olympia301

Open, that is the word that comes to mind with Bat Woman. Lavender has really not been allowed to overpower the intro to BatWoman and all of it is so well blended that it is impossible to tell one note from another. This one is perfectly balanced, almost too perfectly balanced. It is such a "united front" that there is no one component which is poking out behind the others and commanding attention. Bat Woman is really pretty and worth the effort to obtain it.

I didn't go ga-ga over the description of this one and got it sort of by accident as I signed up for a decant circle...boy am I glad I did. This is a nice blend...veeeeery nice indeed. Very musky almost citrus but not quite. Clean and veering toward woods even a bit cedar-like but not wholly masculine. Anyone could wear it. It is unique and if it reminds me of anything at all, I might be tempted to say Buck Moon but I don't think I am accurate. However the high crystalline quality of it makes me say it is a keeper.

Aglea.

Boomslang and Bliss are great, Velvet is sandalwoody beauty chocolate, Tezcatlepoca (spelled wrong but it starts with TEZ if you want to look it up) is beautiful Mexican chocolate... Whatever you choose, try it out in a scent locket. I really think you are fighting the nature of chocolate scents if you want them to last. By their nature they are fleeting and lovely top notes. They are indeed going to disappear when they dry. You need a nice big scent locket to hang around your neck and let the chocolate scents let loose their prettiness throughout the day.

Boomslang is something which just gets prettier and prettier with age. I would highly suggest you buy yourself two bottles of it, one to use now while it's raw and one to love later while it ages.

Real real nice. I get a lot of vetiver out of the blend, and some smokey too. The smoke is small at first but it sure heats up the room within 5 minutes. Great concoction, that the link between smoke and vetiver was made so smooth and lovely. Real nice. Did I say that already?

This one the the most red musk of the dusty and deep variety I have ever smelled. If you love teh smut, you will adore War. I can smell ginger in here but I pick up red musk to the limit for the most part.

This is a beautiful use of lavender so that it performs it's smoothing and cooling magic and does not take center stage. I love a musk thing going in the background, too. This one is real typy and real good. I love it.

Beautifully rose and butter pastry wring in this scent, with the whiff of black currents slightly hard in the background to give the creamy/buttery part something to play off. Mmmm. I smelled this at a local meet and sniff and I think I am going to need a bucket full of it. Knave of Hearts is a winner in my book.

I just love this one. It is very refreshing and just in time for the Dog Days of summer, which is when we will need it. There is indeed cucumber, not one of my favorite notes but...when used with a deft hand it is dynamite. That is how Beth uses cucumber in The Gibbous Moon, she leaves the coolness of it and burns off the pickle-ness of it. It almost veers into violet (maybe the orris talking) but not quite. There is a floral aspect to it but not the ham-handed Flah-ral sort of "can't be bothered" approach, this is a wonderful addition to the whole and absolutely fitting. I am so glad I ordered this one and was afraid I would not like it, wrong. If you were scared to try it, don't be, this one is a charmer. If it fades too fast for you, wear it in your scent locket. Cool, pale and pretty.

Elegba. I really like that one.

Mmmm-Saturnalia is my big vote. Very vetiver very violet and...:

• Lex Talionis
  
• Eat Me
  
• Snake Oil
  
• Vixen (Red Musk but...)
  
• Ravenous (Earth Orange)
  
• Voodoo
  
• Hunger (with sexah narcissus)
  

That is just a partial list. I think your friend will not be disappointed in the patchouli and vetiver numbers, as well as the vetiver and red musk numbers and...well, you get the picture. I think BPAL is an excellent excellent place for the vetiver lover.

I was lucky enough to get a sniff out of the bottle when I went to a Show and Smell with Moonarcana and ForSpecialPlate in the 'hood. I loved this one. It was all fizzy ginger ale to me. Much prettier than the inmate herself. I could not detect any ketchup in this one whatsoever!

I was in love with Pink Moon 2005. I loved the uber sugar and small pink phlox in it and that it turned into pink pink cotton candy on me. This one is much more grown up, I think, with a really big dose of carnation and some serious perfume to it. I like it and I think the bottle art was excellent. Nice Pink Moon!

I am a Gemini. I don't like lavender as a general rule, too sharp and dry for me. So, of course, I cannot leave anything the Lab does alone...and being the solipsistic slob I am, I had to order some to see if it was meeeeee. Right? Well, I didn't know quite what to make of it at first. That is a good sign, that means it's interesting. It is a lavender blend but that unexpected sweetness of the orchid really puts those two opposites at a pretty point. I do like Gemini a great deal. I think it should be up there with my other orchid happies. If you got it, you won't be sorry. If you are interested in it, I would go for it.

RAvenous. Absolutely the best orange evah.

Wow. I was not expecting this! At first I got a nose hair singing alcohol smell. Wew! Don't smoke and uncork this one, you'll be sorry. It smells like real alcohol/volatile. Then, when it gets on your skin it does start to smell like whiskey but (like whiskey) it does not retain that smell for long it turns into very pure and chuchy incense! Real nice and long lasting. This is incense with the smoke still swirling around in it. Mmmm. One of the most true of burning incense smells ever. I love this one. Well well done, very creative, appealing and lovely and unexpected.

My absolute favorite from the Snake Pit! The description does not do it justice, nor do the list of elements in it because they all combine to form something much more beautiful than the parts being flung in a pot and stirred up! I didn't recognize this as a floral in the first place, it was so well blended. There is a kinship to Snake Oil but you can't pin it down with your nose. I don't have it, I just sniffed it yesterday but it is so very beautiful. I was and am smitten, and I never thought I would say that about a floral.

Snake Oil, Eat Me, sugar and tobacco all together and pumping out the really good scent here. Very foody but very sticky resin done perfectly well. I love this one and it is a shame that it is just a tease. I would love to buy it as a Premium Blend if that were Possible. Since it's not possible, I will just dream of it while I put on Eat Me and enjoy that one.

The icon is about a TV program from the 1750's called Wild Kingdom. The host, Marlin Perkins (lower right) came across an anaconda in south America. His "friend" Jim Fowler (upper left) got hold of it to show it off to the camera, and the snake started to wrap itself around Jim Fowler and was going to have him for lunch. All the time, Perkins was talking away about the habits of the anaconda, "bla bla bla...isn't that right, Jim?". Poor old Fowler; finally part of the camera crew had to drop their equipment and come to the aid of the half eaten Naturalist. Much fun was made of that episode.

I'm voting Boomslang. I love the cocoa and it does oddly morph into a minty range which lifts it up before that goes away and you get a pure Snake Oil thing with accoutrements. I am perishing to try King Cobra.Mmmm that sounds great.

I love this blend because it is a real departure, a turn in the road. This is a light and clever use of lavender as a sophisticated topnote that never overpowers or takes center stage to burn itself out. When it disappears, it does so gracefully. This is a graceful scent overall, one that you would wear to work and be considered fresh and ladylike but efficient and cool. It is a refreshing blend, and if it reminds me of anything, that is Yardley's Bond Street (which has been out of production for years). That is a very high compliment indeed.

The drydown goes to a serious but womanly musk which is wonderful in its compatability with the lavender which was chosen for the opening. I also get amber, a dry and straw-like scent bolstering the drydown phase and it is leading this composition into another direction, back to the nature side again.

Dolce Stil Nuovo is really a well well blended scent and I would vote for having it stick around, elevated to the general catalog. Everything in it works in harmony with everything else, even the strong departure of the musk in the intermediate drydown is done by someone who knows what they are doing.

Abhisarika is a fabulous white floral to my nose. It is as if the assignment was to make the smell of a gardinia out of everything but the essence of gardinia. It is exceptionally fresh and non cloying, which is a real accomplishment for this sort of deeply creamy white flower. I don't get any jasmine here as some do, and the rose is blended into the rest of the flowers so that I can't quite get a grip on it either. But the effect of the whole is indeed floral, and it is beautiful. So, for all the flower lovers out there, this one is a real treasure.

(I love the concept, it's about time that we all got a bit of information on how beautifully Indian culture handles sexuality, so different form the west and entrancing. If we were busy dividing the Annunciation into five parts and panting over each one, the Indians were busy deconstructing the orgasm. *sigh*)

This one reminds me of Blood Moon. Go ahead and laugh, but it just does. I would never have guessed that it contained any of the ingredients listed (white carnation, iris, orange blossom, and sugared cream). It's more of the cassia side of things to me and I bet that is because of the transformation that scent notes go through if you blend them correctly. The carnation's clove scent is muted by something else and bent into a cassia thing. I can detect the orange blossom in the background and maybe the iris but sugared cream is subsumed into some other set of rooty dark scents.

Zarita is an original and I really have to say that the end product is fascinating in that it proves a good perfumer can take a set of well recognized ingredients and turn them into something entirely different than the sum of its parts.

I love the smell of violets and Faith is all beautiful candied violets.At first I was worried that it was going to be fleeting but faith grew in intensity and encased me in a cloud of sugary violet lovliness. I don't think she will have to be imprisoned in a scent locket, she will last on your skin but I think a scent locket would make it an all day and into the night affair. Faith is a thing to make you yearn for spring, a perfect Black Phoenix scent appearing at the right time.

I wore Hope in bed last night and its creamy goodness was a great way to sleep and wake up with a happy scent all about me. I swear that I think my bottle of Hope smells more like the rose one and Faith like violets!

This is the beautiful smell of roses (to me) and the Antique Lace kick that I love so much. My only problem with Hope is that she dries down almost completely on my skin and does not broadcast as much as I would like. However, putting her in a scent locket does the trick. This one is made for a scent locket! It's a great perfume and if you haven't done so, give it a try and then buy it. It is definately worth the price of admission!