I love Lush's bubble bars and their bath items are my favourite treats. Rose Jam is one of a trio of new bubble bars by Lush, termed "bubbleroons" for their macaroon style appearance. It can be bought from the Lush high street stores, via mail order, or online at www.lush.co.uk and costs £3.50. I received this along with a couple of other Lush treats for my birthday.

Product description: "Jam and Jerusalem! If the Women's Institute knew how to make bath products, this is what they'd make.
A bath that helps you get out of it feeling better than when you got in. With lemon to bring clarity and alertness and rose to lift the spirits. The geranium oil in here will balance the skin, whilst the coconut oil and shea butter will leave you feeling smooth and soft.
This smells of roses, with the sweetness of jam - it shares the same fragrance as Ro's Argan Body Conditioner."

Bubble bars are a really original idea for a bath product. It's a solid bar and feels totally unlike most other bath products. The idea is that you use chunks of it in your bath water and it creates the same effect as a regular bubble bath. Because of its nature the product requires no packaging and is extremely environmentally friendly, just pop it into a recycled paper bag and then re-use or recycle it again once you've finished.

Rose Jam is a really cute and attractive looking bubble bar. Baking is quite in vogue at the moment, and macaroons had their moment in the spotlight as being a fashionable treat. The bright pink colour is very girly and it looks like a fun product. I love bathing and baking so this looked like the perfect sort of gift for me and I can see why my friend picked this out :)

It's important that you use this product correctly, so here are some tips on how to get the most out of your bath. To start with, keep the product dry at all times to preserve it's solid state. I usually store my Lush things in their little yellow paper bags in a box in my bedroom wardrobe, so that the steam and dampness from the bathroom doesn't affect them. When you are ready to use it, with dry hands break off a section of the bar. Lush usually recommend that you use a third of the bar per bath. Because this one is already separated into sections I was a bit more generous and used half of the bar at a time so I managed to get two baths from the one bar.

Start running the taps and crumble the bubble bar section under the hot running water. Make sure you break down the little lumps and help it to dissolve properly. To get an extra frothy bath, run the water through your shower head and the bubbles grow out of control! Unfortunately, despite my care to ensure that the bubble bar was kept dry and away from moisture, by the time I got around to using it (around 3 weeks after I received it) the bar was very moist and soggy, and I found it most difficult to break into smaller pieces as rubbing the bar between my hands just sort of "smooshed" it around (for want of a better word!). It felt very much like I imagine wet Play-Doh would feel! The bar did not dissolve properly in the water and I was left with lots of slimy little lumps lurking in the bath water, which was not exactly inviting! Despite the bar not dissolving fully, the bath water did take on a lovely bright pink colour and there was a nice amount of fluffy bubbles for me to soak in. However, they weren't particularly long lasting and had all disappeared by about half-way through my bath time.

The scent has a true rose fragrance, which is very strong in this product. I am not the biggest fan of rose scents as I find them somewhat overpowering and they have an old-fashioned feeling to me. I did not find the scent sweet at all, it was more of a pure and heavy rose fragrance, and I couldn't pick out any of the other floral notes or citrus as mentioned in the description. The scent did have a lot of power behind it, scenting my whole bathroom and lasting on my skin for some time after I had finished bathing. I put the bubble bar in my bathroom one morning, in preparation for my bath later on that evening, and even before I had used the bubble bar the scent spread well and left my (admittedly small) bathroom perfumed which added to the effect when I used it in my bath.

One thing that I love about using Lush bubble bars is that they seem to have a good effect on my skin as well as producing lovely fluffy bubbles. Once again, this bubble bar did not deliver and I didn't experience any moisturising effect on my skin. Maybe this is because the product did not break down into the water to allow the coconut oil and shea butter to get to work on my skin. Usually I would expect to see at least a slight improvement after bathing with a Lush product, but my skin was feeling dry afterwards and I needed to apply a good dose of body butter to get it back into good condition.

I do feel rather ungrateful to give this product such a poor review seeing as it was a thoughtful gift from my friend, but unfortunately it was just not up to Lush's usual high standards and I didn't enjoy it at all. I MUCH prefer Lush's other rose bubble bar, Amandopondo, which is lovely and light and refreshing as well as working effectively. I would not recommend the Rose Jam bubble bar, and I am now a bit dubious about using my next bubbleroon...keeping my fingers crossed that I have a better experience!

Ingredients: Sodium Bicarbonate, Cream of Tartar, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, Lauryl Betaine, Fair Trade Shea Butter, Perfume, Rose Absolute, Geranium Oil, Rose Oil, Lemon Oil, Cocamide DEA, PEG-6 Caprylic / Capric Glycerides, Titanium Dioxide, Colour 17200.

This is a vegan product and Lush are against animal testing - please keep your beauty cruelty free!