If you read my recent ready for recycling post then you'll know that I recently finished the Pixi Nourishing Cleansing balm. If you read right through to the end then you'll also know that as much as I'd like to purchase the Pixi balm (the one in that post was a sample) £18 is a little expensive for me to spend on just one product at the moment.
As a big fan of The Body Shop and an even bigger fan of the huge discounts they regularly offer I thought I'd instead give the Camomile Sumptuous cleansing butter a try. I've already tried the oil equivalent and really like that one, so I thought chances are I'll like the balm. The balm is usually £10, not a bad price in itself, but I had a 40% discount code and so managed to grab it for £6.50.
I'm a little bit confused by this one because checking the ingredients I can't actually find camomile in there! I've tried Googling for the scientific name for camomile and I still can't find anything that looks right. I'm also confused because Google and my spell checker are both telling me that it's actually spelt Chamomile, so I have no idea what is going on here! I know The Body Shop can be a little bit naughty naming product after an ingredient that features very low in the list of ingredients (meaning the amounts are almost negligible), but I'd hope there is some in there.
If this does actually have any camomile in at all then this is great for sensitive skin because camomile is very calming and unlikely to irritate in any way. It also contains olive fruit oil, shea butter and sunflower seed oil, although the latter is pretty low down in the ingredients. This one does contain a few fragrance ingredients (which a product for sensitive skin probably shouldn't really contain) but fragrance isn't usually a problem for me, as far as I'm aware.
When I picked this up in store and spotted it said butter rather balm I did think that this might be more solid than I was used to, but of course butter in the dairy sense is only hard if it's kept cold, so this is actually much softer than I'm used to. I'll touch on this again below.
As with any product of this type you scoop out a small amount (I wish products like this would come with little scoops, or you could at least buy them, as it's a little more hygienic) rub it between your fingers for a few seconds to start breaking it down and apply to dry skin. You can use this to remove make-up and I think this is how most people will probably use a cleansing balm/butter. But as I mentioned in my empties post I struggle to remove cleansing balms from around my eyes, so I much prefer to use products like this as a second cleanse to really give my skin a good massage,
As I mentioned above this is softer then the balms I've used previously and at first I thought I might prefer that, but actually I don't. The Pixi Nourishing Cleansing balm was a lot thicker and I guess 'tougher' than this so it encouraged me to really massage it into the skin because, well, I had to. This one starts to soften really quickly between my fingers when I'm getting ready to apply it and by the time it has got to my face it's pretty much almost an oil. This means it glides over my skin really easily and so there's not as much massaging going on because it's not required to move the product around. I still enjoy using this, but my face doesn't quite get the massage it does with the Pixi balm. This is also so light and oil-like that it doesn't feel like I need a flannel or cloth to remove it, just a few splashes of water. I usually do use a flannel though just to make sure I am removing it all and for a quick, light bit of exfoliation at the end of the process.
This and the Pixi balm both contain 90ml of product, so they're comparable in terms of the amount of product you get, although they really don't look it. The Pixi pot is almost twice the height of The Body Shop, but I believe the product 'floats' slightly inside the Pixi pot whereas The Body Shop one sits right on the bottom of the tin. So which is my favourite? The Pixi one is definitely my favourite because I like how much firmer it is than The Body Shop's butter. But price wise at the moment The Body Shop wins because it's almost half the price of the Pixi one and with an offer I can get it for pushing closer to a third of the price.
I didn't really mean for this to end up as a bit of a comparison post, but I might as well set it against what I would consider my current 'holy grail' of cleansing balms. This is definitely a very nice product, it just had quite a lot to live up to for me!
The Body Shop Camomile Sumptuous Cleansing butter is £10 and is available online and in The Body Shop stores.
Have you tried anything from The Body Shop's camomile range?
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