Balance Me Skin Brightening Body Polish Review

If you've never tried a bath or shower with a product made with mint oils - you haven't lived!  There is something phenomenally invigorating about washing with a body product that contains mint oil.  This Balance Me skin brightening body polish is a natural, exfoliating body wash packed full of natural ingredients and scented with spearmint oil which gives is a really fresh scent and makes the whole experience refreshing and renewing.

I tend to use a body exfoliant about once a week to help brighten the skin and bring out the "new" me but I'll admit, I do like a really good scrub to help me feel as good as new.  The Balance Me body polish helps exfoliate through its main ingredient - natural sea salt.  I find it most effective when I use it on dry skin but you can use it as a more regular body wash if you apply it to wet skin.  Because the product comes in a squeezy tube, the lotion has to fit through a small hole, which means that the salt crystals can't be that large...I think this limits its ability to give a really good scrub!

However, I do LOVE the minty zingy smell when I use it in the bath - it gives an instant cooling feeling after a hot run!  The polish does also leave the skin feeling good afterward - perhaps not as exfoliated as I'd like but certainly you can feel the effects of the moisturising ingredients such as Shea Butter, sweet almond oil and coconut oil.

If you have dry skin on your feet, Balance Me body polish makes an awesome foot scrub as the combination of exfoliation and cooling mint is the perfect pedi-combo!

The Balance Me Skin Brightening Body Polish costs around £18 for 150ml.

BigGreenSmile - Weleda Birch Body Scrub Review

BigGreenSmile.com stock every one of my favourite ranges of natural cosmetics, and many that I've never heard or tried before.  I'm a big fan of Weleda's natural baby cosmetics range and recently, BigGreenSmile.com gave me the chance to try out another one of Weleda's natural skincare ranges - their Birch oil range which is designed to help soothe.

I chose this Birch Body Scrub which is an in-shower exfoliant for the whole body.  The very first thing that struck me was the scent - it is out of this world.  The scent has citrus notes and it reminds me of lemongrass oil.  Put it this way, you come out of the shower feeling fresh and invigourated!  

The body scrub features very small particles which provide the exfoliant.  It is a very gentle scrub so although you can feel the particles on your skin, it doesn't feel like a whole layer of skin has been sloughed off.  In fact, the creamy lotion that holds the particles is ever so slightly foaming and you can use it as a regular shower cream.

The addition of birch oil means that the exfoliating nature of this body scrub is balanced well with the soothing and moisturising elements.  I use the body scrub regularly on my legs which have been recently suffering with ingrowing hairs and this really helps to lift the hairs from the surface of the skin and encourages a better skin tone on my legs.

I love the scent of this exfoliant and I am now desperate to try out more of the Weleda Birch range from BigGreenSmile.

The Weleda Birch Body Scrub usually costs £9.50 at BigGreenSmile.com but is currently on offer at 20% off.