This Second's Obsession

You are here: Home / Archives for Lush

Lush

2012 Make-up/Skincare Favourites

By

This is a bit behind the times, as I’ve been really busy recently, but hopefully some of you will still be interested though it has last year’s date on it!

My absolute favourite new product of last year was the Revlon Just Bitten Lipstain + Balm in Gothic. After Sarah at SillyGrrl mentioned it several times, I tested it out in a shop and was smitten by its bright red stain. I love lipstains. They are lighter and more comfortable to wear everyday, and don’t come off on mugs and boyfriends. I also like to apply them before lipstick so when the lipstick wears off, I still have colour underneath and it’s not so obvious. I put this product on my Christmas list for 2011 and luckily I got one. It’s not perfect – the drier skin on my lips absorbs more pigment from the pen so if I get lazy about lip care it can look really patchy, and the lid on the balm has slid off a couple of times in my make-up bag – but the bright red colour is just what I was hoping for. I wear this at least once a week, it’s become my go-to lip colour.

I started using tea tree oil this year to battle my spots. The bottle pictured is the Superdrug blend, but I’ve also tried one from The Body Shop. They each have their own pros and cons. The Body Shop one has a much higher concentration of tea tree oil and works better applied to individual spots as its quite drying. The Superdrug one is less drying (despite containing alcohol) and I can use it on large areas. Confusingly, the Superdrug one says it is a blended oil, and it certainly feels oily, refusing to dry, but the only oil listed in the ingredients is tea tree, so I’m not sure what’s going on there. I think that I might try buying the pure essential oil, which Superdrug also sell, and adding a few drops into the blended oil, but I also want to repurchase The Body Shop one as it dries properly and feels a lot better under makeup.

I recently started using Lush’s Cosmetic Lad because the skin of my face was getting a bit dry with all the central heating and cold winds. I usually use Vanishing Cream but I felt it wasn’t thick enough. I did try buying a cheap moisturiser from Simple, the Clear Skin Oil Balancing Moisturiser, but it was a disaster. Blackheads on my cheeks. Seriously. I have never in my life had blackheads on my cheeks before. On my nose and forehead, yes, but never on my cheeks! I do not have blackheads on my cheeks now that I’ve stopped using it (just a lot of tiny whiteheads). I don’t think Cosmetic Lad is doing anything for my spots (I’m going to buy some Vanishing Cream to use at least some of the time) but it has really helped soothe my skin. I had a cold a few weeks ago and usually this means red nose and cheeks for at least a few days, if not a week afterwards, but I put on some Cosmetic Lad before going to bed and when I woke up my face looked normal! I was really impressed as this has never happened before, and I have tried all sorts to avoid the Rudolph look – olive oil, Savlon, layers of my usual moisturiser.

The Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Shadow Pencil in Sin is basically an portable version of one of my favourite eyeshadows that I can apply without a brush. It also makes a great base for the Sin eyeshadow when I want to give it a bit more oomph and works as an inner corner highlight. The downside is that these set really quickly so I have to do one eye at a time, which means that I usually put a bit more on one than the other.

The Ecotools Shade Brush (from the eye brush kit) is my brush of the year. I don’t use most of the Ecotools brushes for their intended purpose. I like to use this one to apply highlight shades under the brow or in the inner corner. It’s the ideal size for me.

The Benefit Bad Gal Lash is a mini that was free with Glamour magazine some time last year. I decided to try it after a friend recommended it and I was delighted. I don’t know if I’ll buy the full size because the brush on the mini is massive enough (though not as long as the brush for Revlon Grow Luscious, which is ridiculous) and I think Benefit test on animals, but it is a really nice mascara. I can apply multiple coats without any clumping at all, even if I leave several hours between coats (ie. if I put one on in the morning for work and then want to amp it up for the evening).

You can’t really see the name in the picture, but that’s Lush’s Karma perfume. I love this stuff. It’s so fresh and bright and spicy and delicious. It’s such a strong scent that I can still smell it on me the next day. I also have the soap and body lotion (Karma Kream), plus a bubble bar in my stash. Yes, it’s hippieish and laden with patchouli like an old goth but I think it is one of the nicest smells in the world and sometimes reach for my pot of Karma Kream just to sniff it!

Finally, I started buying the Barry M Base Coat, Top Coat and Hardener this year after getting fed up with Rimmel base coats drying out before the end of the bottle as they have no ball bearings. The only reason I stuck with Rimmel for so long was because I kept buying their base coat in sets or getting it as a gift. So much happier with the Barry M one. It dries fairly quickly, has TWO ball bearings, and was made in the UK.

Special mentions go to the products that have been my favourites for multiple years now: Lily Lolo foundation and concealer, Aromaleigh eyeshadows, Urban Decay eyeshadows (especially Sin), Bourjois eye pencils and The Body Shop lip balms. I particularly love Bourjois’ liquid eyeliner Liner Pinceau, which I abandoned for a little while this year, but the much raved about Rimmel liquid eyeliners just do not compare!

My Top Five Lush Products of the Moment

By

I’ve been drafting several make-up reviews that I will post as soon as I take pictures to go with them, and I thought that whilst I’m in review mode, I’d do a quick review of some of my current favourites from Lush.

5. Pied de Pepper

This is a lovely peppery cinnamony warming lotion intended for feet. I love the smell and it’s really strong too, which means I can mix it with olive oil to make it more moisturising and last longer. It actually mixes with olive oil really badly, I mix it up and then it separates again within a few minutes, but I put up with having to stir it every time I want to use it because it does the job so well. After working on my feet all day for a couple of months they were in a pretty bad state but have been recovering fast thanks to this. I always put some on if I’m chilly and it makes me feel better.

4. The Olive Branch

It smells beautiful, like oranges, lemons and olives, and is meant to be used as a shower gel, but at the moment I’ve been using this every other hair wash as shampoo. I wouldn’t use it all the time as it eventually makes my hair greasy but as I only use soap and Reincarnate on the other washes it makes up for the little bit of dryness I get and leaves me with smooth soft hair that is still light and styleable. It makes a great shower gel too and lasts ages as a little goes a long way. It’s not really a gel consistency, it’s very runny in fact, but a few splashes of this lather up really well.

3. Reincarnate

I’ve been using this solid shampoo for about three years now. It was the first product from Lush that I tried, and I still love it. The smell is very earthy and a lot of people don’t like it, though I do. It also takes hard work to get to lather and isn’t a brilliant cleanser on its own – living in a hard water area I find that I have to use conditioner after or wash my hair with soap and/or another shampoo first or I’ll get build up.  But it has made my brown hair more reddish, people actually compliment me on the colour of my hair quite often. If I flip the ends up onto the roots you can really see that they are completely different colours, the ends are lighter and redder, but when my hair is down it doesn’t show because it’s a natural, subtle gradient.

2. Vanishing Cream

This moisturiser is so light, I’ve definitely gotten less spots since I started using it (couple of years now). It’s expensive but a little goes a long way so I only have to buy about two pots a year. It also is perfect to wear under mineral foundation as it isn’t oily, it means that wearing a full face of make-up feels about the same as wearing none at all. It smells mostly of lavender in my opinion, which some people find offputting, but I’ve learned to like it.

1. Love Lettuce

photo from the Lush website

If I was only allowed to buy one Lush product for the rest of my life, I’d probably choose this one. I had these really annoying tiny little spots on my temples for several month, too small to really do much with but they wouldn’t go. A couple of weeks using this mask and they were gone. I ran out, and they came back. Bought more Love Lettuce and a couple of uses later they were gone again. It exfoliates my skin really well without being harsh and drying and I don’t need to actually use it as a mask all the time, what I do is scoop a little bit out with my fingers whilst I’m in the shower and use it as a scrub. That way it lasts a lot longer. However, it still gets used up quite quickly, plus it is fresh so it has to go in the fridge, and is £6.45! If you have five empty black pots from Lush you can exchange them for a free fresh face mask, which I’ve done once, but I don’t use up the other products fast enough to get enough free Love Lettuces. I’ve run out again though, so I’m just going to have to fork out the cash.

Do you like Lush’s products? What are your current favourites? Other products I use regularly include: Enchanting Eye Cream, Lemony Flutter, Porridge soap, Angel’s Delight soap, Rub Rub Rub and Let Them Eat Cake. I’m trying out one of the sugar scrubs at the moment, I got it in a set, and I love the scent, but it is really quite scratchy so I don’t think I’ll buy one.

They’ve got some new products out for The Cursed Day (‘Cursed’ pronounced ‘Cer-SED’, natch), including a ballistic of a little blue man called The Ex Factor. It’s a shame that it’s vanilla, which I don’t really like, because the whole idea of dissolving it one body part at a time sounds fun, it reminds me of the way I used to eat Pom-Bear crisps or Jelly Babies as a kid, biting off the legs, then the arms, then the body, then the ears, then the head! I’m bad to the bone, obviously… I’ve been looking longingly at the Something Wicked bath melt (it’s purple) and at the new apple-scented Temptation soap. I love apple scents and use the Nina perfume by Nina Ricci, but £7.30 for a soap is a lot too much for me!