TrailerTrashPrincess

i finally decided to rehome this and so as it has moved on to a better owner, i thought i'd add my thoughts:

i keep my BPAL bottles in various boxes. some pretty and decorated ones, some plain ones that were shipping boxes in their previous lives, etc. but each one has a specific smell that wafts out when the lid is lifted/folded back.

somehow, this bottle contains the BPAL-box-smell of one of the decorative gift boxes (sort of a caramel brown, with a 2 drawn on the lid in metallic silver marker) that lives under my bed. that box has some of the phoenix scents (e.a.r.t.h, c.a.n.d.y, and some of the bards of ireland scents, plus a few assorted shunga and random other things that i acquired along about the same time).

it really boggles my brain how this bottle of 13 smells like so many of those scents from that box all combined... but it does.

i finally decided to rehome this and so as it has moved on to a better owner, i thought i'd add my thoughts:

i love bananas. real ones (more black than yellow, please). fake ones (runts! milkshake from Sonic! Laffy Taffy [sorry Mitch]! hard candy sticks from Cracker Barrel!), etc. as long as it isn't green (*shudder*), i'm pretty much good with any form of banana.

i don't really get any banana here. a faint church-y sort of incense (no nag champa or frankincense). i also don't really get any Dorian. more of a burned sugar-incense-oleander. which in and of itself is nice enough, but it is so faint that it just doesn't work for me.

i finally decided to rehome this (so glad it is going to someone i know will wear it!) and so as it has moved on to a better owner, i thought i'd add my thoughts:

super-pom. like, a cape-wearin' superherofruit. orange blossom tends to smell like fritos to me, but i never got any of that, or any red musk, either, from this. something did tinge toward faintly medicinal, but i think that was just the pomegranate.

i love that buttered popcorn smell. buttered popcorn jellybeans. i have buttered popcorn flavoured lipbalm. i have Shill from way back when and it is my gonna-watch-a-movie scent, whether we're going out or staying in.

i'm so confused by this one, though, because if i didn't know it was a fresh-from-the-Post box (well, it arrived a few days ago but i only opened it last night) i'd swear i'd put on Golletes.

i get more leftover-breakfast-cereal-milk (strawberry Crazy Cow, mostly. maybe a little of Honey Kix?) than Pop Secret. which is fine with me, i adore Golletes!

in the bottle, this has a generous dollop of that Misk U coffee scent. but with a dairy-heavy and yet bitter caramel thing going on, too.

now, i don't drink coffee, i can't stand the taste, but i love the smell. and i used to happily eat carob covered coffeebeans.

this turned... seriously odd on my skin. bitter-masculine and woody.

i had a tiny bit of this, but it is now going on to a better home where it will hopefully be more appreciated.

the Lab's bourbon vanilla and i don't get along, i think, because it generally smells of nothing, or nothing-adjacent, to my nose. between the tonka, frankincense and tobacco i was hoping this might be delicious on me, but it isn't. i wonder if the copal/myrrh and "yellow sandalwood" are what reminds me of the peanut-butter-rice-krispy-treats scent i get out of Misk U?

a bouquet of white flowers, with just-brushed minty-fresh breath.

wet on skin this smells like a freshly opened package of good quality figs. a little dirty, a little earthy, a teeny bit sweet, but with some zing and a bit of sour. that was nice while it lasted.

briefly had a bout of vinyl-y, pool float plastic with a hint of water hose (i like that smell, though) but it didn't last.

i'd swear there's cedar in this, because there's a goodly hamster cage in there now, after a couple of hours. cedar, my mom's wet cigarette ashes* in a paper bag, and something almost sweet but wrong.

*my mom smokes Salem menthols, the stinkiest cigarette ever.

Apple Peel. like, the woody stem, the peel of the apple, and maybe the core with all the seeds. not a sour green apple, and not a fake-red-apple smell like you'd get from B&BW, but like a real apple (like the one from Snow Glass Apples?)... just the peel. woodsy apple, not floral or foody.

no Salon Selectives 90s hairspray smell, either!

i go back and forth on whether i like this or not. i don't dislike it, but i think i've finally decided that i don't need it...

i don't know what burning a vanilla bean would actually smell like, but whenever i put this on, that's what my brain tells me i'm smelling - plumes of smoke from a burning vanilla bean. Vanilla Bean Bonfire.

and something about it reminds me of GothCon ... but i can't figure out what! some kind of scent memory, 'cuz every time i sniff this i start thinking about that weekend, and some of the folks i met then, and haven't talked to since.

never gave much thought to this scent, but a bit of it came my way yesterday so dutifully i'm trying it. i sniffed it last night and thought it smelled ok so today i put on a tiny drop from the tip of the imp-wand on the top of my left hand.

and oh my boy howdy gee did this amp up like whoa. i feel like i walked into a cloud of Axe bodyspray or the cloud from one of the fellows who believes cologne is as good as a shower.

i like the smell of hay, and i like bergamot. i never had a real opinion of opoponax until a few years back there was a bit of a smelling circle that included a vial of it in a sticky, extremely stinky resin form and, well, i get a lot of that in this. i like bourbon, but hate vetiver...i confess to having no clue what "bourbon vetiver" is but i'm guessing i don't like it.

and srsly the throw on this is astounding. i've been trying to let it settle in for an hour or so now but i just can't take it, it's too strong.

i imagine fans of Drakkar Noir will like this. that cologne was instant migraine for me back in high school.

i hate vetiver - it smells like cigarette ashes in a wet paper bag. and the Lab's honey and i just don't get along at all, no matter how much i love real honey. i don't like lemon, or any bitter citrus peel.

i adore saffron - when i lived alone it was one of the four or so spices i owned (i was so happy to not have black pepper in my apartment!), and i've yet to be disappointed in dark musks.

so... i wouldn't have ever bought this or sought it out, in other words. but i got a bit of it yesterday and i didn't recognise the name on the label so i went ahead and tried it out. and gnaaahh it's good.

not as sweet as Smut, not as exotic as Morocco.

that is, as long as i don't sniff my skin. the wafts of it are nice, but when i sniff my wrist all i get is the choking smell of cigarette ashes in a wet paper bag.

and since i refuse to wear perfume i have to sniff from a distance, that's it for me on this one.

if you can do vetiver, and enjoy teh Smut, this might be a hidden gem for you.

i don't like mint. i dislike Snow White.

i don't get any sugar or cotton candy out of this, and also no mint. it is extremely masculine. like, if there was a Mr. in Snow's life (but not the woodsman)?

it's very off-putting. love the imagery and the name, but i'm glad this bottle is going to a better home.

sniffed from the bottle, i get a sort of sweet-lavender-y-yellow-cake kinda thing. nice but not amazing.

on skin, wet, it goes to this ucky pickle-like bitter celery weirdness that made me desperately want to scrub it off. (i have the same pickle issue with Ivanushka, and the most recent Herr Drosselmeyer, but not the original one)

after half an hour or so (and for the next 6 hours, and a good 24 hours on my sweater cuff) it has settled down into something i can only describe as Daddy. some amalgamation of the colognes my Daddy wore when i was little. not entirely unlike The Gentleman from a couple years back.

so i'll pick up another bottle of this, and put it away.

the only way i can describe this is, well, heartwrenching. but that's for my personal take on it. in reality, it's a nice, masculine, classic sort of scent. if pressed, i'd have to say probably something along the lines of original (not the current reforumulated version) of Old Spice, and Halston's old Z14.

shipping this bottle off to a better home, so some quick notes so i remember why i didn't keep it...

friendly, soapy, lightly floral (no purple or white). reminds me a lot of one of the Philosophy perfumes (the purple one, Falling In Love?), which i have both a perfume and dupe oil of.

very pretty, very nonoffensive, would even make a lovely and comforting room scent.

badly named. i don't think this should've been a steampunky scent. this is what i wanted from Grandmother of Ghosts.

how is it that a scent so full of ick-notes turns into something so candy sweet? lemongrass, grapefruit usually kill anything for me. i think it's the guava that makes it go suntan-oil-wrong on me after a while, but that first couple of minutes is delicious pink cake batter yum.

love this. not so much as perfume, but just that it exists. it's a booze-filled chocolate bonbon. it's amazing. amazing, i tell you.

why is it that the cinnamon and grapefruit (and clove) have overwhelmed EVERYTHING else in this for me? boo.

i *like* the smell of beer. cheap concert-beer, homebrew, whatev. i like to drink it, and i like the smell.

i also like the dirt-smell of mushrooms. i'm not sure what apple rootstock smells like, but i bet i'd like it, too. it sounds dirty. i also love honey, except for whatever the Lab calls honey, which isn't even remotely honeylike to me... it smells more like unwashed socks.

sadly, i get no beer, no mushrooms. thankfully i also don't get honey. what i do get... smells an awful lot like Grog, which i can't wear because it goes all suntan-oil-coconut (blech!).

so basically this is, like, Grog for around Hallowe'entime, with a little bit of something pumpkin-spice-ish-ness in there. boo.

i absolutely adore SGA... and i admit i had really high hopes for this one.

and she smells delicious in the bottle. but on my skin? within seconds this delicious apple (but not the icky sour green apple or apple shampoo or hairspray scent ) goes straight to rancid pears with cedar shavings.

so much love and so many thanks to the fantastic faerie who picked this up for me!

it sounded so right up my alley based on the notes! as such, i've tested it before the bottle has had time to fully rest from the cross-country journey. so i may revise this in a few days.

but right now?

when i first opened the bottle and sniffed, i was reminded of either Dia or Khrysee (i'm not sure which, but one of the two). but then i dabbed a bit on the top of my wrist and sniffed. still-wet, it reminded me more of Antikythera Mechanism or Galvanic Goggles. briefly. in a very masculine-tobacco kinda way.

but then whatever turned Ivanushka into Pickle-ushka rears up and turns this into Quart of Pickle. That choking, nose-crinkling boiling vinegar and spices stage of making home-made pickles.

so. Poison (the band) played at Lakewood (in Atlanta) every year, for my birthday, for... about 14 years. yes. just for my birthday. it was my party, and i invited a few thousand of my closest friends

anyway. one year in particular, it rained. and oh good heavens how it rained. but it was summer, in Georgia, and it was warm. by the time i got halfway through the (gravel) parking lot, nowhere near the gate, i was already drenched. not the first, nor the last time that happened to me there! but that year, i had product in my hair. it was a weeknight and i'd gone to school (highschool) that day. and my favourite hairspray is Suave. was. is. only used hairspray once in the last decade or so - and it was Suave, then, too.

anyway. it rained so hard and my hair got soaking wet, and i had mousse-and-hairspray water running everywhere. and i could not only smell it, but i could *taste* it. but i was having a lovely day, and the rain was warm, and i had fantastic seats and backstage pass so what did i care?

and this partial bottle of atmo spray i just got? smells exactly like that day. warm summer rain, Suave hairspray, and a few thousand of my closest friends. and i adore it!

**this was in the mid 90's, so i can't say if their hairspray still smells the same. i hope it does, though!**

i adore buttered rum. but this was the scent that finally convinced me that i just can't do the Lab's rum. it just never works. i really honestly can't tell much difference between this and Grog.

quick thoughts as this bottle has recently moved on to a better home: i can see the comparisons to Lush's American Cream. it also reminds me a bit of the "Sexiest Musk" from Body Fantasies that - don't pay any mind to the name - is really quite delicious. this goes oddly mint (but not mint)-plasticky on me, and has a dusty floral background in there, too. all in all i don't think this is quite staged-moon-landing so much as astronaut's aunt's guest bathroom. maybe?