Valerie and I ducked into our local Lush Cosmetics store yesterday, largely because I had cleaned my bathtub and a clean tub demands a mess-creating bath. I exercised restraint and picked up two bath ballistics: The Boogg, and So White.
The Boogg is the cutest little snowman-shaped bath bomb. I haven’t tried it yet, so I can’t give a review. I will review it when I’ve popped it into my bath! It’s got little colourful balls inside that spiral out and stripe the water with coloured swirls, which is truthfully the only reason I ever buy bath bombs.
So White is a bath bomb with gratings of Lush’s bubble bars (solid bubble bath powder), so it fizzes away releasing a happy apple scent and coats the water’s surface with a little layer of bubbles. I love apple scents, both artificial and real. And this does have an apple-like accord, though the crispness of apple is softened by the inclusion of floral essential oils. Understandable, as it is a bath product, but I do love the sharp tartness of a freshly bitten apple. I won’t review this till I’ve used it, as the last So White I used was last year and I don’t want to work off last year’s memories.
I also got a free Cupcake mask, as it was expiring soon. (Yay freebies!) I haven’t used Cupcake before, though it’s been on my ‘to try’ list for a few months. At the moment, my skin is leaning towards oily with minimal breakouts (one or two pimples when I’m too lazy to wash my face at night) and some stubborn blackheads which refuse to disappear.
Apologies for the dodgy photograph; the lighting is bad everywhere at the moment and my camera is rather basic.
Like most Lush masks, these are best applied to a wet face. Having a wet face also means that you can stretch the product further than the projected four-or-so treatments per pot. (I tend to be able to pull twelve.) Keep gross bacteria at a minimum by using a new wooden spatula each time you dip, and consider freezing it in portions and defrosting what you intend to use so that you can keep it a little past its use-by date.
Cupcake is a mud-based mask that smells of chocolate and peppermint. It looks like ganache mixed with a thick cream mousse and doesn’t taste a thing like it, so take it from me: do not eat; the real stuff is better.
It also contains cocoa butter, so for those of you who suffer crazy breakouts from the stuff, tread with caution. I, too, am someone who suffers crazy breakouts from cocoa butter, but I am very bad at heeding my own advice and so! All over my face.
Cupcake feels like a very thick mousse with a rough, slightly gritty texture, although a sparse grittiness that is reminiscent of fine sand rather than giant chunks of salt. Just scrubby enough to appease my love for shower violence. (Scrub the dead skin off, the blackhead inducing little buggers! Arr.)
After five minutes, it hardens slightly but not completely. My skin felt slightly tight once I had rinsed it off, but I’m also not quite in the target group for Cupcake so I don’t think it’s really all that drying if your skin is decidedly oily, rather than my fickle ‘bored with being dry now BOOM YEAH PARTY TIME BREAK OUT THE OIL YO.’
It does leave quite the residue so I’d tone/rinse prior to applying moisturiser. It also makes a mess in your sink… or maybe I just suck at washing my face neatly; who knows. Suffice to say, WATER EVERYWHAR. On the mirror and on the taps and on the sink.
It’s a bit early to write a review as to its long-term effects, as I’ve only had one trial and bad after-effects can pop up after a few days, even if there’s a honeymoon overnight period. My blackheads are still there but I didn’t expect them to disappear after one use (after any amount of uses, really). My face feels nicely non-oily without feeling dry, so I have no complaints on that front, and the cocoa butter seems to have quit its vendetta against my pores. It leaves my skin feeling pretty clean and fresh, with an even tone (though nothing beats Catastrophe Cosmetic for evening out skintone). Cupcake seems perfect for those humid summer days when my skin feels terribly oily and sticky.
Repurchasing is definitely on the table — particularly if I happen to get it for free with the five pots trade in scheme.
strangely incoherent love letters 