‘Sparkly Pumpkin Bubble Bar’ by Lush

Today’s review is on another Lush Halloween product (and my last one for now). It is the ‘Sparkly Pumpkin Bubble Bar’ and it is vegan and cruelty free of course. You’ve probably guessed that it looks like a pumpkin and you aren’t wrong. You’ve probably also guessed it’s sparkly and indeed, you’d be correct there too. This means the dreaded glitter. Now I know glitter is actually extremely popular with most people. I don’t know why I particularly dislike it. It’s probably because it can be a nightmare to get rid of and I worry it will irritate my skin if I am soaking in it. In fact, glitter bothers me so much that I actively avoided using this bubble bar as I was convinced it would be traumatic for me. I was quite surprised though as you will see . . .

This is the first bubble bar I have reviewed on here. They vary from bath bombs, in that you crumble them into a running bath. They are basically solid bubble bath. They are still good for your skin and can sometimes change the colour of your bath water, like bath bombs. They produce a fantastic amount of bubbles if used correctly. If the bubble bar is particularly large, I often just use half (like I sometimes do with bath bombs). As bubble bars are designed to crumble, this makes it really easy to save some for another time.

The ‘Sparkly Pumpkin Bubble Bar’ was a lot better than I had anticipated. On crumbling it in my bath, I realised it wasn’t glitter all the way through (hurrah!) but only on the outside. That immediately made way for the possibility of enjoying this bath. Inside of the bubble bar is a bright, solid orange colour. Quite beautiful. I used the whole bar as it isn’t particularly big, and watched my bath water turn a dark orange colour.

On observation, I found there was hardly any glitter in the bath water. In fact, when cupping my hands full of water I couldn’t really spot any and it didn’t linger on my skin afterwards to my knowledge. I expected this bath to have quite a strong scent, despite the bar not smelling of much. Unfortunately I found it didn’t seem to smell of anything! Of course this made me double check the ingredients out of interest. It contains grapefruit, juniperberry and lime oils which did surprise me, as I thought it would be more pungent.

Overall it makes for a nice bath due to the colour and bubbles but doesn’t smell of very much at all.

6/10

‘Sparkly Pumpkin Bubble Bar’ is available at all Lush UK retailers during October. Please bear in mind stocks will be limited.

‘Autumn Leaf’ bath bomb by Lush

Today I am going to review another product made by Lush. It’s their new bath bomb ‘Autumn Leaf’ and has, as you might have guessed, been released in time for autumn.

I was drawn to the product by it’s pretty leaf shape and subtle pastel colours of mostly green and yellow. As usual, I checked and it is indeed vegan and cruelty free. I thought it was very different from the other bath bombs which is probably what drew me to it in the first place. Most of their bath bombs are spherical and I had to double check it wasn’t in fact a bubble bar (although the texture is obviously bath bomb, perhaps slightly more crumbly due to not being round).

On giving it a sniff in the shop and again, before dropping it in my bath, I could only really decide it was perfumey. Not over the top perfumey, but a nice subtle, soft smell that did sort of make me think of autumn and October. It smells pretty much the same when it’s dissolving, but stronger. I was treated to the smell of fresh grass and reminded of autumn leaves crunching underfoot, as I lay back in my hot bath. I could also smell bergamot and sandalwood oils, which definitely contributed to the memories of bonfires and cosying up in front of the fire on a cold October evening (with Hoggle of course). It’s definitely the sandalwood and bergamot oils that provide that perfume smell I was initially talking about. Beautiful smells that aren’t over-powering and are nice and relaxing. Real favourites of mine that are uplifting, cleansing and soothing. There’s also some neroli oil that’s quite toning and contributes to the positive feel.

The ‘Autumn Leaf’ bath bomb is beautiful to look at. I almost didn’t want to dissolve it . . . but I did. The colours provide a sort of marbled effect and the colour once it starts fizzing is vibrant. There are reds, yellows, oranges and greens. All traditional autumn colours. Once the bath bomb has completely dissolved, your bath is left a dark orange colour. In terms of actual fizzing, it starts off dissolving quite fast but I noticed it slowed down once it had reduced to quite a small amount. There is no glitter in this one, which I appreciate. It’s not that I don’t like glitter, but I don’t like washing in it and I don’t always like it on my skin when it’s not in good shape. I find a lot of Lush’s bath products contain glitter so it’s nice to find ones that don’t. I am pleasantly surprised to discover that Lush use biodegradable glitter though, which means no harm to the environment!

The ‘Autumn Leaf’ bath bomb is available at all good Lush UK stores for £3.75.

This one gets a 9/10!

To see a video of Lush’s ‘Autumn Leaf’ fizzing away, click here.