Thursday 4 September 2014

To Lush or not to Lush (Collab)



A few weeks ago Lush held a live preservatives debate, in the aftermath an idea for this collaborative post was born. Sarah (Sugarpuffish), Amber (Amber's Beauty Talk), Paula (Naturally Paula) and I, all have different experiences with the company and for our own reasons have decided to give a few alternative suggestions to some of the products from the line up. For the other puzzle pieces of this story you will need to visit these ladies blogs.

My Lush story:

I first discovered Lush when I was a teenager (this is probably not surprising). I remember rushing into the store every payday in hopes of discovering something new. My favourite moment was bringing it all back and poring over the Lush times, looking for ingredients and reviews for each one of my products. You see, as long as I can remember, I have been reading the ingredients lists of every single beauty product I bought, but Lush times was were I was learning what those words actually meant. Straight away I spotted that not all ingredients were natural (although at this point it mattered little to me), I liked the idea of colour coding that made it easier to see how many synthetic chemicals each product had. As I was growing more aware and trying to make better choices with my beauty products in my twenties I was choosing to buy products from Lush that had only those ingredients I was happy to use. I stopped using their soaps and shampoo bars, and was sticking to a couple of cleansers, massage bars, one bath bomb (the Big Blue), fresh masks and of course my beloved Aqua Mirabilis. My favourite products that were all natural Baby face and Sweet Japanese girl were both discontinued (that was quiet some time ago), yet I still kept going to the store, hoping that they would be back.

As I was expanding my knowledge base and finding new natural/organic brands my trips to Lush were becoming less frequent. It felt like I was growing up and changing, yet my old friend Lush was not moving with me. Like with old school friends, with some you have an amazing relationship and with others there is simply nothing to talk about. Lush and I had less and less in common. Nostalgia however is a powerful thing, and the one product I would come back for was Aqua Mirabilis, this was what I used in the morning of the day I got married, and every time I smelt this body bar it brought back happy memories. To be truthful I have not been inside one of their stores for more than a year, but I wasn't actively avoiding Lush, it just was not at the top of my list.

The things I like about their products is that quiet a lot of them are free of packaging. The fact that they recycle their black pots and if you bring 5 back you get a free fresh mask (that is why I still have some empty black pots from forever ago). All the ingredients lists are readily available.

However they use quiet a few ingredients that I personally do not want in my products, and now to confuse things even further they have this "self preserve range" which only addresses the paraben part of things. Somehow it all makes me very sad, while before I would hang out in a Lush store after getting a pay cheque, now my destination is Wholefoods Beauty aisle.

As a person who tried pretty much everything from the range in the past (so not any new products in the last 2 years), I thought I would share what I use instead of my old Lush favourites.




I used to adore Lemony flutter for the scent alone, smell of lemons is so refreshing and uplifting, however as soon as Burt's bees lemon butter cuticle cream came into my life I knew it was here to stay. While the two products smell almost identical, Burt's bees is like a miracle worker when it comes to strengthening my nails.



Lush was probably partly responsible for my soap obsession and two of my favourites were Honey I washed the kids and Porridge. My discovery of Bathing Beauty solved this little problem, the Miracle soap that combines oats and honey is like a magical hybrid of the two but without any of the ingredients that I avoid, and it is just so amazing.

One product the I still want to replace is my beloved Aqua Mirabilis, however I think I will need to resort to some DIY to do this. I figured out a recipe that I'm going to use, but it is yet untested as I am missing one ingredient, which I was going to get at the end of  beauty challenge 10. So if you guys are interested let me know in the comments and I will do another post on it.

8 comments:

  1. I have a sample of Miracle soap and I can't wait to try it but I'm trying to use up what is already hanging around in my soap dish lol

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    1. Oh that soap is absolutely divine, my skin is easily irritated and it never fails at calming things down, hopefully you will love it too ;) xx

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  2. Loved doing this post with you girls! Looking forward to seeing if your DIY works out :)

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    1. I've never done a colab before, it was fun :) I will let you know for sure how the DIY works out xx

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  3. I guess geography saved me. I never discovered Lush until later in life and YouTube. Not to worry, I was bathing in the ever so toxic Bath and Body Works as a younger person. Tamara, you cannot introduce me to another natural soap, I have my weakness!

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    1. The funny thing is they used to have more products with clean ingredients but they kept discontinuing them... Sorry but I love my soap 😉 xx

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  4. Oooh the Miracle soap sounds good! Ah yes, Paula reminded me of my slight obsession with Bath and Body Works... I loved their body sprays and candles so much - not anymore! :D

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    1. It is fab! Bathing beauty in General is a fantastic brand. It's weird to see how the things I used to like so much before are not even in the top 50... Xx

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