Elbow Grease Moisturising Bar

When I started getting tattoos over twelve years ago (has it really been that long?), I remember having to search for hours and hours to find anything suitable for healing and enhancing my ink. Even then, the products I settled for were never particularly impressive and I'd never really notice a difference after using them, despite the extortionate price tags. 

So I was really excited and rather intrigued when I noticed the little tubes of Elbow Grease sitting on the shelf inside the entrance to the new Oxford Street store. These little beauties are not specifically designed to brighten and improve the appearance of tattoos, but this is just one of amazing feats that it can boast. 

Made from an impressive combination of butters and oils, this 60g tube is a little smaller than the miniature bars of FUN that you find in some of Lush's gift sets. Yet while £5.95 seems rather expensive for such a small product, I can guarantee that you'll get far more usage out of this than you would initially expect. 

Coconut oil, cupuacu, murumuru and illipe butters and candelilla wax make up the base of this bar, and it is the latter ingredient that gives this product its consistency. While my pictures may suggest that it is quite a fragile moisturising bar, it is far more resistant than you would imagine. It feels a lot like a tealight candle that has been burning for many hours - it's sticky and slightly messy but strong enough that it won't just leak all over your shelf. 

Containing orange flower absolute alongside both neroli and ylang ylang oils, Elbow Grease has a sweet flora aroma - one that sides more with the former ingredient. It's not an aroma that you'd want to wear as a perfume or use as a lotion - it's far too simplistic for this, but it's definitely not a bad-smelling product by any stretch. 

To use, I found it easier to massage my fingers across the top of the bar - where  it immediately softened from the heat of my skin and coated my fingertips with a light oil that I was then able to apply to my body. The consistency of this product means that application is really straight forward and I found that none of the product went to waste because of this. 

What is great about Elbow Grease is that it is a very versatile product - one that can be used for many different purposes, and one that works well for all of them. Firstly, I used this bar to moisturise my older ink, which brought out the colour a lot more and helped to make them more vibrant when I was out and about. It would also be great for newer tattoos - to help keep the colour strong and stop the heat of the sun drying out the skin and causing the ink to crack. I found it particularly helpful to apply this to my elbow tattoo as it has faded very slightly over time due to me resting on that part of my body quite a lot.

Aside from tattoos, this bar is also great if you have really dry skin between your fingers or toes. A small smidgen of this helped to revitalise these parts of my body and diminish the scaly skin that had began to form there. Furthermore, I also found Elbow Grease useful to apply around my fingernails where it made my cuticles and extended area look much healthier and less 'bitten'.

In all fairness, this product is perfect for applying to most areas of your body - especially those that may be suffering a little dryness. While it's not suitable in place of a lip balm, it can be used on the face or indeed along the hairline if you're suffering from dry patches due to the warmer weather. This is also a great product to use on healed cuts as the moisture will speed up the healing process without irritating it or making it sore.

Elbow Grease is one of those products that I tend to overlook for the more interesting and better-smelling ones. However, this is a fantastic multi-purpose bar that is so handy to have around the house. While I wouldn't recommend that you carry it around everywhere with you as it will make a mess of your bag, a small amount in a sealed container is now a staple part of my handbag and one that will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. 

Quantitative Ingredients: Extra Virgin Coconut Oil (Cocos nucifera), Cupuacu Butter (Theobroma grandiflorum), Murumuru Butter (Astrocaryum Murumuru), Illipe Butter (Shorea stenoptera), Candelilla Wax (Euphorbia cerifera), Soya Oil (Glcerine soja), Neroli Oil (Citrus Aurantium amara), Orange Flower Absolute (Citrus Aurantium amara), Rosewood Oil (Aniba rosaeodora), Sandalwood Oil (Fusanus spicatus), Ylang Ylang Oil (Cananga odorata), Benzyl Benzoate, Citral, Farnesol, Geraniol, Hydroxycitronellal, Limonene, Linalool, Perfume. 

Vegan?: Yes.

2015 Price: £5.95 for 60g.

Year Of Original Release: 2015.  

Scent Family: 
Elbow Grease Moisturising Bar
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