Little Bird

Buck Moon 2017 reminds me more of the original Falling Leaf Moon or Samhain than the original Buck Moon (the GC 'Ochosi' reminds me of original Buck Moon). I actually don't get much greenery from this blend, other than a whiff of sweet pine at the start. Mostly this smells like spicy, dry, crunchy fall leaves and a soft, furry animal musk that's slightly powdery and vanillic with just a hint of dirtiness. It has that spicy, dry patchouli that's in blends like Samhain, to my nose. The musk reminds me of a toned down Smell Bent's Commando. I'm really loving this blend.

Dark, super powdery, resinous black musk with hints of dry herbs and a gritty, earthy, slightly smoky and ashy note that I think is the tobacco. The herbal notes go a little sour and savory on me, and I actually don't smell any dragon's blood. I don't really like this one. Powdery black musk with sour, dry herbs and ashy tobacco.

I think that this is my favorite of the Zodiac blends, but I like red & spicy. The red musk is strong, warm and sweetly musky (and fruity smelling, always makes me think of red wine). It has a red, glowing, floral edge from the dragon's blood. As it dries down, I can smell a sharp spiciness from the black pepper and a warm, dry wood from the sandalwood, but it's mostly a lovely swirl of red musk and dragon's blood.

The lab's champagne notes are always too sweet and a little sickly (pukey) smelling on my skin, and that's what I get from this blend as well. I can't really pick out the honey, but the champagne itself is like a fizzy, sugar saturated booze.

This was guaranteed baby powder on me with the amber and sandalwood notes. I get that bone dry powder. I also thought this would be spicy from the cassia, but it doesn't turn spicy on me at all. I do get a sour, perfumey, red rose and herbal lavender. It reminds me of the rose and lavender scented powders and bath salts that my grandmother used to keep in her bathroom. Clean, herbal, perfumey rose with lots of powdery, dusty tones...

I get nothing but dry, sharp, dark cinnamon from this. I can't even smell a hint of the buttery pumpkin note.

I like Splatter Comedy and The Twelfth more for banana cream pie scents. There's not really anything creamy about this Banana Cream Pie. This smells like those powdery banana flavored sweet tarts candies with the hard outer shell coating, and the pie crust reminds me of a buttery version of golden musk. So this is like perfumey banana flavored sweet tarts.

The perfume oil version of this is tons of cinnamon on me and irritates my skin, so I'd be afraid to use this as a bath oil. The bath oil smells the same as the perfume did to me - a fresh, perfumey apple with lots of cinnamon, reminding me of an apple cider scented fall candle.

I liked this in hair gloss and perfume oil so much that I tracked down a full size of the bath oil too, and I love the bath oil as well. I don't notice any difference between the perfume oil, hair gloss, or bath oil with this one. They're all three very strongly scented and delicious smelling. "Key Lime is my favorite pie to eat, and this is my favorite of the bptp pie fragrances as well. A lot of the other pies went to a generic spice smell on my skin, but there's no spice here at all, and it's so complex. Tangy, sweet key lime juice in a cold, vanilla custard with hints of a graham cracker cookie crust. I love that this somehow smells chilled. It's perfect, and it smells just as amazing as a key lime pie tastes."

Marshmallow Cookie Pie was an amazing hair gloss, and then the bath oil and perfume oil versions that I got were just nowhere near as strong. Bath oil is stronger than the perfume oil, though, and smells like fudgey chocolate brownies with a hint of marshmallow. Fades very quickly from my skin, though.

I get more of a creamy vanilla note from the bath oil than the perfume oil, even though I think they're the exact same oils. Maybe just something about the bath oil base allows the vanilla to come out more (as I wear the bath oils the same as perfume oils). Super-sweet, blueberry candy, a creamy vanilla, and hints of buttery pie crust.

Bath oil is pretty much the same as the perfume oil version. Smells more like cinnamon and nutmeg than clove to me (I loooove clove) and has a generic spice candle scent to it. I'd be afraid to use this in the bath (skin sensitive to spices), but I use the bath oils more as regular perfume oils anyhow.

This smells exactly like the perfume oil did to me - syrupy, canned peaches that go a little plasticy on my skin. I don't get quite as much spiciness in the bath oil for some reason.

I use the bath oils the same as perfume oils and really enjoy this one. I love the buttery sugar cookie scent at first, but it dries to pretty much all milk chocolate with just a tiny hint of golden, buttery, toasty something. I love chocolate scents, though, so this still works for me.

Cheap, artificial, oily, suntan lotion type coconut with tart, lemony bergamot. After a while, it settles into more of a soft coconut milk with even less bergamot. I use the bath oils the same as regular perfume oils, but this one fades very quickly. Light and too much into suntan lotion territory for me.

This is so pretty. I like how the honey just adds some oomph to the cherry blossom's natural, honeyed sweetness, and the cool, slightly minty, slushy snow note is refreshing. It's like beautiful, sweet, honeyed blossoms peeking through melting snow. Clean and delicate.

I use the bath oils like regular perfume oils (they make me break out in a full bath and weigh my hair down), and this one is a soft, cool, watery cucumber and blue musk. Blue musk always makes me think of a still pond during fall where the water is perfectly reflective and not moving at all. Hints of soft floral that go slightly powdery on my skin. This is a pretty, clean, spa-like fragrance. Serene.

What everyone else has said - this smells like a Terry's chocolate orange, like milk chocolate and an orange note that's sweet and somewhat artificial, but not *too* artificial. I don't tend to enjoy chocolate + fruit scents, but this one is kind of fun and sweetly simple.

Lots of beeswax, which is realistically sweet, honeyed, and waxy. Smells like burning candles and sweet resins with hints of spiciness from the cassia and a touch of cool, misty fir. Reminds me of atmosphere sprays like Alchemical Laboratory and Templum Victoriae. A sweet, honeyed, waxy, warm incense fragrance.

When I first spray this, I always think of caramel apples (with tons and tons of caramel), which I guess must be the cookies note? Then there's a cigars, hint of cigar smoke, and old wood note that's like walking into a cigar shop. The overall feel reminds me a lot of the Red Lantern room spray, which is one of my favorites. There are little hints of pleasant dustiness and cold air as well (like the scent of cold winter air following you into a warm store during winter, and a hint of frozen, green flower stems). Caramel apples in a cigar shop full of old wood, a hint of chilled air from the outside, and a hint of frozen, green stems from a florist's fridge. If you like Red Lantern, I think you would enjoy this. It's like a gourmand tobacco with airy touches.

I've always wanted bpal's snow note as a room spray, and here it is chilly, slushy, weirdly realistic, ever-so-slightly minty, snow note. Spraying this in a room makes it feel like you have snow melting all over the place. It's clean (but not soapy), refreshing, cool, and delicately sweet. I think this makes a perfect home fragrance.

I picked this one up mainly because the label and name made me laugh. I'm not really loving it as a perfume yet, though. It reminds me of scents like Cheesecloth Ghosts and some of the plasticy type single notes. It smells like crisp, new notebook paper, glue and wet paint on my skin. Within a few minutes, I also get a generic, sharply lemony, musky men's cologne. Then hints of toasty, warm, slightly bitter coffee and dark leather creep in underneath that generic cologne and plasticy glue scent. I don't like the musky citrus cologne in this (prefer Wilde for that sort of thing), as it's thin and sharp to my nose, and the warm coffee and dark leather just don't mesh well with it for me. It's like it's trying to go in too many directions at once and can't form a cohesive scent on my skin. It smells chaotic and jumbled to me.

I'm also a Taurus and into vanillas and gourmands but also earthy, sensual, deep fragrances. If you like Twilight, I think you'll enjoy TKO. Jack can sometimes be a little too buttery and holiday-candle-esque to me, but lots of people love it. There are so many bpals that it can be really hard to find your favorites. One thing I'd recommend when starting out is to focus on the general catalogue and avoid the limited editions for a while. There are a lot of gems in the GC and it's just more affordable than getting into the LE collecting. Snake Oil isn't really vanilla-y on me either, but I'd strongly suggest trying Dorian. It's one of the most popular bpal scents and is a very nice, cool, sweet vanilla tea. Alice, O and Dragon's Milk are also very popular and lean towards being gourmand. Eat Me and Drink Me are the very sweet, straightforward cake blends. Shub-Niggurath is gingerbread cookies. I've gotten a few variations of Mouse Circus. The first bottle I had smelled like vanilla ice cream and peanut butter cookies, but the second bottle is like vanilla, salty popcorn and pink cotton candy. Gobo is one of my favorites (Fraggle collection). From my review: "It's sort of like marshmallows, salted vanilla cream and tangy lemon and tangerine custard." I don't like Snake Oil, but I do like the Snake Pit blends in the Carnaval. If you like chocolate at all, I strongly recommend checking out Boomslang. The Other Hot Chocolate in the Coralines is also a great cocoa scent. And for my random recommendations, I suggest Voodoo and Sacred Whore of Babylon. They just smell very bpal, complex, mystical, and have a good dose of sweetness to them.

HOCHELAGA Warm musk with soft leather, a dusting of dry wildflowers and herbs, sweetgrass, sage, shagbark hickory, and Canadian balsam. Un musc chaud avec une note de cuir souple, saupoudré de fleurs sauvages et d'herbes, de foin d'odeur, de sauge, de caryer ovale, et de baume du Canada. Hochelaga reminds me of bpal's Fledgling Raptor Moon (but much better) and Harvest Moon 06 (and I now realize that they share notes of sage and shag hickory, so I guess that's the similarity that I was picking up on). This also smells a lot like Arcana's Hate blend on me - all creamy, dry woods and warm spices. I'm surprised at how spicy this is on me, and it smells very much like a dry, slightly powdery, warm, sweet clove. The balsam has a creamy, dry quality that reminds me of a good sandalwood. And the sage, sweetgrass, hickory, and herbs mix together in a way that's sort of exotic, comforting, and delicious smelling. I don't find this to be bitter or green herbal at all, more spicy, warm, and almost edible. I can't pick out any of the leather or florals - just wonderful, cozy spice and beautiful, smooth, dry woods with a little extra oomph. This one has amazing throw and staying power on me as well, lasting really strongly for about 8 hours.

Starts off like warm, melty milk chocolate and a sugary mishmash of a fruit smell (sort of reminded me of dried pineapple and canned fruit cocktail scent). I like white chocolate with fruit, but milk or dark chocolate mixed with fruit just never works for me. I don't like the taste or smell. Very quickly, though, this morphs into more of a dry curry spice with swirls of cigar smoke and hints of toasty coffee and sweet chocolate. It actually reminds me of several of the Cuban/Havana inspired fragrances that I've tried, which all seem to be a cigar, spice, and tropical fruit thing with hints of coffee. By the half hour mark, this is all curry and whiffs of cinnamon on my skin. Dry and spicy with a little sweetness. I tend to like gourmand scents, but this is like a mishmash of foodie things that I don't really enjoy (the chocolate + fruit and the savory curry drydown). Still, it's interesting.