gwynethr

I fell in love with this totally after the first try. So sweet, and caramelly in a way I could get into, not the way caramel as a scent usually makes me feel (I tend to get gaggy). The woods and the sweet, almost fruity quality really worked for me. But then something happened a while ago and I can't even wear it anymore. I thought it wasn't agreeing with me simply because of that time of the month, but every time I've tried to wear it, it causes me such pain in my sinuses and is so sharp and nasty, I feel like I'm going to be sick. So now I've had to give my bottle away, much to my dismay. I don't even know what caused it -- aging of the perfume itself, or something in me that's changed... my other wood loves, Tombstone and Hearth and some of the Salons, still seem fine on me, and I just fell in love with The Red Queen and that also seems fine, so maybe it is how the blend ages. Whatever it is, I'm sad.

It's so weird. I love apricot and would love an apricot tart scent like whoa, but all I get is apple pie. And I don't like apple pie. At all. I want what everyone else has!

I got this in a pile of imps from someone, most of which were not good for me, and I'd assumed that it would be rose-based, just by the name and the fact that most of the other imps she sent were rose heavy. Wow, what an incredible surprise! I love fruity scents and wood scents (as opposed to woodsy, like pine and fir). The good wood ones always remind me of my old boyfriend when he was doing woodwork. And I adore the scent of dark cherries and currants. I get that right out of the bottle -- the notes are all there, prominently, none taking over the other, and they fortunately stay that way on me for a long time. It's got great throw and lasts for hours. I was beginning to despair of the Mad Tea Party scents -- only Tweedledum and Tweedledee were at all pleasant for me, and rose figures in so many of them. Now I have a MTP scent I can get a bottle of and wear all the time. This is what I love about BPAL -- just that a perfume of such an unusual combination could even be conceived of. I have never smelled anything like it!

I also get cat pee for the first long hour or so. It has a lot of throw, so that's not great. But I left it on the second time, just to see what would happen if I could get past cat pee, and it softened considerably. I get no citrus at all, but it smells much better after a few hours. Now the question is: which lasts longer, me or the perfume? Because apparently, if I can outlast this it turns into a good blend!

Damn, but I wish I got what so many others here seem to have got from this scent. I was fascinated by the notes listed, and thought that the combo would dampen some of the notes I don't usually go for, but... it's just a very sharp, almost powdery or soapy scent, smelling too much like a store-bought perfume for me. I had high hopes, and tried again after I recovered from bronchitis, but still no go.

This one is very interesting to me -- the exact flip-flop response from Witch Queen. That one started out nice, and turned bad; this one starts out unpleasantly pungent to me, then mellows as it goes along, just getting lovelier. I think I have a crush on Tristran.

Dang. This starts out very floral, much more so than I expected, but none of the deeper notes. Unfortunately on drydown, it turns to old lady perfumey floral. My skin seems to do something to lily notes of any kind, even callas. I am so bummed because the description just sounded magnificent to me. I'll definitely try it at other times of the month and in different weather and see if it work better, though.

The amber and the musk make this border on sickly for my nose, unfortunately. (Not as bad as Gluttony, though, which actually makes me feel nauseated.) I like the scent wet much more than dry. If it were straight fruity and vanilla-y, I think I might like this one better. I will definitely finish off the imp, eventually, but it's not one I'd want to wear much.

This is just so lovely! It's restrained and... dignified? I don't know if that's an appropriate word for perfume, but that's how it feels to me. I was afraid of the heather at first, because that's exactly the kind of floral that I usually hate, but it's so light and subtle that it merely enhances the blackberry, not conflicts with it. And the berry is so soft, too -- it doesn't hit you in the face with tartness. I was lucky in that as soon as I fell in love with this, someone put their bottle up for sale. It wasn't lasting even an hour on my skin, so I wanted to try from a bottle and see if slathering more on would help. Alas, it still disappears so quickly. That's the only negative thing I can say about this lovely blend -- it wafts over you with its softness and beauty, and then it's gone.

Oh my heavenly lord. This is just exquisite. I'd bought an imp for a friend for her birthday, and kept asking to try it, but she never remembered, so I finally just bit the bullet and got one myself. And I am just blown away by this scent. So sweet and light and woodsy and it's just... I finally found my GC signature scent. So far the only sig scents have been LEs, for me, and the closest I could come in the GC was Queen of Sheba, but this... this is even better. I love the root beery, planty smell of the sassafrass and balsam, the vanilla is so perfectly creamy, and the cedar! I just love cedar, it isn't pencil shavings for me at all. I grew up in a foresting family, and the smells of cedars and hemlocks and firs is very close to my heart. I'm a western girl, born and bred, and this is another one of those scents, like Western Diamondback, that hurl me back in time to playing in old-growth woods or high desert scrub, riding horses; the smells of places that haven't changed much since the early 19th century and where you can still find that open sense of the west in all its glory. I can't wait to get a bottle, and see how it ages.

Holy cow! For once I actually smell something similar to what others smell! Whee. I seem to never pick up the same responses as most people who post, but this time, it's a spot-on match: this really is red velvet cake. And i'm also kind of surprised that with my unsophisticated nose, I could smell something that defined. It's really wonderful. I was a little nervous about buying a rare foodie scent untried, but after hearing about it for so long, my curiosity won out, and I don't regret it. Except for the part where now I want red velvet cake, like, now .

I still haven't figured out what I think about it despite a few tries. Part of it may be the slowly dawning realization that BPAL's amber doesn't sit as well on my skin as other ambers, and I'm getting an almost powdery or soapy quality in most of the blends where this is a dominant note. The other notes can sometimes balance out, but apparently not anything with lunar oils (not that I know what those are, and I can't seem to find a description when I search). I have had such bad luck with the lunacies -- all the ones that list "lunar oils" as notes have been a disaster for me, though this one is a lot less problematic. I think letting it age for a while might help. The bad part about that, though, is I can't enjoy the red moon in its own month! Wish I'd been able to get the orange more, or even the heliotrope.

I confess that a lot of the Japanese scents smell almost indistinguishable to me -- they are all lovely, and seem to fall into two categories, floral or slightly fruity. Everything is very faint and soft, though, and this one is no exception. I can't distinguish any particular notes here, it's all a very soft, almost floral scent on me, and smells almost the same wet as dry. Not much throw, but of the Japanese-themed scents, this one is one of the nicest, even though it's not a huge standout from the others. I'm kind of embarassed about this inability to distinguish them, but hey, I have the same problem with green teas. The only one I could pick out of a crowd would be genmai cha.

I'm trying to think of the word this is bringing to mind, and the only thing I can come up with is tough. It's dark and smoky and has earthy, scorchy qualities that make it seem like the kind of perfume my inner tough girl would want to wear -- the one I never really get to revisit much any more. I haven't liked some of the other scents like this much before, but this one hits the spot. This reminds me a lot of the smell of air after you've been shooting. I think it'll be great to wear when I want to smell like I'm not to be trifled with.

I feel like Sarada said it all better than I could. This is just incredible, and one of the highlights of the new Exhibition. It morphs throughout the day on me, and finally ends with beautiful honey that lingers and lingers. I couldn't imagine what to expect, but it wasn't such a wonderful blend. What a happy surprise!

This is one of the few of the new Salons that I'm not impressed with. On me, it's pretty much just like a store-bought, perfumey perfume. I can't pick out any of the notes I love most, and am not even getting a type of fragrance at the top -- nothing woodsy or floral, just very perfumey in a way I don't like. Fortunately it doesn't have a lot of throw or lasting power, so it's not like it's flat-out sharp or nasty. Just not for me.

Wow. WOW. A couple of these notes made me more than a bit nervous to try it, as they provoke lengthy sneezing fits, but everything here is so soft and airy and gently floral. It smells as soft and gentle wet as it does dry, which is very unusual to my nose. I think this may be a bottle-worthy scent. Plus, I love bats, love the drawing, so how could I go wrong?

When I got a decant of this, I couldn't wait to try it, because it was purple in the vial, my favorite color. The scent matched the color -- it was quickly my favorite GC scent, and the first GC bottle I bought. It's been sitting there, aging for a bit, and I find I love it even more now than I did when the bottle first came. It's almost a comforting scent, the honey sweetness, the warmth of the almonds, the soft tang of the spices. This is an everyday scent, the kind of thing you could wear anywhere, especially if you wanted to feel sophisticated and elegant. This truly embodies everything the legend of the Queen of Sheba was about... in fact, it kind of reminds me of those old Blackglama fur ads, What Becomes a Legend Most? Not poor dead animals this time, just gorgeous BPAL perfume!

I was sort of afraid of this one because me and lavender are unmixy, very very much. But I love the other notes, so it was worth a try, and I'm glad I did. It's not a favorite so far, but the lavender is incredibly subtle on me, for once, and so are all the other notes. I can't even really pick any one note out, though there is something I can't identify that's most prominent, and I assume it might be the copawhatsit, since I don't know that I've ever smelled that before. There's a slightly spicy, slightly herby, slightly warm, slightly herbal quality to it -- as though every single note is perfectly balanced against the other so that nothing leaps forward. Very interesting.

Ah, so typical -- can't smell any leather, and only the faintest, barest whiff of metal. I wish my nose were more sophisticated sometimes, because I especially love those smells. Wet: It's very smoky at first on me. Sharp, but I can't identify what it is. Dry: It smells like... well, someone above said curry, and that might be it. I keep thinking Indian food. Though what, specifically, I don't know. Just kind of makes me feel like I'm in a restaurant. This is a strange one!

This is the first time I've bought one of the full Exhibit sets, and am trying everything without previously reading people's impressions. Since this was in the middle of the set, I tried it first, and it's just so wonderful. I'm about 50-50 on the Salons so far, and still have three to go from the first two exhibits, but it's the darker, more incensey ones or the bright florals I've enjoyed the most, and this one just exudes incense. It's so dark and smoky, with that faint honey and wine scent to back it up. After a few hours, it settles into a totally honey note for me, which I'm very happy about. Definitely a great first one to try. It's very interesting reading about the notes above, too. I love that kind of information, as I'm sort of a scent ignoramus in many ways, and it's very helpful in understanding what appeals to me.

I can't figure this one out at all. It's definitely cold... sharper and more herby than other wintery scents. I have never smelled either Nuclear Winter or Ice Queen, but I've usually avoided the cold scents with mint in them. And I'm not sure I like this much more, but... I can't stop sniffing my arm! I'm going to have to wear this more often, especially on its own so I'm not fighting another scent that I'm testing on my other arm, to see if I can figure out what I really think of this!

This is just Oh! So! Lilac! on me, and I couldn't be happier about it. The other notes only add some balance and foundation; it's almost pure lilac, except for a few hours in, when it morphs into Stargazer Lily. Normally, the lilies, though I love them in real life, don't sit well on me as scent notes, but here it isn't as obnoxious as I've found it in other blends. Then after a bit it goes back to lilac before it fades. I'm anxiously awaiting my bottle of this. This is the first Salon I've actually had to acquire in bottle form.

I am just madly in love. I figured this would be an ideal scent for me, but I didn't expect to love it this much. It's so warm and well-rounded, a perfect balance of the floral fruity qualities and the warm earthier ones. My only complaint is that it doesn't last long enough -- gone within a few hours, but I'm going to try slathering instead of dabbing and hope that it might last longer.

This one scared me a bit to try -- the mulled wine part specifiaclly, because of the dreaded cinnamon and spice notes. But it's wonderfully balanced through those greener notes, I think. I definitely don't get any leather, but that's okay, as it often turns to evilness on me, but I think I can detect it from far away at times. It smells the same wet and long after drydown, which is great, and seems to last for quite some time. Lovely!