Christina Alyce Beauty: bath

I received so many gorgeous bath products for my birthday a few weeks ago, and I could not wait to try everything out. One of the first products I tried was this jar of bath salts from Plantfolk Apothecary.

I had initially seen these on Urban Outfitters, (Plantfolk Apothecary does have a site, but it is down for maintenance at the time of writing this) and I couldn't add them to my wishlist fast enough- they sounded absolutely amazing. Luckily, my mom is good at sticking to my wishlist, so I got exactly what I wanted!

These pale pink bath salts are incredibly aromatic. The moment you remove the lid of the jar, they release a strong aroma of lemongrass, a hint of sweet vanilla, and a slight herbal, chamomile undertone. It's the perfect summer bath scent; fresh, sweet, and green.

Out of all the different categories of bath products out there, I tend to find soaking halts are my favorite, and have the most noticeable effect on me physically, and when it comes to relaxation. This little jar is jam packed with three different salts: Pacific sea salt, Celtic sea salt, and pink Himalayan salt. This combination is excellent for treating muscle soreness, and drawing out impurities. I also find that with soaking salts, I leave the tub with the same feeling one gets after spending the day at the beach, content, relaxed, and renewed by the sea.
Rhassoul Clay also has a hand in that cleansed and renewed feeling, because it is best known for effectively unblocking pores, and it contains many softening and nutritive vitamins and minerals, such as silicon, magnesium, iron, sodium, potassium, and lithium.
Combined with the lemongrass, chamomile, and vanilla essential oils, these ingredients relax the body and mind, and leave your skin feeling incredibly soft. I also added Fig + Yarrow's Woods Bath and Body Oil to my bath, and the combination resulted in one of the best smelling, most moisturizing baths I've taken. I really love these salts, and will certainly be purchasing them once I run out, and I would love to try the Wood Fired version as well.

Size: 9oz
Price $14

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I am usually cautious about purchasing higher priced Kitchen Items, like Shower Gels and Body Lotions, because at $15 or $20, it’s a bit of an investment for something I may not like. I went back and forth on this one for quite a while and though I didn’t want to spend the money, I’ve learned from experience that I’d probably regret passing it up and give in weeks later buying it for a very inflated price on eBay or elsewhere. I could always sell it myself if it didn’t agree with me anyway!

The list of ingredients and online description certainly make the scent of this sound unique. With a few floral ingredients, grapefruit oil, and fennel, you’d perhaps imagine a fresh floral scent, with a dash of licorice. But in reality, the scent is nothing like what I expected. I will do my best to explain how it actually smells to me, but in all honesty, this scent was rather weird and difficult to describe.

I could definitely detect a little bit of citrus in the aroma, but It doesn’t smell at all floral to me- my nose can’t pick out the rose or jasmine ingredients, whatsoever. There is a slightly powdery note that may come form the rose, but I really can’t be sure. The fennel gives the shower gel an equally sweet and bitter twinge, and brings everything together to create an overall fresh, sweet, yet almost plastic scent... a rather strange way to describe it but it’s not necessarily a bad smell. I have certainly smelled worse things from lush.

Moving past the strange scent, this gel is also pretty unique to look at. A neon green opaque liquid, this shower gel certainly looks electrifying. The creamy consistency is similar to that of Lush’s new shower creams, and I did find this shower gel to be a little more softening than other shower gels, and it still lathered really well. The scent lingered very softly on my skin after using this.

Overall, B Electro is a pretty decent shower gel, and while I don’t think I will repurchase it, it is definitely an eye catching product with a unique scent, and feels great on the skin.

Rating: 3.5

Price: £11 ($16.64) for 240g

Status: Kitchen Exclusive

Vegan?: Yes

Would I repurchase?: Probably Not

Ingredients: Fresh Rose Petals, Water (Aqua), Sodium Alkyl Sulfate, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Glyceryl Stearate & PEG-100 Stearate, Fine Sea Salt, Cocamide MEA, Perfume, Glycol Cetearate, Propylene Glycol, Lauryl Betaine, Grapefruit Oil, Fennel Oil, Rose Absolute, Jasmine Absolute, Tincture of Benzoin, Organic Jojoba Oil, Benzyl Benzoate, Citronellol, Geraniol, Limonene, Linalool, Colour 59040, Colour 42090, Methylparaben, Propylparaben.

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Roulades are quite a new concept to me, and I’ve had my eye on both Dreamwash and Icing on the Cake for a while. I was excited to try a sample of their blueberry-scented sibling, which was in a handful of surprise product samples in a recent Kitchen order. Upon first sniff, I wasn’t all that impressed. I was hoping for a sweeter blueberry scent, something fresh and fruity, but what I found was far from it. While not the most unpleasant thing I’ve ever smelled from Lush, I wouldn’t exactly call it mouthwatering. I found it to be a very natural blueberry scent, and quite earthy and even a bit sour. Very unlike the homemade jam scent I was expecting!

As I mentioned above, I am new to the whole roulade thing. It is a soft but solid bar shape, so I assumed it would be easy enough to use it like a bar soap. Unfortunately, It was not so simple. I dug my little grape tomato sized chunk of roulade out of the container, wet it, and attempted to lather it directly onto my body, but this proved to be rather slippery and messy. When mixed with the warm water, the roulade got a bit softer, so it squished unpleasantly in my hands and pieces fell off and a lot of product got wasted. It also didn’t produce much lather to speak of. I really didn’t like using this directly on my skin, so I decided to use it on my netted sponge the next time I used it.

With the netted sponge, I had slightly better results, but it was really more effort than it was worth. just rubbing the roulade on the sponge didn’t give me any lather to work with, so I ended up mashing it into the netting and really working it in, to finally produce some suds to work with. What lather I had didn’t stretch very far, and the bits of roulade fell out of my netted sponge and made a mess of the shower.

After washing with both methods, I didn’t feel any more moisturized than I would with a shower gel, or even a traditional soap. I certainly didn’t feel the moisturizing effects of soya milk, coconut oil, almond oil, or cocoa butter. On paper, this sounded beautiful and nourishing, but in reality, I just found this a really disappointing product overall, and I’m apprehensive to try the sample of Orange Roulade that I received. I would never spend close to $13 on this product!

Rating: 1/5

Price:

£8.50 ($12.84) for 100g
£21.25 ($32.11) for 250g

Status: UK Exclusive

Vegan?: Yes

Would I repurchase? No

Ingredients: Fresh Blueberries (Vaccinium myrtillus), Rapeseed Oil: Coconut Oil (Brassica napus;Cocos nuciferal), Glycerine, Water (Aqua), Soya Milk (Glycine soja), Organic Almond Oil (Prunus dulcis), Fair Trade Organic Cocoa Butter (Theobroma cacao), Perfume, Olibanum Oil (Boswellia carterii), Osmanthus Absolute (Osmanthus fragrans), Sandalwood Oil (Santalum austro-caledonicum vieill), Sodium Chloride, EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Sodium Hydroxide, Farnesol, Geraniol, Limonene, Linalool, Colour 17200.

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The last two bath bombs I used were both major disappointments, so I was really hoping that the third time would be the charm. Luckily, Skydancer was an all around solid choice. Lush UK recently introduced Skydancer to raise money and awareness to support the tagging of the very nearly extinct Hen Harrier. You can read all about the cause here.

Compared to Lush’s other, more spherical bath bombs, Skydancer certainly stands out. Most similar in size and shape to the psychedelic Granny Takes A Dip bath bomb, it is a round disk, but unlike Granny, has a raised bird on the top. I think this bath bomb is very unique, and I love that it looks like the Hen Harrier is flying in front of the sun. Normally I am not a fan of yellow bath bombs because they usually are not very colorful in the water and leave you feeling like you are soaking in a tub full of something unmentionable, but this yellow bomb transformed the bath into an incredibly vivid shade of bright yellow, similar to the fluorescent Yog Nog bath bomb, and was quite beautiful.

Skydancer is a slow, steady fizzer. Despite there only being a small layer of blue, the bird sits mostly atop the water so it stays around for quite a while as the bright yellow foams, fizzes, and colors the water. I found that it did a lovely job softening the water as well.

The scent of Skydance is mellow and refreshing. I was expecting a heavy licorice scent from the citrus, aniseed, and cinnamon combination, but found that it was a clean citrusy scent with a touch of warmth- not spicy, but a hint of comforting licorice in the background. I found that it paired very well with Northern Lights soap, which has a powdery clean citrus scent, and also complimented the color of the bath water, with it’s similarly fluorescent hue.

I really enjoyed using Skydancer. While it doesn’t pop and fizz and spew a thousand colors and mounds of lustre throughout your bath, it is a reliable and enjoyable product, and for a good cause to boot. It has a fresh, unique scent, vivid color, and is a solid addition to Lush’s line-up of bombs,especially for those who enjoy a calmer bath, and don’t enjoy exiting the tub coated in glitter, which is a characteristic of many newer bombs. I really hope I have a chance to order more of these before they are gone!

Rating: 5/5

Price: £3.95 ($6.00)

Status: Limited Edition Charity Item, UK only

Vegan?: Yes

Would I repurchase? Yes

Ingredients: Sodium Bicarbonate, Citric Acid, Cream of Tartar, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Water (Aqua), Bergamot Oil, Cinnamon Leaf Oil, Sicilian Lemon Oil, Lauryl Betaine, Benzyl Benzoate, Lilial, Eugenol, Limonene, Perfume, Potassium aluminium silicate, Titanium Dioxide, Iron Oxides, Colour 47005, Colour 42053, Colour 42090:2.

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Out of all of the colorful, exciting, and bubbly bath products Lush offers, the bath melts are always my favorite. Though usually quite tame in the water, bath melts are the most nourishing bath product that Lush offers, and usually offer beautiful scents and an overall wholesome and relaxing bathing experience. I was ready to absolutely adore this ginger scented purple bar, and ordered two from the kitchen, anticipating that I’d regret ordering just one.

I received my order, and though the melts smelled pleasant, I was disappointed that they were not more spicy. I was expecting a full-on gingery scent with undertones of jasmine, almond, and oakmoss, something spicy with a hint of sweetness, as well as a floral woodiness. Overall the smell felt extremely one dimensional and flat, not anywhere near as magical as you’d expect from a purple product with such a name. The actual scent is difficult to describe, I suppose it just smells like ginger, but without the spicy kick.

As the bath melt melted in the water, it was a beautiful sight. a rich purple pool of cocoa butter with pink and blue swirling through. I did not fill my tub as much as I do with a bubble bar or bath bomb because I wanted the skin nourishing ingredients to be as concentrated as possible. Despite the lesser amount of water, this melt did not change the color of the water aside from making it fairly cloudy, but, even worse, was not all that moisturizing. I may be spoiled by Ceridwen’s cauldron, which is nearly twice the size and does an amazing job, but I know that classic Dreamtime is the same size as Something Wicked and still offers a generous amount of moisture. In the tub, the water hardly felt softened, and out of the water, my skin was only slightly more moisturized than it would be after a bath with a bubble bar or bath bomb. I did not need to use lotion on my entire body, but my problem areas like my elbows and feet were not sufficiently quenched from the bath. This is not an issue I’ve ever run into with other bath melts.

This may be my most disappointing Kitchen purchase since Krysztal Solid Deodorant. Or perhaps even more disappointing, because at least the deodorant smelled wonderful. This fell short of expectations in every category, and I don’t plan to purchase it again, should it return to the Kitchen.

Rating: 2.5/5

Price: £4

Status: Retired/ Kitchen Exclusive

Vegan?: Yes

Would I repurchase? No

Ingredients: Cocoa Butter (Theobroma cacao), Laureth 4, Almond Oil (Prunus dulcis), Perfume, Ginger Oil (Zingiber officinale), Jasmine Absolute (Jasminum officinale), Oakmoss Absolute (Evernia prunastri), Colour 77007, Colour 18050, Colour 61585.

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I am a huge fan of anything with a gorgeous autumnal scent, and once I saw that this contained a selection of ingredients that combined to create the aroma of pumpkin pie, I was ready to order twenty. Unfortunately, something must have happened during the ordering process because I had intended to order two bars, but only ended up ordering one. But, of course, that just means the bar i did get my hands on is that much more special.

I awaited the arrival of my soap eagerly, and once it arrived, I could faintly smell it through the package. I dug it out, and the beautiful spicy autumn scent amplified. This soap contains a combination of orange juice, pumpkin puree, cardamom oil, clove bud oil, spearmint oil, cinnamon, and gardenia extract. These create a warm, creamy, spicy scent with a hint of freshness from the peppermint and citrus to keep it from being too heavy. This soap is formulated to stimulate the skin with the spicier oils, and nourish and hydrate with pumpkin puree, coconut oil, and rapeseed oil. This is the creamiest soap I have used from Lush, as well as the most hydrating. This bar is very soft to the touch, and I didn’t expect it to lather much as a result of all of the moisturizing ingredients, but I was surprised to find that it lathered rather generously.

Pumpkin is a beautiful fall soap, that smells glorious and is generous with lather and moisture. I plan to savor this soap, and I look forward to using this as the perfect product for a Thanksgiving shower. While I won’t be eating pumpkin pie, there’s nothing wrong with bathing in it!

Rating: 5/5

Price: £4 ($6.08)

Scent Family:

Jacko Bath Bomb

Status: Kitchen Exclusive

Vegan?: Yes

Would I repurchase? Yes

Ingredients: Water (Aqua), Rapeseed Oil and Coconut Oil, Glycerine, Fresh Orange Juice, Pumpkin Puree, Perfume, Cardamon Oil, Clove Bud Oil, Spearmint Oil, Gardenia Extract, Sodium Chloride, Titanium Dioxide, EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Sodium Hydroxide, Cinnamon, Eugenol, Limone, Colour 15510.

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The original Karma bubble bar was one of the first bubble bars I ever tried from Lush, and when I first heard that they changed the look of it so drastically, I was a little upset. I really enjoyed the old version, and while it didn’t offer much color, it was a very nice product all around, so why fix what isn’t broken? Well, I decided to just order the new one to give it a try while it was still a UK exclusive, and I was a little sad to see that when it arrived, most of the glitter at the top had worn off, and most of the orange band had crumbled away. I blame this on the UK’s naked shipping method, because while environmentally friendly, it does tend to cause your products to arrive a bit worse for wear.. most of the items from this order ended up with a lot of color transfer. But, of course, there shouldn’t be any issues with product performance even after a bumpy journey, and I’m glad to say that this bubble bar worked beautifully.

I decided to use the entire bar, as I normally do when trying out a smaller bubble bar for the first time. Within moments, my bath was transformed into dark amethyst waters topped with mounds of fluffy bubbles. I really am not exaggerating when I say this is the most richly colored bath product I have ever used from lush, and it’s a very big improvement from the weak orange waters of the old formula. I couldn’t even see my hand when I touched the bottom of the tub, it was that deeply colored. The rich color mixed with the generous amount of bubbles means that this bar could easily be split across two or even more baths,and still leave you with vibrant purple waters and plenty of bubbles. My only complaint, was that the bubbles did disperse fairly quickly.

Another aspect that I found to have improved over the old formula is the scent. While it still smells identical to the classic patchouli Karma fragrance, I did find this to be much stronger than the original bubble bar. I really enjoy the sweet, musky scent of Karma, and the soap is a staple in my stash, so having an even stronger scent in the bath is always a treat.

This version of the bar also improved the condition of the water a great deal, something that I didn’t notice all that much with the old version. I don’t know what ingredients the old bar contained, but the updated bar is filled with moisturizing ingredients like olive oil, cocoa butter, and mango butter. It also contains lemongrass oil which not only tones the skin, but has uplifting and anti-depressive properties. Elemi oil is a product I had never heard of before, but it tones the skin, balances sebum production, and acts as a natural painkiller. Patchouli, pine, lavender, and orange oil combine for an uplifting and soothing aromatic experience.

This was a beautiful bubble bar, much improved from it’s predecessor. It offered water in an unbelievable hue, generous bubbles, and a fragrant, moisturizing soak. The only way I could hope to see this improved would to be a little dash of luster next time, since mine was all but rubbed off.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Price:

UK £4.25
US $11.95
It’s twice the price in the US, and as with most products, I highly recommend ordering from the UK. It still ends up being cheaper even with the slightly higher shipping cost.

Status: Permanent

Vegan?: Yes

Would I repurchase? Yes

Ingredients: Sodium Bicarbonate, Cream of Tartar (Potassium bitartrate), Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Lauryl Betaine, Corn Starch (Zea Mays), Mango Butter (Mangifera indica), Fragrance, Citric Acid, Patchouli Oil (Pogostemon cablin), Sweet Orange Oil (Citrus sinensis), Lavandin Oil (Lavandula Hybrida), Pine Oil (Pinus sylvestris), Lemongrass Oil (Cymbopogon citratus), Elemi Oil (Canarium commune), Deep Purple Lustre (Red 28, Blue 1, Aluminium Potassium Silicate, Titanium Dioxide), Glycerine, Fair Trade Organic Cocoa Butter (Theobroma Cacao), Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil (Olea europaea), Laureth 4, *Citral, Hydroxycitronellal, *Limonene, *Linalool, Copper Sheen and Radiant Gold Lustre (Potassium Aluminium Silicate, Titanium Dioxide, Iron Oxides), Gold Glimmer Lustre (Synthetic Fluorphlogopite, Iron Oxides, Silica), Yellow 6 Lake. *Occurs naturally in essential oils

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Christina Alyce Beauty

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