The Body Shop Tea Tree Haul

So, as you can tell by the title, I went to The Body Shop, armed with a coupon and a pretty good idea of what I wanted to purchase. After reading a few other reviews of the Tea Tree line, I figured it might be a good option for me. Now, for those of you who don't know, I have very oily skin with the odd breakout, with large pores on my nose and t-zone, and I feel like I've tried every product under the sun to help with this. The Body Shop also has another product line - their Seaweed line, which is mainly used for clarifying and mattifying. This line worked pretty well for me, but I don't feel like it made enough of a difference to my skin to warrant me purchasing it again. On the plus side, it did smell amazing. 

This brings me to the smell. I'm sure it would be obvious, but if you don't like the smell of Tea Tree oil or anything like this, YOU WILL PROBABLY NOT LIKE THIS PRODUCT. All of the items contain organic tea tree oil, and the scent is not subtle. For me, that is a great thing, I love tea tree oil, and I was raised on that stuff to get rid of blemishes back in the day. But... yeah, I digress - if you don't like tea tree oil, or consider the smell to be too strong, you might need to look into another product line. 

Here is what I purchased! Click READ MORE for my reviews of the products.

If it looks like a lot, that's because it is. I guess I should mention again that my mom gave me a coupon that states if you spend $40 or more, you get $15 off your purchase. The best part about this was that they had a promotion running in store (it seems to be a pretty normal promo, since it's been there most times I've gone to the store) where if you buy 3 products, you get 3 free. Of course, this means that you pay for the 3 most expensive products, and you get the other 3 free. As you might be able to tell, there are actually only 4 full sized products in the image above, and the other two items were a large Satsuma Body Wash (because my boyfriend is obsessed), and a White Musk body butter for his mom, who we went to visit yesterday. In total, for all 6 products, I paid $48.16, which is pretty damn amazing considering that the body wash and body butter not shown above were $20 a piece. 

I only bought these products yesterday, but I've already had a chance to use the full sized items. The woman who helped me in the store (I believe her name was Megan, go name twins!) was so helpful, and she explained the products to me in great detail and helped me make an informed decision when choosing which items to purchase. She also provided me with a few samples of the products I did not purchase, as you can see above. Hurrah for customer service! But back to my original point, I have had the chance to use these products, so I can quite happily give a first impression. Of course, the only way I'll know if they're truly working is to try them for a few weeks, but I can always update as I go. Let's begin, shall we! 

The first item in my skin care lineup is the Tea Tree Skin Clearing Foaming Cleanser. In the store, they had a few different cleansers to choose from in the line, including a creamy cleanser, and a regular facial wash. Out of the three, I was told that this one was one of the more popular items, since it wasn't as harsh as the regular face wash, but a little bit more intense than the creamy wash. This item I got for free, but the price I would have paid was $13.00CAD. Right off the bat, I have to admit that I'm really not used to a foaming cleanser, and I used waaaay too much. That foam was everywhere, and I did my best to not get it in my eyes and nose. Because of the tea tree oil, I definitely noticed that it stung my eyes a bit, but not in a bad way... does that make sense? It's tea tree, that stuff is potent. After using this, I splashed my face with lukewarm water, and pat it dry with a towel. This DEFINITELY dries out the skin a little bit, so for anyone with really dry skin, please beware. 

Instead of using my Clarisonic, I instead moved on to the Tea Tree Squeaky-Clean Scrub. 

This stuff is wicked. I think out of all of my purchases, this might be my favourite. I'm a sucker for scrubs, but this one was so nice. The exfoliating agent in the scrub did not feel harsh, or like it was really tearing at my skin. With a light hand, I massaged it around my face for about a minute before rinsing off. I'm not sure if it was just me, or if I still had any foaming cleanser on my hands, but when I rinsed it off, the scrub felt like it was foaming up. Of course, because it would have gotten into my eyes, I didn't have time to check in the mirror to see if it was truly foaming. But it FELT like it was. One thing I have to say about the product though, is that it felt like it took forever to get all of the grit off my face. Even after using the other products, I could still feel the odd little grain stuck to my skin. Maybe it's my failure as a face washer. This product was free for me as well, but the price in store was $15.00CAD. 

This is the Tea Tree Skin Clearing Toner. You might notice that this product has a bit of foam at the top of the bottle. That's because you have to shake to activate it. I don't know why this is such a big deal, but somehow it makes the product even fancier. On the bottle, it says it contains "Community Trade organic tea tree oil, tamanu oil and white willow bark extracts ensure skin looks matte, without drying." So yeah, it starts off with a bit of silt at the bottom of the bottle, and you shake it up for a few moments to mix the products all together. It's pretty cool to me, but I can definitely see how this might annoy other people. Who wants to wait to tone! This toner did leave my skin feeling really refreshed, but even though it says it's not drying... this stuff is drying. It's not a BAD feeling, necessarily, but I felt like I needed to lotion up almost immediately. This was my last free product in the Buy 3 Get 3 deal, and it is regularly $12.00CAD. 

This was my last product purchased, the Tea Tree Blemish Fade Night Lotion. I love night lotions. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I just love them. It's a tiny bottle, and it says that it helps improve the appearance of blemish-damaged skin. That doesn't really include me, but I do have a bit of hyper pigmentation and redness from previous blemishes, so I guess I hoped it might help that. Honestly? I'm a little disappointed in this product right off the bat, if only because I did not find it to be moisturizing at all. I ended up having to put another night cream over it, in order to try to make my skin feel less tight and dry. Even though it is not a serum, I'm going to use it like more of a night treatment, underneath my regular moisturizer, and I'll see if it helps. The cost of this is $18.00CAD and maybe that's why it sucks to have it be my least favourite product. 

The sample packs that I was given included two packets of the Tea Tree Pore Minimiser (which I am super excited to try), the Tea Tree Facial Wash, and two small vials of the Tea Tree Oil. On the packet for the tea tree oil, it does say it's been diluted to 15%, which will be nice for targeted any wayward pimples. 

There you have it! There are a LOT of other products in this line, and depending on how these items do, I may find myself returning to pick up the others... especially since they gave me another coupon, those rascals. 

Hope this helped anyone who is curious about these products, and please let me know if you have any questions or comments. 

xoxo

Meghan