mari4212

Wet on me, and for the first few hours, this is tart green apples, the smell of them as I'm slicing them up to put into a pie. Very juicy and crisp. No honey, no ylang-ylang, no rose.

 

After a few hours, this turns into the same creamy-soft rose that I get in Maiden, with a tiny bit of apples remaining underneath.

 

It's a nice scent, but not spectacular on me. I could wish for a more rose and to smell the honey. But I'm just as glad I never got the ylang-ylang.

Snake Oil is one of those object lessons in listening to the other forum members.

I got my imp of it about a year and a half ago, after reading all the comments on how it was fantastic vanilla spicey greatness in a bottle.

I tried it once, wrinkled my nose, and wondered whether the majority of the forumites were insane. (Okay, so the answer to that is yes, but in a good way.) It wasn't awful, but it didn't do anything for me. So, remembering how much people were emphasizing aging Snake Oil to make it smell better, I figuratively tossed the imp onto the back burner and forgot about it for about six months. Tried it on again then, and I was still shrugging. It was better, but still not this liquid gold that I'd heard about.

After that, I'd try it every few months, waiting for this incredible transition to occur. Finally, I pulled it out last week to try again. Yummmmm. I was finding any excuse possible to bring my wrists past my nose to smell it.

This last batch of waiting seems to have done it. Snake Oil still hasn't knocked out Chimera or Mouse's Long and Sad Tale out of my top two, but it's definitely hit my personal top five in terms of scents. I just have to buy it and then forget about it for a year and a half first. At least, for an imp. It'd probably take longer for the bottle to age to the same level of greatness.

There might just be something weird going on with my noise. In the vial, and when I first put Maiden on, I don't get white roses, or carnations.

 

Instead, I get lily. Almost a single note lily scent that lasts for a few hours. Not sure where that is coming from, maybe it's the concept of white florals that's tripping my nose up there.

 

After the first few hours, the scent dies down a lot, and it's in that second stage that we start getting into a creamy soft rose scent, with maybe a touch of carnation.

 

Both stages are nice, but I vastly prefer the second stage. I could wish that the first stage died off faster, or that the second stage was a bit stronger in terms of throw, but this is still very pleasant.

 

It's a calming scent for me, and a good one to use in situations where some of the stronger/more unusual perfumes BPAL offers might not be appreciated.

For me this ends up very much being green tea, with perhaps a splash of lemon. I was really hoping the honeysuckle would play up a bit more on me than it did here.

 

That being said, it's a wonderfully light, fresh, and clean scent on me, and very cool and calming. Not something I'm looking for at this point of the year, as I need warm cozy scents to distract me from how frigid it's gotten, but perfect for summer.

In the imp, I get lavender and herbs, and I'm reminded of Scales of Deprivation.

 

On me wet, it's instant lemon. But a creamy and soft lemon, not too sharp or astringent in the way that straight lemon juice can be.

 

As time goes on, a bit of the lavender reappears, but it stays very quiet while the lemon remains strongly present. I love this scent for when I need to concentrate, or when I need my brain to stop racing.

 

I've currently got this layered over the very end of Miskatonic University, a scent that ends as lightly creamy on me. I think that's softening Arcana here, encouraging it to mellow into something more quiet and even more calming.

Ummmm. This is one of the scents that never morphs on me. I get hazelnut coffee in the vial, and the same hazelnut coffee on me, for hours and hours to come.

 

This is one of my favorite perfumes to wear when I'm going to be working, or arround a bunch of people who may or may not like perfumes, because it's just a lovely light coffee scent that doesn't waft incredibly much. I can smell it on me easily, but it doesn't overpower anyone else, the way Dragon's Milk can.

This is, alongside Chimera, my favorite BPAL scent yet.

 

I tend to ration both out into seasons. Mouse is my go-to in spring and summer when I just want to feel and smell wonderful, where Chimera is a straight fall scent.

 

As for the smell itself:

 

It's still hard for me to pick out individual notes. Mostly I get the sum of the scent as one discrete entity. On me, Mouse starts out a creamy-sweet smell, with a light floral undertone. The floral aspect lasts for a few hours, but what remains for ages is the creamy sweetness. It's a warm, light, comforting scent that reminds me of wrapping up in the pastel blanket my mother knitted for me years ago, the one that is always present on my bed.

 

This is my go-to scent when I need to feel comforted and loved. Or when I'm in a happy mood and able to comfort and love others, it reflects that feeling as well.

This is another one of the scents I've had for a while, coming on two years (in the imp vial). So I'm reviewing it after it's aged for quite a while, though I don't recall any major shifts in its scent over that timespan.

 

Wet and on, it blooms out to be very cherry, and rather strong. Most BPAL I can smell if I bring my wrist up to my nose, or if I'm moving and the scent wafts. Dragon's Milk, I can smell when I'm sitting still. And for the first half-hour or so, unless I applied it while I was outside, so can everyone else in the room! I've had to be very cautious about applying it before getting into a car or other confined space, because it can give me a headache.

 

After that initial bloom that is almost too cherry for me to stand, Dragon's Milk drastically improves. It softens, the scent becomes less overpowering, and a creamy sweetness becomes the dominant note, with the cherry thrown out the window.

 

The second stage lasts forever on me, all through the day. I love the second stage scent, but since an imp can last me so long on this, I don't have any plans for getting a big bottle of this.

I've been trying out bpal perfumes for almost two years now, but this is my first review. *crosses fingers that it goes well*

 

I got Chimera with my first imp pack, and it is my all-time favorite perfume to wear, ever. I don't detect many individual notes from it, just a warm, spicy-sweet complexity that never fails to make me smile. And it lasts forever on me. *grins* I put it on in the morning, and I'll wake up tomorrow with a bit of it still lingering as a slight sweetness on my wrists.

 

This is the scent that for me encapsulates curling up under a blanket on a porch swing in late autumn, with a mug of mulled cider in one hand, a plate of gingerbread next to, and a book in my lap, enjoying one of the last bits of autumnal warmth before winter hits and its too cold to want to do anything outside. Not that it smells exactly like any one of those things, but it's the same emotions evoked. I'm so glad this was in my first pack of imps, as it solidified my love of bpal forever.

 

This week has been stressful, and this was the scent that I automatically went for to comfort myself, and it seems to be really helping. Nothing like knowing that you smell great for improving your mood.