Elspethdixon

In the bottle/wet - delicious buttery baked-goods with a hint of spice. I'm mainly getting cream cheese and brown butter rather than pumpkin, like baking snickerdoodles. As it dries, the pumpkin and spices come out more, as do the red patches wherever the oil touched my skin (such is life with sensitive skin, alas). Once I've had it on a few minutes, it's all spice, but still with a delicious foody/baked goods element to it. And the skin reaction is not as bad as I've had with some scents - almost worth it for how good it smells. And it lasts well, too. All day long, I get periodic whiffs of spicy pumpkin-cookie goodness. I may make this one of my "dab on clothing/put in scent lockets" oils, since it smells amazing both wet and dry-on-my-skin.

Wet - sweet chocolate, with very little honey. Very foodie and, as others have said, almost candy-like. It's actually a little cloying on me, which I expected TBH - the lab's chocolate notes are often overly cloying on me unless there's a sharp on incense-y note to cut the sweetness. Dry - the honey comes out a little, but not as strongly as I'd hoped, and the chocolate remains the dominant note. Still too sweet/cloying - this is one I'll have to layer or wear very sparingly. However, on my girlfriend (who also wears El dia de los Reyes and Gelt better than I do) it smells amazing and completely edible, like walking into a godiva chocolate store. She's the one I really bought it for, and it was a slam dunk for her.

In the bottle/wet - the dead leaf note is very strong, and incredibly realistic. In fact, it smells so much like piles of damp dead leaves that it makes my chest tighten a little as I subconsciously expect my leaf mold allergy to kick in. Unless it morphs substantially, this one will be a no go on me. Dry on my skin, the vanilla and myrrh notes come forward more and it becomes sweet and a little powdery, but alas, the dead leaves remain as a strong undertone. I wanted to like this one, because I love myrrh and vanilla, but the sharp leaf scent was just too much for me. (For someone who doesn't associate the smell of wet dead leaves with wheezing and sneezing, OTOH, it would probably smell very pleasant).

The tiny plastic wands in the imps work perfectly for applying oil, but the wand caps for the 5ml bottles are IMO too large and awkward. For bottles, I usually flip the bottle upside down (while it's still closed, obvs.) to coat the underside of the cap in oil, flip it upright again, and then open it and dot the little nib on the underside of the cap against my skin and/or rub the rim of the bottle against my skin where I want the scent applied, then rub the little smear of oil the cap/bottle rim leaves behind into the skin with the inside of my wrist (which conveniently ends up transferring the scent to my wrists as well).