LUSH Prince Charming & Neon Love

As promised, I'm back to report on Prince Charming shower gel and Neon Love bar soap from this year's LUSH Valentine's Day collection.

Prince Charming shower gel is the first-ever LUSH product with fresh pomegranate juice, which put it at the top of my list for things to try from the collection. Fun fact #1: I love eating pomegranate seeds and will eat an entire fruit's worth in one sitting if left unsupervised. Fun fact #2: I used pomegranate juice as paint for my art project in senior year of high school; I even pressed the juice out of the seeds myself.

Oh, back to the shower gel: made with grapefruit, pomegranate, vanilla, marshmallow root, and almond oil, I was expecting Prince Charming to be fruity and refreshing, with a bit of sweetness. Although the scent has a slight sour edge from the fruits, it's much sweeter than I expected. I get mainly marshmallow and vanilla; no surprise considering that marshmallow root and vanilla pod infusions are the first two ingredients on the list, meaning they are the most predominant ingredients in the formula. If you found Snow Fairy overwhelmingly sweet, you might like Prince Charming, which is a step down from the cotton candy-scented holiday fave. As with other LUSH shower gels, this one lathers perfectly well and a little goes a long way. My skin feels clean but not stripped, and there's also an addition of almond oil, which helps hydrate skin.

PS: I absolutely love the dusty rose colour of this shower gel. Any lipstick or nail polish dupes come to mind? (Serious question. I want this colour in all forms possible.)

Ingredients: marshmallow root infusion (aqua, Althaea officinalis), vanilla pod infusion (aqua, Vanilla planifolia), water, sodium laureth sulfate, sodium cocoamphoacetate, propylene glycol, lactic acid, lauryl betaine, grapefruit oil (Citrus paradisi), fresh pomegranate juice (Punica granatum), sandalwood oil (Santalum austro-caledonicum vieill and Fusanus spicatus), geranium oil (Pelargonium graveolens), almond oil (Prunus dulcis), titanium dioxide, citronellol, geraniol, linalool, limonene, fragrance, D&C Red No 33, D&C Red No 27, FD&C Red No 4, methylparaben, propylparaben

Neon Love soap is as Valentine's Day-themed as it gets: a bright reddish-pink bar soap with a white heart (if you're lucky to get a good cut like me) featuring bergamot, rosewood, and cinnamon leaf. On first sniff, I wasn't sure I liked the spicy, slightly woody scent from the cinnamon leaf and rosewood oils, but it grew on me pretty fast. Plus, after you wet the soap and start lathering up, I feel like the scent becomes more complex and the fruity notes come to the surface.

I generally prefer LUSH soaps over the shower gels, since the soaps tend to contain more oils that hydrate the skin (this one contains relatively high concentrations of rapeseed oil and coconut oil.) Surprisingly, I even prefer the smell of it over Prince Charming: Neon Love turned out to be less spicy and intense than I expected, and Prince Charming was sweeter and less fruity than I had hoped. My favourite LUSH soaps are refreshing and zesty, like Sea Vegetable and Sexy Peel, but Neon Love was a pleasant surprise and a nice change of pace.

Ingredients: water, propylene glycol, rapeseed oil, coconut oil (Brassica napus; Cocos nucifera), fresh passion fruit (Passiflora edulis), cornflour (Zea mays), sodium stearate, fresh figs (Ficus carica), fragrance, cinnamon leaf oil (Cinnamomum zeylanicum), rosewood oil (Aniba rosaeodora), bergamot oil (Citrus Aurantium bergamia), titanium dioxide, glycerine, sodium chloride, EDTA, tetrasodium editronate, sodium hydroxide, citral, coumarin, eugenol, geraniol, linalool, limonene, FD&C Yellow No. 8, D&C Green No. 8, D&C Red No. 27

Sweet and marshmallow-y or spicy and woodsy--which do you prefer? Do you eat the tiny white bit inside the pomegranate seeds (Bf doesn't, it's a point of contention.)