Fab Find of the Week: LUSH Ultra Fresh monthly box
If you like to buy your fruit and veggies at a farmer’s market or via a box scheme – or you’re simply into natural-as-possible skincare – then you’ll be as taken with this innovation from LUSH as much as we are.
The ‘Ultra Fresh’ monthly box launched just last month, showcasing three fresh cosmetics (spanning skin, body and haircare), made with ingredients that are in season at that moment. The boxes are available for pre-order only (this month’s can be ordered up till 8 a.m. 29th May, which is Friday), and then are made on demand and sent out at the beginning of the following month. So, you’ll receive the June box in the first week or so. (Note: there’s no subscription commitment; you just buy the monthly boxes that you fancy.)
LUSH tell us: ‘The first six months of boxes will contain honey from Salisbury, Dorset seaweed, salt and sea water, Dorset blueberries, Dorset cucumbers, Spanish almonds, olives and red grapes, and Dorset shiitake mushrooms.’ The idea is that skin nutrients are served up as fresh as possible, whether that’s enzymes, vitamins or live cultures.
See that mention of seawater, above…? Well, there’s an oceanic theme to June’s box – which goes by the name of Sea Shanties – and it’s a lovely story, because contents are based around tooth wrack seaweed, harvested just a short boat trip from LUSH’s pioneer shop in Poole’s Old Town.
The products included are…
• Ahoy Me Hearties (Fresh Cleanser Roll) – a solid cleanser based around various seaweeds, along with fresh lime juice, coconut yoghurt and kaolin. To use, you break off a little piece off, adding water to create a cleansing paste. (Or soften with a little more water and use it as a deep cleansing mask.)
• Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life For Me) – a second facial cleanser, this time in gummy format (for which LUSH are well-known) – which is weird but rather wonderful: you work the gummy between your palms to create a light foaming gel, then after you’ve used it, just pat the gummy dry and stick it on your bathroom tiles for safe keeping! With natural ingredients including fresh parsley, glycerine, carrageenan and more.
• What Will We Do With a Drunken Sailor (Body Scrub) – the key exfoliator in this scrub is fine Dorset sea salt, hand-harvested from Chesil Beach, along with apricot kernel oil, to nourish, and zingily citrus-scented.
• Shiver Me Timbers Seaweed (Facial Toner) – based around rosemary, samphire, chamomile and seaweeds, this is totally D-I-Y: you steep the mineral-rich plants in water to create a toner, which keeps in the fridge for up to a week. (Decant into a spray bottle, is their suggestion.)
All very innovative, rather fun – and if you’re a bit more high-tech, you probably know a teen or a tween who’d go crazy for this.
So, get your skates on to order June’s box. (Or your turbots?)
£25 – order here
