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BPAL Madness!

bheansidhe

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About bheansidhe

  • Rank
    diabolical decanter
  • Birthday 09/01/1971

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    bheansidhe
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    http://bheansidhe.livejournal.com

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  • Pronouns
    She/Her
  • Mood
    Doomscrolling

BPAL

  • Favorite Scents
    ALL-STARS: Aradia, Badger, Dead Leaves and Anything, Hesiod's Phoenix, Hope and Fear Set Free, The Magician's Wand, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Lovers with Rutting Cats, The Silence of the Woods. KNOCKOUTS: Autumn Overlooked My Knitting, Banded Sea Snake, Black Hellebore, Dorian, Freak Show, Habu, Imp, Jack, Kanishta, King Pursued By a Unicorn, Kumari Kandam, The Girl, Loviatar, Men Ringing Bells With Penises, Midnight on the Midway, Pinched with Four Aces, Snake Charmer, Three Witches, Tanuki No Orai. PECULIAR FANCIES: Gomorrah, Kumiho, Nosferatu, Opuhi, Pele, Jester, Sudha Segara. ARCHENEMIES: most jasmines, most myrrh, honey, galbanums, civet, "scorched," French tobacco, and red currant, particularly as manifest in Debauchery, Cathode, Montresor, Samhain, and Sugar Skull. NEMESIS: O.

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  • Western Zodiac Sign
    Virgo

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    United States

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  1. This one is beautiful, sultry, and bringing up some of my more ..... confusing .... scent connotations. My brain offers: this smells like the CONCEPT of CATS .... like ... not like an actual cat or (god forbid) cat-related accessory, but like if you were describing to an alien how amazing it was to pet a really plush, sleek cat's fur, but as a scent, it would be this one. Or: this smells like the sister blend to ***just*** the cushion component of the cushions in The Crimson from The Girth of Venus, so maybe it smells like silk feather-down-insert cushions and the idea of cats, as a concept overall. It smells close and secret and like something you'd go searching for in the crevices of something beautiful and warm and maybe a little (ahem) dirty. It smells ilke it could be the missing Eighth Veil. Also, a little bit like apples. Welp THANKS ANYWAY, BRAIN.
  2. bheansidhe

    Idle Moon: Vanilla Husk and a Bundle of Twigs

    As noted, this perfume is alllll about the bundle of twigs, and they're quite the assortment. I am getting whiffs of sweet, jammy fir sap, and also the cool wintergreen of birch, some tannic oak, and maybe some mellow rosewood as well. In addition to vanilla husk (which takes a while to emerge), I think there may be a trace of cassia bark giving it a warm, spicy afterburn. If I was sniffing this blind, I'd guess it was some kind of sweet and mellow resin blend. This one feels like a candidate for aging and retesting for sure!
  3. bheansidhe

    On Houses

    The first wave is a sharply bitter floral soap; the bitterness may be a tannic lavender of the kind described as "herbal". I'm not sure what's causing the soapiness, because it's not the jasmine. Night-blooming jasmine usually reads as "nutty and warm" on me, while it's the more traditional jasmines that cast a soapy vibe. Fortunately, once this untangles itself and gets its sea legs, it becomes a much gentler bouquet of lavender and rose hips with some kind of complicated cool white floral thing happening way in the background, and a slightly salty, slightly green-grassy moonlit dew.
  4. bheansidhe

    On Clothes

    This reads as a sexy, sultry caramel -- or possibly maple syrup, as another commentator noted. I get the comparison, and maybe that's a better choice, because there's no butter in the mix. Let's say, then, that it's syrup distilled from amber and sandalwood, sun-warmed and honey-dusted. I normally can't wear any of the Lab's honey blends, but "honey dust" seems better-behaved on my skin, so I have VERY hopeful hopes here!
  5. bheansidhe

    Angst

    This is not at all angsty; it's a rather peppery, pithy grapefruit and red ginger (more rooty and spicy than the white kind?) with sweet, bracing fir needle and rhubarb, anchored by some kind of tree bark. I'm never quite sure what balsam is supposed to smell like, so I can't tell you if that note dominates. There's a particular patch of forest I hike in central Oregon where the air smells of fir needle, and that's definitely the conifer here - not pine or pine freshener. As it dries, it turns into an achingly gourmet, small-batch rhubarb ginger ale - the kind you put into a $25 cocktail being served somewhere foody. (Now that I think of it, I need to try brewing a rhubarb ginger ale.) The final drydown is gently woodsy. So much more cheerful than the painting, but I'm not mad about it.
  6. bheansidhe

    Discarded Weapons

    *heavy sigh* Gonna be another one of THOSE reviews, I can tell ..... Okay. This smells like the Gingerbread Man after you're finished f&cking him. (It's a fairytale, okay?)
  7. bheansidhe

    Lu Zhishen Pulls the Weeping Willow Upside Down

    Sniffed: this is SO pungent in the vial, about 50% sharp clean clary sage (sweeter than white sage) and 50% rooty, resinous notes I don't recognize, even though I know (and enjoy) vetiver. It's herbal, but not like tidy dried bundles, and more like you yanked a handful of autumn-dried stalks from the ground, root and all. Applied, it takes a moment to settle on my skin, where it turns into something oddly reminiscent of .... bronze? the actual metal bronze, the smell of a temple bell in your sweaty palms. It's bronze-tinged musk. There's the funky vetiver, finally, layered with the sun-warmed bronze, the clary sage, and the brown patchouli root. Willow boughs could mean salicylic acid, which would account for the tinge of aspirin bitterness amid the herbs and roots. The musk smooths everything together in the end, but it's a dark and austere smooth over a dark and thrumming base. I don't get cypress per se, but I get what Beth has described as "funeral vibes" in the mix. It doesn't smell menacing, but it smells dark and quietly unfuckwithable.
  8. bheansidhe

    Boney Moon: Spiced Chestnut and Honey

    Do you know how some patchoulis are described as "chewy" (looking at OG Banshee Beat / Revenant Rhythm here)? This duet has the same sweet, chewy quality as that patch when first applied, while not smelling one bit like actual patchouli. Honey and chestnut notes both hate me, so there's a brief discordant arm-wrestle with my personal chemistry where I get a treacle-y molasses cut with a strong potpourri note, which resolves into nutmeg, ground ginger, and a touch of what's reading as bay leaf. The spices are warming and culinary-adjacent, but not baking spices per se; this isn't another pumpkin spice iteration. It's spiced like the Silk Road, not like Starbucks. It's wearing down like a big, round, sweet, chewy, kind of REALLY funky caramel incense overlaid with chestnut toffee and ginger beer - a little like Red Lantern. I can see this as a demented dark circus food stall.
  9. bheansidhe

    Equivalent No. 314

    This painting's canvas is firmly in the "scorched milk" family of Snake Milk, Ghost Milk, Mummy's Milk, etc. It's layered with a soft iris that, combined with the white tea blossom, lends an Earl Grey bergamot vibe, like tea mixed into clotted cream. There's a perfumey musk middle section that I assume is the ambergris. Overall low throw, but very discernable on the skin. Verdict: soft, creamy, "if milk was a perfume."
  10. bheansidhe

    Je Suis Toujours la Grande Isis

    This is a cold white floral AND a sweet incense smoke AND a spicy clove-blackened lavender at the same time, all bottled up in orris root soap like a trio of baffled genii. It's clean skin, but also a clouded smudge of myrrh. The clove never dominates, but lends a spicy quality to the floral notes. The lavender is astringent and herbal, but also mild. This winds up smelling like a really, really expensive French soap on me.
  11. bheansidhe

    A Guardian Angel Serves a Small Breakfast

    AAAHHH, THIS IS SO GOOD, THIS IS SO GOOD it's .. gingersnaps? Peppery crispy gingersnaps, butter, a little waft of coffee steam, and something I can't name but makes me want to drag my waffles through it, and then my whole entire butt. Why the hell did I type that? What unhinged review is this? I'm snorting my arm like a truffle pig. What am I smelling? Oh, there's the musky component, and the cream, and the spices, and the amber, and now the gingersnaps are something much closer to the magical sweet buttery dough note in Lavender Lussekatter, sans lavender. Rosenkuchen apparently has rum, poppy seeds, almonds, and/or raisins, depending on the recipe, and now I'm getting a German bakery vibe, but primarily? It smells like angelic pastries for breakfast and MAGIC.
  12. bheansidhe

    Rapturous Spouses and Curious Cat

    From start to finish, this blend reads like "honey plus" - and as noted, this is a viscous forest honey, almost as funky as a chestnut honey; pungent, distinctly musky, but still definitely a *honey*. Sniffed, it's dark honey plus lemon blossom and neroli. On my skin, it's honey plus tree-sap resins and a touch of floral sweetness like honeysuckle blooming in the background. For a moment, confusingly, it's honey plus a very realistic salted black licorice. On drydown, it's honey plus a resinous musk, still viscous and sweetened, but not cloying. I never get a separate note of ylang ylang or amber. It's low, golden, and darkly warm; really an interesting play on honey variations. ETA: the next day I still smell it, and it's now honey plus amber.
  13. bheansidhe

    The Serpent in the Lilacs

    Sniffed: a dark purple Snake Oil variant. Applied: a medium-bright Snake Oil overlaid with a floral pollen that's almost bitter, like angelica root, but gradually softens and opens into both a lilac floral and a vegetal green vanilla musk. The lilac is realistic, but not shrill, bright, or soapy; it floats like a leaf on the Snake Oil river. This is overall a softer and slinkier blend than I was expecting, with the vanilla musk and some chewy patchouli notes carrying equal weight with the lilac.
  14. bheansidhe

    The Third Veil

    This one confuses me a lot (without offending me in the least). Sniffed, I get .. sexy ginger ale without the bite? A very green, vegetal vanilla note? Something powdery and light blue? What it IMPLIES is that you are floating across the sunny lawn at a garden party wearing a giant, GIANT flower-bedecked and tulle-veiled hat, something that treads the line between 40s starlet and 80s church lady, an ankle-length sundress (not a caftan), and comfortable -- yet kittenish -- strappy sandals. While sipping something refreshing, ginger-infused, and deceptively non-alcoholic. Enjoy. ETA: creamy, powdery, sweet ginger-ale musk at drydown.
  15. bheansidhe

    Egyptian Red

    For a relatively short (low-throw) perfume, this blend announces itself with BIG shouty cassia and cinnamon notes when it hits the skin. Fortunately, they're muffled by the waxen lipstick accord. There's a touch of bright citrus at the edges, but as it wears, it fades into warm, spicy, slightly powdery, cassia-scented stage makeup. I don't specifically get myrrh or lotus, but I get a fringe of glamour. 100% wear this if you want to feel like Liz playing Cleopatra.
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