Little Bird

I'm not exactly sure why I bought a 10 ml of this one unsniffed. So many of the new Wanderlust descriptions just sounded like awesome places that I'd like to visit... the whole unspoiled rainforest idea appeals to my sense of wanderlust so strongly. And I liked the thought of smelling "wet, dark greenery." In the bottle... this reminds me of Two Monsters. All masculine, chilling black musk. On me... black musk. It's a cold, dark, almost crystalline sort of musk on me. I also get a hint of something funky and BO smelling at first. After a few minutes, a sweet and lovely floral note begins to twist its way through the black musk. There's also a very damp feel to this, like flowers in the dark depths of the jungle, smothered in thick droplets of condensation. I was kind of enjoying this one and then, 15 minutes or so into this, it becomes so sharp and perfumey that it's making my eyes water . The floral is now reminding me of sharp opium poppy, and the musk has taken a violent turn. Is this that volcanic gas note? If so, I hate it. In the drydown, this blend quite literally stings my eyes and becomes painfully sharp on me. I had to wash it off. It is not the dark greenery that I was hoping for

Pulcinella and Teresina was the Carnaval scent that I was most excited about. Which figures, because it appears to be the most unpopular one . I am always the odd one out. I heaved a sigh of relief when I realized that it was not the leaky bottle in my order. I love puppets. My dad used to put on the most brilliant puppet shows for me when I was little (he passed away when I was 12), and he made them seem so lifelike and funny. They always make me smile and, no matter how creepy they are, I find them adorable. The artwork for Pulcinella and Teresina is my favorite BPAL label ever. What wonderfully evil little marionettes In the bottle, this reminds me so strongly of one of my favorite rose blends ever: Parlement of Foules. But this is much more intense than Parlement. Deeper and richer. The notes in this have me really worried though. BPAL's cedar goes insanely funky and smoky on my skin, and labdanum tends to smell like baby powder on me. I *so* want this to work on me though. I want to love this more than I've ever wanted to love a BPAL blend... On me... this is another wonderful BPAL rose blend and unique enough to stand out from the others as well. This is a perfect blend of peppered woods, goldeny sweet resins, and full red rose on me. No one note is overpowering the other, but it has awesome throw and keeps wafting around me in the most sensual sort of way. I'm not getting any funky cedar or baby powder. After an hour or so, the woods have calmed and headed to the background (but are still very much present and lovely). Now it's mostly soft rose and a sweet, almost syrupy resin. I love everything about Pulcinella and Teresina. It's going on my top 10 list for LE blends, and I'll definitely snag a few more bottles before it disappears

I am now well acquainted with The Candy Butcher. It butchered itself while it was en route to me and leaked all over my package . Bad Candy Butcher. In the umm... bottle... and mostly leaked all over my other bottles... this smells like dark cocoa powder, hazelnut, and rubber balloons. In my attempt to clean up the leaky mess, I got this all over me. And I mean ALL over me. Like a whole bottle of leakage. And this is still incredibly light on me, to the point where it has almost disappeared after only a half hour. I got that rubbery cocoa smell for a while, then it dried down to a faint creaminess that actually reminds me of butterscotch or caramel. But that strange rubber balloon smell is really off-putting. Candy Butcher is more creme brulee than cocoa on me, with a weird rubbery undertone. Staying power is awful on me too. At least I don't have to deeply mourn the loss of my bottle now, lol. There has to be a bright side. ETA: I usually do well with BPAL's chocolate scents (I LOVE Lump of Coal, Bliss, 13, Cerberus) and the creamy, milky, vanilla scents... so The Candy Butcher is an odd exception for me. ETAA: I aged my replacement bottle for a bit over a year and this still smells off on me. The rubber tone isn't as strong and has morphed a bit, but now I get a faintly burnt scent from this. It's like loads of creamy vanilla added into a bit of milk chocolate with a background of burnt rubber. *Why?*

When I saw the "warm and wet" bit, I instantly thought of Bayou. "A lazy, warm deep green scent with a thick aquatic undertone: Spanish moss, evergreen and cypress with watery blue-green notes and an eddy of hothouse flowers and swamp blooms." And the description pretty much sums it up perfectly. It was one of my first BPAL loves, just because it's so unique and interesting. It smells like hothouse blooms and swampy water... but somehow it makes swamp smell wonderful. A lot of the aquatics have more of a chilly smell to them, but Bayou is very warm on me. The Pool of Tears was like cold, salty water and florals on me. The Mock Turtle's Lessons is a more complex aquatic. And Sea of Glass is just a really beautiful aquatic... BPAL makes quite a few interesting 'watery' scents.

In the bottle... this smells like a field of lavender flowers (herbal stems and all) that have been coated in a wonderful sugared vanilla. On me, this has a cool eucalyptus sort of bite to it that reminds me a bit of pine trees. A cool pine-like something and I'm still getting that wonderful vanilla note. It's a sugary, cool, smooth, and slightly powdery vanilla. Perfect for a dream-time blend. After fifteen minutes or so, the pine and chilly menthol note has disappeared and the soft lavender flowers have returned. More than anything, this is an enchanting vanilla smell on me. A nighttime vanilla unlike any of the other vanilla scents in my BPAL arsenal. Sweet and soothing. In a strange way, this smells exactly like what I imagined those cartoon "dream lands in the clouds" to smell like when I was little. After 2 hours, this is a faint spun sugar and powdered milk sort of scent on me. Like cotton candy and vanilla, only not as sickeningly sweet as those two things could be. It's just so wonderfully comforting. TKO is going to give Sleepy Moon a run for its money. This could very well be my new favorite scent for wearing to bed. It really helps to clear my mind and relax me. Love this one

My boy has taken over my wee decant of Crown of Success. And that is fine with me, because it does strike me as a masculine scent (one that is actually even a bit too masculine for me to pull off). This is earthy and dark, smells sort of like a dark vetiver with hints of black patchouli in it. I also get a bit of the peppery bite that a few other people have mentioned. On me, this stays dark and murky and kind of depresses me... on my boy, a smooth wooden note comes out in the drydown. It smells like sexy woods and earth on him. I gave him the decant when people in his life were trying to drag him down... but he's generally pretty lucky and able to shrug off other people's negativity. Now he just smells extra sexy while doing so

Something in this blend goes very sugary-sweet on my skin. It reminds me of some sort of fruit punch drink with way too much sugar added. Thick, fruity, tropical, and hyper on the sugar. In the drydown, the fruity note takes on a boozy quality that reminds me a bit of wine... spiked fruit punch. I'm also getting hints of rose in the drydown, and the rose goes a bit sharp on me. This isn't a favorite smell of mine, but it's an interesting fruity scent with hints of floral.

First on, Seven African Powers is soapy citrus and a grassy herbal scent. Green, a bit sharp, and soapy. After a few minutes, the soapiness fades away and a bit of something like dry cedar begins to come out on my skin. Over time this morphs from an astringent green scent to a dry, almost dusty scent on me. Like the grasses have dried and a warm cedary scent takes over. It becomes more grounded and earthy. This isn't a scent that I'd wear, really, but I found the transition that it went through on my skin to be rather interesting.

I was expecting this to smell more green and damp, since that's what I think of when I think of 'moss.' But this is a surprisingly dry smell. At first it does smell a bit like damp tree bark on me... earthy, musty, and kind of woodsy. In the drydown though, this is the crisp dollar bill smell that I get from Greed. Dry and papery. It smells just like money. I don't know that I'd ever wear this or want a big bottle of it, but it's an interesting little scent.

Light Myrrh on me was a sort of peppery, dry, dusty woods with hints of sweetness. Dark Myrrh is richer and deeper. I definitely can smell the honeyed note that other reviewers have mentioned. In the drydown, this is like smoky, dark incense on me, but with a wonderful sticky-sweetness. It doesn't remind me of woods as much as the light version. This is very strong and has a lot of throw on me for about an hour, but it fades quickly after that. I love this and the light myrrh but, like the light version, I can't see myself ever wearing the single note by itself. It's gorgeous though <3.

La Flamme has a really beautiful scent to it. Definitely dominated by warm red musk, hints of a watery and subtle sweet orange, and what smells like brown sugar to me. In the drydown I can smell a bit of spicy red rose, but I never get any cinnamon out of this blend (and my skin usually amps up cinnamon). It also goes a bit powdery on my skin, but not in a bad or baby powder-ish way. A sultry and warm sort of powder that envelopes me like a cloud. After an hour, this smells like sweet orange and brown sugar on me, with hints of red musk wafting all about. As for the effectiveness... I have a few specific ideas in mind about what I want to do with this oil, so I'll update this after a few weeks ETA. Hrm. This is not as man-magnet-y as I was hoping. It's a warm scent, but it sometimes seems to go oddly off and metallic when I wear it as a personal fragrance. The boy I used to be interested in hated it, and the boy I'm with now isn't overly fond of it either.

Caliph's Beloved is such a lovely fragrance. It reminds me a bit of Voodoo (my all-time favorite scent), but a warmer, spicier sort of version. It has the same cola smell on me, and perhaps a hint of something like a warm, red patchouli and red sandalwood. This reminds me of that holiday spice version of coca cola in the drydown, which was basically just cola and cinnamon. I *love* that smell. Cinnamon bothers me sometimes, but the cinnamon here isn't overly strong or sharp to me. It's just perfectly sweet and foodie. As for the effectiveness... my sexual excitement is pretty much always at a fevered pitch to begin with, so I'm not sure that I noticed any difference that was out of the norm. I do love this as a perfume though, and will probably go through my bottle and buy more. It's very sexy and pleasant to me. Perfect for heating things up during the winter

I almost didn't buy Chrysanthemum Moon. The description of the opium den terrified me. The whole opium/poppy thing is something that I've learned to fear... the smell of it gives me vicious migraines and actual nosebleeds. But I hate to miss out on a BPAL LE, so I decided to face death and buy a bottle at the last minute anyhow, lol. The beautiful description for the Mum Moon fits it so perfectly. Gold-dusted mums, sensual incense, and spicy ginger are all apparent to me... I could really visualize the story that was told along with the scent when I wore this. A strange side note: This has a subtle background note that smells like a man's lime-scented cologne. It's sexy and pleasant, just not something that I was expecting. In the bottle, this actually smells like some sort of lime cleanser on me too. But it's a light (barely there after a half hour or so), gentleman's cologne on my skin... Mainly this is like spicy, dried flowers and sultry incense. There's probably a bit of amber in here too, because it takes on a warm, dusty quality on my skin. There is that opium poppy note here as well, but it was light and faded quickly enough that even an opium-hater like me could wear this without getting ill. I really was fond of this one. It was a wonderfully comfortingly warm, spicy, dry incense on me in the drydown. I'm going to love Mum Moon this winter

In the bottle this smells like apple blossoms, sweet yellow apples, and honey. It's definitely heavy on the apple, but it reminds me more of the delicate, muted yellow apples than the sour green or crisp red ones. On me... wow. I never thought that apples could smell this beautiful. Les Bijoux smells like love to me. Like really making love with someone who means the world and more to you. Given the description, I was really expecting this to be a bold, sexual scent. An aggressive scent. But it's not at all. This is sweetly trusting, delicately feminine, captivatingly vulnerable. It so embodies the idea of love for me that, when I wore this, I thought about my boy and missed him so much that I started sobbing. This is a romantic scent. Romance at its best. Actually describing the fragrance? An old, cozy blanket thrown down in a field at the height of fall. A chilly breeze swirls around you as the scent of your lover’s skin and your girly perfume mingles in the most perfectly sensual blend. Hints of fading blooms and grasses waft about. You can still smell the sweet, faint scent of the apples and muted peaches that have fallen around you. It's sweet, it's a bit crisp, it's warmly sensual, and you are hopelessly smitten. This isn't a throw down the boy and jump on him perfume. This is slowly being seduced by the boy, getting kissed all over and having sweet nothings recited to you like it's just as special as the first time. I don't normally like fruity scents, but this is such a soft, gorgeous scent. Lots of throw and staying power, but not thick or overpowering. I don't pick out any rose, frankincense, or myrrh exactly, this is insanely well blended, but I imagine that they are the enchanting perfumey notes behind the sweet, goldeny fruits and sexy skin musk. I'm so glad that I splurged on a 10 ml of this one, it is going straight to the head of my top ten list. I'm going to slather on Les Bijoux for my next interlude with my love. This the most beautiful, romantic scent that I've ever had the pleasure of wearing. ETA: I still love my 10ml of this, but recent imps I've gotten of this scent do not smell the same at all. The scent seems to be heavy on the skin musk now, which is sharper and slightly powdery. The fruitiness doesn't have that delicate, honeyed apple quality anymore either, but turns a bit sour smelling. I'll cherish my original bottle of this scent, but I don't like the reformulation/whatever new notes bpal is using for it.

I thought that Neroli was the orange hard candy-ish scent that I get from a few blends... but apparently I was wrong. This single note doesn't smell like oranges to me at all, and it's incredibly subtle and fades quickly on my skin. Maybe I've never picked out the Neroli in blends before, because it's so light on me On me, this is a combination of a bitter citrus note and a perfumey white floral. This would give me a vicious headache if it weren't so subtle. As it is, this only lasted about 15 minutes on my skin. It was oddly bitter, dry citrus on me while it lasted... kind of reminding me more of grapefruit than orange.

I really enjoy the tomato leaf singlenote. If you've ever planted and lovingly tended to a tomato garden, it's a smell that you will recognize fondly. This is just like the way that tomato plants smell when they're out in the warm sun and growing well. Tomato Leaf has a pleasant warmth and spiciness to it, just like the distinctive smell of the plants. If you smell a tomato, you can pick up on the spicy hints and the almost citrussy sort of bite. They manage to be so uniquely green and crisp smelling, while at the same time so warm and spicy. This singlenote is just as captivating to me as the plants have been. It makes me think happily of the gardens that my father and I tended to every summer. The only blend that I've seen this in so far is The Jersey Devil (of which I ordered a 10 ml of unsniffed), and I'm hoping that I can pick out this note in that blend as well. It's wonderful

I suffer from anxiety as well (social anxiety, agoraphobia, and other 'fun' stuff)... My two soothing scents that I've been wearing a lot lately are Hand of Hermes and Sleepy Moon. I find them really calming and comforting. They don't end or cure my anxiety by any means, but they are somewhat helpful in beating down my jitters sometimes, or helping me to relax at the end of a rough day.

Hand of Hermes starts off smelling rather like LUSH's Dream Cream (pleasantly creamy, candy-sweet lavender with an herbal edge) and then becomes very cinnamony on me for a while. After an hour or so, it calms down to a fair mix of sweet lavender and cinnamon. And, just because I feel as though I should mention it, this is probably not a good blend to put on sensitive skins. I have very resilient skin and can wear the best of cinnamon blends without an allergic reaction, but this even made my skin a bit tingly and... burning. It only was bothersome for about 15 minutes, but it is something to take into consideration nontheless.

Like all of my temple blend reviews, this is going to be pretty much just a comment on the way that it smells to me. First on, this smells rather icy and earthy to me. Sort of like a chilly menthol/eucalyptus and some sort of aquatic note mixed with vetiver. It gives me the mental image of fallen leaves and mud around a pond, frozen under a sheet of ice. After about an hour, the ice has thawed and this is a warm, sweet incense and vetiver sort of smell on me. This smells thick and a bit suffocating on me after a while. It's like being in a room where there's just too much incense burning, and the smoke becomes a bit sharp to the nose.

Lucky #20 frightened me a bit in the tiny decant vial that I got it in. At first sniff it was like getting beaten over the head with an overpowering floral bouquet. Sticky sweet and FLORAL. A tiny dab on me and this instantly turned into heavy jasmine with a drydown of jasmine and herbal soap. Soapy jasmine. Thankfully this fades and isn't very overpowering or noticeable on me after about 15 minutes.

On me, this TAL Yemayá starts off smelling like watery aquatic notes mingling with mango and honeydew melon. Aquatics usually smell sharp and soapy on me (yay dryer sheets), but this is a lovely watery smell. Watery in the way that cucumbers smell. In the drydown, this starts to get a lot sweeter on me. It begins to remind me of watermelon jolly ranchers, with a twist of tart strawberry. Somehow it still has a sort of fresh feeling though, keeping it from being too artificially fruity or overwhelmingly sweet. I like this one.

Like other reviewers, this singlenote does the disappearing act on my skin. It only lasted for about a half hour on my skin (which is fine, because I don't really like orange scents). While it lasted, this reminded me of orange tang. You know, that tart and powdery juice mix that didn't taste very good. This doesn't strike me as a sweet smell so much as a sour or bitter orange peel sort of scent. A tad powdery, watery, and very subtle on me.

Rosewood is a note nemesis of mine. This has ruined a few blends for me, because it takes on a very sharp rose fragrance on my skin. In the vial it smells innocent enough, a nicely resinous and polished wood with rose sort of scent. On my skin, it becomes a sharp, stinging rose. I don't get any sort of woods note from it at all. The best way that I could describe the way that rosewood smells on me is that it smells like vomit . Sharp, acrid, and nauseatingly strong.

It's interesting how varied the reviews for this singlenote have been. I was kind of hoping that this would smell incensey on me, but it's more of a buttery floral (smooth, light, kinda creamy, and warm). It reminds me a bit of jasmine, but softer... In the drydown, this goes verrry powdery on me. If there were a jasmine scented baby powder, that's what frangipani smells like on me.

This is going to be pretty much just a scent review for Nine Muses... since I dislike the scent too much to actually ever wear this for the intended purpose. On me, this manages to remind me of floor cleanser and medicine at the same time. A mixture of sharp lemony citrus, menthol-y eucalyptus, and maybe some kind of mint... all wrapped with a heavy helping of soap. This is strong, sharp, and soapy. Tons of throw. It's unpleasantly bitter and distracting on me, and doesn't sweeten up or calm down even after a half hour of wear I ended up washing this one off. It would be more of a distraction for me than an inspiration.