I'm a Lush Convert (Lush)

Member Name: Vialdana

Product:	Lush
Date:	18/06/09 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: georgous smells and wonderful body and bath products

Disadvantages: you'll be addicted to them really quickly

What's the big deal I thought... so they sell soap and bath bombs and things I thought... At very steep prices I thought!

For quite a few years I heard lots of people, friends, family, people I'd met on the Internet, all talking about Lush as if it was something special, something important, something which no person should go without experiencing. I even went so far as to look on the Lush website a few times, and I ordered a copy of the Lush times, I still wasn't really impressed, or convinced that this shop offered anything for me. It seemed to be somewhere that was just cashing in on people who like to use natural products on their skin it was very pricey, I mean after all, what's so special about a bit of soap really?!

My attitude and opinions changed the day I had my first real Lush experience. Lush opened a shop in Milton Keynes, my home town. So, armed with a reasonable amount of scepticism, and my purse, I took a trip into town. Before I go on to describe the shop and it's contents, let me tell you here and now that I am a convert! I rang a friend of mine that night who had recently had a birthday, and I found myself blabbing on to her about how wonderful the place was, and that I'd just had to buy her a few bits so that she could experience for herself the wonders of Lush. As I listened to myself talking I realised I was hooked.

The shop has been open a few years now, and I'm a frequent shopper in there when I have money to spare. My bathroom has it's own little box in the corner for me to keep my special lush products in, and my sink is adorned with a bar of my favourite lush soap (honey I washed the kids).

The shop when you approach it is easy to find, firstly there's the big overhead sign which says LUSH in huge letters that helps a bit, then there's the stacks of large brightly coloured uncut soaps and heaps of bath bombs glittering away in the window. Finally there's the smell, as you approach your nose is drawn towards the store, as all the scents of the different products merge together and you feel like the bisto kid drawn in on a wave of sweet gooey lovely smells. My first visit - in fact my first few visits, I felt rather like a child in a sweet shop, there is so much choice when you're new to it all, and it can be a little over awing. The people who work there are brilliant, not pushy, but helpful and patient and willing to explain all the different products to you in detail as you learn your way around.

Lush do quite a wide range of bath and beauty products ranging from your simple (or in their case not so simple) soap, to bath ballistics (bath bombs to you and me), massage bars, shampoos and conditioners - in liquid and solid form, masks for face or feet, bubble bars and many more things that I've not yet managed to lay my hands on even after several years as a customer.

***Massage bars:***
These are solid bars that look a bit like soap I guess, they contain things like shea butter or coco butter so that as you massage them across the skin they soften and melt into the skin allowing you to massage it freely. There are a variety of scents available, and one of my favourites is called 'Wiccy magic muscles' it contains (amongst other things) cocoa butter, cinnamon leaf oil, peppermint oil, coconut oil and shea butter. According to Lush it's good for use after exercise or for stiff or aching joints. It was one of the first massage bars I tried, and I still buy and use it as I have Fibromyalgia, which means I ache a lot, and this helps some.

As you rub the bar over the skin the bar softens and starts to melt so that you get a layer of the mixture of butters and oils forming over the skin which you then massage in. The scent is kind of spicy and warm smelling, and it's definitely relaxing. The sensation on my skin is very warm and gentle, and it definitely helps relax my muscles sleep better. It costs £4.84 for a 70g bar, and that will do me several massages.

***Soaps:***
Lush soaps are, like all their products, made from natural ingredients none of which are tested on animals (they won't even buy ingredients from places that test on animals!), and all of the soaps are vegetarian, and most are vegan. My favourite soap that they do is 'honey I washed the kids' it's got all sorts of things as well as honey in it - from orange oil and bergamot oil to aloe vera extract. It smells like a sweet honey drink, and it leaves your skin feeling very soft. They do many soaps, and they're all sold per 100g so they cut you a piece and weigh it for you in the shop.

***Bubble bar slices:***
These are strange looking, almost like lumps of playdough to look at, all bright colours and swirls and things depending on which you buy. When you run your bath, you crumble it under the running water from the taps, and the water just bubbles up into this amazing mass of froth and bubbles - just like the baths you see ladies in old films lounging in! The water becomes incredibly soft, and super scented. (I wouldn't recommend trying to actually wash while in a bath like this, it's more for when you just want or need to really relax and get away from it all).

***Bath Ballistics:***
Picture the normal bath bombs that you can buy in shops, well they are a very poor comparison to these. These are closer to the size of your fist than to the size of most bombs, and they fizz up in a really incredible way. If you've got kids, they'll love watching the fizzing action these have on the water when you throw them in the bath, it's like watching those vitamin c tablets that you pop in a glass of water, only on a really huge scale. My favourite is their butter ball - it's one of the first I tried, and it's one of the smaller ballistics Lush do (still plenty big enough though). It contains cocoa butter, so that as it dissolves in the water, the water is softened and so is your skin as you bathe in it. The smell is kind of odd on this one, buttery with a sort of toffee hint to it, and a good dash of musk. It's a gentle smell, and one which makes you want to stay in the water for a good long relaxing soak, so if you try this, take a glass of wine and a good book with you! After bathing, it always leaves my skin incredibly soft and smooth, and the feeling lasted for ages too.

***Solid Shampoos***
Lush do several of these and each one is a sort of round fat disc shape. I have two I alternate between personally - Jumping Juniper and Soak and Float both of which cost £4.40 each which seems quite high until you learn that one bar will last me months and months. Jumping Juniper is a lovely purple colour and is for greasy hair, it leaves my hair shiny and soft, and it smells lovely. Soak and float doesn't smell so wonderful to be honest and is a soft yellowy brown colour with bits of yellow petal in it, but it's so good at ridding me of dandruff that I don't honestly care how it looks or smells. Both are dead easy to use - just wet your hair, moisten the bar and rub it over your head to make a lather, rinse in the normal way and you're done. I find that as long as my hair isn't too long I don't even need conditioner with these.

Like I say it took me going into a store to become a convert to Lush, before that I really wasn't sure what all the fuss was about, and I did think that their prices were a little high too. However having been using their products for some time now, I'd say that really I don't spend much more on this sort of thing than I used to, it's just that I get quality now I'm buying from Lush, and also the products I buy last a lot longer.

The lush website has details of where all their shops are, and ingredient listings for all their products. You can sign up there as well to receive a copy of Lush News, which is a newspaper style catalogue of their whole range. You can also of course buy their products from their website, but I'd advise anyone who really wants to be converted to actually travel and find a store - the experience is well worth it.

*some parts of this review are copied from my review on ciao a few years ago.*

Summary: Excellent products that smell fantastic and leave your skin and hair feeling fantastic.