Cup O' Coffee Exfoliating Mask

Sometimes the role of a teacher can be very overwhelming and usually warrants far more of your time than your average nine to five job. Weekends and evenings are never 'marking or planning free', and your sleep can also be interrupted with either ideas for lessons or strategies on how to cope with the impossible-to-complete admin tasks that have been thrown at you.

When the stress of the job becomes too much, I will often revert to drinking bucketloads of coffee to counteract the tiredness and lack of enthusiasm I feel towards the profession. While it's not the greatest remedy I could opt for, it's the simplest and quickest one available.

When Lush first announced that Cup O' Coffee Exfoliating Mask was coming out, I was immediately intrigued by the concept of using coffee in other ways to stimulate and alert me in the mornings. While it was initially targeted towards a male market, Lush's products are always universal, so I wasn't put off from purchasing a large 250g tub during the opening day of the Oxford Street store. 

This exfoliating mask is designed to be used on both the body and the face - stimulating and hydrating the skin and leaving you feeling ready to face the day ahead. Featuring a blend of coffee infusion and roasted cocoa extract, this product presents a very strong, rich and heavily smoky aroma in the tub. 

While the ground coffee is the dominant fragrance, you can detect a subtle chocolately layer underneath, which just softens the bitter coffee aroma and gives it a pleasant, rounded smell overall. The Fair Trade vanilla absolute and organic agave nectar induces a little sweetness into the mix as well, so while you'll need to like coffee to appreciate the smell, it's not as dry or as potent as Percup Massage Bar. 

A point that I feel I should make in regards to the smell of this product, is that while I drink coffee regularly, I would not consider myself to be a big fan of the smell. Most coffee-scented products wouldn't get a second look-in for me and it would be one of the last scents that I turn to for product fragrances. However, whether it's because of how it benefits my skin, or whether it's because of how it makes me feel after I have used it, but I really don't mind the aroma of this product at all. If you are someone who dislikes coffee, I would still recommend that you try this out - you may end up loving it as much as I do. 

Aside from its aroma, Cup 'O Coffee features an array of ingredients to help moisturise, hydrate and exfoliate tired and weathered skin. Kaolin helps to cleanse and exfoliate dead skin cells and debris from the surface; coriander seed oil stimulates both your skin and mind with it's spicy, slightly aromatic fragrance; and vetivert oil restores the moisture that you may have lost over time and gives your body a smooth, healthy finish. 

In the pot, this exfoliating mask doesn't look particularly appealing - a thick, murky brown paste with specks of black laced throughout the entire tub. However, it is these tiny pieces of ground coffee and caffeine powder that give this mask it's grainy consistency and help to make it a really effective skincare product. 

As you apply liberally to the areas of the body that you feel needs it, massaging it all over in circular motions, the grains of coffee will not only remove any dry skin or debris that may have been present on the skin, but give you a gentle scrub to leave you feeling clean and refreshed afterwards. While it does offer a slightly rougher consistency than most of Lush's regular face masks, it is not as gritty as the likes of Don't Look At Me Face Mask, so you won't have to worry about it being too harsh on your skin. 

After leaving it on for a good 10-15 minutes, you'll need to rinse it off in the shower and apply a body lotion or massage bar to inject and maintain that hydrated feeling for the rest of day. I found that my skin felt instantly rejuvenated after using this in the mornings, and whether or not it was psychological or physical, but I also felt far more alert and awake after using this mask.

Although I wouldn't use Cup 'O Coffee every day, this is a great product for those who need an emergency blanket to turn to when they're having 'one of those morning'. This not only left my skin feeling clean and clear and looking radiant, but helped to improve my mood to boot so I wasn't such a grumpy person at work that day. 

While it's not going to solve my overabundance of marking, this mask is definitely something that I know I can rely upon to give me an instant boost. For this reason, I will definitely be buying this on a regular basis and recommending it to all of my colleagues who are in the same boat as me. 

Quantitative Ingredients: Coffee Infusion (Coffea Arabica), Water (Aqua), Tacl, Kaolin, Organic Agave Syrup (Agave Tequilana Leaf Extract), Glycerine, Perfume, Vetivert oil (Vitiveria zizanoides), Fair Trade Vanilla Absolute (Vanilla planifolia), Roasted Cocoa Extract (Theobroma cacao), Coriander Seed oil (Coriandrum sativum), Ventone (Hectorite), Caffeine Powder (Caffeine), Coumarin, Limonene, Linalool.

Vegan?: Yes.

2015 Price: £6.50 for 100g, £12 for 250g.

Year Of Original Release: 2015.