TrailerTrashPrincess

bear with me while we go on a journey. 

one of my favourite sweet treats are these orange slice things

they're nothing like the "orange slice" candy i grew up with, which are like gumdrops but shaped different. these are softer, squishier, and sweeter.  
i love the idea of orange juice, but i don't actually like the taste of it. or real oranges.  just so bitter. 
Clementines, satsumas, and mandarins are good but i can't eat regular oranges or grapefruits, just too sour.

so. wet in the bottle, this smells a bit like yellow cake batter, and a hint of one of those orange slice candies.  not a real orange, but a sugary treat that happens to be orange in color, more than anything else.  

with me so far?

then, once it settles in, that yellow cake batter and orange candy scent just vanishes, and what is left is an almond-extract-ish sugar cookie dough. because most sugar cookies have either almond, lemon, or vanilla, right? this one has almond.

a little bit later, that cookie dough has become cookies and they were baked alongside some sort of savory roll/bread.  and maybe.... molasses cookies? or maybe i'm imagining that 'cuz i had two of those for breakfast. or wishful thinking because they were my last two and i'd like more.

the Strawberry version of this, from a few years ago, is one of my top-20 BPAL scents. i adore it.

this...   ok. when i was little i adored Strawberry Shortcake. to be honest i still do.  some of her friends were a little odd.  but this? this smells to me exactly the way the Raspberry Tart doll did.
like somewhere between blueberry and blackberry, with sweet pastry.  almost delicious, but not quite (because i don't like raspberries).

one of my favourite BPAL scents is Rose Cross.  

and it mixes really nicely with Snake Oil. 

and, for whatever crazy reason, after about an hour, this has settled onto my skin and smells a lot like the bottle of those two that i mixed together about five years ago (a very-obviously-not-a-BPAL-bottle, that i combined imps of varying ages into).  powdery and spicy but none of the play-doh.

the crazy thing is that this doesn't smell all that floral to me. 

on my skin, anyhow, this ends up smelling closer to what i wish all the milk and cream based scents smelled like. i love the idea of those scents, but instead of milk, to me they end up more like... Greek yogurt that's just this side of going off. unsweetened, tangy and a little off-putting.

this smells milky, and pale pink, and with the slightest whiff of aerosol White Rain hairspray. 

when i tried it two years ago, i didn't think much of it but now? now it is so very pretty.

this turned out nothing like what i expected, but isn't that so often the case?

the in-bottle and wet-on-skin changed so much, and so quickly that i barely had a chance to form an opinion of the wet-on-skin scent before it settled into what it stayed as.

Strawberry Money House from the 90s, or strawberry incense from the 80s.  i haven't had Strawberry Money House in ages, and haven't had strawberry incense in, oh, 20 years?

but that's what i get from this amazing little bottle.  not the sugary strawberry-preserves of Strawberry Moon, and nothing even remotely Smut-like or Scherezade-y.

but like.. Strawberry Shortcake, the teenage years. when she painted her walls dark red and wore Vamp nail polish. 

this smells so familiar.

i haven't sniffed it in years - maybe i'm thinking of the Spinning Multicolored Metallic Pinwheel one from a decade or so ago? 

i don't get that plastic-y strawberry, this is more like the one from Strawberry Moon.  i'm not getting cotton candy or the zing of lime zest - but i am getting something more like key lime pie (which, honestly, i prefer over lime zest... and i love cotton candy but these days it tends more towards that blue raspberry thing and not what i remember it being like).

dry, suede-y leather and a crack of gingerbread.   

like if a Gingerbread Man joined a biker gang.   there's a little something Whiff Lash-ish happening in the background, so maybe there's Irish Spring and greasepaint happening in the clubhouse of that biker gang?

this is that honey note the Lab uses that i think of as California Honey.  which is not what i (as a Georgia peach) think of honey as smelling or tasting like.

once, many years ago now, i purchased some Fage greek yogurt with a little side pocket of honey that you were to mix in just before eating.  that honey *tasted* exactly like the way the Lab's honey note *smells*

i'd never had honey that tasted like that before. i couldn't eat it then, either, it just wasn't right.   honey was one of the first things i ever purchased with my own money (from a beekeper who had a roadside stand.) and i've bought raw and pasteurized honey from all over the country and all over the world.  i also can't stand orange blossom honey, just for the record.

anyhow. this is that honey note, which if you know you like it, you'll probably like this.

and it is not the Parkerhouse yeast roll / soft white bread being baked kinda smell i was hoping for.  this isn't Wonderbread, it is something almost oaty and hearty and the kinda thing i'd want with stew, not with honey.

sadly this is a no-go from me. 

also i can totally see how L403 got first Doritos and then Lush from this, but i get less of a HIWTK than a - what's the other one? Beautiful? Flying Fox? the one that used to be B Never or some such? because it is that kind of honey. 

i had a migraine the night i tested this so i need to try it again to be sure...

in the bottle and wet on my skin it was alllllmost Snow Glass Apples, and it was so beautiful i almost wanted to cry.

but then it settled in.  and started reminding me of the Pink Champagne from... a while back. which never worked on me (too soapy?).

cashmere makes me itchy.  all sheepwool makes me itchy.  

this reminds me of F5, and my PawPaw's old recliner. 

@Dark Alice's mention that this smells like a Tradition That Must Be Kept makes sense, because the smell of this made me cry. I feel like it is reminding me of something I've lost, something I've forgotten.

this is beautiful, though.  green and snuggly and familiar but not commonplace.

i love patchouli, and ambergris, and oudh, and most vanillas. 

many many years ago i got a BPAL bottle in a swap or a purchase from a forumite who worked in some kind of medical lab, and they had some sort of cling film that they used to seal things to make it super duper leak proof. kinda milky-clear, thicker than the food type of cling film (Saran Wrap, etc) and super adhesive without actually being sticky.  I then looked it up on a lab supplies website thinking how neat that would be for packaging, and then promptly forgot about it, I guess.

i ordered this beard oil earlier this year (in May), but it wasn't until a lovely forumite mentioned earlier this evening that she used it as nail oil that i thought to get it out and open it to see how that would work for me!  and it was wrapped with that same sort of amazing sticky but not sticky film. way easier to remove than tape, didn't stick to the label or the bottle, just itself.  anyhow, thought i'd mention that the dropper bottles were packaged well to avoid leakage/spillage.

which is a good thing because this bottle is so full that it looks empty, if you know what i mean.  like, tilting it upside down there are just a couple of tiny air bubbles that move to show it is full. 

the oil is a light caramel colour and smells more like carrier oils than much else.  which, again, since it is meant to be used right under the nose i can see why it wouldn't be highly fragranced.

on my skin (since... i don't have a beard) after a little bit it settles in and warms up and i get a little bit of a patchouli and vanilla scent.  but sadly i don't get any ambergris or oudh.

*update, about an hour later i'm getting a hint of something earthy that adds a little oomph, but it is smooshed-nose-to-skin in order to be able to smell it. the carrier oil scent is gone now, though.

The Lab's site lists the ingredients as: 
Jojoba oil, argan oil, rosehip seed oil, evening primrose oil, grapeseed oil, rosemary oleoresin extract, and Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fragrance.

i put a single drop on the top of my left hand, and rubbed the top of my right hand on it and then used them to rub down my arms and I can still see where the oil was, and where it wasn't, nearly half an hour later. it did make my skin very soft, though!

it still doesn't have much of a smell, even in the bottle.  so i bet this will make a good nail oil, for days when i don't want a heavy scent.  or a beard oil for someone who doesn't want a super smelly face!

admittedly it has been a whole lotta years since i last tried Ü (the Mutter Museum scent) but once this settles onto my skin, that's what it reminds me of. a touch less dry and a teensy bit maybe something like brown sugar in there? maybe it is the patchouli making me think something brown-sweet, though.

i'd say this is on the masculine side of unisex, and could also make a nice room scent if you wanted a resin-y sort of scent that didn't lean towards cedar or frankincense/myrrh.

i admit i bought this for the name, because the Error 502 is one of the most frustrating things to try and resolve from the tech back-end perspective. 

i couldn't tell you how many times i've been to the beach in Florida/Georgia/Alabama/Carolina.  usually too hot, stinky, sandy beachy.  i happened to be in Florida one year when it snowed and seeing snow on the sand was kooky, but i still didn't care for the beach even then.

i don't like the ocean.

but the beaches i've seen from TV shows from the UK are so different.  like pebbles instead of the yellow sand, and often it just looks too cold to be in anything but a coat.  my real visual is this, i admit:

i haven't left the US, so if i'm totally wrong, well, forgive me, i mean no insults. probably doesn't smell any better there, but the visual is just so different!

anyhow, to me this isn't Snake Oil and anything snow-y.  not really.  it is more like Snakes Join The Doctor and Romana, in the Leisure Hive episode, and hang out on a beach like that one.  cold and pebble-y.

it smells cold, and ocean-y.  like maybe Snakes smell different when they're all bundled up for the winter?   it reminds me of a scent from one of the older Lilith updates - i'll need to get them out to figure out which one.  Like maybe Yaksh or Humpback Whale?

whichever one it is i'm thinking of, it reminded me of the way our hotel room at Ballys smelled when we went there for our wedding.  

this could very well have been called Gingerbread Herr Drosselmeyer '05.

i don't like rum. or the rum note in scents.

but Butter Rum is one of my favourite candy flavours... i've never actually had buttered rum in real life but the recipes i've seen for it sound tasty.  i don't wanna make a batch of it just for one sip to see if i like it, though.

i don't get anything Grog-y or really even anything at all booze-y out of this.  it is vaguely foody, in a late-December-holiday kind of way.



Galerie des Glaces is, like, somebody took all the glass from House of Mirrors and put it all in really over-the-top ornate gilded frames.  i should mention that i adore House of Mirrors (not the HG version, just the perfume oil version).

so,  in the bottle and wet before it really settles into my skin, it is very House of Mirrors~ish, but with something warmer and maybe peach/apricot~ier around the edges. 

but after an hour or so it morphs almost exactly into Casmir but without that Chopard back-note. i also like Casmir and have many variants of it, just FYI.

based on the notes, i think a lot of folks who might really like this might've skipped it so i wanted to post my thoughts even if they're not so much a review as a babbling stream of comparisons.

amber-y (but not powdery), glass, almost ozone but without the high-pitched headacheyness, almost white musk without the detergent-y-ness. 

petrichor in a warm fuzzy sweater, and something peach-ish hovering in there somewhere.

such a pretty poison.

this smelled so familiar when i was decanting it, and i've narrowed it down to that it reminds me of an old* Lush product.

(*i love the smell of a lot of Lush stuff, i was a loyal fax-and-mail-order customer of The Body Shop, ordering overseas from their UK office, starting way back in the late 80s, then followed through the various incarnations. up until a couple of years ago when i just couldn't justify the expense anymore.  still love the smells. still using up stuff from my ancient stash. haven't bought anything new from them in 2+ years now, though, and still have never set foot inside a Lush store. maybe someday! even though there's [at least] one in Atlanta now!)

whatever it was that i think this reminds me of was yellow, with either dandelions or chamomile or tiny yellow flowers of some sort embedded on the top. i think it was a hair product.  but i didn't use it as shampoo or conditioner as it was intended, i used it as either soap or a lotion block. probably why i can't remember what it was called. 

i tested this tonight and i'd have sworn this was some sort of chamomile, white tea, maybe tonka, kinda thing.  i never in a zillion years would have guessed this was oakmoss, lavender, aloeswood, patchouli & rockrose. 

i do adore aloeswood, though. and patchouli.  

if the idea of a light, clean/crisp/refreshing sort of could-be-soap smell, that's chamomile-y, slightly astringent without being bitter, and yet just a little bit earthy sounds good - don't be afraid of giving this one a try.  if you're not a fan of oakmoss or patchouli don't let that scare you off.  i like both and still never would have guessed they were in this.

while decanting this, probably a week ago, i spilled a little (horrors!) and tonight i found the yarn i used to sop it up and wondered why it smelled so good.

after a week of chilling on some (acrylic) yarn, it was like honeysuckle and moonflower. maybe a touch of orris, but no moss and no cucumber. 

i always expect white ginger to smell like my college roommate Rebekah's awapuhi shampoo (which smelled good on her, but i hated it on me, and out of the bottle).

overall, a beautiful soft floral but leaning towards being high pitched and likely way too floral for most.

almost exactly Snow White.

i don't understand it, it shouldn't be, but it is. 

i buy Snow White because it smells like a certain memory.  i can't wear it, it goes funky on me, but this - on my skin, smells the way Snow White does in the bottle. maybe just a little warmer (might be the pumpkin [not pumpkie pie, just real, straight pumpkin], and i do love pumpkin!).

the Strawberry Sufganiyot is one of my top 50 BPAL scents, ever. might be top 25.  fresh blueberries are ok but in muffins and baked goods, so yum! (and, to be honest, even artificially blueberry flavoured things like cereal and instant oatmeal are fine by me, too) 

i had braces for 9 years, and had it drilled into me to not chew gum, so i never was much of a gum chewer.  it hurts now, and i wasn't supposed to then.

but boy did i love the smell of it, back in high school.

and this, on me, smells like sun-warmed grape bubblegum, leaning towards the Blueberry Muffin doll from my Strawberry Shortcake collection. so a little bit grape bubblegum, and a little bit plastic doll-head, with eau de faux blueberry.

i might just like it more because of that, than if it had actually smelled like blueberry pastry on me.

[No additional description provided.]

i don't wanna be first, but somebody has to be. so forgive me for not being all that good with reviews and we'll hope that the folks who post after me are better at it.

a couple of years ago there was a Yule called Mud-Mingled Boot Slush that was a minty slushy scent with hints of good clean dirt and something that kinda felt like waterlogged cement.

i'll need to dig it out to do a side-by-side but this reminds me so much of that, except with shortbread cookies (like the tin of "Danish Butter Cookies" the size of your head that we pick up at Sam's Club every year around this time).

i don't get Sugar Cookie (like the '05, The Devil's Bake Sale, or any of the other versions, either), but a more buttery sort of cookie, which i'm fine with. it could've been called Yellow Cake Batter In The Snow and that would make sense to me, too. 

but it is the minty-snow-y-ness that is the most dominant here, but it is sweeter than the Mud-Mingled Boot Slush from ... whatever year it was. 2016?  i hate peppermint, but this doesn't bother me. the mint is more like essence-of-cold-frozen-air than actual, like, toothpaste-y mint-y-ness. 

this isn't something i'll wear as perfume but i think it would make a good car air freshener (Little Snowy Tree) type scent.

just did a decant of this and wanted to come here to note that it is ORANGE. like super duper milky cloudy orange.  there was one of the 'Weenies that looked a lot like this.  thankfully they smell really really different.

i'm... coming down with something so my smeller's not smelling things very well but i do get that pumpkin spice* smell, with a little bit of something almost floral-y? don't really get any of the original SM though.

* = i don't like that pumpkin spice thing.  i love pumpkin, and pumpkin pie, and nutmeg, but whatever's in that "pumpkin spice" flavour/smell that took over this time of year, i don't like it.  

(i also don't drink coffee, use any kind of pepper, eat ketchup or mustard, but i love fruitcake and will happily drink straight Golden Grain)

i'm from Georgia. and i adore peaches. fresh, canned, cobbler, however you wanna serve it up, i loves me some peaches.

i also like pumpkin. not that "pumpkin spice" thing, but actual real pumpkin-flavoured-pumpkin. no spices needed.

actually, i like most orange foods. except mangoes, and peppers.

a few years back we had the Pie update and there was a Peach Cobbler scent that made me sad because it didn't really smell like peach cobbler to me.

this, though? this smells like peach cobbler. not a fancy one, but the "dump" kind you make with canned peach and a cake mix.

i've tested it about five times so far and i keep gettin' straight up peach cobbler. which i'm totally ok with.

most white musk goes straight to Tide / laundry detergent for me, and i just can't do it. too high-pitched and headachey.

Neroli more often than not will smell like Fritos corn chips to my nose.

i've had perfumes (not just BPAL, but commercial ones, too) that had violet root and violet leaves as a primary note and i've liked them, and i adore iris scents. honeysuckle, i like real ones - they're one of my favourite flowers - but in perfume it almost always has something not-quite-right about it.

lavender i only go for if it is sweet like TKO or Lilith's Lavender.

so, all that aside, this is really pretty. surprisingly pretty. it is soft and clean and kinda reminds me of some fabric softener i had a while back. i don't get any white musk or any Fritos. and the lavender, while not as sweet as TKO, isn't the medicinal/minty kind, either.

so... yeah, kinda like getting a hug from a friend and they use a different kind of laundry soap/softener than you do. a snuggly, comfortable hug of a scent.

yesterday i opened one of my BPAL boxes and reached for something but... apparently i grabbed the bottle beside it instead of the one i meant to pick up. i was getting dressed in a hurry to go run errands so didn't think too much of it.

anyhow, i got into the box again today to try and figure out what i wore, and picked this up and put it on again - that's what i wore yesterday.

and after a couple hours i figured out what it reminded me of, so i got that bottle out and sprayed some on my other wrist. so i have this on my left, and a different scent on my right. and while they're not 100% identical, they're darn close.

so. for any fans of Electric Youth, this might be a good substitute.

eta: this is the newer version. i have both but the one i have on right now is the new one.

i loved this. i loved it SO much. i didn't much like the older one, but the '08 was just lovely. i went through... several bottles.

now that i sold the last decant i had stashed away - 'cuz i knew i'd never use it - i figured i should jot down my thoughts.

when it was fresher (oh, a decade ago) there was a bit more forest in there. woodsy-chilly-trees, deep in the woods where the sun never really hits. never got bonfire smoke, but there's a skin musk and the powdery amber. and the memory of trees.

it is almost like the memory of a most excellent night, in a bottle. i hope we get this back again someday.