Little Bird

I wish that I could find a scent that smells like real marigolds because I love their spicy, herbal, green smell.  This doesn't smell like true marigold, though it is floral.

The overall scent is a dry, perfumey floral in a room full of smoky copal incense.  I get an undertone of slightly overripe fruitiness (mango at first and then purple grapes?).  I love oakmoss, but I don't pick up on it here either, just a dry quality to the floral, I think.

An old offering of dried flowers, incense smoke, and fruit.

I like this, but I wish it were stronger on my skin.  I can barely smell it at the one hour mark, and La Ofrenda doesn't have much throw on me, no matter how much I slather. 

Bayou is one of my all time favorite bpal fragrances and Eldena Ruin is like the softer, more feminine version of Bayou.  It's like they're in the same family, but Eldena Ruin fronts as a proper Southern belle with more floral and an elegant, powdery undertone, while secretly being a swamp witch in her heart.  I swear I can smell a blue-green water and Spanish moss in this that I also get from Bayou, though the mossiness here is turned down.

Eldena Ruin has a swampy, warm, humid quality to it, like Southern greenery and heady blossoms covered in a sheen of moisture, the heavy heat causing them to give off huge wafts of romantic floral and what smells like a mossy greenery and smooth, slightly darker ivy note to me.  I get blue-green water, smooth greenery, a delicately sweet and humidly floral olive blossom, and powdery amber.  Or perhaps that's the olive blossom giving off that soft, powdery quality, because it doesn't really smell like fossilized amber to me.  I usually get a smoky quality and hint of evergreen from that type of amber, and this isn't smoky or pine-y at all.  I don't know.  I do know that I love this and I've been wearing it a lot.  It smells like my dreams of moving permanently to Florida.

The only pumpkin flavored thing that I enjoy is the Salted Caramel Pumpkin Pie concrete from Culver's.  In the bottle, this smells just like that ice cream + a plate of gingerbread cookies.  Sweet, creamy, and spicy.  I will probably wind up using this more in an oil warmer than as a perfume because it's so much better in the bottle than it is on my skin.
First applied, this immediately becomes a drier, spicier scent. 
Dry pumpkin spice seasoning blend poured over the gingerbread cookies.  There's a hint of creaminess and richly sweet caramel, but they're already on the way to fading out entirely.
After a half hour, still lots of spices and the caramel is oddly starting to smell more like honey.  The creaminess is gone, but I feel like I can smell hints of astringent black tea, earthy tobacco, and crunchy dead leaves along with the heavy spice.  As it fully dries down, it's very much in pumpkin spice candle territory and the sharp, dry spice isn't something that I care for.

I really miss the Lab's discontinued blend "The Hamptons," but Syngenesophobia has a similar feel to it (and it's currently available on the Lab's etsy page, which is where I got my bottle ).  I don't really smell the aftershave at all, but I do get a hint of earthy, sweet chewing tobacco that is more present in the bottle than it is on my skin.  Once it's applied, this is all gin and red wine, in pretty much equal measure.  It isn't as sweet as The Hamptons, but the red wine has a pleasant sweetness and red fruitiness, sidling up to the crisp gin.  I adore the Lab's gin blends and I wish that the gin GCs had stayed around more.  It's like a crisp, clear, chilled booze (minus the alcoholic burn) infused with melting snow and evergreen/juniper.  Very boozy, but I really enjoy the Lab's red wine and their gin notes, so this is a win for me. 

Syrupy, dark molasses sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, over a warm, slightly woody, slightly powdery, amber glow (with a hint of cola-like resin to it in the drydown).  It's the scent of a country wafflehouse where the whole room and the furniture is made of wood and you can smell all of the decadent sugar, butter, & syrup drenched breakfast items.  Cinnamon tends to amp on my skin, but it stays subtle here, and I like how the molasses is syrupy and sweet, but still darker in scent profile and not sickly sweet like mapke syrup.  A pancake type of scent that I can actually wear and that I don't find cloying.

The scent of TKO whipped into coconut custard and poured into a buttery pie crust (no spices in the pie crust). 
There's no sunscreen coconut to be found; this is deliciously gourmand and ultra creamy all the way through. 
TKO itself is usually too strong and sweet for me, but all of the cool creaminess in this scent really mellows it out beautifully.
I'm not even a huge fan of lavender in general, but the Lavender Kitchen series has really surprised me.  Everything about Lavender Coconut Cream Pie just works for me and I don't think that I own anything else like this where it's a tropical, creamy lavender with buttery pie crust undertones.  I love it.

Sugar Cookies & Bourbon, in the bottle and on my skin at first, smells like bitter cough syrup lightly sweetened with a hint of cherry.  The bourbon part is downright awful to my nose - harsh, heavy, bitter, and medicinal.  Thankfully, the bourbon disappears as the oil sinks in to the skin (only about 5-10 minutes for me) and then the delicious cookie part comes through in full force.  Buttery, sweet, vanilla-y sugar cookies that are a little well done on the edges, just enough to add a darker, caramelized tone to the sugar cookies.

It's really strong and has great throw on me, which is sometimes hard to find in a cookie perfume oil.  It turns into a satisfying, sweet gourmand if I just suffer through the bourbon opening.

I've given Gingerbread Snek plenty of time to rest and I've worn it several times now and it just doesn't smell right to me.  I should love this, but it turns very sour and dry.  For the gingerbread part, I only smell sharp, dry spices (like an intensely sharp cinnamon and nutmeg more than ginger), and I'm not getting anything that I normally associate with Snake Oil.  There's an earthy, woody, sour, patchouli-ish note that dries down like pencil shavings and there's a dirty, sweaty, quality to it that really bothers me, but neither of those components smell like the patchouli or musk that I associate with Snake Oil.

Pencil shavings, sweaty musk, and sharp, dry, powdered spice. 

I only bought Witch Milk to finish my Monster Milk collection, but it was the milk that I was least excited about trying.  This is great on me, though.  A tasty currant with sweet honey and creamy milk, like a variation of Eat Me that feels a little fresher and darker.  As it dries down, the incense smoke, black pepper, and dry herbs form this dark, witchy, earthy undercurrent that's also amazing.  The darker notes give off this suspicious, maybe poisoned edge to your red berry and honeyed milk drink.  I've worn this twice now and the first time the currant and milk were stronger and the second time, the darker notes were stronger (but could still smell all of the elements together in both wears).  Either way, I love this.  Very kitchen witchy.

This is going to be a multiple bottle hoarding situation for me.
Gorgeous, well-worn, soft, black leather and the balsam/woods note that I adore in Wolf Moon '24.  It's wearing a leather jacket in woodshop, enveloped in this perfect black leather note while smelling the caramelized and lightly smoky scent of sawing through wood.  It's so very smooth and lightly sweet, almost like a hint of vanilla.

This year's Lunar New Year blend is a mix of super fruity & sweet with sensual florals.
In the bottle, Wooden Dragon smells like a homemade tropical punch with a generous splash of citrus juice and a background of pine needles, like you're sitting outside at a summer party in someone's backyard and they happened to plant a big pine tree and you're sitting in its shade while you sip this fancy punch.  It's not a strong pine, but a natural one that floats softly in the background.  The pine doesn't survive at all on my skin, though.
First applied, this immediately launches into gummi worms candy and sharp floral perfume that's sort of dewy and sensual rather than being offputting.  Gummi candy trying to be a mature lady's perfume, in the best way possible. 
It's really fun and candied for about a half hour, and then the drydown is just amazing.  The gummi candy impression fades, but it's still a very sweet, tropical lychee juice with hints of cheery, sharper citrus cutting through the sweetness, and I just adore the way the florals and dragon's blood are swirling together in this year's blend.  The plum blossom, peach blossom, and peony combo in this is gorgeous.  I smell actual plum fruit and the florals are sharp and threatening to go soapy, which I would normally hate, but mixed with the sweeter notes, they smell elegant and rich.  The dragon's blood makes it even more sensual, darkening the florals and giving off a red, glowy impression.
This might be my favorite Lunar New Year scent yet.

Wolf Moon 2024 is soooo good.  It has a smooth musk and greenery that reminds me of the original Buck Moon at first.  
It's crisp night air (a creamy white musk?) and a sky full of twinkling stars, rolling in a bed of tulips and smelling the scent of their smushed stems, green and cool, with the sandalwood and balsam giving off a mix of dry, slightly powdery sandalwood and the scent of freshly cut trees pulled into a woodshop where furniture is being made.  The beeswax gives everything a beautiful, creamy, vanilla-y beeswax sweetness at the edges and makes the scent something of a woody gourmand over time.
After about an hour, the green part mostly fades away and it leaves behind the warm, smooth woods blend with creamy sweetness and still that airy, cool, nighttime impression.
My brother is a carpenter and there's an edge to the wood that's caramelized and just a teensy bit smoky, which reminded me of him making furniture in the garage and the scent of wood when it's heated and cut.
I expected something darker and heavier out of Wolf Moon '24, but this is bright, cuddly, and cheerful while still making me think of roaming around in the night, and I love that there's nothing sharp or overwhelming about it.  "Smooth" is the word that comes into my head every time that I smell it.

I also love how the duets are being done this year, taking notes from the Lunacy blend and mixing it with a new note.  I ordered Balsam & Leather with the Moon because bpal's leather is a safe bet for me, but now I want Grass & Midnight Dew and the Lupine Musk and Ambrette Seed hair gloss as well, and maybe the Beeswax & Pine Needle.  I think it's so cool that you could love a note within a blend, go back for a variation of that note, and layer it with the original blend to amp up certain qualities.  An all around awesome idea that I'm definitely going to be addicted to, lol.

Hard Luck Lollipop smells like an orange cream lollipop with a hint of fizzy orange soda on my skin for the first half hour.  It reminds me of those trees of fancy flavored, swirled lollipops that pop up randomly at the check out lane in stores.  After a while, though, this smells just like cotton candy, very sugary and floofy yet still with that hard candy quality, and it still has a hint of fizzy orange soda.  I don't smell any of the grit, petrichor, or incense; just delicious, candied elements.
It's a light scent on me that only lasts about 3 hours with low throw, but it's a pleasant, fun, sugary hard candy.  I like it enough that I think I'll turn it into a spray, which always helps the fragrance have better throw.

In the bottle and for the first few minutes on my skin, this is a powdery, sharp floral with hints of sweet, fruity-floral, tropical tones.  Fresh and slightly soapy.  The drydown shifts into what is very much a sharp floral laundry soap powder type of fragrance.  After an hour, I'm left with mostly a baby powder-ish scent with an undertone of masculine soapiness.  I don't recognize the floral as jasmine; it's more nondescript, and I don't get the discernable resins that other reviewers noted either.  Just laundry soap and powder, which I don't enjoy.

I was almost scared off by the mention of almond (I hate the cherry scent of almond extract), but I'm so glad that I got a bottle of Lavender Plum Galette because it is stunning and I get no almond at all from it.  The lavender is a little herbal, a little creamy, a little sweet, and very airy and spa-like.  The plum has an edge of sugarplum to it, but it's also very dark and sensual.  I agree with doomsday_disco that it is like the plum in Snake Charmer, but the plum here is the star of the scent and it's so amazing.

The lavender starts out strong, but the plum takes over in the drydown, and it turns into mostly that gorgeous plum note with hints of airy lavender spa and a square of warm, gooey caramel.  I want to order multiple bottles of this.

I seem to be the odd one out, but I only smell sharp gingerbread spices and no milk.  My skin tends to amp spices and this one irritates my skin a little (slight redness where applied).  Mostly this is a sharp, powdery cinnamon and nutmeg type of scent on me and it never changes and the milk never shows up.  I wish it were an overdose of milk, but it never gets there for me.  Three Witches, Pickled Imp, and The Wild Men of Jezirat Al Tennyn are some of my go tos for spicy scents.  I will probably wind up rehoming Gingerbread Milk.

A gooey, sweet, chocolate brownie with creamy lavender white chocolate chips, topped off with sprigs of herbal lavender for decoration.  I'm not the biggest fan of lavender, but I am a huge fan of gourmands, and I really like what the Lab has done with The Lavender Kitchen.  The little bit of herbal lavender keeps Lavender Brownie from being too sweet at first, even though it smells absolutely decadent.  After a couple hours, the lavender fades a lot and I'm mostly left with gooey brownie and a smooth, creamy, vanillic scent.  I can see myself wearing this a lot when I want a chocolate scent (though Chad from the American Gods series will always be my #1 chocolate scent).

A pretty black tea that isn't bitter, lots of cream, a whiff of lemony bergamot, and surprisingly not much gingerbread or spice.  It's like a cup of lovely tea next to a gingerbread biscuit.  I expected it to be strong on the spices, but I'd say this is the Gingerbread Cotillion that is lightest on any gingerbread notes.  I usually don't like black tea scents because they can be astringent, smoky, or oddly metallic, but this is so mellow and really smells like a cup of earl grey and cream.  My only complaint is that it only lasts about a half hour on me before leaving behind a barely there, vaguely powdery scent.  The longevity wound up being so bad on me that I swapped away my bottle.

Very light scent, towards the traditionally masculine side of things, and reminds me of Dee at first (sharing the tonka and woods).  The vanilla and tonka aren't super sweet, but add a light, creamy, subtle sweetness.  The drydown is a light, powdery, warm, dry woods with subtly sweet, creamy vanilla-tonka.  Not much throw at all on me, and only lasted about an hour.

Deep purple, creamy, floral lavender and the silvery, powdered sugar scent of orris, on a bed of strong, creamy vanilla.  It leans gourmand on my skin, sort of like a bar of lavender infused white chocolate, but not overly sweet.  Perhaps more like a lavender infused glass of warm milk with a little sugar.  It's a perfect sleep blend because it's not overly aggressive.  I find TKO to be too strong, sweet, and in-my-face for bedtime, but I could happily wear this to relax.

Pomelo is one of my favorite fruits.  I think they taste like sugared grapefruit with none of the bitterness that grapefruit can have, and they have a little undertone that reminds me of pine and tropical mango.

I think I can smell all three of the citrus notes in this (or I imagine that I can).  I can smell the scent that gets on your skin when you're peeling oranges, the scent/taste of juicy, sugared pink grapefruit, and the tropical nuances of pomelo.  It's not bitter or sour at all, more a mix of sweet and bright citrus tones.  There's a teeny tiny bit of soapiness on my skin after a while, but mostly a fun mix of sweet citrus fruits.

A Priala type myrrh - deep red, smoldering, slightly spicy, heavy, and satisfying.  I think the papyrus is adding to the woody, spicy, earthy tones of the myrrh. 
The benzoin gives it a good dose of powdery vanilla sweetness after about 20 minutes. 
I usually don't love benzoin, but it pairs really nicely with the myrrh and cypriol, adding a softness and delicate, warm, vanilla powdery sweetness to the whole blend that makes it easier to wear and more crowd pleasing.

I've asked myself if I really needed all of the myrrh menage blends that have been available lately and the answer is yes, yes I do.  

I have a couple decants of Snow Snake '22 and regretted not full bottling it, so I was hoping that Snow Snake 2023 would be pretty much the same.  It is unfortunately (for me) not the same, and I do prefer the '22, but I still like this year's version.  '22 was lots of red musk with hints of warm, earthy patchouli, sweet slush, and vanilla.  '23 is waaayyy more vanilla.  I think that a lot of people will love this one because of the amped up vanilla.

Snow Snake 2023 is tons of vanilla with a warm, almond-like undertone (not cherry almond, but warm almond cake?).  It threatens to veer into play-doh territory for the first few minutes, but the mid-stage is all creamy vanilla and that hint of warm almond cake.  It reminds me of other fragrances like Tom Ford's Vanilla Sex and LUSH's Butterball more than Snow White, oddly.  It takes about a half hour for the Snake Oil part to start bleeding through all of the vanilla, but I enjoy the fragrance a lot more when it does.  It's Snake Oil's slinky, dark muskiness, exotic perfume spices, and it's patchouli earthiness, with a warm vanilla added in and turned all the way up.  The Snake Oil gets stronger over the hours, but never completely overtakes the vanilla-y notes, and it's a really great fragrance.

I just wish I also had a full bottle of Snow Snake '22.

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.