Why I'm taking a lot more notice of Lush recently

Photo: Lush UK Facebook page

Lush has never featured heavily in my life. It's always there in the background, a great go to for Christmas and birthday gifts, making its presence known in shopping centres and high streets around the country by that unmistakable smell. But beyond the psychedelic gift boxes and sassily named bath bombs, I'd never looked into their other ranges, never bought anything there for myself.

That's all about to change.

A couple of things have made me sit up and take note of Lush recently.

Firstly, they encourage customers to recycle the black plastic pots that many of their liquid products come in.

This is something I've been hoping to see introduced for a while (in the vein of Irn Bru) in the likes of high street stores like Boots and Superdrug, but I understand that the logistics would be a nightmare (imagine sorting through the packaging of so many different brands to return it to the right supplier).

A post shared by LUSH UK (@lush) on May 4, 2016 at 5:31am PDT

But for every five black pots that you return to a Lush store, you'll be given a free face mask. The pots themselves are returned to Lush HQ, cleaned, melted down and remoulded into pots. I'd love to see the likes of Body Shop following this lead (it's worth noting that Body Shop's ethical standards are already above and beyond most high streets stores thanks to their anti-animal testing ethics).

Thanks to Dainty Alice blog for flagging this one up. I'd expected Lush to make a big to-do about it on their website and social media - and rightly so - but this doesn't seem to be the case.

Secondly, Lush is going naked. It's been luring customers in with a slow strip-tease for a while, but this Christmas, 80% of its products will be sans clothing, sans packaging and au naturel. What's so special about this?

The solid version of the Snow Fairy conditioner for Christmas 2017

It doesn't just apply to the solid products like bath bombs and soaps. Conditioners, body scrubs and shower gels are all getting the naked treatment, being sold without any packaging at all.

Wait, what?

Isn't that going to get messy? Nope, the wizards at Lush have whipped up solid versions of these products, which require no packaging. It works like this:

"Solid, naked products like body butters are formulated with little to no water and are therefore often innately self-preserving - just like our Christmas range. By replacing the water content with ingredients that remain solid at room temperature, like Fair Trade cocoa butter, bacteria growth is inhibited and stays that way. Eureka.​"

Add to this the Lush's long standing Against Animal Testing policy and pledge towards ethical buying, and that omnipresent smell may have just lured itself a new loyal customer.

New brand alert: Button & Wilde

One of the perks of my day job is that I often get sent new products by PR teams, and a package that caught my eye recently was from a company called Button & Wilde, who specialise in bath and body care. Specifically, personalised bath and body care.

I'll be honest, I don't foresee a situation where having my name on my shower gel (because really, what is body wash, if not just a posh name for shower gel?) would put me at an advantage in my day to day life. But the packaging's pretty, so I'll roll with it.

It helps that I have a weird button obsession, and that the button in the logo is flanked by a rather cute hedgehog and a slightly wired-looking squirrel. Is he caffeinated? High? Indignant at the unnecessary 'e' on 'wilde'? Who knows.

Beyond the cute packaging and personalised aspect, the products themselves are of pretty decent quality, the scent sitting quite comfortably between the cheap-night-out and stuff-your-gran-uses ends of the scale. I can't yet vouch for the shower gel body wash, but the body creme is one of the better ones I've used, not requiring too much rubbing in, but not too oily either. Well done squirrelly Joe, you done good.

No word yet on the pricing of Button & Wilde products, but watch this space.

See Button & Wilde website for more information.

Disclaimer: Although I was sent these complimentary products as part of my day job, I only write about products that I genuinely like. That, and the fact that I didn't want to risk the wrath of that particular squirrel.

Beauty product review: Bleach London The Big Pink hair dye

Anyone who has had so much as a sniff around the rest of this blog knows I'm not a beauty blogger. My make-up is done in under 60 seconds each morning (and yes, you can usually tell) and I'm certainly not one for buying expensive hair or beauty products. But I fancied a change for the new year, and that change came in the form of a new, slightly out-there (for me, anyway) hair colour.

I've had a hankering for candyfloss pink hair for a couple of years now (think Amelia Lily in her X-Factor time) but it's a tricky one to pull off. I certainly couldn't cope with a full head of it -- I'd be feeling the need to skip down the street and sing songs from the musicals as I went about my business. So I decided to take the dip-dye approach, and when the post-Christmas sales turned out to be disappointing, I consoled myself with a bottle of Bleach London The Big Pink hair colourant (£5, Boots). It claims to fade out in 2-10 washes, so if it wasn't right it didn't matter - it wouldn't be hanging around for too long.

The product was gloopier and less runny than expected, and a rather flourescent pink when it came out of the bottle. The bottom three inches or so of my hair was doused in the stuff, as per the instructions, and then began the 15 minute wait - a shorter time than other dyes I've used in the past. When the rinsing out came, the water was a shade of pink that would put Bagpuss to shame.

Time for the big reveal:

Well, as you can see, not quite the result I was hoping for. My hair has a slight pink hue if you look at it in the right light, but other than that, a disappointing result. I guess my hair was too dark to start with, but I'm reluctant to get into bleaching my hair. If anyone knows any other products that will turn medium-brown hair a candyfloss pink, please let me know in the comments below.

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FieldCandy tents

I'm not normally one to write about products on this blog unless I have a strong opinion about them. I don't take bribes for coverage, or do sponsored posts, or anything like that, so what you see is what you get.

With this in mind, I really wanted to share a product that I came across through work recently. Bear in mind that I haven't seen one of these products in the flesh, as it were, let alone tried one, so I make no promises about their quality.

I present to you, FieldCandy. Not a dance music club night in the South Downs, as one might suspect from the name (just me?), but a funky new range of tents, designed to look like things other than tents. Take for example,my personal favourite, the book:

or the shed

There are plenty more cool designs on their website. However, at £195/£395/£495 a pop, the website is where they are most likely to stay for the majority of people.

But imagine how much more fun a campsite of festival full of these bad boys would look!

Photo of the Day: 27/01/2013

Yesterday I attempted the "crackle" effect nail art that is so en-vogue right now, but the results were disappointing. I used Avon mosaic effects top coat in black, layered over another Avon nail varnish in "Real red". The effect worked well for my thumb, but for every other finger, the cracking was minimal, leaving a pool of black over the red. Halloween it is not, so the whole effect looks somewhat amateur, a disappointing result for a product I was so looking forward to using!

For yesterday's photo of the day, click here.

A rusty jewel in the American breakfast crown

My culinary exploration of American breakfast options took a turn into the unknown this week, as I cracked open a pot of Apple Jacks. This is one American cereal that I never tried on family holidays (back in me yoof, like). The idea of a combination of cinnamon and apple flavours is just about acceptable in a pastry, a cheeky danish in the afternoon perhaps, but I was expecting the combination of flavours to be too overpowering for a breakfast cereal.

When I opened the pot, the shape of the cereal resemble the culinary Deity that is Froot Loops, however the colours were disappointingly underwhelming. It may seem obscure to pre-emptively judge a breakfast cereal based on the brightness of colour, but I've come to learn that when we're talking American cereals, brighter colours=more e-number = happier Lau.

Happily, when milk was added, the colours appeared brighter, although still nowhere near the Froot Loops spectrum. The flavours however, were very bland, proving my fears of overpowering flavour to be unfounded, and resembling a lightly perfumed cardboard, as opposed to the slightly more mature sibling in the Froot Loops family that I had been expecting.

It is my conclusion then, that Apple Jacks are the rusty jewel in the otherwise shiny crown of American breakfasts.

Talking clock-Product review

A recent visit to one of my favourite shops, Give the dog a bone, resulted in a rather spontaneous purchase on my part.  A talking clock. How exciting. And in the shape of an apple too!

"What does it say?" I asked the befuddled looking shop assistant, who thankfully is also one of my closest friends, and therefore used to my crazy ramblings, "Does it dish out infinite words of wisdom and inspiration in your darkest hours? Or can you record your own utterances and have them played back to you?"


Actually, the clock tells you the time and the temperature when you press the little stalky button on top. As it happened, I had just relegated my old clock to the drawer, battery-less, for being too noisy, and so I took this as a sign that it was meant to be and purchased the clock.

In theory a talking clock is a grand old idea, one that Wallace and Gromit would have been proud to come up with. In fact they're probably kicking themselves right now that they didn't. Calm down lads, and have another piece of Wensleydale, I see some flaws in this product.

As well as the talking setting, where you press the apple stalk to hear the time, the clock also has a silent setting. If you press the stalk, the screen lights up, showing you the time and temperature. It's one of those colour changing screens, that stays alight for 20-30 seconds going through several colours of light before turning itself off. Either setting is great for people who can't sleep easily with the light of a clock glaring down at them.

The more sharp minded reader will have already noticed the problem with this. In order to see/hear the time in the middle of night, you have to drag your arm out of it's lovely warm position under your duvet, s-t-r-e-t-c-h across to the other side of the bed, possibly across anyone else who happens to be in your bed and press the button. Plus, if it's on the speaker setting, it is liable to wake other people up, resulting in angry housemates. The possibilities are endless.

Some of the instructions are written in questionable English. This isn't an English language student and aspiring writer being pernickity over the odd misplaced apostrophe. Oh no. I quote one paragraph from the instructions

           "when the alarm unseal, it will play the music ring 

when the alarm time arrive the setting time, music will 

continue one minute, it will talk time one time 

when the music talking at last second."

Resultingly, the alarm hasn't successfully worked yet, so no comment on what sound it may or may not make. Not a problem if you're a student who rarely has anyway to be before 11am. Slightly problematic if you're a businessman who must be up at 6:32:23 each morning to catch an overpacked train to a bustling city in order to do a highly-important-yet-top-secret job.

Another annoyance is the voice. It's an American woman, and a highly annoying one at that. There is nothing wrong with American women, or indeed their voices, except that this particular one happens to be annoying. On reflection, maybe that'll make an effective alarm. Maybe we'll never know.

If you're in the market (or indeed, in Give the dog a bone) for a serious clock, then this fruit themed wonder is probably not for you. If, however you're looking for something a little bit quirky, then this clock is unusual and definitely has it's benefits. The annoying American woman is not one of them.

The truth about GHDs-product review

GHDs; Misunderstood by men, worshipped by women. And until recently, misunderstood by me, too.

Never having been the most feminine of teenage girls, it was always beyond me why anyone would spend over £100 on a pair of hair straighteners.  The hype that surrounds them has always gone over my head, no pun intended. What makes them different from any other pair of straighteners (except the price)? Surely your hair can only get so straight, regardless of whether you spend £30 or £100 on straighteners? Even now, I can sense pampered and primped women everywhere shaking their heads in despair at my ignorance as I write this.

My limited use of straighteners has always been reserved for special occasions and very bad hair days, however I seem to be very accident prone with them (although on reflection, that is a sweeping statement that can be applied to most areas of my life). I've got through several pairs in my teenage years; Babyliss, Remington, Vidal Sassoon- hell, one pair even exploded in my face, mid-straighten. I've still got the scars from that one, but it didn't deter me in my search for controllable hair. I bought another pair, and kept straightening, hoping for some sort of miracle. All these other brands did an OK job-my hair was always straighter when I finished than when I started, but nothing amazing happened. I guess, then, that it was curiosity more than anything that made me bite the bullet and splash the cash on a shiny new pair of GHD gold max stylers.

Even the process of buying them was daunting; Having seen the adverts full of gorgeous goddesses with naturally amazing hair, and even looking at the sort of people I know who already own GHDs, I felt as if I wasn't good enough to own them, that I didn't have a right to, a fear that I may be laughed out of any one of the overpriced salons I could purchase them from.  I had looked on the website before, so that I knew exactly which model I wanted and didn't make a fool of myself when asking for them, and tried oh-so-hard not to wince at the price as I handed my credit card over, still feeling the need to prove myself worthy of the 'in-crowd' for whom such purchases are normally reserved.

The whole way home I was dying to know- did the secret of good hair now lie within my grasp, my life long search for the holy grail over, or had I just been conned out of £100 for a distinctly average product?

My conclusion? GHDs are different, they do seem to work better, and they leave your hair feeling softer and shinier than other straighteners I've used, although whether this is a short term effect that will wear off remains to be seen. It may even be psychological , just knowing that I have bought a more expensive and highly coveted product. I don't know what the GHD secret is, but I'm amazed they've kept it under wraps and away from competitors for so long. Worth the extra money? In my case, definitely; my hair has become so long, thick and generally uncontrollable that other straighteners were having little effect. GHDs make it more manageable within minutes and, on days when I'm willing to put the extra time in, presentable, which it hasn't been in a while!

In short, I'm a convert.