Savannah

I wasn't familiar with dragon's blood before I tried this, but I figured it would be whatever wasn't the cinnamon, clove and pepper. :-P It's not at all what I expected. From the "resin" and the dark red color I expected something rich and deep, but this is an odd floral-y scent, indeed a bit sharp. The cinnamon is strong and the pepper is definitely there sharpening everything up-- the clove isn't really the kind of clove I like, it gives the blend a bit of a medicinal feel. I offered my wrist to my friend and she said, "Smells like those cinnamon flavored syrups they put in coffee at Starbucks." Sort of spicy and artificially sweet. I kind of like it-- definitely keeping the imp-- but don't think I need a bottle.

Wood, wood, and more wood. Most strongly cedar, with a bit of pine and some other woody things that I can't identify. As it dries, I can detect some frankincense and myrrh in the background, but this is overwhelmingly a wood fragrance on me. That might be my skin's fault-- it tends to amp cedar, I've found-- but I'm sad that the lovely resins got buried in the woodpile.

I definitely get the "furniture polish" from this. Sharp lemon with wood and a dirty note that must be the patchouli. It's complex and evocative, but not something I want to go around smelling like. I'm passing it on to my lemon-loving friend! This does not change on me much from the vial to the skin to the drydown, except that the wood comes out more.

Ha, this caught my eye because my friend also loves Vera Wang and I'm also trying to bring her into the fold! Here's the list of Vera Wang notes from the packaging she had: Bulgarian Rose, calla lily, mandarin flower, gardenia, lotus, iris, white stephanotis, sheer musks, white woods, nectar Here are the BPALs she loves so far: Psyche, Nefertiti Here's the list of (catalogue; I don't mess around with LE) BPALs I'm trying to get for her to try: Viola: tea rose, lilac, Calla Lily, Somalian Rose, amber, Spanish moss, red sandalwood, rosewood, and myrrh, with Mandarin. Eternal: Stephanotis, cyclamen, heliotrope, white rose and gardenia. Queen of Hearts: Lily of the Valley, Calla Lily, stephanotis and a drop of cherry. Veil: White sandalwood, lilac, gardenia, violet, orris, lavender and ylang ylang. The Lady of Shalott: bold gardenia, crystalline musk, muguet, water blossoms, aquatic notes and white ginger. Nuit: dazzling white musks, white rose and night-blooming jasmine with soft moss, Egyptian incense, and moonflower. Shroud: Dry white sandalwood wrapped in thin woods, soft grasses and white flowers, cajeput and embalming herbs. I'll keep y'all updated on which ones she actually likes. :-)

There's a coffee shop in Richmond, VA, called Rostov's. It's crammed with bins and jars of flavored coffees, ground and in whole bean form; chocolate-coated toffee almonds dusted with confectioner's sugar; pralines; chocolate-coated espresso beans; and so many other coffee- and chocolate-oriented delicacies that the mind reels upon entry. I turned to my mom when we went in and said, "If only you could bottle the scent of this store." Someone has now bottled it. And I officially worship that someone. :grovel: This is so good I cannot even believe it. I need more, more, more! And I need an oil burner! *runs off in mad excitement*

So it's official. Rose on me = nasty, soapy death. There will be no more experimentation with anything with rose in it, no matter HOW nice the other ingredients are. This is depressing. I can smell that it's a beautiful blend-- the frankincense, one of my favorite scents in the world, smells just a little brighter than usual, and I'm wondering if that's the olibanum, since I'm not too clear on the distinction. I love the hint of fresh, honey-sweet lily of the valley, and the myrrh grounds the scent wonderfully. But guh, rose! Cannot deal!! I'll be passing this along to someone less rose-opposed.

Wet: Florals. Soapy florals. Jasmine or rose? *checks* Ah-- rose. Yep, rose still hates me. Drydown: Violet. And sandalwood. Oh, this feels like dawn, a spring dawn in a dewy rose garden. The cool violet, cool white florals, and the tinest hint of cool mint, and the sandalwood warming it just a touch like the first rays of the rising sun. The rose is just killing me. If it would go away, this would be so beautiful. A delicious, evocative scent, so fitting for its name. Unfortunately, I can't get over the rose enough to fork over for a bottle, but highly recommended.

Vial: Ooh, sweet tonka, and some sort of flower. Sweet pea, I assume. On: SASSAFRAS! Holy mother of root beer. Seriously, that's some strong, green, fresh-cut sassafras. Er, wait. Sassafras? I have no idea where that's coming from. Waiting for it to go away now. Reading reviews to see if anyone else got sassafras. Hmm. No. I am officially insane. Drydown: The sassafras faded . Now it smells like sunblock. Floral-y sunblock. Guh. Definitely not for me. I just want to know where the tonka from the vial went. :-(

I love and adore chocolate, but I've never yet found a chocolate fragrance that worked for me, so it was with a mix of jaded cynicism and tremulous hope that I swapped for an imp of this. Another poster put it very well: "Strongly cocoa, not chocolate--there is no milky smoothness that the cocoa butter brings to chocolate." I don't like milk chocolate, so I thought this would be a good thing for me, but it turns out the smoothness from the cocoa butter is a really important ingredient of the chocolate experience for me, because without it, the sweetened cocoa smells to me like chocolate flavored candy. Not a chocolate bar, mind you, but one of those hard candies flavored with chocolate, like the outside of a brown Tootsie Roll Pop. This is much more sophisticated and healthy and organic and real, of course, but still. It's too sweet for me, and unfortunately, the incense and wood are doing nothing to cut the sweetness. They just linger smokily and sultrily behind it, like beautiful female backup dancers to an unsubtle and self-aggrandizing male singer, making me wish he would shut up so I could absorb them more fully. That said, this is a beautifully crafted scent-- I pretty much end up thinking that about every BPAL oil I've tried so far, even the ones I send off to more loving homes. I think this will be one of those. Off to find a lover of sweet cocoa. ETA: Okay, a few hours later I caught a delicious whiff of sandalwood. Seems the girls pounced the dude and started snogging him enthusiastically. Er... I mean the notes really... blend on drydown. Very lovely and much less sweet. I might actually have to keep this one around.

Oh! Flowers! Oh my goodness. This is the ultimate floral scent. Sweet and fresh and blooming and green. It's like walking in a garden crammed crazily full of all kinds of flowers, or like sticking your face into an armload of delicious, freshly-picked, dew-covered wildflowers and breathing in. It's the kind of scent that, when I'm walking along and I catch it, makes me turn around and say "Oh! What is that divine blooming thing?" All that said-- floral scents are not really my thing. This is completely gorgeous, but I won't wear it a lot because I just don't wear floral scents-- they don't express my personality. I'm torn as to whether I should keep my nice decant, just to wear on days when I feel bloomy, or pass it on to someone else who might appreciate it more. In any case, if you like flowers, you will LOVE Flower Moon.

I am not familiar with ozone, so I asked for a decant of this in swaps mainly out of curiosity, and because I love cool, aquatic type scents. Turns out I DO NOT like ozone. That is, not if that is the predominant scent in this blend. Apparently my nose doesn't do Beth's aquatics, so I get ozone plus some flowers, which are probably really nice in themselves but do not take to being fried by rain-free lightning in this scent.

*sigh* I guess I'm going to have to accept that my nose does not interpret the lab's "aquatic" note well at ALL, with the blessed exception of my beloved Sea of Glass (come to Mama, little bottle!). It's a durn shame, since the mere word "aquatic" in a description is enough to send me searching for some. But this? Not aquatic to me. Not even a little bit aquatic. Not even cool. Smelled like Chaste Moon without the cream or mint, which just leaves those unidentified lunar oils, plus some beautiful soft florals. Those are beautiful, but overall, this blend is a disappointment to me. I'm going to have my nose checked for a defect in the aquatic-detecting circuit.

I instantly identified this scent: Butter mints. Those melty, chalky pastel ones they always serve at wedding receptions in the South. A creamy, sweet, buttery, minty smell. This is more delicate and less synthetic-smelling, though-- like an ethereal, idealized version of the rich, creamy taste of them. I happen to love butter mints (I gravitate towards them at weddings!), so I find this scent delicious and enticing, but I'm not sure it's really "me." Something that's really nice to smell, but not to smell like , on me. It's very, very feminine and pretty, and slightly... frilly? As Tea Cake said in Their Eyes were Watching God , "Jus' lak a lil girl with her Easter dress on." I get zero coconut, and usually if there's any in there, my skin screams nothing but that (which is what unfortunately happened to me with Spooky).

For the life of me, I couldn't identify this smell until I read the other reviews. Apple cider is it! Warm, sweet apple cider with a cinnamon stick in it. Quite yummy! This does not change much on me from the vial to my skin, except that the cinnamon comes out a bit more strongly as it dries down. It's a pleasant scent, the sweet fruit and spice well balanced and not too strong, but definitely there. It reminds me of fall. However, I have come to the conclusion that the Voodoo blends do not work the desired mojo as far as I am concerned. Maybe my deity and rituals are just too far removed from the Voodoo tradition, but I need a much stronger "kick" to my block-busting rituals than this. And while this is a very nice scent, it isn't nice enough that I'd buy a bottle just for the scent. I'll keep my imp around for when I need calming, pleasant fall memories, but not for when I need inspiration or strength-- I'll stick with other, non-Voodoo scents for that. ETA: Okay, so hours after putting this on, I just accomplished something I've been putting off and dreading since December. Apple cider now smells like sweet, sweet success. Don't know if it was the oil per se, or a combination of that and some accountability I managed to scare up for myself, but I might have to revise the conclusions in that last paragraph now.

I am not a big fan of rose, but this scent sounded so interesting from the reviews that I got an imp. I'm so glad I did. In the vial it smelled of nightmarishly soapy roses. I was hesitant, but put it on anyway. As it began to dry, the frankincense, one of my favorite scents, came out and ushered the other scents reassuringly to my nose. I'm not familiar with orchid, but the florals in this are quite lovely, and complemented beautifully by the other ingredients-- the white musk makes it feel fresh, and the frankincense adds an exotic note that keeps the whole thing from going soapy. The lavender stays in the background-- I can tell it's there, but the scent as a whole is not soporific the way I think of lavender concoctions as being. This is a truly lovely scent, even if it's not my usual fare. I'll have to sample it again before I decide whether to get a bottle, but I'm definitely keeping the imp.

The generous and lovely ayrdaomei gifted me with an imp of this to supplement another aquatic scent I had purchased from her. I did want to smell of the beach, so I ignored my misgivings about rum and leather and swiped it on. Sadly, my misgivings were only too well founded. I hate the smell of leather, and this was... well, the smell of leather. And my skin amplifies alcoholic scents to an alarming degree. I smelled like a drunken jockey. Possibly one who had fallen in the ocean some hours previously. Not sexy. Not, alas, piratical. Off to swaps.

::cries:: I am so disappointed. I wanted so badly to get my hands on this, because from the description and the reviews it sounded like my holy grail of scents. IT'S FLORAL! It isn't my skin, either-- it was overpoweringly sweet and floral in the vial. My nose must be insane. After I put it on, the sweetness receded a bit and the aquatics came out, but I could not smell a single bit of salt no matter how hard I tried. It smells fresh and sweet and wet and outdoorsy, like the breeze off of somebody's garden after a hard rain. But marine-- no. After reading everyone else's reviews, I'm almost starting to wonder if my imp was mislabeled or something, but it's probably just me and my crazy sniffer. Off to swaps, alas. :-(

Oh man. I cannot stop sniffing this one. I've stopped putting it on and am just taking giant whiffs from the imp, because I'm scared I'm going to run out of it. I ordered a bottle the same day I got the imp in the mail! Normally citrus scents go either headachey-sweet or completely non-existent on me, but this one is perfect. Tartly sweet the way real fruit is-- you can almost smell enzymes and vitamins in this, it's that natural-- with a bitter edge like the zest from orange peel. The spices give it kick without blunting the freshness at all. This isn't a scent I'd wear every day, but it's a scent I'd always want to have some of available, to take a deep, rejuvenating sniff and bring myself back into focus. Eleven stars!

Oh... wow. This is amazing. I got this hoping for a nice cedary scent for my fiance, who is addicted to Comme des Garcons White. This isn't that, though. It's a very strong, masculine, somber blend. It calms and strengthens me. It's extremely true to the character-- kingly and powerful with an undercurrent of bitter grief. This is excellent. I'm keeping it for days when I need a king's strength.

I bought a 5ml of this from a forumite without sampling first, because it sounded so amazing. There is a kind of instant peppermint hot chocolate that gets sold once a year here at a craft fair, and it's like crack. I was imagining something a bit like that. When I sniffed it in the bottle, it did smell something like that-- only very, very sharply alcoholic. More like hot chocolate with Creme de Menthe liqueur than peppermint hot chocolate. Still good, but not like I'd hoped. I put it on, hoping the alcohol scent would go away. Alas, it was the chocolate and peppermint that went away, and were replaced by coconut. Very, very heavy coconut, like tanning lotion, but still alcoholic. Sort of like a pina colada, heavy on the rum and without the pineapple. This confirms my suspicion that I can't wear scents with any coconut in them at all, because my skin amps up the coconut like whoa and eats any other notes. This bottle is off to someone whose skin may appreciate it more than mine did!

I was hoping this was going to be the Perfect Marine Scent that I had previously hoped Kingsport would be, and in the vial I thought it just might be. First on, it smelled like my current holy grail of marine scents, Creative Universe Mare, but sweeter and more floral-- if Mare is an ocean breeze that's just crossed a tangle of young green plants on its way to you, Sea of Glass is an ocean breeze that's just crossed a tangle of blooming jasmine and gardenia. Bliss, heaven. Then it started to dry down, and the flowers took over. I flailed ineffectually at the flowers, trying to get them to go away and leave the salty aquatics alone, but there was a pitched battle, and now what I smell is the carnage, with bits of flowers and ripples of cool ocean lying all dismembered among each other. It's actually quite delicious. It isn't the Perfect Marine Scent, but it's a beautiful scent. It can stay.

This card isn't as special to me as many others, but I got it in a crucial spot in a recent reading and have been meditating on its meaning, so I requested it when buying several Tarot decants from a lovely forumite (thanks, tempete!) This went on very round and smooth-- something like grapes or cherries, but with none of the sharp sweetness. More like... grape tea? That sounds odd, and there isn't a tea note at all-- I mean like grape-flavored herbal tea. That's the closest I can come to how this can be grapey without really being sweet or fruity at all. Later the grape fades, but leaves a lingering richness behind that keeps the new notes from smelling like... dust. It's a woody, papery, herbal kind of smell. I can definitely see this being the interior of a neat, well-appointed hermit's retreat. Altogether, I can see that if you wanted a reserved, solitary, but not at all shy scent, this would be the one for you.

Wet, this was a delicious fresh summer meadow scent with wonderful yellow florals and a very wholesome, cheerful feel about it. I was expecting something a little more diverse, like the World, but this is pure plant on me. I guess the idea is that all the disparate elements in Temperance-- water, earth, air and sun-- come together to make the cheery daffodil! Dry, it turns... as green florals do, on me-- soapy. Not unpleasantly soapy, but soapy. Very clean in a natural kind of way. I like it, but I liked it better before it dried.

In the bottle: Greeny herbs. This is going to turn soapy on me, I just know it. Wet: Ooh. Green. Very, very green. Grassy meadow, clover stem green. Very fresh. I approve. Dry: Ooooh, now. I smell... honey! Oh, wow. From clover stems to clover blossoms-- a sweet, fresh, live-smelling honey scent, with a little bit of grounding earth. Like burying my face in a clover patch! This is almost foody on me, it's so sweet and delicious, but with a definite green, floral kind of sweetness. This is love. I think a bottle is in order.

This is a beautiful scent-- quite complex, as everyone has said. If the cinnamon had stuck around longer, this would have been a definite keeper, but unfortunately it faded into the background. (That might be a good thing for some people!) What I was left with was something very lovely, beautifully balanced, but too... tame for me. I need more kick to my scents. And I think the very balance of it is befuddling me. I am like "Settle down and smell like one thing, dammit!" This is a very sweet, gentle and well-balanced scent, and it's going to make some lucky swappee very happy.