myoubi

Unseelie lives up to its name -- wispy, ethereal, dark. It smells something like a vintage perfume, it's older in style and definately a sophisticated scent. While I can't sort out notes at all, such that I won't even try, I will say that it's a beautiful, beckoning scent with moderate throw. I don't understand the Snow White comparison at all -- there's none of the clear whiteness or creamy coconut quality of Snow White to Unseelie, but perhaps that's just skin chemistry doing its thing. There's something in here that reminds me a little of Brisingamen, although Brisingamen is a much brighter clearer scent. They both go a little powdery on me after a bit -- fortunately I'm a fan of powder.

Verdict: a lovely scent, and if it were GC I'd have a bottle in an instant; and if someone offered up an imp, I'd probably swap generously for it. It reminds me a lot of Dark Delicacies -- not in actual scent, but in tone. And since I love DD and have a lot of it, I'm not dying for more Unseelie.

Smells like Shub! The soap is very creamy in texture and doesn't overlather like some soaps do. It also just plain looks pretty. I find the shub smell lingers a bit, so I make sure to dry my hands very thoroughly afterwards, and even then a bit stays on my fingers. The scent is rather strong and very true to blend. Nice.

got a testable sniffie from the generous djnevermore in a swap. Thank you!

Yes, this is carnation, spot-on. I feel like I've actually got my nose stuck in the flower itself. Slightly spicy, just a little green, and with very good throw -- I only applied a teensy bit and I can smell it from a foot away. I'm always amazed at how accurate single notes are, and this one is no exception.

Wow. Am I smelling the same scent?

I get the fizzing hairspray note of Stardust too... but mine doesn't smell like candied fruits I wish it did. Mine smells green. Like celery. I'm serious, it smells like mysterious celery.

no sugar. no sweetness. dries down to a waxy white floral with celery.

thankfully other people seem to love this one because it has no home here.

Have you considered looking for TAL decants? In particular, Brass Balls, Crucible of Courage and War sound like they might be appropriate for your situation.

Other than that, you would want a crisp, clean scent -- while I understand Forspecial Plate's reasoning, I'd suggest going for something that at least /you/ will be able to smell while you're wearing it, that way you can "fortify yourself" in scent. How about something like Dirty? (crisp clean linen) it's a nice, simple "clean" scent to other people, but it's also very professional..

ETA: You could also go for something like Moxie, although buying a whole 10mL for one presentation might be a little much ^_~

I don't understand why this one doesn't get more BPAL fandom love... it's beautiful! Fans of Ice Queen, Skadi and possibly Snow White should all at least /try/ this one.

Scent: In the bottle it has that cold, delicately lemony scent that all BPAL snowy blends have, along with what I think is juniper. I smell one of the crisper florals as well -- definately not the rose, maybe the narcissus. Immediately applied, it smells -- mm! like a kinder, gentler Ice Queen, Ice Queen sans those hard pale musks. After about ten minutes of frozen forest it sweetens abruptly, and enters a phase of surprising warmth. It's some interaction of scents that I can't name that actually smells warm and mellow, not floral-y at all, almost berryish. After abut five minutes of that, the florals become more apparent, and it's like a gently-frosted forest full of spring flower shoots. The crocus in particular is prominent; curiously, the rose stays in the background, as does (thank God) the dahlia. It stays like this -- warm florals in the foreground, frosted pine behind them -- until it fades.

Tone: This isn't a cold scent. As many people have said, although it's pine-y, it's also warm and sweet -- which is odd given it has such a strong snow note. I'd wear this more in winter, it's not quite a summer cool-down scent. This reminds me of my favourite parts of Ice Queen and Snow White -- Snow White's mellow sweetness without that coconutty smear, Ice Queen's cold berry forest without those brittle musks.

Verdict: Beautiful. I don't need more (I have too many cold scents already :/) but I'm keeping my bottle.

ETA: After a couple of hours, this reminds me strongly of Snow White without that coconutty sweet note.... which is what I disliked most about Snow White. Perfect!

I'm reviewing this blend based mostly on scent, since I'm not using it in ritual work and thus am not sure what I ought to expect, effect-wise.

Scent: In the imp, this is a sweet, fresh, almost candyish melon, quite powerful at first. I can't smell anything else. On my skin, the melon mellows (whee!) and for a moment i get an almost spicy note. It retains its sugary quality as it dries. There's something other than melon in there grounding the scent, and it's definately aquatic in character, but it's not at all peppery or jarring. This is a sweet, bright, dewy melon that dries down to a sweet, gentle, sugary melon.

I don't usually like fruit scents, but this one is lurrrve.

I wanted to try numb based on the name alone, and it does live up to its description. It is gelid and frosty -- that's the coldest, numbest, frozenest violet I've ever smelled. It's as faraway smelling as if you took a flower and encased it in ice, and then tried to describe how it looks. It's actually quite pleasant -- if you like violet. As it happens, I don't.

It's a bit curious -- nobody loves poor lil' Numb, but everyone is mad for Faith.

cedar drawer liners + lemon pledge.

not for me.

I would bathe in this if I could On me this actually has very little throw and stays close to my skin -- if I put my wrist to my nose and huff, I can just smell sweet melon and grassy clover, with some kind of wood (rosewood?) underneath. It's very subtle and the notes blend beautifully. I get very little melon at all, and the rose, if there is any, is of a particularly pale and almost aquatic variety. I wish I had more, and I'm hoping against hope it gets resurrected

GOJIRA! indeed

This reminds me a lot of Ice Queen -- there must be at least one common ingredient, surely, because they both have a very cold, hard-edged tone to them. like little_galaxie, I also think this smells like a very high-end conventional fragrance.

SCENT: This starts out reminding me strongly of Ice Queen. It's very grapefruity, but it almost reminds me of white musk for some reason -- both fragrances have a brittleness and a hardness to them. As it settles, the grapefruit dissolves and lets the mandarin warm the scent a little bit. This is a floral, but not an obvious one -- I don't get the orchid sweetness or the gentle mellowness I associate with rose. I don't know what lemon bark smells like, but judging from the chilly nature of the scent, it may be that that I am smelling. Then, after 10 minutes it changes again: the freezing citrus backs off just a touch, opening the gates just slightly for a mellow orchid mandarin.

TONE: This is not a nice happy perfume. It's not friendly. It's not agressive. The Queen is cold and high and hard and incredibly aloof. It's also a demanding fragrance -- it's not something I'd just put on unthinkingly. This is one I'd wear if I was shopping in the most expensive district in town and didn't want anyone to bother me: it carries with it a sense of entitlement and hauteur.

VERDICT: Oh, I already have too many icy chilly scents. Why do I need another? But I really like the Queen, I do. I may get tired of her eventually, but right now she fills a niche well.

ETA: Here's a link to a similar question.

**smacks head** D'oh! I'm such an idiot :/ I should have searched before I posted a new topic.. mods, go ahead and smack me.

Ice Queen = "Destroy Everything You Touch" (Ladtron)

My girlfriend smokes clove cigarettes, and the scent of clove reminds me of her. Since we're long-distance, I'd like to find a clove scent to put on and curl up in for when I miss her... and I'd prefer it was a BPAL scent, because my fanatical obsession has begun to enable her.

I've tried March Hare, and it smells sticky and thick and after a while turns to spoilt jam -- not a nice clove at all. I also have a bottle of the Ecstasy of Passion, but the clove doesn't come out particularly strongly on me (I wish it did ). Anyone have any suggestions for the truest clove scent they know?

Shubshubshubshub shubshubshubshub love....

After sniffing this once at a Meet-n-Sniff I knew it had to be mine. After making do with an imp for weeks, my bottle finally arrived!

Scent: In the bottle this is a predominantly lemony ginger blend, dark and fresh and rooty. On my skin the citrus burns off in a matter of seconds, leaving me swathed in a comforting haze of ginger and something earthy or resiny beneath it. This isn't a sweet wimpy ginger like in Gingerbread Poppet -- although it retains just a little of the Poppet's natural sweet foodiness, I wouldn't call this a foody blend unless your grandma's ginger cake was very low on sugar and high on zing. After a couple of hours the major gingeriness cools, leaving dark cream resins with a little rub of dark ginger. I don't smell incense per se at any point, but there's definately _some_thing underlying the scent that just doesn't come up and smack you in the nose.

Tone: Warm and comforting, this one has throw. It wafts, and although the drydown is much more subtle than the initial half-hour, this isn't one I forsee having to reapply frequently. It's a backbone blend, and fills the niche of cuddle-by-the-fire-comfort-scent that I thought would be Misk U's job. I wouldn't really call it sexy, but I can see how some people might find it an angrier blend.

Verdict: Especially in wintertime or on rainy days (like today!)

as a trillion other reviewers have said, this one smells like... cinnamon. Not sugary in the slightest, it smells like the earthy woody powdery spicy smell of a broken cinnamon stick. Gorgeous, and nothing at all like how we've come to expect "cinnamon" to smell/taste. So glad I got to try this one.

Preconceived notions: It's musk. It will hate me. I just know it. White musk is pleasant but often too harsh on me, and red musk, while so lovely to sniff, can only occasionally be coaxed into behaving the same way on my skin. I grabbed this because I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.

Scent: in the imp, it's beautiful. It's not an I-am-animal-sweat-from-/sex/ smell like a lot of darker musks go on me, although it's definately a dark scent... this is almost too velvety and spicy to be a musk. It could be a perfume in itself. As it dries the spiciness comes out more, and it sweetens, developing almost a powderiness after half an hour that reminds me of the way amber goes on my skin (except a touch sweeter, maybe not in a good way).

Tone: It's the best part of Snake Oil but without the Snake Oil, velvet-soft and sensual and sexy without the screeching scentedness that Snake Oil has. Don't get me wrong, it took me a while but I've definately come around to SO -- but if this was available in bottle form it'd replace my year-old Snake Oil in a heartbeat. This is definately in SO and probably in Snake Charmer as well, and I wish it was in more blends; it's a very distinctive spicy musk that slinks and smells exotic, but in its SN form doesn't scream perfume!

Verdict: it's beautiful! Really, it's gorgeous. And if I had a bottle, I'd want to wear it every day in winter and surround myself with it -- in fact, if I could buy bottles of this stuff, I might just ditch most of my collection and wear it every day. But I don't have a bottle, I have an imp, and that's where things get tetchy, because if I love and cherish an imp too much I never end up wearing it. So unfortunately, this one may just be too gorgeous for me to keep around.

But it is /stunning/. Heartily reccomended to people who love musk and hate musk, and who love Snake Oil and hate Snake Oil. *for the record, this is a note that becomes more prominent in aged SO than fresh SO, to my nose, so if you like this musk bear that in mind

a little OT, but when I saw 'Bridal Perfume' in the subject line I instantly thought: Havisham! srsly, I'm saving up an imp of that to wear on /my/ wedding day, should it ever come...

On a more serious note, I vote Morocco. It has an almost Antique Lace feel to it, without the absolute sweetness and femininity of AL -- it's a little more grounded, has a little something extra.

Apparently The Girl loves Hope. I usually wear MB: Closet around her (she likes that on me too ) but yesterday it was warm, so I reached for Hope... she wouldn't stop sniffing and nibbling at my neck all night. I'm sooo glad I have a 5mL coming!

My standard I-want-attention scent is (oddly) Monster Bait: Closet. It has never failed yet...

I've held off reviewing DD because even though it's one of my favourite scents, I can't pick out notes in it and it's hard to describe :/ But it's so beautiful that I had to write something here.

TONE: Exactly what the name suggests -- dark but delicate. It's a ladylike blend, a bottled version of the blonde-haired dame in a forties film noir. Unique in that, while it has so many rich components and such a dark tone, it nontheless isn't at all a /heavy/ blend. I've never smelled anything like it, and it's purrr-fect for me.

NOTES: The orchid comes on strong for a while, and what must be the devil's trumpet accord -- some unnamed floral diluting the high sweetness of the orchid. My mother smells something vaguely cocoa-esque, which I think is the coconut. After a few hours, it dries into this amazing resinous scent warmed by the fruit gums. Still, it escapes being heavy!

VERDICT: I love this blend. Hunted down seven decants and then a bottle, and they all mine. Orchid is usually too sweet for me (Queen Mab) but now i'm curious to try Black Moon.

I couldn't sleep last night, so I rifled through my imp box trying to find an appropriately soporific blend. Dove's Heart was the closest I had -- soothing an unquiet mind in order to get some friggin' shut-eye. I applied it to my wrists and temples, and within ten minutes was sleeping like a baby

I couldn't identify specific notes in this one (I'm bad with the voodoo blends generally) but there's something about it that reminds me vaguely of Come to Me -- a light herbal aquatic-ness that I actually really like. Dove's Heart is a bit too lavender-y for me to want to wear it as a scent, but it's not unpleasant to smell. On the whole it's a sweet smell, but with an herbal bitterness somewhere in there -- it's light, with relatively good throw and decent staying power, and dries down on me to a sweet powder skin scent that was still on my wrists when I awoke this morning. SO glad I had an imp of this lying around!

I cautiously like MLST.

PRECONCEPTIONS: I wasn't sure about at first -- based on the note list alone, I thought it would be too cutesy and sweet for me. But someone had a bottle up for sale, and she had other stuff I wanted, so I just bought it and figured what the hell.

IN THE BOTTLE: it doesn't smell terribly pleasant -- it's heavy on the vanilla, but it's an odd thin sharp vanilla. Maybe that's the sweet pea.

WET AND DRYING: it smelled better -- if I had to identify it I'd say it was a vanilla sweet pea blend. The amber started coming out after about ten minutes, which is good since I like amber, but it doesn't amp hugely on my skin, which is odd. At this stage, and for the next hour, it's almost a straight vanilla-amber made floral by the addition of the twining sweet pea. pleasant, but not a huge amount of throw, and a little too sweet for me...

DRY: After about an hour, though, the sandalwood starts coming through. Mmmm. With the warmth of the sandalwood to ground it, and once the sweet pea has stopped twining around everything with its cloying sweetness, this turns into a lovely vanilla-amber-sandalwood scent that is stopped from being thick and too warm by the /hint/ of greeny-sweet floral. It's very pleasant, and I like smelling it.

BOTTOM LINE: I do like it. I'll have to live with it for a bit to see if I'll really use it, and it is a bit gentle for me, but it's not something I'm aching to heave out of my box. Reccomended for those who like the sweet and gentle scents; it's everthing it promises to be, if you can get past the phase of choking sweetsweetsweet pea-vanilla.

I need to go with my instincts more often on scents. Gorgeous, and now I need more.

Snow Bunny is, as many people have said, a sweet soft pine scent, with the sugariness of Snow Angel and (somewhere) a hint of floral. I don't get the juicy berries a lot of people are talking about, but then again that's a good thing, because fruit sometimes stomps all over everything with my skin chemistry, and I"m glad it's staying nicely to the back. I never thought I'd say this about a pine scent, but this is very delicate and feminine -- it doesn't have the agressive forestyness of (say) Nocnitsa. This isn't a scent for everyone, it /is/ powder as the description suggests, but for those put off by the pine, don't be -- I am not a fan of smelling like a Christmas tree and that kept me from trying Snow Bunny for a while, but I am sooo glad I did.

To me Snow Bunny smells like the best parts of both Snow Angel and Snow White -- it doesn't have the slushy watery coconut-sweetness that Snow White has, and it isn't overpowering like Snow Angel can be. It's girlier than Snow Angel (yes, it is possible!) but more cheerful than Snow White, which is IMO a good thing. It's crisp and girly and rosy-cheeked as the description suggests. Beth got this one spot-on, and I will treasure my half-bottle.

Thanks to Ah Xia for helping me get ahold of some of this!

This one doesn't change much on me, and for that I'm glad -- because it's beautiful. I get mostly creamy amber and dark myrrh, but it's saved from being heavy by what must be the lilac -- a gentle florally scent that smells almost like lavender when intermingled with the amber. This is a scent I could wear every day, if I had enough of it. The myrrh makes it warm and sexy, but it's also a scent I could wrap myself in like a blanket on cold winter days. I'm glad I have a half-bottle, and would not at all mind nabbing more.