Yes To Carrots: Lip Butters Review

I'm obsessed with lipbalms (and you thought it was nail polishes that I was obsessed with, eh?).

The long and the short of it is that I had been addicted to Vaseline since my teens (and let's just say that I'm not a young chick anymore). I didn't switch to natural lipbalms until just under three years ago.

The lovely Jellynat sent me these many months back when she read that I was on a quest for the perfect lipbalm. The Yes To Carrots Lip Butters are her favourite and she thought I would like it too (this was when Yes To Carrots lip products weren't easily available in stores over here). The thing is, she was supposed to send me only the Mint variant to try but bless her, she decided to send me all three that came in a promo pack. In our little swap, I sent her errr....nail polishes in return.

It has taken me a long time to write this review simply because I wanted to go through all three variants first before penning my thoughts on them. On top of that, I had also been interspersing these Lip Butters with lipbalms from other brands, some already purchased before I received these Yes To Carrots ones. Now, now, I'm a good girl and I do finish every lipbalm that I have, right to the stump (except for the one that caused an allergic reaction!), and these Yes To Carrots Lip Butters are no exceptions.

Great Stuff
I can definitely understand why Jellynat loves these Lip Butters. They are made of mostly certified organic ingredients. They go on so smooth and creamy and in my experience, they can repair troubled chapped lips. They are extremely moisturising (one wouldn't expect otherwise!) and they keep the lips soft and protected for hours and hours. I love these!

Flavours
I've tried these three variants/flavours: Berry, Melon and Mint. They all have the same basic list of ingredients with minor differences for the different flavours. The Melon one really smells like honeydew (melon), the Berry variant like strawberry and you've guessed it, the Mint one smells minty and leaves a cool, fresh, tingling sensation on the lips (which lasts no more than fifteen minutes). My favourite of the three is Melon. The scent is spot-on.

By the way, Yes To Carrots has two other Lip Butter flavours - Carrot and Citrus.

According to Yes To Carrots (excerpts)
Yes To Carrots USDA Organic Lip Butters conditions, invigorates, and revitalizes your lips, moisturizing to keep them the smoothest and softest they can be.

• All natural ingredients
• No animal testing
• Paraben, petroleum & phthalate free

Ingredients

Final Words
I can recommend you many good lipbalms but I think you should try the Yes To Carrots Lip Butter if you've been looking for a great lipbalm. In my eyes, it is the perfect lipbalm.

However, for now, I love exploring the big, wondrous world of natural lipbalms too much to stop at Yes To Carrots. I will definitely go back to Yes To Carrots every now and then though - must try out the Carrot and Citrus ones next.

On the Yes To Carrots website, the Lip Butters go for USD12.99 for a set of 5. Unlike before, the Yes To Carrots Lip Butters are now easily available here in the Netherlands in stores like De Tuinen, Sephora and Etos. They're usually priced at €3.99 each (4.25g / 0.15 oz). I've also seen them with a €4.99 pricetag (not in the abovementioned stores) and if you see that too, please be wise and walk away. If you can't find Yes To Carrots products at your local drugstores, try Amazon - I've also seen it on Amazon DE.


Further reading:
My Lip Treatment Series featuring natural lipbalms I've tried in the past
Yes To Carrots website

Yes To Carrots: Eye Contour Cream Review

I had been looking for a new eye cream to replace my Superdrug Vitamin E Moisturising Eye Cream (a predecessor of the one currently available in Superdrug) which I had been using for several years. Since I had no access to a Superdrug store in this country, I resorted to trying out several random drugstore brands available here. They failed miserably and that’s when I decided to give the Yes To Carrots Eye Contour Cream a try.

Product
Name: Yes To Carrots – Eye can C Clearly Now Eye Contour Cream
Volume and Price: 50ml / 1.7 fl oz for €12.95

According to Yes To Carrots (excerpts)
Yes To Carrots is a complete family of skin and hair care products that combine the anti-oxidant power of Beta Carotene from orange organic fruits and vegetables, with Dead Sea Minerals.

You never believed your mom when she said carrots were good for your eyes. Our Eye can C Clearly Now moisture rich Eye Contour Cream will have you believing differently. A gentle spring water based Eye Contour Cream with organic carrot juice, organic cucumber juice and 26 Dead Sea Minerals.

Paraben-free.

Green tea contains excellent anti-inflammatory properties, whilst aloe vera gently nourishes the delicate skin around the eyes.

Apply every morning and evening to your eye contour using gentle loving strokes.

Packaging
Comes in a box. The broad jar is made of frosted plastic.

Contents
Very light peach-coloured cream that is moderately thick in consistency. Here’s the list of ingredients without the Latin names:

Water, Cucumber Water, Carrot Juice, Carrot Seed Oil, Aloe Vera Leaf Juice, Dead Sea Water, Isopropyl Myristate, Propylene Glycol, Glyceryl Stearate, Beeswax, Cetyl Alcohol, Peg-40 Stearate, Chamomile Extract, Sorbitan Tristearate, Tocopheryl Acetate, Fragrance, Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Green Tea Extract, Silt, Niacinamide, Imidazolidinyl Urea, Pomegranate Peel Extract.

For the ingredients list with Latin names, please check the Yes To Carrots website.

There is an expiry date stated on the jar cover.

My thoughts
Packaging
The jar is basic but the cream being housed in a jar does mean that you would have to dip your finger in it. So, always use with a clean finger.

But the size of the jar! Oh, why is the jar so big?! 50ml is a lot of eye cream to go through. The period after opening symbol says 12M. Will I make it to the bottom before one year is up?!

Scent
I’m having difficulty describing the smell of this cream. It has a pleasant scent, but it’s not quite carrot. All I can say is that when I smell it, I’m strangely reminded of the scent of my Mum’s makeup when I was a child.

Consistency and Application
The cream is quite thick but application is smooth and easy. With a mixture of tapping and stroking motions, I apply it on the delicate skin all around the eyes, paying more attention to the outer corners of my eyes which tend to feel tight after facial cleansing.

The tightness disappears when the cream is eventually absorbed into the skin. The surface of the skin is left with a hint of stickiness which I sometimes use to my advantage – it acts as an eyeshadow base. It can certainly bring out the colour of your eyeshadows, provided that you apply the eye cream evenly on your eyelids. I can’t guarantee that there won’t be eyeshadow creasing later though. Below are swatches of the blue eyeshadow from the Etos All in One Party Colour Kit.

Swatches in three swipes each
L-R: On bare skin, with Yes To Carrots Eye Contour Cream, with an eyeshadow primer

Effectiveness
This is just a moisturising cream, so don’t expect it to be an anti-wrinkle eye cream. I don’t find the cream too rich, a common worry where eye creams are concerned. I’ve been using this cream twice a day without any problems.

During the period between the eye creams of Superdrug and Yes To Carrots, I was having problems with dry flaky skin on one of my top eyelids. I suspect it was from the drying side-effects of using eye makeup removers for waterproof makeup. The other random drugstore eye creams didn’t help one bit. It was this Yes To Carrots eye cream that finally solved the problem. My eyelid hasn’t had that dry flaky skin since.

Conclusion
Never mind the corny line about carrot being good for the eyes and the cheesy ‘Eye can C Clearly Now’ name. Fortunately, I’m only here to review the cream.

For now, this eye cream certainly works for me. It nourishes the skin around my eyes sufficiently. My one grouse is that the volume per jar is too much for an eye cream. Pictured right is the state of the contents three months on.

I’m nevertheless determined to get to the bottom of it!