urbanruralferal

well, I don't know. I sniffed this in the imp and oh it smelled aquatic. huge deal breaker.

I wasn't going to try it, but I couldn't resist, and it was light, and had that "fresh" swiffer pad smell, aquatic on me and no doubt.

washed it off.

I was interested to try this, in my search for all things vetiver.

I applied this on one wrist, and vetiver(t) SN (non BPAL) on the other for comparison.

Devil's Claw goes on as a rich vetiver, slightly sweet, and show great promise in the first moments. as it dries, the sweetness comes out. I can't tell you what kind of sweetness, or even if that is the right word. It's rather metallic, really.

Now that it is fully dry, the vetiver has receded enough behind this other quality, and I am not really fond of it. It's like it loses it's bite. It isn't ashen to me, but I don't tend to think of vetiver aas ashen, except in Brimstone, which is quite gritty.

I would tend to agree with the poster who likens Devil's Claw to a blend of Brimstone and Azathoth, but I can't quite remember Azathoth, and couldn't find where I had reviewed it...

all in all, I am much better pleased with my vetiver SN. It was my signature scent for A LONG TIME; I am clearly not one of those who can't tolerate the oil. My skin loves it so. It becomes a part of me, and in this blend, there is a foreignness that I don't need to learn to love.

 

so, Devil's Claw is off to swaps!

Urd has been on my wishlist for a very long time, and I was happy to be able to try it after getting some in a swap. As soon as I opened the little imp, I had to slather it on. My ddaughter said, "Are you sure you gonna like that stuff?" and I said, yeah!

What a wonderful scent in the imp, as much hippie headshop as ever promised.

And on the skin, wet, too. The sweetness was okay by me, as the patchouli (and maybe the champa) grounded it and I do love patchouli.

Once it was truly dry and settled into my skin, though, it lost it's deep deep appeal. It took on a waxy quality, and I found myself wondering if it contained sandalwood, a big deal breaker on my skin. It just went into meh-land.

I thought this might be my Grail, and it isn't.

It goes on a bit sharp, that pine is not a typical evergreen and it seems almost like there is a touch of ozone. I like it, but it the kind of scent my husband crosses the street to avoid.

With a bit of time, it gets sweeter and sweeter. There are some interesting phases as it dries, but it seems to have settled into a weird cross between the Rexall drug of my childhood (candy) and the shop that sold Job posters and porcelain figurines (scented candle.)

Well, it was nice to try...

A little spicy in a gingery way, a fair amount of lemon, quite nice. An underlying lot of floral, not trumpets of floral, more like curtains of floral through which the light filters.

Not my kind of thing, at all, but oh so pleasant.

A friend has a bottle of this and let me try.

Oh so gnarly and good in the bottle! I am a lover of resins, and this seemed right up my alley! It was seeming to be very close to Schwarzer Mond, wet, with that patchouli and sweetness. There is nothing like that kind of scent to nudge me into memories of hippie witches I encountered as a kid in the 70's. yes yes yes yes yes, some of my original role models.

then, the sandalwood overwhelmed the blend and I just can't get into Beth's sandalwood. On my skin, it is a very parrafin smell, and a dealbreaker everytime.

Oh well. there are so many others!

I got the opportunity to try this at a friend's, and at first, I was sad I hadn't ordered any. It was such lovely incense, without turning under to the waxy sandalwood that hates my skin. I was in heaven, or at least kneeling before the altar, but I think I got lost in dreams cause when I cam back to, it was gone. Completely gone!

I would order some right now but for it's short-lived quality. Oh well.

this smells very similar to Grog. Hot buttered rum mix. Yummy, but not the kind of thing I wear on my skin. It's already been traded off, I think.

very simply, hot buttered rum mix, you know the kind that comes in the plastic barrel. Couldn't smell any rum, though.

Much like Drink Me.

no go.

yep, there's the dirt. My friend's eyes got wild as she likened it to Nosferatu, only not as disturbing. (But I haven't tried Nosferatu, so I can't say...)

After a while the dirt wore off and I began to smell like those weird hippie date cakes that some BPAL is like for me. ???

Unexplained mysteries, but completely unwearable.

Hurray for the meet n' sniff, I say!

this goes on very strong in the vetiver department, and quickly takes on that baked good scent that I have noticed in centzon tetochtlan and recently in penny dreadful. What accounts for this characteristic, which is not like vanilla-y baked goods, but like a date oatcake you might purchase in some worker-owned coop bakery, I have no idea. Maybe it's just my skin chemistry faking me out. Nevertheless, it doesn't appeal.
Hours after application, this has settled into a familiar vetiver/black musk combo that is so nice in haunted, but I already have haunted and bluebeard to keep me happy so this goes off to swaps.

anyone know of any other schwarzer mond relatives?

wow, it is really amazing to read those reviewers of Fallen that say they don't smelled florals in this stuff! In the bottle and on the wrist, this is predominantly floral. Florals do tend to amp on my skin, wiping out whole families of possibility in the BPAL world...

As it settles in, the resins and woods started to warm up through the florals (I swear there is more than violet in here), and I was wondering if there were black patchouli in it, but no. I am just getting to know that one, black patchouli.

The vetiver never showed up. I am sorry about that. (Although I don't know if there is any tethering this scent, for me.)

I don't even have the patience to sit through the minutes, the hours, to see what this becomes. It is way too perfumey during this the first 45 minutes.

bye bye fallen.

I got this as a frimp from some dear swapper, and it has been lingering in the corner of my imp box for awhile, every now and again it gets a little rotation...

the thing is, I really like it. It isn't the kind of scent I usually wear, so I forget about it. Soft scents are normally not in my repertoire, and the amber provides so much softness here. On me amber is often too powdery, but what a lovely surprise! the amber is kept in check by the musk. there is a bit of tension between them that keeps things interesting. Perhaps some would decribe this tension as velvety, I suppose. Velvet is a tense fabric, if you think about it.

 

so, here are some review-y type notes:

 

Putting this on, without a memory of what notes were in it, I thought perhaps I smelled vetiver. If not vetiver, than certianly something as just as comforting. Second thought, as the amber makes itself clearly known, is that this reminds me of a lady's deodorant, but in the nicest of ways. It's not like I feel like I just applied Lady Speed Stick to my wrists. lol.

Than I thought, wait! Bluebeard was similar in this quality! And it all sort of gelled for me. This is a feminine version of Bluebeard on my skin. Which is very very good. If Bluebeard for me is Russell Crowe as Captain Jack in Master & Commander (and, yes, I know, Bluebeard wasn't a pirate...) than this is Jack's adept sister, dressed in palest of violet (I could smell those blossoms in this perfume), and ivory colored silk, velvet ribbons, rustling skirts. she knows what she wants and she gets it, but she isn't wicked, no.

 

I have an imp at my disposal, and I imagine I will get another. I am sure that what I am in possession of is indeed aged. I wonder how well a bottle would last...

Not to my nose. Not at all.

Alice!

Yeah, we were just noticing that our newer bottle from the Tea Party is amber, our older blue.

I think I like the amber better. More apothocary-esque.

hmmm, well, this smelled like leather rubbed with a lemon oil when first applied, and then it developed an incense character. Rather a ubiquitious incense hippie scent in the middle stage. At the end is a soft incense amber.

Not a real standout.

Perhaps my review will be somewhat tattered this time. I wore this yesterday, and my remembered impressions are not all together in my mind.

 

My first impression of this when wet was of starburst candy, the red variety, I think. Juicy and fruity and sweet! Pleasant enough. Certainly not evocative of a bordello. Only later into the drydown did it pick up sort of a salt scent, just barely there, almost like cucumber, or like the faintest whiff of sea. That certainly would account!

Later still, I smelled honey in it, and something akin to something about Osun, without it really smelling golden.

It faded away to a simple candy scent, faded faded faded...

I will swap this now. Thanks to the lab for the frimp!

This one goes on all bright citrus. Lemon, I suppose that would be the verbena.

It burns off quickly. I had wondered if verbena would stick around longer than actual citrus, but not so this time, anyway.

It soon smells just like perfume pages on my skin, and

that's just far too pretty for me.

I already have this one lined up to swap.

In the bottle, this is very dark and fruity. I didn't try it right away for that reason. But on the skin, it is sweet and and a bit waxy and the cassia warms up right away and I feel like I smell like a holiday candle that is being marketed to hippie-used-to-bes.

One thing about this scent is that I do not get the smokey quality mentioned by others. It is a clean almost crisp fruity red spice on me. It definitely sends out tendrils but they aren't curling tendrils of incense smoke.

Interesting, but I do not think I will keep it.

They've played this tune before. It's called

"White Floral Breakdown," and it ain't for me!

So, I had no preconceived notions about Mum Moon, my first Lunacy. I am still new enough to BPAL to have so much to discover!

In the bottle and wet it definitely has a dry floral take, sort of dusted in a yellowish smoke. Maybe like pollen fields in late summer? I don't know, someone else mentioned pollen...Anyway, there are most certainly chrysanthemums in this. Not everyone likes chrysanthemums, you know.

 

As it dried it really started to smell like something you smoke. A blond tobacco maybe! Yum.. At one point while this was getting used to my skin, I thought, "This belongs in the Carnaval Noir!" A little bit of Torture King, and even a little bit of Medicine Show, without the girly bits.

 

Once it was fully settled in, (and BTW, it shows no signs of moving out, we have a regular tenant at the Chelsea it seems,) it is fucking twisted!

I am smelling an old lady in this, an stylish old lady in a Roman Polanski flick, yellowed around the edges, hell, yellowed through and through. Oh dear, she has peed in her foundation garments but she stills commands respect! You still bring her her glasses of sherry when she scrapes her voice into a request.

My good sense tells me not to wear this, to go ahead and find it a home, but I am holding back. I like it. I'm going to wear it again. And maybe again. Oh god.

sugared milky tears in my black tea. Interesting and complex but after wearing it three times, I can't really describe it well, it doesn't speak to me or ask me to wear it again. I tried layering it with other scents, to no avail. It seems like there should be something for me there, but no.

Something about these Tea Party scents, the ones I have tried all have an element of childhood, which makes sense. with the exception of the Caterpillar, which makes sense.

I had a chance to try this in passing without knowing the notes, and what I got from it was not so much leather as sweet pipe tobacco, the headache inducing kind. The yucky kind. Like Herr Drosselmeyer!

I would try this again just to break it down more, but I am not actively seeking any out, no way.