Little Bird

Raw, chilled gingerbread cookie dough, sweet and spicy. In the drydown, the marshmallow adds some vanillic creaminess and the cocoa smells like a super light dusting of cocoa powder. If I didn't know that this was supposed to be gingerbread hot cocoa, though, I'd guess that the notes were vanilla, cinnamon, and clove. It doesn't have a ton of throw for a spicy scent and it's puzzlingly low on the chocolate part.

Bpal's pomegranate note often turns to powdery sweet tarts candy on my skin, but this one isn't doing that at all. The pom here is deep red, very juicy, sweet, and tropical leaning. The pom smells absolutely edible, lickable, drinkable, while the black ink takes it down a darker, more menacing, gritty, mechanical feeling avenue. I really enjoy the contrast of the two notes. It makes for a cool combo, and it's also very strong. This has tons of throw and lasting power, and it feels like a great scent for a warrior goddess. I find that it starts off stronger on the ink and then turns to stronger on the pomegranate after a couple hours, but both notes stay very present and noticeable. I'm glad I took a chance on Pomegranate Ink. It's not something that I'm going to wear every day, but is definitely something I'd reach for when I want to feel like a warrior goddess and up my confidence. A fruity gourmand with a dark twist.

Golden, dry biscuits with what smells like a tart lemon and raspberry curd (or maybe a slightly less sour red currant) and thick, sweet cream. A little bit of spiciness and warm, sugared smoke as it dries down, like a hint of burnt on the edges snickerdoodle cookies mixed with those other notes. I'm most surprised by how creamy it smells, especially in the drydown, where it turns into mostly vanilla cream and hints of sour lemon and red berry. Gnome Ruckus doesn't have a ton of throw on me, and it only lasts about 3 hours, but I'm always happy to add another gourmand fragrance to my collection.

You have to try this one if you like jelly donut scents or you liked the long since discontinued Monster Bait: Closet. In the past, the Sufganiyot scents have often smelled off on me, like fig newtons or all perfumey fruit and no pastry, but this smells exactly like a Krispy Kreme jelly donut with the sugar glaze that's so addictive. I can smell a hint of lovely, lightly spiced apple pie filling in the bottle, but it's all berry jam, fluffy donut, and sugar glaze on my skin. The blackberry is gorgeous, like a fresh berry filling, the kind you'd make on a stovetop with fresh berries and lots of sugar. I'm wearing this one again today, dabbed on my sweater, and it's reminding me so much of Monster Bait: Closet, but stronger and tucked into a glazed donut. If you liked the blackberry in that OG, then I really think you'll love this scent. It's hard to find blackberry gourmands and this one is excellent.

Evening Reading smells like a romance novel and is one of the prettiest bpals I've ever worn. The rosewater and lavender in the opening are creamy, soft, and delicately sweet with a strong scent of freshly snapped, chilled, green flower stems. The rosewater isn't perfumey or sharp, so if you were worried about the rosewater like I was, it's more green, smooth, and refreshing than sharply rosy. It hints at soft, clean skin. The hearthsmoke isn't smoky at all, but I think that and the lamp oil are giving me an impression of pen ink. It's the scent of coming to bed and slipping into cool, clean sheets with your windows open to a cool breeze, a vase of fresh flowers from your love on your bedside table, and falling asleep writing in your journal to dream about your person and snuggling into them wearing their favorite leather jacket. It has an element of coolness and a clean impression to it without being minty or soapy in any way. I find it really fascinating and evocative. The monthly paintings have been really impressive to me and this is one of my favorites of the favorites. Evening Reading and The Blue Door are both such a mood and make me want to travel, dream, and write.

Starts off with VERY sweet cherry, like a cherry lollipop tossed into a bag of powdered sugar. The roasted chestnut is the first note to peek out around the cherry, adding a dry, woody, toasty element to the scent. After about 15 minutes, the cherry is still sweet and sugared, but also has a darker, juicy quality to it and some tartness to cut through the sugar, with the labdanum coming through to add a resinous, slightly powdery, warm, amber base to the cherry. It's a simple, sweet, cheerful, snuggly scent. Reminds me of Solstice Scents' Cherry Vanilla Amberosia, but more sugary, floofy sweet and with a softer resinous tone.

The champagne smells more clean and fizzy than usual, and not as sweet as usual. It makes me think of dropping a LUSH bath bomb into water, picking it up as it's fizzing and dissolving, and going to smell it and getting the fizz up my nose. A cold, sharp, clean fizz that's not unpleasant and is sort of spa-like. I do not drink alcohol, though, so maybe that's why my brain is going to bath bombs and not champagne. Champagne & Blood starts off with a burst of sweet maraschino cherry, but quickly dries down to a wonderful fragrance where I can smell all of the listed notes. The cherry, dragon's blood, and cola-like myrrh all meld together to smell like a resinous, sweet cherry cola dropped into the clean fizziness, with wafts of a powdery, warm perfume that smells like powdered amber incense (not baby powdery at all) and spicy, dry clove. It smells like a relative to Blood Kiss, like Blood Kiss's incredibly attractive and confident mom who can pull off wearing a crisp suit and is someone who knows the importance of meditating and taking care of herself every day. I might have to rethink my stance on not liking bpal's champagne perfumes. I'm really enjoying this one.

I put this on the other day and promptly forgot everything (the inoperable brain tumor and other health issues are fun fun lately 🙃). I then spent the entire day asking everyone in my house where the beautiful lemon cream dessert smell was coming from. It haunted me. I wore Beaver Moon '23 again (for the first time! again.) the next day and realized it had been me all along. So, Beaver Moon 2023 is a beautiful dessert scent that lasts all day with good throw. The cheesecake is super creamy, sweet, vanilla-y, and slightly tangy. The matcha is a richer, darker green tea type of scent with lemon and honeyed cream. I usually dislike green tea perfumes because they're sharp, too bright, and slightly white musky, but this is darker and smoother with none of those sharp edges to it, or the cheesecake just smooths it out perfectly. It's 100% gourmand and lovely and I'm glad that I have two bottles to enjoy.

When I opened Champagne & Snake Oil, I was immediately reminded of that scene in Disney's cartoon Robin Hood movie, where Sir Hiss gets stuck in a barrel of ale and comes out completely plastered. It's funny how I haven't seen or thought of that movie in so long, but it suddenly came back to me. That's my favorite thing about perfume, the way it brings back memories and stirs up the imagination. Anyhow. I love Snake Oil variations, but I hate champagne notes in perfume oils. I'm waffling on whether or not I really like this mashup. For the first 20-ish minutes, the fragrance is actually off putting to me, like someone handing me a pranked glass of fizzy alcohol with brown, dusty mulch and laundry soap powder in it. I enjoy the dark musk and earthiness of Snake Oil, but it's like it's gone stale and musty here. Then it turns to where I can't smell the Snake Oil at all, but the champagne isn't as sweet as bpal's champagne note usually is and it smells very dry, dusty, sharp, and soapy (reminding me more of the off fizzy note I got in Batty Cathedral). I was thinking that I should just scrub it off and give it more time to rest or just admit defeat, but I got busy organizing some things in my kitchen, and Champagne & Snake Oil does eventualy settle into something rather nice on me. The sugared vanilla bean starts to come out a lot more, sweetening the whole blend, and anything creamy and vanilla-y is a plus for me. The champagne still stays more on the dry and soapy side of things, crisp and sharp rather than sweet and bubbly. The 'dark spices' of the Snake Oil also come out in the drydown and add a dark, seductive edge to the vanilla. So it winds up being creamy, sugared vanilla with chilled, crisp champagne, a waft of exotic, spiced perfume, and a hint of soapiness on my skin. It's not distinctively Snake Oil to me, though. In most of the Snake Oil variants, I recognize it as Snake Oil, but this has more sweet vanilla cream and spice to me and not so much the signature slinky musk. I'm curious to read other reviews of this one.

Torta Setteveli smells like chocolate lava cake. Fluffy and moist chocolate cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and velvety chocolate melted over the top. I don't get the hazelnut and praline, and I'm glad, because I don't like those notes. It's cool that this scent smells airy/fluffy and very decadent and rich at the same time. I feel like I can practically taste this and imagine the texture of the cake, the melting ice cream, and the chocolate sauce.

Every time that I wear this, it smells different, and I think that's to do with the oils separating. My bottle is completely separated into two halves with a light oil on top and the bottom half is dark, heavy and a bit sludgy. Sniffing in the bottle before mixing it up, I get a blast of headshop dragon's blood incense but, mixed up, I either get a strong red musk or a strong fossilized amber as the main note. Either way, it's been gorgeous every time that I've worn it. I get along great with all of the listed notes, so it makes me happy no matter which way it turns. I love fossilized amber so much. It's incense smoky and sweetly resinous with hints of misty, dark pine. The balsamic and pine tones make me feel like I'm deep into the shadowy parts of a pine forest, burning resins and incense in a thankful ritual, with the champaca giving it more of a dry, papery, grey incense smoke in the drydown. I'm wearing this today and I'm getting all of the incense smoke and burning resins. After an hour, I can smell hints of the red musk and dragon's blood peeking through as well. If my mixing leans more to the red musk side of things, though, I get more dragon's blood as well, and the two notes mesh together into a sensual red glow that's very rich, slightly vanillic, slightly fruity in a red wine way, and infused with lighter incense smoke. I've been buying from the Lab for almost 20 years now and I still have a hard time describing their distinctive red musk notes. I have a hard time properly describing things that just smell amazing to me. It's so smooth and sultry. I hope that this review makes sense. It's just been a different experience every time that I've worn this one, and I think it's the mixing of the two layers.

I wore And The Fairies tonight without checking the notes first and I didn't get any lemon, amber, or greenery. It went straight to a sort of generic, creamy, lightly floral scented lotion where I couldn't pick out any one particular floral. Slightly spring-like and a tad soapy.

Perfume cannabis that smells of dark green, cooked spinach (like the way my favorite sencha teas have that spinach-y undertone), sticky, green sap, and a slightly spicy, slightly sour, herbal weed. I hate the smell of actual weed, but I like the fragrance version of it that shows up in perfumes. For a while, I can kind of pick out earthy patchouli, a teensy hint of leather, and a waft of incense smoke, but I have to focus and try really hard to pick out those notes. It's very heavy on the cannabis accord. The champaca incense and charcoal finally nudge the cannabis out of the way a bit after a half hour, giving it a pleasant, smoky incense over the cannabis.

Hot Feral Devastation doesn't smell anything like its listed notes to me, but I like it. It smells like black pepper and a clean, cool, smooth, chrome-metallic men's fragrance with a little bit of sweet citrus. It's like Marc Jacob's Bang with a shiny metallic and hint of citrusy-sweet neroli. I'm a fan of bpal blends that smell more like traditional men's fragrances, so this was a surprise win for me.

A beautiful, smoky vetiver dominates this scent, and it brings to mind dried grasses burning into billows of black smoke. It has none of that weird mesquite bbq vetiver, which is what I always worry about. This is earthy, rich, and primal vetiver, and the little bit of clove, the sweetly resinous opoponax, and the amazing, strong, blood red musk really round it out into something that's very sensual to me. I just love the sour, dark, slightly metallic edge (it's not the clean chrome metallic or a rusty metallic) and deep. wine-like fruitiness of the blood musk, while it still smells so thick and heavy and really does make me think of blood. An idealized vision of blood. I love it paired with the earthy, smoky vetiver. I've been wearing this for several months now and it keeps getting better, sort of smoother, with the blood red musk coming through more. I love it and I loved looking up and learning about all of the influences behind this artwork. I always look forward to the monthly paintings <3.

First on, this smells like opening a bag of fresh gummi bears while wearing a gorgeous, sugary floral perfume (the gummi bears fading to bear-ly there after 15 minutes). There's a sharp, elegant, department store type of perfume muskiness, but it just smells great mixed with all of the sweetness. This is a very floral perfume, but I can't pick out any one flower by itself, they just melt together into a beautiful bouquet with the juicy pear and pink sugar giving it plenty of sweet tones. I was worried about the mint, but I get zero mint.

This is such a green, joyous scent. It so vividly reminds me of my childhood, rushing through the giant cane bamboo stalks and scrappy grasses on my way to the river, finally making it to the rocky riverbed and smelling all of the greenery around me, the mix of sun baked stones and wet stones, and a cool, watery breeze coming off the river. It's beautiful. I felt so drawn to the artwork for this scent, but wound up passing on buying it and then deeply regretting it. I'm so happy that I found a secondhand bottle. I'm going to cherish this fragrance.

Green and bitter, like picking dandelions, but with an undertone of something funky. It keeps reminding me of a whiff of dead fish (and thankfully that goes away after about 10 minutes, but it's a rough 10 minutes). As it dries down, it's still green and bitter and strongly reminds me of dandelions, with the added sweet, clove-y spiciness of carnations. I like it a lot once it settles into the sappy, slightly bitter greens and spicy carnation phase.

I always love bpal's Harvest Moon blends, and this is another winner for me. The apple reminds me of Lambs-Wool, which is one of the very few apple blends that I enjoy (I wrote this before reading doomsday_disco's review, so I totally agree on the Lambs-Wool comparison 😊). It's a warm, baked apple that's been sprinkled with sweet clove, topped with a dollop of sweet cream, and drizzled in a tiny bit of honey. The earthy patchouli and dry hay mixed with the clove give it a Samhain-esque backdrop. I can't pick out the cornmeal and roasted oats exactly, but there is something unique, warm, and flour-ish (but not so dry) here. It's like Lambs-Wool and Samhain had a baby that's a little more gourmand and a little more hay rides and corn mazes. Oddly, it never veers towards being cologne-like on my skin. It holds on to the earthy and sweeter notes. Another love for me.

This is such an odd (but wonderful) blend. In the bottle, I can smell the musk and forest part and it's beautiful. It has a creamy, sweet, white musk scent, the sweetness of chilled night air in spring, and hints of wood and green sap. I smell it and think of a beautiful red stag standing at the edge of a tree line while the sun sets. On my skin, the candy part immediately amps up and I also get the scent of black pepper. Black pepper and a creamy, somehow vanilla leaning mix of warm toffee, sweet caramel, and smooooth chocolate. The pepper calms down after about a half hour and some of that cool, creamy musk comes back, lingering underneath the candy. I get the forest impression in the bottle, but on my skin, it's a Halloween party in someone's slightly haunted basement with lots of candy, a few fake cobwebs, a sputtering fog machine, and a chill that slowly starts to unsettle everyone. I'm not used to the Lunacy scents being this playful (except for the beloved Beaver Moons, of course), but I really love this creamy, sweet blend with a spooky undertone. It could easily be too sweet, but the other notes keep it from being cloying. I'm considering at least one backup bottle.

For me, this is in the same family as Boo and Traditional Sheet Ghost, which I think is cool. It has a soapy, clean laundry to it (that I see no one else has mentioned, but it's so prominent to me for the first half hour), hint of sweet lemon, and sugary, creamy candy corn that leans vanilla-y and not at all waxy like actual candy corn (more like buttercream frosting). I don't get the plastic at all, but there's a warm, slightly powdery, snuggly amber note in the drydown. The sweet, vanilla-y note is the strongest to me. Overall, though, this is a light scent on me, only lasting a couple hours with low throw.

I'm confused by A Doll's Doll. I was hoping for sugared carnation, but this blend isn't sweet on me at all and I don't smell carnation either. The whole thing is so sour, slightly soapy and dry. It's like intensely sour grapefruit pith and soapy, dusty aldehydes. I didn't enjoy it at all

I don't get most of the listed notes, but this smells like a cup of hot, green tea, a splash of lemon, a spoonful of sugar, and tons of honey and cream. Very much a warm, cozy, comfort scent. Tea scents are usually too astringent for me, but this one has a really appealing sweetness and creaminess to it.

The first half hour of this is so lovely on me, making me think of the sweet bubble bath that I had as a child and clean pools of beautiful, chilled water. Then it starts to shift on me and it makes me so sad, because it turns into a sharp, dewy, slightly green, springtime white floral (more snowdrop than iris) and dry, powdery sandalwood. I love the watery opening, but the drydown is like the water has dried up and disappeared. Conceptually, I do think it fits its artwork, though. Like it starts off with the cool, clean fountain pool and then you notice the owls and flurry of dry, slightly powdery smelling wings. Then snowdrops. So much snowdrops.

I got a partial bottle of A Melancholy of Goths, but I'm going to order at least one more full size for myself before it goes out of stock. It is exactly as advertised, I can pick out all of the listed notes, and I feel like it captures its artwork and concept so perfectly. It is the gothiest of goth perfumes from bpal. The clove cigarette smoke mixed with the champaca incense and hint of hairspray is a whole mood, with the beautiful plum note adding a hint of sweet and sour juiciness that's mouthwatering to me. I even get the 'velvet' because there's an undertone of something here that smells like plush, old fabric. It reminds me of Romanti.Goth, but is still its own unique, wonderful creation. Sweet clove cigarette smoke, the foggy, slightly grape-y, hazy smokiness of champaca incense, the spark of slightly metallic hairspray, laying in a heavy draped room on an old, plush, velvet couch, with slices of dark, juicy plum on a tray next to you. An amazing scent.