elka_knits

wants this list so bad... my husband however is a different matter

I got an imp of this years ago and never tried it. To be clear, I ORDERED an imp of this, hoping for carnation carnation carnation. i was so disappointed to smell milky rose. Well I am on a testing jag and dabbed some on. OMG the carnation blooms on my skin and becomes perfection indeed. After a while the rose drifts in to dance with the carnation. I get no powder, no funky milk note nothing but spicy carnation and sweet pink roses. I LOVE this. Alas she does not last and I tore through my imp within 2 days. If only she had a bit more throw and longevity i would be buying a bottle in a nanosecond. Unfortunately given my skins love of this scent I would go through a bottle in no time. I am so torn

I like mama ji and morocco which you mentioned. Both have a spicy incense vibe

So, I have a question that maybe some of you BPAL veterans can answer...So, being less than a year old BPALer myself, trying to get a hold of a very hard to find scents (like Candy Butcher, Monsterbaits, VILF, Storyville, Cake Smah, etc etc), does the lab ever re-release these for the public to buy? I understand that they are hard to find and also understand that when someone here has a bottle, they only want to swap for a HTF one, OR when the Lab put outs bottles on Ebay, I rarely win any because the bids go over $60 and I just can't afford that...so, do any of these old scents ever come back so semi-newbies like me can maybe buy a bottle or two at the regular lab price?? I would hate to think that I would never be able to get my hands on some of the older, wonderful scents that I would LOVE to try...any info??

Occasionally the lab will resurrect a scent and there may be a slight reformulation. I personally think of the reformulations as batch differences and those have been known to happen for any scent, LE or otherwise, over the course of a small period. Although I do have less than a handful of LE or D/c scents that I am always on the lookout new favorites can overshadow the old. For example Bakeneko is a favorite but I parted with my back up bottle because something new came along that I liked better. Right now I am all over Shroomy Chocolates when I was all over Gluttony. Yeah both are no longer available but when I ordered the Shroomy I did so because I had just gone over the notes of Gluttony {crying over not having any} and noticed a similarity.

I know that might not be helpful. I too am insanely curious about Cake Smash and Cabaret Goth cus it seems nobody will part with it and I was inactive during the time they came out but over the years, and there have been quite a few with BPAL, I would say that there really is something wonderful on the horizon despite it sounding like a 'there there' whilst clutching the precious

Purchased directly from lab in '06 and tested recently due to icky drearies as well as considering of current peony offerings...

I love peonies. I love their pale pink, their huge overblown frilliness, and most of all their heady scent. Whenever I am down I open up this bottle and huff the glory of peony. Unfortunately wearing it is a different matter.

Wet it is as in the bottle~ glorious, glorious heady peony but upon drying, almost immediately the reeds throw in a green aquatic which, tho not unpleasant, is not what I am seeking when I think of peony. I am not entirely sure what 'asian woods' means but with a good dry down, a half hour or so, I start to smell rattan or slightly musty baskets. On my wrists, both of them, this is the prevalent note and brought to mind the earthiness of mushrooms or the taste of water chestnuts strait out of a a can. However this is very faint and has little throw. It requires bringing my wrists to my nose to get that funky note. The peony, faint and wistful, fades but surprises me with her lingering scent whenever I turned my head. The cleavage drop lasted, fairly true to bottle, for well over 12 hours.

Overall a 2/5 because of the lasting power, and lingering loveliness. Points taken off because I don't like shoving my head down my shirt, or giving myself whip lash, to smell peonies. I am so spoiled and used to just bringing my wrists up to nose for a quick shot of pretty when wearing my BPAL

Editing to add: This perfume has always personified spring to me and it still does. Even tho I was unhappy with the green that peeked through at the 15 minute mark I did think how springlike.

I have had this bottle of Vixen sitting around for about 5 years now so it is well aged....not because it isn't lovely but because there are so many many things to smell and wear that sometimes something slips through the cracks. Anyways patchouli is the note of doom for me. Always has been and probably always will be. Not to start an argument but a while ago I remember reading something about patchouli being considered one of those sexai smells however in reality it is off-putting and gross. So anyways whenever I tell The Flame I dislike patchouli he seems surprised because it is such a universally known sexy scents.

Vixen is what I WANT patchouli to smell like~ earthy but sweet and mellow. Unfortunately the wet stage is please poke my eyes out horrid patchouli smell. Thankfully the wet stage only lasts oh half an hour and once the headache eases I am the happiest girl ever. I do have a friend that steps away from me whenever I wear patchouli {and totally turned me off mme moriarty which I had loved and stockpiled until then} so I am going to test this one around her. Anyway all this patchouli hate is to encourage those who normally don't get along with it to give Vixen a try. She really does mellow into something sweet and sassy!

Interesting, very very interesting.

When I put this one on it was red hots on steroids. Pure cinnamon burn baby burn. Seriously my skin burned. And all I could think of was cinnamint gums or red hots or any other red red red cinnamon scents. About an hour later the cinnamon fades and the cardamom, lovely, lovely cardamom, comes out and it is slightly grounded by the patchouli. Keep in mind that patchouli had become the death note of hell. I love it in the bottle and always think I am going to love it on me but nah not really. Here it plays super nice.

Very faint within two hours~ my skin either eats it up or it is such a me scent {I do bpal cardamom a lot} that it just seems like a skin scent. It is fainter than Mama Ji~ my all time favorite~ with the same warm vibe but dryer ala Morocco. After the morph down it reminds me of Gypsy Moth sans wax. I like it but will not be reordering this one. I might even part with it since I have too many other similar scents to compete with when I am getting dressed.... Either way it is beautiful and warm and spicy but doesn't last well on me.

I'm going to be totally upfront and honest by saying I didn't expect to like this one. Oh I did when I purchased a bottle many moons ago but fairly recently I sniffed all my bottles and set aside the ones that wrinkled my nose. This is one of the nose wrinkles.

I was pleasantly surprised when I put it on. The sticky sweet honey note [which translates to day old sweat socks on me and is so consistent about it that I now skip the skin morph and associate that note to the point of not honey ... sweat socks] didn't appear at all on my skin. Until later. MUCH MUCH later. Like 8 hours which makes this one wearable. The smell was oddly familiar and soothing. At first I thought it was sandalwood and then, after a day thinking about it, I realized it was the smell of my old boss from 1983 at language lab. He was an Indian man and I always loved how he smelled. I guess it is a combination of all those exotic unguents , incense, and spices. Actually he was my high school friends dad which is how I got the job but hey I always loved that smell.

Very comforting, extremely long wearing~ it has been 24 hours and it is still going strong, and very beautiful. I do think that, due to old boss association, it has a masculine vibe in my head. A drier, more woody Morocco, that probably should be an atmospheric instead of to wear. I vote this the love child of CARCERI D'INVENZIONE and MOROCCO. Make that a boy love child with all of the sandalwood amped and less of the carnation and frankincense.

For those that love honey it did get the honey in there at around the 8 hour mark on me, as mentioned above, and during that time the woods made it what I wished SMUT had been. I totally get other reviewers commenting on the similarity to smut as well. The woods ground the honey in such a wonderful way. This bottle has moved from the icky pile to the test further pile.

I am wondering what I tested and rechecking my decant label after reading these reviews. It sounds like what I thought it would smell like but what I got instead was a sharp piercing soapy smell when wet that lingered for hours afterwards. Yeah it lost the sharp poke my eye out please strident note but soap soap soap. Maybe it is the bergamot? I was thinking, prior to looking at label to check notes listed, that there might be some red musk in there. That soapy fruity sharp note I am growing to dislike. At least I think it is red musk....? I will retest this one again next week just in case I was doing something funkalicious with it but until then can somebody please tell me what in there would turn into a tortuous soap note? Please

I purchased this for the beeswax, vanilla amber, and carnation. Maybe lily of valley as well. In the bottle all I got was rose rose rose. Overwhelming rose so never did more than open and sniff. I just tried it on today to be fair and well you know that smell you get when you cut a flower to put in vase? That green stem smell? Now imagine you are in a room full of roses and you just started trimming them to put in vases.... green overshadowed by rose. Then, within a couple of hours, poof! Gone. I was rather enjoying it actually but kinda hoping for a wee bit less green and a wee bit more spicy carnation or creamy amber vanilla or mellow beeswax. Not enough lasting power and I just know there are rose lovers out there who will love this more than I.

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hours after writing my review I am getting faint whiffs of a delicate rose. So PRETTY. I suppose it was such a sudden drop in throw that I thought it was gone {or my nose died for a bit} The Flame will get a chance to weigh in soon enough.

My Husband Loves this on me. He asked that I buy moar. This and Mama Ji are two scents he just recognizes and thinks of when I ask what to wear.

I am not fond of the wine scents. There is also patchouli in this one and patch has turned into the no-no scent. HOWEVER for some reason both are tame in this particular blend. On me a dusty musty scent with the sweetness of wine. When I first ordered these this one was the scent I was sure I would love but I ended up liking vamp tears more over time. It kinda reminds me of the plummy scents out these days... that sweetness from Snake Charmer? Maybe the red musk... Something similar either way. I so like this one but my personal scent profile is skewering towards the innocent and this one is not

grapefruit which I really like and something green underneath it... probably one of the flowers but I am not sure which one. Which actually gives it a pithy vibe. Or should I say rind? Very fresh and light with lasting power due to tonka. A little sweet. Candied grapefruit rind.

soap! soap soap soap soap. stupid chemistry.

No. Just No. Oh okay in an effort to review for others:

All berry and rose on me. Mainly berry. Pom or something like that.... sharp and juicy red fruit.

editing to add: it mellows down from the acid berry rather quickly into a mellow one but becomes so faint that I literally need to have my nose against my wrist to sniff it. So from screaming jarring Berry Hear me Roar to nearly nothing. Very very quickly. I could be nice and say that frankincense and or sandalwood tame the berries and give it a nice round edge... ground them or something but by the time it is mellow it is so faint I cannot really pick out one note over the other.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I'm wondering a few things about non GC or LE sets..

 

- the Carnaval Diabolique scents, do they randomly show up, or do they come around a certain month or time of year?

 

- Also, what's the deal with the Periodic Table? Is it new or just being re-imagined?

I believe the carnival went down due to redoing the artwork and will be live again asap. I believe there is a thread on the carnival here: http://www.bpal.org/topic/34409-carnaval-diabolique-discussion/ On page 173 there is a note from Beth stating that it is a priority getting it up and going again. With a surprise project.

After much thought I figured out that this is

Cream Soda

maybe a cream soda float. yeah

Hi there! Another n00b with a question

 

I'm really interested in some Salon blends, namely The Great He-Goat and The Smiling Spider. Are they still available to buy? I'm a bit confused because the Gustav Klimt scents were supposed to be taken down in October but I can still add them to my basket. What about older scents? And why some of them are 'discontinued' while others are not, surely they are all LE?

 

Thanks to anyone who can help me clear the confusion

The Salon isn't LE that I know of... eek I forget what it was since I haven't been on forum to keep up. I do remember when the first salon came out but I forget the theory behind the salon...if it was a series that would go live then come down like carnival or what.

You can buy the great he goat and smiling spider in the 5ml bottles. Imps are only available in packs such as the entire salon exhibit pack. I believe the ones that are discontinued were done so due to component issues.

Lupers come out by mid Jan usually and stay live until the last week of March. I wouldn't worry about being prepared for the LE's~~ way too many of them to kick yourself over missing something in particular. There are 64 live scents on the LE page at the moment. The weenies and pickman gallery stuff just went down but there was some overlap. Leather Phoenix sold out quickly. The Rainn scents are still clickable on the website {which makes me happy cus I hope to get my matchstick girl and phoenix decants and be able to order all together} and those are LE as well. The Sticky bat is LE so lets say that we are up to 69 LE's live at the moment. Move on down to the trading post and you have another 9 scents {3 in bottles 6 as part of stockings} and well... There was a day there {the lunacy, weenies, yules, pickman, etc etc} where I believe there was at least 100 live LE scents. At $20 a pop it just isn't feasible to stress over missing out.

I am forever grateful that the lab is so creative and offers so many interesting things for us to try. I do like getting LEs and have some favorites as do most people. I have also been ordering GC stuff with every order I made for oh about 6 yrs now. I don't order very often because I go in spurts where I madly try to buy a lot of stuff then knock myself on the head for having too much to wear already. In the past month I have acquired 7 bottles and 8 imps not counting frimpage. I realize that is a lot for some and barely any for others but I won't get through these in a year even if I slathered several times a day. Oh okay maybe I will but you know...it will be a while. And I am already planning my yule order. Thank heavens the traditional luper favorites don't do it for me. Most people seem to pick an update that they go gaga over. Weenies vs Yules vs Lupers vs Lunacies as a favorite and then pick out maybe a scent or two out of the others. At least that is what I have observed.

I just got this yesterday and need to test some more but for now Super Love. It smells rather smokey to me... like nicotine not smoke smoke. I couldn't stop huffing it. I kept putting it under the Flames nose and he said it was too sweet and then okay it is growing on me {probably to keep my wrist out of his face judging by tone} but I loves it. I want more. I do hope I will be able to order some in a couple of weeks. I know it is not supposed to be live at this point but the lab kindly respected my order for it. If I can't be getting it from the lab I suspect I will be combing the sales pages. LOVE LOVE LOVE.

sweet, smoky, spicy, creamy goodness all the way.. some lightness from the occasional whiffs or orange or tangerine. I see somebody else said 3 Gorgons and yeah I guess so but 3 Gorgons, which I only tested once and am considering as a summer time scent, is nowhere near as nice.

2006 version

On me beeswax, something woody, something skin musky, and underneath it all the resins. Not smoky incense but resins. The little blobs of myrrh that I used to burn way back when. Sooooo

In the bottle it is sharper but almost immediately mellows into something evocative. Yes evocative instead of note after note. Very well blended

and mellow.

The woods to me seem like a fir tree I recently came across. Like hello where is the piney christmas tree smell? Very faint hint of tree smell that has been worn over the years by many many hands[skin musky], absorbed eons of myrrh which is all buried beneath the beeswax used to polish it all.

Coming back to review this I re-read the description: five tears of this incense, each encased individually in wax sums it up pretty well. Throw in hands clasped in prayerful hope over wooden pews and you got it.

I am glad I have this bottle and find it silly I only wear it one day a year~ Today Christmas Eve ! I may pull one off the sales page just to have a backup

I just received a wee bit of this as a companion for a purchase from the lovely Stellans therefore I have no clue how old it is. The label was nice and old looking tho and it was really a sniffle, or since it was a frimp, a friffle. Being the weirdo that I can be I frantically bumped the end of the friffle against my wrist in an effort to eek out a droplet. Success!! NOTE this is not a full fledged multi day test and yeah I usually do think hard about and sniff, resniff, and oh yeah slather prior to writing a review...

in the bottle: cherry

wet: some weird cheap candle wax vibe. There used to be some faux candy that tasted like I imagined wax did and yeah that is what it smells like

about half an hour in: oh so this is what they soak the boxes in to give them that bpal smell. Squee. Too bad it is so faint

it has been about 3 hours: Settled into a baby powderish , vanilla-ish dry slightly spicy-ish scent. Really indescribably but nice. Very very little throw but decent lasting power so far. I am not sure if this is due to the last desperate dregs from imp being banged against my wrist instead of the usual slather or if it really is a skin scent.

I would love a full imp of this to give it a good college try. I think it is like my Dragons Milk {which come to think of it has that same weird funky plastic vibe when wet... hmmmm....} and I worked myself through 2 imps, not sure I really liked it, before I ordered a big bottle and made it my hey this is my body that naturally, sans perfume smells awesome, day scent. I might not be fooling anybody but it is real close to skin and fakes me out ;P

A surprising love. I have been wearing my florals lately to combat the Missouri rains that pass as winter blahs. Seriously, to digress, I expect glistening snow not muck Christmas week.

In the bottle~ very floral, maybe even too floral. Orchid and roses with orchid being stronger than the rose

Wet~ rose amps up

A bit later~ lovely cream and musk very very faint floral that warms it all up and lightens up the scent. This is not the sour milky cream or vanilla sugar cream but a rich heady cream

BPAL has turned me into a floral lover over the years. I don't know why I didn't trust that evolution enough to try this one before. My bottle is direct from lab to me many years ago. Curious to know what The Flame thinks of this one when he gets home tonight. Although.... I believe it will need to be reapplied. The staying power is not very long or perhaps that is because I am used to more in your face spicy scents. As The Flame likes to say about my favorite most worn stuff: dangerous This one is more discreet and ultra feminine

This is an initial impression review. Mainly because I have a wee bit of a headache and am blaming Mme Moriarty's patch for that

This is a very round fragrance... sultry in the languid sense. I am not a big flower person so spent some time wondering if it was gardenias or magnolias that I was smelling. Either way that velvety plush petal white flower smell. Almost overwhelming when first on although it has toned down quite a bit {took @half hour} I am not getting any of the other notes. No amber or frankincense which I was looking forward to. There is a bit of a green feel to it as well and slightly defiled. Like bruised and faded petals once it toned down a bit. Yeah this is one of those unhelpful reviews. I was hoping for a floriental but am getting strong florals. Will be back in a couple of days when I get a chance to try it without a headache

Okay I haven't tried it again but editing to add: The Flame really liked this one on me. He usually doesn't comment on what I wear out of the blue. When I picked him up from work yesterday I did get hints of amber and frankincense so it was becoming the floriental I thought it would be. Unfortunately I couldn't smell it at all after a couple of hours. Maybe an occasional hint of something floral . My skin eats it up. I pulled on the shirt I wore yesterday after my shower to get the kidlets off to school and I still smell it on my shirt so it isn't a weak scent. It just you know doesn't last *on me*

Unfortunate

It is a very wet and sultry scent. As I mentioned yesterday languid. I sensed hot humid dusk and a southern beauty lounging on a chaise fanning her self. Perhaps one of the most evocative of my bpals since the moment I put it on I was transported elsewhere. It was just PERFECT for the chilly fourth day raining dreariness of yesterday. I will treasure my imp as a total mood lifter but due to its rapid dissipation and quite frankly the heavy floral until just before it fades { I prefer the resins} it will not be a bottle buy for me. Unless the husband requests it which given the variety of perfume I have around I sincerely doubt. Only time will tell if he loved it that much.

I have decided my skin amps vanilla. At least I have to figure that is the bpal smell that hovers close to my wrists on half my scents. A lot of smells end up the same after a while so it has to be a note right? Which is fine by me cus I love it no matter what it is.

Okay so my bottle is well aged. Not opened to air out age but stored in a nice dark cool cigar case in closet for 3 yrs.

In the bottle a sharp almost painful lemon cleanser smell. Nothing about the bottle makes me want to put it on but I know I purchased it due to some resin note in description. Yep check notes listed and there is vanilla and myrrh and frankincense. I put it on and yuck lemon detergent. After a while I catch a powdery note which usually means amber. I like that amber powdery note so no complaints and HOPE for this smell.

The lemon is throwing me for a loop and when I put it on it had that cologne consistency ~ clear and thin easily fading into skin. Since I usually wear resinous scents that become thick and vicious and have some yellow or red stain I am confused. Hey I don't know my notes! I decide that the grape and whatever else is in there is floating on top of my precious incense scents and roll my bottle to warm and distribute notes.

Retry

Lemony but no longer detergent. An incense vibe but not heavy in your face. I feel as if this is a light summertime incense used for a cleansing ritual instead of a head shop scent. Like a sage smudge stick~ clean a bit green and incense-y. Sorry to keep harping on the incense but it is what I look for ya know and most of my perfumes contain notes that make me think of that stuff. Maybe not incense but I used to burn amber resin and myrrh and frankincense stuff so yeah.

But again there is whatever note my skin amps. Not reeks amps because it is a skin scent. Really close and subtle. Very much like a lot of creamy sweet scents such as Dragons Milk on me. I may get rid of this one or keep it for when the weather warms up since the lemon whiff on the well rolled application is cooling and clean.

I have been wearing this one for a few days now and loving it! Not much a review is it? It has a dry feel to it to me... and lasts a really long time. I put it on last night around 6 my time, for example and woke up today and am still smelling sandalwood today. Which is pretty much the final impression/overall impression for me.

It does have a sweetness and incense feel to it. A bit spicy from the carnation. I always love those if you love this then try that scents and I guess I could say if you love Mama Ji {my all time favorite} then this is a less in your face skin scent. Mama is more exotic and in your face with the sexy sexy and morocco is more subtle.

My bottle is pre whenever the label changes went through. I haven't purchased anything from lab or on second hand market since 2008[ maybe even 2007 but definitely since before my last two moves] so very aged although given the fact that it doesn't really morph on me and what I smell in bottle is what I get I am not sure if aging is necessary. Just beautiful

You might try and see if you can get into a decant circle. I tend to go for resins and other incense smells so have Jacobs ladder, Midnight Mass, Haloa and the Magi from'06 socked away. All of those mentioned amber, myrrh, frankincense and/or vanilla/tonka in the descriptions. I never went for any of the roses , lick its, or pine/juniper scents. I like to think of my smell as warm [creamy, spicy] and welcoming~ golden if you will~ instead of cool so anything that talks of winter chill or crisp air has been skipped. Unless it was a lunacy. I like the lunar oils in general and am willing to risk weird to me notes. Of all the smells the trading posts bread puddings are calling to me as are the lights from matchstick girl. I hope to get decants of the ones that sound interesting and get in an order before they go down in Feb.

Historically lick its and snow white do seem popular but I have never tried either of them and I don't know any local BPALers despite living in a fairly large city.