[Multi] Introduction and some Reviews
Anothe refugee from alchemylab here. Hiya! I hear you people are nice and don't bite n00bs! *winning smile*
My Dragon Moon order came a little while ago (though I didn't get any Dragon Moon in it-- is it still a Dragon Moon order?) and I've been steadily testing my way through the 12 imps I ordered and several frimps I received.
I think I did my homework on how to format a review post here, but if I screwed anything up, I apologize. I know I am sort of jumping in the deep end here. :P I've been writing these over the past couple of days and was just about ready to post them-- plus I figure there aren't a lot of reviews of some of these around yet, so maybe if I bring some, you nice people will like me and not throw rocks at me.
Mouse's Long and Sad Tale - Vanilla, two ambers, sweet pea and white sandalwood. Sigh. It was so good when it first went on-- even the sweet pea, which is traditionally death to me, was behaving itself. So pretty and sweet and gently spicy and feminine. Like a smart, sassy, nicely groomed girl. And then the amber amps, and it amps, and it amps some more, and just like in every amber blend, once it dries down I might as well be wearing pure amber resin. I love the scent of amber, luckily for me on accounta the ampage, but I'd like it not to overpower everything else in a blend that contains it, damn it. Ah well.
Eat Me - Three white cakes, vanilla, and red and black currants. In the imp this was pure cheesecake and much, much too sweet, but on the skin and as it dried it turned into a nice, light angel food cake with some sweet, round, juicy berries. Really quite yummy-- one of the better sweet-foody scents I've tried, I'd say-- but not a must-have. I think. I'll keep the imp around though.
Drink Me - However, this bottle was not marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off. This one fairly knocked me over backwards, in a good way. I used to try to imagine that taste when I read the Alice books, and this isn't what I imagined, but it's positively delicious. I smell pineapple right off, but without any sharpness or stingingness-- a very creamy pineapple, like a pineapple pudding, which I reckon is the custard, and there's a lovely cooked cherry to it as well, not the nasty cough-syrup cherry that I sometimes get from BPAL cherry blends, but definite cherry pie/tart. I don't get the nasty butter note that ruined Jack and Snowblind for me, but there's a savory tang to it that could be the buttered toast, and I don't get meat exactly, but something maybe that could be the glaze for a roasted turkey-- savory and subtle. And there's a sweetness to the whole thing that isn't overpowering candy-toffee, but reminds me a tad bit of the less overwhelming aspect of Gluttony. It only gets better as it dries down, and twelve hours later there's just a lingering sweet creamy vanilla, like dessert, that miraculously doesn't go plastic on my skin like so much BPAL vanilla does. In summation: I want a bottle of this.
Hymn to Proserpine - The darkening amber of faith’s sunset, deepened by the dark fruits of Proserpine. Amber amber amber pomegranateycurrantyamber. Amber. The end. Heh. No, the amber doesn't quite overwhelm the fruits, but the tinge of fruit that does manage to linger is too tart for me. I like this one, but I like other amber blends better. I'm not much for fruit anyway.
Pool of Tears - A sea of salty tears drowning out Alice's light floral perfume. Lovely. Probably the best "ocean air" scent I've smelled from BPAL. The flowers are fresh and pretty. I'll probably want a bottle of this eventually, but since I just got bottles of my previous two favorite fresh/aquatic/light springtime scents, Amsterdam and Sea of Glass, and since it's not that different from Sea of Glass-- just a tad milder and more feminine-- I'm fine with holding off. I'll keep the imp around and maybe when my Sea of Glass runs out I'll get a bottle of this instead.
Olokun - the glorious, unknowable gloom of the ocean floor. Speaking of seas, this is a very interesting interpretation. I got it because, well, I'm always looking for ocean scents. And this is one, but it's definitely not a beach scent. Nor is it the clear, bright ocean of Sea of Glass, which always makes me think of the "utter east" in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where the water is so clear and the light so strong that Lucy, looking down off the ship, can see its black, shoe-sized shadow fathoms below. But I wouldn't call this a gloomy scent either. To me it's a deep blue-green, and silent and mysterious and beautiful. In terms of notes-- definite grapefruit (not surprising as every remotely "ocean"-themed BPAL I've ever smelled has been grapefruit), with a dark shadow over it. Sort of like I imagine R'lyeh from the reviews, though I've never smelled it. I really like this, but it might be a little-- intense-- for everyday wear. Yes, I'd travel under the sea, but I don't think I'd like to live there.
Death on a Pale Horse - empty white musk and mint seeped with solemn lavender, doleful patchouli and vetiver, scythe-sharp yuzu and lime, with geranium bourbon, white sandalwood and calla lily. From the imp, and wet, this was overwhelmingly dark, earthy, "dirty" patchouli and vetiver, but amazingly (since normally my skin amps patchouli), it dried into a very pretty, light, sweet scent. My chemistry does tend to take the edge off of the tart fruit scents, so I'd guess what I'm smelling is the "blunted" scythe-- the sweetness of yuzu and lime without the sharpness-- plus sweet fresh lily, white musk, and just a hint of sweetened mint, with a little glug of bourbon to blur the whole thing and sandalwood, vetiver and a teeny bit of patchouli grounding it. This is one I'd consider getting a bottle of, although I suspect I might get a better version of the same thing from Whitechapel (White musk, lime, lilac and citron), which I haven't tried yet. And the drastic transformation here is a teeny bit disconcerting. I wonder how it would do mixed into lotion?
Himerus - juniper, sandalwood, rosewood, red musk, orchid, bergamot and lilac. Wow. Head-y. Very sweet and heady. I guess that makes sense since most of the components are sweet and bright, but I guess I was expecting the woods to ground it a bit. It's not the slightest bit grounded. I mostly get orchid, juniper, red musk, and a heady floral that could be lilac, with a bit of sweet bergamot. It's pretty and sweet-- just a bit TOO sweet for me, I think. Too much. Some real staying power, too.
Bess - Rosemary, orange flower, grape spirit, five rose variants, lemon peel, and mint. I ordered this before the final verdict on rose = Ivory soap had been handed down from the high scent arbiters in my brain, so I receive it with a feeling of preordained doom, which is only intensified by the lovely smell of it in the imp-- a sweet, gentle rosemary-mint-citron blend that reminds me both of Propaganda Bath's Atmospherium soap and of my dear and madly efficacious Ajna without the alarming anise note. And, AND, it reminds me of High John the Conquerer, my first BPAL ever, which I swapped away early on because I had a negative voodoo-related experience with it but which smelled like bright herbs and grapes. But what will the roses do on my skin? Oh, what?
*weeps* It's a beautiful BPAL miracle. It's working. IT'S WORKING!!!
Yay. :) This is excellent. I think it will be very good for chakra work, too.
Cheshire Cat - Grapefruit, red currant, dark musk, Roman chamomile, delphinium, and lavender. This was lovely, fresh, sweet, soothing and wonderful... for the thirty seconds it lasted on me. Then it was nothing. Not even a smile remained. Very, very sad. I may have to try this one in a scent locket, because I really did like it until it went poof.
Now we get into the frimps:
Thanatos - Dry white sandalwood and soft Siamese benzoin over a lugubrious blend of myrrh, Moroccan rose, mastic, tomb moss and a thin whiff of Greek incense. This is... reminiscent of Medea without the berries, and also really, really, really good, and would be a no-brainer for a bottle if that nasty Ivory-soap scent that rose ALWAYS turns into on me didn't keep peeking out of the middle of all that fabulous rich spicy incense and resin and wood... ohhh, and that delicious moss. I'll give it another trial before I decide for sure. But I can barely keep my hand away from my nose. Mad staying power on this one, too, and a tendency to morph but only into better and better things. This may be love. Out, damned rose.
Athens - voluptuous myrrh, golden honey, red wine, and sweet flowers. I know BPAL honey goes to cat pee on me, and red wine is usually a no-no as well, but I swiped it on-- again, just in case. It was nice for about a minute-- I love myrrh, the honey was a tad overwhelming but nice, and the flowers were very pretty-- and then, hello cat pee. Alas.
Whip - black leather and damp red rose. Oh, gag me. I love the name, but... leather and rose, on me? That's like handing a vampire a crucifix made out of garlic. I tried it on just in case, because you never know, and... NO.
Jazz Funeral - Bittersweet bay rum, bourbon, and a host of funeral flowers with a touch of graveyard dirt, magnolia and Spanish Moss. Smells, perhaps not surprisingly, almost like a dead ringer for Burial (The scent of upturned cemetary loam mingling with floral offerings to the dead) but overlaid with sweet, strong booze. Let's say Burial layered with Baron Samedi-- which is pretty appropriate, right? I like it-- it evokes a mood really well-- but I don't think it's for me.
In closing, this community seems really nice. I'm glad I got pointed here. :)
My Dragon Moon order came a little while ago (though I didn't get any Dragon Moon in it-- is it still a Dragon Moon order?) and I've been steadily testing my way through the 12 imps I ordered and several frimps I received.
I think I did my homework on how to format a review post here, but if I screwed anything up, I apologize. I know I am sort of jumping in the deep end here. :P I've been writing these over the past couple of days and was just about ready to post them-- plus I figure there aren't a lot of reviews of some of these around yet, so maybe if I bring some, you nice people will like me and not throw rocks at me.
Mouse's Long and Sad Tale - Vanilla, two ambers, sweet pea and white sandalwood. Sigh. It was so good when it first went on-- even the sweet pea, which is traditionally death to me, was behaving itself. So pretty and sweet and gently spicy and feminine. Like a smart, sassy, nicely groomed girl. And then the amber amps, and it amps, and it amps some more, and just like in every amber blend, once it dries down I might as well be wearing pure amber resin. I love the scent of amber, luckily for me on accounta the ampage, but I'd like it not to overpower everything else in a blend that contains it, damn it. Ah well.
Eat Me - Three white cakes, vanilla, and red and black currants. In the imp this was pure cheesecake and much, much too sweet, but on the skin and as it dried it turned into a nice, light angel food cake with some sweet, round, juicy berries. Really quite yummy-- one of the better sweet-foody scents I've tried, I'd say-- but not a must-have. I think. I'll keep the imp around though.
Drink Me - However, this bottle was not marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off. This one fairly knocked me over backwards, in a good way. I used to try to imagine that taste when I read the Alice books, and this isn't what I imagined, but it's positively delicious. I smell pineapple right off, but without any sharpness or stingingness-- a very creamy pineapple, like a pineapple pudding, which I reckon is the custard, and there's a lovely cooked cherry to it as well, not the nasty cough-syrup cherry that I sometimes get from BPAL cherry blends, but definite cherry pie/tart. I don't get the nasty butter note that ruined Jack and Snowblind for me, but there's a savory tang to it that could be the buttered toast, and I don't get meat exactly, but something maybe that could be the glaze for a roasted turkey-- savory and subtle. And there's a sweetness to the whole thing that isn't overpowering candy-toffee, but reminds me a tad bit of the less overwhelming aspect of Gluttony. It only gets better as it dries down, and twelve hours later there's just a lingering sweet creamy vanilla, like dessert, that miraculously doesn't go plastic on my skin like so much BPAL vanilla does. In summation: I want a bottle of this.
Hymn to Proserpine - The darkening amber of faith’s sunset, deepened by the dark fruits of Proserpine. Amber amber amber pomegranateycurrantyamber. Amber. The end. Heh. No, the amber doesn't quite overwhelm the fruits, but the tinge of fruit that does manage to linger is too tart for me. I like this one, but I like other amber blends better. I'm not much for fruit anyway.
Pool of Tears - A sea of salty tears drowning out Alice's light floral perfume. Lovely. Probably the best "ocean air" scent I've smelled from BPAL. The flowers are fresh and pretty. I'll probably want a bottle of this eventually, but since I just got bottles of my previous two favorite fresh/aquatic/light springtime scents, Amsterdam and Sea of Glass, and since it's not that different from Sea of Glass-- just a tad milder and more feminine-- I'm fine with holding off. I'll keep the imp around and maybe when my Sea of Glass runs out I'll get a bottle of this instead.
Olokun - the glorious, unknowable gloom of the ocean floor. Speaking of seas, this is a very interesting interpretation. I got it because, well, I'm always looking for ocean scents. And this is one, but it's definitely not a beach scent. Nor is it the clear, bright ocean of Sea of Glass, which always makes me think of the "utter east" in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where the water is so clear and the light so strong that Lucy, looking down off the ship, can see its black, shoe-sized shadow fathoms below. But I wouldn't call this a gloomy scent either. To me it's a deep blue-green, and silent and mysterious and beautiful. In terms of notes-- definite grapefruit (not surprising as every remotely "ocean"-themed BPAL I've ever smelled has been grapefruit), with a dark shadow over it. Sort of like I imagine R'lyeh from the reviews, though I've never smelled it. I really like this, but it might be a little-- intense-- for everyday wear. Yes, I'd travel under the sea, but I don't think I'd like to live there.
Death on a Pale Horse - empty white musk and mint seeped with solemn lavender, doleful patchouli and vetiver, scythe-sharp yuzu and lime, with geranium bourbon, white sandalwood and calla lily. From the imp, and wet, this was overwhelmingly dark, earthy, "dirty" patchouli and vetiver, but amazingly (since normally my skin amps patchouli), it dried into a very pretty, light, sweet scent. My chemistry does tend to take the edge off of the tart fruit scents, so I'd guess what I'm smelling is the "blunted" scythe-- the sweetness of yuzu and lime without the sharpness-- plus sweet fresh lily, white musk, and just a hint of sweetened mint, with a little glug of bourbon to blur the whole thing and sandalwood, vetiver and a teeny bit of patchouli grounding it. This is one I'd consider getting a bottle of, although I suspect I might get a better version of the same thing from Whitechapel (White musk, lime, lilac and citron), which I haven't tried yet. And the drastic transformation here is a teeny bit disconcerting. I wonder how it would do mixed into lotion?
Himerus - juniper, sandalwood, rosewood, red musk, orchid, bergamot and lilac. Wow. Head-y. Very sweet and heady. I guess that makes sense since most of the components are sweet and bright, but I guess I was expecting the woods to ground it a bit. It's not the slightest bit grounded. I mostly get orchid, juniper, red musk, and a heady floral that could be lilac, with a bit of sweet bergamot. It's pretty and sweet-- just a bit TOO sweet for me, I think. Too much. Some real staying power, too.
Bess - Rosemary, orange flower, grape spirit, five rose variants, lemon peel, and mint. I ordered this before the final verdict on rose = Ivory soap had been handed down from the high scent arbiters in my brain, so I receive it with a feeling of preordained doom, which is only intensified by the lovely smell of it in the imp-- a sweet, gentle rosemary-mint-citron blend that reminds me both of Propaganda Bath's Atmospherium soap and of my dear and madly efficacious Ajna without the alarming anise note. And, AND, it reminds me of High John the Conquerer, my first BPAL ever, which I swapped away early on because I had a negative voodoo-related experience with it but which smelled like bright herbs and grapes. But what will the roses do on my skin? Oh, what?
*weeps* It's a beautiful BPAL miracle. It's working. IT'S WORKING!!!
Yay. :) This is excellent. I think it will be very good for chakra work, too.
Cheshire Cat - Grapefruit, red currant, dark musk, Roman chamomile, delphinium, and lavender. This was lovely, fresh, sweet, soothing and wonderful... for the thirty seconds it lasted on me. Then it was nothing. Not even a smile remained. Very, very sad. I may have to try this one in a scent locket, because I really did like it until it went poof.
Now we get into the frimps:
Thanatos - Dry white sandalwood and soft Siamese benzoin over a lugubrious blend of myrrh, Moroccan rose, mastic, tomb moss and a thin whiff of Greek incense. This is... reminiscent of Medea without the berries, and also really, really, really good, and would be a no-brainer for a bottle if that nasty Ivory-soap scent that rose ALWAYS turns into on me didn't keep peeking out of the middle of all that fabulous rich spicy incense and resin and wood... ohhh, and that delicious moss. I'll give it another trial before I decide for sure. But I can barely keep my hand away from my nose. Mad staying power on this one, too, and a tendency to morph but only into better and better things. This may be love. Out, damned rose.
Athens - voluptuous myrrh, golden honey, red wine, and sweet flowers. I know BPAL honey goes to cat pee on me, and red wine is usually a no-no as well, but I swiped it on-- again, just in case. It was nice for about a minute-- I love myrrh, the honey was a tad overwhelming but nice, and the flowers were very pretty-- and then, hello cat pee. Alas.
Whip - black leather and damp red rose. Oh, gag me. I love the name, but... leather and rose, on me? That's like handing a vampire a crucifix made out of garlic. I tried it on just in case, because you never know, and... NO.
Jazz Funeral - Bittersweet bay rum, bourbon, and a host of funeral flowers with a touch of graveyard dirt, magnolia and Spanish Moss. Smells, perhaps not surprisingly, almost like a dead ringer for Burial (The scent of upturned cemetary loam mingling with floral offerings to the dead) but overlaid with sweet, strong booze. Let's say Burial layered with Baron Samedi-- which is pretty appropriate, right? I like it-- it evokes a mood really well-- but I don't think it's for me.
In closing, this community seems really nice. I'm glad I got pointed here. :)