Irish Shaving Soaps Review 1/5: The Burren Perfumery

A little bit about The Burren Perfumery:
Named after the awe-inspiring karst landscape in County Clare, this lovely perfumery (and herb garden and tea shop!) is currently run by the couple Sadie Chowen and Edward Biggs. All of their products are handmade using only natural ingredients most of which are herbs and flowers native to the area. They ship worldwide and offer a 10% discount of first orders.

Presentation:
Pretty as a picture and wrapped in handmade paper (some with tiny pressed flowers embedded in it) these soap blocks are 100grams in weight. The delicate and simple, clean presentation is lovely and each one feels like a small hand-wrapped gift. Inside of the outer paper is an inner lining of a light wax paper surrounding the opaque cream-coloured soap. The square shape means some pairing might have to be done to get it to fit into a shaving mug but the soap is easy to cut.


Ingredients:
Saponified Olive, Palm and Coconut Oils, Calendula Oil, Irish Spring Water.
(Bonus points to this soap for being very natural with no hard-to-pronounce stuff!). Also it doesn't contain tallow so it is vegan-friendly.


Scent:
This only comes in an unscented version so it's great for people with sensitive skin or allergies.


Lather & Shave:
Unfortunately this is where the product falls short. In brief, it lathers like a body soap, not a shaving soap. The clue to this is in the ingredients as it is so heavily oil-based. A foamy, bubbly lather can be produced but it has very little staying power and no thickness or cushion to it. Only a tiny amount of water is needed to get a lather on this (wet brush, gently squeeze brush, and rub on soap). The brush does not really "load" with product and lather is formed straight away.
With all that having been said, if you don't mind lathering your face bit by bit, there is a decent shave to be had provided you don't have very coarse hair. This lather does not soften the hair so thick beards won't have enough cushion, but it is very moisturising and your skin feels wonderful and soft afterwards. 


Cost:
€6.50 per bar from http://www.burrenperfumery.com/. 


Summary:
I love the ingredients and the look of this, but I think I would much prefer their standard body soaps and I imagine this soap could double as one quite easily. If you have a light beard and want a nice one-for-everything soap (maybe for travelling) then this could be a real winner, and those who are sensitive to fragrances will be attracted to this also.


- BE


Click Here For Part Two: Crobally Irish Soaps

The HUGE Irish-Made Shaving Soaps Review!

DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!!

Here it is folks! What you've all been waiting for and never even knew it... I've been working behind the scenes on this one for a while and finally I'm writing up the results! It all began a couple of months ago when I once again got asked the familiar question by a reader: "Do you know of any good shaving soaps made in Ireland?". After finding my usual reply of: "I haven't tried any, I'm very sorry" just far to lame for a blogger of my global fame (ok, so my mum thinks I'm cool - that counts, right?) I thought "Enough of this Barber Eile, let's see what's out there!"
A few e-mail conversations later with some awesome Irish soap makers, a few excited days waiting by the post box for little packages to pop through, and here it is...a review of the main 5 Irish-Made Shaving Soaps available (I'm open to expanding this if I've missed any!).

I'm going to post each review as a separate entry so as to make the products more searchable in this blog. In the interest of fairness I will review them in alphabetical order by company name. 
They are:

• The Burren Perfumery - http://www.burrenperfumery.com/ (Click For Review)
• Crobally Irish Soaps - http://www.croballyirishsoaps.com/  (Click For Review)
• Dr. K Soap Company - http://drksoap.com/  (Click For Review)
• The Handmade Soap Company - http://www.thehandmadesoapcompany.ie/  (Click For Review)
• SunRose Garden - http://www.sunrosegarden.com/  (Click For Review)

Each review will be broken down into sections: Presentation, Ingredients, Scent, Lather & Shave, and Cost. I used my Gillette Super Adjustable DE razor loaded with a Shark blade and set to 4, and my Men-U brush for every shave for consistency. 
So without further ado let us begin!
Click here for The Burren Perfumery Shaving Soap Review!


*please note that all products were received as a free sample for review, each supplier was informed that an unbiased review, without their edit, would be published in the interest of honesty and fairness*

Stop Go

Hey everyone,
Just to let my regular readers know that I have some uber-bloggings in the works. Sorry about being so quiet this month but my mum's illness has worsened though we hope it will get somewhat better soon.
Please stay tuned though and I'll be around and blogging again next week!
- BE

Articles and Interviews

Hello!
I was going to save posting an entry about these articles until I had my TV appearance on IrelandAM - it was meant to be this Monday but they have had to postpone it until June!
Regardless, I've been receiving quite a bit of media attention lately as a result of my medal-winning, which has been both an exciting and a very new experience for me. When I was at the awards ceremony in the Law Society there was a photographer from the Irish Hairdresser International Magazine: http://irishhairdressermagazine.ie/ and they did a really lovely two page spread in this month's issue about myself, and the winner the Medal Of Excellence in Hairdressing, Michelle Silke. I like how out of the 109 medalists, only 2 were Irish and we got the ones for hairdressing and barbering! If I get a chance to take a better picture of the article I'll put a link to it on here so you can read it but here's a snapshot I took on my phone:

Then I was asked to do a phone interview for the Education Section in The Sunday Times Paper as they were doing a piece on how City & Guilds have their European Headquarters in Ireland now. They sent a photographer around to my workplace to take a photo too! I was just about to start doing a hot towel shave on my friend Jim so the back of his head gets it's moment of fame too!:

And finally The Irish Times Newspaper interviewed me also. This one was an unusual as I met the reporter for a coffee and we just chatted for about half an hour with his dictaphone sitting on the table. Mainly the interview consisted of him asking a few things and me just waffling on about everything I could think of. You can read the interview online (the link is below). It's funny to see the bits he chose to print and how it was all edited together to sound a little more ... "juicy" I guess? For instance, the whole thing about me saying "Hitler Youth Haircut" was not phrased like that and some of the questions he asked were not said at all, rather written to match some of the things I mentioned - but I'm guessing that's how journalism works. Here's the article online: Irish Times Interview , it was also put in print in the magazine suppliment on Saturday, and here's a photo from it:

So there you go! Who knew that I would get this far when I started this blog huh? It all seems a bit unreal to be honest. I wonder if any of my readers out there have been following from the start and what do you all think? It's been quite a journey and it's really only beginning when I think about it. I hope to have exciting news in a couple of weeks!
- BE