picturesofmeghan

sadly this didn’t work on me. in the bottle it is beautiful- it reminds me of a view of cascading cherry blossoms. it is sweet, bordering on sweet tart, and based on bottle sniff, i would have backed it up. sadly, my skin doesn’t work with it - my fiancé said it smells like something is missing. i do this with a few scents - they smell hollow? on him, it smells like it does in the bottle ??? so it is definitely me.

if any BPAL does this on you, this may not work. vanillas and blackberry tend to do this on me 

i had a similar experience to @Fletchkat in the dry down - In the bottle, they smelled amazing and I was so excited to try it on. But the plum/opium mix it opened with went sour on me. Then, I got the same dry down as fletch explained - half dead smelly flowers.

i’m waiting to see if this morphs a little, but it’s so far a no go for me 

I actually like this a lot. I have both lights of men’s lives to compare it to, as well as dalliances by candlelight. This is much less vanillic or sweet than those two. There is no honey obviously. I’m testing straight out of the mail, so it’s waxy candle with slight tones of a soft leather. I’ll update after I’ve had a little longer

I didn’t get many of the Halloween first time around, but I did get mouses long sad pumpkin- 
This sat a while, so now I can review it well. When I got it it was extremely pumpkin with a little bit of a sugariness to it, almost similar to a lip smacker that exist in 1 million years ago in a sugarplum scent.  In the bottle I still get very strong pumpkin spice. Wet on the skin, it is very pumpkin and then evaporates slightly into that sparkly scent similar to the bonnebelle sugar plum (Which didn’t smell like plum to me, it was a glittery mauve color, closer in scent to cherry chapstick but with a sugary depth). This has both that quality as well as some thing that borders on a warm spiciness with a carbohydrate background. i don’t get sweet pea or any of the mouse elements.  my fiancé says he smells basil; he only chose pumpkin when prompted. this is pretty strong and i’m not totally sure how i feel about it. 
If you want strong straight up pumpkin spice, I would go for this. If you’re looking for mouses long sad tale with a tinge of pumpkin, I do not think you will find it here

i am a big fan of aquatics, but not lavender. 

(but i almost always agree with @doomsday_disco!) 

in the bottle, this scent has a lot of lavender- not a super sweet one, though I am pretty new to BPAL, and I can’t really pick out specifically with a lilith lavender smells like, but a more herbal one. this lavender was stronger when i first got the bottle, but after settling a few weeks, it’s mingled more. 

wet- i get fresh, realistic lavender floral- green almost like when you break a piece of grass, followed by saltiness and rain like water.

when i tried this initially, the lavender went on sharp and astringent and faded off to reveal a scent much like the past lilith ‘a vast similultide interlocks all.’

as this dries after resting, the scent feels like a colder rain- purple tinged storm clouds, the ambergris making it soft and salty.

while i like simultitude, it almost borders on soapy. after resting, this scent does NOT edge towards soapy. it’s almost sweet, and somehow cold because the lavender’s astringency balances out somehow as it burns off. it does get lighter and more aquatic, and it wears close to the skin. 

all in all, i’m very pleased with this scent  

in the imp- green and shampoo- like to me.

wet- dense, green, sharp, with a fig undertone and apple around the edges

as it dries, the dense feeling dissipates and seems to be replaced by green apple and hair conditioner(?), and sandalwood is coming out a little. the green fig is still at the base, and i think that combined with the sandalwood is where the conditioner feeling comes from. florals start to come out more as it sits - i think the sweeter is hibiscus and the one that’s ‘too much’ to me is the lily lol...

overall i don’t like this on me.  it just doesn’t work 

hi everyone! i’ve been looking for ‘my perfect plum’ and i’m pretty sure joyful romp was along the lines of what i was looking for. 

does anyone know anything slightly more obtainable that is similar?

it doesn’t smell like real strawberry to me.

it smells like artificial - syrup or candy or shampoo. it’s not a bad thing. 

in the background, i get a slight sharpness from a green leaf.

i don’t love this, but i don’t dislike it either. it’s kind of a ‘whatever’ - i got it to go with HGs like party tricks or kamisuki, which i think it will pair well with (i’m pretty confident it’s the same strawberry used in both of those), however it hasn’t been my first choice with either so far.

in the imp- almost a citrus saltiness, but barely anything there 

wet - SOAPY - i asked picturesoffiance to help here - he said something like snuggle at this stage..

as it dries, both of us thought the site kind of dissipated into a lighter version of a typical aquatic perfume. We both read it a little differently though, I got the salt separated from the aquatic, but he got a lot of floral initially (he couldn’t place it)  and a sharper note that he said reminded him of clinique happy..

as it evolved, i did see what he meant- I got the aquatic element is much lower in the mix, with flower dominating and a sharp citrus bouncing off the whole thing, which I’m assuming must be the bergamot (which was the only thing i could find in common with happy).

it’s settled now - he called this ‘irish spring’ and i kind of agree - it also has low throw and longevity.

not awful, but i really wanted to love this. I have yet to found good aquatics from bpal that I really love, aside from sturgeon moon

side note: 

there’s a note present here that i’ve noticed in a few things- hair glosses esp - a weird ‘empty note’ - if that makes and sense. it floats above and it’s barely noticeable here,  but it’s mixed into other notes 

so i just got a VERY aged imp. I tried to review it without looking at any of the notes. The oil is very very dark. Going on wet it’s almost a sweet balsamic scent. There is a green note in the back, there’s also a powdery nest that comes out and makes it lighter as it dries. Dried, it almost makes me think green, slightly masculine, yet soft, powdery amber. not something i’d wear, but i could see people loving this. It does remind me of snake oil

smells like a woody, expensive men’s cologne... dried down much softer, aquatic. it does have an edge - i guess that must be the tomato leaf ? 

overall, may acquire a bottle for picturesoffiance

wet / in the decant - strawberry koolaid? or cherry koolaid that separates into strawberry... 

in my ‘ditch,’ where i applied first, the sweetness spreads, mingles together, things out, has a metallic edge, and the lavender crops up in the middle and holds this close to the skin.

i am not looking at the notes but feel like i smell

a very subtle rose. 

this seems to not have crazy throw, and it’s surprisingly wearable for something seemingly so random. 

this one gave me all clove. i love the idea of clove, but i guess i amp it and it morphs into something weird on me. i did get the slight metallic blood tinge and a little fruitiness underneath, so if you play well with clove, it may be worth trying. 

i agree with the assessment that this is a ‘safer’ scent, but it is actually a favorite of mine. the cherry blossom and strawberry are soft, not quite shampoo-y, but just smell as if you have incredible, beautiful hair. it’s not cloying or overly sweet,  but it’s not green either. 

the vanilla orchid ‘fills up’ the background of the scent so it doesn’t feel hollow. 

i can’t imagine someone disliking this. 

teppo was sadly not a match for me. i love the amber used (as starbrow notes) in sweet amber and cherry liqueur, but this read as very tart orange/lemon CITRUS, with no sweetness or softness whatsoever. 

fiancé thought it smelled like cleaner. 

off to swaps it went!

i wanted to love this; i love the mix of notes, and i was very excited to try it. 

i usually amp rose, but this seemed to be battle of the death notes, with clove winning out and dominating. it became currant drowning in clove (which takes on an herbal tone that just does not work for me). 

i got this for a friend, but tested it to make certain it was something she would enjoy. this went very powdery on me, and the ginger did not agree with me.

from what i know about snake oil, i think this smells a little like it, which the sniffies i have had of it indicated to me i don’t enjoy that much either, hah.

i tried an imp of the perfume and own the HG. unless something was off about the perfume, i prefer the HG MUCH more over the perfume. the HG starts off very patchouli and dries into the most wonderful, spicy fig- the patch does down and lets the warm fig emerge. i generally do not love patch, but i really love this. 

the perfume evolved in the opposite way - almost a fake, tart fruit first and then the patch came later in the dry down.

the HG is strong; it’s one that wears much longer than a lot of others do on me. it has great throw, and i have actually gotten many compliments on it.

some odd comments that may be of interest-

‘like that market bloodmilk vends at, do they sell that there?’ (fiancé referencing oddities in brooklyn)

’you smell like a really high end witch store’ - one of my friends. 

very almond cherry wet / in the imp.

as it dries i get more cherry less almond, the cream isn’t in the forefront but rounds out the scent... i think i smell the crust because the cherry starts to fade.... as the cherry recedes, it starts to get not quite buttery, but the way pie crust tastes when it’s up against the pie filling. in itself the crust is not super sweet; it’s slightly doughy with the cherry remnants and slight cream bringing the sweetness. i do get brown sugar in the crust as someone else said.  i can also see where people read cherry chapstick, because if i don’t concentrate, it seems to blend like that, even though there’s no waxiness. the pie crust covers the cherry scent a bit.

i don’t know if my brain is just not registering the complexity, but i don’t really smell the elements that would make this a chypre.

there is a soft perfume-y element, which must be amber, which seems to tie everything together.

also of note - the cherry is different from sweet amber & cherry liqueur HG.

edit: as i wear, i get a very light citrus, somethjng vegetal and medicinal (sharp) in the background... sooo i guess that’s the chypre.

this is ‘okay’ to me. the first initial smell to me is that juicy cherry-gummy note jovial embrace has. that juiciness carries through, but the rose coming through smells almost christmasy to me? to be honest, it smells like jovial embrace encumbered by patchouli and rose. glad i didn’t blind bottle. i LOVE jovial embrace, but i don’t love this. 

edit - wearing it, it smells like cherry wine. not like sangria, but a sweet fruit wine, spiked with a rose that isn’t powdery 

for me, this smells like irish spring soap with a slight metallic edge. it softens as i wear it, but i cannot detect cherry blossom as it dries down. eventually it has a light light cherry blossom base. 

it is not a total loss at all though, as my fiancé likes it! 

on him, it still has the cologny- irish spring smell, but there is a cherry blossom scent rounding it out on the bottom. it’s more than it is on me, and it has better throw and a heavier, not quite incense,  but SOMETHING else there ???wowowow! he rolled his eyes at me because i kept asking to sniff it to review.

i know this is an older one, but i am new to bpal and in my quest for past shunga HGs, a super kind person sold me her backup of this one.

at first spray, this is prickly. it’s almost got a weird lemongrass-ness to me (to be honest thjs may be a sharp currant smell), but that quickly fades.

it becomes a soft, musky, close to the skin/hair scent, absolutely purple- i smell blueberries and plum, slight floral and spice, then a base of more fruit. it’s not juicy smelling like jovial embrace. it’s definitely drier than that. 

if this makes sense - visually, i have the dark musky fruits over the floral/spiciness (i want to say like mulled wine type spices?), then a more sweet version of the fruit as the base. 

as someone else mentioned - almost definitely blueberry. 

i don’t get regular wine, but i do get blueberry or blackberry wines 

candy blackberry wet.. as it dries on my wrists, the blackberry remains, but on my ‘ditch’ area (i don’t know what else to call the inner arm elbow part, but when describing this area for tattooing, it is the ditch)- super citrusy as it dries down. 

i forgot bergamot was a note here, so i was a little surprised by it. there is something green in here too, which i guess is the tea?

hours later, i get creaminess and rice!

i love it!

i get the gardenia & honeysuckle more in the wet, but they recede and as it dries cherry blossom and cream in the forefront with plum blossoms on the edges. yayyyy!

edit - this lasts quite a while on me, and i’m going to say it’s backup worthy. i am fairly new to bpal and have only decided a few things are worth it, but this is. so, for whatever that’s worth. 

overall impression  this is pure, unsweetened, matcha to me - it reminds me of experimenting with it while working in a smaller coffee shop..

wet- i catch some of the ivy & bitterness, it’s yellow green like fresh cut grass but on a cloudier day. the bitterness almost borders on fennel for me, but doesn’t get there. i can see the comparisons to fresh cut flower stems. there is a slight sweetness as it dries,  but only enough to temper the bitterness and make the green more neutral. i’d imagine that’s the sandalwood. it almost wants to go to a floral at points,  but it doesn’t get there either.

dry- it’s still green, grassy, and matcha. my mind keeps trying to trick me into smelling lemongrass or a white floral.  this isn’t something i’d usually expect to wear, but it’s not awful. i am going to revisit it in a bit and see what i think