Giving it Lip (Lush Let Them Eat Cake Lip Balm)

Member Name: bondgirlk8

Product:	Lush Let Them Eat Cake Lip Balm
Date:	02/02/09 (222 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Works impressively well, doesn't have a taste

Disadvantages: Sweet smell might be too overpowering for some.

It was my birthday a few weeks ago, and my lovely fiancé surprised me with a collection of wonderful Lush products. I really love Lush but, though I often go in for a smell and a dream, I can rarely afford the high prices. Having already reviewed the Fair Trade Foot Lotion and The Happy Pill, I am now reviewing a lip balm called 'Let Them Eat Cake' which I believe is a Christmas-season-only product.

Like most people at this time of year, I suffer with cracked and chapped lips. To be honest, I am afflicted most of the year if I do not coat my lips in some kind of lip balm or another. In addition, I just love lip balm and don't think it is possible to have too many of them.

I'm working my way through my birthday delights and have included in each review some information about the company, Lush. You will notice if you read more than one, the same information is provided. The actual review, however, is not the same and is specific to the product in question. The company information is included for those readers who choose to only read one of my Lush product reviews.


WHAT IS IT?

Let Them Eat Cake is a tin of lip-balm intended to smell of Christmas cake. It is a tin of solid product that melts to the touch, which is designed to be smeared on to your lips using your finger. The lip balm then coats your lips protecting them from the elements, soothing dry or cracked lips and giving your lips a lovely shiny, glossy and plumped up look.

Lush are a cosmetics company which specialises in making 'fresh' and 'handmade' cosmetics. They are an environmental and ethically aware company, and promote these ideals through their products, packaging, and manufacturing processes. They use minimum packaging, source their ingredients ethically, use natural ingredients and essential oils, encourage recycling, are against animal testing, do not use animal fat in their products (indeed many of their products, including this lip balm, are vegan. ALL their products are vegetarian.)...the list of goodness goes on. They are indeed a 'good' company, and their prices reflect these ideals which, as we know, always cost more.

In addition to being such a lovely company, their products are also rather lovely. The aroma of the shop is so strong that you can tell when one is near before you even catch sight of it. As I mentioned above I often find myself in a Lush shop purely to enjoy the smells and a look at all the pretty slices of soap and solid bubble bath. Like many of the girlies out there, I'd shop in here for all my cosmetics if I could.


PRICE

I don't know how expensive this product is, given that I received it as a present. I don't wish to know for that exact same reason so I'm not going to look it up so I can tell you. It will be on the Lush website (www.lush.co.uk) if you care to find out. I DO know that it is a Lush product, and so the answer is basically going to be "not cheap". I will say that it DOES work; I carry it everywhere and just can't stop using it, so it probably justifies the cost.


PACKAGING

The Lush packaging is very simple. As mentioned above, the company intentionally use as little packaging as possible as it is part of their environmental ethic.

Lush Let Them Eat Cake Lip Balm is supplied in a simple round silver tin which contains 10g of lip balm. It There is a maroon-ish colour sticker on the top which features the Lush logo and white writing showing the name of the product and what it is. There is another sticker on the bottom of the tin detailing the ingredients and informing me that I should use it all up by 01/02/10. As Lush make 'fresh' cosmetics, it is reassuring to me to see from the date that this actually is the case. I don't think I have ever finished a lip balm in my life (presuming we can discount the strawberry flavoured Chapsticks which I had a brief stage during childhood of physically eating) and the 10g sized tin is more than adequate. Given the amount that I appear to be using this one though, there is a chance I'll just about finish the tin before the expiry date is reached.

It is nice packaging which appeals mostly due to its simple nature and its homemade appearance - it does look like it has been brewed up and put into a random tin that happened to be knocking around at the time and a sticker plopped on so that it can be told apart from the other concoctions.


SCENT

Wow-wee, this is STRONG! So strong in fact that the first day I had it, I shoved it in my bag to take to work. By the time I got to work (my door to door commute is only 25mins long) my entire bag smelt like cake. I actually think my office does too now - I really hope my colleagues don't mind the smell.

It does smell like Christmas cake, the main flavours being fruit (current, sultana, raisin, orange and lemon), sherry and vanilla. It is incredibly sweet. Sweeter than if you actually inserted your nose into a real slice of Christmas cake and had a good old snort. Truth be told, it is perhaps just a little TOO sweet. The odd thing is, it smells nice if you smell the actual balm. BUT the strange lingering smell that has penetrated the very fabric of every bag I own isn't really a cake smell; just a sickly-sweet smell. Now, I don't really mind that all that much - I'm not fond of sweet tastes, but I'm OK with sweet smells (better now I know what it is), but it could be way too much for some of you. Thankfully (for me anyway) it doesn't have a taste to match.


TEXTURE AND APPLICATION

When you first try to apply the lip balm, the balm itself seems quite hard and not all that much is picked up on your finger. This means you may need to rub it over more than once to get complete coverage of your lips. After you have used the product for a day or two though, it seems much softer; you are fine once you have broken through the outer skin.

I find the consistency of the balm to be just soft enough. Any harder and you need repeated applications, and any softer and you would end up over-coating. It feels soft and soothing as it is applied and it makes my lips feel cared for as it is rubbed in. It is absorbed well into the lips, and a little goes a very long way. It remains on my lips well and I can definitely feel that there is a barrier there between my lips and all the things in this world that damage them. The lip balm even survives though a drink or a meal without leaving excessive residue on the glass (there is, of course, a bit of this) or vanishing from your lips. I do tend to apply it quite regularly - perhaps every hour or so - but that is generally because it is on my desk in front of me at work all day and I just like it. I apply much less in the evenings or at the weekends.

As I mentioned above, there is thankfully no taste. I'm not too struck on lip balms that taste nice, the main problem with these being that I just lick it off as soon as I've put it on (I no longer feel the need to actually eat it though). The other problem, which would have been more relevant to this product, had it actually had a taste, is that I don't like the taste of Christmas cake. To be honest though, the smell is so strong (and most of what we taste is actually smell) that it took me a while to come to the conclusion that there is no taste. I was very unsure for a while, and was half convinced it did have a taste. I didn't think it tasted of Christmas cake - I knew this as I didn't dislike my imagined taste - I did think though it perhaps tasted sweet. Vanilla maybe?

IMMEDIATE RESULTS

From the first day I used this lip balm, my lips felt nice. They felt soft, and smooth and generally cared for. I knew they were thanking me. I went on to use it like an addict.


LONGER TERM EFFECTS

I've been using this lip balm for a few weeks now and it's still the one I carry around with me daily, despite the smelly bag side effect. My lips are feeling very nice and have neither cracked, nor gone dry in the three weeks since I started using it. That's quite amazing in January really.

I will definitely keep using this lip balm and will check out the rest of the selection that Lush offer. I will more than likely use others from the range, though my next one may not perhaps be quite so sweet.


Thanks for reading

© BondgirlK8 - January 2009

Summary: A lovely festive lip-balm that will do wonders for your lips