November 15, 2010

BPAL - The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

This was a frimp from the lab :o)

Wet: warm fruit with a hint of spice and a background of grass and hay

Dry: still fruity but without any tartness to it. Perhaps sweet pear + something floral. Good that the spicy feeling didn't stay, in the first moment it felt like one of whose "spice" scents that make me nauseous and my skin amps them like crazy - instead it turned into a kind of honey underneath the fruit.

Later. Whoa ... this is just getting sweeter and sweeter, the honey seems to grow on me. Time to have a look if there even is honey in this blend from Rappaccini's Garden:
Whiffs of cinnamon bark, almond, and spikenard surround a perfect fruit, whose scent is akin to a tamarind, with the grace of a fine grape, as warm and rich as a fresh fig, glistening red like pomegranate seeds, and as crisp as an apple.
No honey. But okay, something like tamarind! Yes, that explains the sweetness. I really can't get any apple nor pomegranate - there could be a hint of grape - but it's a really overripe grape.

No no no, this just is not the right scent for me, far too sweet! I'm not the fruity scent person anyway but if I wear a fruitscent I want it to be fresh.

Easy verdict: Absolutly no bottle ;o)

November 11, 2010

BPAL - Haunted

Wet: Sweet citrus

Dry: Still citrus - this is funny because I pretested this scent a few weeks ago and back then it was a amber-foody beauty I adored - but now it's ... just so different! I'm not a citrus-fan, so this one is really not my alley.

Lets have a look at the lab's description under Ars Moriendi:
A mournful, poignant scent, thick with foreboding. Soft golden amber darkened with a touch of murky black musk.
Well - obviously my skin is confused. Back at the first test I knew that this scent should not be foody. Now it's not foody but fruity and that's wrong too. I just don't get it.

Both scents don't fit the description at all - todays citrus is everything but not mournful - it is sunny and happy. And the warm amber scent is very comfortable and nice - perhaps hauted by a nice blanket to wrap myself in ;o)

A bit later: Now it's baby-powder ... dead on.

A lot later: Aah, now it's like the first time I used it - amber and a bit foody, really nice. I'll have to think about this one. My favorite amber scent is still Blood Amber - and I'm not sure if I want to wait more than one hour for this scent to become nice. Without Blood Amber I guess I'd go for this one. I'll have an eye on it while the imp ages a bit, perhaps it becomes better, otherwise this won't pop up my bottle wishlist.

November 9, 2010

BPAL - Halloween: Brooklyn 2010

I confess: I just ordered this decant because I loooove NYC - so I just had to have this one, even if the labs description did not call out for me:
Flowering dogwood, weeping cherry, Korean pine, camellia, moonflower, Alberta spruce, arborvitae, and crab apples.
Wet this is a sharp scent. Aquatic mixed with smashed floral stems and a hint of some sour fruit.

As it dries down it gets a lot more gentle. Now there are wet trees, and wet leaves on the gravel in a park.

My skin seems to eat this one - it has no trow at all - which is too bad because it is a very interesting scent. It's not a "perfumy" scent to me - it's just very beautiful, conjuring up a perfect park scene after a heavy rain, paired with some melancholic thoughts.

I can't pick out the scents listed in the labs description - but on the other hand I don't know most of these scents ;o)

Cotton-test: On my cotton piece it's the fresh and aquatic scent with some crushed stems but without the fruits. Pleasant and rainy.

Verdict: I'm torn about this one. I only want to buy bottles of scents I'll truly want to wear - and I don't want to wear this one. But it's so nice - on my skin and on the cotton, even - or perhaps because - those scents are so very different. I enjoy sniffing it every few minutes ... but I wouldn't want somebody else to sniff it on me. So perhaps I should just keep my imp and enjoy it ... but I'm not determined yet.

November 4, 2010

BPAL - Satyr

Wet this reminds me a bit of Lush Tramp - not that it's the same scent, it's only the same feeling.

It's really hard for me to pinpoint what this scent could be. Musk and something wooden? A dab patchouli? A hint of lavender?

As it dries it's a lot like Czernobog which I looooooove. It looses the disturbing complexity it had in the wet phase and becomes sweeter and softer but still a bit wild and extraordinary.

I'll have to do a comparison between Czernobog and Satyr. Wet I like Czernobog better - but dry I'm not sure.

But lets have a look at the BPAL homepage, Ars Amatoria. The lab doesn't reveal a lot about this one:
Unleash the bawdy, unrestrained passion of the satyr! A ferociously masculine scent: sexual, vigorous, and truly wild.
Sexual: yes. Masculine: perhaps. Wild: a bit. Anyway: Dry it makes me want to eat my hand! It's gorgeous and will go right to my "need a bottle" list - and I'd love to try it on my dragon!

But this won't be a typical "go to" scent for me like Blood Amber. Blood Amber feels like a blanket I can cuddle in or like a second skin. It just feels "me" - Satyr is more "what I'd like to be" or "that's my mood today".

edit: Several hours later this becomes powdery in the best way possible - still in love with this one!

November 3, 2010

BPAL - Punkie Night 2010

Another Halloweenie from this year! The lab description says:
Once upon a time, on a wild October night many years ago, a fair took place at Chiselborough. The men of the village of Hinton St. George made their way to the fair, and spent the night in revelry, drinking and carrying on, far into the darkest hours. Their wives grew concerned, and went looking for their unruly husbands. In order to see their way through the autumn gloom, they hollowed out mangel-wurzels and crafted them into makeshift lanterns. The drunken men, in their sloshy haze, saw the ghostly lights approaching, and believed them to be goolies -- the furious spirits of unbaptized children. In terror, they fled in panic from their bemused, bewildered wives.

To this day, that night of foolishness is still celebrated! This is a light-hearted scent: apple orchards, bright cranberries, and a touch of warm cider.
Wet this is fresh and crisp, green apple! Nice, authentic and crisp.

After a while it seems get a floral sidenote, but it's very discreet.

Dry: It gets warmer and I can get some cranberries, but they stay in the background. It's still mostly apple but the cider part adds something mellow to it and gives it a boozy feeling (still wearable in public without someone thinking you drank ;o) ) - it's not the fresh cut apple anymore.

I like this scent, but I'm not often in the mood for a warm, cozy fruit scent. I'll keep my decant but I won't need a bottle of this one.

Still in regard to the day I'll get my scent locket, I tested this one on a piece of cotton to see how it behaves without my skin altering it.

Comparing my wrist to the piece of cotton approx. 45min after application:
While my skin turned this one into a warm scent, the scent on the cotton is still fresh. It's all about freshly cut apple with a really tiny hint of cranberries, no cider noticeable at all. I prefere the cotton version because of it's authenticity and freshness but I'm not tempted to buy a bottle of this for scent-locket use. While it is a beautiful apple scent, it's "only" an apple scent. I wan't more from a perfume than the feeling of a single note. But I'd like this scent as a room scent ... perhaps placing the cotton piece on my heater will help me with that ;o)

Update: The cotton peice on the heater is more red apple scent, a bit warmer than before - nice roomscent!