urbanruralferal

trying this for third time after wearing it for a couple days I have some notes.  Definitely goes on like a Snake Oil variant but waaaay more romantic.   When I say it hs a red side to it, I don't mean red musk, I mean cherry.  It goes great with tobacco, and it goes GREAT with the smell of woodsmoke permeating my boyfriend. 

It's a little nostalgic, but close enough to now to make me just want to swim in it.   It's fantastic, enough said!

in the bottle, it's Dorian with a bit of greenness behind it, which is amplified when on the skin. While it dries down, the grass gets stronger, and it smells like things I wouldn't want to mix together... a kind of uneasy bride to Nosferatu...

The lavender and the grass compete with the Dorian notes for awhile, and then the Dorian takes center stage, backed by lavender, pretty low throw...

I made a cocktail with lime while wearing it and it made me wish there was more of a citrus component, but I suppose layering could fix that. I'm just not sure if I am that interested.

It's nice, I might keep the imp for a sleep scent, or I might swap it.

This was a frimp from the lab; I never would have ordered this.

In the bottle, it was juicy. The wine, I imagine.

Wet, fruit, with the dirt emerging quickly, and an herbal component.

As it dried, the wine subsided and it became very clean smelling, but always with the dirt note grounding it.

So, clean dirt. In a way that was subtly unwholesome. Like someone had done their laundry to death, but failed to wash their dry, dirty skin. Ugh.

I don't do sharp clean scents, and I mean, I don't do them. Dirt I may be okay with, in principle, although I haven't seemed to like it in the past.

Nose-fear-achoo

Unfortunately my husband has reactions to all the strong laundry detergents people use these days. So at my house I have to avoid "clean" scents.

Well that turned out badly. I had high hopes for this one, I'm not sure why. Alice Charette wants to try to it too, so I ordered it.

In the bottle, I smell a spicy floral. Nice, if different than what I usually reach for.

Wet, It is herbal, fresh, green, and I'm getting some citrus. It has a clean smell, like a... wait, like a cleaning product. Uh oh. Good thing the old man is out in the woods...

After 15 minutes, The amber is warming it. It is still clean, it is summery, and a little spicy. It is morphing into a nice summer breeze blowing over a garden that has phlox and stock blooming in it. In that respect, it is good on a stormy November day like today.

After it had settled in even more, I started getting a tiny bit of powder, which I do sometimes from amber, but not much! And it has a slightly dusty edge to it. I also started getting kinda stressed about this lingering in the air when my man gets in. I can tell he is not going to like this one. So much throw!

So I rush to wash it off, air out my room, put all the new imps in a jar with an airtight lid, change sweaters...

And sure enough, he could still smell it. "whew! I'm going back out to the office," says he.

Now I have a headache. It's just the stress, I'm sure. The opposite of relaxing!

I bet this is a beloved scent among those who can tolerate the fresh floral notes like this. I was almost convinced, myself. Despite the fact that I will probably never again put this on my skin, I am not going to say I don't like it.

Wowsa. This is straight up root beer float when wet, getting a wee bit plasticky as it dries.

I slept through the middle dry down, but when completely dry it smells like super creamy vanilla.

I like it, but it's not the kind of smell I wear. I was hoping for more wood, and maybe the cedar made an appearance in the 2nd act, but for me to want to buy a season pass, I would like the cedar, or *something* with a little more grit, to be standing on stage at the end of the show.

This is the first time I have tried any of the Samhains. I am reviewing the 2017 release.

In the bottle, this smells like a super sharp cologne. It does not smell like something I would put on my skin. But I did, and it immediately started morphing into something that was powdery and cloying, with a bit of fruit. And also floral somehow.

At that point, my son said it smelled like applesauce.

Drying down, about 30 minutes into it, this image came to mind: A dressed up Victorian baby in its highchair, shrieking bloody murder as its grownup tried to feed it applesauce. Young and perfumey and fruity and LOUD. I don't know what it is in this blend that is so cologny. The mullein? The fir? Someone mentioned dead leaves as having a cologne quality, maybe they do for me as well? I haven't tried any other blends with the dead leaf note...

2 hours later, the spices have really amped up to a level I would have expected, and are trying to balance the loud sweet high-sided quality that just won't quit. It is a little musky at the edge there, where they meet. Instead of balancing, however, they are competing. They aren't playing well together on my skin. It is better now than it has been, tolerable, but only just.

I don't know, this doesn't smell like Samhain to me, not what I think of when I think I think of Fall. Chock it up to skin chemistry, I guess.

I realize that this is fresh as fresh can be, and that aging is going to alter this blend significantly. And that that would be a good thing for me. But I don't think I'm interested enough to stick it out.

Well, at least now I have something to swap!

P.S., I love patchouli, and I didn't get it at all from this. I guess it is well blended, and therefore hard to isolate, but I could have used a familiar friend here.

I can speak to this.

I find that the sensitivities will vary wildly from person to person. My husband will get a splitting headache from aquatics or rose but is fine with resins and woods, and a lot of other things, thankfully! This suits my tastes well. However, a former co-worker could handle some florals and nice rain scents, but the resins I love would make him feel ill. (And I also think he liked to find fault with me...)

And then, one of my local librarians would have a reaction to any scent I wore into the library! So if I knew I was going to the library, I would put on my oils after the visit.

I find I need to clear each scent family with the person who is affected by them, and that can be frustrating, but ultimately gracious.

One of my main concerns in wearing fragrance (in my case work involves dealing with hundreds of strangers a day) is that I can't be sure that my personal desire to indulge in beautiful (to me) scents isn't going to trigger a reaction in someone else. I try not to slather, and I definitely put on my oils an hour or so, at least, before I am going to be in public, so as to give the blends time to settle down.

This is a good thread. Lots to work with!

Is there anything in the GC similiar to Tokyo Stomp with that wonderful vanilla mint that doesn't contain eucalyptus as well?

I enjoy Mad Hatter as my favorite vanilla mint. Of course, Mad Hatter contains pennyroyal, not mint, and it has a different feel...

and I like it better than Tokyo Stomp.

Ah, tokyo stomp...

so in the bottle this was ver very foody, with almost a caramel tone to it.

Wet, it goes straight away to vanilla cookies or those wonderful candies, mint-meltaways. the mint is not a sharp mint, a creamy and warm mint that I have been looking for.

As it dries, it losing the fresh cookie quality and sort of becomes chow-meiny. I know people have mentioned this phenomemon in other reviews (for other perfumes) and here I have it. It's not unpleasant, just not that rich vanilla mint I wanted. I was worried about a plasticky effect, but it only threatened to go that direction for a brief time and then didn't.

Overall, I can't say that this is the holy grail of vanilla mints for me. I'm glad to have tried it, and I will keep looking, but for now, nothing has supplanted Mad Hatter.

I'm keeping an imp for me and the girls and the rest will go off to be sold.

hmmm, with notes like this, I was excited about the possibilities here...

in fact, this was one of the first BPAL I tried, years ago, before I had any ability to predict what works on me or doesn't... and I ended up giving it to a friend, who loved it.

But hey! This should work on me!

I got this as a frimp and in the vial it is really really nice. Warm, red, soothing to a person raised by hippies.. Not necessarily a stand-out among warm red hippieish scents, but nice nonetheless.

Once this hit my skin, though? Nope. Within ten minutes it has lost the red warmth, and it gets all "baked-goodsy" on me. This is a specific signature that a lot of BPAL takes on for me. It's like some crunchy oat cake made with dates or something. Not really anything I want to smell like. I wonder what it is that turns it so? maybe Beth's vetiver, which, although I LOVE vetiver, is a bit less sharp than the vetiver SN that I have worn for decades...

Now, 45 minutes later, I can hardly smell anything. wierd.

This would be one for a scent locket in the car on a warm day. yum. It's not so precious that I wouldn't mind using it up that way... or maybe I'll send it to that friend who got that first imp.

Bloodlust makes me think about when people talk about the simplicity of the GC blends in comparison to the complexity of LEs... I don't always buy that; some of my faves are GC and deep, but this is one GC that illustrates that argument perfectly.

is there a blend that smells predominantly of mint, but not menthol? the search function takes us to blends that mix mint with a zillion other oils, and what I want is something a bit like mint tea. Something fresh and at the same time comforting. And if possible, not a LE.

Yes, I would like to know about this too. I kind of hoped Green Tree Viper would be that for me. You could try that, it's an LE, but out for so long that it practically isn't.

I mixed Dorian with Hemlock, and I got the most luscious creamy but not cloying blend. I would love to find a blend that does this with mint instead of the evergreen that is hemlock. (Mad Hatter is creamy, but it has a very sharp quality due to the menthol.)

I bought a bottle of this, unsniffed, and at first sniff and application, I immediately shoved it to the back of the shelf. too cold, too rosey.

Today I tried it again, and I actually like it. It seems like others have had the same reaction...

It actually reminds me of the Caterpillar, only with the rosewood being at the top rather than the jasmine. so much so that when the Winter died down, after several hours (nice average throw) I put on the caterpillar, and they meld well.

A rosewood box in a unheated box, dark musk and/or myrrh adding a swirly deep softness to it. The spices were apparent at first, and there was something fleetingly citrus about it too, but all that receded (but didn't disappear) after the first hour or so.

I will keep this, since I have a bottle, but I really only need about 2 imps worth. My husband wasn't around when I was wearing this. I don't think it would sit well with his sensitive nose. he would call it a "grandma's bathroom scent" but he's missing out!

Guess it's time to get some more decanting supplies...

Great He-Goat!

I'm looking for mint scents that are not cold -- specifically, I love spearmint but do not like peppermint. A buttery mint that's not icy might be nice, too.

 

Recommendations? (This is all happening because I tried Gennivre and fell in love with the mint tea beautifulness.)

 

Thanks!

I wwould recommend staying away from blends with pennyroyal then, because it has that icy quality, and more of a peppermint feel to it (although it's definitely pennyroyal, another animal).

For instance, Mad Hatter is like mint meltaways to my nose, but the mint is cold.

You might try one pennyroyal scent, though, just to get a feel for what it is like!

This scent makes me feel super warm and cozy but in a very stand-offish way. I really feel like I am wearing a heavy velvet gown in deep deep red, and hanging out alone in a room with maybe a Yule tree and some candles and dark paneled walls. Very warming!

So, yes, red, and spicy, like Love Me is spicy. I don't smell cocoa at all, and that's okay. The vetiver is not very strong in this, but anchoring.

Like vetiver single note on my skin, this scent becomes "invisible" to my nose a couple hours after application, but I keep getting comments about it throughout the day. Good comments. Although my scent-sensitive librarian started snuffling when I got up to the counter...

Many of the red blends are too high-pitched for me but this is gorgeous.

It also smells REALLY REALLY good layered with 30 year old patchouli.

I refuse to be sparing with this. I am going to wear it every day in this cold weather, until the imp is gone!

I had a chance to try this at a friend's. It was extremely high-pitched masculine scent. I suppose some would call it gender-neutral, but not I. It has been some time since I tried it, so I cannot give the best review, but let it be said

for the record,

that it gave me a splitting headache after a hour or two of wearing it.

No no no no no no no no no.

In the imp, I get all excited on account of the vetiver, but upon application, this is much more myrrh than anything.

It is sweet and almost dirty. Wet, I get a similar quality from other oils that don't seem to share components (Centzon, Penny Dreadful) so I am thinking it is something with my skin.

After this dries it smells like a pleasant version of stage makeup. Sweet, a bit powdery, but with much more that I don't feel equipped to analyze at present...

In fact, all night at work, I had a painful desire to get back into theater, and I realized I had to be influenced by the scent of Sloth.

I agree with filigree_shadow that this is a good one to keep around for layering.

I am very picky, but I will be holding on to this for while longer yet.

hmm. I wa excited to try this and finally got my hands on a decant, but

Oh My.

Imagine a rose and a cinnamon/spice bathroom air freshener getting together and having a lovechild.

This is it.

On me of course. I am sure that on you, all of Beth's artistry will surface and swirl.

I have tried and tried this oil, to no avail. I have a lovely aged imp that is nice and thick, and dear flyingpizza came over yesterday and put some of it on. It smelled so nice on her, I had to give it another try, but sadly, it just lays there on me rather flat and plasticky. It is such a tease! I know how good it can smell, and I love to sit next to someone who is wearing this oil, just basking in it's warm sweet spicy vanilla glow, but on my skin it is just off.

I much prefer Snake Charmer. sigh. I will try Death Adder and see how that goes.

Ralph Lauren Polo = Scarecrow

*giggle*

This is one of my favorites. I'm surprised I haven't reviewed it yet.

It is a pale, dry scent. and warm, as in sun-baked. It has been in the sun long enough to have most of the color removed, but that is not to say the essence is gone. Not at all. For all it's colorlessness, it is not at all weak.

And the musk soaks it into my skin so that it feel like a part of me.

I would have called it a white sandalwood. But no, the description has it down as red. Normally, Beth's sandalwood is way too candle-smokey on me, so you can imagine that I am well pleased to have this, which is what I want in a sandalwood.

I recently inherited my mother's perfumes and there is an old vial of sandalwood (20 yrs maybe?) that smells just like morocco to me.

Oh, and it is great for layering!

In the bottle, almond and nothing but, but almond is like that. on my skin, it was immediate almond and baby powder (I thought there must be amber in this!) with something high-pitched in the background that keeps rising.

Pretty well meh on me.

I gave it to my daughter, whose skin does lovely things with amber (and indeed that's how it smells on her) but there is no amber in this! ???

Got this in a swap today, and I remember why it was on my wishlist. I have been waiting to find a scent from this family that pleases me immensely, but this was not a real stand out.

sorry for the boring review, but I smelled oakmoss, a bit smoky, a bit of leather, all in all, a typical men's cologne.

I have other scents to try, other things that move me, and I'm just going to swap this. Maybe I will try it again in a few years when I am in a different mood.