Janegodzilla

So far, this has been the most feminine of the Steamworks scents. The rose does its usual thing on me and amps like crazy, but the jasmine is a nice counterpoint to it and keeps it from going too crazy. I noticed the wine note mostly when the oil was wet; once it dried down, I didn't get much wine at all, which made me kind of sad. A scent locket might work really well to keep the pinot note around. Overall, this is surprisingly pretty and feminine, with the non-floral notes giving it a little more depth and complexity than I think it would've had otherwise. I don't know that I'll need a whole bottle anytime soon, but the imp will certainly be nice to have.

Like most of the Steamworks scents, No. 93 Engine is warm and pleasantly unisex. It's a bright, busy sort of scent -- the word "bustling" comes to mind -- with different notes zipping in and out to play. The balsam, cedar, beeswax, and sage are the notes that stand out the most on my skin, with everything else merging into a rich, busy backdrop that tosses up a hint of smoke or sweetness every once in a while. It's a lovely blend overall and I like it a lot, and the only thing that gives me pause is how strong the balsam gets after it's been on my skin for some time. I'm not sure if it's a one-off thing based on the particular day I was testing it or if it's because I'm prone to amping pines and firs and the like, but I'm definitely going to hold off ordering a bottle until I know for sure. The first hour of No. 93 Engine was amazing.

Well hello there, vetiver! How nice to see you! Alecto is an odd little scent. In the bottle, it smells overwhelmingly of wood, dirt, and greenery, all of which are completely overwhelmed by vetiver the second it hits my skin. Thankfully, the vetiver calms down after a while, and what emerges is wood and something that's kind of dry and leafy, like a tangle of bushes in high summer. There's also a sweeter note that comes out after a while, which I guess is the blackberry leaf? It smells exactly like a tomato plant to me. It's a sweetish green pulpy scent, like the way your fingers smell after you've touched tomato leaves. Alongside the cedar and dry greenery, it makes for a really interesting scent overall, but it's definitely not me.

This one was sent to me as a gimp from arboretum on livejournal, and I absolutely adore it. It's the most candy-like of all the scents I’ve tried so far, very bright and pretty and golden. In the bottle, it smells like sugar and honey, but the second I get it on my skin the musk comes out to play, and as it dries the ylang ylang emerges alongside the honey. The way Skuld develops is just lovely – when my nose is close to my wrist, I smell tropical flowers and musk and honey. But every once in a while I’d catch a whiff of the oil throughout the day when I turned my head or whatnot, and to my surprise I didn’t get flowers or musk, but pure honeyed CANDY. Deliciousness. One a minor note, I like how long Skuld lasted as well. I haven’t had much luck with staying power when it comes to the sweeter scents, so I was pretty delighted when I hit the end of my workday and Skuld was still floating around me in a pretty cloud of golden candy goodness.

Coyote would smell SO GOOD on a guy. In the imp, it struck me as being rather sweetly masculine, like a combination of hay, sunshine, grass, and men's cologne. There's a hint of meadow flowers in it once it's dried down, but the cologne and golden grass are really the scents that dominate. In my head, this is what a cowboy would/should smell like. It's a smidge too masculine for me to wear, but I'm definitely keeping the imp in the hopes that I can someday convince my boy to wear it. I think it would be swoonworthy on him!

I was really excited about trying this one, especially after reading all of the reviews, but...I'm feeling pretty "meh" about it. It's nothing against the oil itself -- in the bottle and on my skin, Miskatonic U smells like sweet, creamy coffee liqueur, with just enough wood to keep it grounded. But even though I've been dying to find a good coffee scent, MU is just a little too sweet, boozy, and creamy for me, and I think I was hoping for something a little darker and richer. It's an utterly delicious scent, but in the end it smells like something I'd rather be drinking than wearing.

Arboretum on livejournal gifted me with an imp of this when I expressed an interest in foodie scents. I’d read all of the reviews exclaiming that Shub-Niggurath smelled like cookies, but I had no idea that they’d be so accurate! Shub is pure gingersnaps, and those gingersnaps have TEETH. It’s a little less sharp when it dries (my usual imp whiff cleared out my sinuses and made my eyes tear up, it’s that biting), but it’s still a bright, snippy, zinging sort of scent. It never struck me as being particularly lusty; rather, the ginger in it feels playful to me. It’s the kind of thing I’d wear when I was feeling cocky and irreverent – not an everyday scent by any means, but fun when I’m in the mood for it.

Dragon's Heart is one of those weird scents where I started off not liking it at all, but after it had been on for about twenty minutes I realized I was completely in love with it. I'm not sure why I didn't like it much at first -- in my notes, I just wrote "argh, soap" -- but it doesn't smell remotely soapy to me now. I've never tried a Dragon's Blood scent before (this one came to me as a frimp) and so it's hard for me to pin down what exactly this smells like. It smells oddly floral to me, but no specific flowers stand out; rather, it smells more like the idea of flowers, overlying something much richer. It's feminine, but not in a girly way. It's sophisticated and grown-up, the kind of thing you'd wear with razor sharp heels and a no-nonsense attitude. I never would've thought to try any of the dragon's blood scents on my own, but this made me want to sample them all.

Oh my god, menthol! This scent came to me as a frimp, and I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be for me when the whiff I took from the imp nearly burned out the inside of my nasal passages. Even once it was on my skin, it was all menthol, all the time. A few other things emerged as I wore it -- there was something that smelled like dry, gray stone, almost like pumice, and at one point I caught something kind of swampy and brownish-green -- but for the most part this was just a blast of pure, unadulterated menthol. I have to admit that it made for an interesting experience scent-wise, because I've never smelled anything that was so fiery and cold at the same time (it's like a volcano erupting in Antarctica, basically), but it's still not for me.

ROSE. ROSE. ROOOOOOOOSE. ROOO--okay, now something else is showing up. Whew! In her first thirty minutes, Ophelia is almost unbearable to me. A lot of the really pronounced florals go straight to my sinuses in a really unpleasant way, and Ophelia was like an icepick right to the brain. I'm not sure if it was the rose or not -- it's a pretty likely candidate considering it dragged all of the other notes off the playground and kicked them in the ribs before grudgingly allowing them back to play. After those first exquisitely painful thirty minutes, though, Ophelia mellows out and becomes quite soft and pretty. Even once the rose settled down, it was still strong enough to keep me from identifying the other floral notes involved, but that actually worked for me. Whatever florals I was getting formed a quiet, melancholy base for the rose, and there was just enough warmth there to temper it. I don't know that I'll wear it very much, but I'm glad I have it on hand for the days when I'm feeling a bit floral.

This smells so good in the bottle. It's all creamy chocolate and minty goodness, with just the barest hint of cedar and moss. It smells the way you'd think an enchanted forest would smell. To my complete and utter dismay, however, the cedar completely overtakes it once it gets on my skin, and after about twenty minutes you'd never even know there was supposed to be mint or chocolate there in the first place. As forest scents go, it's quite pretty, but I wanted to smell like an enchanted mint chocolate forest and not, you know, the regular boring sort. Alas. I've noticed that cedar is kind of a jerk on my skin and likes to take over everything, so maybe a scent locket will be a little kinder to this one.

This is such a pretty scent! It's very warm and gentle and clean, and the honey gives it just enough sweetness to make it feminine without being overwhelming. The chamomile is very pronounced on me, as is the honey, and the combination is soft and sweet and comforting. There's something very warm in the background (the tonka or the hyssop, perhaps? I'm not really sure what either of those smell like), and whatever it is keeps the honey from being too sweet. I can definitely see this being bottle-worthy. It's lovely!

This isn't the most complex scent, but it's definitely a solid one! I get so much tobacco from this that it's not even funny, so it's probably a good thing that I really like tobacco notes. This is another one of those oils where the scent is different depending on how close you are to it (or maybe it just depends on where I'm applying it...I'm not sure!). On my wrists, it smells like herbs and tobacco leaves, with barely any sweetness at all, but when I'm not trying to sniff it directly off my skin it's a cloud of exotic, spicy vanilla. I was holding off on trying any of the Snake Pit scents because I wasn't sure I was going to like Snake Oil, but Snake Oil's awesomeness is making me fear for my wallet.

Ahahaha, oh my god, this smells like honey and sex. I thought everyone was just exaggerating! I thought I was really going to like O, because I love honey scents and amber has been pretty kind to me so far, but ultimately I think it's too sweet for me. The amber doesn't ground it enough, and without something musky or spicy to cut the sweetness, I find that the super-sweet honey or sugar scents like O give me a raging headache. If aging doesn't temper it at all, I think I'll have to pass her along to someone who will appreciate her.

Oh, YUM. I can definitely see why everyone makes a fuss over Dorian. I'm one of those people who gets a lot of lemon from this, but it's a sweet, creamy lemon, like what you'd get in a lemon meringue pie. Dorian is sweet and subtle, all musk and sugar and lemon cream with just a hint of vanilla and tea to round things out and keep everything from being overly sweet. The lemon makes it feel very fresh, and the musk and sugared tea are weirdly sexy together. I don't know. I really, really like this. Bottle for sure!