Cagedflame

Wooaah, that certainly is apricot in the imp and wet! Nothing but vibrant apricot, energetic light orange. Once it's dry, the spice comes out. It smells more like cinnamon than clove to me, lacking that woody bite underneath that cloves have, but I don't really mind. I adore cinnamon as well as clove. I'm not sure if I'll purchase a bottle, but I'll definitely keep the imp.

Hazelnut coffee and a hint of chocolate with a slightly odd, almost bitter note handing around in the back is what I get, and hazelnut coffee with a hint of chocolate with what I think is the hops? is what it stays. I wish it were a little stronger, but I'm going to test it again when I'm not trying a bunch of others out. I may have just overloaded my poor nose trying a bunch of the million imps and Body Perfumery samples I got today. It reminds me heavily of Yankee Candle's Hazelnut Coffee scented items, which is not a bad thing, seeing as how I want to eat the candles and I don't mind smelling foody. (If you don't like foody, why would you buy something called Gluttony anyway?)

In the imp I smell vanilla, musk, spice. Immediate expectation : like every other oil w/ musk that I've tried, it's going to go all musk on me and I'll hate it. It didn't! It's soft. Sweet. The spice disappears on me in the drydown (damn! I'll have to spike it with a little Inferno) and the vanilla tones down some, but the musk shockingly doesn't take over. Similar to Dana O'Shee with musk and a little something else. Sexed up baby powder. As it is, I want a big bottle. If I can add a tiny bit more spice and vanilla, I'll have found a Holy Grail. ETA : After a few hours, this delicious smoky slightly woody sort of resinous note I can't name comes out. Ohhh it is good. Someone buy me a vat so I can wallow.

In the vial, I smelled what I now know is musk and something resinous, almost pinelike, and something woody. Less masculine than I expected. On... well. There was musk. And musk. And musk. Musk is apparently the "dept store perfumy" note also in Bastet and Bathsheba that my skin seems to like to make drown out every other note. If the other notes had stayed in, I'd have kept the imp for occasional wear, but thanks to chemistry it'll go in the swap pile.

in imp and on skin wet, floral, astringent, slightly green. reminds me of queen of sheba. 5 min - coppertone sunscreen. slightly chemical, slightly floral, and a little of something else. 20 min - same but stronger. apparently honey doesn't get along with my skin.

oh dear. this smells like a spicy cough drop on me. i see that other reviews say this is an amber with spice, distintive amongst other ambers... i now fear that anything strong on the amber will smell like unspiced cough drop on me.

Yesterday I was eating some rather good vanilla ice cream and hoping my single note imp would smell as good as the ice cream tastes. Oh my, it's far far better. It's a deeper, "brown" vanilla. And while I love Dana O'Shee, they smell very different to me.

If it smells so much like a pear my mouth watered, something was done right. Now during drydown it has a slight medicinal tang and a hint of spice -- the medicinal tang i'm pretty sure will soon disappear. Any scent I like seems to have that less than yummy tang during drydown. If the spice remains, cool... if it doesn't, I'm still happy. I wish I had some pears around to eat. now it smells like there's a flower in there? eek, i really hope that goes away and returns to pear. i'll check it in 20 min or so. i think i killed my nose trying to sniff all the SNs i just got in. i can't smell a darn thing now. i'll have to try again tomorrow.

De Sade : Leather and smoke, smoke and leather. The smoke of a wood fire, specifically one with a mix of seasoned wood and green branches, mostly maple or oak with a little pine. (Ok... so my father has smoked the house out with the woodstove a few too many times.) After dry down, just leather. Very raw and masculine. Several others have said that Dead Man's Hand is raw hide leather and this is an expensive jacket. This smells like raw hide leather on me. If this plays similarly on Boyfriend's chemistry I will be getting a bottle of it to slather on him.

The description says blood (dragon's assumedly) and and amber like the title, but all I got was dragons blood so strong and wafting I now have a headache with a backnote of soap. Apparently dragon's blood just takes over on me, so I'll have to avoid it in the future, and send this to the swap pile. I feel guilty that this is a two-sentence review, but that's all I needed until I threw this sentence in.

At first, this smells sharply green. Almost like fresh cut grass, with a hint of floral and spice behind it. Carnation, prolly, but also a different spice. Unfortunately, this rapidly just goes soapy. For a while it's green herb soap, but eventually it's just cheap ass soap, like those seashell shaped soaps old ladies get at the dollar store and keep in a dish on top of their toilet. Then like cheap supermarket soap like Crest. Yuck. Swap pile.

... Offerings of milk, honey and sweet grains were made to placate these creatures, and it is that the basis of the scent created in their name. While in the bottle and wet, this smells like cherry/amaretto cookies. During the drydown, it smells rather icky... it takes on this synthetic smell, first smelling like those old scented dolls in a bad way, then smelling like this sunscreen I have (not coconutty, like many sunscreens are, like chemical playdoh). After it's dry though... mmmm. Soft and sweet, somewhere between "cookie" and "skin." It doesn't last as long as other BPALs, but it still lasts for at least a few hours before a touchup is needed. 5ml bottle candidate.

Inferno is cinnamon candy on me, very similar to Big Red.

the hesperides : in the imp, apple, soap, flowers. on my skin wet, oh my god, this delicious warm autumnal slightly spiced ripe apple scent with almost a hint of caramel or something. not a tart granny smith or a slightly pear like golden, no... a very ripe red apple, or apple cider. please oh please let it stay like this! i ran upstairs and stuck my wrist under mom's nose and made her smell it. she wrinkled her noise and said potpourri? sniff, sniff. oh no, a slightly potpourri ish note IS coming up. back! back! go away! still definitely warm apple, though. i'll wait 5 minutes and sniff again. uh oh... more potpourri. ;_; oh! wait! i think the potpourri smell is fading away again! yessss! it must have just been a drydown thing. i can live with that. i like this, a lot. it's apples and something else, something "outdoors." the wood perhaps? definitely like an apple orchard. i'm going to try layering this with inferno to amp up the faint spice. seems to be working nicely, but i'll have to see what happens when the cinnamon starts to calm down a little and the orange blossom rises some. edit : well, i've waited. the combo is delish. i can't stop sniffing my wrist. i was actually expecting to get this, find out it wasn't like the description at all, and crinkle my nose and swap it away. i was fully expecting to hate it after smelling it in the vial, but i can't believe how much i like this one! it's not even what i pictured as a me-scent... i only bought it because i once used an apple-y scented red candle for a lust charm that worked really well. but i really like it after that potpourri phase ends. edit again. timeline of potpourriness fade : 0826 hesperides on 0829 starting to pick up potpourri 0831 yeah, def. some potporri 0835 potpourri toning down a little 0839 still kinda potpourri-y 0841 dying down

In the imp I smell cherries, something tangy, something green, hints of dragon's blood and what I think is musk. I don't smell and clove, cherry, or wine with it on. This smells like sweet dragon's blood to me, with faint hints of vanilla and what I'm believe is musk. I'm pretty sure musk is what I keep thinking is perfumey? And when it's strong, it makes me think of perfume my maternal grandmother tends to wear, thus the old lady association. I could be way the hell off track, though. Maybe I'll hunt up a single note of musk so I can figure it out. Blood Kiss is a very nice scent, though not what I was hoping for. I get no cloves, which I love, and only the faintest vanilla hint, and no wine or cherries. Incense/perfume. Not what I'm looking for in a daily wear perfume, but maybe a good occasional one, or one for during some rituals I do. Similar to Bastet, but doesn't go/seem as old ladyish on me, and it isn't as strong. I think I need to test this again to see whether or not I should swap it away.

In the imp, it was an impressive wrathy red, and smelled of incense. On, I immediately could tell it was dragon's blood. Sweet, almost floral but not quite. I haven't smelled it in a long time, and only as powdered incense, but I recognizd it right away. Dragon's blood and nothing else and strongly so. 15 minutes later, cinnamon started coming out under it. 10 minutes after that, they were almost equal in intensity and the blend was quite nice. But the cinnamon quite quickly started to fade away again, leaving just the dragons blood. The dragon's blood started to soften and go slightly powdery, and now it's gone soapy. Poo. I hope all dragon's blood including scents don't do this to me.

I never could properly ride a bike, so I hope it's not toooo much like learning to ride one.

This isn't something I'd have picked out for myself, but since I got it as an extra, I'll try it. Disclaimer : my chemistry seems to hate florals other than orange blossom/neroli. In the bottle and wet : Woah carnation! Smells like burying my face in a pink, white and red carnation bouquet at the florist's. I can already tell that this is extremely not-me. But I may as well keep reviewing while it's on and I've nothing else to do. 5 min after applying, it smells like... JASMINE?! This smells exactly like our jasmine plant does when it blooms. O.o Now this powderyness is starting to show up underneath, and something else. This reminds me of a light spring version of the Bastet I just tried. Maybe it's the musk note? It's getting more of that scent I associate with commercial perfumes. More and more that perfumey note is showing up, and the faintest hint of something fruity. Hm, smelling a little more like carnations again. If one likes carnations or florals in general, they'd love this. There's that slight hint of spice people keep talking about with carnations, now. Ooh, I think I'm getting a headache. Time to get this one off.

This smells like a perfume my mother used to have when I was really young. I can see the color of it... brown-gold, amberish. Thin sloshy liquid in a rather plain clear bottle. Don't know that this is a good resemblance. Seems sort of old ladyish on me, not the sexy slightly spicy scent most others seem to have gotten out of this. Something slightly smoky under it, and something powdery. Very very perfumey still. Someone else said that if they put too much on it gets very perfumey. Maybe that's what happened. I'm going to go swab some of it off with some neutral carrier oil. A little better, but just not me, and not what I was expecting.

Ravenous made my skin angry. The only notes listed in Ravenous are red patchouli and orange blossom. I know I'm not sensitive to the latter... it actually seems to play very nicely with my skin. So I'm guessing I'm sensitive to the red patchouli. I'm crossing off anything with this in it off my list, except for ones that sound so appealing I'll risk the burning and red blotchies. Thing is, a lot of the blends just list "patchouli" in the description, and one description sort of implied that Indonesian patchouli is red patchouli? Anyone care to help me figure out which oils contain the prime suspect in my allergy/sensitivity?

Through the packaging, I smell amaretto with a bare hint of cinnamon. And maybe a teeny hint of maraschino cherry. Mmm, appealing! Once I've opened the bottle : Cinnamon has come to the front and the amaretto smell is underneath now. On - This dries almost instantly on me, so there's no real point in wet/dry distinction here. This is now nose tingling cinnamon candy. Yes, it does remind one heavily of Red Hots or Big Red gum. It'd be cooler if the other scent stayed more present, but I adore cinnamon, so I'll keep it anyway. After a few minutes, I think I'm getting the faintest hint of that neroli? Neroli seems to turn to a sweet powderyness on me and that's the faint hint I smell. Makes it smell ever so slightly less like candy. ETA : The neroli seems to have come out more and more after a while, and after a fairly long while the cinnamon and neroli were about equally strong, which was very nice. I now know what that powdery sweet (but not baby powder ish) note was in Ravenous, and I'm glad it wasn't what I was allergic to from that blend.

In the bottle, it smelled like flowers and wine and tobacco. On me, this turned into icky shampoo-y overly strong floral on me. Ew. I had such high hopes, but I had to scrub it off.

This smells like my favorite incenses, before they're burned. Yum. In the bottle I could smell some sort of fruit, but now that it's on and dry all that I smell is the yummy insence-y smell. I can't decide if it smells more like Nag Champa or this nameless powder incense my friend has. ETA : It's a really nice smell, but not really one I want to wear in my skin daily. I was going to keep this for use as a room scent, during rituals/meditations, etc, but my skin started to burn and get red and splotchy. Damnit! I had to run and get it off. I gave it to my friend, who's really into incense-y smells. Perfect for her.

My first scent. In the bottle, strong scent of rose, slightly powdery. Cut rose a bit past its prime. On me, wet, it morphs into this gross, chemically scent that reminds me of some sort of household cleaner like Pledge and lemons. Ew. Stays that way for a bit after drying, then it's just strong (slightly chemical still) rose. In an hour or so, it's changed finally to what I was hoping for : a dusty dried rose. This does definitely last. I put it on around 8 last night and it's almost 8am now and I can still smell it on my wrist.