Lush Rub Rub Rub Shower Scrub & Ocean Salt Facial Scrub: Review

Lush Scrub Review
As a bit of a fake tan addict, scrubs are HUGELY essential to my weekly beauty routine. I’m usually a pair-of-exfoliating-gloves-from-Poundland kinda gal (and the tramp strikes again), but I figured it was time to get scrubbing serious about things. I have a full time job in a real industry, for goodness sake. It is no longer ok to be buying my beauty essentials for £1 (I say this as I remove my makeup with a £1 cotton pad).

I love Lush and there has only been one product I wasn’t happy with – the henna disaster that I blogged about here. I think that that may have been more to do with me not really understanding what henna is and also being a genuine idiot, however. So, these scrubs were something of an excitement for me and I was a genuine eager beaver to try them out. TO YOU I SAID GOOD DAY, DRY SKIN.

SO…lets start off with the Rub Rub Rub Shower Scrub.

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It’s described as being a “fragrant blossom-scented sea salt scrub for your body and hair.” Smell-wise, it’s amazing as most Lush products are. It is also an exciting bright blue, which made me feel quite the fancy lady. The salt grains are quite fine and there are two ways that you can use the Rub Rub Rub Shower Scrub. You can either use it on dry skin for more vigorous exfoliating OR you can use it in the shower, where I found that it lathered up a bit more. I tried both and I think I preferred using it in the shower – mainly because it meant I didn’t get salt all over my bathroom floor.

My verdict: I really love this product. It exfoliates well, although I would say that the more stubborn bits of tan were a bit more difficult to shift (I had to revert back to the gloves for those!). I think I’m going to use it when I just want light exfoliation during the week – it’s not harsh at all so I reckon could be used pretty regularly. Their claim about being able to use it in your hair I’m not so sure about. I did give it a go in the interest of blogging. It’s supposed to give volume (because of the salt), which I could kind of feel before I chucked on loads of conditioner and probably lost any volume that was present anyway.

Next up we have…the Ocean Salt Facial Scrub.

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I was really impressed with this bad boy as well. It’s apparently got loads of sea salt, organic limes and avocado butter to wrap it up in a wonderful package of cleaning, brightening and softening magic. It’s marketed as a face exfoliator but it can also be used on the body too. The salt grains are a lot bigger in the face scrub than the shower scrub and the smell isn’t *quite* as nice. Saying that, I’m more of a fan of flowery smells than fruity ones, so others might disagree.

My verdict: Excellent and an honour to our Queen and country. My skin felt SO amazing after using this. I suffer from skin that’s a bit uneven and looks royally crap without some kind of primer or makeup. But after the Ocean Salt facial scrub, it actually looked relatively normal! I would say that it’s a harsh exfoliator though – if you have very sensitive skin then this one probably isn’t the one for you. I have quite a sensitive lip/chin area and it stung a bit when I first used it – especially when I went at my exfoliating circles with brute force. Keep a gentle hand, my friends, when using this. It isn’t necessary to get too wild!

Friendly warning: try and not get either of these in your mouth. They are very salty.

Lush Caca Brun Henna Review.

‘Ello lovely human beings,

Today is a slightly different post to our usual blog frolics. Today, I am discussing hair, hair dye and my first venture into the world of henna.

Backing up a little bit, my hair career (is that a thing?!) has been extremely varied. I started off a little ginger curly haired afro child, migrated to a strawberry blonde (with the help of highlights!) in my teens, bleach blonde and vibrant red at uni – finally settling on brunette when I graduated and decided to become a grownup. Here’s a little collage for your viewing pleasure.

PicMonkey Collage

I’m really loving being a brunette at the moment, but I have found that my hair’s condition hasn’t really got any better. Because my hair is quite light naturally, I look genuinely ridiculous when my roots start to come through. This means I have to dye my hair every month or so to keep myself looking less like a middle aged man and more like a 21 year old girl. Obvs this is WUBBISH for my hair and has meant that I decided to move away from chemical dyes.

I hotfooted it to Lush because I heard they did henna dye and after a rather complicated explanation from the lovely sales lady, I bought what looked like a smelly green bar of chocolate. I got it in the shade Caca Brun, which is just the plain brown henna shade. Whilst being somewhat intimidated, I also felt very smug and convinced that I had become some kind of Buddhist hippy in the space of about 10 minutes.

According to my new best friend at Lush, the henna takes about 5 hours to develop and is extremely messy so I prepared myself as fully as possible to do the deed a couple of Sundays ago.

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This was my henna kit! Not as extensive as some blogs I saw, but it was actually fine and I’m glad I didn’t have too much crap around! The stuff really is messy…

DSCN0132Hair grips | Chopping board | Knife | Gloves | Shower cap | Pyrex bowl | Kettle | LOTS of newspaper!

The general idea is that you grate the henna, mix it up with hot water to form a consistency of thin yoghurt and then apply to your head while it is still very hot. You obviously don’t want to scald yourself, but the henna becomes hard and thick when it dries, so virtually impossible to spread onto your head! I forgot to add a grater into this picture, so took another one to be thorough and in case you have forgotten what a grater looks like.

DSCN0149You can see how weird the henna looks in this picture – it’s so green! I mixed it up with hot water and it formed a liquid, which can only be described as looking like baby poo. Needless to say, I was very apprehensive about putting this stuff on my head.

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I ploughed on though, and whacked loads of it on. They recommend starting at the back and working your way across the head, so this is what I did. I also concentrated on my roots, because that’s where I wanted most of the colour.

At the end of it, this is what I looked like! I piled the henna-ed hair on top of my head to make putting the shower cap/plastic bag on easier. It also made me feel like I was going to a fancy ball.

DSCN0155I am a moron, I am sorry.

I popped on my shower cap AND a plastic bag because I was worried about dripping. I looked genuinely mad.

A few things I noticed while hennaing my hair. It is REALLY heavy once it starts to dry/harden on your hair. In fact, I felt like I was carrying an extra person around all day. I was basically Professor Quirrell. It also drips, a lot. I ended up wrapping an old towel around my plastic bag head because even with my precautions, it dripped lots! Other than that, it didn’t stain my skin at all (I wiped all the bits on my head/ears) and it didn’t stain my kitchen either.

It also smells quite strange. Not necessarily unpleasant, just a little bit like wet hay, incense and cats.

Five hours is also a long time to wait. I discovered that Safe Haven is a terrible film.

So, what was my verdict?

Ah, henna. You cruel, cruel mistress. After all that effort, smelling of cats and discovering that who I thought was Nicola Sparks was actually Nicholas Sparks (WHO KNEW?!), the henna basically did nothing to my hair. My roots are now a delightful shade of weak tea, resembling nothing brown in the slightest. My hair, if anything, is a muddier colour than it was before. I didn’t even feel the lovely conditioning feeling that everyone raves about when using henna.

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This is a useless picture I took on my iPhone but hopefully you can see the tragicosity that was my hair. Double vom.

IT BASICALLY WAS 5 HOURS OF MY LIFE WASTED THAT I WILL NEVER GET BACK. And I had to throw away my pink pig shower cap, which had ears and a tail and amused me on Monday mornings.

Back to the drawing board it seems…the drawing board being a cute salon in Oban, Scotland. They fixed my hair and now I look like this, marginally better I think!

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Excuse the pout, I thought I was Kate Moss for a minute.