Little Bird

I was so sure that I would love this. I adore anything puppet-inspired, I love the lab's apricot and black patchouli, and I'm generally pretty fond of woods. Unfortunately, the apricot and the patchouli don't seem to survive the blending. In the bottle this is cringe-worthy. It's sickly sweet... too much brown sugar, hyper caramel, and sugary butterscotch. It's like someone had too much sugar and then threw it up on a pile of pencil shavings. On me, it's thankfully not that tooth achingly sweet. It just makes me smell like pencil shavings. Definitely dry woods. Unpleasantly dry and a bit dusty. I hoped that this would morph into something fantastic if I just wore it for a while, but it smelled lightly of pencil shavings for about a half hour and then disappeared. My skin eats this. I'm going to keep my bottle around for aging and re-try it, but for now I'm just sad.

I had to try this after all of the rave reviews, but I'm not really crazy about Minotaur. In the imp vial it smells like a not-as-lush and more perfumey version of Priala. On my skin, it's perfumey-sharp and powdery. I love the smooth, sweet resin blends like Midnight Mass. I love Priala's dark, thick qualities. Minotaur is sharp and musky more than resinous on me. In the drydown, it even turns intensely soapy, which I'm not used to resin/incense blends doing. If I had to guess at the notes in this, I honestly would have figured it was a perfumey floral blend with some powdery incense in the background at first. The drydown is sharp floral soap. Not for me. This one is headache inducing.

Florence is my ultimate spicy-fruity scent. It's really beautiful with the berries and spice. I definitely recommend trying that one if you haven't already .

(First off, I love the kitties in your avatar ) And... this isn't BPAL... but if you love the smell of fresh, true orange, have you tried Masaki Matsushima's "Mat; Orange" fragrance? It's really the most perfect, true, freshly cut orange scent I've ever found. I love it. For perfumey BPAL... you might want to try Faiza, Black Mamba in the LE Carnaval section. It had a classic perfume smell to me, and it also has orange pulp, vanilla, blackberry and florals in it that you might enjoy. Tweedledee is one of my favorite fruity-floral scents from BPAL. The orange blossom & citrus in that one really shines. I actually found Tweedledum to be a more perfumey citrus too, so you might want to try that one as well. Also, I'd have to recommend checking out some of the blends in "The Salon." Almost all of those have have a commercial perfume feel for me. Good luck!

I used a sample vial of this in my oil burner. It's a very clean scent to me... almost like lemony dish soap. Bright and citrussy. The boy really liked it as a house fragrance.

Lady Luck Blues is my favorite out of the recent Friday the 13th update. It is also my boy's favorite (on me; it's a very girly-pink scent that he wouldn't ever wear, lol). When I asked him to smell it, he said, "It's nice. I like it. It's a little baby powdery though... you hate it, don't you?" And it is a touch powdery, but it's not powdery enough for me to dislike it. I wouldn't have even noticed it was powdery at all if he hadn't pointed it out to me. This is definitely a rose scent. The rose note dominates and stays strong... and it smells rich, red, and a bit spicy to my nose. It's the only note that I can definitely pick out, though there is some fruitiness to this blend as well. At first it smelled like that rich rose and sweet tarts, though the fruity aspects became more juicy in the drydown. It is definitely a tart fruit in this blend. There is also a creamy sweetness here that lingers and pops up every once in a while (perhaps the honey and tonka?). I really like this. It's an excellent rose blend, and a girly scent that I can actually pull off. I love how sultry the roses are. The touch of tart fruit and creamy honey-tonka-vanillaflower make this especially beautiful.

I have mixed feelings about this scent - it's very interesting and intriguing, but I can't pull it off as a perfume at all. In the bottle and first on my skin it smells strongly of green moss and caramel. The combination of foodie, edible caramel and... moss... is a little strange for me. I feel like those two notes shouldn't be together in my mind. The caramel and the addition of the 'dust' ruin this for me, but they're also what make it intriguing. Over time, the caramel of this fades and the scent gets much darker and deeper. It smells like earth (literally like dirt) and the wood of trees. I don't really like black musk, and it is very strong and perfumey in this blend during the opening stages... however, it's bearable for me. The dark musk is like a chilly, man's cologne wafting on a breeze through the forest. After fifteen minutes or so, the 'dust' note in here really is very, very dry. The dust keeps it from feeling like a lush forest to me. This feels like a forest that hasn't seen rain in years and is literally drying up and dying slowly as the dust takes over. It's very interesting because the dust note comes out for me gradually; it's like I can literally smell the forest drying up and turning to dust. Dark, earthy, foresty, and incredibly dry... I keep getting images of The Dust Bowl where fields literally dried up and just blew away in the wind. Bad Luck Woman Blues is too dry for me to wear. It becomes almost painful to smell, like it's getting caught in the back of my throat and suffocating me. Still... it gets points for being very interesting and giving me some vivid imagery.

It's weird how everyone seems to have a different amount of cocoa in their bottles. My bottle has little brown smears on the sides and then stuck to the bottom, like the cocoa ran down the sides and is now plastered to the bottom. Plus, my bottle isn't even full up to the shoulders. If I shake it up, a few solid looking bits of cocoa float up, but they don't seem to blend with the rest of the clear oil. In the bottle this smells like heavily spiced cocoa. Cardamom and clove with a hint of hot chocolate. On my skin, the spices take over. This actually reminds me slightly of Treat #2. The spice is dry and perfumey on my skin, and something in this is rather sharp on me. Sharp, perfumey, dry spice. ETA: And my boy doesn't like this one either. He sniffed my wrist, made a face, and said, "Sharp. Wash it off." Which is fine, because it is giving me a bit of a headache anyhow. Sad. I loved the first two Thirteen blends.

The boy and I love pine/forest scents, so I snagged a partial bottle of this one for him. On me, this starts out a somewhat sharp evergreen, and then mellows down to a sweet pine sap for a bit (I love this stage) before drying down into nothing but woodsmoke. It's way too smoky for me to wear, and I'm not a fan of the smoky-cedar smell. It just makes me smell/feel dirty. It works out well for my boy though, because he wanted this simply for the 'woodsmoke' in the description. He has been dabbing a little bit of this underneath his other colognes (mainly Givenchy Pi, which is one of his favorite pine scents) and it just adds a sensual, foresty smokiness. It makes him smell like he's been out camping overnight, only cleaner, lol. I'm glad we have a couple mls of this one. It smells delicious on the boy when it's layered underneath some of his other colognes. It's not one that I would ever wear, and the boy said he wouldn't want to wear it on its own though. Still... very fun for layering purposes .

This blend reminds me a little bit of Dirty's sweet, almost-floral laundry soapiness. It is like Dirty covered in heaps of grass clippings and dandelions. Green, a pleasant bitterness, and a sweet soapiness. It does turn a bit more soapy on my skin than I would like, and it fades fast on me. My boy really loves this one for himself, but says that the poor staying power keeps him from wanting a bottle. Wish it lasted longer.

I love tonka, but I can't really pick the tonka out of this blend... and I'm not sure what exactly hops smell like, but this is a rather bitter, dry blend on my skin. In the drydown it gets a bit sweeter, though I wouldn't pick out cherry or tonka. A Bold Bluff is a dry, sweet tobacco on me. I'm not crazy about this one.

I expected this to be such a dark, heavy scent, but it really does have Buck Moon's soft, sweet musk. It's light, creamy, and almost reminds me of vanilla or tonka. With the leather, it reminds me a bit of Perversion (which is a blend I love on the boy these days). A Bachelor's Dog is a pretty simple scent with the soft musk and leather. I might enjoy this, but I really don't care for the smoky cigar scent that dominates in the drydown. I have an awful time wearing tobacco notes though.

Something about this smells exactly like green olives on my skin - sour, damp, very salty, and with a pinch of sweetness. It makes my mouth water. And it stays like that on my skin. I can go and sniff a jar of green olives in the kitchen, and that's exactly what Riding the Goat smells like on me. If I sniff very deeply, I can get hints of sweetly smoky something underneath it all. After 15 minutes... whoa. Now it has gotten a bit too sour. This smells a little like... pee... on me. Still, very salty and pungent. How strange. This doesn't smell like any BPAL I've ever tried before. It doesn't smell anything like any of the incense blends that I have. Something in this goes very soured on my skin. I definitely need to smell this on someone else.

Okay... this is going to sound weird... when I was little, my mother had these taco scratch-n-sniff stickers that she gave me... and that's exactly what this smells like in the vial and on my skin at first. Spicy taco stickers, lol. I kind of wish that it would keep that smell. In the drydown, this is a bit much for me. The slightly soapy rose mixed with dirty tobacco and cold leather makes me a little nauseous. I can pick out all of the listed notes, and it goes soapy and cold on my skin. Over time, this just gets sharper and more soapy as the rose water and 'perfume' amp up even more. Boo. The Dogs don't seem to agree with me

New Year's Eve in Dogville is interesting at first, but not at all wearable for me in the drydown. In the vial it does smell rather grassy, wet, and clean. It's like a lawn at night, covered in chilly dew. Something in here almost reminds me of cucumber or melon, but it's not as strong a note as either of those things. On me... this quickly morphs into the sharp musk from hell. It is the generic perfume scent of my nightmares; like my mother's old, musky perfume bottle that always smelled strangely off to me. Or like the heavy, cheap perfume that my sister-in-law uses to try to cover up the smell of her drunken binges. It smells like a very aggressive, sharp, cheap white musk. New Year's Eve in Dogville is one of those musks that makes my eyes water and will give me a headache pretty quickly. I had to scrub this off after fifteen minutes. Um. I hate this one.

In the vial this is verrry sweet coffee and something spicy, like peppered woods. On me... smells like lots of butterscotch, some coffee, and a bit of pepper in the background. After 5 minutes or so, this dries down to a very sweet, very warm scent. It's not in-your-face spicy, but it seems to radiate warmth. I can't really pick out any of the coffee. It smells like butterscotch and caramel with a background of spicy woods. I'm not getting the bitter, black coffee that others have mentioned at all. My skin seems to amp up the sweetness in this blend. I normally hate tobacco (smells just dirty & smoky on me), but I can't smell any tobacco in this blend. I think that I'm getting that peppery spice from the 'dry woods.' This ends up being one of those scents that I like and appreciate, but I'm not sure that I'd ever actually wear it. It reminds me a little bit of Tiresias, only sweeter and not as good or complex.

In the vial, this is one of the sharpest, soapiest scents I've ever come across. On my skin... the same. I wanted to know what 'wool' smelled like, but I don't think this is it. I asked my boy what he thought it smelled like, he said, "Cheap dish soap?" Then he refused to let me try it on him. I can't say I blame him. Kelly Pool is just awful on me.

I was hoping that this would be a dreamy blend for my boy, but it's not as smooth or creamy as I imagined it would be. White musk can either be crazy-sharp and reminiscent of cheap hair spray and chemicals on me, or it can be chilly, creamy, slightly sweet, and gorgeous. The white musk here is of that sharp variety to my nose. On me this is that sharp musk and cold leather. On my boy, it's pretty much just leather - cold and dark and very much not him. Where is the beautiful lilac fougere that I was anticipating?

Not at all fishy; rather, quite Springy! Innocence spiked with a little bit of foolishness: Lenten rose, crested iris, Virginia bluebell, primrose, moss phlox, blue crocus, daffodil, and dewy tulip with a touch of sugar blossom and honey. I keep trying floral perfumes in the hopes of finding ones that smell like real flowers. I especially cannot resist the daffodils; they are my favorite flowers and I love the way that they smell in real life. I like the smell of flowers, but I tend to hate the way they translate into perfume. Unfortunately, Poisson d'Avril is more perfumey, chemical flowers on my skin. I cannot pick out any of the listed floral notes, I just get a perfumey, flowery mishmash of scents coated in toothachingly sweet something. It does somehow still give off the impression of being bright and springy. I like this one more after a half hour or so on my skin, though it still isn't the sort of fragrance I'd personally wear. It lightens up on my skin and the sweetness calms down, taking on a sort of powdery quality. Powdery, light, bright florals.

I thought that I would adore Milk Moon 2007... I enjoy the original Milk Moon and I LOVE BPAL's fig note. Unfortunately, this is awful on my skin. I am not one of the lucky ones who got this to work with their skin chemistry. It really does smell like spoiled milk and overripe fruit. And it is sort of sharp and acrid like baby spitup. Really... really not something I want to smell, much less smell like. I wish this had been more like the original

I'm a Taurus, but I've never been fond of that whole 'May flowers' cliché that my birth month seems to get stuck with. I opted for a decant of this one after reading the list of notes, and I'm glad I did. The oil seems to have a psychotic episode on my skin, like it can't figure out who it is and none of the notes are working together. It's sharp, it's herbal, some mint is hopping around, it throws out some intense soapy notes... after 20 minutes or so, it finally settles into a sickly sweet apple blossom and soap, then it fades away. Thankfully, this doesn't have very good staying power at all on me. This definitely isn't a scent for this Taurus. Thanks for the decant anyhow, Cass.

Definitely get Tamora . It's one of the most beautiful BPAL scents I've ever tried... warm and sparkling. Very pretty. I also love Caliban (exotic rainforest scent) and Jester from the Illyria series. It'd probably be a good idea to read over reviews, see if your friend likes florals, and pick out a varied imp pack. But definitely get Tamora

I'm not crazy about cinnamon in general (it's normally overpowering and sharp on me), but Cockaigne smells exactly like cinnamon toast to me, in that perfect-pastry sort of way. I was just sniffing my two 10 mls of it this morning and swooning . It's worth a try if you haven't checked it out yet.

In the bottle this kinda reminds me of Midnight on the Midway. Crisp, citrus air, midnight florals, and some candy sweetness. The boy said "flowers and citrus" and "smells nice." I was worried about the florals & fruit in this... I dislike jasmine and grapefruit especially. To my surprise, I really love this blend though. The words that keep popping into my head to describe it are 'tart and fluffy.' All of the notes are on their best behavior with not one of them going off or offensive on my skin. The florals here are sexy and sweet (slightly creamy and tart) rather than being the perfumey florals that I fear. The pink grapefruit isn't sharp like most of BPAL's citrus; it adds a tart, juicy twist to the blend. And the vanillas are... The vanilla comes out more in the drydown (as the citrus juiciness fades) and this just gets better and better. This Monster Bait is a floral that I can wear. (As an odd aside, Too Faced's quickie chronicle makeup palettes have a similar tart fruit & candied vanilla smell that I get from this - and I always wished I could smell like those palettes, lol). I'm rambling. I always ramble when I love a scent. This is great stuff. I'm definitely getting several more bottles when it is more readily available. ETA: The drydown of this smells exactly like La Maison de la Vanille's "Vanille Divine des Tropiques" on me.

My wee drop of this is quite hateful. It's definitely a perfumey floral, going all musky and sharp on my skin. It also smells sort of dry to me. I won't be trying to find more of this one.