• The LUSH life: part 3 // the routine •

The third and final post in my little LUSH series is all about my skincare routine. I use mainly LUSH products (bar the odd Soap & Glory product and a blob of Sudocrem on my blemishes) and I love how natural and gentle the products are. I feel like the skincare line has really changed my skin, calming any redness and blemishes I may have, and I love my little routine I have going on.

The products I'm going to talk about are all suited to my skin and may not work for you, but I'm sure that any member of staff at LUSH will help you find the routine to suit you. My skin type is combination; I have a semi-oily t-zone, dry skin around my mouth and jawline and normal skin on my cheeks (as you can imagine, this makes it rather complicated when looking for foundations and skincare products). I have acne scarring on my cheeks and get the odd breakout every now and then on my chin and jawline. I turned to LUSH skincare when I was around 16 years old, when my skin was at its worst. I was recommended the Cupcake Face Mask and instantly fell in love - it drew the crap out of my skin and calmed down my redness. Unfortunately, my acne was way past any non-medical cure so I had to go on Roaccutane, but the point of this story is that I was so impressed with my experience with the product as nothing I had tried before even came close to calming down my redness. And so my love affair with LUSH began!

If you missed the first two posts...
Part 1: LUSH collection
Part 2: LUSH favourites

The following routine is my evening skincare routine - my morning skincare includes lots of Soap & Glory and not a lot of LUSH.

• I start off by removing my make up with coconut oil (I bang on about coconut oil in these posts!) and then wash my face with cold water. I mix a little of Let the Good Times Roll Facial Cleanser and cold water in the palm of my hand to make a paste - I make this paste thick when I need more of an exfoliator, and thin when I don't need to exfoliate. I then massage the paste onto my damp face and neck, being careful to avoid my eye area, and rinse off with cold water. I wrote a full review of this beautiful product which can be found here.

• If I need to exfoliate, I'll reach for the Ocean Salt Facial Scrub. I tend to do this once a week/once every 10 days when I feel like my skin is looking a little dull and could do with a pick me up. The scrub is very grainy and is full of sea salt, lime and butters. It's not for the faint-hearted and certainly isn't as gentle as most exfoliators, but it works brilliantly at getting rid of any dead skin and making my skin feel so soft. I wash my face and take a pinch of this product, then work it into my skin and wash it off. You need to be really very careful that this product doesn't go anywhere near your eyes or it'll sting like crazy (unfortunately I talk from experience!) and I make sure not to get it anywhere near my under eye as the skin is so delicate there. For now, I'll stick to using this product once a week/once every 10 days so as not to over-do it and this has been my exfoliator of choice for around 3 years now.

• So many people have raved about the Tea Tree Toner Water and for good reason. It's just so lightweight and gentle with a really subtle tea tree smell that is hardly detectable. I either spray some onto a cotton pad and swipe it all over my face after I've cleansed or I spritz it directly onto my face, again after cleansing. The first way is less messy but the second way is the most refreshing, and something I tend to do a lot in the summer when I'm feeling hot and bothered. The tea tree works really well at reducing the oil in my t-zone and calming down my blemishes that always gather around my chin and I can't say enough good things about it.

• The Full of Grace Facial Serum is a real luxury item and is used in the famous LUSH spas in some of the facial treatments. It's a solid serum that's packed with softening (but non-greasy) butters, camomile and portobello mushrooms - to "retain elasticity and keep you looking radiant." This product come packaging-less so you'll have to find a tin (I have a few LUSH tins) to put the bar in to keep it fresh, so do bear that in mind. Depending on how lazy I'm feeling, I either run the bar in between my fingers to create a serum/buttery texture and then go onto massaging it into my skin, or I rub the bar directly onto my face and then massage it in. I have been told that rubbing the bar onto my skin can't be hygienic but I never do this when I have any open blemishes, so there's no need to worry there. LUSH do also state that you can rub it directly onto your skin so I'm just going by their advice. You can also use this product before applying a face mask to allow the mask to absorb deeper into your skin and I've found this also works beautifully. In general, this product is so so lovely and I always make sure I have a back-up just incase it runs out/I lose it/someone mistakes it for food and eats it (it has a very foody/herbally scent).

• I use Vanishing Cream Facial Moisturiser in both my evening and morning skincare routine as I can't decide which routine it fits best in - it's such a wonderful moisturiser and is great in either situation, so I thought I'd use it in both routines. It's really lightweight and sinks into the skin so quickly, leaving no trace of moisturiser whatsoever. I'm not sure it'd work well for people with dry skin but it works well for me as it doesn't make my t-zone greasy. I do struggle to find a moisturiser that works for me as I have such extreme combination skin so when I found this last year, it became a staple and I'm having to force myself into branching out and trying new moisturisers. The texture is really thin and kind of runny, it's not heavy at all and is definitely what I'd call a summer moisturiser. In terms of scent it's very light but like most LUSH products, it's herbally and inoffensive.

• My lips are constantly chapped and it's so ridiculously annoying, especially as I'm a matte-lip lover, so it occurred to me a few years ago that I need to start getting into lip scrubs. This Bubblegum Lip Scrub was the first lip scrub I'd tried and I haven't strayed away from it, so I'm not sure how it compares to other lip scrubs but I'm in no hurry to find out. I rub a small amount of the scrub onto my dry lips and then either lick it off (is this gross?) or massage it off with a towel and I'm left with lips that are free from dead skin - winner! Aside from exfoliating, the scrub also manages to moisturise my lips as it contains jojoba oil which just makes it the perfect product for me. I'm lazy when it comes to putting chap stick on (which is probably why I have chapped lips) so the fact that I can skip this step makes me all the more happy. The scrub also tastes and smells like bubblegum which is a bonus, and I'm looking forward to trying the Popcorn Lip Scrub when I run out of this one!

So I've reached the end of the series and if you read all 3 posts or even just this one, thank you and I hope you enjoyed them. Please let me know if you like these types of posts as I have so many products from the same brands and would love to do this type of series again. And if I haven't persuaded you to pop into your nearest LUSH store yet...then I've exhausted it and clearly haven't gotten across how utterly amazing the products and the brand in general is. :)

Daniela