Elspethdixon

Dark Chocolate, Tobacco, and Vetiver from this year's Lupers (up right now) is a slam dunk as far as smoke/cacao goes. I second Satan Summoning His Legions, which is a delicious leather/incense blend, but be warned if you're sensitive to spicy oils - I got the red/burning cinnamon skin reaction with it. Fighter from the RPG series is a very strong, almost single-note leather. It smells just like sticking your face up against the lining of a set of brand new Vanson's motorcycle leathers and inhaling, and it layers well with most of the other RPG scents mentioned upthread. I've heard good things about skekUng the Garthim Master (dragon's blood, vetiver, and smoke) but have never tried it myself. The Ars Draconis scents (GC) all contain dragon's blood and most of them are pretty unisex. You might like Dragon's Hide (dragon's blood, leather, and smoke), or Dragon's Claw (Dragon's blood and sandalwood).

In the bottle: Cinnamon with a cool/sweet top note (maybe the honeysuckle?) Wet - Cinnamon. Sweet cinnamon-y cinnamon. On the drydown - CINNAMON. This is basically a single-note cinnamon on me at this stage, and for the whole first hour or so that I wear it. This is not a problem for me because I adore cinnamon. And unlike most strongly cinnamon-scented oils, it doesn't turn my skin red (yay!). It's a very strong, but soft/sweet cinnamon, not a dry/dusty one, and not quite the "red hots candy" single-cinnamon-note of All Night Long. After two hours - The cinnamon has softened slightly, and I can now smell some of the incense underneath it. I can't pick out the honeysuckle, but that may be what's been making this scent softer/less harsh than All Night Long. After three hours - The scent is starting to fade back to a general soft-powdery sweetness (why does incense always go to powder on me?), but still with a detectable hint of cinnamon. It's reached the "have to put my wrist right up to my nose to smell it" stage that practically everything with myrrh or frankincense reaches on me after a few hours. Verdict - Cinnamon that doesn't burn my skin = WIN, even if I have to reapply it by lunchtime in order to make it last all day.

Wet - leather with a hint of ecclesiastical incense. Very masculine. As it dried, the incense came forward a bit - by about five minutes after application, it was a lovely balance between incense and leather. I can't really smell the cinnamon, but my skin certainly knows it's there. My skin is flushing red and going warm/tingly/faintly itchy wherever the oil has touched it. Dry - after an hour or so, the leather has dialed back a bit and spice has started to peek it's way out, and it's delicious leather/incense with a hint of spice. It's one of the first strongly leather-scented blends I've worn that isn't overly masculine on me (Fighter reeks of brand new motorcycle leathers on me, even when I try to layer it with something else), but I can tell it's already starting to fade. After two and a half hours, all traces are entirely gone. My skin has eaten it whole. I really like what this one turns into after I've been wearing it for a bit, but the hour or so of delicious soft incense-y spiced leather may not be worth waiting out the ten minutes of skin-reaction at the beginning.

"Drink Me" seems to smell different on almost everyone who reviews it (perhaps fittingly given the description). On me, I get a massive waft of butterscotch as soon as I open the bottle, and it remains buttery and rich/sweet and almost cloying as it dries on my skin. I totally get what the people who mentioned custard and butter cookies were talking about. I always wear this layered with something spicy (Chimera, Inferno, Wrath, or my beloved Pumpkin II 2014), which turns the cloying foodieness into a delicious gingerbread cookies/holiday baking smell.

Wet - vanilla rootbeer, with the rootbeer scent in the lead. Pleasant enough, but not the kind of thing I'd want to smell like all day. Dry - Delicious vanilla with a hint of cedar. This was another of those "apply, be iffy on the scent when wet, then a half-hour-to-an-hour later want to make love to my own wrist it smells so good" scents on me. I'm almost through my first bottle of this and have already ordered a second. My sister, who is also a fan of foody oils and who loves both vanilla scents and root beer, bought it for herself immediately based solely on sniffing one of my open bottles and says she has no regrets.

Wet, this is very floral/incense on me (well, by my standards of "very floral," which are probably most of other people's "moderately floral"), but after a few hours, it morphs into a lovely cocoa scent. I tried this once at the BPAL booth at NYC Comiccon and was unimpressed on first sniff, but a few hours later my left hand smelled *amazing* and I was wracking my brain to try and remember which oil I'd tested on it. I usually layer this with a stronger but shorter-lived cocoa/chocolate perfume, in order to have some chocolate around to balance the incense/flowers during the first phase.

Wet/in bottle: CREAM. A very foodie/gourmand sweet, heavy cream. (So realistic a cream note, in fact, that my cat, whose usual response to all perfumes is to recoil in disgust, came over to sniff at the open bottle with interest). Dry: Still foodie/gourmand/cream, but softer and less heavy. It layers beautifully with my 2014 Pumpkin II. Edit: A couple weeks later, I'm starting to get a hint of cinnamon on the drydown. A soft, warm, almost cinnamon-sugar-cookie type cinnamon.

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).