Showing posts with label Burt's Bees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Burt's Bees. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Quick spotlight on Burts Bees & Upper Canada Soap Co.

Burt's Bees Exfoliating Radiance Wash

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Description from website:

"This creamy body wash infuses Royal Jelly, one of nature's most nutritious substances, with jojoba beads and a fruit acid complex to gently exfoliate, smooth and help even skin tone. Safflower seed olesomes intensely moisturise and condition, leaving skin with a naturally healthy, radiant glow."

Retails for $9.99


Ingredients:

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What I noticed:

- Smells heavenly! its hard to describe but the scent is a mix of honey and floral notes.
- Non-drying, doesn't sting sensitive skin at all
- Jojoba beads are too few to be effective at exfoliating properly
- Does not foam up much so you tend to use more of it than you would with a foaming body wash.


Overall:

Recommended if you have dry / sensitive skin, and don't mind not having a foaming body wash.

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Upper Canada Naturally Body Butter in Warm Honey Nectar

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Description from website:

"Butter up your skin with our Body Butter - an intensive blend of shea and cocoa butters works hard to soften the driest skin, while our Vita Body Spray is a quick and easy way to refresh skin -- enriched with Vitamins A, C and E for on-the-spot nourishment and skin-soothing properties."


What I noticed:

- Top layer is a bit harder, but has a wonderful souffle texture underneath
- Sweet, floral honey scent
- Slightly inconvenient tub format
- Rich (since it is a body butter), would be good for dry skin or even normal skin during winter.


Overall:

Recommended if you have extremely dry skin all year, or just want an extra moisturization boost.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer

I love red papayas, but good ones that are perfectly ripe and sweet are hard to find here.



For now I'll have to make do with Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer in Papaya, courtesy of the folks at Burts :)

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It swatches as a warm, orange toned sheer red, with gold shimmer:

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See below lip swatch. It is suprisingly pigmented (I had thought this would be sheerer like a MAC Slimshine), almost like lipstick. I could blot some off as well for a sheerer, more subtle look, but this is how it looks applied straight from the tube.

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I've noticed it leaves slight tingly mint feeling. The flavour is pleasant and refreshing, it makes me feel as though I just brushed my teeth.

The product is also moisturizing, similar to a stick lip balm. By that I mean it is not as moisturizing as pot balms, but is on par with other stick balms I've tried (Blistex, Chapstick, Burts Bees Honey balm in stick form).

Here are the ingredients list off the website:

Ricinus communis (castor) seed oil, helianthus annuus (sunflower) seed oil, cera alba (beeswax, cire d'abeille), candelilla cera (euphorbia cerifera, cire de candelilla) wax, mentha piperita (peppermint) oil, lanolin, theobroma cacao (cocoa) seed butter, cera carnauba (copernicia cerifera, cire de carnauba) wax, tocopherol, rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary) leaf extract, glycine soja (soybean) oil, canola oil (huile de colza), limonene, May contain+/-: CI 77491/77492/77499 (iron oxides), mica, CI 77891 (titanium dioxide), CI 75470 (carmine), CI 778161(tin oxide)

I definitely like the fact that it doesn't contain petrochemicals, or sulfates, parabens, phthalates. Doesn't hurt to be safe!

My only gripe about this product was that it cannot be twisted back down once you have twisted it up. So don't twist up too much product...like I did in the picture above!

The lip shimmers come in a variety of other shades and retail for CA$5.99.

So have you tried any of the lip shimmers? What do you think?

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Mini Q&A and Burts Bees review

Mini Q&A:

Fiona wanted to know how much shipping for Everyday Minerals costs to Canada - it cost me $5 for the sample kit. The last time I ordered, I got stuff worth $30+ so it cost me about $8 then. You can get an estimate by checking out, as long as you don't click on the Confirm Payment button just yet :)

Also, Anonymous wanted to know how much I got my NYX pigments for. I got mine for $5.99 at PharmaPlus / Rexall. Kind of expensive, but those are the only stores that sell NYX in Canada :( But its a LOT cheaper if you order them off Ebay or CherryCulture.com.

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Ok, I've decided to finally do the review on the Burt's Bees shampoo even though I feel like I don't have much to say about it :S I was thinking it'd be a lot more useful if I had gotten the matching conditioner, but it wasn't in stock at the drugstores I went to.

I did see it at Whole Foods Market, but Whole Foods was charging a ridiculous price for the Burts Bees stuff :( The shampoos and their matching conditioners were $12.99, while the regular price at Shoppers is $9.99....a $3 markup??

So I ended up buying a different conditioner from Whole Foods to try - the Shea butter one. This is probably also overpriced at $14.99, but it was a Burts Bees product I haven't seen in any other stores, and I really needed a good rich silicone-free conditioner. This one doesn't come with a matching shampoo so I figured it should go well with any other BB shampoos.


Burt's Bees More Moisture Raspberry and Brazil Nut shampoo, & Shea Butter and Grapefruit Hair Repair conditioner:

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Ingredients for More Moisture shampoo:

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This is the second Burt's Bees shampoo I've used. Previously I tried their Colour Keeper shampoo. It smelled awesome and cleaned my hair fine, but didn't do much to prolong my haircolour despite the claims.

Since my hair isn't coloured anymore (except for the ends that are growing out anyway), I decided to try something else. I wanted to continue with Burts because I like the fact that its sulfate-free. I've heard that sulfates dry out your hair more and since I already have dry, fine hair, it needs all the help it can get.

The shampoo cleans my hair nicely. Lol I don't know what else to say - other than I like that it does what a shampoo should do minus the sulfates :)

Note that Burts Bees shampoos, because they are sulfate free, do not foam up as much as regular shampoos. So it might feel like you need to use a lot more product to clean your hair. However thats not really the case - you just have to get used to using the same amount but with less lather present.

Only thing that bothered me the first few times I used it is the scent. I was expecting a raspberry scent, which IS there, but its not quite the usual raspberry scent you get from lotions and stuff. I thought the scent smelt a bit 'fishy' at first lol :) So I read the label and they mention that the raspberry extract contains omega 3 fatty acids! I'm thinking that might be why.....Does anyone know if omega 3 fatty acids smell fishy even if they come from non-fish sources? Hmm....But anyway, the smell is fine after you get used to it. Just take a whiff at the store before you buy it to make sure that you will be ok with the scent :)


Ingredients for Hair Repair conditioner:

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I love this conditioner. I have tried Burt's Bees Colour Keeper conditioner before, and that one sucked :( It didn't condition my hair enough and left it tangly. However this Hair Repair one is much richer, and smells awesome because of the grapefruit scent. It works best if you squeeze out the water in your hair as much as possible before putting the conditioner. I've used it a few times now and it leaves my hair smooth :) I do still use a bit of my usual Kiehl's hair serum oil to smooth the ends but I have a lot less trouble with brushing it due to this conditioning this product does :)

The reason I got this product was because I've read somewhere that you should use silicone free conditioners together with sulfate free shampoos. With regular drugstore shampoos, what they do is strip your hair clean with the sulfates, while the conditioners contain silicone to balance it out. But with a sulfate-free shampoo, using a silicone containing conditioner would add to product buildup and probably make my already fine hair flatter :P

Normally, with regular sulfate containing shampoos, I use Johnson & Johnson's Kids Detangling shampoo because my hair just gets tangled like crazy otherwise. But I hate that it weighs my hair down more and if I use too much, makes my hair feel greasy faster. I believe its because of the silicones in the product. None of these things happen with the Burts Bees, and from looking at the ingredient list, it seems silicone free :)


To summarize - Thumbs up for both products :) Just make sure you are ok with the scent of the More Moisture Raspberry shampoo.

Final note: I don't use any hair styling products like hairspray or mousse or serums at the moment other than the Kiehl's Silk Groom serum, which is oil based. So I'm not sure if it will clean hair effectively if you use a lot of those, since this isn't meant to be a clarifying shampoo. But it works well for a simple haircare routine like mine :)


P.S. To Canadians: Don't buy Burts Bees from Whole Foods - its overpriced. Even the online Canadian site (http://www.forever-natural.com/) is cheaper than Whole Foods. The shampoo is listed for $10.99, which is $1 more than Shoppers Drug Mart but $2 less than Whole Foods Market. Also, if you buy over $50 you can get free shipping!
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