

[ShunnerOfHugs]

I was so excited to try Elf after I read the other reviews, and after smelling it on my mom and my little sister. It smelled great on them, like flowers and berries and something else I can't quite put my finger on. Unfortunately, when I wear it it turns into something VERY sour, with just a hint of berries underneath. Mostly just the sour stuff, though. There must be a note in there that doesn't work with my skin... I just don't know which note that is.

Edited April 1, 2016 by ShunnerOfHugs

[FeralFae]

Woodsy scents are my favourite, and smelling Elf straight from the bottle is very evocative. It's exactly like I imagined it, and it's very summery!

Wet, it's very much woods and moss but the sweetness which I'm guessing is the berries + honeycomb comes through more. When it dries the forest backs off a lot and leaves only the berries + beeswax + musk with a hint of woods.

 

I like it in the dry phase but I don't think it's quite there yet as far as elves are concerned. I'm happy I bought a whole bottle though, because this works wonderfully layered with Ranger, for a less playful and more evocative scent.

 

Now, I would love a more serious scent that captures the magic and culture of the elves without screaming "tricksy little elves hiding in the forest eating berries", but I'll keep looking!

[Cali]

Clean, soapy. But an expensive one at that! Goes really well with the other RPG scents I've tried so far.
There's a woodsyness to it, like adventuring through the crisp forest in spring when it hasn't gotten warm outside yet.

Not for me, but those berries are great.

[Scarlet Woodland]

I don't know what's up with my nose but I get fresh guava?! In the imp and on my skin. Not going entirely mad as my colleage has them growing in her garden back home and concurred... guava. Don't get me wrong, there's some other stuff going on underneath but it's still all of a fresh, tropical nature.

 

Utterly bizarre considering what's in it but thankfully I love it. Whether I'll spring for a bottle remains to be seen as I'd half expect it to show up and be an entirely different scent. If you told me it was something like Tweedledum in there by mistake I'd entirely believe you.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Scarlet Woodland

[lillielil]

I joined today just to add my weird comment about this scent.

 

In the imp: pine, pine, with a hint of pine

 

Wet: aspen and honeycomb

 

Dry: straight-up banana with a note of bubblegum

 

I was hoping for more musk and moss. My skin did this one no favors.

[Victory]

Definitely pine-y. A very clean scent. So clean that I think you could be covered in thick mud and as long as you were wearing Elf, you'd smell like you'd just gotten out of a shower. I myself was hoping for honeycomb + berries + musk like FeralFae got, but it's nice for what it is.

[Bamels]

Frimp. This smell of pine. But not the bathroom cleaner kind, a bright, sweeter kind. The flowers are strong in this, which never agrees with me, but we'll see how this dries down. This smells like a forest, and like a florist! As it dries, the pine scent has disappeared and I can only smell flowers. I amp florals, so this is no surprise, unfortunately I've not found many bpal florals that work with my skin. The floral scent has calmed down now it's dry, and hasn't turned sharp like most florals do. The leaves are almost peaking through. It smells like an early Spring morning in a forest, with just the hint of mist among the flowers. Unsure if I will use this, but am willing to try again in Spring.

[IslandRain]

You know that smell when someone liberally sprays floral air freshener in a bathroom after, AHEM, utilizing the facilities? That's what this smells like on me

 

Not sure what note is the culprit on me though (the violet? the lilies?) as I haven't tried too many bpals yet...

[LizziesLuck]

I've avoided Elf, because violet, but I could not ignore the golden musk, honeycomb, and amber any longer. Hoping the violet is non-existent on me, so that I can enjoy this.

 

Wet: Oh wow, not what I was expecting at all! This actually smells like a forest. It's a beautiful atmospheric sort of scent. I can imagine if I burned it as a room scent it would immediately make me happy. Feels like being outside. I don't actually enjoy wearing this kind of smell, for whatever reason, but I do really like it. So realistic!

 

 

Dry: This goes pretty sour on me, once dry, the way pine does on my skin (acrid, like urine. Not nice). I can pick up the berry though, and I bet this would be lovely on the right chemistry.