Carmencita

In the bottle: Designer Perfume. Something baby boomers wear. Lemon and baby oil and cologne

On my skin: Baby oil and ozone. Lemon and sweet lime. Smells nothing like I expected.

After a while: Baby oil and sweet citrus. Mostly baby oil.

Conclusion: Not for me. Maybe my chemistry fracked with it.

Firstly, I hate florals. Hate. Except when they have been blended so as to be unobtrusive.

However, I purchased this because peony has a special place in my heart. In the first piece of historical fiction I ever read, a wonderful and under-appreciated novel by Muriel Jernigan called "The Forbidden City", 'Peony' is the private nickname of the protagonist.

I thought this would just sit in my BPAL box in homage, since I didn't expect to like it. I was wrong.

In the bottle: At first it's grassy pink flowers, new buds, not fully bloomed, their perfume not fully explored... and then a harsh note of violet which SCARED me.

On my skin: No violet, just that soft, new-bud pink peony, with a hint of something ripe like fruit behind it, but very subtle. If I wear this in my hair it has some throw, although it fades on my skin within a couple of hours. Hair or scent locket. It is beautiful. The only floral I could ever wax poetic about some day.

In the bottle: Butterscotch and Caramel ice cream

On my skin: It's like within the dab I put on my wrist, the apple scent moves to one section of the dab, and the caramel-butterscotch moves to the other side. I can smell each distinctively and separately. The apple is like it has been marinated in pure sugar water. Very tart and super super sweet. The caramel/butterscotch overwhelms it though. The apple throws just a little, the caramel element throws a LOT. Too much.

On the dry down, the apple mellows even more, and the caramel/butterscotch becomes (if possible) even STRONGER. It's too rich for my blood.

I wanted to like this because I love PUNKIE NIGHT sooo much and was hoping this was similar, but to my nose, they are entirely different animals. I think I'll stick with trying to find more bottles of Punkie.

I tried this last night when I had a head-and-neck ache. I filled the tub with hot water and used the entire fizzyBoom.

The scent was very mellow (which is good as strong scents -even good ones- can aggravate a headache or be a trigger for a migraine). It was a mint, but not a hard mint, something was softening it. It was pervasive but the scent lingered close to the water.

I sat in the yellow-green water, reading, my headache becoming sedated. By the time I stood up to rinse off, my skin was luxuriously smooth and lightly oiled, and aside from the blood-rush pain immediately when I stood up, as soon as I had righted myself, the headache had eased almost entirely. I was able to go to bed later and sleep solidly, with no head or neck pain to wake me.

Yay. I need to make another order of these to insure I always have Grr.

Like others, I have not tried the oil, but I can't say enough about the fizzy.

For the last two and a half weeks I have had the worst cold of my life. I've been trying to heal it with herbs and lots of sleep.

After doing a dry-brush exfoliation, I prepared a bath. Man, these fizzies are HUGE. It ran around the top of the water, frothing like mad and releasing this inoffensive, calming scent.

I sat in the bath meditating for at least a half hour. My muscles' soreness was erased. My head ceased to throb. My breathing cleared.

I was able to body butter myself after and fall asleep, dead to the world, blissfully, for a solid four hours before I had to wake up to cough. Every night, I have not had even a solid ONE hour until the TKO bath.

It calmed my system enough to suppress my hacking for a long stretch so I could get some uninterrupted downtime.

Thank you TKO. Thank you BPTP.

Addendum: Oh, and when this arrived in the mail it had a languorous hand-drawn black heart with my name penned into the top box flap. I'm going to save it! Handwritten by someone at BPTP. Swoon. I'm such a groupie.

In the vial: So sweet. A sharp sweetness. Fruit and concentrated sugar covered in artificial honey.

On my skin: Cloying. Something spicy and a little peppery behind it. Candy and syrup and gellied fruits.

Later: Fades to a soft sweet incense scent reminiscent of Scherezade (spelling), but with less incensey resin and more pure essence.

In the vial: Pure almond extract (YUM) but even sweeter.

On my skin: Almonds and hard maple sugar sticks and orange honey comb. Lemons. Subtle florals.

Later: This smells like Wonka's Wonderland. The BIG introductory room in the original movie. Where you could eat the tea cups that grew on trees and drink lemonade from them. Without the scent of the chocolate river. Sweet. Almost cloying. But not nose-itchy or gross out.

In the vial: Dirt and fizzy coke. But not Coca-Cola. Some imposter company's fizzy cola. The dirt is old and dead but moist.

On my skin: Mint, morning graveyard mold. Something sick and rotten.

Later: This still smells rotten. It's disturbing. Essense of corpse. Disgusting but fascinating.

I am sick right now (although my sinuses are clear), so I may come back and change my review and try this on my skin when I get better.

The same in the vial, wet, and dry (just more intense in the vial).

Unlike everyone here, these smell very watery. Drowned grasses and flowers. I smell carnation. Perhaps that's the geranium? The flowers are subdued with gallons upon gallons of fountain water above them. This smells deep and cool and so wet. Soaked wood. An old church with the roof caved in and rain water having collecting in the holy font where dead flowers are.

But there is no smell of rot.

I'm not sure if I would by a bottle of this, but I might not give away the imp. I think I may just keep it for myself.

I love Monterey (I'm a California native myself). I used to visit Monterey once a month with my dad.

Caliban seems to fruity to be oceany to me. I didn't get a beachy scent from that at all. But I may just have weird chemistry. I agree that a very carefully blended violet can evoke the sea.

Luckily, I was able to test this at a Meet N Sniff and soon after I placed my second ever bottle order at the Lab. I've been so obsessed with it of late I just was too distracted to deign to review it.

In the bottle: An apple orchard in late October at sunset, where there's a slight nip to the air and you are making out with someone who is bracing you against an old tree.

I disagree with a lot of reviewers here in that these apples do not smell green to me. Nor do they smell 'crisp'. They are deep red and gold autumn apples, overly ripe, just fallen from the tree and laying in the roots. This is the most Autumnal scent ever to grace my nose save actual AUTUMN. There is a wonderful cider smell, but the scent is so naturally blended that it smells like cider if you could tap cider from a tree. It doesn't taste human-brewed, you know?

On my skin: Doesn't change to a different scent but gets layers. Mulled spices, tree bark, and such, although the harvest apple scent is still true and the most prominent. I don't smell the cranberry individually, but it must be part of that mulled spices, cidery blend that is part of this scent.

It does not smell like a candle to me. Or a tart. I have Yankee tarts in two different scents of apple and one called 'harvest wreath' and not any of them smell like this. I would not use this as a room scent simply because I can't imagine using a drop of it on anything but my skin. Using it to sweeten the air in a room seems too impersonal a use for this scent.

Dry and later: Keeps its purity, especially if I put it in my hair, and it has a wonderful throw; intoxicating but welcome and wouldn't offend even the most perfume-sensitive nostrils. Stays for hours, and over a day! I put it in my hair yesterday morning and now it's evening the next day and I still smell it! I hate that I'm going to take a shower.

Now I can't wait to try Hesperides with the comparisons to it.

One of my top three BPAL scents so far (the others are Swank and Nephilim).

I loathed this in the bottle. I almost sent it along to the next person without trying it because I was so sure I would hate it. Then I remember that my most beloved BPAL I had the same reaction to in the bottle and did a beauteous 180 on my skin.

Well, this wasn't that fairytale, but it was still better on my skin.

In the bottle: Decades expired Grandma perfume

On my skin: Watery violet

Dry: Violets in water. This is something I love the smell of but don't want to smell like. I keep sniffing my wrist. I'd use this as a 'smelling salt' in my purse to evoke a particular mood, but I would never wear it or use it as a room scent even.

It's going to pass along to someone else. Still, to all you others who read this review, make sure you test it on your skin (and this goes for ANY BPAL oil) before dismissing it.

In the bottle: Gardenia-scented Sangria

Wet: Gardenia. But not too bad as a floral scent. Smells like whiffing a fresh flower, not smelling perfumed flowers. I'm not getting any of the other layers.

After a minute: Okay, it's still all flowers, but it's more complex. I can smell the peony and the jasmine separately as opposed to their combined 'gardeniaesque' scent. Still no pepper or ginger or fruit or tea.

After a while: I can smell a bit of the pepper now, but only because I'm searching for it. I doubt another nose would pick it out. Crisp florals with a throw. I'm sure a flower-lover would relish it, but sadly I am not a Petal Princess.

Blessedly, this was the same in the bottle, wet, and dry on my skin. Perhaps a bit more intense in the bottle, but none the less, no chameleon activity.

This scent is the experience of sitting around a kitchen table on a mild autumn evening with a group of giggling friends, eating vanilla ice cream and oreo cookies and molasses cookies, all in a mad sugar rush with something sinister going on in the background.

That's what this smells like to me. Ice cream, cookies, and PURE EVIL.

The evil part is underneath. Just this little bit of darkness, mischief, something awry. Perhaps there is a cunning demon beneath the table where the gigglers sit. Just about to gently scratch a long charcoal-encrusted claw across the ankles of the ice cream-faced bevy.

Mmm. I might get a bottle of this. Oh wait. It's not available. FRELLLL!!!!

In the bottle: Sharp mint and pine, but the pine is dominant and something else in it reminds me of Nephilim.

On my wrist: The mint and pine are strong, but some mellow, almost sweet scent comes through. Other people mention berries, but it's not quite that. Maybe a sweet moss. There is a coolness to it, in the scent and seemingly temperature wise. Now on my skin it's sweetness and cool trees and pine and mint still. I really like this.

BOTTLE wish list!

I am getting some very unusual variations from this.

It smelled the same in the bottle and on me for long hours.

Like a little snowy cherub and faint violets. I love it. It does indeed smell like snow with something soft, ethereal, and bright added to it. I am getting a slight apple underneath that gets stronger the longer I wear it. It's not a crisp sharp apple, but a smooth, soft gentle apple, I forget which kinds taste like this smells. Not a red apple. But a yellowish one. It has that nice powdered sugar and maybe the lemon in it is what makes it smell like snow? It does not smell like lemon to me. And the peach I think is what is smelling more like a smooth, unubtrusive apple.

Of course only after falling in love with this scent do I realize it's not currently available.

Off topic for a second. I smelled Midsummer's night yesterday in the Yankee store and thought it smelled awful. Does it smell different burning or in a wax tart than it does to sniff the lid of the candle?

In the bottle: Bitter lemon, but not unpleasant, and a pale musk.

On the skin: The aloe comes through but smells waxy, like store lotion. The lemon gets even more bitter, but still not unpleasant. But the musk is too much and itches my nose.

Dry down: Fades quickly, and the remnants still itch my nose.

Not unpleasant overall, but definitely not for me.

Cosmo had that famous article showing that in scientific double-blind (or whatever) studies, the scent of pumpkin pie was the most arrousing and appealing to a guy.

So Harvest Moon 2006, here we come! Or Jack.

But go with other people's recommendations, as I've never fully tested my BPAL scents on random men.

Smells like (both in the bottle, wet on me and dry on me): Rootbeer, cinnamon, and musk

It's too masculine for my tastes and too musky (but I'm sensitive to musk).

Still, very interesting scent. I would recommend it to others, particularly men.

I got "Maenad" in a swap.

In the bottle it is reminiscent of "Vice" with a citrus smell.

On me in all stages it is sweet strawberry. It smells like a plastic Strawberry Shortcake doll my sister had when she was little.

The florals I can't smell at all individually. They just seem to add a little complexity to the strawberry scent.

I know a lot of you didn't like it, but I love it! I can't stop smelling my wrist. It's a very 'young' and innocent scent, reminds me of playing games when I was little, and for some reason of the 80s.

Probably going to get a 5ml of this.

DO NOT JUDGE THIS SCENT BY ITS SMELL IN THE VIAL! PUT IT ON YOUR SKIN FIRST!

I almost threw this away because I hated the scent I got from sniffing the vial. It smelled like expired cologne. But for some wonderful reason I decided to try it on my flesh and it was immediately phenomenal.

Very earthy, as previously noted. I'm not familiar with most of the components of this scent so I can't name what I'm experiencing. However, I'll assume the fruitiness I smell is fig, even if it has berry-like qualities to it.

It's very complex. I notice something different every time I sniff my flesh. Sometimes I notice the fig, sometimes the smell of leaves and woodsy herbs. And clean, fresh, rich earth. It is absolutely nothing like it smells in the vial. It is 180 degrees different.

I'm definitely going to get a bottle of this.

In the vial: Chocolate and peanut and hazelnut

On my skin: Cocoa Puffs and Cocoa Crispies cereal

Dry down: Less puffs more Wonka and Godiva

I want to eat this.

In the bottle: Almond extract! That's what I smelled. A little bit of the cherry, but mostly almond extract was my first impression.

On my wrist: Very floral and cologne-like, the cherry was gone. So was the almond.

After a while: I can smell the lilies and this powdery baby type scent.

Overall impressions: Now very powdery, adult, too adult for me I'm afraid. Regal enough for the Queen of hearts I suppose.

In the bottle this smells to me like incense or a bohemian clothing shop.

At first application it smells like muslin and musk.

After it dries all I can smell is the musk and I don't like it.

Several hours later it mellows a bit but is still too musky for me and smells like white freshmint tic-tacs.

Overall, this scent is not for me, but some of you who like musks which are very apparent but not too overwhelming, will probably enjoy it.