Evilynn

In the bottle: Red candies (I think it's the red currant's fault more than anything) Wet on the skin: Red candies. Drydown: Pink candies I get BERRIES, SWEET BERRIES aaall the time from Red. I wish there'd be more pink musk involved, maybe on a longer drydown? I couldn't keep it on for long enough to find out. Thankfully, this wasn't a purchase for me, but for a friend who's a fan of Red the Fraggle and hopefully don't amp sweet berries to high heaven.

In the bottle: Cherry Cheesecake, complete with graham cracker crust. Wet on the skin: Vanilla cheese cake with a hint of cherry Drydown: Strawberry poundcake. I never thought I'd say this, ever, but I'm actually really sad the drydown is strawberry rather than cherry. The cherry gave it a little tar bite that was needed for it not to go super sweet extremely foodie on me. At least it gave me hope for other cherry scents! Sadly, off to swaps it goes.

In the bottle: All ozone, all the time Wet on the skin: mostly ozone, but a hint of something that my nose almost reads as green tea (I'm guessing sandalwood musk + white pear, maybe?) Drydown: This is mostly ozone on me, but after an hour it warms up a little and I get some sandalwood musk, honeysuckle and a hint of pear as well. This is a really beautiful scent, and I'm glad i got a bottle. I've been looking for a clean ozone scent for a while, and had pretty much settled on Szepazzony (sp?) before it was discontinued. If you like Torture Queen, Szepazzony, Sea of Glass or similar scents, this is definitely one to look up!

In the bottle this is all PEARPEARPEAR! to my nose and at first that's the scent on my skin too, but gradually the pear dials down and the honeyed vanilla cream comes forward. The pear is gone within a couple of hours, but the honeyed vanilla cream is still sticking around 8 hours after application. This has the same vibe as Cupid Complaining to Venus to me, but a bit more discreet. Except for the first 15-20 minutes or so.

In the bottle: Buttery vanilla of the same kind as is in Love's Philosophy or Lovers with Rutting cats. Wet on the skin: Mostly buttery vanilla and a bit of amber Drydown: Spicy resins and a little hint of beeswax. Very faint. This is something I think I have to age a bit. My SO really likes it (on himself! ), so I'll hang on to my bottle for that reason alone, but I have to admit this is not quite as great as I thought it would be from the notes.

I never realized it was the peony in The Dormouse that makes it so tooth achingly sweet on me. Lady In Speckled Pink Kimono is mostly sweet peony on me, it doesn't change much, and I don't get a lot of vanilla orchid. It reminds me a lot of two different types of candies I'd buy as a kid, so my associations isn't to anything particularly elegant. It's nice, but I don't think it's worth keeping my bottle.

I snagged a bottle of GTV unsniffed before the Carnaval went dark, and I think it's Summery Snake Oil to me. in the bottle: slightly medicinal and generally snake oily. I think I smell spearmint of the extras. wet on the skin: SO with spearmint and a hint of bergamot drydown: Mostly SO.

Chocolate-y snake oil! The cocoa and rice milk tempers the snake oil base a bit, so Boomslang is wearable a lot sooner than straight Snake Oil is for me. The only downside of Boomslang is that the oil is very dark and stains like the devil, so I only tend to wear it when I wear dark clothes. This is one of the few scents I have backup bottles of.

I have the 2005 version, and in the bottle it's all gingerbread. Wet on the skin it's mostly gingerbread, but as it dries down it fades into a sugared spice kind of scent on my skin. I like it, and will most likely hold on to my bottle, but it doesn't have that much staying power on me, so I doubt it will replace El Dia De Los Reyes as my go to winter/yule scent.

Sunny mandarin over a layer of spicy fig. This dries down to smell more figgy and spicy on me, and I might be going nuts (or my nose is broken), but it smells sort of carnation-y, or at least it smells like what part of the drydown of Morocco and Inez smells like on me. I got frimped Carnal by the Lab, and while I'm hanging on to my imp I'm not sure I'll get around to getting a bottle, even if I do love the scent of mandarin.

in the bottle: Strawberry cake wet on the skin: Strawberry cake. Unfortunately, the BPAL cake note has never liked me much, luckily it gets drowned out by strawberry very quickly, except... drydown: Slightly fake strawberry. I never get any bergamot out of this, nor any sandalwood. I get a hint of vanilla and honey, but just enough to make it sweet. I can smell the orchids up close, but the throw is all slightly cloying strawberry. I might let this age awhile, in the hopes that the vanilla and honey will become a little more prominent, but right now Kitty is the kind of berry scent that reminds me of scented erasers I had as a kid, and when people smell me, they think it's the tea in my mug, and not my perfume. I usually like BPAL's strawberry scents, but I think this might be my least fave so far. 3/5

Madagascan vanilla bean, vanilla orchid, orris root, and saffron. in the bottle: boozy vanilla and saffron wet on the skin: vanilla and saffron and a bit of orris drydown: vanilla and saffron. This is like Love's Philosophy (which I *love*) without the cream on me, which means it's wearable at work/during the daytime. Saffron works really well on me (it doesn't turn to winter greens or anything like that, just adds a bit of spicy bite), and I'm very happy I bought a bottle!

In the bottle: wintergreen-y vanilla Wet on the skin: This is an oddly warm acquatic on me. There's winter green, slushy snow and a hint of vanilla, but...warm. Drydown: Aquatic vanilla. The drydown is pretty nice, but the wet stage is decidedly odd on me, and I prefer Waltz of the Snowflakes over Winter Time, so off to swaps it goes.

On paper this should be good on me, except that milk can sometimes be iffy. In the decant it's milk chocolate, rum and cardamom, and on the skin it's milk choc, rum, cardamom and...bacon?? I don't know if it's my nose being broken or if it's the spice + the milk in the milk chocolate that makes this smell like charred pig on me, but it does. I very rarely have to run off and wash scents off, but this was one of them (I'm a vegetarian, and while I'm usually not squicked by meat, I've never much liked the smell of bacon).

in the bottle: Weird. Well, grains, I take it, and something I can't quite place my finger on. I get a bit of citrus from the lemongrass and ginger too wet on the skin: Shubby ginger, grains and a hit of lemongrass, 20 minutes in and the ginger and lemongrass has morphed into "citrus" and the grains are still there in the base. I'm not really detecting either tea or honey so far. drydown: Like a slice of fresh bread and a cup of honeyed black tea. The drydown is actually rather nice, if a bit too foody for me, but it takes almost 2 hours for the lemongrass to die down, and that's a little too long for me. Off to swaps.

in the bottle: white honey, white sandalwood, cherry blossom and orris wet on the skin: out of the gate it's white sandalwood and honey with cherry blossom and orris taking a back seat. Within the first 15 minutes the Iris gets a little overwhelming, but does a quick dash to the finish line and vanishes (thankfully) within the hour. drydown: sandalwood, honey and coconut and pale floral. The ultimate drydown seems to be honeyed white sandalwood with a bit of coconut and cherry blossom. The coconut and sandalwood balance eachother out very nicely. This is a nice clean smelling (without going soapy) scent, a bit more unusual than a regular pale floral. It is rather pretty and while the dry down is a little on the faint side, I like it well enough to keep my bottle.

in the bottle: shub-y ginger and the clove smells almost peppery to me. Not much cream and honey from the bottle. wet on the skin: At first it smells like a more peppery version of Shub, I think I might get "pepper" from clove+cream, because the lab's cream note can go all kinds of strange on me. Uh oh, the cream is amping and this is probably never going to work out. :/ drydown: Sour cream and clove. The cream does burn off after an hour or so, and I'm left with mostly clove and a little bit of dry ginger. I never got even a hint of honey from this. If you love Shub and/or clove-y scents, go for it. I took a chance on this and the cream went bad on me (it does the same in Boo), but even if that ages away I'd be left with almost single note clove, so off to swaps it goes.

Seven honeys under one unkempt roof, with fiery-tart cubeb and dusty cardamom. I had not read the reviews before trying Crib Girls, and I assumed cubeb would smell peppery, so consider me well surprised when I got a blast of what felt like lemon and lemongrass upon application. In the imp: Citrus and honey Wet on the skin: lemon, lemongrass, honey. Somewhere around here I started writing off the scent as I'm not too big on lemon and tend to dislike lemongrass. Drydown: Warm lovely honey without any trace of the scary citrus. I went from thinking about passing on my imp to wanting a bottle. I take it I need to age it to get the cubeb to calm down, but Crib Girls jetted up to be one of my favourite honey scents. I get very little in the way of cardamom, so either my skin eats it, my nose ignores it, or it's so well blended with the honey I'm not noticing it.

Punkie Night 2010 In the bottle: Fresh apples and a little bit of berry Wet on the skin: Apple scented candle and sweet berries (surely cranberries shouldn't smell sweet??), it's very similar to Lambs Wool in the initial stages, but with spice instead of fizziness. Drydown: My skin must devour apples, because the apples fade progressively and after 4 hours I'm left with the berry sweetness and very faint spice. It's not horrible or anything, but it's not brilliant on me either, and The Hesperides is still my favourite BPAL apple scent.

in the imp: Tobacco wet on the skin: Tobacco drydown: Tobacco and a little bit of honey sweetness. Tobacco tends to go ashtray on my skin, and while the drydown is reasonably nice this just isn't for me.

A return of 2006's Ridiculous Scent! As creepy as Spooky was spooky, this is the scent of butterscotch-kissed, caramel-smothered red apples spiked with a blast of coconut rum. In the bottle: Caramel and apples Wet on the skin: Caramel, caramel and apples Drydown: Still caramel and apples. The final base note is caramel/brown sugar on me. It's basically like The Hesperides + caramel. It's a nice enough scent, but I happen to like The Hesperides better, so I think I'll be swapping off my bottle of Creepy 2009.

In the bottle: All buttery vanilla, akin to Love's Philosophy or Lovers with Rutting Cats Wet on the skin: There's buttery vanilla (although the butteriness burns off quickly on me), but there is an hour or so of distinct goatishness, which I assume is the cream doing evil, evil things. Drydown: Once the goats mosey on off it's a light, pretty vanilla. The milk in White Rabbit goes awful on me, but the cream in Love's Philosophy is fantastic, so I was hoping Boo would be too. I've never tried fresh Love's Philosophy, so I might stash Boo away for aging before swapping it off, on the off chance that the goatishness will age away. Damned goats!

I normally wear bright bold colours (or black ) on my nails, but I like to have one or two neutrals that I can use when I need to hide the discolouration that the reds and blacks inevitably bring. Recently I've mostly used OPIs Cosmo Not Tonight Honey, but I thought some change would be nice, and it was. Helle's Belle is a cool toned pink with gold shimmer and a lavender flash in daylight. I'm warm toned myself, so a lot of cool tones are difficult for me to wear, but the gold shimmer saves this for me. I can't comment on the dry time, because I usually only wear one coat (maaaybe two) of my neutrals, since I mostly use them for camouflage, and one layer dries just fine.

They certainly do Thank you! (although my wallet weeps! )

Does the Trading Post also offer free shipping on international orders over $500? I'm tempted to try to do a mini group order if that is the case.