dcindaheezy: First Impressions: Lush!

I've never been to a Lush store before so when I found out there was one about a half-hour drive away from where I live, I decided I'd give it a shot and see what all the hype was about. I've heard/read about Lush for about a couple years now thanks to online beauty gurus that RAVE all about these products, I just never tried them until now.

"Zamn girl, you hella late."
I know, I know. But better late than never, right? RIGHT. For those who are completely out of the loop, Lush is a cosmetics brand pretty similar to all those skin/body care shops; The Body Shop, Bath & Body Works, so on and so forth. But what makes Lush stand out above all the rest is that these products are made fresh by hand and contain little or no preservatives. They also use vegetarian only ingredients and do NOT test on our furry friends. It gets better, Lush uses recycled materials for all their packaging and are compostable or biodegradable. Go green! There are products available for skin, hair, and for bath/shower. More info on their site here.

Upon entering the store, I was immediately reminded of a deli or a fancy little market!..only it smelled entirely better. A whole lot better. There you'll find different soaps, body butters, natural hair dyes, mud masks and you can even purchase some items per pound. There are samples all over and the entire place is decked out with stands and sections written on chalkboards. The workers are probably some of the nicest people out there. One worker in particular, I forget her name, but she was just the sweetest and really energetic in a non-annoying type 'a way. She explained every section, what each product did, offered us complimentary fruit drinks (yes, drinks),and showed us a demo of one of their natural seaweed soaps. She also thoroughly answered every question I had and was not at all irritated, so I really appreciated that! She seemed like she really enjoyed her job, which made it a nice experience along with the fantastic atmosphere.

I wasn't planning on purchasing anything to begin with, but after being totally convinced, we decided to try our luck on Lush's Cupcake Fresh Face Mask ($5.95) since it was the only one catering to oily skin. Not only that, but it also specialized in Teenage skin as well, which I knew would be safe for my younger sister to try out too. It said to keep it on for about 5 minutes, but it felt so good that we kept it on for about 10. I recommend chilled masks at the end of a warm day. Feels like HEAVEN. It didn't harden to the point where I couldn't move my face, but it did crack and crumble here and there, which was expected. I felt a very slight tingling sensation, but it wasn't bothersome.

The consistency: Since it's chilled, my initial reaction to it was that it felt like a slightly firmer and thicker frozen yogurt, or frozen custard. No granules, no little exfoliant beads. Just a bit grainy. Smooth upon application, but you'll have to be pretty quick since it'll slightly dry up as you go along.

The smell: To his/her own, but personally, I enjoyed the smell. It smelled a bit like a mint 75% cacao chocolate chip, but with more of a menthol scent. Haha. It lingered a wee bit even after a few hours of washing the mask off.

The result: I didn't expect it to wash right off. I thought I'd have to put a little umph in my rinsing, but this surprisingly washed off fairly quick. The mask melted off quicker than most of my face scrubs. As I've said a few times before, my skin isn't the quickest to adjust to new products, so again, I was surprised to see that nothing bad happened after wards. Not even after a few hours. However, it did what it was supposed to do, which was get rid of excess oil and sooth the skin. And it did just that for the entire day. I have the most oilyest of the oilyest skin, and I couldn't believe how this kept my skin from being greasy for almost 24 hrs. Not to mention it also made my skin pretty soft. Super super pleased with this product. Going back to check out their other stuff for sure!
I have to note that if you re going to try the Cupcake mask and you have dry skin, make sure to use lots of moisturizer after. Learned that the hard way when my brother (whose skin is somewhat oily, mostly dry) decided to try it as well and it completely dried out his face. Haha.