First, I’ll talk about the new line and then I will discuss my personal experience trying out the new line, so if you want to skip the product introduction, just skip to the bottom of this post. This product was given to me through BzzKit.  You can become a BzzAgent using this referral link.

Burt’s Bees has recently released a new skin care line, catering to those of us with sensitive skin. Their new line is Burt’s Bees Natural Skin Solutions for Sensitive Skin. What’s most interesting about this new line is that it contains some pretty cool ingredients, such as cotton, rice, aloe vera, extracts from the bark of the Soapbark tree (quillaja), yucca, and bees wax.

In this new line is the Sensitive Facial Cleanser, Sensitive Daily Moisturizer, Sensitive Eye Cream, and Sensitive Night Cream. I was given a full sized Sensitive Facial Cleanser as well as the Sensitive Daily Moisturizer.

I wonder if Glymm will sample the eye cream and the night cream… Hint, hint, Glymm 😉

The sensitive eye cream is meant to moisturize the areas around the eyes and reduce puffiness with its white Genepi extract — known for its anti-inflammatory properties, as well as tannins which are also known to reduce inflammation. The cream is ophthalmologist tested and goes for $24.99 CDN, which is about average for eye creams.

The Sensitive Night Cream is designed to rejuvenate your skin. It contains rice extracts for moisturizing and aloe to soothe your skin. This also goes for $24.99, again, an average price for specialty creams.

I haven’t tried out either of those, so I can’t comment on them.

On Sensitive Skin
A lot of people self-diagnose with sensitive skin, not understanding how sensitive skin pH balance is. If you change up your facial care routine in any way, your skin will react to it. Often, this results in breakouts, excess oil, or excessively dry skin. While your skin adapts, it’s important to continue on with the new routine for at least three weeks before judging the end result, unless you experience an allergic reaction. Having your skin react poorly to new products doesn’t necessarily mean that you have sensitive skin.

If your skin reacts easily to different products, becomes itchy, gets rashes, dryness in spite of different attempts at various products, discomfort, and so forth in reaction to fragrances, stress, weather, or some products, then you might very well have sensitive skin. That said, Burt’s Bees new line is incredibly gentle for most skin types, whether or not you truly have sensitive skin. It contains 99% natural ingredients.

My Trial, Week One
The first day that I got my trial products, I practically jumped out of my skin with excitement. I love most things Burt’s Bees, so the excitement quickly turned into pure giddiness.  I will do my best to be unbiased in my reviews.

Full Size Sensitive Face Wash

Day One: At bed time on day one, I eagerly opened the facial wash and read the directions:

“Wet face and apply cleanser with fingertips or a wet washcloth, massaging gently, and avoiding contact with the eye area. Pat skin dry.“

Two things put me off right away: Avoid the eye area? Darn it! I was excited to see how it would work removing makeup from my eyes, but I guess I can live without using it on my eye areas. The other thing that put me off was that the directions didn’t say if we are supposed to just wipe off the product or rinse it off. I opted to rinse it off and have continued to do so through the trial. I’m pretty sure that’s what they meant.

I washed my face, enjoying the smell and the feel of the cleanser. It goes on very smooth, rinses easily, and the most overwhelming smell is that of bees wax, which I personally adore.

After I was done washing my face and patting it dry, I eagerly opened the moisturizer. This is going to be good! No wait, wait… Aw man. “Daily moisturizing cream.” Apply in the morning? Fine. I’ll wait.

To my surprise, my skin most definitely did not need a moisturizer that night, anyway. It wasn’t oily, or gross feeling at all, it was just… Hydrated. It was weird. It felt like I had just received a facial at the spa.

Full Size Sensitive Daily Moisturizer

Day Two: I woke up with new comedones around my nose and chin area. I normally don’t get these kinds — itty bitty little pustules. This made me a little sad, since I had a  lot of faith in Burt’s products, but I carried on. Washed my face, first wetting it, lathering on the cleanser, then rinsing it off with water, and patting it dry.

Time to try out the moisturizer! Yay! I smoothed it over my clean face and was in awe of it immediately. It felt like I was spreading lip balm onto my face, yet it didn’t feel heavy at all. The smell is awesome as well… I smelled bee’s wax for a good portion of the day. haha

I really love the package design for the moisturizer, although I’m not a fan of needless packaging. I would have preferred just a simple tube. Something potentially recyclable. This moisturizer comes in a pumping bottle.

At the end of day two, I washed my face again, enjoying it once more. No new comedones showed up and the ones from the morning were mostly gone.

Day Three: I woke up with no comedones! Hallelujah! At this point, I was really wishing I had done a before picture of my skin. There weren’t any insane results, but there was a notable reduction in redness around my nostril and the bridge of my nose as well as a few scarred areas.

I still had many flesh-coloured bumps on my forehead, though. No black heads, no pustules.

Day 4-7: The best part of this new line so far is that my skin had practically no reaction to the change of routine. Outside of a handful of pustules on the first day, there has been no drying, no oiliness, no new breakouts. Still, it’s only a week in, so we’ll keep waiting to see.

The flesh-coloured comedones on my forehead seem to be reducing right now… I’ll keep an eye on them and report back, soldiers!