- Joined
- Tuesday June 7, 2016
- Location
- Monterey Bay, California
I just stumbled across Van Yulay recently, and I've been running through a lot of samples because Van Yulay offers many options: Page 1 and Page 2.
The samples are well done: the thin plastic container is wide and deep enough so that you can load the brush easily, there's a snap-on top that makes them stackable (but they are light, so a tall tower tends to topple), and they use the actual product label rather than a handwritten label.
It's worth trying samples because the fragrances, naturally enough, have quite a range of appeal, fragrances being notoriously YMMV. I've not encountered a fragrance I dislike, but some (Club Humidor, for example, which I used this morning) have so faint a fragrance that I can barely smell it; others are evident but uninteresting to me personally.
The ingredients vary from soap to soap. For example, some use a vegan formula, others use tallow and/or lanolin. Some soaps have ingredients not common in soaps: honey, coffee, half and half, bourbon, cocoa powder, and so on.
Most of the soaps seem to contain clay: bentonite, kaolin, or the like. I had difficulty with soaps containing clay until I learned how best to load the brush. What works well for me is to start with a brush that is just damp—giving a dripping wet brush two good shakes should do it—and then adding a small amount of water (1/2-3/4 teaspoon) during the loading and working that into the brush, and repeating that as needed. Generally two additions are enough, but for a large brush I might do it three or four times.
Once the brush is fully loaded, I bring it to my face and work up the lather. This might or might not call for another addition of water.
Although the ingredients vary, the lather has always been good, and trying a sample can lead to the purchase of a tub. For example, I got a tub of Achilles, which has these ingredients:
The samples are well done: the thin plastic container is wide and deep enough so that you can load the brush easily, there's a snap-on top that makes them stackable (but they are light, so a tall tower tends to topple), and they use the actual product label rather than a handwritten label.
It's worth trying samples because the fragrances, naturally enough, have quite a range of appeal, fragrances being notoriously YMMV. I've not encountered a fragrance I dislike, but some (Club Humidor, for example, which I used this morning) have so faint a fragrance that I can barely smell it; others are evident but uninteresting to me personally.
The ingredients vary from soap to soap. For example, some use a vegan formula, others use tallow and/or lanolin. Some soaps have ingredients not common in soaps: honey, coffee, half and half, bourbon, cocoa powder, and so on.
Most of the soaps seem to contain clay: bentonite, kaolin, or the like. I had difficulty with soaps containing clay until I learned how best to load the brush. What works well for me is to start with a brush that is just damp—giving a dripping wet brush two good shakes should do it—and then adding a small amount of water (1/2-3/4 teaspoon) during the loading and working that into the brush, and repeating that as needed. Generally two additions are enough, but for a large brush I might do it three or four times.
Once the brush is fully loaded, I bring it to my face and work up the lather. This might or might not call for another addition of water.
Although the ingredients vary, the lather has always been good, and trying a sample can lead to the purchase of a tub. For example, I got a tub of Achilles, which has these ingredients:
Stearic Acid, Coconut Fatty Acid, Palm Stearic, Castor, Potassium Hydroxide, Glycerin, Tobacco Tea, Aloe Vera, Coconut-Emu-Tallow-Meadow Foam-Borage-Argan- Oils, Kentucky Bourbon, Sodium Lactate, Herbal Ground Tea, Calendula, Extracts, Poly Quats, Allantoin, Silica, Bentonite Clay, Glycerin Soap, Tobacco Absolute, Mica and Fragrance.
"Kentucky" bourbon is redundant: in the US at least, whiskey can be called "bourbon" only if it is made in Kentucky.
