Little Bird
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Everything posted by Little Bird
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Honey flavored sugar, all sweet and cheerful and bright, sprinkled over sweet, ripe, milky fig, with an air full of meditative, calming incense. All of the notes are sweet, but in a delicate, smooth, non-cloying way, and the milkiness of the fig makes everything feel so creamy and soft. I didn't expect to love my partial bottle as much as I do. I love creamy, gourmand notes paired with incense, making me think of sweet offerings and old temples.
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Blackberry Moon 2022 has vintage bpal vibes for me at first (the berry reminding me of the blackberry in Glasgow and kind of having a mellow, candied vibe like Jester). I'm glad that the fresh, green notes that I was worried about don't show up at all on my skin (no tea, no bergamot, no green leaves) and the other notes (earthy patchouli, delicately sweet fig, musky amber) add a warm, earthy, perfumey base to the blackberry. The berry turns more rich and wine-like over time and I'm still really loving the musky, ambered base and earthy tones. The scent feels a bit mature to me, a bit vintage, deep and autumnal.
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I loved the scorched milk note in Snake Milk, so I thought I'd enjoy this blend, but I don't get the same scorched milk note and I'm not loving the variety of chocolate used in this blend. The chocolate in this is coming off as very artificial / chemical to me, like a fuzzy scented marker sort of chocolate, and it has an undertone of way too sweet caramel that comes off as a candle type of scent to my nose. 10 minutes in, it smells like a caramel scented candle and no chocolate at all. Slightly waxy/plasticy.
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The first 45 minutes are tangy, sweet raspberry jam and apricot marmalade. Then the fruitiness fades to a more nondescript, slightly sour berry, and a somewhat musky vanilla sugar comes through in the drydown. I wish it held on to the opening stage because the drydown is a little reminiscent of berry flavored cough syrup to me. By the three hour mark, it had already faded away completely.
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This is like 50/50 the perfect marshmallow and the perfect chocolate. It's realistic like sticking your face into a bag of marshmallows, all creamy and sugary and vanilla-y, and the chocolate is like a perfect mug of rich, fudgey hot chocolate. Very satisfying.
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I can barely tell the difference between Cacao Pod and Boomslang, except that Boomslang lasts longer on me and I think that Boomslang is just a bit richer, smoother and more complex. Still, I can barely tell the difference when Cacao Pod is first applied, until it starts to fade around the one hour mark. The cocoa absolute, undertone of creamy sweetness, and dark musk are all very reminiscent of Boomslang. It makes me want to dig through my packed boxes and find a bottle of Boomslang to slather.
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I talked myself out of buying this so many times that it went out of stock and I wound up getting a bottle in the secondary market. I love it and I'm glad that I finally took a chance on it. It's so gourmand, sweet and creamy. Sweet cream with a drizzle of honey, all sugared milk and snuggly. The carnation adds an essence of warm spiciness. The vetiver has a little smokiness to it in the drydown, but it never gets overwhelming on me (and isn't the variety that can smell like roasting cedar planks or mesquite bbq); it's more of a hint of sweet, caramelized smoke on my skin. The peony is barely there on me, just a whisper of fresh floral that I catch every once in a while. I really enjoy how it all plays out on my skin.
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I have no idea why I bought a bottle of this because rosewater is usually too sharp for me in perfume (though I love rosewater in skincare products), gardenia is usually too bold and heavy of a white floral for my tastes, and I don't tend to enjoy powdery scents. Young Woman Powdering Herself starts off scary, but a half hour into the drydown, does mellow out into something pretty and wearable. It goes on sharp, like nailpolish remover, with sweet, chalky powder, and dries down a little less acetone, but still has a screechy hairspray quality to the white floral gardenia that never entirely goes away, though it does fade a lot over the hours. The rosewater comes out and freshens things up in the drydown and, mixed with the sweet powder, smells like dewy, sweet, pink roses after a while. Candied pink roses, but still dewy and fresh, with a lingering undercurrent of sharp gardenia, and a sweet, powdery finish.
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I like how all of the Lunar New Year scents smell similar, but there are subtle differences along the line of them. Water Rabbit is sweeter than many of the others and has a juicier, happy, sweet fruitiness, and it doesn't come off as soapy as many of the other Lunar New Year blends have on my skin. This one is juicy, shimmering, orange jellies, tropical lychee juice, a hint of watery green from the bamboo, and a little bit of warmth, intrigue, and red glow from the dragon's blood incense. Very pretty, playful, and cheerful.
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I just got a bottle of this and I'm confused by how clean, sharp and cologne-like it is. It's a sharp, watery type of cologne scent with lemony tones and a soapiness that makes me think of creamy bars of generic white soap. A freshly scrubbed and topped off with axe body spray type of scent. Of the listed notes, I can maybe smell a whiff of leather at first, but I get no patchouli or warmth from this scent. It smells very chemical and clean.
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Cacao, Sweet Patchouli, Clove, and Green Cardamom
Little Bird replied to Seajewel's topic in Lupercalia
My favorite of this year's chocolates, and I almost didn't order this one because I figured I have enough patchouli and cocoa blends and I'm tired of cardamom in perfume. I think that this one is a very sensual and grownup cocoa, though. It's plush like fine cocoa powder, but has a little sweetness to it and isn't bitter, and the patchouli just rounds out the natural earthiness of the cocoa. As it dries down, it smells like there's a tiny hint of caramel in it as well. The clove and green cardamom meld together pretty seamlessly and I like the green cardamom more than the usual, overly sweet cardamom note. The spices feel mellow and calming. After a half hour, there's a little sweet smokiness in here as well, like smoked sweet clove. The overall feel of the blend reminds me of Mayan Chocolate with Annatto Seed, Anaheim Pepper, Cinnamon and Vanilla Bean, and I've been missing that scent for the past couple years, so I'm happy to have this as a replacement. -
The sweet myrrh in this is so strong and beautiful. It smells thick and rich, like sticky amber paste, with tones that are slightly clove-spicy, sweetly vanillic, and reminiscent of warm, sun baked woods, and it's all deep, dark, and resinous in a rich, heavy way that makes me think of sap. I love myrrh and this is my favorite kind of myrrh with the complexity of the sweet and spicy tones. Lasts all day on me and makes me feel powerful.
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I can only smell the candy sweet cherry for about the first 10 minutes and then it's all about the sweet, powdery notes. The white sandalwood does its usual baby powder thing and then orris root comes in smelling like powdered sugar and silvery floral. There are hints of sweet honey and floral ylang ylang, but mostly it's very powdery and dry.
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A little cherry/almond extract in the vial, but I mostly smell the cinnamon and sweet buttercream once applied. Buttercream frosting dusted with sharp, dry cinnamon. Cinnamon usually amps up on my skin, though.
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I almost full sized this because of the name, but I'm glad that I went with a decant because it isn't very complex on my skin. It smells rather like lemon scented dish soap and a hint of powdery sweet tarts candies.
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Methods has the same issue for me that Neglected Calligraphy does, which is that the citrus (lemony bergamot) and green tea overpowers the other notes on my skin and I don't really care for the perfumey, sour, dry tea note. I get a sugary, realistic honey for the first few minutes and then it's gone, and I don't really ever smell the incense notes. A lot of the Shunga blends this year have come off really flat and single note-ish on my skin where I was hoping for more complexity.
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I wish that the green tea didn't completely overwhelm the other notes in the drydown. I love the glowing green, sweet pine sap, juicy, thick evergreen and hint of dark ink in the first 20 minutes or so. Then the good part just disappears suddenly and completely and I'm left smelling like Elizabeth Arden's Green Tea + black pepper. I don't like the musky, perfumey, warm, citrusy, artificial tea smell at all. I don't think that it smells like real green tea at all, but it is absolutely that artificial green tea scent that's super perfumey and dry.
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Jaunty Tater is surprisingly beautiful. It's an earthy scent, but warm and snuggly and sunny. The vetiver, patchouli, and mossy chypre give off the scent of warm, sun-baked, clay soil with hints of dry moss and roots. If I didn't know that this had 'french fry' in it, I would never look for it or place it, but there is a warm, toasty quality and hint of salt. Not an oily, fried mess or greasy smelling, but warmth and a touch of salt. I really like scents that remind me of the smell of clay soil and the dried creekbeds where I grew up, trees washing out and their roots reaching down into the creekbed. I'm happy that I was able to find a partial bottle of this blend.
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Tart, crisp, juicy apples with the honeyed mandarin making them feel all golden and glowy. There's something almost fizzy and effervescent about this, champagne-like, but minus the actual booze part. I rarely enjoy apple scents, but I like this one. It's sweet and so cheerful and makes me want cider and fall weather even though we aren't even really into summer yet. The lavender and musk start to come through in the drydown and make me think of lavender oil on a soft sweater, slightly powdery-musky. Over a half hour, it shifts from the gorgeous apple opening to this lavender and powdery musk entirely. I wish the fruity opening stuck around for longer.
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Millennial me has really been enjoying this scent. I was worried about the white musk because it's a death note on me if it's sharp and chemical-y instead of creamy, and it almost always is the sharp, dry, cheap variety that gives me a headache. The white musk here is barely noticeable to me, though, and does come off as simply creamy and pretty, not sharp or screechy. The chocolate in this smells like the white chocolate in the original Thirteen blend, which I loved, because it smells pale and cool and not sickly sweet, like if someone made an elegant and grownup version of white chocolate that wasn't overly sugary. It's quite like if the original Thirteen had tasty raspberry instead of tangerine and mandarin. It smells like a mix of good raspberry jam and fresh, ripe raspberries to me with creamy, mellow white chocolate and creamy, pretty white musk.
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This smells musty yet dry on me, like old carpet that really needs to be ripped out and is full of decades of dust and dirt. Dry, dusty, powdery, and sickly sweet with a weird spiciness like old potpourri. I scrubbed this off after only a couple minutes because I just couldn't handle it. The sweetness of the fig with the powderiness of the amber and the dry spiciness of the saffron is not working for me at all.
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The Serpent in the Roses is the gothic, dark, incense drenched rose that I wanted Formula 54 to be. I'm surprised by how dark and incense smoky this is on me, actually. I can pick out some aspect of the Snake Oil if I try really hard, maybe, but The Serpent is really its own thing and I appreciate that. The rose is fresh, but also has a deep, wine-like quality. It really conjures up an image of someone handing me a glass of red wine and brushing a dewy, blood red rose across my skin in a dark room full of incense smoke (perhaps also a whiff of cigarette smoke or clove cigarette smoke). The smoke smells enticing rather than dirty or sharp, though. Hazy, dreamy and seductive. The Serpent in the Roses smells really unique in my collection and I might grab a backup bottle of this one. I've been collecting bpal for so many years that it's hard not to compare new blends to what I already own, but this one stands out for me as something special and original.
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Sweet Amber, Praline, and Patchouli
Little Bird replied to Seajewel's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
I love the lab's sweet amber and am always there for patchouli, but this is more a praline single note on me and it does smell really authentically like praline. The caramel with a hint of boozy butterscotch at first reminded me of the caramel in Red Lantern and it dries down to a fudgy caramel and something like creamy walnut and pecan. I think the amber and patchouli just add a slight, toasty, woody quality to the nuttiness. Very strong and sticks around all day on my skin. -
I don't think that To Lallie smells like Katrina Van Tassel because To Lallie is much sweeter and KVT only has a tiny hint of honeyed cream where this has a much stronger vanilla-d aspect. The rose in To Lallie is sweet in itself, slightly fruity and bubblegummy, where the rose in KVT is more mature and winelike to me. To Lallie reminds me of a lot of other indie perfumes that I've tried that were vanilla & rose, so I get what shadowlover is saying, and it does have a heavy-handed sort of bluntness that reminds me of a lot of bath and body indie oils. When I wore To Lallie yesterday, I kept thinking that it reminded me of Solstice Scents' Rose Mallow Cream, but way less complex and not as sophisticated, and the cool vanilla kind of reminded me of Solstice Scents' Nightgown as well after a while. To Lallie feels very heavy to me and I wanted it to have some complexity to it that it just doesn't to my nose. I don't get any amber, ambergris, benzoin or coconut. To Lallie is vanilla and rose on me in equal parts and I can't really pick out any of the other notes, so I feel like I already own this scent in my collection several times over. If you were looking for a very sweet bpal vanilla & rose, though, this could be worth picking up.
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I wore this without checking the notes and wrote down that it smells like cider spice scented potpourri (dry, woody, sharply spicy) and cigarette smoke with a bit of ash. I'm not really getting any fig or vanilla and the bit of earthiness leans dry, smoky and woody.