couscous

I purchased this one based on Tom and Galen's video review! I was expecting a frigid cold, refrigerated blood orange, and it sounded so clean and refreshing.  Had to get it even though it sounded simple.

On the skin, it is not quite what I expected, but still pleasant. The frost on this one manifests as candy, almost like a sugar coated mandarin. It is sweeter than I expected and less bitter/astringent.

It is *slightly* cleaning product on me, but not intolerably so. As it dries down, I am getting the barest hint of that powdery snow white note no one can place. It does kind of feel like one of the snow white hybrids offered a few years ago.

This one is crying out to be layered. It is pretty and juicy on her own, but I feel like it needs something else to blossom on my skin. Maybe a sharp tea note or a yuzu?  I am curious to read how other fans wear this and what they pair it with, if anything. Personally, I could really get into this with a more bitter citrus underneath. A little more herbal and green.

This is a very girly orange, slightly nostalgic with a powdery candy undertone. It feels very young. Glad I got to try it!

Ah, this was a disappointment.  No red musk. No whiskey.  No amber. 

Instead, it is pine. Pine to the eleventh power, with a bit of the lemon coming through on the skin after it settles a bit.

I love lemon, but in this case she is quite unwelcome. Combined with the overwhelming pine smell, the blend becomes straight up floor cleaner on me.

Red musk is usually a slam dunk on my skin, and Mad Sweeney is one of my favorite winter go-tos, so the whiskey note sealed the deal when I read the description. I really thought Last Tavern would be a no-brainer loved blend, but that pine-sol throwback...Naaaah.  Can't do it. Won't wear it.  I guess the "sleet" is the culprit? 

Super bummed! I hope someone out there gets the glorious bpal red musk smell from this.  I am off to wash thoroughly and slather on some Sweeney instead.  :/ 

Actually, I really loved The Rat King...

Smoky vetiver, straight up. Cigarettes and motor oil! Yum for me, since I love vetiver so much, but I must confess...once you've found a few vetiver blends in beth's line, you really don't need all of them, since vetiver pretty much transforms every blend it's in to a variation on a single note.

I liked Devil's Claw, but it's for fans of the single note only.

This one was another great surprise from the RG line. Black hellebore is herbal and sharp, but there's a definite sweetness to it that makes it more than just an "experience" scent. It's almost like poppies or some other sweet, syrupy flower. It would be almost too much except for the fact that it wears very light.

Another purple scent, though. Purple and green, sharp and juicy. I liked it.

I didn't think hairy Toad Lily was that sweet...I really, really love it!

It's fruity and juicy in that very purple, grape way, without the bitterness that comes from wine. It's got a great herbal and green note to keep it from becoming too silly, and it never moves into that heady floral stage for me. It's one of the least "floral" botanic scents Beth has done. Thank you, beth!

Very wearable, and a perfect scent for autumn...or for when i finally run out of my beloved purple phoenix. Worth a shot for fans of purple scents!

Thanks, GC! Your taste is sleep scents is slightly unorthodox, but I like them!! I've got some Hades and MoEZ at home, actually. When we're up and running, I'll put a few drops in and see if they enjoy it.

In the end, it's just a gesture among many small gestures we hope will combine to make life more bearable, but I figure as loing as I spend so much time debating scents for myself, there's no harm in taking a few minutes to consider one for the pups, too.

I volunteer for Animal control here in NY, and we were thinking of maybe putting a diffuser with essential oils in one of the rooms where we keep the "holding" dogs- cruelty cases and seizures in progress. These poor guys, mostly pits, stay with us for weeks or months.

Naturally, everyone is defaulting to lavender straight up, but I of course can't resist picturing one of Beth's blends in there. Anubis is waaaay too strong (I love it, but it's the strongest bpal I've ever worn , ever), and so is fenris Wolf. The dream blends are the choice of champions, but are there any others you've found particularly snuggly and soothy?

Strong, tart lime. very refreshing, with a nice white musk drydown. Can go play-doh and soapy during certain times of the month, but most days the musk behaves and it's a sour, mouth puckering lime. I also agree about the citron, very subtle but definitely smells like a bit of bitter citrus in there somewhere.

wow wow WOW I love this one! I really needed an almond scent, too! I love Dana O'Shee, but I've always wanted something with a bit more throw, and Beth's stronger almond blends like hecate and Black phoenix worked horribly on me for one reason or another.

port Au Prince has a strong Anise note up top that stays for most of the drydown. It combines with the almond and clove to make a very alcohol tinged smell, almost like almond extract, bitter and astringent and nearly medicinal.

I know you're thinking "and that's a good thing?" , but it really is! Port Au Prince's bitterness is what saves it from being too aggressively foody, and it makes the drydown- as sweet an almond as you're likely to find- all the more striking and rewarding. Too much sweetness is what ruins so many awesome scents. Port Au Prince is a masculine, bracing gourmand, very satisfying.

Honestly, I just feel like no one can go wrong with the wanderlust series. Take a look at the notes, and unless you absolutely loathe one or more, you're going to be in for a treat.

London is strongly tea rose, very potpourri-like and very powdery. These are pink roses, not fresh, green ones.

It's a very old-fashioned scent, and it's obviously for fans of rose. Very proper, very nicely done. Not for me, but nicely done.

Bengal might be the only cinnamon BPAL i can wear. Everything with cinnamon or cassia turns to red hots or big red bubblegum on my skin, and so i automatically avoid any blend with those notes listed because I just hate that smell so much.

Bengal and Red devil are the notable exceptions to this rule- and, in bengal's case, I think that maybe the clove took over and married with the cinnamon so that i could finally, finally get the bark-y, rooty cinnamon I've always wanted instead of the cheap candy.

It's pepper-y, strongly spiced, and indeed very chai-like. It's almost too literal to wear, like you really have been baking all day, but I really liked it.

Hollywood Babylon is a must for red musk lovers. It's undeniably red musk, very sugary but thankfully not syrupy.

I get the definite idea of cherries and strawberries, but without the cough medicine of the former and the stickiness of the latter. It ends up being more of a general berry candy smell, with an incense quality to it on the drydown. Thankfully, the incense is not overtly head-shop and is very light and sheer.

It's a very young fragrance, totally tarty and fun, but it's very wearable and pretty. One of my my all-time favorites.

I am ashamed for not reviewing this one until now. I've burned through close to 25Ml of this stuff since 2004, and I love it now as much as I ever did.

Beth's description may be leaving some things out, but what she gave us is pretty much all you need to know. Very amber, intensely creamy berries, and lovely, solemn iris. The berries are not tart AT ALL, they are not "crafty" or candle-like...they are jammy and rich and sweet and burnished gold. Mildly sweet from the amber.

Honestly, this is just a gorgeous scent. So opulent , but so wearable and feminine. It's an absolute essential BPAL experience. 5 million stars.

This one is a no brainer. I love dragon's blood, I love lotus, I LOVE Blood Lotus. if you hate either one of these, you probably won't like this. And if you hate both of these... honestly, why even bother?

Sheer sweetness with the unmistakable Dragon's Blood resin base. The lilac and bubblegum overtones of each compliment wonderfully. YUM. Blood Lotus is simple, but it's addicting, and it feels like such a logical pairing, too. I don't know what I'd do if this one ever got DC'ed.

Sundew is a fresh, green floral, and it smells like it may be in the Lily family.

It's pleasant enough, but it smells extremely cheap, like a prepackaged FO that should have ended up in shampoo but snuck in under the gate and got into a BPAL.

Generic in the extreme, for me.

I can't believe I passed up the opportunity to review this back when I had 5 bottles of the stuff!

Enraged bunny Musk was the first scent I ever ordered more than 2 bottles of unsniffed, on the grounds that I'd never be able to get anything like it ever again. I was right- there's nothing in the GC as soft, powdery, and as unabashedly childlike as Enraged Bunny Musk... even though this bunny's got quite a nice musky base on him!

The scent is a clover and baby powder bottle of joy, and it dries down to a sheer, musky bubbblegum powder with clover . My only problem is that EBM smelled a bit too simple on me, and it also had very poor throw. It's a slathering fragrance.

Absolutely lovely- a bit young, but lovely- a must-try for very girly girls and people who love baby powder.

figured I'd be one of the only ones who hated and then liked White Rabbitt- but it turns out that I'm not even close! We must form a team of researchers to figure out exactly how many months this one takes to reach its full vintage, because it morphs over time to something that barely resembles the original bottle.

I ordered an imp of white rabbit as soon as Beth relased it way back when, and I was crushed to find that it was all linen on me- and that real ozone-y, fabric softener linen smell I cannot stand. I got a bitter black tea smell over the whole thing, but it was mostly screaming fabric softener. Not good at all.

Recently, I got an imp of this from a swap, and smelled it for the novelty, expecting to wrinkle my nose yet again, but NOW this white rabbit smells like EXACTLY those white rabbit candies they sell in chinatown, and I LOVE it. I love it. I don't think i'll be able to stop thinking of this smell until I have a bottle ( it wears just as great as it smells). It's milky, and plasticky in the peculiar way that all really cheap candy is...but it doesn't smell cheap or unpleasant, it's whimsical and fun and nostalgic, and it's a totally new type of gourmand scent for me.

It was worth the wait!

Wow...just like the manga this may have been inspired by, Midnight Kiss is surprisingly heavy under a veil of pretty susbstantial sweet. It starts out with that sharp, sour red wine note that you can find in Nosferatu or Centzon Totochtin .

It's also got a strongly medicinal smell to it at this point, almost like juniper but not quite. Is that the patchouli?

As it dries, I'm getting undeniable pipe tobacco, much like Dia de Los Muertos 05. It keeps threatening to become too sweet and headache-inducing for me, but so far, so good. There has been an impression of cocoa running through the scent the whole time. It never quite gets to the front of the line, but it's always there. As far as raisins go... I wouldn't have said so, but I can see it now. Yum, raisins!

Finally, it dries down to a sweet patchouli blend- but this is 6 hours later, and you should know that Midnight Kiss smells as potent on me now as it did early this morning. That's a long time to stick around at nearly 100 percent! Put this on with a micro drop, because if you hate it you're going to have a hard time getting it off you.

I bought this scent hoping for a cousin to my beloved Cerberus, and this one just barely slides in to fit the bill. It's no replacement, but there's some resemblance here somewhere- enough to make me really glad I got it. This one shouldn't be a surprise to many. Beth is pretty much putting it out there- patchouli, nicotiana...this isn't a blend for the faint of heart! Hopefully, you know whether or not you enjoy these types of fragrances.

If you do, this one is lovely , and definitely worth your money.

The Flower Song is a lovely fruit blend- If I didn't know the notes beforehand, I doubt that I could absolutely identify said fruit as pomegranate-but if you told me it was I would have agreed with you.

Truth be told, I was REALLY looking forward to this one, being a fan of both pomegranate and lotus, but the lotus was overwhelmed, I think, and I was left with a happy, pretty wearable fruit with good staying power. Very nice..but little underwhelming, and very much like The Fruit of Paradise on me.

It's definitely worth a try if you can find it- but I'll be sticking to the awesome Hymn to Proserpine for my pomegranate fix!

Beltane 2008 is a wonderful green herbal-floral, very dry -and, surprisingly, extremely light. I think of the scent as a sheer, dry sister to Ostara, and I'm thrilled with it. I, too, get impressions of clover and grass. I LOVED 2005 Beltane but hated 2006, and I'm happy to say that 2008 is much more like the greenery of the former, and so much less heady than the latter. I'm not getting any strong resins from the one, but there's definitely a wood base to this, and it's not a sweet or pine-y wood. Very blonde wood, if that makes sense.

I wish it were a bit stronger on me, but that's my only complaint. It's totally lovely

Wow. Talk about a surprise! I was running late this morning when I'd heard that New York was FINALLY going to get spring sunshine for more than one isolated day in a row, so I was frantic to find a floral scent for the occasion. I don't own many, being a resin girl, but I spotted the imp of Machu Picchu, which came as a gift in my recent order. Two unsniffed seconds later it was on me. I metaphorically crossed my fingers and hoped it wasn't so sickening that I'd get a migraine at work.

Not only did I not get a headache, but I also didn't get "sensory overload" like I do with a lot of florals. In fact, I could smell this one for hours on end! It's one of the nicest scents Beth has ever done. Honestly- it's creamy and so, so slightly fruity (green melons and watermelon?), with a bit of green grass and that lovely, lovely amber base. I got a compliment on it right off the bat, and my subway trip in hasn't been such an olfactory orgasm since the very first days of discovering bpal. It doesn't last too long, which is a real shame, but I can live with that. It's just so pretty.

I love this one. I'm going to have to buy a bottle right away (and before spring ends, since this one is highly seasonal). I might have known this one would be good- the wanderlusts always are for me. Highly recommended for nearly everyone.

This one wasn't too boozy on my skin, actually. It was rather syrupy, a little spicy- but not very rum-like.

Oh, well. I wasn't hoping for that, anyway. Truth be told, I was hoping for a more complicated Obatala, since Obatala is my Gold Standard for coconuts, and I'm always going to be on the lookout for something similar but more strongly concentrated. I thought for sure that UpaUpa would fill that niche.

It didn't, of course- but only upa Upa is too different to be compared. It's got a lot of elements from scents you may know and love, of course (I can totally see the Elegba comparison), but it's very clearly a "new" scent. It's got coconut, spices, and just a hint of pineapple on me, but the combined effect is very butterscotch, very...grog. yep. A spicier Grog.

As it dries (and it's got insanely long lasting power, by the way), the spices come out more and more, as is to be expected. Now it actually smells more colada-like, as the sweetness gets tamed and overtaken a bit. The coconut in this is not watery and refreshing like in Obatala, and it's not decadent and meaty like in Eden, but it's very candy-coated and happy and fun, and it makes my skin smell like a million different desserts- all of which I wanted to seek out and devour while wearing it.

Upa Upa may not be good for the diet, but it's so perfect for the beginning of summer, and I love it. If you've spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure out a way to stick a paper umbrella into your morning coffee without being made fun of by your coworkers, then ....you really need to run out and hunt some of this down NOW.

This one really is heavy on the juniper, so be prepared.

In my case, I'm thankful that it is, because the juniper in this has given me an earth scent I can wear and love- my very first! I can't wear pine-y scents at all, and a lot of bpal's "earth" notes end up too loamy on my skin, so I've been locked out of a lot of otherwise amazing creations. This is perfect for me- medicinal, harsh, and yet comforting all at the same time. Something you hold up to another person's nose, and they hate it, and you laugh and wear it anyway because you adore the way you smell and feel. That's what this is like- a scent you wear for you and you alone.

I almost smell like a eucalyptus plant, but I mean that in the best, most compulsively-arm-sniffing way.

It dries down to a slightly pine (slight enough that i still love it) patchouli blend, with spice.

A masterpiece of suggestion. You can't NOT think of earth when you wear this one!

I think Hurricane completes my BPAL vetiver collection. What a wonderful road it has been, but I'm sad that this wonderful scent was so far down on my list of priorities. I think I was scared off by the "China Rain" notes. China Rain was a popular car air freshener scent in my neighborhood growing up

Wet: A bit of cucumber-like sweetness, a bit of baby powder, some sandalwood maybe? oh, and of course- vetiver's signature motor oil smell. So awesome.

As it dries, vetiver does its usual morph into sweet dry wood, and the baby powder turns into a very light rain smell.

All four of these guys (Hurricane, Burial, Undertow, and Inferno) are highly evocative, and they hit their respective targets dead-center. One of Beth's great early creations, not to be missed!