rinoastar

Let me start out this review the way I would have before I found BPAL: I hate roses. Now I'll start it the way I would now that Beth's rose scents have kicked my butt: Beth's roses are gorgeous, delicate beings crafted by the fae. In the bottle: Rose and spices. Wet: Spices and fresh, fresh red roses first plucked from the garden. The rose has a slightly lemony tinge to it, and it smells fresh, clean, and--gasp! dare I say it?--holy. Drydown: The spices and the roses are competing for dominance and my love. The spices are mellowing and sweetening, and before I know it, the roses have won. They're perfect, sweet, almost supernaturally beautiful on my skin, just sour enough to keep the scent from being cloying, and sweet enough to keep me coming back for more. Truly lovely. Later: Unfortunately, this oil fades very fast on me. Why can't every Rose Cross stay like every Gluttony? I don't think the staying power of this warrants a big bottle, but the scent--while it lasts--is stunning.

In the imp: Sweet. Almost sickeningly so, but not sweet like cakes or candy. There's a pretty enough buttery rum in there, but something dark and wrong is hiding underneath. I almost want to say it's musk, but it smells threatening. Wet: Still warm buttery pastries baked by Satan, but now there's gingerbread, and cookies, chocolate icing and hot chocolate piled with marshmallows. It's like the Goblin Market, only with baked goods: they all smell so tempting, but something in the smell is firmly warning me away. Drydown: Wow, this sucker is strong! There's a note trying to come to the forefront and I definitely want to say it's musk, but not the cool white musks of the other BPAL I've tried with musk. No, this one is warm, but threatening. It smells like having a man you don't know standing behind you while you bake cookies, or having a cat that's been playing near the oven while a cake bakes come sit on your shoulder. Later: The hops have come out now, and while I don't mind them, I think they're the source of that dangerous smell. This reminds me very strongly of my cat, I think, but not in a negative way. It doesn't smell like animals at all, and certainly not cat pee, and it smells entirely too sweet to be an accurate likeness of her scent, but nonetheless, it reminds me a great deal of her. That aside, I don't think this is a scent for me. Everyday wear would cause headaches, I think, because it's almost horrifically strong; maybe I'll break it out for foody holidays, like Thanksgiving or Christmas. ETA: It's been about two hours on me nd it's suddenly taken a turn for the faded. When I try putting my arm to my nose to see if it's still there, I get cigarettes. Not burned tobacco, but thosecheap cigarettes, like Lucky Strikes, straight out of the package. It's weird, and I don't think this will be a keeper. I've got a friend who this would be perfect for.

I should specify--this is a review for "Old Dublin," and I hope the reformulation smells half as breathtakingly beautiful as the imp I have. In the imp: Stunning. Simply gorgeous, faintly "clean laundry" but moreso. Wet: There's rose, underneath something sharp and lovely. Pine, but not pine, ivy maybe? Like sticking your face into the fir tree at Christmas if it were decorated with sweet flowers and anointed with rose oil. Drydown: Oh, there's the roses I've been getting from other rose scents by the lab. I've always hated rose; I think rose smells like an old lady. But this rose is different--Dublin is different. These roses are sweet, yes, but clean. Impossibly clean and fresh smelling, in the way that even fresh roses aren't for me. Dublin smells white to me, like pure white light filtering through the trees as you stand in the middle of an enchanted glen in the forest. Don't get me wrong--it smells nothing like the forest, but the light...! Later: I've got Mabon in the crook of my elbow and Old Dublin on my inner arm, and the smell that keeps wafting up is breathtaking. It's white innocence, not weighed down by heavy florals. It soars up to greet me and I'm in love. I adore this scent. Perhaps I ought not judge a scent by what I think I'll like and go instead with what calls to me from the site. After all of these perfect rose scents, I'm tempted to let myself move on to the lab's vanillas!

In the bottle: Yup, cherry Halls' cough drops. Wet: Sweet, but not sickeningly so. Morer cherry cough drops, but with a nice rounded berry (the blackberry?) to round it out. Drydown: The "cherry" smell fades quickly, leaving a warm, late-summer blackberry ale. There are flowers in there, faintly, and a gorgeous spike of sharpness underneath it all, but it's all blackberry ale, all the time. Half an hour: It's pretty, pretty, pretty. The berries are having a May Day party on my skin, and I keep getting faint wafts of it as I type. I'm stunned by exactly how much this reminds me of playing in the field, collecting blackberries at my friend's parents' farm as a kid. It's got the smell of spilled beer on the kitchen table as our parents laugh and play card games and we sit in the den smushing blackberries to throw at and stain each other. I didn't want to fall in love with this one because it's near impossible to find, but I do love it to pieces and it so perfectly epitomizes what I remember about that family. I do love Mabon, but now I'm sad because I can't have a huge bottle to slather when I feel homesick.

Gorgeousness. I had reservations at first; compared to all of the pretty, fruity, almost little-girl scents in my order, Mme. stalked out of the box like she owned it and made her presence known as soon as she could. In fact, even though she was sitting on the table three feet away, she kept shoving the other girls out of the way and demanding attention. When I tested her, I found her sharp--far too sharp for my tastes, really. I put her out of mind until later, sure I'd swap the imp away. Then it was time to go home for Thanksgiving and I found myself torn--should I bring imps I love, like my decant of Devil's Night or one of my pumpkins, or should I bring some of the new imps in my dresser? I grabbed two out of my dresser and left campus--and all of my other BPAL--behind. One of the imps I grabbed was Mme. de Marteuil, and she immediately turned on the bedroom eyes. "Try me again," she beaconed. "You never really gave me a chance, you know. You'll find I'm not at all like you remember me." And she wasn't. She was stunning: a crisp floral with the barest ozone-ish undertones, and a flawless sweet peach in the mix to keep it from being bitter. I quickly became used to wearing Mme. everywhere, and had to leave her at home lest I wear her out completely! Overall, a gorgeous, powerful scent that makes me feel like I'm the center of attention for all the right reasons.

I got this and Jack in the same order, and I think Jack leaked a little bit in the box because when I took my first in-the-bottle whiff of Samhain, I got warm, buttery pumpkin with an undertone of strange sweetness. Upon first application, I certainly got a shock--cold, sharp, sickeningly-sweet something assaulted my nose. However, I really wanted this one to work for me, so I stuck it out. Unfortunately, it never deepened to any of the gorgeousness that others here have described, just flat, cloying, pervading sweetness. It's not even a tooth-aching sweet, but a wrong sweet, like Havisham's wedding cake or the smell of candies hidden years ago by a naughty child who has not come back for them. It's a slightly overripe sort of sweet, and after about an hour or two it becomes undeniably masculine on me. I smell like a scarecrow left out to moulder after a drenching rain--all straw-like sweetness gone to seed and rotting in the farrow. I'm afraid this one is just not for me. I don't even want to smell this on my loved ones, so it's off to the swap/sale pile for Samhain. I guess this is just proof (not that I really needed any; I knew better, but couldn't really resist the call) that patchouli and/or woods just go rancid on me.

I've only an empty to smell, but it's lovely. I want more of this so badly...it's all sharp, sharp grapefruit, and then it slides easily into a floral with dark, almost musk notes at the base. It's just gorgeous--definitely shooting to the top of my wishlist!

Holy crap, the rum! It's a loverly rummy goodness, but after a few minutes of wear I start to get sweets-headaches. I really like this one layered with Akuma (accidentally layered because I was testing both today)--Grog lightens the WOW! Flowers! part of Akuma and Akuma makes Grog less tooth-achingly sweet. Unfortunately, this isn't something I plan to take home a bottle of.

First impression: WOW! Flowers! I guessed that it was neroli, but it almost smells like sticking your nose in the musky center of a lily. It's all just WOW! Flowers! for a while but eventually mellows out into a sickeningly sweet synthetic raspberry. It's nice enough, but certainly no bottle for me.

Oh, you silly black phoenix. You're so full of cherries and...soap. Really nice soap, like soap at the airport Mariott or something, but soap nonetheless. I'm afraid I couldn't keep you, but you've already found a well-loved home with a friend who likes to smell of dark cherries. I can see the beauty of Black Phoenix on her, where it's all dark, juicy cherries and musk, with pretty-but-heavy florals, but on me, it's all soap all the time. Stupid chemistry! Black Phoenix was the first one I've ever had go soap on me. I think I'm tempted to stick with my pumpkins...

OMG Pumpkin! I adore pumpkin, but this is...wow!pumpkin. In the Bottle: The first note I pick up is pumpkin. It's weirdly pumpkin, though, a buit synthetic-smelling. This may be the apple in the background, but immediately all I smell is pumpkin. Wet: Pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin. It's pumpkin in a not-pumpkin-pie kind of way--not too buttery, but not terribly sharp or anything. It's a very mellow pumpkin. Drydown: Wow. As the OMG!pumpkin! fades, there's a sharp, sharp, sharp apple in there. There are very faint spices, like when someone has spilled apple cider on their clothes and comes to talk to you after trying to wash it off. It's a perfect apple cider smell, I think, if one can get over the apples that are currently trying to claw my nose off. these are absolutely vicious apples! Half an Hour: This stuff is odd...I was expecting to immediately and unequivocably love it, then mourn because I wouldn't be able to get more without buying the full set, but I'm rather ambivalent toward it right now. I think I may have put too much on, because it is potent. Like wow, potent. All I can smell around me is apples, apples, apples, and only upon putting my nose to my wrist can I smell the pumpkin at all, which isn't really a good thing as the apples immediately go on the defensive when I get that close. I dabbed a little bit on in the computer lab because I'm sitting next to the window and figured that no one would be too bothered by it--I only used a half-swipe of an imp-wand on each wrist--but the other people in the room are compulsively sniffling, as if the apples were attacking them, too. I really hope this mellows out, because it is really drowning me in apple cider. One Hour: It's not quite one hour but all I'm smelling is apples, apples, apples. I can't smell the pumpkin at all, and I'm too scared of singing my nostrils to stick my nose to my wrist to check for it. This is just too much apple cider for me to wear. Overall: This'll show me to be a sheep! I ordered the imp because I love fruit and pumpkin smells, and the reviews for this one were just too good to resist. I'll agree that it's a decent enough scent, and I think I'm going to keep the imp--maybe test it later to see if I was just being sensitive today, or if my chemistry really did amp up the apples to amazing proportions. However, it's just waaaay too much for me to wear. At this point, it's going in the "try it again later" pile, and if it doesn't make it from there, it's off to the swap pile to go home with someone who doesn't feel like a suckling pig gagging on the apple.

I'm not very good at picking out notes yet, but I've decided already that I love this one. In the Bottle: Pretty. Kind of perfumy, and the first thing that gets me is the musk. It reminds me of the smell of the oil perfume shop at the Renaissance Faire, and it's very nice. Wet: A bit flat; one-sided and sweet. It's sweeter and there's an almost vanilla-y smell drifting up, but it's got almost no throw. Drydown: Oh, there's the throw. The musk has sweetened a whole lot and I'm getting a very lovely vanilla. Normally I'm very unfond of the smell of vanilla, since the extract smells like poisonously strong alcohol and the commercial stuff not much better, but if all of Beth's vanilla scents have this gorgeous complex warmth to them, I'm gonna go hoarde. Half an Hour Later: After very briefly passing through a stage in which the "vanilla" feeling I got turned into a very slight layer of baby powder, it seems to have completely disappeared. It's still a gorgeous, gorgeous scent, but the musk has definitely jumped back to the forefront. Ironically, it was the musk that scared me the most in the description (which is why I only have an imp of it, decanted for me by the lovely syrenmyst), but it's gorgeous on me, as well. At this rate, I'm fearing for the berry and fruit scents I ordered that I was certain I'd love! There's an undertone of "fall-themed candle" underneath, but as far as I can tell there's no smoke or booze. My chemistry has merely amped up the sugar and musk to unbelievable proportions. An Hour Later: I think I'm in love. If all of my orders are as unbelievably gorgeous on me as this one is, I'm going to be beyond poor in only a few short months. As it is, I'm already thinking of buying a full bottle of this, even though I really ought not. It's just the most perfect fall scent on me, and I hope I love Samhain half as much when it comes in! I'm getting whiffs of dryer sheets (in a good way!) coming up from my wrists as I type, and every few sentences I have to stop so I can compulsively sniff myself. It's a lovely fall smell, warm and cozy, and right now it reminds me of a cross between warm laundry and good, handmade incense. I'm catching more of the smoke scent now, sharp, and slightly acrid but in a pleasant way. Overall: This actually reminds me of a specific place: in the fall, the Renaissance Faire that I work for runs a haunted house on its site. There's a little glen where the Astral Sea Pewter booth stands and there has been such lovely incense in it for so many years that months after the last Huzzah, the wood has soaked up the smell of softly burning incense and distributes it around the hollow. Smelling Devil's Night is like sitting on the bench in that hollow, thinking and remembering when you were there in the summer with your friends, laughing and enjoying the chance to run around in silly clothes. You admire the lovely fall leaves, and the smell of the bonfire just over the hill grounds you solidly, but you can't help remembering the summer and carefree days, wishing they'd never ended.

I'm Alice, but as my BPAL hasn't come in yet, there's not loverly scent to go with it. Alice wasn't even in my order, though, so the point is moot.

Hi, everyone! I'm trying to find a few good suggestions for a nice, dramatic scent. Which BPALs just scream "Drama!" to you? I'm looking for a scent that will subtly draw attention without choking everyone else around me. The scent needs to be kind of soft since I'll want to wear it on stage, but noticible enough in the everyday setting. I've heard good things about Bordello, but I thought I'd drop in a quick question and get info from the experienced folk here