Elspethdixon

In imp/wet - fruity fig and herbal sage, spa-like and non-sweet. Not the epic glory of Amicitia, but no fig/sage combo could ever equal that one. Freshly applied - why hello lemony white tea, there you are. (I can still detect the other notes if I concentrate, but not easily). I smell like I applied White Tea and Sage Hair Gloss to the inside of my wrists. Five-ten minutes in: The initial blast of white tea has died down and the fig and cedar base has come forward again. Now it's equal parts fig&cedar and whitetea& sage. Like what I get when I wear both the Fig & Sandalwood and White Tea & Sage HGs layered together as a body spray, but without the insane throw doing that that produces. If it stays like this, I think I might need a bottle so I don't have to do that anymore. One hour in - It's gradually morphed from a white-tea-and-sage dominant scent to a fig-and-cedar dominant (with fig in the starring role), but with a hint of the tea and herbal sage keeping it from being as sweet and full-bodied-fruity as the F&WS HG. This is the closest thing to a straight-up perfume oil dupe of that HG I've encountered yet, and I love it. Overall impression: I hoped for an Amicitia scent-twin. I got Fig & White Sandalwood HG and White Tea & Sage HG's perfume oil love child, which is a more-than-acceptable alternative. Like DrKate, I've been searching for a perfume scent-twin for Fig & White Sandalwood HG for ages, and I think A Measurement of the Soul is it.

Can I get anyone's opinions on Hanerot Halalu? I passed up getting a decant of it last month because I already have Flickering Lanterns and Light of Men's Lives to satisfy my beeswax needs, but now that it's actually Hanukkah I'm having non-buyer's remorse.

I amp leather, particularly black leather, and Nobodies Watching Wrestling was beautifully balanced between leather and strawberry jam on me. And like LizziesLuck, I found that it got smoother/softer as it dried down.

In the imp - perfume-y/floral apple (as in, it smells like apple, but not in a foodie way) Freshly applied - once on my skin, the teak and skin musk take over, and it instantly morphs from apple to a soft, neutral creamy skin musk with hints of fuzzy, woody teak. I can still catch just a bit of the apple, but it's almost subliminal. This is delicious. On the drydown - like a softer, more feminine/sophisticated version of Haus of Gloi's Olde Cider Haus. Soft musk and wood and a hint of apple/caramel. But not the rich, foodie caramel-apple of Caramel Apple Cookie. Overall impression - skin musk and light, floral apple, with a warm/fuzzy depth from the teak. More apple and less caramel/cream than I expected.

In the imp/wet - fruity red musk Freshly applied - sweet red musk and something stale and fusty. Not much spice, despite the listed notes Five-ten minutes in - red musk and dragon's blood are not a winning combo on me; the two of them together are all I get, like a thinner version of Dragon's Heart. If I press my nose directly to my skin, I get a faint hint of dry sand. Still no spice, despite my skin usually amping cinnamon. Thirty minutes in - Perfume-y red musk and floral dragon's blood (the kind that smells almost lilac-y). The fustiness is gone now, and it's not unpleasant, but it's not the spicy desert heat scent I expected. This is a heavy, feminine, floral musk. Three hours in - The musk lightens and sweetens over time. By hour two, it's a lovely, sweetened floral musk reminiscent of lilac, and I'm starting to really like it. Sadly, by hour three, it's morphed into something artificial and perfume-y (in the "like commercial perfumes I don't like" kind of way) again, with a slight hint of baby powder. Now it smells like something my mother would wear. Apparently red musk is the patchouli of musks - like patchouli, it ruins everything.

In the imp/wet - cinnamon and something sharp/sweet Freshly applied - toasty cinnamon-clove that mostly avoids smelling like Christmas. My skin stings where I put it on Five-ten minutes in - Sweet, warm, toasty cinnamon-clove with something acrid and hot/dry/sour underneath. Definitely fall spice-themed now, as my cinanamon-amping powers kick in. I want to lick my arm (which is still stinging, BTW, though it hasn't gone red), despite the fact that it smells like it would burn my tongue. Thirty minutes in - Edging into craft store cinnamon broom territory now, but I love craft store cinnamon brooms, so IDC. Craft store cinnamon broom with an undercurrent of something fruity, like a hint of mulled cider. I smell like a fall kitchen decorated with every cinnamon-spice/pumpkin pie spice/spiced apple scented product Michaels makes. My arm has finally stopped stinging/tingling. Loki stays about the same for most of the rest of the wear time, but has started to fade by two hours, and by the three-hour mark, all that's left is a faint, dusty skin scent, like long-faded potpourri or maybe traces of dried snake venom on the floor of a dusty cave. Loki has too much delicious cinnamon for my cheap, fragile skin, alas. If applying it in the middle of the day gave me twenty minutes of mild stinging, putting this on in the morning right after a shower is going to give me red welts. Sorry, Loki. A full bottle of you is not in my future. You're going in my oil burner so I can make my whole apartment smell like that kitchen I was talking about, and I'll have to keep searching for a replacement for Chimera's magical non-burning cinnamon.

Wet/in imp - sweet to the point of almost cloying, rum-soaked cake with cocoa. Smells like it has an alcohol note despite it not being listed. Freshly applied - sweet cake drenched in rum or brandy, or possibly just a really sweet creme liquor made from one of the two. Ten-twenty minutes in – the alcohol note is still present but not as strong – the dominant note now is a heavy/syrupy sweetbread-and-pasty. It’s almost Yankee-Candle foodie and sweet – I can almost taste it in the back of my throat when I sniff at it. I keep getting hints of the roasting nuts (the candied/praline kind) and caramel/candied apples, and for a few minutes at the 5-10 minute mark I got wafts of cooked/melting sugar like walking into a candy-maker’s store, but the overall impression is just a big, gourmand/cakey/sweet/liqueur-soaked whack in the nose. But, like, in a good way. 1hr in – Apple cake, the super-dense, super-moist kind (with little chunks of baked apple in it) that’s halfway between cake and some kind of bread pudding and weighs as much as a brick. Still backed by a foodie-straganza of yeast-y baked goods and a hint of liqueur. At the three-hour mark, it has somehow become sweetened peanutbutter toast. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I like peanutbutter toast?

Wet/in the imp – clean and perfume-y (I forgot until I came here to post that it had white tea in it, which is probably the source of the "clean" aspect) Freshly applied – GARDENIA Five/ten minutes in – The gardenia morphed very quickly into soapy ambergris with a hint of vanilla musk and something sharp/clean that might be the metal notes (eta: and the white tea). A couple inches out from my arm the throw is mostly a soft/light vanilla-floral, but up close/nose-to-wrist all I get is ambergris. Thirty minutes in – primarily soapy ambergris with just a hint of the amber/vanilla/gardenia backing it up. Feminine aquatic. One hour in – all soapy aquatic ambergris now. I had high hopes for the vanilla/gardenia/chrome combo in this, but the ambergris combined with my skin’s hatred for aquatics means the Torture Queen is sadly not for me. At around the two hour mark the amber and vanilla tried to make a comeback, only to then go back to soap by hour four. The traces of skin scent that are all that's left over at the end of the workday are amber/vanilla again. I bet this is lovely on people who can wear ambergris.

This is a foodie caramel-apple-butterscotch delight. I've only used it as a body spray so far, so I can't say how it wears in hair, but the scent reminds me of last Halloween's Caramel Apple Cookie. I'm going to have to upgrade from my little 5ml decant to a full bottle.

Orange and patchouli are both death notes on me, so I can't help you with 3. and 4., but if you liked Antique Lace, you should run, not walk, to check out Zorya Polunochnaya from the American Gods collection. It's a light, ethereal, slightly perfume-y/non-foody vanilla scent, and reviewer after reviewer have compared it to Antique Lace. Lavender tends to figure prominently in the fall Lilith update, which should be going up some time next month (three of my all-time BPAL lavender faves, Capax Infiniti, Good Morning London, and Lilith's Hair Gloss, came from previous years' Liliths). In the meantime, Baku (from the GC Somnium collection) is a sharp, herbal lavender/eucalyptus, Paris (GC Wanderlust) is lavender with sweet/fruity lotus and clove, and Wulric the Wolfman (from the Carnival Diabolique) is a cuddly/snuggly lavender/leather/cocoa. Ganymede, an LE from last year's Moons of Jupiter lunacies, is a metallic lavender with hints of ozone/ice that's very sharp and unisex.

Seconding Kitten with Samisen and adding Flickering Lantern.

I agree with Celestia about sugared/creamy/ethereal florals being the prettiest scent category - and also with a lot of her list. My "prettiest" scents: De Vos's Unicorn (like soft, pale, pastel unicorn fur) Cave of Treasures (heady-sweet lilacs in bloom) Haloes (this isn't floral, but it's like the delicate, apricot-tinged spring/summer sibling of Antikythera Mechanism) Beneath the Kotatsu (this edges into "beautiful"/too mature to be "pretty" territory for me because I associate white florals with my mother) The Best Lies (the sweetest pink rose sugar-bomb ever, like an explosion of rosewater-flavored cotton candy) Roses, Pearls, and Diamonds (soft, slightly-soapy rose with a hint of coconut. Like one of those fancy scented soaps shaped like a rose that you put in the guest bathroom but that no one ever uses because it's too pretty to mess up)

I can confirm that one instance of sitting around in the heat won't damage most oils - I've accidentally left imps in my purse before and then proceeded to let said purse sit in the noonday sun on top of a metal table for an hour while I ate lunch (in July, in NYC), and they didn't seem any worse for it. I'm not sure how it would affect the oil if I did this to the same imp over and over, though, so I don't exactly recommend "inside my black leather purse which is sitting out in the sun" as an imp storage method.

In the imp/wet - Cedar. LOTS of cedar. I think it's Virginia cedar/blood cedar, which is my favorite kind, so my hopes are high for this blend. Freshly applied - vanilliac cedar with hints of what smells almost like wood smoke. For the first few moments, it's like Tombstone without the rootbeer, but then a sweet/smokey/hazy musk similar to the one in Buffalo Man takes over (except this isn't as sweet as Buffalo Man, possibly because it's got the cedar backing it). Five-ten minutes in - cozy/warm/dry Virginia cedar beneath a soft haze of sweet musk. It's official: "fur" musk goes sugary-sweet on me. Thirty-forty minutes in - the sweet musk has gotten sweeter, but the cedar remains the same. two hours in - faint cedar-musk skin scent. Over the past two hours, the cedar and the sweet/snuggly musk have gone back and forth in terms of which dominates. This is a pretty unisex-leaning-masculine blend, despite the sweetened musk, and while it's very different from Bast on me, I agree with Roseus that it complements it well.

n the imp/wet - slightly perfume-y amber, with a hint of something warm and dry. Reminds me of some of my NAVA scents Freshly applied - once on, it's more of a creamy, gourmand amber. I can smell hints of the cacao, and it's very soft, warm, and sweet. Five-ten minutes in - The cacao is gone and the cardamom has really come forward. The gourmand aspect has faded, and now it's an oriental spiced amber, like a softer, slightly sweeter version of The Lion with cardamom instead of clove. I can't really smell the myrhh, but I suspect it's giving this a little bit of depth. It's also not like NAVA's sand note at all anymore. Thirty-forty minutes in - slowly morphing into something a little more amber-y and less spicy two hours in/late drydown - creamy honeyed amber, like a softer/less sticky version of O I really like this, but it's similar to several perfumes I already have (I have a lot of honey/vanilla/amber scents). It's very well blended, and morphs just enough over its wear length to keep it interesting.

Wet/in the imp - cool, candied rose scent. Almost minty? Freshly applied - a sort of slightly-minty sugar scent, with a hint of light rose. Think fancy rosewater marshmallows dusted with cool powdered sugar (you know how powdered sugar feels cool in your mouth when it first hits your tongue but then is just sweet? this is like the olfactory version of that). If there's honey in this, it's the soft/gentle/powdery kind of honey rather than the sexy, sticky Womb Fury kind. Five-ten minutes in - There's no musk note listed, but I swear I smell musk in this - maybe it's the sugar? Some musks go super sugary on me. Now that it's started to dry down, my arm smells like home made/artsy hipster cafe/gourmet macaroon-shop-style rosewater marshmallows with a puffy/pillow-y cloud of cool white musk around them. Like a rose-only version of De Vos, but sweeter, stronger, and with a good six inches of throw. I like sweet scents and gourmands, but this almost borders on too sweet/strong for me. This isn't much of a morpher. The scent stays basically the same from this point out - a very sweet candy floss/white musk sugar-syrup rose - and was still going strong five hours later when I got home from work and took a shower.

Wet/in the imp - perfume-y (but a unisex perfume); slightly astringent, slightly sweet-musky Freshly applied - sweet, sugary musk. Maybe a hint of woodsmoke? I cannot emphasize enough how sweet this smells. You know how Devil's Night from the 2016 Weenies was supposed to be "sugar-crusted musk?" This smells like what I expected that to smell like. I get maybe a hint of woodsmoke and animalic fur/hide right up against my skin, but the throw is all sugar-musk. Five-ten minutes in - I'm starting to get hints of the labdanum/resin, but overall Buffalo Man is primarily sweet musk with a hint of smokiness. Throw is limited, and the scent stays close to the skin, but it's strong when I put my nose to my wrist. The animalic/fur musk that some people apparently turn into pickles/vinegar is clearly sugary-sweet on me. Thirty-forty minutes in - The labdanum has come forward more, and the scent has gained an animalic aspect which is toning down the sugary sweetness a bit. But it's still primarily sweet musk. It's a close-to-the-skin scent, but very snuggly and pleasant. By the two-three hour mark, Buffalo Man has faded to a sweet, powdery skin scent (powdery the way black musk sometimes goes on me, rather than powdery late-drydown amber or like orris). A faint hint of baby-powder-y skin musk lingered on my skin for the rest of the day. I don't think I need a bottle, but this imp is definitely a keeper. Sweet, snuggly musk with a hint of woodsmoke. It does smell brown, but brown like brown sugar being gently carmelized, not brown like buffalo hide.

It's from the Post, not the Lab, but I'm pretty sure Mischief hair gloss from the new CD update smells an awful lot like Harley Quinn. Or at least, that's what I was hoping yesterday when I ordered it Catwoman is either Bast from the American Gods line, or Whip from the GC, for obvious reasons.

Amicitia is my favorite fig blend, followed closely by Figgy Pudding (alas, almost all the GC scents with fig have patchouli in them, which rules them out for me).

The imp was in my jeans pocket for an hour or so before I applied it, so the oil was already warmed to close to body temperature when I opened it and put it on. Wet/in imp - a hint of leather and a blast of fruity sweetness that borders on cloying Freshly applied - a hint of spicy Christmas-candle bay leaves, a touch of leather, and a blast of fruity rum. As it dries on my skin, the cloying fruitiness fades and the spicy bay berries/leaves comes forward. This is nice - Christmas-y without smelling like evergreens or holiday baking. Five minutes in - Manly Christmas candle, but in a good way. Ten minutes in - Manly Christmas candle keeps on Christmas-ing. The skin on the inside of my wrist/forearm where I applied it is starting to feel slightly warm/tingly, but I'm not sure if that's actually a reaction to Baron Samedi itself, or a sympathetic/psychosomatic reaction to the "wtf did I secretly put on icyhot?" oakmoss reaction going on on my other arm (testing Robin Goodfellow on that one). Thirty minutes in - The tingly feeling has gone away, but the manly bay leaves-plus-hint-of-leather/rum non-foodie masculine Christmas candle scent continues. This would probably be much better on a guy, but it's not bad on me. I don't need a bottle, but I'll definitely keep the imp.

The imp was in my jeans pocket for an hour or so before I applied it, so the oil was already warmed to close to body temperature when I cracked it open. Wet/in imp - herbal/forest-y outdoors. Sharp/clean without being citrus-y or pine-y. Freshly applied - sharp/sour and fusty. I can still catch a hint of the clean/herbalness, but the sour fustiness is mostly drowning it out. Also my skin feels tingly-weird on the inside of my wrist where I applied it. This is my first time trying anything with oakmoss in it, and I'm starting to suspect oakmoss might not be my friend. Five minutes in - The fustiness has become soapiness with a hint of outdoorsy showergel. This was so lovely in the imp. Where did that clean outdoorsy herbal forest go? No visible redness like with cinnamon, but my skin still feels weird where I applied it, as if I rubbed icy-hot there. Looks like oakmoss is a definite no for me. (ETA: And I've just remembered that Faiza from the CD line also has oakmoss... and IRRC also gave me a mild skin reaction and I couldn't figure out why. I guess now I know). Ten minutes in - On the one hand, the soapiness has faded somewhat and I can smell the clean forest again, if only faintly. On the other hand, my skin is starting to turn red and itch slightly. My arm stopped itching/burning a little while later, and then I forgot to take any notes on the scent for the rest of the day. The soapy, outdoor-forest-themed showergel scent lasted on my skin for hours at a low-throw/skin scent level, nowhere near the lovely crisp herbal-forest smell from the imp, nut not unpleasant, as manly soap products go. I'm not sure what turned it into soap/showergel, since the notes don't mention any pine or ozone or aquatic notes, which are the usual soap/dryer sheet culprits on me - maybe the black/dark musk? I wouldn't be able to wear it even if it the wonderful early wet stage had stuck around, though, since I'm apparently allergic to it.

In the imp/wet - rich chocolate-coffee ice cream, like coffee candy. Utterly amazing. Freshly applied - creamy coffee candy/mocha sundae with an edge of curry spice. Weirdly good, just this side of cloying. Five-ten minutes in - the coffee candy sundae has become a wave of sweet, spicy curry. I want to eat my arm. Not in a sexy way, but in a "how long is it until lunch, again?" way. Fifteen-twenty minute mark - All curry, all the time. I had goat curry for lunch once at a local restaurant in Bermuda, and Jeweled Spider is pretty much a dead ringer for that lunch, complete with a hint of the iced coffee I had with it (so A+ for realism, I guess). I love gourmands, but I'm not sure curried goat stew from the beach-front bar next to Mangrove Bay is something I want to smell like all day long. I may keep this imp around for the nostalgia value, though - that was the first vacation my wife and I ever went on together and that day was our favorite day of the trip. Two hour mark - The curry has faded away, but it took most of the rest of the scent with it. I can get traces of soft tobacco-cooffee-vanilla-hint-of-savory-spice if I press my nose directly to my wrist, but even that is fading now. (ETA: Actually, a trace of tobacco hung around as a nose-to-my-wrist skin scent for several more hours)

In the imp/wet - light, perfume-y vanilla, reminiscent of a softer Pediophobia Freshly applied - cool, hazy, slightly floral vanilla. There's a hint of something faintly soapy, probably the ambergris. Five-ten minutes in - light, airy vanilla and white musk, like the cool, pale sister of Pediophobia. It makes me think of fluffy white clouds and clean white sheets. Has a good two inches of throw (okay, well, two inches is good on my dry, oil-eating skin). Fifteen-twenty minute mark - same as 5-10. Two hour mark - by two hours, it's faded to an airy vanilla skin scent. The perfume-y white musk gauze-iness has changed to a clean, slightly creamy sort of skin musk, like being freshly scrubbed and going to bed in a clean, white nightgown. It reminds me of hugging my mother for some reason.

The Intangibles for Orisa is perfect! (and of course Hanzo and Genji are both Ars Draconis scents! I should have thought of that).

Like several other people in this thread, I initially avoided tobacco scents because I was afraid it would be similar to cigarette smoke (and even just the scent of that on a smoker's clothes can trigger asthma and/or migraines for me), but after finally trying Antikythera Mechanism, I realized that no, it's glorious on me and not cigarette-smoke-like at all. I grew up in the Southeast, so you'd think "cured tobacco = inside of a tobacco barn =/= cigarette smoke" should have been a no-brainer, but somehow it wasn't. My favorite tobacco scents so far: Antikythera Mechanism: I get oak/teak/cozy wood, caramelized tobacco, and just a hint of vanilla. It's a warm, dry scent on me rather than a sweet, vanilla-y one (in fact, I often layer it with Light of Men's Lives to add more vanilla and beeswax to it). It reminds me a little of a restaurant in VA that's a beloved family tradition - the building is an old tobacco warehouse, and when you go up the stairs to the top level of seating, you can smell the massive old wooden floor and ceiling beams overhead and around you, which are still permeated with a faint tobacco scent from years of having hogsheads of tobacco stored there. Dark Chocolate, Black Tobacco, and Vetiver: My skin eats chocolate notes, so this is all sweet/warm tobacco (I've heard this compared to the French Tobacco SN, which if so, means that that LE probably ought to be my holy grail) and smoky/warm vetiver. It smells like warm, sweet/dark hot wood, like being inside the world's most wonderful exotic-wood-paneled sauna. It's more humid/not as dry as Antikythera Mechanism, and both darker and sweeter. Pleasures of the Imagination III: Humid, sexy tobacco with a hint of leather (miraculously, the leather in this behaves and doesn't amp and dominate everything) and sweet/faintly-spicy honey-benzoin. This is both really humid and really sexy. Smokestack: I'm convinced that this has tobacco in it alongside the really obvious vetiver. It smells like a GC scent cousin to DCBT&V, except a little less humid/sticky, without the hint of chocolate at the beginning and with more a more campfire smoky-vetiver and a hint of maple syrup on the drydown. Other faves that include tobacco but aren't tobacco-dominant: Mars Ultor - mostly black amber with a hint of nutmeg, but I can tell the tobacco is there because it's similar to a lighter/softer, sweeter/less-dry Antikythera Mechanism. It doesn't last very long on my skin, so I tend to wear it in my hair when I'm wearing either DCBT&V or AM Pumpkin II (2014) - this is primarily cloves and oakmoss with a hint of pumpkin, and is also one of the only things with a patchouli note that I've ever been able to wear. I bought this at NYCC back in 2014 based on a sniff test without knowing the notes, so I wasn't even aware that it had tobacco at first. Bunraku Theater - Hay, beeswax, and pumpkin (like a less-sweet Midnight With a Pumpkin Light). I can barely detect the tobacco at all, but I got this one entirely for the beeswax/hay combo, so I don't mind. A Grievous Swarm - I was able to try this at a meet-up, and it's a gloriously gritty/smokey vetiver. The vetiver and myrrh are both strong enough to largely drown the tobacco note out, but I love vetiver so I love this. It's my vetiver Holy Grail. I had really high hopes for St. Clare, but it's super-faint on me and fades extremely quickly. Tobacco Honey smelled like bugspray and made me sad. Elegba is nice but is mostly rum-dominant, while Plunder is mostly cassia/clove and tea. Perversion is almost entirely leather because I amp leather.