By Jenann Elias
If you haven’t heard of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, you should at least look them up so you can see what this is all about. Check the bottom of this page especially; you could win some great Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab goodies!
One of the best things you can get someone is something meaningful and resonates their interests, is functional, original, and makes one feel good. I believe in the power of scent; certain smells make us feel a certain way, or remind us of a memory and event. In my opinion, there is no better selection of scents than the perfume oils made by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. These interesting and odd little oils spark intrigue and are so varied in theme that there truly is one made for everyone. Anyone can buy a fragrance from the mall; but these oils smell different according to our body chemistry, so they truly are unique.
About the Lab
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, or BPAL for short, was founded by Beth; a woman with a passion for scents. The Lab started out only selling a few different scents, and now has a line of over 600 different scents! The perfume oils are all vegan, with the exception of scents that contain honey, and there is never any animal testing.
They’re a small business, and they care about their customers and causes. For example, they don’t include paper invoices in shipments and try to use minimal packaging. They frequently have food and toy drives, donations to local charities and animal shelters; a lot of proceeds from certain scent lines goes to these causes, such as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Hero Initiative, AIDS Project Los Angeles, Covenant House, the Red Cross, UNICEF, the SPCA, and the Humane Society. (Check out Hero Initiative, which gives proceeds to the first not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping comic book writers, creators, and artists in need).
If you’re lucky enough to live in one of the few cities where BPAL has a “will call” event, you can go to a brick-and-mortar store and sniff the samples for yourself! In Los Angeles there is one held every full moon at the awesome little spooky shop Dark Delicacies. There you can test most if not all of the available scents while mingling with other fans and the BPAL staff. I can tell you that the staff are some awesome, dedicated, and hilarious people, and I love going to will call events.
Well worth a nod is the Lab’s sister site, The Black Phoenix Trading Post, which has different yet similar items as the Lab itself, including a BPAL nail polish line, room sprays, and some gorgeous scent lockets. They’re worth a look over as well, but first and foremost, check out the Lab’s scents.
About the Scents
These aren’t your typical cosmetic-counter perfumes. All of BPAL’s “perfumes” are actually perfume oils; concentrated fragrances much more potent than the stuff you’d get at a store and spray all over yourself. A little dab goes a long way. The oils aren’t synthetic either; they use quality herbs, resins, oils, absolutes, and compounds. And these fragrance oils aren’t made just for ladies; most of the oils created are meant to be unisex, and smell different on the individual!
One of my favorite things about the Lab is the way scents are inspired and based on fantastic themes; animals, places, people, comics, types horror movies, and even my favorite literature genres. Amazingly, I feel like the smells really do match up to their inspiration, and create an awe-inspiring homage.
Using their Site
Navigating the BPAL site can be tricky the first time around; with over 34 different categories, unless you know which section to look at, simply browsing can be overwhelming. There are a couple tips to help you.
- Know what kind of scents or themes you like. There is a search button toward the bottom left of their page. Try entering a scent note you like (vanilla) or a theme (graveyard) and see what pops up. However, this feature is currently being redone, so jot it down for future reference and move to number…
- Use Google. Type in Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, and then a scent note you’re interested in. More often than not, it will pop something up in the first couple hits that you can use as a jumping point. It also may link you to BPAL.org; a fantastic fan-run site that has reviews of all the scents pretty much ever available. Which brings us to…
- Use BPAL.org. This friendly forum site has reviews on available scents, a great search function, and the recommendation area. This is a great place to read up on things you might like and see what other people think of them. Looking for a scent for dad, or something that smells like old books? This is the place to check. (In the future if you can’t seem to locate a specific scent, since many of the oils from the Lab are limited edition or get discontinued, try the BPAL.org forums!)
- Good ol’ fashioned perusing. That giant list of text on the left side of the page are links to the different scent lines that the Lab offers. Good categories to check out first? I recommend Neil Gaiman, RPG, Hero Initiative, and A Picnic in Arkham. (Of course, Mad Tea Partyis still my soft spot).
- Many of those new to the site miss out on checking the links toward the top of the page; Shiny & New and Limited Edition. Don’t skip out on looking these over! These scents are generally available only for a short time, so be sure to at least look them over and see what’s new. Right now the Yules (the winter/holiday scents) are out, and they’re some of my favorite scents created all year.
The oils come in beautiful 5ml amber glass bottles, and run around $20 average. If you’re not sure you want to buy a large bottle, or you have too many scents in mind and want to narrow your options down, try buying their little sample vials, called “Imps Ears” or just Imps. These little tester vials come in almost all of their scents (minus the limited editions) and run around $4 each.
The RPG Line
The Lab recently released an entire themed line inspired by pen and paper RPG games. If you’re looking for a good place to begin at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, this may be it. The line features six races (Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Halfling, and Orc), six classes (Cleric, Fighter, Mage, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue) and your basic Alignments (Neutral, Lawful, Chaotic, Good and Evil). The intriguing part? These scents are great alone, but you can layer them for some really unique combinations! Some of the descriptions are amusing; Halfing smells of “Porridge, kukui nuts, and pastry crumbs,” while Paladin is described as “Immaculate white musk, sweet frankincense, bourbon vanilla, white leather, and shining armor.”
Win it!
Want to experience BPAL for yourself? Enter in our contest and you could be the proud new wearer of some of BPAL’s finest! We’re doing a Twitter contest, to increase exposure on the Interwebs!
The prize?
UPDATE! Thanks to the Lab, we now have a few different prizes to give out! We have full bottles of a few of the Alignments from the RPG scent line, as well as six Imps (sample vials). We’ll try to split this up into THREE prizes to give more of you a chance to try these amazing scents! To learn more about these oils, visit: www.blackphoenixalchemylab.
How to enter?
Add Wyrdcon on Twitter, and Tweet about why you would like these oils, or which oil sounds the best to you!
An example would be “I always play a Halfling; would love to smell like one!” @Wyrdcon #BPAL
Make sure that you include a link back to this blog post and use the tags #BPAL and @Wyrdcon. This part is important!
Contest ends Friday, Dec. 16 at midnight PST.
How will the winner be selected?
All qualifying entries will be entered in at random.org and a random winner will be selected.
How do I find out more about Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab again?
www.BlackPhoenixAlchemyLab.
I don’t twit. Why don’t you have an alternative entry for those of us not on Twitter?
HI Gloria!
I sent you an e-mail about this, but have not heard back. The reason we’re doing the giveaway through Twitter is for many reasons, including that it’s easy to keep track of entries, we can’t use Facebook for contests, and that it helps spread awareness through social media! Eventually I’m sure we’ll have some fun stuff for those not on Twitter.