Lush Phoenix Rising Bath Bomb

Both my sister and my fiancé bought me lots of Lush goodies for Christmas, and one that was purchased by my fiancé was the Phoenix Rising bath ballistic. I had seen this one online but did not know much about it, so I was pleased to get the chance to try it out.

The Phoenix Rising ballistic is mainly dark purple in colour, with a golden shimmer running over the outside. The shape reminds me a little of a pudding, being flat on the bottom and slightly rounded at the top. On the Lush website this is depicted as having a gold cinnamon stick embedded into the top of it, but sadly mine did not. My fiancé actually commented on that, saying none of those in the shop had a stick on the top, but he knew they were supposed to as he’d chosen the products online before going into the store.

The idea of this particular bath bomb is that you drop it into the bottom of the bath and it will sink before rising to the top – hence the name Phoenix Rising. I thought that sounded quite a cool idea, so when it came to using this, I excitedly ran the bath and then dropped this into the water. The result I have to say was slightly disappointing. I had expected it would stay on the base of the bath for a little while – 10 seconds at least – but it literally hit off the bottom and then bounced straight back up. The splashing of the water masked it a bit and I just didn’t feel it was quite as spectacular as I had expected it to be.

Whilst the actual rising of the phoenix was slightly disappointing, I have to admit that it did look fairly good as it dissolved. I found it was very slow to dissolve, but when it did, it left a trail of purple on the surface of the water which looked rather pretty. It also started spinning in the water, which again was quite lovely to watch. There was a surprise lurking inside this bath bomb too, which was as the purple outside dissolved, a pale green colour emerged from the product, mixing in with the purple on the surface of the water. When fully dissolved the bath was a bright pinky purple colour, with a hint of gold shimmer to the water and it certainly did look very appealing.

As well as looking good, the Phoenix Rising bath bomb also smells good. I will be honest and say that I was a little unsure of the fragrance at first, but I found that it grew on me. The bath bomb contains cocoa butter, icing sugar, bergamot oil, cassia oil, jojoba oil and Shea butter amongst other things. I find the smell really difficult to describe, as it’s quite unique, I can’t really pick out any individual fragrance and I can’t think of anything I could really compare it to either. It has a fairly sharp fruity scent with a hint of spice to it, but when in the water a real sweetness seems to come out too. I’d say it was fairly feminine and is strong without being overpowering. When in the water the scent was noticeable for the duration of the bath and I’m someone who likes to have a good soak, so I was in there a while!

When I did eventually get out of the bath, I noticed a very fine layer of shimmer on my skin. By the time I had gotten dried however, this had disappeared, so my assumption is that it must have been rubbed off by the towel. My skin felt quite soft after using this, I can only assume the cocoa and Shea butters must have offered some slight moisturisation, although not enough to go without a body lotion. There was also a hint of scent left on my skin after use, although this was only really noticeable close up.

Given the intensity of the colour, I did worry that Phoenix Rising would stain my bath, so I made sure I rinsed it straight away. I couldn’t see any pink marks, but I’ve had Lush products stain my bath in the past and I know they can take a long time and a lot of chemicals to shift! Although it didn’t stain my bath, oddly I noticed the next morning that the cuticles on both of my hands had become a shade of shocking pink! I’ve never had anything like that happen before and luckily it had faded by the next day, but how very odd!

A Phoenix Rising ballistic costs £3.15 and can be purchased from Lush stores or online at www.lush.co.uk. I do think that’s fairly expensive when you only get one bath out of it, but I do see Lush bath products as more of a novelty or a treat than anything else, so I would be willing to pay that now and again as a treat.

Overall, I did really like Phoenix Rising and I would be happy to use it again. The actual ‘rising’ of the ballistic was a little disappointing, but the colour, scent and skin softening properties outweighed that and so I would happily give this product four stars out of five.