Jessye Gets Bubbly! Blooddrop Winter 2015!

Purchased

Blooddrop Clothing & Fineries
Winter 2015 Product Review

It has been a bit of a comedy of errors in an effort to get things that I have ordered for the blog to actually get to me. Happily, my previously discussed Blooddrop Winter order made its way to me in time to be tried and reviewed for your perusal. Goodness knows where the other orders are, but I’m sure they’ll make it here soon. But on to more Blooddrop goodness!

Winter Fae
Bath Truffle

Sugared blackberries, frozen white rose, and breathy white fir.

When the Winter Collection was released, Kristin and I were chatting together and realized that we both wanted this and there was only one pack left. Happily, we agreed to share, both walking away with one to enjoy - most Bath Truffles come in packs of two but there are occasional exceptions which are made clear on the listing page. Rather silly of me, I decided to cut it in half and just use half for my bath. I should have used the whole thing. It was really lovely. The water was soft and smooth and just lightly scented. It dissolved quickly, before the bath was filled, and a respectable amount of bubbles came with it for a bit. They didn’t stick around too long, but I really enjoyed their silky feel and how comforting the water felt.

I’m a sucker for anything named after fae. I have honestly stared at a perfume before, knowing there was absolutely no way I would like it and still considered buying it, just because of its name. If this bath truffle were the fae, it smelled like she had housed herself for the winter in a frosted over blackberry bramble. It’s so softly scented, begging you to lean in and breathe deep, just like the muted smells of a forest in the middle of winter. I love this so much, and I’m really happy I have a half left, but I wish I had used the whole thing at once. Lesson learned.

Kristin adds: Currently out of stock because we bought the last one but there are other scents available.

Daft Girl
Bathy Bubble Bar

Sugared cranberries, crisp apple, and dark orange.

This was a pretty good bubble bar. I used half of it for my bath and it seemed a good amount for me. There was a righteous pile of bubbles in the beginning that I do not have a photo of because I was already in the bath when the bubbles were forming. I try to keep my posts mostly PG. I didn’t notice any kind of dry feeling to my skin, like some bubble bars to give me, especially to my face, which was nice. I should tell you though that the outside of the bar was a bit like a hard shell while the inside was soft and easily dissolved. The outside just took a little extra help. There wasn’t much debris in the bottom of the tub from the half of the bar, and it dissolved within the first few minutes of the bath anyway.

I have no idea what compelled me to buy this scent. I’m looking at the list of offerings, and I see at least two that would have been a better option for me buying by description alone. I’m betting it was the cranberries. I love the smell of cranberries in the winter. Now, before you think I’m setting up for a, “This was a lovely scent, just not a lovely scent for me,” post, I really enjoyed this. If someone came up to me, and talked to me about neroli oil and all of its benefits in helping with Seasonal Affective Disorder and telling me that it’s from orange blossom trees, I would have imagined something that smelled remarkably like this. This is not a bitter citrus; it’s a deep citrus that’s been sweetened with something that has more depth than sugar. I really loved this scent in the bath- it seemed a little lacking while dry.

Purchase Link

Sugar Plum & Jasmine
Flutter, Whipped Body Cream

No scent notes.

This is lotion’s answer to whipped soap. It is whipped lotion. It’s actually a pretty cool concept. Much like whipped soap, you will occasionally find little still-solid bits, but they turn into oil almost as quickly as the rest of the lotion does. And that was a bit of a problem for me. It turned into oil. Almost immediately. You can see from the photos that body heat quickly melts the lotion into an oil to be rubbed around. It’s pretty awesome, but my body is a bit of a bitch about absorbing straight oil. I haven’t touched lotion in a week due to catching a nasty cold and not wanting to get germs into lotion to percolate and reinfect me later. (I used a butter knife to get that lotion out for the photos. ^.^) It’s been about 5 or 10 minutes now, and I’m still waiting for it to finish absorbing. I’ll probably have to clean my keyboard to make sure the oils get off it.

Kristin adds: I picked up a Flutter in An Orange in Your Slipper and it takes forever to absorb for me. I've been using on my legs for this drier season and I've noticed residual oil up to an hour after applying - though with a heavy application. Something about this shea butter + coconut oil mix just doesn't want to sink into my skin.

This is such a gorgeous scent. The plum and jasmine married into this gorgeous fruity floral or floral-y fruit. It’s a perfect balance of one against the other. I would love to give more description but I don’t have other words for it. They blended beautiful into a single unique note, instead of attempting to outdo each other or stay unique to themselves. I really love the scent of this.

Purchase Link

Apple Cider Doughnut
Bar Soap

Apple cider and spice doughnuts dusted with cinnamon sugar.

This is a pretty awesome soap. I’ve only been able to use it once so far, but it’s already lost most of its ridges and is quickly becoming a normal rectangular bar of soap. This is not my fault. When I confronted Mr. J about it, he said, “I definitely have not been washing myself 2 or 3 times a shower.” Apparently, it’s a hit. This lathers beautifully and is great to use. It won’t last long, but I will love every moment that it does.

I have a sample vial of Apple Cider Doughnut from 2014. (Thanks, AG!) This smells EXACTLY like it. It even has that funny plastic smell at the beginning when dry that the perfume has for me in the bottle. But it opens up into that hint of apple being hit over the head with cinnamon and spices. I LOVE it. It is fantastic and probably second only to FP’s Pumpkin ‘Ead soap. They will both last about the same amount of time, which is way less than any other bar of soap has lasted.

Purchase Link

Final Thoughts

I loved everything in this collection I tried. There was nothing about this I didn’t enjoy. If you haven’t tried Blooddrop, I strongly suggest you do. I have very much enjoyed my experience with them and hope that I will continue to do so.

Jessye Gets Bubbly! A few product reviews for Blooddrop Clothing and Fineries!

Purchased

Blooddrop Clothing & Fineries

Product Review

Back over Black Friday weekend, Blooddrop had a nice sale, so I grabbed a couple of mystery items. And then the Christmas hubbub died down finally, and we found muchos mold in our apartment and have spent the past week with contractors coming in and out to replace the bottom half of a lot of our walls. So our bedroom is in our living room and our closets are on another floor in another apartment entirely. But never fear, it did not stop me from taking baths and trying new products! So let’s see what came in my Mystery Package.

Cashmere Bath Oil

Wood notes, baby powder, dark patchouli, clove, ylang ylang and fig.

I’m not generally one for bath oil. It does not absorbs into my skin, and I always have to shower afterwards. I also have rarely found bath oil that felt luxurious and not “a bit slimy and disgusting.” This is a very silky smooth oil. I still had to wash it off after, but it was soft and lovely to be in. I think Solstice Scent’s Glacé is slightly silkier, but we’d be comparing tangerines to tangelos. They are both lovely; they both are wonderful to bathe in. The difference is minute.

The scent is very feminine, heavy on the baby powder with touches of fig. It has fantastic throw and a little bit goes a long way on scent. I don’t see this option on her website, but I do see some others that look quite tempting.

Milk & Honey Pumpkin Mocha Latte Soak

Espresso with chocolate syrup and pumpkin pie spices accented with nourishing pumpkin seed oil.

This one is a little hard for me to review. I know, in theory, what milk bath soaks do. They soften the water and your skin, so you feel relaxed and refreshed. I’ve always had to oversaturate the water to get that feeling, and this was not something I wanted to do with this one. It seemed like a pleasant bath; I wouldn’t say I noticed an amazing moisturizer to it, though I’m sure it’s quite lovely. Having naturally oily skin- I tend to only realize how moisturizing things are when I’m left scrubbing them off afterwards. It did seem to soften the water nicely. That being said, I would happily use the whole thing if the scent were more along my lines. As it is, I’ll see if Kristin likes it. It dissolved well without the complication of finding too many little stubborn bits.

Before getting wet, this smells very heavy on the chocolate notes with bits of gourd and espresso and perhaps a touch of cream. When dissolved it has that steamed mocha smell and the pumpkin really ran into the background. I could barely smell it at all, which was nice since I discovered this past Autumn that I really like the idea of pumpkin, but actually kind of hate the smell of it in perfumes.

Acai & Tucuma Blend Solid Moisturizer for the Body (and hair)

This blend is scented with a leafy green and light, but tart berry scent.

How to Use: Use on all your dry and itchy parts (externally, of course) or a as preventative for dry skin. Great after shaving or getting ink. This works best in the bath tub or shower as it will gently melt with the warmth of your skin when it’s soft and moist, but feel free to use it as a solid lotion, too. 

This particular blend can also be used on dry hair and split ends! You can use as a treatment on your ends before your shampoo by massaging into your damp ends and leaving to sit for 10-30 minutes and then shampoo off or use as a sealant after your shampoo and apply a very small amount to your ends, using downwards sealing motion.

When I used this as a solid lotion, it worked great. It absorbed into my hands surprisingly quickly, giving my issues with lotions. I also tried it in the shower after shaving. I decided I would just rub it all over the freshly shaved skin and see what happened. It didn’t absorb. Okay, let’s rub it in and see what happens. Okay, well now it’s all over my legs and not absorbing and all over my hands and not absorbing. Awesome. Okay, we’ll just wrap up in a towel and see what happens. It’s still not absorbing. Okay, scrub the excess off with a towel and just go get dressed. I think I should have put the lotion on my hands, and then rubbed it into my legs, as opposed to rubbing it straight onto my skin from the stick.

The smell is soft and a little fruity. I had to look up what Tucuma is. Apparently it’s a Brazillian palm that produces an edible orange fruit. There’s a hint of something perhaps creamy to the lotion’s scent, but it is light and fairly nice. It gives me a nostalgic sense that I can’t place, but I would swear I had smelled it elsewhere.

Final Thoughts

I need to preface this by saying that I like Blooddrop enough that I have already made a Winter Bath and Body purchase. And it was more than one item. I have several perfumes from them, and one of my absolute favorite perfumes is from Blooddrop. That being said, while researching these, I discovered that at least 2/3 were from Winter 2014, which is at least a year old. I couldn’t find any information on the Solid Body Lotion or from what collection it was. I feel a little weird about this. I understand that by buying Mystery Items, I probably wouldn’t get anything from this season, or even perhaps last season. I feel like a year, though, seems a little old. They are severely discounted- a $22 bottle of bath oil was sent to me for $8.50.  But I feel like this raises questions and worries about longevity of the product. I didn’t notice anything that seemed like mold, but the solid lotion does have a couple of weird little specks that I have photographed for your perusal.

Otherwise, I’m looking forward to my next Blooddrop purchase and reviewing it for you all!

Company Overview! Ginger and Waldo!

Nothing to Disclose

It stayed warm for a long time this year, but now it finally feels like winter, with its complement of dry skin from the alternating freezing air outdoors and harsh heaters indoors. I picked up a couple of new lotions recently from a small bath and body company from Green Bay, Wisconsin, Ginger and Waldo. I purchased my products in person, but they have an Etsy store where you can order online.

Packaging: 

The packaging is clean, no-nonsense, and professional-looking--brown kraft paper labels with the name of the company, product type and scent, and information about the size and ingredients. The small lotion bar I purchased is molded in the shape of a simple starburst, while the large lotion bars have an intricate bee design molded into them. The hand and body lotion I purchased is in an amber glass bottle with a pump top that all works as expected. This was the deciding factor for my purchasing this lotion, in fact--most of my hand creams at home are in jars or squeeze tubes, and I wanted a lotion I could dispense more easily. The lotion bar was sealed and the lotion pump was the type you have to twist to unlock--it was nice knowing nobody had used the products in-store.

Selection: 

Ginger and Waldo sell hand and body lotions, lip balms, natural cream deodorants, scrubs and bath salts, and solid lotion bars. I was most intrigued by their unusual savory lip balm flavors, such as dill pickle, pizza, bacon, and, appropriately for Wisconsin, grilled cheese. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling very adventurous at the time and, while I smelled the lip balms, didn't end up springing for any of them. The pizza balm smelled very true-to-life, while the others didn't come across as very accurate out of the tube when I sniffed them--which is not to say they wouldn't taste more realistic after warming up on the skin.

Samples: 

I don't think samples are available, but the solid lotion bars are available in a smaller 0.6 oz size, while the regular-sized lotion bars are 1.2 oz.

Quality: 

I haven't tried all of their products, but of the two I purchased, I like the hand and body lotion a lot so far--it smells strong but not overwhelming, and is scented with a pleasant, fruity cherry almond scent that might be a bit on the Robotussin side for some, but it was just what I was looking for. The sweet orange scent of the solid lotion bar is fantastic, but I find the bar a bit harder and stickier than I prefer. It does linger on my hands longer than the hand and body lotion, so people who prefer heavier moisturization might prefer the lotion bar to the hand and body lotion. It might make a nice cuticle cream, as well.

Cost:

The prices are very reasonable, in line with what I was expecting:

• Hand and body lotion is $8.99 for 8 oz
• Lip balms are $3.25 apiece
• Deodorants are $5.99 for 4.25 oz
• Scrubs are $12.99 for 8 oz
• Solid lotion bars are $6.29 for 1.2 oz or $3.75 for 0.6 oz
• You can also purchase gift sets for a slight discount. 

Customer Service: 

I haven't had to deal with Ginger and Waldo's customer service, but they have a good rating on Etsy.

TAT: 

Again, since I purchased these products in person, I haven't had experience with their TAT, but they list 3-5 days handling time in their store policies (it's not mentioned whether this is business days or calendar days). 

Shipping: 

Shipping policies are listed here. Ginger and Waldo do ship internationally and both first class and priority mail within the US. When I created a test cart on Etsy, it cost $2.63 to ship a single lip balm within the US first class. 

Personal Thoughts:

While they don't have showy branding or marketing, from the lotions I've tried, I think Ginger and Waldo make nice, high-quality products that are nice as gifts or for personal use alike. If I get up my courage, maybe I'll try one of the savory lip balms one of these days. I had a nasty experience with some savory teas I bought on a whim a couple of years ago that are still sitting in my cabinet, so I'm a little wary of the unexpectedly savory these days, but one of these days I'm sure curiosity will win out!

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