k00kaburra

This was one of the free imps Beth gave me in my very first order and the uniqueness of it turned me onto BPAL more than the original order did. This was also my first encounter with dragon's blood, now one of my favorite notes. In bottle: It's sweet and fruity, but with the strength of the dragon's blood resin and the rose. This complex scent isn't light enough for spring or summer, but the richness is perfect in the autumn. On me: Rose is the dominant note, tempered by the dragon's blood and sweetened by the wine. Rose normally smells a bit off on me but combined with the other ingredients of this scent it is perfect. As someone said earlier, it's rose with a bite to it. It's a fierce rose for a fierce woman.

In bottle: It smells exactly the way the air does when a lightning bolt has touched down nearby. It's a very exciting, charged fragrance. On me: Eh, not so much. Some quality of the fragrance disagrees with me or has jogged my memory, because I'm now thinking cheap men's soap. I think my boyfriend uses some product that is a simpler version of this. This is one that I swapped away but if I were to get it again I would like to try it in an oil burner to see if it could work as a home fragrance. I quite liked the scent when I wasn't wearing it.

The spirit of temptation, the essence of lost innocence. Apple blossom, rose, ylang ylang and golden honey. In bottle: So crisp! I smell apple blossom and rose drizzled in honey. On me: Unfortunately the crispness of the apple blossom fades to the furthest background and the strength of the rose increases tenfold. The ylang ylang appears as the oil dries. The honey is at the very fringes, sweetening, but it never becomes a strong player in the scent. After an hour the rose remains the strongest and the other notes have faded completely into the background.

True, perfect golden light, refined into an incomparably glorious scent. In bottle: Smells like a special, hallowed place or thing. If I were to stand before a wooden cross, or hold a wooden box that contains some sort of relic, I would expect it to smell of Aureus. On me: There's a very strong wood note that further reminds me of the wooden beams of the church I grew up by. I could never use this as a personal fragrance, but it would be a great fragrance to make my home feel like the sanctuary that it is.)

In the bottle: Light, delicate floral where the rose and jasmine can be individually detected. On me: Quite strong, but terribly wrong. I think I made the flowers wilt or rot! They no longer stand out individually; they muddle together into a sort of vague floral. The scent reminds me of those scented tampons/pads and washroom deodorizers; it's not stinky but nothing I choose to fragrance myself with.)

Havisham really flew! I thought I'd have plenty of time to get it w/ Blue Moon since June Gloom hadn't exactly flown off the shelves immediately. It's a bit frustrating because I expect we won't know who got those final bottles for a while. :-/