Lush Angels on Bare Skin > Reviews (18)

My meeting with Angels On Bare Skin came from a combination of online window-shopping, a desire to try something different and a recession-fuelled dilemma along the lines of, “Can I really justify spending £16.50 on that Clarins exfoliator when one tube only lasts me two months?”. Being the history enthusiast that I am, I liked the mention made on Lush’s website that Angels On Bare Skin was inspired by mediaeval skincare recipes (even if my realistic side wonders whether mediaeval ladies really were that bothered about exfoliating!) and - because lavender and rose are two of my favourite flowers and fragrances - I decided I at least had to try it.

So I went shopping, fully intending to buy a tub there and then, but the assistant in Lush suggested I tried a sample amount first (about two teaspoons worth) and gave me a tiny tub that she said would last a week. Actually I got closer to a fortnight out of it, and was only stopped from finishing it up because my sister cleaned the bathroom out and the remains of my Angels On Bare Skin disappeared that same day . . .

The girl in Lush demonstrated how to use this for me in the shop and I can see why I was advised to get my hands wet and then work this into a thinner paste-like consistency because, in the tub, Angels On Bare Skin looks particularly dense and I did wonder how on earth I was supposed to exfoliate my face with something that (frankly) looked like grainy bathroom grouting with bits of lavender in it. In a way, it’s just as well that it exfoliates so well - my mum thinks my Fresh Farmacy cleanser looks like pate so if she sees this, I’m scared she’ll try to dip breadsticks in it! It really does have that off-beige colour that makes it seem like it should be on a table surrounded by chopped raw vegetables or in a bathroom being spread into the gaps between the tiles.

Impressed enough to replace my trial version with a full-sized tub, I was initially fairly sceptical about just how long I could make the 75g tub last. I know a lot of people only use exfoliators on a weekly basis but my skin starts to look flaky and feels as though it needs a really good scrubbing if I do that so my “shopping brief” when I first went out looking for this exfoliator was that it had to be gentle enough to use every day.

After a little trial and error, I discovered an approach that seemed to work for me - what this involves is getting my face wet first (this cleanser works far better on wet skin than dry), then dipping my hands in warm water and scooping a fingerful of Angels On Bare Skin onto my hand and rubbing it round on my wet hands until it becomes looser . . . come to think of it, that’s actually what the assistant in Lush did when she demonstrated it! (They obviously know what they’re talking about!) It goes a little bit milky on contact with water (something I’ve noticed as I scoop it out of the black plastic pot) but this water seems to disappear when I open the container again so I think the cleanser must just absorb it, and even though it’s so thick and chunky it seems like getting it into anything like a paste just won’t be possible, a bit of water on wet hands actually does loosen it up quite easily and turns it into a thinner, sort of spreadable version of what I was confronted by in the tub so that - most importantly - I can get it to work across my face.

Even if I rub it into my skin with as much pressure as I can (and with my fingertips, that frankly doesn’t amount to much!) Angels on Bare Skin never actually feels harsh or scratchy. I could imagine that this would disappoint anyone who wanted their face to feel like it had had an intensive scrubbing but it suits me perfectly. The only very minor issue that I’ve had with it is that, like most other facial scrubs and exfoliators I’ve tried, I do tend to accidentally get the occasional grains in my eyes when I’m using it which is uncomfortable but not exactly irritating because these tiny little grains just aren’t that gritty so I can usually just ease them out with a cotton wool pad folded in half. I don’t find that I can actually smell the lavender pieces that are combined into the cleanser but these don’t irritate my skin either - they just feel interestingly squashy on my skin and are so narrow and small that I haven’t had any problems with them blocking the sink. A “fingerful” as I interpret it means a chunk that’s just a bit bigger than a couple of frozen peas stuck together would be, and when I swirl it round with warm water to loosen it up, I can spread it across my chin, nose and both cheeks but tend to need just a little more to do my forehead. This probably comes to about 2g at the very most (I haven’t weighed it, so this is just a guess) so, even though I opened my 75g tub three and a half weeks ago, I’ve still got around two-thirds left and my only worry is whether I can use it before the best before date - my tub was made on the 11th June so I’m advised to use it up by 11th September this year. For this reason, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who only liked to exfoliate weekly - I don’t realistically think it’s possible to use this amount of Angels On Bare Skin up in three months so it wouldn’t be great value for money unless used every day or at least every couple of days.

It leaves my skin softer than I expected it to (as I’m reminded every time I open the tub, the grainy particles are actually ground almonds!) and - surprisingly - I feel as though it looks a lot clearer. (I am using this on an alternating basis with the Fresh Farmacy cleanser from Lush which might explain that particular effect, but I certainly don’t think this has made my complexion look any worse and overall, although I wouldn’t say this was a particularly intensive exfoliator, I can still feel the difference after using it. It’s hard to explain but somehow my face just feels clearer, so I can also forgive it for not really smelling like rose, either. If I have particularly dry or flaky areas on my face, these do take a couple of days of exfoliation to be dealt with effectively but I don’t mind that because this isn’t a harsh product.)

It’s a bit more like a paste (like the Dead Sea Magik one I used to use, only much less gritty) than a gel-type scrub (after the Dead Sea Magik one I tried the smaller-grained Clarins orange exfoliating cleanser, but that was starting to get expensive) so I thought it might over-dry my face and leave it a bit too sensitive.

As it turns out, this is quite a good happy medium and - if my skin does feel a bit congested because I haven’t exfoliated for a couple of days - Angels On Bare Skin is gentle enough that I can double-cleanse with it to make up for the days when I have forgotten to exfoliate and still get good results without my face ending up feeling like it’s over-dry. In that respect, it is actually better than Fresh Farmacy which can have a slightly drying effect if I double-cleanse with it. I sometimes moisturise after using this but not always, and I’ve never felt as though I absolutely had to to make my face feel more normal.

Because it’s so gentle, I think Angels On Bare Skin would suit people who like to exfoliate gently but frequently rather than those who prefer to scrub their skin more intensively every week or so, but I imagine that someone would have to have incredibly sensitive skin to be irritated by this cleanser because the grains are so gentle. It suits my cleansing routine (well, as near to a routine as I can get - I’m not that disciplined!) perfectly well and I wouldn’t think twice about replacing mine when it runs out. At £5.50 per 100g for an exfoliator that will last me at least two and a half months even if I use it daily and doesn’t aggravate my skin, it’s well worth the money to me. And it doesn’t bother me one bit that it looks like bathroom grouting, either!

[A footnote - Ciao is asking me how well this is absorbed, so I have rated it as average even though it’s not actually a moisturiser.]