Pineapple Express from Bomb Cosmetics

A few months ago I was lucky enough to win a package from Bomb Cosmetics which you can see HERE and within that package was a Bomb Blaster called Pineapple Express and tonight I got round to using it for the very first time.

With the following description:

"Everybody's laughing on the Pineapple Expressed! Juicy fun and freedom with pure bergamot and grapefruit essential oils to pick you up and post you happy!Sweet & zesty pineapple with hints of Lemon & Orange. Creamy Vanilla comes through the base notes to close"

All I can tell you is that it smells exactly like that and if like me you love fruity scented products for your bath, then this would be perfect and it is only £2.09 - worth every penny.

When it comes to using this Bath Blaster, all you need to do is ensure there are a good few inches of water within the bath and then drop your Bath Blaster in to a bath of warm water and watch as it fizzes, releasing its perfume and essential oils, while the Bicarbonate of Soda softens the water.  Once you do place it into your bath, this is what happen:

This Bath Creamer is full of lovely ingredients and I always like to look at what is something before I use it, it fascinated me for years and this particular product includes: 

• Cocoa Butter and Shea Butter - both know for their ability to moisturise the skin,
• Bergamot Oil - has an uplifting effect on the mood and can also help deal with stress, tension and that fed up feeling,
• Grapefruit Peel Oil - has an uplifting effect on the mood and helps with stress and depression. It is used with great success to combat muscle fatigue and stiffness while stimulating the lymphatic system and thereby clearing the body of toxins. It helps to clear congested oily skin and also assists with acne, while toning the skin and tissues.

There are other ingredients included within this Bath Blaster which are listed on the Bomb Cosmetics website.

The water that you immerse yourself into feels really soft on the skin, that is the best way for me to describe it, the Cocoa Butter and Shea Butter are incedibly moisutirsing and I almost felt no need to add anything else to my skin because it is all there in the water. However with this cold weather, my skin is quite dry on my legs, so I did exfoliate, but then rather than use anything else, I used what was in my water and once out of the bath, my skin was soft and smooth to the touch and it smelt totally amazing.

It is worth nothing that within this products the little stars, silver balls and the fruit pieces all float about your bath, mainly to add some decoration and fun, but there is a warning to always rinse them away from the bath after use to avoid and prevent any staining.

All of the products from Bomb Cosmetics are formulated to be free from Parabens, or Paraben based preservatives.

Have you tried anything from Bomb Cosmetics? Do you have a favourite product?

Ruby Red Cosmetics Natural Skincare

Ruby Red is a company I came by after an opportunity arose in an email and I have to say, if you want a product to make you go "Wow" then read on.

The brand Ruby Red is a combination of Mike’s surname (Ruby), the owner and Red for their London roots. Ruby Red as a company believe that healthy, radiant skin needs vital nutrients from the outside as well as the inside. Their Skin and Body care ranges are full of plant nourishment combined with distinctive pampering aromas made from oils without SLS, parabens, sulphates, petrochemicals and dyes as well as never tested on Animals.  

I was sent two products in the form of a Reviving Body Cleanser** and a Renewal Shea Skin Cream** which as you can see below arrived really well packaged and inside two very different containers.  

The Body Cleanser, which was a finalist in the Best Shower Gel category at the 2014 Beauty Shortlist Awards is described as follows:

"Botanical glucosides found in sugar and coconut makes an effective cleansing agent which does not irritate the skin; botanical extract of Aloe Vera soften and soothe the skin. A warm, invigorating, citrus aroma of Lime, Red Mandarin, Coriander and Cedarwood boost circulation while toning and refreshing the skin"

The first thing about this cleanser is the scent, it is absolutely phenomenal, one of those scents you need on a morning when you feel really sluggish, annoyed that you have had to leave your bed and a morning when no amount of caffeine is going to wake up - well this product will! To use you simply apply a generous amount onto your hands or onto a cloth and then massage over your damp skin whilst in the shower, as soon as the clear looking gel leaves the bottle the scent wakes you, but when it hits the steam you become more alert than you probably have done in a long time, after wahsing you simply wash it off, again using a damp cloth and it leaves your skin not only squeaky clean but smelling so good and the scent lasts pretty much all day, even as it fades it is still wonderful. it is also worth noting that this Reviving Body Cleanser can also be used as hand cleanser, something I am yet to try.

The second product is the Renewal Shea Skin Cream which is in this 60ml glass jar and when I first removed the jar, I didnt find what I was expecting. I was expecting to find a runny cream not a solid, so I was very much intrigued to use this. It comes with the following description:

"The healing enzymes in Lemon and Honey work together to improve cell renewal while Vitamins A, E, & F in our pure, hand processed organic Shea butter help to restore the skin’s elasticity lost through dryness or sun-exposure. A small of cream amount will moisturise, softening and smoothing the skin".

Even though this skin cream contains lemon and honey, the scent isn't as strong as the body cleanser, but it is subtle enough for me to absolutely love it. To use you simply warm a really small amount in your hands and on the Ruby Red site they make a point of stating that by small they mean no bigger than a raindrop, the reason being that as soon as it comes into contact with your skin it begins to melt, so it literally absorbs without no amount of effort on your part and as you massage it into the skin, the lemony scent comes to life and reminds me of sherbet lemons, a scent I happen to adore. Once massaged onto the skin, within a matter of minutes there is no trace that anything was actually there, instead you have soft, smooth skin. If like me you spend a lot of your working life, days and sometimes evening dealing with paper, I find it dries my hands out, hence my love of hand cream, well I have been using this for the last 2 months and it is a perfect remedy for my dry hands, not to mention I use it on my shins, elbows and feet as well.

These products I cannot rate highly enough, they have caused no adverse reactions to my skin, they smell more wonderful than I can give them credit for and I absolutely love using them.  You can find more information about Ruby Red on their website which is HERE and their products can be bought online through the Ruby Red shop or from places like Amazon, Fortnum and Mason and soon to launch in Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge.

For the Love of Shea Butter

Shea Butter is quite possibly one of my favourite scents in a cream or lotion (aside form coconut) it reminds me of Caramac bars, a childhood love I shared with my late Grandfather.  I first came across Shea Butter back in my teens when I was looking for something to soothe and cure my dry shins, a skin problem I have had for many years now and it drives me insane.

I was recently sent a lovely tin of Pure Health Shea Butter Skin Food to try and as soon as the package arrived, it was ripped open.  Inside the package was this 100g tin:

Pure Health Shea Butter Skin Food is sold in quite a funky retro tin and is available for £9.19 whereupon which 10% of the profits are donated to development projects in Africa.    The tin itself tells you that this product is 100% pure, meaning it contains no parabens, sulphates or paraffin to irritate the skin. Instead what will you find is something that is rich in Vitamins A, E and F and being so it is not the only kind to your skin but will also be both nourishing and rejuvenating and it has shown to be effective in treating certain skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis add to that it is also said to be effective in reducing the appearance of stretch marks and wrinkles - now where exactly can you get some of this miracle butter?

Right here -  Pure Health’s Shea Butter Skin Food (£9.19 for a 100g). 

What they say

“From the seeds of the shea tree comes the gift of shea butter. A wonderful natural balm and skin moisturiser appreciated by many with dry, irritated skin. Unlike the white, odourless, refined shea butter that goes into so many cosmetic products today, our shea butter is pure, unrefined shea butter sourced from women's cooperatives in West Africa. In addition, refined Shea Butter has usually been extracted from the shea kernels using hexane or other petroleum solvents, traces of which are often present in the finished product, which also lacks many of the soothing, nutritive properties of unrefined, virgin shea butter.

Like all premium unrefined shea butter, it has a characteristic nutty scent, which disappears after a few minutes when rubbed on the skin. Unrefined shea butter is a very versatile active ingredient for skin and hair care products and has excellent anti-aging, soothing and moisturising properties.”

Shea Butter has been around for many years and it does appear in quite a lot of products, particularly those which are moisturising, hydrating and it even appears in make-up products such as lip balms and lipsticks.  I really like Shea Butter as an ingredient for those reasons and it has a lot of uses:

• Helps heal scars, burns, and stretch marks.
• Prevents ashy skin, chapping, and skin rashes.
• An ideal hairdressing that protects the scalp from sores and rashes and prevents dandruff.
• Helps prevent weak hair from breaking, fading, or thinning out.
• Fortifies cuticles and nails.
• Helps bruises to heal.
• Helps drain toxins from sore muscles: perfect for sports participants.
• Helps prevent skin irritation for babies: used for generations to help babies sleep better.
• Use after shaving to prevent irritation and restore skin's natural lustre.
• Ideal for dry skin, dermatitis, eczema, sunburn and athletes foot.
• Rejuvenates skin pores and adds elasticity to skin.
• Firms up ageing skin and helps clear wrinkles.
• Massage Shea butter into areas affected by arthritis, joint pains, or other muscular aches.
• Naturally, contains vitamins A and E.

Upon opening the tin, using a simple twisting action, the first thing I noticed was the creamy look of the Shea Butter, as you wipe your hand across the Shea Butter, which is packed tightly into the tin, it is almost a solid, until the heat from your body touches it and it simply glides onto your finger, then onto you skin and it is so smooth to the touch.  As it glides onto your skin, it disappears almost immediately and leaves behind no hint that it was there in the first place, there is no greasiness to the skin, so snail-like trail it was once there, instead all you are left with is soft, smooth skin which is purely delightful.  

As for the scent, well it came as a surprise to me that there was no sweet smell, instead there is this soft aroma that had a slightly nutty scent to it, nothing too overpowering, in fact it is so delicate you would almost not notice it, if you weren’t looking for it and it is quite nice.

This Shea Butter is Fair Trade and suitable for Vegans.  It also doesn't contain:

• Parabens or other preservatives
• Parafin or other petrochemicals
• Solvents or Perfumes

After using it for a few weeks, concentrating on one area of my body, my shins, there is already a notable difference to the dry skin on my shins, it hasn’t disappeared entirely but I no longer resemble a reptile about to shed its skin. Instead, my shins are soft and smooth to the touch and I am now not as embarrassed by my legs and I will continue to use this product until it runs out because I can see how beneficial it has been and will be. 

In the last week, I have been using it on my nail cuticles, which is looking quite haggard in the hope it will soften and soothe them and too.