meaganola

I'm impressed by those intrepid souls who can handle heavy musks and incense in temperatures above, oh, 70 degrees fahrenheit.

 

Heh. The thing about summers where I live is that we don't have three months of oppressive heat. Sure, we had a stretch last summer where it went into triple digits, but that only lasted about a week. Our average highs in July and August are right around 80. Which is still hot for me, but if you have one day that hits 95, you have to have a day that only gets up to 65, if I'm doing the math correctly. This is actually why I have a mix of patch/incense stuff and snowy stuff: On mild days, I can hit the heavy stuff, and on the hot days, I can go all snowy. The average high in Orlando in December are the same as our average June high. What you can deal with in the summer probably depends on where you live!

Summer for me means outdoor music and arts festivals (even though I rarely *go* to them, the mood is still there, and the mood is what drives scent selection for me), which in turn mean patchouli and incense, so Mme Moriarty is pretty much bottled summer. And Ravenous, which I actually had to put back the other day because it was *too* summery for me. And Masquerade, although there's enough other stuff in there that I can wear it year-round. Well, okay, by "year-round," I mean "any weekend," since I feel really weird wearing patchouli at work. If it was my old company, I wouldn't give a damn, but I'm temping now, and I have to be a little more restrained in my scent choices at work now.

 

And then there's and added fun part: When it's super hot, I have problems with scents. Except, as I discovered last summer, snow. Season of the Inundation and Moon of Small Spirits got me through an extended period of triple-digit weather (hey, I'm a native Portlander! We don't get that kind of weather very often! And by "very often," I think we broke forty-year-old records for high temps, including the all-time high temp). This summer, I have a few new options to add to the mix: Snowball Fracas, Ded Moroz, and First Soft Snow, although that one may turn out to be a bit too heavy on the non-snow notes for my purpose. On the up side, these scents are all so not-traditional-perfume-smelling that I don't feel weird wearing them to work, so that helps balance not wearing my beloved patchouli at work.

 

And then last summer, I went to see a certain band at a certain bar about once a month, and every single time, it was Snake Charmer, all the way. I heard a song by this band yesterday, and Pavlov would have been proud: All I could think about was slathering Snake Charmer, standing in the crowded dance floor an arm's length from the bar, and downing my third whiskey sour of the evening. And even though it's not summer yet, their shows are starting again in about a week and a half, so, yay, more Snake Charmer!

 

I think just about every single review of Gladdener of All Hearts is required by law to mention that it smells like Burt's Bees Apricot Baby Oil. Because, seriously, that's the only thing I can think of when I smell GoAH.

This one is all coconut milk and ylang ylang to my nose (wore it in my Clocket), which is not a combination I'm wild about. The annoying thing is that I *like* coconut milk and ylang ylang. Put them together, though, and it turns into tossing out the cotton pad after a couple of hours because it was just way too creamy-sweet for me. It reminded me of buying Japanese candy without knowing what it is since I don't actually speak Japanese. Most of the time, it turns out to be awesome, but every once in a while, I encounter something that just doesn't work for me. I ended up with two decants left over after filling decant circle requests, and I was very excited because I thought this was going to be my big winner since I love orange blossom and am going through a ylang ylang phase, but, well, I'm keeping one of the decants to remind myself why I didn't get a bottle or even keep the other one when everyone raves about this oil. *So* sad that it doesn't work for me!

In the bottle and as I was decanting, I had high hopes for this one. Woody, spicy honey. Perfect. This might be the one that gets upgraded to a bottle.

 

Flash forward to this morning. I needed to empty a bottle for a decant circle. I had meant to empty Penis Admiration, but it turned out I had grabbed Ronin. I didn't realize this until I had slathered myself with the last couple of drops left in the dropper. I had been expecting a sweet-ish vanilla-y floral, which is the sort of scent I can apply with a heavy hand like that. The problems with slathering Ronin: Black pepper, white sandalwood, and six hours in a small room. I amp black pepper like you wouldn't believe, sandalwood can trigger a headache (fortunately, not this time) and both of these notes make me cough. Plus I kept getting dizzy, although I'm not sure whether it was due to the perfume or other issues like my lack of lunch. On the up side, it *was* the last bit of a bottle (about a decant plus a tester, if I recall correctly), so I'm not stuck with a full bottle of an oil I can't wear.

Ye Gods. I hope customs does not open my parcel with Signor Dildo and Beanman and Beanwoman Prepare to Attack the Vagina. Nope. I really don't want to explain that to customs. I really don't think I can keep a straight face.

 

That reminds me of the time in 2008 when I was working for a film festival that was showing a French/British/Lebanese movie called _Under the Bomb_ about the aftermath of Israel's 2006 bombing of Lebanon. Customs seized it because the canisters had the word "Bomb" on them, and we had to either cancel or move one of the screenings.

 

I ended up with quite a few partial bottles after decanting, and I'm pondering decanting the rest for sales/swaps and keeping the bottles just for the labels instead of putting the partials up. I don't usually do this, but some of them are too awesome to at least not seriously consider it.

Ick. It wasn't much upon application. Then I started getting tiny wafts of absinthe and orange blossom as the day progressed, but they were buried under this weird feeling of having the back of my throat coated with guy-friendly soap. And this doesn't *smell* like soap, but that's the feeling I end up with. I can practically *taste* it. This feeling/taste is just something I can't get past to even put it in the oil burner like I usually do with scents that I don't feel like wearing again but think would be nice as a room scent. Do not want to cross paths with this one again.

I looked at the Museum's web site and could never find it (they do have Shrunken Heads!) and since I didn't CALL them to get any perfume.... no, I didn't get any. *weep*

 

My original Black Lace label is a different color, darker blue. The new Black Lace label is the same design but more of a teal blue.

Somebody on LJ said (after talking on the phone to the museum shop) that they will be getting a new stock in soon! w00t! Evidently, they'd never experienced such a rush of interest in anything they sell, LOL! Welcome to BPAL fandom!

 

Oh, I hope so! I was one of the internet orders that got an email an hour later that they had sold out from phone orders. Hopefully Ü will be winging its way to all of us very soon.

 

Per wickedgoddess on Twitter:

U has shipped out to @MutterMuseum; should be back in stock by end of week. #BPAL

Dang it. I was hoping for nice, soothing lavender with some extra added goodness. My skin instantly converts it to fairly generic aftershave. *Nice* generic aftershave, but, still, aftershave. Very much not for me.

I don't get plastic, I don't get nasty vanilla, I don't get almond, and I don't get Play-Doh. I just get soft, creamy (vanilla, yeah, but not candle vanilla), light florals with a teeny tiny hint of coconut. It's very lovely and girlie. Unfortunately, I don't do lovely and girlie. This might smell to me exactly what it smells like to Snow White-lovers, but it's just not my thing, much like I have zero interest in French manicures. I thought this might be my reaction, though, so I'm not disappointed. I'm actually relieved that I was finally able to correctly predict this for a change.

 

ETA: It's still going strong the morning after, and this is even after a shower. I like it less and less the longer it sticks around. I'm hoping I can smother it because I am fortunately in the mood for something heavy.

Um. So. This reminds me of a certain sex toy cleanser I encountered a few years ago. It;s a pleasant scent, but I keep wondering how many other people smell it and think it smells familiar. So very glad I have the Spell of Amorous Love for future cherry blossom needs.

Are the Ars Draconis labels the same as regular GC labels now too? Anyone know?

 

I got a bottle of Tanin'iver when it was DC'd in July-ish (so about six months ago), and it had the dragon label, so if they *were* changed to the GC labels, I'm thinking it happened after that.

I don't know how long I've had this one in my collection (probably a couple of years. I think this was a Lab frimp, so I'm not sure when I got it since it's not in my order history file), but I finally got around to trying it today as part of my Mad Tea Party month.

Wet, I get a spicy woody thing. Nice, but not really my speed. After about an hour or so, it goes all powdery, as amber pretty much always does on me. *Really* not my speed. I'm really glad I put this on in the evening so I'm not being forced to live with it all day.

Sunbird. It's got some brown in it, but I get a hell of a lot of purple, too. Maybe raisin, but as a color, not a scent, if that makes sense. I actually don't smell raisins in there at all even though I seem to recall that they're in there.

For New Year's Day I'm going to wear The Fool. Seems like a good choice on a day of beginnings!

 

Ooh, I had to dig out my decant of this after your post and do the same! I really like fresh-new-start things like that. And since I'm just hanging out at home today, the fact that this is just minty dirt on me isn't going to freak anyone out!

 

And speaking of fresh new starts, for my birthday in twenty days, I will be wearing Queen Alice. Last year and the year before, it was just plain Alice, but I needed a change for multiple reasons, and Queen Alice will fit the bill nicely (chances are high this is going to be the only way in which my birthday is observed other than maybe a text message from my kid brother, so I really had to think this one over to make sure I picked the right perfume).

I've got a couple of nephews who I inadvertently got hooked on BPAL when I gave my sister-in-law some Yule decant circle leftovers (the biggest hit: Ded Moroz). I found this out too late to order some for Xmas for them (and so they're getting nail polish instead), but they have birthdays coming up, and I'm planning on giving them sets of their own BPAL rollerballs. The problem: I don't know what is appropriate for kids. So. I looked in here for suggestions for kids, but all I could find was a thread for very young kids, but I think these two are past that age, and another for girls of all ages, but they're not girls, and my brother would get upset if I gave them girly perfumes (he doesn't care about mixed gender roles, but he does not like notes that have traditionally been used in perfumes aimed at women. All of the females on Mom's side of the family -- including me -- tend to have headache problems with most floral notes, so flowers were pretty much banned in our house growing up, and he still has a "FLOWERS ARE EVIL" reaction to pretty much anything floral, and most perfumes deemed appropriate for girls seem to tend to be on the floral side).

 

Anyway, all of that is to ask: Any suggestions for seven- and ten-year-old boys? As an _Alice in Wonderland_ fan, I'm particularly interested in pushing selections from Mad Tea Party. The only one that really stands out to me as male-friendly is King of Hearts, but that just seems too grown-up for grade-schoolers. I just don't know anything about what is or is not appropriate for kids.

This smells like soap to me. But not just *any* soap. Oh, no, *this* soap is the fancy stuff at that hotel my family stayed at on a trip to Disneyland. I snagged the bars every day because of the fact that they were solid carnation-y goodness until the maids started leaving regular (boring) soap. *Loved* the first stuff, hated the second stuff. And my month birth flower is carnation, and it was my mom's favorite flower, which is why I have that tattoo.

 

So. The scent itself. All I get is carnation. Wonderful, creamy, spicy carnation. In my mind, this is what single-note carnation would be. It smells the same to me whether I wear it in my Clocket or on my skin. When I stopped by the drugstore to pick up some nail polish pens for my nephews, all of a sudden the cashier ringing them up looked at me and said, "*What* is that *wonderful* smell?" I happened to have a decant in my pocket, so I had her sniff it to see if that was what she was smelling. Her reply: "It doesn't smell good in the bottle, but on you, it's *fantastic*." It's a hit! I have a half-bottle left over after decanting, and I was planning on keeping that anyway, but I guess I'll have to get another full bottle and tuck it away for times I need to slather on the soothing comfort.

 

As for comparisons between Hod and Alice, there are no similarities between the two to me, and I had originally thought that Alice would be sufficient for all of my carnation needs, as infrequent as they are. In short, nope. I rarely try one of these long-sought-after ultra-rares and fall instantly in love, but that's not the case here, and I'm very glad I didn't get a decant in a swap because I would have never been able to track down a bottle, and I'm *very* happy that it has been resurrected because now I *will* be getting a bottle, and that should be enough for me since it takes me a year to go through a bottle even with daily use, and I wear a different scent pretty much every day, so one bottle is likely to last me *forever*.

This is a worn-in-Clocket review: I have a bit of the 2006 version left (and a whole lot of the 2008 incarnation), and I can barely smell anything right now, so I decided to go for one of the older Yules in my collection that has just been sort of languishing for a couple of years rather than test something new since I won't be able to tell anything apart. But I *was* able to smell this one despite my congestion, and it's all spicy sticks. Not really something I would reach for on a regular basis, but it will be nice to have the decants for future use. It's probably just my childhood, but, curiously, this reminds me more of camping in the summer in the '70s with my cousins than Christmas.

 

(If this doesn't make sense, we can blame the Ambien! Time to stop posting!)

I've been noticing lately that even for domestic packages, the tracking info isn't getting updated until packages arrive, if at all. So you get the CnS notice when the label is generated, and *sometimes* it gets updated when the package goes through the originating post office, but sometimes not. Up until a couple of months ago, I would also see when it hit my local post office, which would mean that I would see the package the next day, but that doesn't seem to get updated any more.

One winter about fifteen years ago, it snowed so much that a Hummer got stuck on the hill outside my apartment for a week. My office closed for a couple of days. 24-hour grocery stores shut down at 5pm. The buses weren't running. The liquor store was open, though. I bought stuff to make margaritas and cookies (cactus-shaped, to match the margarita glasses, and, wow, *that* is a random detail to remember right now), cranked the heat in my apartment, and broke out the Jimmy Buffett. This oil is that weekend in a perfume. And now I want margaritas. And this is a perfect scent for me today even though it's technically still fall because it's damned cold here today, and I've got the heat turned up, although I haven't broken out the Jimmy Buffett or the margaritas. Not *Christmas-y*, but very *it's been so damned cold I'm losing my mind, so I'm going to turn the heat up and pretend I'm in the tropics today*. Or last December, when my family went to Disneyworld for a week right before Christmas, and my sister-in-law and I drank our way around the international part of Epcot one day while the boys (my dad, my brother/her husband, and their two sons) went on kid-oriented rides on the other side of the park.

 

As for the actual *scent*, it's in the same family as Velvet Tiki and pretty much everything in the Atomic Luau Lounge. Fruit, floral, and fizz. It started as super pink floral, but as it dries down, the grapefruit and yuzu come out. Very nice, and I'm a floral-hater. If I didn't already have about a dozen other oils in the same family, I would pick up a bottle, but I'm set. I'll keep the decant, though, because it's just different enough from the others that I just *know* I'll end up getting hit with a craving for it. Most likely on a Friday once I start working again, since Fridays are when I usually break out these sorts of scents.

 

I actually wasn't going to try this one because it's basically two notes, both of which are problematic for me, but I got some oil on my fingers while decanting, so I inadvertently give it a shot. As expected, gummy bears and wine, both turned up to eleventy billion. That is all. When I sniff it in the vial, it's mostly red currant, which becomes gummy bears on me, and the port is just your basic red wine, which I amp like you wouldn't believe (Wanda and Blood Rose might as well be red wine single notes as far as my skin is concerned). The bad news is that red currant makes me queasy, and I always feel weird about smelling like wine, so I'm finding myself extremely reluctant to even thoroughly skin-test it. The good news is that I already found a nice new home for my half-bottle left over from decanting, so I just have one lone decant to sniff when I start thinking that I want a bottle, which is perfect for me.

 

This is one I had a feeling I was going to love based on how much I dig Season of the Inundation. I was right. Snow and dirt has turned out to be one of my favorite combinations. If anyone had told me that a year ago, I would have thought they were insane. Dirt held no appeal, and the stuff I had tried with snow caused extreme pain. Then SotI came along, and I discovered that as long as it's not accompanied by tons of evergreen notes, snow is *awesome*, and snow plus dirt demonstrates why the Lab's full name includes the word "Alchemy." The nice thing about this one is that it's missing something that makes SotI a scent that only feels right to wear in the spring, so I can wear this one in the colder part of fall and winter! *Very* excited about that.

 

And I thought I was going to be the only person I knew outside of fellow BPALers who liked it. I was wrong: My aunt's housemate spontaneously commented that it's really pretty. This is going on the upgrade-to-bottle list. Other snow scents (so far, that's Snow Maiden and First Soft Snow) will have to go head-to-head to get to be on that list, but this is just such a singular standout that it doesn't have to compete. It just has to be itself.

I know this has probably been asked a gillion times before, but I can't seem to find a working picture of what I need on this thread. Can somebody post a picture of an imp and or a 5mil next to a quarter or something else that would give me an idea of the size? I can't get my head around the size....

 

Crappy cellphone pic, but it gives you an idea:

 

 

Thank you very much! I was actually thinking it was smaller than that. I was thinking I could get my friends a little imp to go with some homemade chocolate as a Christmas present. I was thinking if the imps weren't crazy tiny I could tie them to the bags. This is going to work out nicely.

 

Also, if you've ever had/seen a perfume sample vial from a department store, they're usually the exact same thing. It's more or less an industry standard thing.

Wacky. At first, it was pretty much just like everyone else has said. Very lovely. Then I went for a 5-mile walk. I don't know if it was just the way it morphed on me or if it was affected by the walk, but by the time I got home an hour and a half later, it turned into the herbal/evergreen scent. Maybe a cross between rosemary and sage. I couldn't put my finger on it. Nice, though. I'll have to give this one another try when I'm not going to be hiking all over the place to see if it changes when confronted with activity no more physical than getting another glass of iced tea.

I'm headed out in just a little while (the show starts, like, now, but there's an opening band, and it only takes ten minutes to get there, so it's now time to go change and head on out since the parking can be a bit challenging) to *finally* see Wanda Jackson at a bar/club downtown-ish. I've been trying to catch one of her shows for *years*, and the planets have finally aligned. I've found that Sunbird seems to be my scent to wear to shows at this particular club. I opened the bottle to sniff it for some reason a few days ago and got hit with the need to go to a show there (conveniently, I already had my ticket to tonight's show, so I was set as far as finding a band to see there). So, Sunbird it is.