My first thought when I saw the Fancy Me Kit was, ‘oooh self indulgence how I love thee,’ my second thought was ‘I’m not loving the feathers.’ Packaging counts for a lot with me – a really pretty toy that’s nicely wrapped will push my impulse-buy button like no one’s business.  On the other hand, a less than adorable toy in sub-stellar packaging makes me hesitant to touch it at all, let alone take it home and do nasty things to it.

Next thing I noticed about the kit, maybe it was all that vanilla scented stuff in such a small container but the whole thing smelled really, really strongly. Usually I’m all for something to make the office smell a little bit better but that little bundle smelled so strongly I ended up having to put it in a drawer till I could take it home. It was much more appreciated in my living room combating stinky litter box odors later on though.

By the time I took my kit to the bath with me, I was really ready to love this little package. It hadn’t had a fair shake up till now and I was eager to get the notions and potions out and to the test; more than ready to hop into my tub with a long vanilla bubble bath and let all those negative points just melt away in the heat. I went to pour my bubble bath, upended the bottle over the tub and nothing came out – each tiny little none internal use bottle had a little seal over the mouth. Not the punch through aluminum ones, but the tough as nails paper and plastic ones and not a single one of those seals had a little easy pull tab so I had to sit down and scrabble around the tiny lip of each bottle to get to the bubble bath, oil and lotion.

That was not relaxing at all.

But I did manage to get them all open. Diffused in a bath tub the scent of the bubble bath was actually more over powering but the bubbles had a reasonable lifespan in the tub, I did need to use more than half the bottle to get a really good bubble going in the tub though. That’s didn’t surprise me, it’s really hard to find a good bubble bath that produces tones of bubbles without tons of soap and then holds those bubbles long enough for a nice long soak.

After the bath the vanilla scented lotion was a cool and smooth treat on my skin. I didn’t really see it as a massage lotion – it didn’t warm too well in my hands though it went on smoothly and easily, it also absorbed right into the skin, indicating that for use in a massage you’d quickly end up using the whole bottle. Bath plus lotion left me smelling a bit like a sugary confection however and when I went out that day I felt I collected an unusually large number of mosquito bites.

The massage oil on the other hand, was my favorite part of the kit. The scent wasn’t as heavy as with the bubble bath or lotion and it warmed up and glided on the skin pretty easily but with a denser consistency than something like baby oil.  Being a heavier oil also meant that it was a little difficult to spread and I ended up using more of it in one go than I wanted. So the next time I took it to the shower with me and applied it to wet skin after. That did the trick and the oil glided over skin with ease!

I’ve wanted a soy massage candle for forever and was super excited to get my hands on this one but, maybe because of inundating my senses with so much of the other items, the scent on this one was so light it didn’t even seem to fill up my bedroom. When poured on skin the oil was much more noticeably fragrant however it was still light enough that I needed to really put my nose up to skin to get a whiff of the stuff.

Finally the massage bar, I didn’t really have any preconceptions about this one. I’d never heard of massage bars before and was simply excited to see it was composed of shea and cocoa butter which my skin absolutely loves. It was already partially melted when I got it and just seemed to melt more every time I picked it up to unwrap it from the foil packaging, leaving my hands slippery well before I finished opening the package.

All in all, I’d say this is an ok gift to someone else if they have a penchant for really strong scents and/or you know that they love the fragrance you’re giving them, it also doesn’t seem like the type of thing you’d get someone you know well or really like. It would make a great gift for a coworker’s birthday for example, but for your sister I’d say go in a different direction. I know it’s the kind of thing that I’d stick onto a prominent shelf in my bathroom so it could be seen, but probably would never actually use if not for this review.

Fancy a Fancy Me Sampler Kit?  Head to Good Vibes!

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