Review: San Francisco Soap Company Coconut Mango hand cream

It's been getting colder where I live in the past few days, and like always when that happens, my hands have been drying up lately. While I love Soap and Glory's Hand Food (best hand cream EVER!), I decided to start off using another hand cream I had never tried, but got in my latest GlamGuru box, instead to battle this issue. I was pretty sure San Francisco Soap Company's hand cream would be no contender, since I am usually utterly disappointed in most hand creams I try, but this hand cream is actually pretty good! I wouldn't say it's better than Hand Food, but it comes pretty close.

So why do I like it?
First of all, the scent is really nice. I don't have a lot of coconut scented products since I feel it's one of those scents that can easily be messed up, and I do think a lot of manufacturers do that with their coconut scents for some reason. So I actually dislike a lot of coconut scented products, because I feel they just.... well, stink, but this Coconut Mango hand cream has a really nice, fresh and summery scent that I just love!
(I must say I can really feel the mango though. So if you are after a more mango scented hand cream, this is probably not what you are looking for)

The San Francisco Soap Company Coconut Mango hand cream also absorbs fast, which is important for me, as I hate walking around with sticky hands for too long, and it moisturizes really well! So I would definitely get this again, I really liked this hand cream!

Review: Soap and Glory The Fab Pore Daily Micro Smoothing Moisture Lotion

That I am a massive Soap & Glory fan shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has read this blog before. I think it's actually one of my favorite beauty brands of all time, even though I am not too thrilled about their new packaging, so when I spotted what I thought was a new moisturizer from them, called The Fab Pore Daily Micro Smoothing Moisture Lotion, I thought I would give it a try, since I was in need of a new moisturizer anyway. After all, I had been very, very happy with another one of their moisturizers that I had tried in the past, the Clear Here one. What I didn't realize, however, was that the Fab Pore Daily Micro Smoothing Moisture Lotion actually IS the Clear Here moisturizer. That's what it seems like to me anyway, after having tried them both. If it's not exactly the same moisturizer, they are at least incredibly similar.

I had heard that Soap & Glory had actually renamed some of their popular products and given them new packaging, and this certainly seems to be the case here.

That said, this moisturizer is really, really good (you can read more about why I think that in my review of the Clear Here moisturizer here), so while I am not too keen on the packaging, I would definitely recommend this to anyone with oily skin. It's simply great! But you shouldn't expect it to be a completely new Soap & Glory product, because it's not...

Review: Sephora Deodorant Spray

As you may have noticed if you have been reading my reviews of the Sephora products from their own brand lately, I haven't been too impressed with a lot of them, both the facial cleanser, the eye makeup remover and the exfoliator were disappointments for me. But there was one Sephora product that I really, really liked, and that is actually their deodorant spray.

Now, I only bought a rather small bottle of this, which was a shame, since I ended up really liking this spray and I don't have a Sephora where I live, so now I can't pick up some more, but despite the small size, I will say that this deodorant lasted for a really long time. And I mean really long! So that was impressive, first of all, but it wasn't the only reason I liked it.

This deodorant also has a really nice, yet subtle scent, so it won't be too over powering, which is nice. And it does what deodorants are supposed to do too, if you know what I mean!

So this deodorant was really a good purchase for me, and I would definitely buy it again. In fact, I am pretty sure I actually will if Sephora still sells it the next time I visit one of their stores!

So Sephora's own brand is by no means all bad, even though some of the products were less than impressive, it does have some good products too!

Review: Sephora Exfoliating Body Scrub

Time to review another Sephora product, I think!

But sadly, it's another product from this brand that I am far from happy with. But the Sephora Exfoliating Body Scrub might be the worst one out of all the Sephora products I've been trying lately.

Why?
Well, first of all it doesn't exfoliate very well. The grains in this scrub are really small, which works nicely if it's a face scrub, but body scrubs need something that gives a bigger impact. The Sephora Exfoliating Body Scrub doesn't have anything like that, so exfoliating with this body scrub is basically like not exfoliating at all.

Second of all, this clumps up, meaning that while you use it, you have these small white lumps all over you, which is really gross! So while the scrub does absolutely nothing beautywise, it really managed to disgust me while using it.

So I would definitely not recommend this body scrub to anyone, there are so many great scrubs out there that no-one should have to put up with this one. And I certainly won't be buying this scrub myself again either.

Review: La Roche-Posay Substiane Eyes

La Roche-Posay is a brand that I discovered only quite recently (read some of my first impressions of the brand here and here), but since I do like it, I wanted to try some more products by this brand. So since I needed a new eye cream when I went to Paris anyway, I decided to stop by a local pharmacy and pick up a La Roche-Posay one. They only had one called Substiane Eyes, so I have been giving that a try for some time now.

I have to admit that the first time I tried this cream, it gave me a bit of a stinging sensation, which was a bit worrying. But I had not been using any eye cream for quite some time (at least for several weeks) before that, and I remembered that this is something that had happened to me in the past as well, when I started using eye cream after not having used it for a while, so I decided to try it again, and then there was no stinging sensation! So I guess that was just something very temporary, because now I have no side effects when using this cream at all, but I still want to mention it, in case anyone reading this has very sensitive eyes and is considering getting this eye cream. It might sting for you too, after all.

Other than that first small glitch, I find this eye cream to be really good, though. The texture is lovely, thick, but not too thick, if you get what I mean, and it also absorbs very fast, which is a main issue that I often have with other eye creams.

The scent is nothing special, though, this cream feels very clinical, like a lot of other La Roche-Posay, and while I might have preferred this product with a really cool scent or packaging, the very basic scent and packaging does not bother me, and since I really like what this cream does to the skin around my eyes, I totally think I would get it again!

What I think of Soap & Glory's new packaging

As most of my readers probably already know, I am a huge fan of anything Soap and Glory, it's one of my all time favorite beauty brands, but since I had bought quite a lot of their products before they decided to re-do their packaging, it has taken me until now to get something with the new packaging on it.

I got two Fab Pore items, and I have to say that the change is huge, and, sadly, quite disappointing. I actually really liked all the cute pink packaging, I felt this was something that set Soap & Glory apart, and it looked great in my bathroom and shower too.

This new packaging looks way more boring, less unique and more medical, if that makes any sense. I get a toothpaste feeling from the tube, for sure, and really think Soap & Glory should have stuck to their old packaging. I understand that the reason for the change was that they wanted to make it easier for people to find products suited for their specific needs, but I think you could have done that somehow, while you kept the old style of packaging at the same time.

So I will definitely miss the old Soap & Glory packaging a lot!

That said, the products are so good I will still buy them, it's just a shame the packaging bores me now...

Review: Evian Le Brumisateur Natural Mineral Water Facial Spray

Ok, so let's take a short break from all the Sephora reviews, even though I still have quite a few Sephora items left to review still. But I also got Evian's famous Le Brumisateur Face Spray, and I wanted to share some thoughts on that as well.

Now, I've used some facial sprays in the past, and I liked them, even though I never saw them as a must have item in any way. I would say Evian's spray is pretty similar to the other facial sprays I've tried in the past, but I really like the rather small size of this product, since it makes it very portable and easy to carry with you, where ever you happen to be going. You also don't need to use a lot of the spray each time, so despite the small size, I would say the bottle contains quite a lot of product, due to that. I really do think this bottle will last me for quite some time!

 I've mostly been using this during flights, when my skin really tends to dry out, as well as when my face has gotten kind of hot, and it works wonderfully for that, but I am not sure what other uses I could think of for the Evian Natural Mineral Water Facial Spray, so while I like the product, I do not see it as a must have product in any way, and I am really not sure if I would buy it again. It's nice to have this, for sure, but it's not a product that fits into my beauty regime very naturally, if you know what I mean?

Considering that the spray consists of Evian water, a lot of people find it a bit too expensive, but I actually think it is reasonably priced, since it is very similar to MAC's way more expensive Skin Refresher (read review here), for instance, so I don't have an issue with the price, actually.

An interesting product, but I would only recommend it for those of you who already have some kind of clear idea of what you want to use it for, since I don't think everyone really needs one of these sprays.