ivyandpeony

I think that birch can sometimes smell like camphor or wintergreen, too - and it can vary from batch to batch of the component. Back when the Lab did a Dracula series for Halloween (2006, I think?) there was a blend called The Carpathian Mountains. I sniffed someone else's bottle and loved it, but the bottle I got when I ordered turned out to be a bit too camphor-y for me. And Hamadryad was well known for batch variations (minty vs. non-minty, which I think could have been due to birch with and without a camphor-y component.)

Thanks so much for the suggestions! I'm happy to have tracked down decants of the other pumpkin patches I was interested in - Alice, Morocco & Dorian. I love Samhain as a room scent but it just doesn't work as a perfume for me. But what's funny is that my list of top 10 GCs would definitely include Snake Oil, Sin, Alice, & Morocco and possibly Dorian. I've been intrigued from the start by the idea of Alice in the Pumpkin Patch but I wondered if delicate Alice could stand up to the pumpkin & spices.

I'm thinking that Snakes & Sin may smell a little more different from one another as they've aged a tiny bit, so I think I won't rush to divest myself of one or the other.

OK, Pumpkin Patch fans, I need some help. . . I bought Sin in the Pumpkin Patch and Snakes in the Pumpkin Patch. They smell really, really similar on the skin. I love Alice, Morocco and Dorian, but didn't buy those pumpkin versions. Tell me if I need to keep both of the ones that I have, if one can go, &/or if I need to add one of the ones I skipped! I'm completely befuddled.

Last year's pumpkin patch had a vanilla-pumpkin blend that smelled caramel-y to a lot of people (Pumpkin V from 2012). If you really want to avoid hunting down LEs, you might try layering Miskatonic U with Jack to see if it comes close.

Lemon-Scented Sticky Bat is, to me, just intense sugared lemon drops. (You can find it here - http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/stickybat.html) I love Shanghai but the green tea note is very prominent to me. But then again, green tea smells sort of lemony to my nose. And Shanghai is GC so you can order an imp to try it out.

I hate to bump this since its a tad old, but does anyone have recommendations for a nearly pure vanilla scent through BPAL, without having to get your hands on the ever elusive single note?

 

I've tried reading through these 19 pages, and have found recommendations for nearly every type of vanilla but just the pure scent without anything extra. I'd give extra super and bonus points if the recs were GC, as opposed to LEs!

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

I know it varies for all of us, but for me the purest, simplest vanilla is Detestable Putrescence. You can find it here: http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/gris.html

There's a thread right here about lemon scents - http://www.bpal.org/topic/20230-lemon-lemon-lemony-goodness I am sure you will find lots of ideas! (I'll merge this thread with that one after you've gotten some more responses.)

I love that softness you get from orange blossom & neroli as well. A few years back I read a book on perfumery and in a brief discussion of white florals, the author said that most of them contain a substance called indole that contributes to the deep, heady scent. Indole also naturally occurs in feces. It really clicked on a light bulb over my head. I love white florals, I really do, but sometimes it's like they're so good they're bad. Or vice-versa.

My favorite orange blossom scent is Jezebel. I think the honey & orange blossom are a great combination. Now I have to go thru my imps and bottles and see what else I've been loving with these notes!

I tried Jack today and I'm praying a Theme in Yellow is nothing like it. Jack was all fake buttered popcorn (like popcorn jelly beans) and Citronella...

 

The first time I tried Jack, all I got was the buttered popcorn smell too. It was so buttery it made me ill. I stuck the imp away and forgot about it so much that I didn't even think to be cautious the first time I ordered Halloween pumpkin scents. I finally remembered to try Jack a couple of years later, and the butter had faded and it had aged into something I could actually wear. But of all the pumpkin scents I've tried since then, and I have many, only one has been a huge disappointment, and that was The Shattered Pumpkin, from tthe Sleepy Hollows in 2008. It was just a watery pumpkin guts scent and I was so glad I only ordered a decant. (Typically I go straight to bottle purchases for my Halloweenies.) That pumpkin note is the only thing that will keep me from eventually ordering Theme in Yellow, if it smells like raw pumpkin guts with a candle burning inside. I just don't care for that smell.

 

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YES, that is exactly the smell I was thinking of when I was talking about how pumpkin can have a weird vegetable smell! If I want to smell that, I'll just carve a pumpkin. Or open a can. I don't want to wear it.

I have tried most of the returning scents and have bottles of the ones that I love - enough bottles that I may not make an effort to hoard more, but I never say never Day of the Skulls and Dia de los Muertos are two of my "older" favorites, and I really loved Ghosts In Love and Le Revenant last year. And I have numerous years' incarnations of Samhain. Odd thing is I very, very rarely wear it. It gets very heavy and masculine as a perfume on me, but I love making room sprays with it or using it in an oil warmer. It really is the ultimate autumn scent.

I bought Hell-Gate the first year it appeared - it took me a long time to decide whether I liked it or not. I love the clove, but the other notes end up making it very masculine on me (this is a recurring theme. My chemistry doesn't seem to possess much ability to feminize or sweeten a scent, so if I want those qualities I have to buy them up front!) I am pretty sure it's the black musk that's the ringleader. But it smells incredible on so many people.

The really sweet, candy-based scents are often just way too sweet for me (I'm thinking Creepy, Sticky Pillowcase, Suck It, those types of scents). But Ooky is tempting me! It sounds like it might be brightened up with the spices and lemon zest.

Jack was one of the first imps I ordered yon many years ago. . . and wow, I hated it! The buttery note kills it for me (and has killed every scent since, where it's been included). But I've found many pumpkin scents I do love along the way. Pumpkin Queen, Pumpkin Latte, Pumpkin Cheesecake, quite a few of the pumpkin patch scents from its many iterations too. So I don't think the butteriness accompanies the pumpkin in many BPAL perfumes.

I think Theme in Yellow sounds incredible - it's on my list!

It is that time of year again - possibly my favorite update! I haven't even begun to narrow my huge list down yet. I'm still at the "buy it now, or wait for reviews" stage of evaluating all my wants.

I can attest that Sin in the Pumpkin Patch & Snakes in the Pumpkin Patch are on my must list. I tried both of them at DragonCon and was wishing I could take them both home that day. The pumpkin is rich and orange without any kind of vegetable quality and just deepens the spices in each blend. A World Where There Are Octobers was also there but I didn't skin test it. It seemed very woody and I liked it on bottle sniff, but in general woody scents need some sweet component(s) to work on me.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the must-haves and meh's as the Halloween season approaches!

I'm not sure if I'm going to just order it now or wait til reviews come in, but I am really intrigued by Autumn Fancies. Sounds like it might be a fantastic scent in this category!

. . . And although I LOVE coconut, I don't think I want coconut either. Unless its not a foody coconut and its something quite cool rather than creamy

 

Please only GC scents. I would feel too guilty using the more expensive scents on a room.

Have you tried Eden? It's in the Wanderlust category. It's a cool coconut scent - very green and figgy as opposed to a creamy candied coconut. The green component reminds me of the bright figginess of The Apothecary, which would also be a great room scent.

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The other skin reaction I get from BPAL is different. It shows up almost immediately, within five minutes of application, and turns the affected area bright red and itchy. If I wash off immediately and apply anti-itch creme, the skin goes back to normal within an hour. I got this one from Plunder (tea leaf, cassia, cinnamon bark, clove, allspice, sandalwood, tobacco, peppercorn, and nutmeg) the second time I wore it, and strangely enough also from Jailbait ("Sticky pink bubblegum and the thick, sweet scent of orange and cherry lollipops smeared over a breath of heady womanly perfume.") For the record I blind tested Jailbait and thought there was cinnamon in it.

 

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That's the exact reaction I get from cinnamon & cassia. I've even reacted to the same two perfumes! I don't avoid those notes but I do use caution if I'm planning to test or wear a scent with one or both. Always wait as long as possible after showering, apply some unscented lotion to make a bit of a barrier and an odd one I've learned: don't wear those notes in warmer weather or when I'm doing something that might make me too warm. I had Jailbait on one day and got a call that my out-of-town guests were headed in a day early. In my cleaning and organizing frenzy I started getting red and itchy everywhere I'd dabbed Jailbait!

Oh, and the same routine works for me too - wash it off and apply some hydrocortisone cream. Back to normal in a jiffy.

I've never tried Uninhibited, but I found a list of notes:

Top notes: bergamot, orange and aldehydes.

Heart: heliotrope, ylang-ylang, geranium, rose, jasmine and tobacco.

Base: cedar, musk, sandalwood, vanilla and vetiver.

I'll see if I can think of anything that sounds similar!

And now I have Gypsies Tramps & Thieves stuck in my head too.

I'm going to lock this topic so we can keep the convo all in one spot. Thank you for posting the link, SadariEveningstar!

Bumping this because I got a PM asking about this, then somehow it disappeared before I could respond! I apologize to the sender!

Funny thing is, after not wearing this in what seems like forever, I pulled it out last weekend and wore it Friday and Saturday. And that has inspired me to try again to see if I can find a good BPAL combo that replicates it! I only have this teeny roller bottle of UD Sin and I know it won't last forever.

Dungeon Crawl is somewhat hard to find, but I find it really evokes a wet, cold stone basement/dungeon.

That was one of the first scents to pop into my head, too!

My two favorites that would fit this bill are Carfax Abbey and The Castle, both from the Dracula (Halloween) series from fall 2006. So they could be harder to find just because of the amount of time that's passed, but you can keep an eye out in Swaps and in Lab overstock sales on Etsy. (Both have aged beautifully, BTW, so that's always a plus.)

The Castle - A distant whisper of pine, wet moss and dry leaves passing through vast halls and winding dungeons whose scent bears the memory of blood, faded splendor, imperial elegance and stunning violence. I actually find this much warmer than expected - I think there may be some amber & patchouli in there representing the "faded splendor" and "imperial elegance." It is one of the very few BPAL scents with blood in the description that either doesn't contain dragon's blood resin or contains so little that it doesn't get sharp on my skin, too.

Carfax Abbey - The scent of abandoned places, of desolation and emptiness: heavy woods and thin dusty herbs touched by the wafting incense of a nearby chapel. This does have a dusty quality but the woods and resins are dominant. It truly does evoke an empty, desolate church.

I'm one of the few people who didn't click with Black Lace. It was super-heavy masculine tobacco on me to the exclusion of all the other notes. I love Snake Charmer but it is a va-va-voom scent so I don't slather it on every day - still, my collection wouldn't be complete without it. I find Mme. Moriarty to have lots of red musk in comparison to SC.

Regardless of which one you choose, I am sure you can swap it for something else that's equally sought-after if it turns out to be a disappointment!

I'm really excited about the myrrh single note! I love resins and I can ID frankincense and amber pretty easily, but I think sometimes myrrh gets tromped by other notes.

I think Antaria's advice is spot-on. Grab any "holy grail" LEs that happen to come along while you're pregnant and you can swap or sell them later if they end up not working or if your chemistry decides that a certain note doesn't work anymore. Congratulations!

Hi there pznivy! I am sorry that you were disappointed in your first imps - but hopefully you feel better after getting so much good advice from other members. I wanted to give you a link to an existing thread - Why do scents turn to baby powder on me? Feel free to continue the dialogue here - ultimately I will probably merge this thread into that one so the valuable discussion will be there for whoever may need it.

For a figs & honey scent, Hetairae would definitely be my pick. Those are the predominant notes on my skin.

When I sampled the White Sandalwood and Fig hair gloss, I got so much sandalwood that I am having trouble remembering exactly what type of fig is in it! Eden is a really bright green fig scent - it is lovely, but it's very different from Hetairae to me. Hetairae is rich, dark, ripe figs.

I thought I would bump this thread since we have vetiver single note available from the Lab this month. Here's my take on it! Vetiver isn't a note that I can wear often - I actually like the smell of it but it's usually bad when it's on my skin. It amps up and doesn't ever mellow for me. Still, I love it in a couple of blends, particularly Tombeur. I smell it in a lot of blends where smoke or leather are listed as notes. It also seems to age really well. Older bottles of vetiver-containing blends seem much smoother to me.

If I had to recommend vetiver scents, Tombeur would be first for me and I would also encourage everyone to try Azathoth. So what are your recs? Do you have any "vetiver for the vetiver-adverse" recommendations? Are you going to buy the single note while it's available?

Rose Red is the scent that makes me think of a florist's shop - but now you all have given me the idea to try it layered with Spanish Red Carnation.