ow1goddess

This couldn't quite dethrone my beloved Lightning Storm, but I agree that is has similar feel. This is a clean, almost sharp scent, with a tart green apple, and the orchid and bergamot combine to give it something that reminds me of incense. My hair gloss usually burns off quickly but this one hangs around, and I find the scent helps me focus and perks me up.

I LOVE this candle. I want it to be a room spray like nobody's business, but still. I haven't burned it yet, because it's a gift, but it just smells amazing. It smells like a winter night but not like Christmas (which I was afraid of), a nice cold pine scent that is just slightly menacing. I took a chance on it mostly for the name, but I love it.

I like the scent of this in the bottle and when first applied. I'm not sure how to explain it but I can really tell that it's a RED apple, distinct from the green or more general apple, and the honey and resin give it a nice dark, sweet complexity. However, after I wore it for about half an hour, it started to turn on me and ended up smelling like a rotten apple. I'm not sure what caused it, and I plan to give it one more go before I re-home it, but I had to wash it out because I smelled gross- kind of overly sweet and moldy. I've never had a hair gloss react like that. They usually smell pretty much like they do in the bottle, so I'm not sure what's up. Maybe it reacted to my shampoo or conditioner?

I can't pick the notes out on this, but I really like it! The combination together smells kind of like jasmine to me, and overall it makes me think of a "girl" version of Dorian. I get a sort of sweet floral but the cedar saffron etc gives it that suggestion of cologne, I guess. Not what I thought it would smell like but I love it.

I don't get much marshmallow, per se, from this- I get a lovely, smokey campfire scent that is sweet and vanilla-y but not acrid or "fake" like most of the marshmallow scents do on me (my skin loves sweet-smoke, though). It reminds me of The Lights of Men's Lives and Bonfire Night, two other favorites of mine. Glad I decided to buy it unsniffed out of all the Pickmans- just sad the cute little monster is so small on the label I can barely make him out.

I didn't have any notion of what this would smell like, but I really like it! Wet I get a lot of dry (non-milky) cocoa with a nice base of sweet incense- I get a little kick of pepper but it melds with the incense, and a bit of warm dustyness from the hay. The dry-down remains nice but goes more and more to a sweet, fuzzy patchouli. It reminds me of WILF and Hellhound on my Trail. I only tried this one because I lucked into someone selling a big pile of testers, because I would not have bought this otherwise, but now I might need a bottle! I also like that it's unusual- it reminds me of other things, but it's distinctive and different from everything else I have.

It's not BPAL and it's not perfume, but paintbox soap works (on etsy, run by a lovely forumite) puts out Sweet 100s soap in the spring (available now) which is the most amazing, tomato-planty scented soap. I also would recommend Season of the Emergence, I think it was, which was very vegetal.

I get something liked scorched earth and like a garden on a blazing hot day. I like that the brimstone and cinnamon seem to make this smell hot but aren't identifiable as notes. The plants give it a little sweetness but are balanced against the hot and earthy scents. When I opened the bottle, the person with me got a lot of grape in the throw, but I didn't- to me it smelled almost like chocolate. But yes, on the skin I got hot, sweet, and earthy, like a scorching summer day, and I really like it!

In the bottle and when first applied, this is a beautiful, quiet scent, and perfectly matches the description- it really smells like a balmy spring night, green and musky and dewy moist. I loved it. Then my skin chemistry got it...and turned something sour so it sort of smelled like I needed a shower. Oh well, it's on to a happy and loving home now.

I'm not sure where to put this, because my Half-Elf is not version 5. We won it from the Lab in a Twitter contest. It's a proto bottle but it just says Half-Elf on it, so I'm not sure if it will be the released scent or a different version, but it definitely doesn't smell anything like v5 from the reviews above.

In the bottle: Didn't think I would like this at ALL...very strong, sharp wood which makes me think of Pine-Sol although it doesn't really smell like that. I almost didn't try it but I was doing a tester for someone so I decided to skin test what was left.

On the skin: I am glad I tried this! The wood is very strong and seems to be different types- I get conifers like pine as well as maybe cyprus and oakmoss? Added in to this I get something that's hard to explain, but smells like a man's body. Not sweat, exactly, but sexy and male. Like a guy who's been hiking through the woods, maybe, not hard enough to be panting and sweaty but limbered up and warm. I don't usually gender my BPAL but this is a strongly masculine scent. It has a lot of throw and staying power- I only put a small amount on my wrist and could smell it all day, and 10 hours later I can still smell it close to the skin. As it ages on my skin, it sweetens a little until it reminds me more of the "blonde wood" from Aziraphale or maybe something like teak, but it doesn't lose the maleness.

Overall, I'm not sure how often I'd actually wear this myself, but somewhere out there is a guy who'd get laid all the time if he had this. I do really like it as an evocation of the Half-Elf- sort of a rugged loner trapped between worlds but with lots of appeal.

I love this! I finally got one that smells like cocoa without going to choco scratch-n-sniff sticker after 30 minutes. I can't pick out much except sweetness, cocoa and spices because I'm lousy at notes in complex blends, but this has a kind of Mexican hot chocolate smell to it. Everything is really balanced so it doesn't come over too foody but ti's still really warm and comforting- a perfect autumn scent. I'm just sad I'll have to hoard it.

I love red musk- it's one of my favorite notes- but this is awfully close to a single note on me. It's sexy, no doubt, but even dry I can't smell the cream or the honey except as a vague sweetness. However, this may be because I tested it when I was, ahem, hormonal and red musk seems to amp up even more than usual at certain times of the cycle. I'd heard that was possible but this seems to be the only note that really changes on me. Anyway, I still like it even if it wasn't what I was hoping for, so I will definitely try it again in a week and see how it goes. It's also really strong, like people in the next state can probably smell it.

This for me is one of the ones that smells too much like the inspiration...it's got a sweaty, gym-locker-room smell that is an immediate turn off for me. I think it's olive oil, weirdly enough...everything I get with that goes weird in some unexpected way.

In bottle/wet: Funky. Smells like something well-used in a biological sense.

Dry: Fainter, quiets down to something not so bad as the wet smell but still makes me think I need a shower everytime I catch it.

I get a lovely raw honey smell with a bit of feminine muskiness and just a hint of vanilla/spice which isn't identifiable as specific things but makes it more complex. This was decanted from a lab-fresh bottle so I'll try aging it. I don't get the fruit or tea at all. It's a lovely, sweet/sexy feminine smell but it's so faint I can only smell it if I stick my nose right to it. Maybe in a few months it will amp up, or I'll have to bite and get a bottle so I can slather a bit, because I love it, but I want to be able to smell it more clearly!

I didn't have the ones recommended, so I went with a little TAL Energy oil at my throat, hair line and between the breasts. It was faint but there, just a hint of citrus, but you had to get really close to smell it, so I was pleased with it as a choice. I think the interview went really well!

Bumping this because I have an interview tomorrow and no idea what to wear. I was leaning towards Mme Moriarty or Judith and Holofernes because they are among my favorites and make me feel very confident, but I'm worried because Moriarty especially has a lot of throw on me. I don't really have "light" or "clean" scents because I don't usually care for them- I like musky and foody blends but I don't want to jinx it. I've been looking for months and this is my first interview I've landed and I'm so nervous! Maybe just a little J+H in the hollow of my throat where it isn't noticeable? Bewitched is good on me too, might choose that, or Noche Buena. Anyway, suggestions welcome! The position is working in the financial aid office of a large public university verifying documentation.

I really like this one- to me it smells like orange spice tea. I get orange peel and clove, mostly, and a little bit of something else so it smells like sniffing a tea bag, or one of those pomander balls you make with oranges and leave in a potpourri bowl around the holidays. Of all the Yules I've tried, this one smells the most like a Victorian Christmas, but it's good on any cold winter day.

So my question is, how do Peacock Queen and Pink Snowballs compare to 2,5,& 7?

 

It might be the tea rose note you're objecting to in Marie & 2,5,7 . . I utterly adore roses and seek them out wherever I can find them, but I find I don't always love BPAL's tea rose note. It's almost too candy-sweet and bright, and doesn't have that wonderful complexity that fresh roses do. I find the "red rose" and "white rose" notes seem to work better on my skin (although London is the tea rose exception for me-- whatever else is in that makes it lovely).

 

Peacock Queen is definitely lush and full of roses-- I think of it as a "darker" rose scent (if you think of those roses that are so red they're almost black-- that's what Peacock Queen smells like to me). It's fuller than Rose Red, IMO.

 

Pink Snowballs is soft and pretty, but the rose doesn't dominate much at all.

 

And like most everybody else, I've never come across a rose scent as beautiful as Rose Red / The Rose. That smells exactly like a full-bodied red rose to me, thorns wet with dew.

 

Thank you. It looks like I'm going to start out with an imp of The Rose the next time I do an imp pack. It sounds like it is highly recommended and possibly what I'm looking for.

Might depend on your skin chemistry, but I am also a rose lover and reccommend trying out some of the rose + ______ scents. Venice is a lovely, complex scent with rose dominant- but the other notes deepen it so it really does smell Renaissance-y. You could try Whip, as well- my skin kind of eats the leather note but it does make it a little musky. My favorite one from the GC though is Zombi- which I would never have ordered but tried on at the Whole Foods in Raleigh and loved so much I bought a bottle right there. The dirt note on me makes it a very sexy, earthy, blooming rose smell, and on someone else I know, who does not really like rose and doesn't amp it as I do, it smells like a whole rose garden.

Peacock Queen was my favorite for a long time- it's a heady, haughty, blooming hot house red rose, sophisticated and feminine but a bit unapproachable, somehow. Rose Red is my new fave, as she's a bit less strong and has better lasting power on me. You might also try Hope (or is it Faith? It's one of them.) for the sugar note, though it can be a little hard to get without gambling on the whole set. Another good one if you can dig it up is Silentium Amoris- the ylang ylang sweetens the rose and gives a nice melancholy quality.

I will weep bitter tears on this one, because I thought I would love it- it sounded like Crowley but with musk. I'm really glad I didn't buy a bottle (no matter how much I like the art), because this hates me.

I get no musk, at least not recognizable musk, and no chocolate at all. I get stale cigarettes, something like fusty old fur coats, and perhaps a slight ghost of lemon toilet cleaner on the drydown. Hideous. I might try to age the decant I got to see if the musk comes out or the tobacco backs down.

I wish this didn't have the verbena in it. It gives me this weird plasticky-sweet smell when I put it on. Extra frustrating, because it also has this wonderful, evergreen smell like freshly cut holly and greenery, and I wish it didn't have to fight the lemony death note. It's probably because of my skin chemistry, so I guess I'm in the "all lemon" crowd on this one. The lemon does back off a little after about half an hour, though, and then I get the nice green smell more and a hint of something resinous and a bit smoky.

Also, something in this gives me a headache, like MB: Bloody Mary did. Sad times. I will try it in an oil burner and see if that helps, because I really want to save that happy Yule greenery smell.

I didn't know what kvass was but everything else sounded good. I was very interested in the "meat" note as well, since that's not exactly common.

In the bottle and wet on the skin I get a strong sweet and smoke smell with a sour tang I don't like. Not looking good. Reading upthread, I think it might be the rye- I've never liked the smell or taste of rye bread.

On dry down, however, the sour note goes away and it becomes a robust smoky sweet smell. The honey and the wine blend together nicely and there is a pleasantly sharp smokiness which reminds me of a wood-burning stove or smoker, so I guess that's the meat. After about an hour the smoke backs off a little and settles in to make a nice, warm and sweet blend. This is a good holiday smell, too, given the warmth and richness of the food.

Overall, it reminds me of Sugar Skull, but amped up- dinner instead of dessert.

I will say, unlike some other BPALs I've gotten, Thalia is a scent that fits its name. On me it smells like the really sweet white sangria we served at our wedding, very summery, sweet and fresh.

I'm a little sad that pear doesn't amp on me- wet I get more of the plumeria and it's very white grape on the dry down- but the pear does hang around and make it sweeter and fresher smelling. I will try this again in spring or summer, as it seemed a touch too sunny to fit in cold, dark November.

Oh, O...how I wanted you to love me.

Wet- I get this big burst of HONEY, fresh, raw, and kind of carnal when I first applied this, which I adored.

Dry Down: Unfortunately, amber hates me. As it dried, the amber turned into baby powder. I could still smell the fresh honey, but instead of being sexy it came across kind of powdery sweet and innocent, almost something you might give a young girl. Not a bad scent to end up with when a note goes wonky due to chemistry, but not what I was looking for.

Dry: The drier it gets, the more it smells singularly of baby powder. An excellent candidate for a scent locket, perhaps, or into the swap pile.