Botanicals Face Care 'Try Me' Set in Chamomile & Mandarin

Reasonably enthused by my purchase of the Botanicals Mineral Foot Soak, I set out to try some more products by them. I made a trip to the website and bought one of their “Try Me” Organic Skin Care sets. I bought the Chamomile and Mandarin set as it was quipped as being for normal/sensitive skin - no oily skin option, however there is Rose and Camellia for dry skin.

Here is the set and a coin for scale:

Yep it’s tiny... My first impressions were the “Cleansing Melt” which is the dedicated cleanser part of this range is a pot so small I think I’m going to get one use out of it once i’ve scooped it out with my little finger. Two if I’m lucky. The skin polish (exfoliator) is likewise tiny. There’s then a little bottle of skin tonic (toner) and serum which will proabably be good for 5 or so applications – more what I would expect from a try me kit as I tend to think you can’t tell much from a single application of skin care... it takes a while for your skin to react (negative or postively!) to new products. So...for the price... mega disappoint!

On the brightside, these are certified organic products, made in England from sustainably sourced, 100% natural ingredients. There’s no petro-chemicals or synthetic stuff, so if you like all that kind of thing, you’ll be impressed by the ‘purity’ of the Botanicals range.

I was disappointed with the scent of my set... As someone who tends to like fruity over floral scents, I thought this would be awesome, but actually, they sent me a tester pot of the Rose and Calendula cleansing melt too as a free gift and this smells far more beautiful. The Camomile and Mandarin is more subtle, but hey, some people don’t like a lot of scent in their products so maybe you’re one of them.

On to the testing...

Okay so the face melt did actually last about five applications, you don't need too much of it. The product has a greasy consistency suggesting it's pretty enriched with oils and after rubbing it into my face, I used a muslin cloth to remove it. Except you can't remove all of it. True to oils, a residue remains on your skin which I'm sure is very moisturising but personally I just can't stand it. It's like I've exchanged natural face grease after a day at work for just another type of grease so my face just doesn't feel clean to me. The skin polish seemed to be exactly the same formula as the skin melt with the addition of some fine exfoliating grains. This was actually quite a nice product as it was very gentle on the skin but you feel that it's still doing something about removing those dead skin cells. However still there was the greasy feeling once you'd removed the product.

On to the skin tonic and this was by far my favourite of the selection. Mild, cooling and refreshing applied with a cotton pad, this took me by surprise after the other two. It also seemed to go some way to removing the greasy feeling of the cleanser. The scent is also strongest in this product so all in all it's really quite a beautiful product.

My understanding of the term 'serum' when applied to skincare is a product which goes into the deeper layers of skin leaving moisturiser to take care of the surface layers. The facial serum in this set seems to be nothing more than a facial oil to me. Far too thick to have a hope of getting to those deeper layers - to be honest it didn't even sink into the upper layers. Once again I was left with that grease-sitting-on-skin feeling which with this product just didn't go away. I could use this overnight perhaps but never prior to going out as I had that shiny face thing going on that looks like I haven't washed for about 5 days. You'd never be able to use make-up on top of this either for at least a few hours.

It's worth pointing out that I do have oily skin, so perhaps on the average person, this set will work wonders - this set is meant to be for normal skin. Botanicals do not currently offer an oily skin option and maybe this is why.

So, if you're oily skinned like me - the tonic is beautiful but everything else you'll likely want to give a miss. I'm also disappointed with the sizes in the "Try Me" set. Even if the products had fantastic potential results for you, you'd likely never know it from the 5 days or so you could scrape out of this set.

Rating out of 10: 5

The Good:
Pleasant scent
Nice refreshing toner
UK products with all natural organic ingredients

The Bad
Poor performance on oily skin
Expensive

The Ugly £7.95 for "try me" set containing 5g pots of cleansing melt and skin polish and 5ml bottles each of skin tonic and facial serum. Expect to pay around £15 each for the full size versions. If you want to give Botanicals a try, they offer a sample of the Rose and Camellia Cleansing Melt and Mint and Tea Tree Foot Balm for free... but you need to pay £1.95 postage.