The Body Shop Camomile Sumptuous Cleansing butter

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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Ready for recycling #2

I have a lot less products ready for recycling this time round so I can include them all in just one post without fear of boring you all to death before you reach the end of the post! When I lived at home it felt like I rarely used up products, but since moving out I appear to be ploughing through them, so I haven't left it as long this time before doing a post.

Hempz Original Herbal body moisturizer* £12.98 (post) This is a product I was sent just after I moved into my new house, so just over 9 months ago now. I certainly haven't used it consistently though, so this isn't an indication as to how long this product might last you, but with 500ml in the bottle it should last a good few months. I received the original scent, which is floral and banana, and although it maybe sounds a little weird it smells amazing. Other scents available include Fresh Coconut & Watermelon (how incredible does that sound!) and Vanilla Plum. I really enjoyed using this as it was light enough for my skin to actually absorb it and left my skin feeling soft and moisturised.

Repurchase? It's not really in my price range but for how much you get for the price then yes.

No7 Pampering Dry Oil body spray £11.50 This has been hanging around for a long time now and I'm not sure why as I really like it. I think it was part of a Christmas gift set a few years back that was probably the Boots star gift one week. I do like using dry body oils but I do get a bit frustrated that the bottle gets all oily as you use it and I usually have to wipe it down once I've finished. This has since had a make-over in terms of both the bottle and the actual formula, or at least scent, and the reviews on the Boots website aren't very good. The scent was one of my favourite things about this so I'm not sure I'd buy it if they've changed this.

Repurchase? Maybe with a No7 voucher as £11.50 is quite expensive.

Philip Kingsley One More Day dry shampoo* £14.50 (full size) As you may know I'm not a fan of dry shampoo at all, but I actually did really like this one. It's got quite a nice scent and it helped get rid of some of the oil in my hair making it look more presentable. I'm not quite sure what else to say about it apart from that! I'm a spray in before I go to bed kinda girl when it comes to dry shampoo as I think sleeping on helps it look much better when you wake up in the morning. 

Repurchase? I'd consider it but it is a bit expensive when there's much cheaper options available. 

Super Facialist by Úna Brennan Rose Hydrate Calming Creamy cleanser £7.99 This is looking a little truncated because I like to snip my tubes in half and try and get as much product out as I can! I think I mentioned recently that I haven't particularly been excited by any cream cleansers I've tried recently and that stand for this product too. There's nothing wrong with it at all, it does the job and does it pretty well, it just doesn't excite me in any way. 

Repurchase? Probably if it's on offer, as it is at the moment (£5.33 in Boots)

Merci Handy New Wave Love & hand cream* £4.90 Merci Handy are a French brand that has made an appearance in recent Birchboxes in the form of this hand cream and previously an antibacterial hand gel. I believe there's three different scents available; New Wave, Flower Power and Cherie Cherry. I was a little concerned when I first noticed there are little blue beads in this hand cream (surely not microbeads?!) but they disappear as you apply the cream so I'm not sure what they are. This absorbs quickly and doesn't leave any greasy feeling behind but it's not really the most moisturising product I've used. 

Repurchase? No

Nivea Essential Care lip balm £1.65 I think this came as part of a little Nivea lip balm gift tin my boyfriend got me a few years back. I think this might only be the second lip balm I've ever completely used, so that should say something! I think I usually get bored and just forget about them and eventually chuck them out because I think they'll have probably got a bit yucky. This was my general go to, probably not what I'd reach for if my lips are really dry, but day to day it was what I reached for.

Repurchase? If I didn't have about a billion already then yes. You can't go wrong at £1.65! 

Pixi Nourishing Cleansing balm* £18 (post) Oh I adore this product and am gutted it's finished. I was sent this to try along with Glow Tonic and I'm a big fan of both products. I don't use cleansing balms to remove my make-up because I struggle to remove them from around my eyes, but instead I like to use them once my make-up has gone to give my skin a really good massage. 

Repurchase? I would love to but it's currently a bit out of my price range. 

What have you used up recently?

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Ready for recycling #1 - Part 1

Ready for recycling #1 - Part 2

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Some new skincare additions from L'Oreal, The Body Shop and Sanctuary Spa

I've added a few new skincare products to my stash recently, so I thought I'd tell you about them. So here's a little something from L'Oreal, The Body Shop (I'm sure you know by now how much I love The Body Shop!) and Sanctuary Spa.

L'Oreal Extraordinary Oil Facial Cleansing Oil £7.99 (here)

I decided to give this a try when I spotted it was on offer in Boots down from something like £7.99 to just over £5. It wasn't particularly easy for me to get my hands on though. I headed into my local store and found that it was priced at £19.99 down to just over £13; what I believe is actually the price for their facial oil rather than cleansing oil. I didn't want to try buying it in case it did ring up as that price and it was a major hassle, but I did tweet Boots to let them know. Despite Boots telling me they'd contacted the store to tell them to correct it I went in a further 3/4 times and it was still the same price. I ended up picking this up in another store when I was visiting family.

Despite the hassle it took to actually get my hands on this I'm glad I finally managed to. Considering it's a budget to mid-level product (depending on how you personally class the pricing) I wasn't expecting amazing things from it and it has exceeded my expectations. It tells you to use 2-3 drops (I think it means pumps), which is plenty for the not particularly heavy make-up I wear day-to-day and it works really well. It has a pleasant scent, feels really smooth and glides over the skin and gets the job done. I thought it might struggle with more stubborn mascara but it whipped off the one I've been using (a Bobbi Brown one) with ease. It also left my skin feeling soft and smooth and hydrated.

The Body Shop Vitamin E Gentle Facial Wash £7.50 (here)

I appear to be slowly making my way through all of The Body Shop's Vitamin E product range and my latest addition is their Gentle Facial Wash. My product of choice for my second cleanse in the evening and my morning cleanser is a cream cleanser used with water, but I haven't been particularly excited by any I've tried recently. I think this might be because I'm going for more budget options (because they're in my price range right now) and although I'm not opposed to budget cream cleansers I don't think they're quite as enjoyable to use as slightly higher priced ones.

I realised I had a £5 Love Your Body voucher and as I'm a fan of the Vitamin E range and this made this only £2.50 I thought I might as well give it a try. They do a product specifically called a cream cleanser but I believe this is one you use with cotton wool on dry skin and these usually irritate my skin. So I went for the facial wash, which is a creamy product you use with water.  

It's a nice enough product, but as I said it's not hugely exciting. It works fine as a second cleanse and morning cleanse and gets my skin clean. It can strip my skin a little sometimes, but that's a problem I do have with any product used with water as water tends to suck moisture out of my dry and dehydrated skin.

Sanctuary Spa Warming Detox Charcoal Wash £9 (here)

I think it was last year sometime that Boots obviously did a bit of blogger outreach for their Sanctuary Spa brand and subsequently a few of their products made it on to my curiosity/wish list. The two products I particularly wanted to try were their charcoal wash, which I'm talking about here, and their cleansing balm. I picked this up when it was on offer, but held off picking up the cleansing balm yet. I'm glad I did now as I'm not so sure about trying that one anymore based on my thought's on this product. 

I thought this might be similar to the REN ClearCalm 3 Clarifying Cleanser, which is one of my favourite products, but it really isn't. It's a very unusual product. It starts off as a dark grey gel that then becomes a smooth oil as you massage it on your skin and when you add water it foams. This has quite a distinctive and not particularly pleasant smell and it took me a while to place it at first. It smells like paint. Yes, paint! As in painting the walls paint. That really isn't the kind of scent I want when I'm cleansing my skin to be honest. The oil stage isn't too bad, it feels nice, but when you add water it does get quite frothy. As in when you add more water to try and rinse it off it just keeps getting more frothy and can easily end up in your eyes if you're not careful. I find it best to use a flannel to try and remove it as quickly as possible.

I just find this a bit of a strange product. I'm not sure I like the whole gel to oil to foam thing and the smell isn't particularly pleasant. It does cleanse my skin, does help clear my congested chin a little and doesn't strip my skin, despite the foam, but I just don't really enjoy using it. Also I don't think I've actually detected the 'warming' effect at all.

Have you tried any of these products?

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L'Oreal Elvive Colour Protect Low Shampoo Gentle Cleansing Cream

This is the sort of product I would have been over the moon to have discovered when I was (briefly) a red head. A budget colour protecting shampoo that doesn't contain SLS?! You see there are a lot of shampoos around that claim to be colour protecting, but yet they contain sulphates (SLS), which strip colour. So a colour protecting shampoo containing SLS is along the same lines as a freakshake claiming to fat free! To find a shampoo that can actually claim to be colour protecting, i.e. sulphate free, you'd have to look to high-end to the likes of Paul Mitchell, Maria Nila, Bumble & Bumble etc. I think the cheapest one I found was from L'Oreal (round of applause for L'Oreal) in the form of their EverPure range. If you're a £2 bottle of shampoo gal than you might not consider £6/£7 particularly budget, but right now this is apparently the best we can do. 

Just as a quick note, if you've seen the current Head & Shoulders advert there is no way the girl with the orange hair should be using Head & Shoulders. It's a colour stripper, it took my pretty much black hair down to dark brown (used as a stripping mask over several hours) so it would suck out that orange shade no problem at all!

One of the biggest problems I had when my hair was red was that I'm a big time oily hair sufferer and I have to wash my hair quite often, ideally every other day, but I do try to push it further if at all possible. The problem is I'm not a huge dry shampoo fan and nothing feels like properly clean hair, at least for me, and I'm not someone who feels comfortable when my hair feels dirty. Regular washing and coloured hair isn't a great combination, but when I'm using a more natural colour and have found the right dye it's not too bad. I'd still like my colour to last as long as possible though.

Now, a low shampoo is something that will take some getting used to. Products that don't contain sulphates foam very little (because it's the sulphates that make them foam) and a low shampoo doesn't foam at all. To be honest you don't need the foam to clean your hair, we're just so used to associating a head full of foam with using shampoo and cleaning our hair. This is a cleansing cream, and so is much more like a conditioner than a shampoo, and in fact you use it just like I would use a conditioner, in place of a conditioner. You pump a good amount into your hands, apply it evenly from roots to tips, massage gently (remembering there won't be any foam), leave for three minutes (while you shave those legs etc) and then rinse out while combing through with your fingers. 

You do have to use quite a lot so you might get through it quite quickly, especially if you have long hair, but this covers shampoo and conditioner, so you only have to buy the one product. It's recommended to use 10-15 pumps, but I did find this too much for my shoulder length, thin but a lot of it and oily hair. I would say about 7 pumps appears to be about the right amount for me.

Did it clean my hair? Yes it certainly did. I don't see any difference between using this and a standard SLS containing/foaming shampoo. One thing I was concerned about was that both of the low shampoos currently available (this and an Extraordinary oil one) are designed for dry hair, so I thought they might be too much for my hair. I have used this four times now and 50% of the time I haven't rinsed it all out properly, so that is something I have to be very careful of. It is effectively like a conditioner, so you do have to give it a really good rinse and I really recommend using your fingers to help rinse it out like it tells you to on the bottle. Ideally I would like one designed for oily hair, or at least more for normal hair rather than dry, but because of the type of product this is (effectively a cleansing conditioner) I'm not sure if that's really possible.

As I said I've only used this four times so far, and I'm currently using a colour that doesn't fade really quickly, so I can't really comment on how colour protecting this is long term, but so far it's looking good.

The L'Oreal Elvive Colour Protect Low shampoo is £6.99 and can be found in Boots stores and on the Boots website.

Would you consider trying a low shampoo?

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