amrita

That's exactly what I was thinking... I hope it's not rosey! I figured there are enough people who would take a rosey scent off my hands, though... my curiosity got the best of me.

Dry white sandalwood wrapped in thin woods, soft grasses and the lightest white flowers layered over cajeput and the warm, deep scent of embalming herbs. This reminds me a lot of Wolfsbane, only not as sharp. As it dries, rose sulks out from behind the sandalwood and turns soapy. On my boyfriend, the sandalwood disappears and rose totally dominates the blend-- but instead of being soapy, it smells natural and exotic. I don't think it's something he would actually wear, though... The verdict: I can't see past the rose; this will probably be swapped.

In the imp: A black, sweet (not cloying) berry. A subtle green/herbal, some resiny sharpness. I don't usually like how the oils smell from their containers, but this is an exception! (Not getting any pickles, here... ) It goes on soapy, but within 5 minutes, warms and turns beautiful. A sharp myrrh cleaves seamlessly through sweet, dark, dusty berry. Drying, I get hints of something furry and warm and sweet, like a clean animal. A couple hours later, it still smells sweet and dark, and the color impressions I get are jet black, copper, dark purple, and green. Masabakes lasts a long time and has decent throw, both of which are rarities on me. It is dark and complex, and one of the most sexy BPALs I've tried. (I guess I'm weird. Wait, I know I'm weird.) Definitely in my top 10!

In the bottle - fruit punch. Wet on application - fruit punch, then carnation and cloves. A minute later, the honey warms up and comes out, followed by a powdery, creamy yellow. It is warm and sweet, like the fragrance used to scent a fine delicate floral soap. Almost an hour later, the powderiness has disappeared and it smells of slightly spicy honey. In two hours, all I get is sweet amber. This is a pleasant blend, but my skin sucks it right up, and it's a little too sweet and benign for me. I like the spice before the drydown... too bad it doesn't stay longer.

Upon application, this is a sweet, wet, velvety, sharp, fresh yellow-green. A yellowish pollen smell emerges almost immediately as it warms. But this is a good pollen smell - like daffodils. Several minutes later, the sweetness of berries starts to show. It's very subtle. This berry level is close to perfect as far as I'm concerned. A half hour later, the berry is still subtle, and I smell what I think is maple leaf-- it's the green smell you get when you snap a big deciduous leaf in half. Polleny wildflowers. Damp breeze swirling through treetops. This makes me feels so happy! An hour later, it's almost completely gone. I smell something fuzzy, saplike and green, slightly sweet... it's like the sun has broken through the mist in the forest. This has almost no throw on me and fades really fast, but I'm going to try making a solid perfume out of it and see what happens. I'll probably try it during meditation, too. And because I'm a total nerd, here are links to images of the ingredients so you have something to picture... they're so pretty! Iris versicolor linne (aka Blue Flag) [1] Loganberries [1] Mayflower (Epigea repens, aka ground laurel, trailing arbutus) [1] [2] Prairie crocus (Anemone patens) [1] Wild rose (Rosa dumalis) [1] Mountain avens (Dryas octopetala) [1] [2] Yellow birch (betula alleghaniensis) [1] And its bark... [1] [2] And of course, Maple... [1]

Wet: Dry lime and lilac. This smells soo beautiful. Drying: The musk and a creamy floral note appear underneath the lime and lilac... This reminds me of standing in the window of an old B&B in the San Juan Islands in early summer, looking out at a sun-warmed meadow, feeling lighthearted. After 3 hours, I can't smell the individual lime note, but I think it's still there, drying out the floral musk. I also get a hint of creamy vanilla. This oil lasted the longest of any I've tried. The musk is nice, but it's too masculine for me and keeps going and going-- I just got tired of it. Fortunately, this smells really wonderful on my boyfriend (but the lilac isn't as prominent). I was really impressed with this blend!

Wet: Green soapy blackberries with a hint of boozy cough syrup. Drying: The blackberry warms and sweetens considerably, the soapiness fades, the heather blooms. After time the blackberry and heather together seem almost too sweet. 3-5 hours later: Lingering berry sweetness with a hard sniff. My favorite stage is right after the blackberry warms, but before the heather kicks in. I accidentally spilled this imp on a concrete floor during a class break and had to endure 1.5 hours of the cold volatile soapy parts wafting up. (I apologized to my neighbors but luckily they hadn't noticed... why, I have no idea. ) That event definitely turned me off of Glasgow for a while, but I might give it another try down the road, since the blackberry was pretty nice.

This is so strange. Sudha Segara goes on smelling weakly like sour musty milk with a touch of ginger and doesn't change. Not good! I've tried this several times, from two different imps, and it smells the same on both my fiance and I. I just don't get it! I thought this would be awesome; I love milk, ginger, and honey! (And love the BPAL notes in other blends.) In fact, maybe I'll wait several months and try it again, just to be on the safe side... Skin, I ask you, "WTF?"

Wet: This starts out as an aquatic bay rum and almond. It is simple and smells very masculine on me. 5 min - Vanilla and spice - very nice! Bay rum still going strong. 25 min - Caramel and bay rum. 1 hr - Only vanilla lingers on my wrists. On my neck, I'm still getting strong bay rum, and the smell is just too masculine for me. Will donate to fiance for testing and analysis...

Crappers. This smelled like sour, plasticky coffee when wet, and sour, plasticky coffee with soapy rose when dry. At one point, about an hour after application, a pleasingly complex vanilla wafted up-- I confirmed it was me, but the smell went away after a moment and we returned to the regular program. This blend sounded so awesome... I think I'll wait a couple weeks and try again, just in case.

In the imp I also smell fruit punch (kind of like tropical flavor Skittles). On my skin, fruit punch turns to warm sweet musky apricot. At this stage it is beautiful! Within 10 minutes the apricot fades to the background and the florals and musk are all that's left. It smells like the perfume counter at a department store. I can't wait to try some of the other blends with apricot... hopefully one of them will work for my skin.

When I first tried this, I was fascinated and adored that mysterious floral topnote, the carnation, and the creamy yellow/amber richness. On second try, I found the drydown almost nauseatingly sweet after the spicy carnation fades... I've got to swap it. Sad... I really loved how it starts. I'm curious what the flower is. I imagine it to be white and waxy...it reminds me of something I've smelled while visiting Florida.

Wet: Impressively balanced lotus, juniper, and mint, with a hint of eucalyptus. The mint is velvety, not piercing. Somehow...this smells like those heavy, suffocating fogs that pour down your throat and wet your lungs. Drying: buttermints and dry juniper. A hint of amber or something golden. The mint feels cool on the crooks of my arms. After a couple hours, this dries down to a faint tart lotus/amber. This does have some dark associations for me. It reminds me of a recurring nightmare of clocks I had as a child, and of my step-grandmother's house. It's intriguing; this is a "weird mood" scent for me. I'm sure I'll finish up the imp.

In the bottle, I smell drenched herbs and incense. When wet, the strong herbs and incense fade, and vetiver and rose step up. This rose smells like rosa alba, white rose. I agree the smell is comforting. It reminds of hugging a clean wild furry animal and laying my face on its shaggy warm neck. I smell tree trunks with sap oozing out of the bark. No lemon, pine, or rice pudding for me. After it dries, the scent meshes into warm smooth dark forest with a hint of rose, and fades within a couple of hours. This has really grown on me in the few days that I've had it. It inspires a warm loving feeling that reminds me of the way I love my cats. Weird, but wonderful.

I also get lots of spice when wet and a sweet creamy spicy drydown-- sooo nice. Initially I thought that this scent would be too foody to wear, but found it to be so uplifting and enticing I didn't mind. I had just applied some of it at work when a coworker walked into my office and got a faraway look in their eyes-- "What's that smell? It smells like... like... Christmas!" I don't think it smells exactly like gingerbread (not the stuff I make at least, which is heavy on the molasses and has a sharper clove smell-- oh yeah, and it contains beer ), but that doesn't diminish its awesomeness. And now for the sad news: I had only an imp of this-- I had it with me at an evening class, took it out to apply it, and I seem to have left it there because I couldn't find it anywhere when I got home! Hopefully this will just be a funny story when I FIND IT next week. ETA: I was able to get a bottle of this-- and I was shocked and appalled to notice yesterday that it's almost HALF GONE! The oil is getting sweeter and creamier as it ages too... just really, really lovely. Oh Gingerbread Poppet... I love you so. I don't want to have to ration you. Please don't go!

I haven't refrigerated diluted BPAL, but I *always* refrigerate my carrier oils. I've stored them in there longer than 6 months and haven't had anything go bad yet. This also goes for butters (coconut, shea, cocoa, etc). I absolutely can't stand the smell of rancid oil (especially olive oil for cooking) so I'm very AR about keeping it fresh! I bet storing your carrier-diluted BPAL would be a good idea for the long term, but you would have to wait for them to warm up and mix before applying, to keep them smelling the same, I think...? Maybe you could try using an oxygen barrier...

I have a lot of essential oils, and a few of them were bought as 10% dilutions in carrier oils since they would've been prohibitively expensive pure. I recently sniffed a few that I hadn't used in a long time (6 months maybe?) and I could smell that the carrier had gone rancid! I was pissed but this also let me know that I need to go through dilutions within 1-2 years or I might lose them. I know Beth's blends are mostly perfume oils (I think the site says something like 85%)... but is it possible that the little bit of carrier is going bad over time, in blends where the components don't have enough natural antioxident properties to prevent that? I know you can buy a blend of inert gases that you squirt into the tops of bottles of perfume/essential oils to protect them from oxidation (it pushes all the air out)... maybe that's something to consider for big bottles...?

Wet, I smelled only mixed berry candy (*fancy* berry candy, mind you)-- with a prickly nose-tickling hint of soap. Long after the drydown I got faint, warm sugared vanilla (which was lovely, but required a stiff sniff of the wrist to smell it at all)... At no time did I get amaretto or incense. It took me several tries to see if I could like this, and I finally decided it was too sweet and didn't have enough depth on me. Bye, Bordello!