DevilsCandyCane

I was so sure I was gonna love this, with the candlesmoke, musk and opium notes, and the big love it's been getting on FB, but just...no. HELLZ no!! I've been spraying it on my sleeve, as I do with all atmo/linen sprays, since I have chemical sensitivity issues and don't like to spray in the air and inhale stuff. Initially sprayed, there was a brief few seconds of lovely candlesmoke and a promising hint of beeswax, but then it went directly to hell. The whiskey is not the bourbon-type whiskey I love, this is 100% Scotch Whiskey, round and boozy and Christmas cake smelling - it smells exactly like a Scotch Whiskey distillery we visited when I was little, and the smell is exactly as nauseating as I remember from that day My mum's analysis was that it smelled like the medieval history museum we once visited - they were pumping in this atmospheric aroma that was sort of muddy and sewer-y and boozy and unpleasant, and I think she hit the nail on the head. Sprayed on clothes, it smells like you've been on a long alcoholic bender, and possibly slept in a puddle of your own wee, which oddly isn't a vibe I frequently like to give off ...I'll say one thing though, it has the staying power of a Duracell bunny, so much so that my hoodie has become utterly intolerable and will be going directly into the wash

Ha, I knew I'd have to redo this review, it was morphing all over the place the first day, but now it's been in a warm room for two days it's settled down Freshly applied, gooey juicy dribbly-syrup red velvet cake So, so gorgeous! That begins to fade within a couple of minutes, to a drier, deeper, more chocolatey cake scent, and then the Dorian, Doc and Snake Oil begin to creep in. The first day I tested this, it almost vanished, leaving nothing but a waft of Dorian and a hint of sweetness, but now - hurrah - the cake is holding its own! It's a perfect balance of the lovely backing of Dorian, a tiny hint of masculine leather, and these ground the overlying cake, making it wonderfully gender-neutral and less pure sugar. The cake that remains isn't so lush and dribbly-squidgy as it started, but it's still got a major red velvet sugar-rush going on - it reminds me a little of the drydown in Midway, that final stage of sweet, heady sugar that seems to envelop your skin, and I can smell the vanilla tea of Dorian just beneath, and closer to the skin the more masculine vibe of Doc. Absolutely lovely! So glad I finally managed to snag a bottle, it's been on my wants list for so long!

This smells so, so similar to the White Bees Swarming hair gloss, just without that shimmering aura of frosty sweetness. The honey note is definitely the same though, sweeter and more floral than the honey in Bard (which I'm testing on the other hand!). The tonka was very much in evidence wet, but it's faded away now to just leave a very sweet, simple, slightly herbal chamomile-honey. Overall, I think I'll use the remainder of my White Bees first (I largely wear it as perfume/body oil), because I really love that sparkly frosty sweetness, but when that's gone I will very probably return to this for a workable backup!

I actually tried this many years ago, and completed hated it, I seem to recall it being weird wood and dirty cafeteria smelling, but I got an imp recently and...wow. I dunno if my skin chemistry's changed or what, but I immediately bought a bottle, and the bottle's even better still! Wet, my bottle is thicker, darker coffee than my imp, absolutely beautiful - I can't have caffeine anymore, so I've been deprived of coffee for well over a year, and I adore the smell of it - this is the perfect coffee scent! As it dries, the coffee becomes milkier and sweeter, with a tiny hint of booze in the background, definitely reminds me of the beloved Jack Daniels sploshed coffee I miss so much! There's only the faintest hint of wood, which I'm happy about, it's mostly just lovely coffee, and the throw and longevity are great - I'm testing various things at the moment but keep catching whiffs of coffee So, so glad I tried it again, this is finally the Holy Grail coffee-replacement scent

The wet stage is odd, I get brief, strange hints of wood and metal, but happy that mostly disappears once dry, and it's all about the soft, silky honey-vanilla, with perhaps the tiniest hint of white floral in the background. This is just such a lovely honey scent! I am on a hunt for a holy grail honey scent, and this isn't quite it, there's still a hint of wood in the background making it more grounded and less sticky-honeytastic than I'd like, but nonetheless it's beautiful Definitely not at all masculine though, I was surprised by how pretty and feminine this scent is - bay rum usually makes for a lovely boysmell, but this...is not that!

In the imp it seemed almost metallic, and I nearly didn't skin test at all. The wet stage was very strange and cold-smelling, but once dry, on me this is Midnight Mass but much richer and more complex and evocative. Midnight Mass I was always fairly 'meh' about, but this I'm really quite liking - it has the same holy, church-y feel to it, but it's a much prettier scent, the rose note is really coming through now - it's a warmer softer sort of 'church-y' than Midnight Mass, which always smelled somehow cold and dusty to me. This is church-y, but pretty at the same time...

I'm surprised by how much I love this - the initial idea of the combination sounded so bizarre, but when a friend had a bottle for swap, I was curious. I love both Gingerbread Snake, and Jolly Roger, but combining them seemed decidedly odd. Somehow though, it totally works! In straight up Jolly Roger, I get all salty sea air, and a hint of driftwood, but in this there's so much more leather. Leather and salty sea air, and the gingerbread is just a hint of dry spice in the background warming it up. It's only the barest hint of foodie on me, very gender-neutral, with a slight masculine leaning, and I think it's sexy as hell! This is such a compulsive-sniffer scent, I can't stop smelling it! It's definitely gonna be a summertime favourite, but with the gingerbread addition it's less purely sea-air summertime than JR alone. I really, really really love it!

This is so lovely, but I'm baffled by the listed notes! The main scent for me is a sort of forest-y pine-yness, a little like Jersey Devil, but in Elf it's so much warmer and softer and more complex. It's definitely a pretty wood, rather than a rugged forest - flowers and berries and sunlight here. It's a very calming, refreshing scent, outdoorsy but magical. The honeycomb and amber I don't really get any of, at any stage, which is a little sad, and it does fade to nothing within about half an hour on me, so I suspect I'll never spring for a bottle. But I did grab 2 more imps, and will be using those often I'm really blown away by the RPG scents in general - I'm not a gamer, particularly, so I never sought them out, but of the imps I've received, they've all been amazing, such gorgeous, fresh, gender-neutral, outdoorsy-but-magical things. And I think this is my favourite so far

I'm so sad about the morphing this does Freshly sprayed on clothing, it's fabulous - really dark and evil, somehow earthy but not the outdoorsy earth note, this is more like the damp depths of a cave, atmospheric and awesome. But then about 15 seconds later it fades into oblivion, only to be resurrected after a few minutes as a sort of limp patchouli thing. It's not exactly unpleasant at that point, the dankness vaguely remains, but it's mostly like an almost floral soft patchouli (smells very, very similar to TAL's Determination), and though it's not a bad smell, there's just something about that makes me feel intensely irritable. I think it may be that it smells very much like generic female perfume, and makes me think of ghastly family visits, being annoyed by relatives Sorry, evil temple - you're the first linen spray I've ever met that I won't be keeping!

I've been dying to try this for a while, strawberry scents being my new infatuation, and the honey addition meant I absolutely had to find a bottle I was worried by the grasses and dandelion sap though, I don't like bitter green notes at all, and they tend to go crazy on my skin and stomp all over everything. Happily, those are far in the background, just a tiny whisper of green that keeps it really fresh and outdoorsy smelling Newly applied, there's this amazing mouth-watering combination of sweetness and tart strawberries, I wholly agree with someone else's view that it smells exactly like a bowl of freshly cut strawberries, sprinkled with sugar, sweet and tart and juicy and amazing. It's a very pink scent though, rather than red, the strawberry flower and grasses make it a little green, and a little floral, so it's not all straight-up gooey red strawberries. As it dries, it stays fairly true, and the honey comes out, which is fabulous Even with the honey though, it's very pretty and very fresh, and I can't stop sniffing it when I wear it! My only complaint would be that it's not the strongest of scents, stays very close to the skin, but despite that I will definitely be keeping my bottle, this will be absolutely gorgeous in summer

I'm so sad to finally notice the stations of the sun discontinued I still have 2 bottles of Tum, one a cobalt, and it's such a classic summer scent for me. In the bottle I get none of the grape other people mention, to me it smells like sun-warmed grass, and sweet white wine (which I guess is a little grapey, but more wine-grapey!) On skin it gets drier and muskier, but it stays sweet and bright, it always makes me think of riding through farmers' fields of overgrown, dry grass, with the sun shining - it's such a happy, mellow, summery scent. This on one wrist, and Jolly Roger on the other, is total summer BPAL for me - sunshine+wine, and seaside. I really regret not getting a bottle of Ra before they came down, I loved that too

Nope, nope nope nope - I love Sherlock, but this I had to scrub off in seconds. It's aaaaaaaall about the metal and grease, and I absolutely can't stand metallics, they ruin just about all the Steamworks scents for me I was really hoping that the intense metally nose-ouch might fade into the background, but it just made me feel ill >_< The patch of skin where it was, now has a very slight lingering scent that isn't quite so unpleasant, it's better balanced, but it still smells a bit like a garage, and it still makes my nose tingle in a not very nice way!

This is really, surprisingly lovely! The notes I would've guessed at were totally different, to me it's like a clean, efficient sort of violet-lavender cologne, yet wholly different from Villain or Wilde, this is much softer and more gender-neutral. In the early dry-down it was giving me really weird memories of my big brother's room in the late 80's, that it was painted this grey-violet colour with hints of pastel lemon and blue - I think partly because this smells exactly like those colours, and partly because there's an odd hint in this of the subtle muskiness that my brothers' rooms always smelled of, when we were little. (but don't worry, it doesn't smell like sweaty boys - I had a bizarrely heightened sense of smell as a child, and whenever I came home from school I could immediate tell who had visited that day, by their lingering scent. Dog-child! ) Overall, it smells very clean, but not in a lemony-soapy way, this is just...reassuring, it smells like the sort of guy who is always effortlessly in control of every situation, which is fitting! It almost has the slightest scent of freshly ironed, perfectly creased laundry, immaculately clean shirts. I rather love it, and think it'll be wonderful for summer - quite possibly a bottle needed!

This was a surprise bottle from the lab today, after a minor slip-up with my last order, and it is the best surprise ever, I absolutely love it! 3 vampires tried, every one of them fabulous, these are rapidly becoming Pokemon Vampires - gotta catch them all! Reading the scent notes, I would've been scared away by the bitter almond, but happily I get none of that. My first impressions, before looking up his notes, were that Dorian & Snake Oil had had a baby, and wrapped it up in clean leather As it dries, it very much reminds me of a cross between Temple Viper and Western Diamondback, the 2 snakes that were my favourite from CD - it's got the musky spiciness of Temper Viper, but with that clean white leather note from Diamondback, and...something else, that initially made me think of...almost smelling the heat of my own blood beneath the skin, which is such a cool effect, and I guess can now be attributed to the blood musk - which is another note that would've scared me off, since blood in terms of dragon's blood is *not* my favourite thing. Overall, this is lovely, and so compulsively sniffable! Absolutely gender-neutral, very elegant-yet-sexy. So Much Love!

I've been so obsessed with honey scents since Imaginer and White Bees, and this is lovely too. Sadly it's as good as useless in the bath - the scent just totally disappears, which is a shame, with my other BPAL oils, when I run the bath the whole room fills with the scent, but this, nope, even sitting in the bath and adding more, almost no scent at all. So instead I've been using it as body oil/perfume today, and for that it's wonderful - the additional of sage to the honey is so beautiful, freshly applied it just adds a hint of dry, dusty herbiness, and it feels more like early autumn, in mood, it smells like the sunset of fading summer, with sun-warmed grass just beginning to cool; that's how the sage smells to me, it's very light and pleasant. Later on into the drydown, it becomes less sweet, and more of a light musky herb-scent. Even as body oil, the scent doesn't linger as long as I'd like, but I suspect that if I slather myself in it post-bath, and then put on my pyjamas, they will end up smelling fabulous! Overall, I do wish it worked in the bath, but fortunately my order also brought a backup bottle of my favourite BPAL bath oil, so I'm covered for baths! And it smells lovely enough to be a body oil keeper - so much lazy late-summer evening atmosphere

Blind bottle purchase, it's been morphing like hell, but I think I'm in love with it - it's clearly a little temperamental with my skin chemistry, but now I've eaten and my body's doing the stupid radiator thing it does after food, the heat of my skin's turned Cicuta unbelievably smoky and dark and sinister, zomgggg, this is *exactly* what I wanted from him! ...I actually just ordered a pair of running shoes, so if Cicuta needs hot skin to really blossom, I think he'll be my new running buddy! Fresh/in the bottle, it's very sad and beautiful - roses and candles and loneliness, I love that this is a dark candley scent, leaning more towards my beloved Hand of Glory than the happy sweet beeswax of Light of Men's Lives. The downside of its morphing was that for a while it developed a cold, salty-metallic note, which is the same cold tickly one that put me right off Blood Popsicle. Happily that seems to be a brief, occasional thing, so I'm hoping it's mostly a peculiarity of winter shipping, and with a few days in a warm room that aspect will be wholly gone. But the dark smoky thing he's doing right now on my super-heated skin is unbelievable, it's so atmospheric. Earlier on he was weeping piteously in the cobwebbed recesses of his dusty old castle, and right now he's throwing a furious tantrum and burning all his books - I like him when he's angry and demonic!

Ohh, I love this! I'm glad I didn't see the reviews 'til now, because mentions of 'buttery' would've scared me right away - I don't like to smell like popcorn, and Jack does that to me, but this isn't at all popcorny, thank god! Wet, the buttery is there, but it's more warm, creamy coconut marshmallow milky snuggliness Freshly applied, the coconut comes out a little more, it's a bit like Eden but not so almondy-sweet. As other people said, it's very beachy, and very warm and comforting and happy-making. On me, the throw and longevity have been amazing - I was testing everything at once earlier, but Ivory Vulva was the thing I kept getting lovely whiffs of from a distance. As it dries, there's a tiny hint of spice, almost nutmeg, and it makes me think of the best rice pudding ever made, or some sort of creamy white cocktail Conclusion, I absolutely love this, and if I hadn't blown my load on some Ebay BPALs yesterday, I would be thinking about a backup bottle, because this will get a LOT of wear, it's one of those scents that will definitely get me through stressful days, being so warm and snuggly and comforting, and I suspect it'll be amazing in my scent locket. SO MUCH LOVE!!

When I first tried it this morning, it was acrid burning tyres, blehh... It's had all day to warm up, so here goes attempt number 2... Freshly applied...hmm...acrid tyres. Whiff of burning rubber. Bit of fairly pleasant cologne in the background. Drying, the acrid tyre stench is fading, but it's still very dirty. It's hard to say exactly *what* it smells like, I'm unfamiliar with cistus and benzoin, but there's none of the vanilla, amber, nutmeg or tobacco that I wanted. It's just dirty racetrack with something a bit citrus-cologney. It definitely is getting cleaner as it dries, but sadly that just means edging towards a cheap sort of toilet cleaning product Usually I really like smoky things, but the only smoke I get from this is acrid, 'someone's put something plastic in the oven', and all the sweeter notes are just...not there, at all. Yuck. Will be getting rid of this bottle!

Editing this review, now I have my own bottle to play with, and the impressions I get from it are very, very weird! When applied, this makes me think of my holiday to Florida, and being on Daytona Beach in particular - the beeswaxy note is somehow like sunscreen on hot skin, very nearly coconut-y, and there's something almost salty like sunshine and sea air - it's total beach-smell, without being at all artificial. Which is really cool, albeit not at all what I was hoping for! Just applied more, and fresh it's a little more beeswaxy, almost a honey note, with something that smells a little like a library, a sort of old books scent, but overall...it still smells like the beach to me! I get absolutely zero smoke from this, so it doesn't make me think of candles at all - my big candle love is Hand of Glory, which is so damn dark and smoky and gorgeous, and I've just discovered Cicuta which has a lot of dark sinister smoke in the drydown, but this...no smoke, none at all, so it's all sweet, squeaky-clean beeswax, and it just...BEACH! It's the BEACH! It's also a soft scent, very low throw, which is sad. Overall it's very pleasant, but...I don't know if I really need the whole of this bottle...

Surprise sniffie of something I was super curious about! Freshly applied, this is *gorgeous*, there's the soft beeswaxy candles with a hint of smoke, but also something that gives me the impression of a soft, fluffy, pale pink cloud, almost a gentle floral note somewhere between rose and lavendar, very comforting and cuddly and soft. Unfortunately it fades away very very quickly, leaving just a very quiet hint of milk and something that smells almost like violets. If that initial scent stayed, I would definitely be seeking some out, it's just such a comforting scent, but given it dies in all of 5 minutes on my skin, nope. Glad I've got to try it though!

I got a surprise sniffie of this (edit, haha, from the wonderful poster above me, no less! ), and it's really lovely, I now have a massive 'do I need a bottle' dilemma going on! Wet, it's...slightly sharp with the tobacco, but also almost incensey with the frankincense. When first applied there's that slightly old man-ish squelchy countryside and tobacco scent that I got from Bram Stoker, but that rapidly fades into...sexy-guy-out-clubbing smell! It's like tobacco and smoke and cologne all mingling on a battered leather jacket, and it definitely smells dark and dangerous. This stage I absolutely love Unfortunately it occasionally dips into bitter tobacco-spit, like when you lick the Rizla and accidentally get a strand of tobacco in your mouth, which is the element that's holding me back from thinking I must have this, but...it is really tempting. I just love how badass and dominant this scent is, while still smelling weirdly natural - there's no artificial manly cologne stink about it - my little masculine collection has nothing with quite the same vibe... Such a dilemma!! Knowing my impulsive tendencies, I will end up with a bottle ordered before the week is out

This is one of the most beautiful Christmassy BPALs I've ever encountered I don't get much vanilla *or* sandalwood, but I also wouldn't call it particularly aquatic - I read a few of those reviews before I got mine and thought ARGHHH, I hate aquatics, this is a *disaster!* Happily it's not, for me When freshly applied, it's a little bit Yankee Candle smelling, lots of sparkling snow and what smells a lot like...a piney foresty scent, which I love, but in this it's definitely a snowy forest. It reminds me quite a lot of the Fae Forest linen spray, which I also love. This just smells so calm and magical, it really does remind me of walking completely alone in snowy countryside, the total silence except for snow scrunching under boots, and the sparkling white expanse of the fields and sky, it's such a beautiful scent and I do wish I had more than one decant, though it's so season-specific that I wouldn't want a whole bottle either. This will be a huge Christmassy favourite in years to come though At the very bottom of the drydown, I occasionally catch the strangest hint of almost bonfire smoke - not like the Bonfire SN, I didn't like that, it was acrid and dirty, this is a cleaner, lighter smoke scent, which I guess is finally the slight woodiness of the sandalwood coming out...but then other times at the bottom drydown stage I do get a little bit of the dreaded aquatic thing going on - the final stages seem quite odd and unpredictable, but happily the magical snowy forest stage lasts a pretty long time

Bit scary in the bottle, SO MUCH LEATHER! This is insanely strong, I haven't even been spraying it, just wiping a little onto my arm since it's so powerful. The rose peeks out a tiny bit, and the musk keeps it dark and mysterious, I get no honey at all, and the leather is always the dominating force. And it's like a rainbow of leather, new shiny leather, old battered leather, BDSM convention leather, and the latter is my overall impression, it does smell like a sex dungeon! I don't love this as much as other people seem to, I'm glad I only have one decant, but I will be keeping it, it's got such a cool badass evil supervillain vibe that I'm sure I'll find a use for it

I was unsure about this in the bottle, there's something almost eucalyptusy-leathery, but once sprayed (testing on my hand for now) it dies down into more of a snowy note. And actually, I find this strangely masculine, which was a pleasant surprise - it reminds me a lot of Doc Constantine's Medicine Show linen spray, but with wintery overtones. Really really sexy comforting boysmell with a bit of sweetness and a tiny hint of snowy pine (which is lovely, but very strange with the listed notes, it doesn't smell at all earthy patchouli-y, or very vanilla-y, they seem to balance each other out into something totally different...) I can't imagine I'll be spraying this in my extensions, because it just smells too masculine for swishy girly hair, but it will definitely be used as body oil whenever I'm going out in boy mode

This is absolutely *gorgeous*, and I immediately set about acquiring more than my single decant! I don't have much hair (other than my occasionally used extensions), so I've been testing hair glosses on the back of my hand. When first sprayed, there's this amazing soft aura of gentle, sweet honey gorgeousness, with just a hint of floral, total 'holy SHIT this is incredible! This is the best thing I ever smelled!' moment It gradually dies down into soft beeswaxy honey with a little sparkling hint of frost, and this stage lasted ages. Honey can be a weird one for me, sometimes I find it overpowering and sickly, but when it's *good*, honey is one of my favourite notes, and in this, it is amazing I will be wearing this a lot as perfume!