From what I can piece together, she has several new scents in the works. Yeah, this should be interesting.
I received my Marrakesh scented soap from Michelle at Mysitic Water yesterday evening. I think the scent is very appealing. Since my sweet bride is better at describing scents tha I am, I asked her to describe it. She said it smells clean, earthy and "Christmasy", a little spice but not like a pine tree. I found Michelle's description on her website and she says her customers describe the scent as "clean dirt" or an earthy scent as my wife said. Maybe by looking at the ingredients list, those better at this than me can make a correlation between the scent and particular ingredients: "Marrakesh" is an original blend of mine - dark iron-distilled patchouli, Virginia cedarwood, cinnamon leaf, oak moss, lime and petigrain essential oils". I'll be using it tonight for the first time and I'll post what I think afterwards. I'm sorry if I didn't help with the scent description.
Randy, Hope you enjoy! Can we get a Lather shot if you get a chance? Thanks so much for your input! Jesse
Hey, everybody. Tonight I used my Mystic Water (MW) Marrakesh scented soap for the first time. I'll try and keep this brief and hopefully give you stuff you can use. I had read where MW has the consistency of Cella. It does and that's where the similarities end. The puck is soft. Soft enough when you hold it in your hand that it leaves soap residue on your fingers. When I went to run my fingers under the water to rinse them off, I kept rubbing my fingers together waiting for the soap to wash off, but it took forever until I couldn't feel soap in between my fingers any more. Very slick. A good sign of things to come. The scent of Marrakesh is outstanding and unlike some soaps that I can't smell once I start lathering my face, this one stayed with me the whole shave. It has an earthy/spice/clean scent. Very pleasant. The puck is obviously handmade as it has those handmade wrinkles and pock marks in it. I used my silvertip badger and loaded directly on the puck for 20 secs. The brush loaded very easily and created plenty of lather on the puck even though I was trying to take it slow. This is my brush after loading and just before taking it to my face. I wet my face and started lathering with the brush. This stuff immediately began making pillows of lather and, in about half the time of some soaps I use, I had a full face of lather. Very impressive. I then started to look closer at the soap on my face and I thought, "MWF!". It lathers and sits on my skin like MWF does. You know how some lathers look like they're floating on top of a layer of slick oil? That's what I get out of MWF, RazoRock and now Mystic Water. Very slick and I like slick. Each pass I made with the razor was super easy with plenty of glide. I squeezed the soap out of my brush and hand-applied the soap to my face on my last pass. The picture below shows how much lather I had left in the brush (the bubbles on the brush handle is where my hands were wet, not from the lather). I had trouble finding a spot on my face to put it all. While this was just my first run with MW, I'm looking forward to many more shaves. She's a keeper. Congrats. to Michelle. She's done an outstanding job with these soaps.
I got some shave soap samples from Michelle to try out. She sent me a few of the scents she it testing out. The soap is fantastic. In my opinion, it is similar to QCS but works better, and it is a better value. The lather is easy to make and thick. The first scent I tried is Lime Lavender. It is an awesome scent. Lily of the Valley is a very nice floral scent too. She's also working on a mentholated version. I have two different strengths of that. This soap is definitely worth trying out.
Randy, Great Review! Now to wait on the Peppermint/Menthol, I hope it is Face Freezingly delightful! Nice Pictures. Jesse
I think I have a sample of the Peppermint/Menthol on the way, or will shortly. I'm currently working through a sample of the Marrakesh. This is fabulous soap. I did have to use a little wetter than normal brush, but the lather was was super slick and very creamy once I nailed the ratio, and the skin care proprieties are as good as any soap I've used.
Absolutely! And you know...since I've started using it, my wife is getting really tired of me coming out of the bathroom after a shave saying, "Best shave ever!" This morning's shave...WOW! Effortless. I'm also finding that after the third pass there is enough residual slickness that just a bit of water is needed for touch-ups.
This sucks. What a crappy review, Randy. I can't believe you would do this to me. You're title says it all. I just got a boatload of soaps and stuff and now this. Well, I guess there is only one thing to do................................How do I go about trying some of this stuff? (I hope the sarcasm was dripping enough to come through here)
No!!!! You just brought in a haul that puts "Deadliest Catch" to shame. Four new products in one shave!?!?! OK, if you must...but I did warn you.
Sounds like JoAnna and I need to be asking for our royalty checks since I had the idea and JoAnna brought it to reality for a lime and lavender shave soap. It's called Yin Yang in the TSD store. No one was making such a soap and when I first came to TSD, I begged and pleaded - or at least asked - JoAnna to do it, and she did.
Well do,,,,, If I get it. I'm starting to find some inconstant lathering with this soap, trying to work through it and make sure it's nothing i'm doing. Slickness and skincare still wonderful though, face feels like I just shaved with the wool fat. EDIT/UPDATE: This soap seems to require a specific technique, that is maybe better suited to face lathering. As a bowl lather I had little/no luck producing stable lather until I used the following method: I needed to very slowly start loading the brush (maybe a little wetter brush than normal for me), then basically slowly build lather on the soap, then finish off by face lathering. Over hydrating, or whipping the brush too much gets too much air in the lather. I just wish it didn't require such a deliberate process. I've seen the different brush comments about certain brushes working better, I think the soap worked better with my Simpsons 58 (Best hair) than any of the 2-band brushes I tried (Simpsons, Thater, Semogue). Perhaps the springier backbone of the two-band makes it easier to get air into the lather. As everyone seems to agree, the slickness and skin care are TOP notch. As for the scent (Marrakesh): It is not my type of scent, but there there was plenty of scent, and it seemed deep and multidimensional,,,, not a flat one note type scent. If you like the scent as describe on Michelle's website, i don't think you'll be disappointed.
Got a sample of the lime yesterday and tried it for last nights shave. I soaked my Omega boar while I showered, shook it dry, loaded the brush and went to face lathering. After getting a solid coat on the right side of my face I went to town on the left only to discover that by the time I finished my left I needed to apply to my right side again. (not a stable lather at all) I loaded more on the brush, probably spending 30 more seconds swirling and got a passable lather, with some of the same issues. After two passes and 3 brush loads I decided to switch to my best badger brush and.....voila. Just like its supposed to be. Smooth, creamy, stable, and slick. I got an excellent 3rd pass. Maybe it does perform better with some brushes than others. I will try it again tonight with the Badger and see what happens. Update: Tried again tonight using Moes advice. I soaked my semogue 620 while I showered and then shook it until I couldn't get any more water to come out. I built the lather very slowly as not to get too much air in the mixture. Applied to wet face and added a few drops of water. Fantastic lather. It was thick, had great cushion, incredibly slick, and stable. I guess I used too much water last night. I will be buying a puck of this very soon.
The two badgers I use are the Dridecker and an EJ Best, and both work well with my sample. I face lather exclusively so take that into consideration.
I would also try the following, maybe try your boar again but: Load soap slowly, and do some slow lathering on top of the soap. SLOWLY add water. It seems once this soap is over hydrated, or overly whipped with air, you can not bring it back, best to start over,,,,,, IMHO of course.
