Kippy

It was the aspen leaves that got me. I was desperately hoping for the scent of decaying aspen leaves, the smell of the forest in fall under a golden cathedral of quaking leaves. I just knew I'd get my package today, and when it was, this was the first bottle opened and slathered on my forearm. It's not quite living up to my desires, but I'll give it a day or two to calm down and try it again. There's some aspen in here, herbalish, clean, but it's really subdued. We need MOAR ASPEN up in here. I can't smell the roses at all, no great loss. Mostly it's a flower, I can't pick out which one. To me, it's more evocative of the color of aspens in fall, rather than the actual scent.

Aquatic, mint, a whisper of pine. The drydown was lovely, but after an hour and a half the mint and the pine are gone, now I've just got aquatic.

Doesn't quite smell like an upended Halloween bag, cause the bags generally have some chocolate in there! If you like foody/sweet, this is a good one. Stawberry, sugar, and caramel, and a little cotton linen keeping things clean. It's kin to Sugar Skull, but the strawberry and cotton really makes this one pop and make it more intriguing.

Let me start by saying I just love this. Innocent and sweet with secrets. I have a really hard time identifying lavendar as a scent. I grow ten types of it in my garden, love the scent, but if I put on a blindfold and was asked to identify what I'm smelling, 70% of the time I would get it wrong. What others are getting as a lavendar punch at the start, I'm smelling as baby powder. Since that's appropriate to the concept, I could swear it's baby powder I'm smelling. The baby powder scent calms down upon drying, just a hint floats over the top when dry. The Snake Oil and Dorian base smell exactly as I imagined them. It's innocent with a troublemaking streak, like the toddler that blurts out some embarrassing fact in public.

White rose and honeyed cream. Rose and honey, a great combination. Virginal would be the word I would pick for this. Perfect for those days where you feel like being the ingenue. I pick up no cream. Lower throw than you would expect from rose or honey, or maybe I wisely applied just a teensy bit. Honey keeps it long lived too, the rose faded out after about four hours, but it's still a teensy bit there after six.

This is syrupy cloyingly sweet. The woods aren't prominent, and relinquish the mix to honey vanilla and cherry tobacco quickly. The cherry tobacco isn't enough to balance out the sweets. I'm left in a diabetic coma.

Samhain 08 I'm new, so never had a chance to try the previous versions. I'll compare to Harvest Moon, since it's similar in notes. HM was fir and spiced cider. Samhain is also fir and spiced cider - however, there is less fruitiness and more spices here. Samhain is more wearable while HM seems more potpurri or room scent. HM seems like a contrived fall scent, where Samhain invokes the season while doing it's job of making you smell fantastic. Really quite lovely. Edited to add, DAMN WHAT SMELLS SO GOOD??? OH IT'S ME!! Quite lovely doesn't cover it. Must.get.another.bottle.

It starts all fir and spiced cider. It's really apple-ish on the dry down, it's not immediately apparent that the fruitiness is more of a grape. Grape tends to escalate and get wildly strong over time on me, it does it here too after about an hour of wear. While very evocative of the season, it's a bit too close to a potpurri or room scent for me to really enjoy as a perfume.

This was almost all grass for me. I was hoping for some more leaves.

Harumph. Other posters have said it's woody or aquatic, now I'm going to muddy the waters further and say it's a floral. My first impression is dirty floral. It's not immediately rose to my nose - the copal and agave are covering it a bit and keeping it in control, but yep, if you concentrate, there it is. I'm definately picking up the cigar tobacco, it's whats keeping this floral a little dark, a little dirty. In time, the woods come out and it gets a bit cologney. Nice - not a homerun, but it will get some rotation this fall. It's a welcome change from all the vanillas that seem to be multiplying like tribbles on my bpal shelf.

Chaos DCCCXIX (819) CARAMEL, big time. When the lab sends me a fresh mix of caramel, all I smell is celery seed. It goes away in time. I'm going to have to give this a couple of weeks to see if it calms down. On the upside, I rescued Agrat Bat Mahlat from the NO pile to compare, and now that Agrat has cooled her heels for a while, there is no celery to be found and I'm liking her. Update: 9/26 - the celery aspect has calmed down quite a bit, and now I'm able to wear this. It's caramel and fig. Good throw, long staying power.

This is one of my favorites. The first time I tried it, vanilla was the first thing to come to mind. I came back and checked the description, and was a little surprised it didn't list it as one of the notes. But on second sniff - maybe it's not vanilla at all but that soft smudgy quality of vanilla that softens the edges of other scents. It's got a creamy quality, but doesn't smell like cream. It reminds me of glaceed fruits over ice cream, or a big puffy pink pillow.

At first sniff in the bottle - I was skeered. Totally astringent, sharp, chemically, scary. It's the old-skool OFF! with the orange top. I took the plunge and put it on. The OFF! quality fades quickly and I'm not skeered anymore, but still.....Do I hate this? Do I really really hate this? Maybe it's not so bad. Wait, am I starting to like this? Or do I hate this? I could love it maybe, a little. Or not. The problem is, I can't really say what it smells like. It doesn't really smell like its notes - I'll just remark it has a thin, dry quality. And I suspect it might grow on me. But I might hate it.

It's Lush Honey Waffle soap. Dead on match at the beginning of the dry down. (YAY!!! I love that soap!) I'm not picking up the nutmeg or clove at all, just herbal honey goodness. As time moves on, it does develop a fuzzy vanilla-ish quality, but I don't think its actually vanilla. The lemon is just barely there. Another win for the honey lovers!

Wet - pure chocolate. Bitter dark chocolate. Dry - Chocolate Chocolate Choco.. bugspray! Chocolate Chocolate *eyes honeysuckle suspiciously* The bugspray scent doesn't get out of control though, as chocolate is rounding out the edges and keeping whatever it is from leaping out. This will merit a second chance.

Oh Inez. You are beautiful and I surrender to you completely. This one is a morpher: Inez breezes through her components, each one presenting itself almost like (but better than) a single note, one by one, until they all fade into warm amber vanilla (and yes, a little oatmeal cookie!). Incredibly sexy. I can't imagine the men-folk standing a chance.

When wet, I'm getting the patchouli slap mentioned above. It mellows considerably as it dries. Spices and carnations are a natural combination, so if you like that scent, prepare for Clemence, the SPICIEST of the spicy carnations.

I'm not a fan of this. It was excellent in the bottle, but when on got very jangely on my skin, like all of the notes were there, but just not melding into a single perfume. There's metallic and spice and men's cologne, all feeling incongrous and clashing. When I got into a car with my friend, she asked if I had been smoking clove cigarettes. I like the smell of clove smoke on my jacket, and I would say this wasn't really that smell, but not totally unlike it either.

I don't really know what a poppy smells like either, I've always considered the ones in my garden to be pretty scentless. This smells like a meadow - or more like throwing your blanket down and having a little picnic in a meadow. There's green grass and crushed bitter stems, tiny wild flowers peeking through the mass of stems, and the sweetness of berries and honey that you are eating. The honey and berries are pretty subtle, and I amp sweets, so you might not notice them at all. The greens really dominate for me. Verdict: thumbs up for capturing a place and a mood, and wearable to boot.

When this was wet I can smell the epazote and probably some of the coriander underneath sweet amber, and I liked. Then it dries and it goes to a flat non-descript sweetness - I'm not sure it's exactly the scent of bubblegum but it's the feeling of bubblegum. Yick. Get it off!

On first sniff - how can this smell so grapey with no grapes or berries listed in the notes? It's grapey and sweet and has a bit of an exotic thing going on in the background. So very berry. After dry down the honey is the main note, but the musks and the ylang ylang are keeping it from being candyish or foody. I love it.

The cruelest of all BPAL moments is when you find something that really, really works on you, is an expression of your personality in scent, eureka, you've found it, I must have 10 bottles......and then your skin just eats it. I mean, this has patchouli in it, it should stay on my skin for days! 20 minutes. I shall try again and hope I'm having a fluke day, but I fear I'm going to be bitterly disappointed. The patchouli is prominent but not hippyish, and the violet and moss lend a sophistication to this. The violet isn't as prominent as I had expected, but that's ok.

This one isn't debauched at all. This is a sweet and innocent scent. It reminds me of lemon pound cake and a gentle orange blossom and rose. None of the notes really take over, it's quite well balanced. The rose stays well behaved. I really like this, but my skin just eats it. I can slather away and in a half hour it's gone.

I don't quite get a real rosemary scent here, but there is a slightly herbal background to the roses and orange blossoms. It's a sweet and lovely perfume though. I like, but this one only sticks around on my skin for about an hour.

A lovely, lovely perfume. I was expecting something less wearable based on the description, but this is a great day scent. As others have said, this is a warm aquatic with a spicy floral kick from the awapuhi. If you are on the fence with aquatics, this would be a good one as the warmth really brings something different.