Thanks for all the great feedback regarding last week's newsletter. I'm glad our diverse Panel of "experts" is so useful. I've been filling the Panel with plenty of new faces, so look for more Panel feature reports in the near future. This week I'm back with a look at Bella bath products, and the new Nutrifusion haircare from Reflect.com. Enjoy!

Bella
Jennifer Maloy from Bella was nice enough to send me a few goodies from her bath line, and I have to say it has been a treat to try them. While these are not completely "natural", all the products are aloe vera based (except the body oil spray) and have some plant extracts and oils.

Bath and Shower Gel ($18 for 12oz)
This meets all the requirements I have for a shower gel: it lathers well, rinses easily, softens my skin without drying it out, and smells nice. The scents are lily tangerine or honeysuckle grapefruit, as you'll find with almost all the Bella products, and both are soft and feminine with a definite floral emphasis.

Walnut Sugar Scrub ($20 for 12oz)
It seems no bath line is without a sugar scrub. I like this one because it has a fine texture in a gel base that lathers, so you can scrub and wash at the same time. If you have trouble getting up in the morning, try the tingly, wake-you-up peppermint; the orangey citrus scent is better suited to a relaxing at-home spa treatment.

Body Oil Spritz ($16 for 4oz)
I tend to shy away from spray oils because they can feel so, well, oily. Not this one. The mist is very fine and requires very little massaging to absorb into the skin, so you can spray it on after a bath or shower, comb your hair, brush your teeth, and you're ready to get dressed. Since the spray is fine, it covers a good amount of skin at once, so you don't need very much. The scents are lily tangerine or honeysuckle grapefruit (my personal favorite), just like the shower gel.

Whipped Body Cream ($22 for 8oz)
If you have dry skin or just like to layer your scents, this body cream is a nice alternative and/or complement to the body oil spritz. It is emollient but not greasy, and it absorbs quickly. It also comes in lily tangerine or honeysuckle grapefruit.

Peppermint Foot Scrub ($14 for 4oz)
I got the ingenious idea the other night to use this scrub while sitting on the edge of the tub while my daughter took her nightly bath. I could watch her and do a little spa treatment at the same time! When my feet were nicely exfoliated and she was ready to get out, I just rinsed my feet in the tub and let the water out. I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner, or I could be saving a ton of money on pedicures! This scrub feels fantastic, thanks to walnut and pecan shell powder and jojoba beads, and it has a great minty tingle. After, I followed up with Bella's Foot Cream ($15 for 4oz) in honeysuckle grapefruit (also available in peppermint lavender, which I would choose next time to go with the peppermint in the scrub). This rich cream softens dryness and hydrates with aloe, glycerin, safflower oil, coconut oil, jojoba oil, and vitamin E. These two products are my favorite of the line.

Honeysuckle Grapefruit Hand Cream ($16 for 4oz) I've been on a definite hand cream kick lately, so compared to the others I've been testing (Ahava, One Minute Manicure, June Jacobs), this one is pretty average. It made my hands feel soft right after applying it, but after half and hour or so, the dry spots felt dry again. My hands are especially dry, so if you need just a basic lotion, this may work for you.

For more information on Bella bath products, visit Bella Beauty. Want an easy way to try the products for free? Be one of the first five (5) people to enter here and I'll send you the Bella Beauty Box, a great little sampler of small sizes of walnut sugar scrub, shower gel, whipped body cream and body gloss, packaged with a pink net sponge. These sell for $22 but you'll get one for free if you are one of the first five people to enter our little giveaway. Good luck and be fast!

Reflect Nutrifusion Custom Haircare
The claims are eye-catching: "Everything you need for perfect hair" - wouldn't that be nice? While I've loved many of the things I've tried from Reflect, this new system for haircare just doesn't impress me. Instead of creating products from scratch, the new approach offers prepackaged "solutions" for the look you are going for (straight, curly, volumized, etc.) that are then customized depending on your answers to questions about your hair's texture, fullness, length, condition, etc., as well as questions about if you color, perm or swim frequently, use heated styling tools, and so on. Answer these and you move right to picking out the product scent and package style and accent. I selected Smooth and Straight, and here's what was recommended to me:

Daily Essential Shampoo ($17 for 8.4oz)
As shampoos go, this one does the job but that's about it. Sure, my hair is clean, but it was still very tangled on the ends and was definitely not smooth or frizz-free without using copious amounts of conditioner (review to follow). I don't need to spend $17 on a basic shampoo and neither do you.

Nourishing Conditioner ($19 for 8.4oz)
I am so spoiled by the amazing results I get from Vidal Sassoon Moisturizing Daily Therapy (for about $5 a bottle), nothing else seems to compare. Even after answering the questionnaire with details about my fine, dry, slightly damaged, frizzy hair, I still need 12 (!) pumps of this conditioner to completely coat my hair, and it's still not fully detangled. When I try combing it out, I still have tangles at the ends, and I end up losing a fair amount of hair trying to work the knots out. It's as if I didn't even use conditioner... Since Reflect does guarantee their products, I am thinking about having it re-customized to see if they can fix it.

Brilliant Shine Glisten Drops ($24 for 1oz)
This shine serum is the most puzzling product of my customized solution. First, I'm lead to believe that this is the one styling product that will make my hair smooth and straight, since it's the only product recommended for styling, but when I click on "view my custom styling tips" at the end of the product creation process, it states "Always prime hair first with a Straightening Lotion." If I need a separate straightening lotion, why isn't it part of my "solution" kit? Second, this is the most basic shine serum I've ever seen. I compared the ingredients to drugstore brand Charles Worthington (Results Frizz Taming Serum, to be exact), and they are almost identical - and, of course, Charles Worthington is a fraction of the price. As a basic shine serum, it works fine and does control my frizz, but since it's not a straightener, I need something else for that or my hair is still wavy. Grrr. My final complaint is the packaging. The lid has a dropper built in, but the dispenser button is big and awkward, and it only dispenses a few drops at a time, which might be fine for a short hair style, but I have to dole out 3 or 4 pumps for my long hair. To make matters worse, the dropper doesn't hold the serum in the tube until you press the button - it just runs out, so if you need more than one squirt, the serum dribbles out and ends up making the outside of the bottle all goopy. A pump bottle or actual medicine-style dropper would work much better.

All I can say is, Reflect, please go back to the lab and bring back some of the great formulas you used to have. I remember the original conditioner I got two years ago was one of the best I had ever used. Why change a good thing?

I hope you enjoyed this issue of The Cosmetic Report!