moonarcana

I generally don't like to rush to snap judgements like this...but I'm pretty sure that White Moon just became my favorite Lunacy blend!

Read the listing of the notes again: lilac, calla lily, wisteria, white sandalwood, moonflower, night musk, phlox, and violet. Yep, they are all there! Blooming in beautiful harmony. This isn't a loud and pushy floral scent, it's softly feminine with amazing depth and so very classy. I've not tried it out in public yet, so I don't know how the scent carries to others, but I am rather enjoying the lovely floral aura that's surrounding me while wearing White Moon and it certainly seems to have good staying power. (at the moment, I'm 4 hours into the application and still getting frequent lingering wafts of this amazing bouquet)

If I had a Sub Rosa bottle cap, it would adorn a bottle of White Moon. I'm so glad I had the presence of mind to order two bottles.

I like the cool lava lamp like effect and all, but sometimes the mixture comes out snake oil and sometimes it comes out SNAKE OIL

I'll never look at my lava lamp in the same light again!

Snake Oil - quintessential BPAL whether it likes you or not

Black Phoenix - ummm...obviously

Alice - classic

Antique Lace - classic

Black Moon Rising - as Phaedra already mentioned, the set is the perfect dynamic balance of the range of the lunacy blends.

Dorian - classic

Dragon's Heart - passionate Ars Draconis

Embalming Fluid - classic

Hollywood Babylon - so different

Smut - oh yeah...gotta have teh Smut

Snow White - classic LE

Venice - one of the GC's most beautiful floral blends (IMO)

I was taking a risk with this one...lured in by the aphrodesiastic promise of Egyptian amber, red ginger and cardamom...indifferent to orange and fig leaf...but completely skeptical of pumpkin. It's never done well for me as a fragrance. I'm not overly fond of pumpkin pie either.

The bottle art is great - I also got Samhain, so I'm wondering now if more Halloweenie bottles feature the little crone witch but I love the black cat on her shoulder on the label of Pumpkin Queen.

Sniffing the bottle is like experiencing the aroma of an autumn kaleidoscope. I'm not exaggerating when I say I amused myself with the revolving door of scent for nearly 20 minutes before I finally tried some on. It moves from buttery soft pumpkin bread to succulent fruitiness to exotic spice and each time I bring the bottle close to inhale is different than the last whiff. That little parlor trick alone is worth the price of admission.

I let the oil pool upon the skin for a bit and the changing notes continued to take turns singing their solos. I begin longing to experience their harmonius collaboration but they seem quite content with grabbing the spot light away from one another - without attempting to upstage.

As the scent settles in there are times it seems more blended, but then one or the other of the notes will spike back up on it's own again.

The foody side of Pumpkin Queen is her namesake gourd sprinkled with ginger and cardamom spices. The pumpkin is soft and wafts sweet and creamy - almost like fresh pumpkin bread with a buttercream frosting. But then the Egyptian Amber comes to the front and hypnotizes me with it's beauty. And when I regain my senses, I realize that I'm now smelling an intoxicating fruity zest. They don't rotate in any set order.

It's been about 4 hours since I first applied the oil and it still carries a unique presence although the voices have gotten individually weaker and are resigned to carry on in unison.

I'm not a big fan of many of the often favored foodie scents out there, but Pumpkin Queen has plenty of diversionary tactics up her sleeve and I've fallen under her glowing spell. (I can't wait to see how this one ages)

Edit 10/26 - I ended up swapping my bottle of PQ, although I kept an imp to see how it ages and because I like smelling the scent from the bottle...just not ON me. It's very lovely, but just not a fragrance that I can wear.

I read a few reviews which commented on the complimentary balance between Voodoo Queen and Doc Buzzard - but I put more of a connection between VQ and Storyville. It's like the same woody resin incense note, but where Voodoo Queen goes dry and dusty, Storyville gets soft and creamy. Enticing.

This one is quite fine indeed and since it's so hard to come by, I'll just be ever so grateful for this opportunity to try it out - thank you Gypsy Rose Red!

When I was a kid, my grandpa had a huge garden and grew all kinds of vegetables, but his favorites were rutabagas, turnips, parsnips, sweet potatoes and my grandparents had a huge root cellar and that is what Doc Buzzard reminds me of - earthiness of the dirt walls of the basement as well as the soil still clinging to the stash of tubers, fermented herbal notes of the decaying greens sprouting from the top of each root and a waft of the ever present tobacco resin that was my grandpa's aura.

I enjoy this scent for the sense of extreme nostalgia it produces for me, but even without the personal recollection associated with this scent I don't think that it's something that I could ever wear as a fragrance.

Thanks to GypsyRoseRed for giving me the opportunity to try this rarity!

I had a sniffie of this previously, but thanks to GypsyRoseRed's generosity in donating enough of the Convergence scents for a small test/sniff circle I got to take a bit more of this incredible scent for a ride.

...reaffirming my love for the scent even stronger than before!

Voodoo Queen is sensual and aloof. There's a compelling incense base, if I had to guess I'd say frankincense, myrrh and black amber - theres a touch of softness that I cant pinpoint as floral or sweet herbal, but it helps to balance out the resinous quality and give it a distinctly feminine edge. As it dries, it literally dries all over - the fragrance feels like a dusty attic - not with an unpleasant mustiness, but the way your lungs feel with that first breath of walking into a place that had settled it's atmosphere and been left undisturbed for a good long while.

I am completely under her spell.

A deep peppery resinous incense swirls up into my mind and hypnotizes my senses. Schwarzer Mond as a woman's fragrance exudes confident control - unafraid of the dark as it taps into the ancient secrets and wisdom of the Crone.

And any man who wore this scent would command my complete and undivided attention. Rrrrrawrrll!

My buddy caramialove and I were both too chicken to commit to a whole bottle of Chaos Theory, so thinking that there's safety in numbers, we decided to go in together on a bottle.

Here's my review:

Chaos Theory III: MV

Smells like a Sharpie.

in the bottle...

applied to the skin wet...

after it dries down...

Smells like a Sharpie.

So although neither one of us desires to actually smell like a Sharpie, it was a fun experience. And no...you don't get a buzz from sniffing it!

just received my bottle yesterday, purchased from a lovely forumite...

I may have mentioned this a few other times, but I'm not typically a foodie scent person which is why I've found it easy to steer clear of the Monster Bait scents. However, the Monster in the Closet has always intrigued me. Blackberries??? Bourbon??? RED FREAKIN' VELVET CAKE!!! Cut me a big ol' slice of that stuff because I'm loving the potential there!

So I caved in...I bought a bottle of a foodie scent.

I love it.

Others have made the comparison, so I'll chime in and say that this could be The Dark Side of the Beaver Moon Except for I'm not a big fan of Beaver Moon.

In the bottle - cake, with berry filling between the layers. I don't like it much from the bottle.

Nor do I care for about the first minute or two when put on my skin...still too cakey.

But then - that drunken blackberry smell rises to the occasion and that's all she wrote. I must have re-applied this stuff 5 times over the course of the evening last night just to get a buzz off that intoxicating aroma. It's not at all overly boozy to me, but it's not fresh blackberries - they've definitely been fermenting a bit.

It dries down to a soft vanilla with light berries that I find to be very lovely. Not cake at all.

I defintely give the Closet Monster a 5/5 ...he can scare away the other monsters from under my bed and my panty drawer any time!

These are the scents that my friends and family tend to ooh and ahh over the most...

(in no particular order)

GC's

Alice

Swank

O

Lady of Shalott

Dana O'Shee

Siren

Opium Poppy (but I'm a bit of a pusher on this scent )

Venice

Hollywood Babylon

Shadow Witch Orchid

Sherezade

Juliet

LE's

Snake Charmer

Luna

Peony Moon

Snow White

Smut

Veils and Mist is the first TAL oil that I've tried.

The reason I wanted to get it was so I could 'fade into the woodwork' at work and stay out of all the corporate BS and office politics.

I took it for a test drive yesterday. When I got to work, it was quiet and nobody in my department was around, so I took the imp from my purse and focused on being able to go about my own business and just get my job done without all the unneccesary petty crap that I normally get a heaping helping of every day. I annointed myself with the oil - which is (bonus!) a gorgeous floral scent that is very much something I would choose to wear as fragrance - and let me just tell you, I was amazed.

The rest of the day, I got more work done than usual - I had only a handful of calls all day and they ALL pertained to matters that I needed to deal with for the course of my job. I got not ONE call from the customer service dept. or sales, who only ever call because they tend to panick and call me for the answer instead of look up the information that I update in the computer.

I'm telling you, it almost felt like a vacation! I walked out at the end of the day feeling no stress from all the aggravation I normally have trying to navigate my way through everybody else's drama.

It was truly remarkable.

I won't over-use this oil, because my personal outlook is to use magical assistance as sparingly as possible, but now that I've experience what this oil is capable of doing - I'm pretty jazzed that I have something like this in my cache of potions!

Definitely Urd

And as others have mentioned...Two Monsters is incredible but indeed very refined to be classified as straight out 'head shop'.

I understand why people usually file The Catepillar into this category...but there's an ethereal quality about it that keeps me from putting it there, although I love me some really good "eau de headshop" AND The Caterpillar is my very favorite GC, so I'm probably contradicting my own opinion somewhere there!

I don't really have anything else to add that others haven't already mentioned ...but I'll chime in with Lust, Sherezade, Snake Charmer and certain phases of Lotus Moon are a pure trip!

I find Opium poppy and the Caterpillar very headshoppy but maybe thats just the head shops around here

...try layering Opium Poppy over Malice sometime.

a few of my favorite 'marathon' scents...

Snow White - I can put it on in the morning and still get occasional wafts late in the evening and still smell it on my skin when I wake up the next morning.

Urd

Jezebel

Snake Charmer

Carnivale

Smut

edit to add: Oh yeah, Morgause stays for the long haul too!

Beautifully hypnotizing - a pure floral resin fragrance which perfectly captures the the essence of opium's enigmatic spell. This is one of the few BPAL oils I've tried which doesn't change at all from bottle to skin until it starts to fade away at the very end, wafting unobtrusively into the night on a warm summer breeze.

This is among my Top Ten favorites - most definitely rated a 5/5

"They now came upon more and more of the big scarlet poppies, and fewer and fewer of the other flowers; and soon they found themselves in the midst of a great meadow of poppies. Now it is well known that when there are many of these flowers together their odor is so powerful that anyone who breathes it falls asleep, and if the sleeper is not carried away from the scent of the flowers, he sleeps on and on forever. But Dorothy did not know this, nor could she get away from the bright red flowers that were everywhere about; so presently her eyes grew heavy and she felt she must sit down to rest and to sleep."

From The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

I made lotion today and I had considered scenting it with Whitechapel because I had a couple of extra imps of that onhand...I ended up going a different route (mixing Opium Poppy and Malice...yum!) but I'm definitely going to try Whitechapel lotion sometime in the future. On me that scent is very lavender with a twist of lemon...which I find so funny because there's no lavender listed in the notes. But no matter which way the scent wafts, it's really quite nice.

The cap comes off the bottle, drawing me in to it's clutches with sweet gooey berries and promises of a good time lurking in the background...

I pay for my ticket and go on through the gate.

On the skin the cacophonic rhythms of the evening fair take over, revolving around and around with bright sweetness and dark temptations. While Carnivale is still fresh upon my skin, it is like a ride on a big beautiful carousel spiked with the anticipation of going through the haunted funhouse next!

As it dries, the gorgeous deep spice of carnations begins to permeate the senses until it's the only note I notice at all. This is my favorite part and lasts a long time, but then after awhile, the flowers slowly fade as a familiar sassy spark emerges - yeah, that combo of amber and heliotrope that makes wearing Hollywood Babylon feel so naughty. I guess you could say this is the part where I sneak out the back gate to engage in a bit of (ahem) indiscretion with the intention of rejoining my friends for some more fun on the Midway later.

The whole ride lasts about 4 or 5 hours on me, but I'd gladly buy another ticket to let it roll well into the night.

Definitely 5/5

I too love florals and Beatrice and Bearded Lady are among my favorite LE scents. If you've not tried Flower Moon, you may want to find some of that...it is my most favorite of all.

As far as GC, I love Amsterdam, but that may be too green for your liking. Today I packed my imp carrier with 3 Rappaccini's Garden scents which I absolutely adore - Opium Poppy, Asphodel and Shadow Witch Orchid...among those Asphodel is the 'brightest' scent. I recently got the imp of SWO and can't stop sniffing myself...so it will become a bottle soon.

I'll have to go through my notes when I get home to give you some other recommendations - there are so many wonderful flowers to smell in the BPAL garden!

The aroma rises from the bottle very sweet - but not in a sugary way, so I personally don't find it to be 'bubble gum'...more like a big ripe Summer fruit salad. I smell some floral and a hint of resin lurking in the shadows...but right now it's all about the hot fun in the Summertime.

It eases into the skin like a lazy afternoon when it's time to kick back, cool off and get ready to go out on the town as soon as the Sun goes down. But just because the night air might feel cooler, that doesn't mean that things aren't about to heat up. Wow! The transition is nothing short of mesmerizing. My wrist barely left my nose for a good 1/2 hour. (is super glue a secret ingredient?) And it continues to be wonderful, but it took me about that long to regain the presence of mind to shake the narcotic stupor and drag my arm up off my face.

After a couple of hours it drifts gradually into a light but extremely present dusting of amber and faded rose...sigh...with just the slightest memory of the Sweet Sunshine.

How glad am I that I have a bottle of this?

Oh yeah...Pretty Damn!!!

5/5

Hi there -

see Macha's note about the bottles a few posts back on this thread.

I got my lab order yesterday, and while I´ve seen many amber bottles around, I was a little surprised the GC came in those as well. I always figured GC would come in the blue bottles, am I totally insane for thinking that? Is it random, or will the amber ones become the rule now? Anyone? All (that would be five, tops) my other GCs are blue...

 

and I don´t mind the amber bottles, not one bit, cause they´re all so shiny & pretty

reviewed courtesy of Quikslver's GC circle swap

Kurukulla

first sniff: like sweet white wine.

tested wet: this is totally fruity -I don't smell rose at all. It's grapes and orchard fruit...nothing heavy - but still very full and lovely.

tested dry: I find it completely mystifying that someone who loves florals as much as I do does not smell ANY flower notes in a big bouquet of lotus blossoms and roses. (scratches head) but I will have to say that this is one of the nicest fruity scents I've tried.

conclusion: This goes on my imp wish list...maybe the next one will reveal some floral notes - I need to give it another try before I deem it bottle worthy.

4/5

reviewed courtesy of Quikslver's GC circle swap

Djinn

first sniff: this one is interesting, compelling even - I can't identify components, but despite the dark name I'm not afraid to try it.

tested wet: it does have a firey soul...a real invasive and permeating. It doesn't feel or smell "hot" like spicy or woody, but it's like the electricity that bounces off the flames as they crackle and dance under a night sky.

tested dry: the sparks fly for quite awhile and then settles innocuously into a pile of lightly powdered ash. Then *poof* the whole thing suddenly disappears.

Conclusion: If an imp should happen to cross my path I'd enjoy dancing in the flames with Djinn again.

3/5

reviewed courtesy of Quikslver's GC circle swap

Dee

first sniff: medicinally antiseptic. Not sure I want to put this on my skin.

tested wet: but I did and it smelled like strong aftershave wet on my skin.

tested dry: but it mellows nicely. it now has an attractive scent - definitely more of a man's cologne (at least in my opinion) It has a rugged sophistication about it.

conclusion: I wouldn't wear it, but I would recommend or give as a gift to a quy who appreciates fragrance.

2/5

additional note - this one is really hard to wash off the smell

This is currently one of my favorite scents - it is soft and beautiful yet deeply dark and wicked all at the same time.

Sniffing from the bottle, a fragrant sweet ylang ylang wafts above the full breath of patchouli. When applied to the skin, the notes compete with each other a bit - alternately chaotic and harmonius.

As it dries, it settles into the most amazing warm and spicy floral. The clove is more noticable now, but it is well partnered with the patchouli incense and ultimately mellowed by the persistent blooming of the ylang ylang. Ylang ylang can be difficult to love, but I find this presentation to be extremely enjoyable.

I have to give it a 5/5

...and as somewhat of a layering note, Malice really rocks with a dab of Opium Poppy placed nearby.

reviewed courtesy of Quikslver's GC circle swap

Cobra Lily

first sniff: beautiful floral - bright and summery!

tested wet: much the same like sticking your face in a big garden bouquet.

tested dry: a light incense-y note starts to emerge and give the fragrance more depth and complexity.

conclusion: I like this - it's going on my imp list!

3/5