ivyandpeony

A specially crafted Panacea for SAD would be an awesome addition to that line - I'd be ordering a bottle tomorrow! Citrus seems to be a moodlifter that gets real results, so if there's a blend that's already among your favorites with a lot of citrus notes, work it into rotation. Moxie (which is one of the Panacea) is orange with ginger and it's quite uplifting, I find. Just dabbling about to see what is on the internet, I see bergamot specifically mentioned quite often, so perhaps that's another note to seek out. I will respond at greater length when I have a little more time, but rest assured, you've got plenty of company, and spring is coming!

To answer the most important question first - no, I don't smell pickles And I don't smell "fur" either, but what I associate with the smell of fur is Fritos - anyone who has a bulldog, a bull terrier or a related breed should be able to relate to that. So for me to say, no fur smell, is a good thing, unless you are looking for a tortilla-chip-scented BPAL. In fact, it would probably be much easier for me to list off things that Ivanushka does not smell like, because it's such a difficult perfume to describe. It doesn't smell like any other BPAL I can recall smelling. It is light, and warm, and musky. It's sunshiny without being bright - dappled sunlight on leaves. Not too dry and not too sweet. It has a powdery feel but isn't baby-powdery. It's beautiful and evocative - I close my eyes and picture the forest and different scenes from the story. And I wub the little deer on the label too.

Welcome to the forum & the BPAL world, Janet I thought this thread might be helpful to you, so I figured I'd cross post your request in it. If Blood Lotus is staying true and not getting sweeter on you, that can mean a lot of good things - it may mean that you just don't have a taste for overly sweet scents but that your chemistry doesn't really make things overly sweet. Lotus can be a very sweet note - some people liken it to bubble gum. Although the scent description doesn't include notes, most of the "Blood" scents contain some dragon's blood resin (and from my experience with Blood Lotus I think it does), which also has a lot of sweet qualities. Jezebel may be too sweet for you because it has a very dominant honey note - Hellfire contains tobacco, which can be sweet on the skin (my chemistry does not do this, but I know people on whom it does have this effect). In Calliope, almond could be a culprit, and Vampire Tears has a couple of "sweet" florals, honeysuckle, wisteria and white ginger, as well as green tea, which I find to be a sweet note. This doesn't mean that you will have to avoid entirely every BPAL scent that contains honey, tobacco, almond, sweet floral notes, fruit, cream or vanilla (those are the most common sources of sweetness I can think of) - but you will probably need to look for blends that also contain some dry, spicy, earthy or woody notes to balance the sweetness. You probably will have to try a lot of stuff, just to get to know your own chemistry and to get your nose acclimated to your likes and dislikes, but that can be fun, and it's not like you have a deadline or this is a contest or anything. Do expect things to morph a good bit from the wet stage to dry, it's in the nature of the beast for BPAL - but hopefully as you go along and narrow down your choices, you will end up liking the long term results just as much as that first swipe on your arm.

This is my favorite of the 13 new retail-exclusive blends. If I had to choose only one adjective, it would be "sublime." Like GRR and The_Witching_Hour, I immediately picked up a hint of a note that's in Storyville - I wonder if the same vanilla is in there, and maybe a secret blend of spices. Since Storyville is one of my favorite blends ever, that may have been my "you had me at hello" moment. But Wezwanie/Hold is no poor girl's Storyville, it has a character and beauty all its own. The hazelnut is a background player to my nose (which just goes to show you how different our noses can be, that sookster's nose gave her a peanut butter vibe!) It's mild when wet and as it dries down, I think it serves as a glue to hold everything else together. This was happy news for me, since hazelnut was the note that gave me pause when I first read the announcement and wondered which of these new blends I would like. Otherwise, it's like a greatest hits list of my favorite notes ever. Overall, this is a warm, spicy blend that some may find comforting, some may find sexy - I think it can be both, or whatever you want it to be. It's anchored by the resins, sweetened by the honey and vanilla, and spiced up with the red sandalwood, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I am going to be reaching for this one throughout the winter!

In the bottle, sweet honey, fruit and florals, all nicely balanced - but this one morphed a lot as it dried. Sometimes I don't like rose geranium if it's overly green, like broken geranium stems, but the one in Mad Kate is more on the rosey side, like an herbal rose, very lovely. The ultimate result on my skin was that the tart edge of currant, the honey-waxiness of the beeswax and that unusual rose geranium note all faded away or were overcome by the gardenia. This gardenia is gorgeous and perfect, like you're not only walking by a gardenia bush, but you've picked a blossom and you're holding it close to your face for a sniff. It has crazy throw - on my drive home I could smell gardenia even though I had applied a tiny bit and it was covered by my sweater! I decided not to buy a bottle now, afraid that I might be overwhelmed if I had Mad Kate applied on all my pulse points, but I think I will keep it on my wish list - over the years, I can't count the bottles that have struck me like this one, as if everything inside is fresh and new and all the notes are at a freshman mixer getting to know each other. Nine times out of ten when I have a bottle with that vibe, I pop it in my BPAL drawer, take it out to try again in a month, and have something fantastic. In particular, I find blends with what seems to be a bossy jasmine, gardenia or patchouli note to really benefit from a little bit of aging. I think Mad Kate is going to be a bottle that''s worth the dollar outlay and a little time investment.

They are different scents... Carnivale was a GC scent that was discontinued in October 2004. But when the Carnaval Noir series debuted in June of 2005, it was resurrected as an LE with that series, so there are probably more bottles of it floating around than many of the other scents that were discontinued in that "fell swoop" of 10/04. Carnivale is "sweet wild berry, spicy carnation and heliotrope layered over deep amber and musk."

SIN. Best cinnamon and patchouli ever. It reminds me a bit of Blue Skies and Fluffy White Clouds, which seems to have some spice in it vs. Tramp's super-green patchouliness. (If amber &/or sandalwood don't play nicely with you, it may not work, but otherwise... Sin is the ultimate. )

You should definitely have a peek through this thread - Forest and Woods Scents - there's been lots of discussion there.

Hi saracakes, and welcome to the forum! I am sure you will get some suggestions here, but you also might want to check out this thread, which covers all kinds of chocolate recommendations. Good luck!

Wow, euterpe414, if I ever figure any of this out I will definitely share with you, because we have got some similar DNA or something. You have some things on your lists I didn't think to include when I made mine (and I included some you didn't), but everything on your YES list works on me, everything on your NO list doesn't. I had approached my analysis a little bit differently, like marlena did, by rose type. If anyone's interested to see it, here it is... if not, feel free to skip it and continue the rosy chatter The Yes List: Bulgar Rose (Psyche… : but not Gypsy Queen) Bulgarian Rose (Rose Moon) Damask Rose (Maiden) Damascus Rose (Abhisarika, All Saints, Utrenyaya) Gallic Rose (Pontarlier) Moroccan Rose (Three Brides, Harlot, Lucy Westenra… but not: Rapture, Pride) Musk Rose (Kali, Titania) Red Rose (The Haunted Palace, Pulcinella and Teresina) Somalian Rose (Harlot, Queen Mab) Tea Rose (Euphrosyne, Marie, Rose Moon, Wilhemina Murray) Turkish Rose (Bearded Lady) White Rose (Parlement of Foules, Snow Moon, Ace of Hearts, Eternal, The Reaper and The Flowers, Ophelia, Dublin) Yellow Rose (Schlafende Baigneuse) And in general: Alice, Rose Red, Rakshasa The No List: Sumatran Rose (Desire) And in general: Black Rose, Blood Rose, Desire, London, Lucy’s Kiss, Moon Rose, The Peacock Queen, Wildfire I will have to go through & make some additions, like Kurukulla (although I am not sure if it's one or more of the roses, or one or more of the lotuses that do it in for me).

The Sailor's Den, from the Salon, has a very salty quality.

Well, there isn't a stand-alone thread about blends that are similar to Dublin, so no wonder you couldn't find it, dzurlady! What we do have is a couple of threads pinned at the top of Recs. One is for finding things that resemble favorite LEs, the other is for comparing GC and discontinued blends that you find to be similar. Here is a really quick way to find something simple in a multi-page thread. Open the thread where you think the information you need resides - any page will do. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, until you see the last post. At the bottom left, directly under the last post, you will see a box with the words "Enter keywords." Here, type in Dublin (or Hellion or Morocco or whatever your heart desires) and then click the button right beside the box that says "search topic." This will give you every post within the topic that contains your keyword. What I will do is leave this thread active for a bit so we can get some comments - then I will most likely merge it into the GC & discontinueds thread for the sake of keeping all those comparisons together. And I will make a note to dab on a little Dublin today - I haven't worn it lately, I have been wearing lots of resiny-spicy-gourmand things. So a change would be nice, and I can ruminate on this question a little. I'm thinking some layering might help you achieve what you are looking for, since I saw a reference to Skadi and thought that a bottle of Dublin would be easier to find... Oh, one other idea, Canpake Although it might not have helped in this case - when it was announced that Dublin was discontinued, there wasn't an opportunity to order one last bottle - you can subscribe to forum announcements. That way you can come by the forum as often or as seldom as you like, but you will get an e-mail anytime that the Lab announces updates (discontinuations often are announced then), eBay listings of rares, and other stuff like that. (The story with Dublin was that one of the Lab's artisanal suppliers had to close shop - they supplied single note components for Arachne, Dublin, Empyreal Mist, Mantis and Neo-Tokyo. So those five blends had to be discontinued. It was announced with the Thunder Moon - Blue Moon update.)

Rose geranium isn't an actual rose - it is a member of the geranium family but the scent of rose geranium essential oil does have a floral quality reminiscent of rose that gave the plant its name. I smell a lot of herbaceous, spicy notes in it as well - to my nose it really does smell like a combination of geranium leaves and roses. But it may be that those spicy green geranium notes don't agree with you, so those rose geranium blends aren't working out. I did a quick search for rose geranium scents for you and got: Ligeia (from the Maelstrom series), Rage, Resurrection of the Flesh, Garden Path With Chickens (although I don't smell it in there at all!), Vicomte de Valmont, and possibly Kostnice (although it's listed as geranium rose). I am pretty sure it's a major component in the PMS Panacea, Bitch, also.

Two threads that I think some of you might also want to take a peek at here in Recommendations: recs for the longest lasting BPAL scents, and recs for oils that have both throw and staying power. If I apply directly from a 5 ml bottle, at a minimum I tip it onto a finger once for each wrist, once again for cleavage, once again for behind ears/hairline/run fingers through my hair. I also have a lot of oils I have decanted into roller bottles and then I just roll on till I am happy with the cloud.

Since these two returned with the Yule LEs this year, you are absolved of your evilness. You'll have to think of something else naughty to do if you want to maintain some kind of evil enabler standards. I think that a lot of people who haven't found quote the "right" rose for them and who had not been able to try Rose Red or the Peacock Queen will be really pleased with one if not both. I couldn't tell you what is in each one of them - I can wear Rose Red and it smells gorgeous, like I am sticking my face in a big bouquet of fresh cut roses. But The Peacock Queen gets that dreaded powdery old rose quality on me - which also happens with Black Rose, Blood Rose, Desire, London, Lucy’s Kiss, and Moon Rose. Just to show you how serious I am about this... I even have a Word Document where I did a search for all the BPAL rose blends, sorted out the ones I could and couldn't wear, listed the types of rose the Lab uses and tried to figure out if there was a common type that was killing certain blends for me. But I can't really tell from the descriptions alone, and there are some types that appear in blends that I can wear and blends that I can't wear (for example, Moroccan rose which is in favorites Three Brides, Harlot & Lucy Westenra, but also in Delight and Rapture, which I can't wear at all).

Are you sensitive to citrus, Nia? Or are the spots where you're using Phobos getting any sun exposure when you're wearing it? Citrus oils are notorious for causing photosensitivity and the grapefruit in Phobos may be concentrated enough to be causing problems for you, either combined w/sun exposure or because you're particularly sensitive to it.

I think I like you. I am going to do a little mod-thing and add anise, aniseed, licorice, liquoirice, and fennel to the subtitle, so this can serve as the thread for people searching for those scents forevermore. I was surprised there wasn't a thread dedicated to this already - after three and a half years, there are only so many things that haven't been covered in Recommendations, you know? I need to go peruse the Will-Call threads to see what people thought of La Befana. I have it in my head that candy charcoal = licorice, and that kept me from ordering a bottle (I am not a fan of licorice smells or tastes, I don't even like fennel as a vegetable ) But of course, if it has licorice, the licorice lovers can rejoice!

Here's a tip for searching longer threads, just FYI (cut and pasted from my post in Beyond Perfume): Open the topic that you are interested in - for example: "Bottles, Containers, supplies galore," "BPAL in Oil Burners, Warmers, Diffusers," "Solid BPAL Perfumes." Then scroll down to the bottom of any page of that topic, where you can see the last post on the page. Right below the last post, you will see a box on the left that contains "Enter Keywords" with a radio button beside it that's labeled "Search Topic." This handy feature will find a list of posts for you within the topic that contain your search term. So if you are only looking for atomizers, search the "Bottles" topic for that. You are thereby relieved of the giant pain in the ass of reading 18 pages of posts looking for what you need.

I'm pretty sure that BPAL has never made a blend with a blueberry note. Maybe someone will mention something that reminded them of blueberry, though. I searched the reviews forums for mentions of blueberry and this is what I found. To replicate the search, search for blueberry, highlight the Reviews subforum, choose Search All Posts and Show Results As Posts.

Hi miyamo! Welcome to the forum (and Recommendations). I'd definitely put The Candy Butcher on the list - it is only available as a 5 ml bottle as it's one of the Carnaval Diabolique LEs, but you can always try to find a decant from a fellow member in the swaps/sales threads or pursue swapping your bottle away if it doesn''t work for you. It's definitely a dark chocolate scent but with a certain creaminess that makes it seem like more than just chocolate to me, like a chocolate baked good. I can't guarantee it = chocolate chip cookie, but I do think it's worth a try. The closest thing in a single scent (i.e. no layering required) that I can think of is Lump of Coal, which smelled like brownies baking in the oven, very similar to the smell of chocolate chip cookies to my nose. I almost hate to mention it because it's incredibly scarce and hard to find, as it was only available during the Yuletide Inquisition 2 years ago, and was one of three scents you might have received if you were deemed to be naughty. There are lots of very skilled layer-ers and combiners around here so I have a feeling you will get some good suggestions that will top mine.

I think Saw Scaled Viper is the new Inferno. (Inferno used to be the guaranteed skin scorcher... ) ClareN's theory about varying levels of cinnamon or cassia in different blends makes a lot of sense to me. It could definitely explain why you could wear certain blends with these spicy notes and others could give you redness and burning. I have had some success diluting spicy blends - Bengal and Al Sharain both gave me the dreaded cinnamon/cassia welts, so I diluted each by about a third with jojoba oil in roller bottles and it seems to have done the trick. I'd advise doing this with a small amount and testing it on yourself a few times before diving in and diluting an entire 5 ml bottle - once you've diluted an oil, it is not kosher to swap or sell it on the secondary market. (Basically, it falls under the same rules about swapping or selling a product made with BPAL - you've literally made a new product, 66% Strength Bengal for example.) Another option for wearing spicy blends can be to make yourself a lotion with them - they are usually quite strong scents, so an imp's worth in 8 ounces of unscented lotion can dilute it enough that it doesn't irritate your skin but you can still enjoy the scent. Another thing to experiment with in small scale first, make a teeny amount and test it on a small area of skin before applying it with abandon. And there's always the scent locket or the room scent option. But if you suspect at all that you are actually experiencing an allergic reaction rather than the kind of sensitivity to "hot" spice notes people have described, cross these ideas off your list and swap that oil away, pronto. What Myotis described sounds like the classic reaction, although I also get a little burning in addition to turning red where I have applied something spicy - but itching, hives, welts that spread beyond the spot where you applied the oil, are all indicators of an allergy.

If you love 51, you need to get your paws on a Silver Cloud ballistic from Lush. It's one of the Christmas LE products for this year - I didn't check to see if they are on the NA site yet, but they were in the store here in Atlanta when I went on Sunday and I got one. Now, I rarely find Lush's descriptions of their scents to describe them that accurately, and this one's no exception. Here's what I got from the UK site: As it hits the water, a whole concoction of sweet orange and lime essential oils, laced with floral gardenia fills your bathroom with a reviving scent. Close your eyes and you`ll feel like you`re floating on cloud nine. Open them again and you`ll find yourself surrounded in a tiny shoal of silvery sparkles in the turquoise blue water. Matched with Mark`s fruity fragrance, Silver Cloud is one of Noriko`s finest creations. I haven't bathed with mine yet, but I was huffing it this morning and trying to put my finger on what it reminded me of when I made the 51 connection. It's very similar to the early stages of 51, bright fruit and white florals - which is very unexpected and refreshing for a Christmas product. I'm really rationing myself on baths right now since we're in a terrible water crisis, but I'm looking forward to trying this one out and until then, I'm letting it sit on my dresser in a little dish as a pomander.

Just a quick note about searching. If you are looking for a thread that you know you have seen and are having trouble finding it, please do the following. First, try a search by topics only. Also limit your search to the subforum where you think you saw it by highlighting that subforum in the search form. Try Recommendations, of course, but sometimes you will have seen a thread in BPAL Chatter that covers a similar topic that doesn't exist here. Anyway, limiting to topics only will definitely help keep your results to a manageable number and limiting to subforums narrows it even more. If you still cannot find the topic, please do not start a new thread asking where it is located. PM the moderator(s) for the subforum where you expected to find it for assistance.

The thread is here. Try using the search term "TAL" searching titles in Recommendations.

I would definitely e-mail customer service for that one, TofuWarrior. The folks at the Lab are the only people who could have the definitive answer for that question.