biocarolyn

This review is for the 2009 version... First off, I enjoy pomegranate quite a bit. I haven't smelled Persephone, but I enjoy Swank. This is much less bright than Swank, which is summer pomegranate fun. This is definitely winter pomegranate, with a touch of mulling spices as well. Still bright red & juicy, but a distinctly WARM fruit. The spices are almost as strong as the pomegranate on me- allspice maybe, & cinnamon. This is a really nice, festive winter blend.

Well. Now I have a scent to add to that thread about "not getting" the popular scents. On me, 2009 Snow White smells like almond paste. Heavy, thick almonds- the exact note I was hoping would hide. Oh well...you can't win them all...

I third Shadow Witch Orchid. That felt very purple to me. I don't see The Raven as purple, maybe just a dusty blue-lavender. Most of the berry blends seem red to me. Maybe Lady Macbeth, which feels like a really deep winey-burgandy purple.

Ye Gods!!!! In the imp this is nothing but strong, syrupy cherry. Maraschino-Robotussin Cherry. Screaming cherry. I really did not want to test this, as I'm not a big fan of cherry scents, but the woods tempt me. Wet on the skin, the cherry is still there but woods come out to play. Mahogany & maybe Cedar? The dry-down is about the woods entirely.

My husband is pretty uniformly against anything he perceives to be "girly-" he even thought Dorian smelled girly. His favorites: Hellfire Galvanic Goggles Antikythera Mechanism The Robotic Scarab Theodosius Jolly Roger He seems to be especially enjoying the Steamworks line...

In the bottle, it smells like shrieking caramel. Scary, wet gooey, foody caramel. Applied, the caramel tones down almost immediately to sugar. My high school job was Dunkin Donuts, and this smells like the vat of gunk they dip donuts in to make glazed donuts. Just exactly like that vat. But then, after a minute or so, it has an intense strawberry jelly scent. It becomes glazed strawberry donuts. Which I guess works to make squishy guts for zombies, but these zombies are going to get cavities. Too sweet by far for me, but I felt "uneducated" not having tried a really foodie scent.

I love this blend. Skin musk is probably the most dominant note to my nose, although it doesn't get really "musky." This is a second skin scent to me- very much a "you but better" smell. After the musk, the beeswax is strong in this for me as well. This is a new favorite, and immediately prompted me to post an ISO post and beg everyone to trade or sell to me. Love this blend!!!!!!!

Last year's Lupercalia blends can apparently do no wrong on me. Lovers in a Ricefield is mostly plum to me, with the rice in the background. I can't find the nutmeg, and there is a hint of vanilla making this smoother. Although it doesn't beat Giant Vulva for me, I still like this a lot.

I traded for this recently, and I thought I would try it before looking at the notes list again. So even though I checked now and I think my nose must be broken LOL, here's what it smells like to me. In the bottle- I get a bit of a dirt note, similar to the dirt in Planting Moon or Destroying Angel. It's nice healthy dirt that grew good food all summer. I also get dry grasses, hay, that sort of thing. Very fall. Wet, on skin- Dirt all gone! There is a note that reads a little sharp, like whiskey- I think it is one of the grains. I get mashed fruit, but it smells a bit apple-like more than berries. Dry on skin- Warm mulled cider with that note that smells like dirt to me lurking underneath. This is warm fall, similar to Samhain. Some of the same damp leaves from there are here too. This is a really nice fall blend. I like it a lot, and I think it is going to be great for this time of year!

To add to "light" earthy scents, try Destroying Angel. One me it starts out clear, loamy potting soil. It's a clean dirt, if that makes any sense. I seriously recommend it!

I have discovered that although red musk hates me, skin musk & I are friends. Actually, perhaps more than friends. I've loved it in the Illustrated Woman, in Giant Vulva, and now as an undercurrent in Tamamo-No-Mae. There is something citrus about this blend(which is good, because I like citrus)- like the sweetest ruby red grapefruit you could imagine. I know there are no citrus notes listed...Its such a strange combination of sharp and soft- maybe that is her intellect, her sparkling wit (like in the legend). Anyway, unfortunately, I have no idea what the rest of the notes in this blend (OK, except for white tea, which I can't smell in it) smell like, but I love what I smell. Top 3. And I just smelled it for the first time today. Damnit- doomed to seek out more, probably at ridiculous prices LOL. See? This is why I was staying away from the LEs...

I think this is Red Musk. It's the same sad, rubbery, latex smell I get from Mme. Moriarty, Kabuki, and a few others. I was hoping that the cranberries would win out, but no dice. Red Musk hates me. Sigh.

This is extremely tart grapefruit in the imp and immediately upon applying. However, it starts to turn to shrieking white florals, and I get scared. Luckily, it stops after about 10 minutes, and shifts to a nice mix, with florals that behave and bright, tart citrus. Really nice...

I thought this would never work for me, so much so that I didn't even bother ordering it. Then I got my bottle of Knock-A-Dolly, and liked it but thought it was too sweet. Lambs-Wool was the one I ordered first, and I tried to convince myself that I like it a lot but it was too sweet and smelled like a Yankee Candle to me. I thought about it, and finally gave in and ordered Samhain. I haven't smelled any of the previous versions of Samhain, but this is really nice. I think it has a lot in common with Falling Leaf moon, but it fits in the spectrum between Falling Leaf Moon & Lambs-Wool. This is actually my favorite autumn blend so far, and I was despairing of finding one before the season was over.... I'm happy. Really nice.

This one smelled like those old scent flavored markers- grape marker and sweet wine. It's sad, but unfortunately it's too sweet for me. I love berries, but this one is extra berry! Too sweet...sad.

Proof I didn't look up the notes- wet I was convinced I smelled rum, then it dried down to overwhelming cedar. It's odd, because I can usually tell the difference between sandalwood & cedar- I guess red sandalwood is closer. The sandalwood amped on me as it dried down, and I got nothing but woods. Truthfully, I couldn't smell the patchouli. Maybe I'm broken LOL....

In the imp, this is so heavily soap to me its not even funny. It smells EXACTLY like Dial liquid hand soap. I don't really get floral from it, but I'm not good with florals and can't really ID individual floral notes. It stays pretty similar on my skin wet, but by noon the dry-down has become a light floral scent. I was going to lunch and smelled my wrist in the car, and couldn't remember what I put on this morning. It does morph, the soapy-ness goes away and it becomes a really clean, golden, light herbally-floral for me. The most predominant description I could come up with for this is clean-golden. Its very fresh, and is actually nicer than I expected after the sniff in the imp.

I don't know what in the world I was thinking when I bought this! I haven't loved resins, and most of the notes in here I would guess would be too heavy for me. I keep thinking I like aquatic scents, trying them, and not liking them. So I guess I got caught up in the "lunacy" (heh) and thought, ooooh, fall, my favorite season. So this came, and I put it aside. It took me a day or two to try it...For me, this blend keeps creeping up on me. I tested sparingly, just a tiny dab on my wrist, expecting to not like it. Shock- it's really nice. I kept smelling it, every half hour or so, and it keeps getting nicer. I can't pick out the notes, although the previous reviews seem to hit on some things I noticed- very light, almost ghost of a smoky scent, more intense rain type note when wet and during early dry down. A hint of something that is almost cinnamon was there too, along with crisp fall leaves. For those who compared it to Samhain- I haven't smelled Samhain yet. But I ordered Knock-a-Dolly, which is supposed to be "Samhain plus sugar." Sprayed some in the living room Sunday morning, and in the early evening, it was chilly and had been raining most of the afternoon. We had the windows open, and I was sitting on the couch, looking out the window. At first I thought I had gotten a whiff of myself, but as I said, I had put on very little and it was early AM when I applied. Then I realized- it was the damp, crisp, fall air combining with the lingering Knock-a-Dolly in the room. But my first thought was that it smelled just like Falling Leaf Moon. This is a really interesting blend, and I'm going to hang onto it and enjoy for fall. Thanks to Beth, for creating something that really drew me in and is a great experience. This is what I love about BPAL- I don't just smell nice. The blends are really interesting and make you examine your scent memory for associations and are just generally a wonderful experience. That can't be easy to create time & time again. Excellent!!!! ETA: Samhain 2009 arrived. I like it a lot, and I think it splits the difference between Falling Leaf Moon & Lambs-Wool, if that makes sense. So if there is a continuum, this is on one end- Samhain without the apple and sweets, and make the woods wet.

This was a frimp from that lab, which is excellent because I never would have tried it. I'm learning to trust BPAL vanilla, because it doesn't smell like those horrible commercial blends on me. The strange part about this is I didn't think I liked vanilla, I thought amber went to powder on me, and I'm basically afraid of florals. But this is unexpectedly nice, and definitely more than the sum of its notes. I'm actually contemplating a 5ml! Something is broken in my nose though, as I get a bright note and would have thought there was a berry in this. That's a good thing for me, but I wonder what I'm smelling? Sweet Pea? Could it be a floral that isn't gross? ETA: GAKKK! The amber came to get me, about 2.5 hours after I put it on. It was all of a sudden a /really/ extreme, powdery scent that was wayyyy too much. I had to wash it off. It smelled like cheap hair salon. Sad- it was nice in the beginning.

For me, this one did not change at all. It smells the same in the imp, wet on my skin, and dry on my skin. This is all Autumn-spices-yankee-candle for me. I'm sad. I wanted to LOVE this, and I only like it a bunch. This is really nice as a room scent, and its very pretty, but it smells too much like a candle for me to wear. Oh well... One thing- it layers nicely with Carnal.

Got this from a forumite and it is lovely. I was tempted to seek out earth notes because I really liked Destroying Angel, and these two scents have a similar feel to me, since Destroying Angel reminds me of these wooden boxes of white button mushrooms with dirt that my father used to bring home from Hoboken. This reminds me of green beans, tomato plants, and freshly turned dirt. My grandmother used to love to garden, and they had this garden that we used to put turtles in, and we would be walking among the rows of tomatoes, see a beautiful red one, and bend down to pick it. When you grabbed it, the bottom half was missing, having been eaten by hungry turtles. One of those turtles (I named her Katie) came home with me every winter (yes I could tell them apart) and even went to college with me. So this smells like Katie, which is lovely. Comfort scent.

I was really interested to try this, and I was surprised that I liked it. It has a lot in common with Fae, I think. The white musk and light floral is the same but obviously this is lemon, where Fae is Peach. It is a very soft lemon, not a bright citrus tang. Definitely not wood polish lemon at all. It's gentle, and while it doesn't shout, it does hang out forever. This is literally the only BPAL I've ever tried that lasted 12+ hours on my skin.

I will chime in with a recommendation of Destroying Angel for anyone looking for a really nice dirt note. On me, its pure dirt wet, and very slowly, over 4 hours or so, transitions into really light white floral. But its more like a ghost of white floral. And I don't do floral. But I like it a lot anyway...

This one was a total shot in the dark for me- I am an illustrated woman, and skin musk and I seem to get along. I had hoped tobacco would be dry tobacco leaf, rather than smoke, and pitch pine and I are friends. Since CD won't be here forever, I figured I'd give the Illustrated Woman a try. When I put it on, it was all cologne on me. Not unpleasant, but REALLY masculine. I am not a girly-girl, but this was even a bit much for me. I kept inhaling my wrist deeply through the dry-down, and the pine came out a bit. So I waited, and waited. This is so well blended, I don't think I could identify the notes if they weren't in front of me. Fascinating. Complex, and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I'm dying to put it on my husband, to see it if smells different on him... Edit, almost four years later: Granted, my Tastes have changed a bit... But in directions that would make me think I would like this less. However! This blend also changes drastically over time. I think the tobacco and skin musk together was what made me feel this was so masculine. It isn't girly, not by any stretch. But these days, my bottle is sultry, earthy feminine. The pine and tobacco have faded somewhat, although both are still present; and the smoky vanilla is more prominent than it was. This is definitely one of those scents I wear for ME, rather than trying to smell good by someone else's tastes. The Illustrated Woman reminds me of one of those really amazing designer dresses that you need tons of confidence to pull off, otherwise the dress will wear you, rather than the other way around. Wearing it well makes you feel like you could conquer the world. This is an amazing blend and so, so different from anything you'd get from a more mainstream perfume. I love it!

I thought I had found my BPAL love. Then Australian Copperhead came along. And the funny part about it is, I wasn't particularly motivate by Snake Oil (Sorry I know, it makes me a heretic) In the bottle this is all tart berry. I love berry, so I thought maybe this would be the hook that reeled me in. I was right. The berry stays heavy on my skin wet, but slowly fade and the blend gets more & more vanilla-ish as time goes on. In the end, the berry is just a hint. I want to marry this bottle and have little copperheaded babies.