Teaotter

In the imp: sweet amber and leather. Wet: Nothing. My skin eats it all up for the first fifteen minutes. Dry: Powdery sweet and the mildest hint of leather. I was hoping for more black leather from this blend, darn it! It's a pretty scent, but it sticks very close to the skin and just doesn't stand out from other powdery amber scents for me. Oh, well.

Wet, this gives off a wave of fresh pie cherries -- not cherry pie filling, but fresh sour cherries, pitted and juicy and waiting to be turned into pie. The cherries calm down after a minute, enough that I can tell there's an herbal honey in the background. Lavender, maybe a little thyme, and some other dark fruit -- maybe dates - and a hint of rosewater. Once it's dry, it settles into something not at all foody, just a lovely honey-herbal incense with occasional wafts of dates and cherries. I get a hit of cedar here and there, but nothing that threatens to overtake the rest of the incense. Looking at the notes, my nose clearly confused almonds and cherries with this. I usually amp rose and cedar, so I'm thrilled they stayed well-behaved here. This is a lovely soft incense with a Middle Eastern bent.

There's an entire thread - Bedtime BPAL - http://www.bpal.org/topic/6329-bedtime-bpal Strangely, it's not in the Recommendations section, but the BPAL chatter...

Does anyone have any recommendations GCs similar to for Mopsfledermaus? (Brown sugar and ginger root with smoky clove, bourbon vanilla, cardamom, and Indonesian musk.)

Wet: butter pastry Dry: sweet vanilla and coconut macaroons, with a bit of the muskiness that ambrette usually makes on my skin. I wish there was more of the musk and ambrette to balance out the sweetness, but no, I smell like a macaroon. Nice, but not what I wanted from this scent.

Amber, a sweetness like honeyed tea, and the mildest possible hint of fougere. This stays true through the whole wear, with a delicate throw. This reminds me a lot of Feed Me and Fill Me with Pleasure, but without the peppery/woodiness of the black patchouli in that scent.

This is so beautiful. Wet, it was barely present, with a green note like flower stems fading slowly into orchid, and I didn't think I'd like it. But once dry, it really opens up with the most lovely throw. It's remarkably well-blended; I can smell the white rose and a bit of orchid if I think about it, but mostly it's a single, gorgeous scent of its own. It's definitely in the Oriental category, it has the warm amber undertones. But it's soft and gauzy, cool on top of warm, billowy and white... Gah! Okay, I'm having a hard time describing this. It falls into the category my partner calls 'perfumey,' but it's a delicate, beautiful one. I don't often wear scents like this, but oh, this is so lovely!

Roadhouse - Truck stop sleaze. Weedy dandelion and hops with a whiff of tobacco and hemp and a swirl of booziness. If you want something that smells more porridge-y, you can try Halfling from the rpg scents - Porridge, kukui nuts, and pastry crumbs.

I swapped for #49. In the bottle: fizzy, like champagne Wet: effervescent ginger, something cool and kind of minty or camphoraceous, and a soft vanilla. The spouse smells Five-Spice Powder in the throw. Drydown: Dry ginger cola over vanilla, with a bit of medicinal herbs. This smells like a tonic, but a very pleasant one.

Something between my nose and my skin chemistry turns this into a very strange scent, because I get baby powder and vinyl gloves. (No, I don't understand it either. No one else around me smelled vinyl, so I think this might've just been my nose playing tricks on me.) Boy howdy, does this oil work! I had a bad depressive episode last week and needed to pull out of the pit of despair and do a lot of very difficult work-related tasks this week. I used this oil on my forehead and wrists twice a day, focusing for a minute each time on letting go of the lingering negative emotions. I was able to be calm and get things done, and I'm starting to be hopeful that I caught my SAD early enough this year.

This is my favorite atmo spray ever, and I could've sworn I reviewed it before now! To my nose, this is exactly the Pecan Sandies cookies that my dad used to love, with a hint of fruity oatmeal and baking bread in the background. I don't get any beer or mead -- or bananas, for that matter. Just nutty sweet kitcheny goodness.

Woods #70 (decant) In the imp: lilac fougere? Maybe a little lime, but this smells more like a fougere than any of the fougeres I got. Hmm. Wet: Blast of lime, white musk, lavender or lilac. Drydown: This is definitely a fougere on my skin. Lavender, lime, a dab of white musk, and oakmoss. Smells like clean skin and a beautiful English garden in the sun. It's got big throw on me, which makes me very, very happy!

Decant of #136 In the imp: coconut milk, like you'd put in a drink. No rum, though. Wet: Still lots of coconut, but there's an added vanilla warmth and it's making me think more of macaroons than slushy drinks. There's a note that reads like leather, but I'm pretty sure it isn't. I just can't figure out what it is. Drydown: Warm bourbon vanilla and coconut, with a balsam note in there too, I think. It's pretty darn foody, but the balsam stops it just short of actually smelling like food.

#52 In the imp: The oil is the translucent pinkish-brown that usually comes with amber as a base note. Is this really a fougere? The scent in the imp is a bit fruity and a bit sour (sour like old sweat socks, not sour like citrus). I'm a little afraid of this one! Wet: Huh. That wasn't what I was expecting at all. Sweet amber with Dutch cocoa powder and fruit that I think is plum. There is still a hint of sour sweat underneath the rest of it, which I hope will go away. Drydown: Oh, there's vetiver in here! Not the charred, smoky kind, but the green and grassy kind. I'm still getting a sweet amber and plum on top of the vetiver, with a bit of lavender and cocoa as well. Though I'm not convinced it's all plum; there may be a bit of apple in here, too. Verdict: This is so gorgeous! The fruity amber is warm and sweet, the grassy vetiver and cocoa give it some seriousness, and the bit of sharpness from the lavender rounds it out. This reminds me a lot of Wulric, with the vanilla swapped out for fruit. Where Wulfric is powdery sweet, this one is translucent and a bit tannic. (If that even makes sense, ha!) I'd never have labeled it a fougere if I'd just sniffed it, this smells more like an oriental on my skin.

#31 (decant) In the imp: citrus and... hmm. A sweetness, possibly floral. Wet: If I had to pick a particular citrus, I'd say lime, but really, it smells more like Sweet Tarts -- powdery sweet and acidic without actually smelling like a particular fruit. There is definitely a floral tone, I think it's lilac, but there could be more flowers in there and I just can't pick them out. It's also got a warmth to it, which is probably tobacco. Drying: Ah, there's the 'Irish Spring' I was expecting. So there's oakmoss in this, but it's relatively faint. Dry: This reminds me a bit of Jareth, actually, though Jareth is sweeter on my skin. There is a bit more fern than oakmoss at the bottom, I'm pretty sure about the tobacco. There's allspice and maybe a bit of juniper, as well. The Sweet Tart smell backs off and leaves me with a bit of tartness and the powdery lilacs on top. I like this a lot more than I expected when I first sniffed the imp, but it isn't really me.

#187 - from the same decanting circle as Alterosen's review above. In the imp: clean white musk and bright white florals, very soapy. Not promising, since those hardly ever work on my skin. Oh well. Wet: White musk and white leather, brightened by jasmine. Every so often, jasmine decides to play well with me, and this is one of those times. No soap to be had. Yay! Dry: I'm pretty sure jasmine isn't the main floral note, but white florals work so seldom on my skin that I'm not very familiar with them. This is mostly white musk and leather, with enough floral elements to sweeten it up a bit. When I put my nose right against my skin, I can smell something peppery and a little bit cedar-ish, with maybe a hint of lavender. Verdict: this is definitely a winner on my skin! I never would've ordered a decant of this if I'd had any idea of the notes, but it works so well for me, I'm definitely glad I got it. One of the things I love about Chaos Theories is how they knock me out of my usual comfort zone and let me try out perfumes I'd usually rule out.

On my skin, at least, Tombeur has some elements of Womb Furie or Smut (both of which are LE, but were available in many years) and Crowley (from the Good Omens series).

Sometimes my skin is weird. Anubis is one of those cases. I don't expect this review to be terribly helpful to most people, but maybe there'll be someone else out there utterly puzzled by what their skin makes of this perfume. In the imp: sweet resins and herbs Wet: Carnations and honey. Giant bouquets of in-your-face carnations, drizzled with orange blossom honey. 5 minutes: More carnations, but the honey has become honey mead. There is definitely some alcohol here. And some chamomile tea. 20 minutes: Vodka-spiked coca-cola and carnations, with a chamomile tea chaser. 30 minutes: This suddenly shifts. The cola element comes forward and start reminding me of tree sap, the carnations develop a resinous tone, and the alcohol burns off. The chamomile disappears entirely. Next few hours: Warm cola resin balanced with herbs and a deep floral-toned sweetness. There is a fruityness my nose reads as raisins, and just a touch of a very woody vanilla. Throw is moderate, and this lasts a number of hours before burning down to a hint of spices on my skin. No, I have no idea why I keep getting carnations from this. *shrugs*

I bought a bottle of this off Ebay recently expecting the red musk version, but as far as I can tell, this oil is completely clear and has no red musk to it at all. (It wasn't described by the seller either way, btw, just what I assumed.) The bottle smells strongly of honey, and very mildly of spices. Wet: Creamy spicy vanilla - Chimera, is that you? Drydown: spicy vanilla waffle cones, and the barest hint of Egyptian musk. Not much throw, very much a skin scent. Dry: Either my nose was just confused at the beginning, or this one grew some serious throw after fifteen minutes. I'm not getting a lot of identifiable honey, but it's definitely a honeyed, spiced cream. Gloriously foodie and luscious! The Egyptian musk is still hiding underneath a thick layer of cream, but it's definitely there. This lasts about four hours on my skin and has utterly delicious throw. I may layer it with Snake Oil just to see what that smells like, but I'm not at all unhappy with the version I got!

To my nose, Implacable Beautiful Tyrant hair gloss is almost an exact dupe of Hesiod's Phoenix. It hair gloss, but it's GC.

I'm really fond of Egg Nog, myself. And Mari Lwyd from this past yule update. There was also a limited edition 'Land of Dreams' series a while back -- Sleep, Dream, Wake, and Nightmare -- that were nice. They're hard to find, though.

The amber in this reminds me very much of Leo (the 2007 one) and a little bit of my beloved Hay Moon -- both of which are winners on my skin. Sweet amber with a hint of spiciness that could be cinnamon or pepper (probably the nutmeg) somewhere in the distance, with vanilla smoothing the whole thing out. The tobacco is probably giving it that warm feeling (my usual response to well-blended tobacco notes), but it doesn't stand out separately. Honestly, this perfume smells like one thing, all the notes are so well blended. I was worried that the nutmeg would stomp all over everything, or that the cistus would be too floral. But this is just utterly beautiful and perfectly in balance.

In the imp: Loud, stompy vetiver. (I love vetiver, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it is very mean to the other notes in a blend.) Wet: Fig, so very much fig. I can't smell the vetiver at all any more. Drydown: Still mostly sweet fig, but the vetiver comes out in the background, making this a spicy, slightly smoky, slightly grassy fig. General impression: a basket of plump dark figs and sticky fig juice all over my hands, while standing in knee-high dry grasses with a hint of a bushfire in the distance. Simpler than Figgy Puddin and not as pie-spiced, but definitely in the same family.

I bought this hoping for gritty, smoky vetiver. Instead, it's a sweet, sweet incense -- very headshoppy. This isn't a demon school, this is a mild conversation amongst perfectly pleasant people.

LXXXV - received as a decant from Ordo_ad_Chao -- this is SO AMAZING, I just had to come say. I'm terrible at picking out notes -- there's definitely a fruit note in the dried apricot/date range, and a cakey-ness, and some kind of musk, I think. But I don't really care about notes, because I put this in my hair yesterday and spent all day smelling AWESOME, and getting compliments, and letting my close friends sniff my hair and get more compliments. ... actually, I care about the notes just enough to wish I knew, because I'd like to encourage the Post to make about a million similar hair glosses so I can buy more. ETA: Now that I've had a little more time with it, I'm pretty sure this one has an osmanthus note in there. It's so lovely, osmanthus and cake.