Loose Powder

I was looking for a body scrub to exfoliate my skin with. Being a huge Bath and Body Works fan, I decided to give their True Blue Spa line a try since they had a by two get one free deal.

The Body Buff is a good scrub. The scent has very light fresh citrus smell that makes you smell clean and think of fresh clean linens. After using the scrub, my skin feels very soft and clean. The scrub does a great job in cleaning and exfoliating my skin as well as softening it with shea butter, which is added into the scrub.

For $20 I think the 16 fl. oz. bottle is a good size since I exfoliate once every couple of weeks, so a bottle does last me a while.

I recommend this scrub if you are looking for an exfoliate that smells nice and makes your skin feel shiny and smooth.

This definitely makes me want to try more of the True Blue Spa line stuff.

Hi, everyone! Sorry about the long holiday hiatus, but I’m back now with more reviews. First up, I’d like to talk about the promotion that The Body Shop had during November & December. I know, it’s way too late for you guys to get in on it, but they have similar deals during the year.

The Joy Bag was a $5 reusable tote that, when purchased in the store on a particular weekend, came with a coupon book. The 6 coupons were good for a free weekly item from the store as well as being accompanied by a special weekly sale.

After 6 weeks, here are the great products I got for free!

• Body Butter Duo – one side is a lighter lotion for normal skin and a heavier cream for drier skin. ($18)
• Earth Lovers Shower Gel – 100% biodegradable, soap-free gel with no sulphates, colorants, or parabens  ($10)
• Hand Wash – soap-free cleansing gel ($8)
• Rainforest Shampoo – biodegradable shampoo free of silicones, sulphates, parabens, and colourants. ($10)
• Holiday Home Fragrance Oil – ($7.50)
• Holiday Body Butter – ($18) The offer was  actually for one free holiday item of any time (not gift sets) and I picked up another cranberry body butter, which is my favorite.

The tote itself is a nice bag to have for your various shopping needs. It’s a lightweight, cotton fabric that folds up to fit in a purse pocket.

I haven’t used the shampoo yet, but the other products are all fantastic and I’m going to talk about each one briefly. First, I want to say that I’m a huge fan of The Body Shop and their products. In recent years, they have made a lot of effort to develop products that use fair trade ingredients are more eco-conscious. Though their products still contain the usual cosmetic chemicals, the effort made to reduce this is appreciated.

The Body Butter Duo is a great product for people who have varying moisturizing needs, but I pretty consistently need a heavy moisturizer year round. I picked the Sweet Pea scent, which is a lot better than the Bath & Body Works Sweet Pea scent – it’s more authentic and less perfume-y.

I’d never looked at the Earth Lovers shower gel before, but having used it for a couple weeks, I’m a fan. The scents are great and it definitely washes clean with no soap film feel. I find that the scent stays on my skin for some time after my shower, too, which is nice. I’ve used this in my hair and though it doesn’t lather as much as a traditional shower gel, it still works well.

The hand soap is great and I’ve added the fragrance oil to the wax tarts that we have at home to boost the scent of those. As I said above, the Body Shop body butter is my favorite product so it was awesome to get another one in a cranberry scent.

Overall, I think this was a really great deal. Obviously, this program was designed to bring customers into the store as well as promote new items such as the Earth Lovers shower gel and Rainforest Shampoos. I did end up spending money on other items while in the store, but with my member card and the various discounts offered, I saved a ton of money and got some good gifts for Christmas. Next time an offer like this is available, I’ll definitely be participating!

Up until recently, I’d been using either a St. Ives body wash or Neutrogena’s Body Clear body wash, since once in a while I get little breakouts on my back & shoulders The St. Ives I was using was their Oatmeal & Shea body wash, and I wasn’t super impressed with it. Always on the lookout for different and more natural options for skin & body care, I decided about a month ago to try a Burt’s Bees body wash. I had some reservations – I recently tried sample sizes of some of their shampoo & conditioner, and was sad to discover I hated it in every possible way. It smelled awful, didn’t lather in my hair well, and didn’t rinse out of my hair clean, so I didn’t feel like it had been washed. But I took the plunge and bought a bottle of their Naturally Nourishing Milk & Shea Butter body wash.

One of the things that drew me to this was a) I didn’t hate the smell, and b) the ingredient list looked short and uncomplicated as compared to most other body washes you look at. It doesn’t smell wonderful, but it doesn’t smell bad – it smells natural, if that makes any sense. It’s kind of sweet, but also smells like powdered milk, which is an ingredient. It’s much nicer smelling than the Grapefruit & Sugar Beet shampoo and conditioner I tried, which for some reason I really, really hated. Regarding the content, the only ingredients of any real concern toxics-wise is the ‘fragrance’ (according to Skin Deep), which is of concern because the actual contents of the ‘fragrance’ are not declared, so some can be eye or other irritants to some people. Skin Deep rates this product as a 4 on a scale from 1-10, making it only a ‘moderate hazard’. It looks good to me – better than what I’ve been using.

On to the actual performance of the body wash. When I tried it for the first time, I didn’t like how thin it is. It has about the consistency of a beaten egg and isn’t viscous or gel-like at all. I felt like I had to put a lot on my wash cloth to make it lather up. That said, when I did get an appropriate amount on my wash cloth & added a little water, it lathered up decently. I was also worried that it wouldn’t rinse off cleanly – I like that “squeaky” feeling of rinsing off soap & knowing I’m clean. This rinses off very cleanly! After washing with it my skin feels pretty moisturized, and not dry or tight at all. During the summer with humidity my skin doesn’t really get dry at all, so I’ll have to see how this performs in the cooler weather when my skin gets wicked dry, but I’m really liking this body wash for now!

I’d definitely recommend checking this out. It’s probably good for sensitive skin because of the lack of toxic crap ingredients, and it didn’t dry out my usually dry skin, and it doesn’t smell terrible. The bottle is lasting longer than I thought it would, even though I use a little extra to get the amount of lather that I like. Overall a great product from Burt’s!