sailthetethys

Hi, I'm Sail and I hate florals and am totally over peach and orange blossom is usually a miss and caramel scents tend to make me gag. So idk what possessed me to buy an decant of this but holy hell, it's so good. There is a faint peach that isn't all HI IM A PEACH, and I'm not really getting any caramel or lemon or vanilla. So this must be mostly tuberose. Well, add tuberose to the list of florals that work. This is gorgeous and makes me want to go romp in a field of whatever the hell a tuberose is.

Oh, this is a pretty one but it's close to the skin. The initial wasabi blast reads as a blast of cool, sharp mint to me because my nose doesn't know what the hell it's doing, but it's refreshing none the less. After that it quickly dries down to a honeyed green tea. Definitely one to hold onto for summer.

I held off on buying a bottle of El Dia de los Reyes - which I love - when the Lupers went live in the hopes that this scent would be similar. Pleased to say I'm not disappointed. El Dia is a bit more cinnamon-rich whereas this one is a bit creamier. I don't think I'd be able to tell them apart if they weren't side by side. Edit: Currently retesting this one during the pre-order struggle. I keep catching whiffs of the coffee absolute note in MCCCCCCA (heh), which smells lovely when I put my nose to my wrist and sniff it with all the other notes. Unfortunately, on its own it keeps tricking me into thinking I've got an abandoned cup of the stuff lurking around my desk somewhere. Sorry Macaw, but I'm going to have to go with El Dia. On the upside, it did trigger me into tidying up my desk.

This is fine tobacco shop tobacco, soft leather, and sweet spice. And it's too good. Like, it's "I'm being seductive toward my own wrist" good. If this scent were a person, I would have sex with it. And I'd have bruises afterward.

At first, it's just pure forest - conifers and leaves and other forest smells - and it is lovely. And, as the others have noted, there's a warm and spicy something that shows up in the drydown. Maybe my nose is deceiving me, but I think there's a campfire in this forest. It's not very smoky or in your face. It's the sweet, resinous smoke that you get from burning sap, the smoke from the last embers of a dying campfire. When you wake up in your tent in the middle of the night, somewhat disoriented and slightly afraid, this is the scent that reminds you of where you are. It's burning low, but with just a little tending it'll restore itself to a full blaze. I really couldn't pick a better metaphor for our rogue rangers than little smoldering lights in the dark. What a gorgeous tribute to the NPS.

Oh my god. This is why I don't resell, you guys. I hated Venustas when I first blind bottled it. Instant headache. It was super perfume-y and sharp; not at all the creamy, sexy, incensce-y Dorian I'd been hoping for. I held onto it because it seemed like the forumites were going mad for it, so I figured I'd sell it or trade it down the line. Naturally, this didn't happen, because packing and mailing a thing is a task that apparently takes too much effort. But every now and then, I'd come across a thread where someone was raving about it, and so I'd dig it out to retest. It always resulted in immediate regret. This wasn't just an issue of letting settle from the post. Venustas just hated me. Until today. Today, three years after the fact, Venustas has decided to emerge from exile in the back of my drawer and reveal itself as a delicate, creamy, sweet fougere with a waft of incense in the background. It's a sexy witch nibbling on a lemon cookie in a tea shop. She's not Dorian, but I'm pretty sure she snogged him in an alley earlier in the day. It dries down a bit powdery - not a baby powder but more of a powdered sugar that seems to temper that cologne-y edge that has always made my head pound. So THANKS Venustas. You've pretty much guaranteed that I'll never be able to part with any one of my BPALs now in the hopes that somewhere down the line they'll decide to act right. Good thing you're so pretty, or I'd be really mad at you.

I got an imp of this - with a cute little handwritten label!! - from the post along with a 2016 Yule order. Oh MAN, can y'all please release this one for reals? It's delicious. It's very creamy and sweet and fresh. I can't pick the patch out, but I think it's helping round this scent out and keeping it from being too sweet and simple. It reminds me a bit of an old favorite Bath and Body Works scent, Rice Flower and Shea - it has that same creamy, comforting sweetness to it. And despite it being a light scent, it makes its presence known. Thank you so much Puddin' and Goblins for including this in my order! Add me to the list of folks wanting a big bottle of this!

This isn't what I expected either. It smells a bit more green than I expected, slightly more aquatic than one would expect a desert to be. The white tea leaf is very similar to Eldritch Drunken Constellations, which might be making this seem green to me simply by association, as EDC is more of an aquatic tea scent. There is also a cool cucumbery wood and snow scent, similar to the one that I get from Ded Moroz. As it dries, it becomes warmer and spicier - the sandalwood and dry vanilla make it a bit more desert-like. Honestly, I really love this. Two very different biomes blended together - a cool wet forest and a dry warm desert. Also, I bet this would make me accidentally misplace my pants if I smelled it on a man.

"Ooh. This is sweet and weird." - totally helpful thing I wrote in my scent notebook This one is, as others said, cooler than expected. Powdery, incense-y, and there's a hint of sweet snow that reminds me of Snow White. The more I sniff, the more I like. After a minute, that myrrh really starts to sing. I might love this.

No questionable attempts at describing notes on this one - this is all raspberry and black tea. There's probably birch tar as well, but my uneducated nose can't pick it out.

Bergamot like whoa. This is all lemony tea with a faint whiff of lavender on me - unusual, since lavender usually dominates everything. It starts out as, like Mollum said, smelling sort of like an essential oil sleep aid, but then it wakes up into a bright, invigorating blend when dry. No hint of plum on me. I really like this - it's very fresh and clean smelling without being medicinal or soapy.

OH HELLO PINE OF MY DREAMS I was recently betrayed by pine when Wolf Moon left me smelling like a neglected litterbox. Pine clearly feels badly about what it did and wants to try again. This is sweet, cool pine, and yes, there is a fruit/berry note that weirdly makes me think of Juicy Fruit gum. I say weirdly because I totally dig it. It's different from all my other evergreen scents, and it's very sweet and pretty.

OH MY GOD. This is smoky and spicy and sweet perfection. It smells like a sexy birthday cake candle that just got blown out. I love carnation blends, but I've never actually known what carnation smells like. Apparently it smells like that ridiculous sentence I just typed above and can't bring myself to type again. This is magnificent and I need it in my life forever.

"Oof, I wasn't expecting it to be this floral," said the jackass who once again ignored the fact that LITERALLY EVERY NOTE is a flower of some kind. The jackass is me, by the way. I am the jackass who now smells like flowers. Again. That said, this is very pretty if you're a flower person and not a jackass.

Oh. This is so soft and sweet. I tend to shy away from powdery scents, but this is just lovely. It's definitely got a glow to it, but it's a cool glow - the perfect evocation of a winter sunset in a quiet wood. As it dries, something spicy-sweet and clove-ish comes out. Does oakmoss smell like cloves? I'm bad at this.

Frimp! I've never had luck with the lab's chocolate note. It always comes off as very fake-smelling and plasticky. So I almost didn't bother with this. So glad I did - it's pure Swiss Miss Cocoa on my skin. Grainy, rich, creamy, and chocolatey. Unf.

I love love love pine. Pine and I are bff. I hear people talk about the whole cat pee thing and I'm like "Y'all are bananas, but whatever, more evergreen glory for me." So idk why I smell like cat piss and grape soda right now, but I'm pretty much refusing to accept it. First stage of grief and all that. I keep sniffing, hoping it'll morph into the gorgeous purply night smell I caught a whiff of when I first opened the bottle. I even re-sniffed the bottle, and no, now that's cat piss too. The cool, crisp berry scent is becoming a bit more prominent, but there's still that faint whiff of feline vengeance that all shithead cat owners are familiar with lingering in the background. Still in denial that pine would betray me, after all we've been through together. Edit: So 15 minutes later this turned into Nocturne (which naturally shares zero notes with Wolf Moon) and then abruptly disappeared. So I got mad (hello, second stage of grief) and slathered myself. Sniffing my wrist is like slapping myself in the face with a pee-covered sock. AND YET, as I type, I keep getting wafts of this gorgeous woodsy purple scent that is similar to what the poster above me described. I'm hoping this is just a temporary skin chemistry fluke. I'm going to try again later to see if there's any improvement. 3 years later edit: Nope, still smells like pee. 3 years and 10 minutes later edit: Holy shit the pee went away and this is LOVELY. Purple and cool and mysterious. FINALLY. SUCK IT PINE, I WIN.

Wet: the honey note from O is predominant. I happen to love that note, so yay! There's something slightly greener underneath - a fresh grassy scent. No rose yet. For whatever reason, I tested 3 scents on the same arm, so my nose is having a fit. This one is better appreciated sniffing from a few inches away, but I keep huffing it trying to keep it separate from the others and I've about made myself cross-eyed in the process. Dry: ok, once again I'm going to be fairly useless describing what it is I'm sniffing. But the smell I'm getting from my wrist reminds me of a baby doll I had when I was little; one of those super realistic ones that had scented skin. Sort of a soft, delicate, sweet scent that isn't quite baby powder but in that family. I'm thinking that maybe the honey's gone a bit powdery on me, as it's wont to do. And beside it is light, creamy rose with a hint of grass. To me, this is a soft, girly, spring scent. Not what I'd expect from a Weenie, but very lovely none the less.

APPLE. This is crisp, fresh spring apple, not spicy autumn apple. At first, that's all I smell. The apple fades after a few hours to a soft, sugary scent that lingers. A sweet, crisp, very pink scent. God, the Lupers this year are murdering my bank account. This one's bottleworthy too. Samhain's apple is a little too heady for me - it can almost be a little nauseating, like drinking too much hot cider at once. This apple is refreshing and energetic, like taking a bite out of a Honeycrisp during a brisk Spring hike. Nine-Years-Later-Edit: This remains one of my favorite and most-reached for spring Bpal scents. It’s aged to be more honey-forward, but apple is still the star. It’s like biting into a sweet pink apple while simultaneously burying your face into a bouquet of spring wildflowers.

This, to me, is Katharina's sultry big sister. It has the same sweet, lush apricot that I love in Katharina, but the cardamom and the bourbon vanilla warm and spice it up a bit. It's absolutely delicious. Not too sweet, but softly sexy and close to the skin. This is the perfect snuggle-up scent.

Everyone said it smelled like a jelly donut, which is why I bought it in the first place. I absolutely LOVE jelly donuts. But somewhere between buying this and receiving it, I convinced myself that everyone was wrong and that making a strawberry donut scent was impossible and that this would just smell like strawberries and maybe cream. I should really listen to my betters. You know when you're expected something like, say, orange juice, but you take a big ol swig of chocolate milk instead and even though you probably would prefer chocolate milk in the first place your mind still revolts because it expected something completely different? Yeah. My first impression was that this was horrible and plastic, because I just didn't expect it to smell JUST LIKE A GODDAMNED JELLY DONUT. Which is absurd, because everyone said it would. Anyway, 5 seconds later, my brain got over itself and realized that this is the most delicious thing that's ever happened to me that isn't actual food. It smells like a strawberry jelly donut. Powdered sugar, flaky buttery donut, sweet creamy strawberry jam. Decent staying power on me too. Don't know about throw since I haven't worn it out yet, but I'll let you all know if any of my peers try to take a bite out of me tomorrow. I once said in all sincerity that I would prefer to be proposed to with a box of our local bakery's strawberry and cream donuts instead of a ring. I am serious about jelly donuts. This smells just like those donuts and I'm so glad I bought a bottle.

This is my first review and my nose isn't exactly trained in such things, so take this with a grain of salt. At first application, it's very damp and mossy. I agree that there's initially a smoky patch hint to it, similar to Banshee Beat, but that's completely gone now. It sweetens up as it dries. At first I wasn't sure - I love green, mossy scents but wouldn't necessarily wear them - but the sweetness (I'm assuming that's floral/musk) makes it much more wearable. It's dusty too - reminds me of the dusty note in Tombstone and Dee that I love so much (that must be the woods). There's almost something a bit marine to this - a clean, cool salty smell that seems at odds with the dust and moss - maybe that's the stone? All in all, it's an extremely evocative scent - makes me think of a crumbling Scottish castle by the sea. I'm absolutely ok with that, and wish I'd gotten a bottle. The longer this stays on my arm, the more I love it.