Bellissima two bar set - soap discontinued by Principessa Beauty - review by Jul!a

Why are you telling me about some bars of soap?

Because they're pretty and they smell good and they work just as well as "real" soap, which isn't terribly surprising given that they are real soap.

Can you tell me about the packaging at all?

My bar of soap came with another kit, but reports tell me that your two bars will come in a wonderful box that's really worth of being given as a gift. The bars inside will be wrapped with plastic wrap.

What does each bar look like?

Inside the plastic wrap, each bar is about 3 1/2" wide by 2" deep and 1" tall. It's a light pink color, and has "principessa" carved into the top with a small decorative design underneath it.

Cool. What do they smell like?

These soap bars have been given Pricipessa's Isolina scent. The scent is is designed to be a blend of fragrances that are fresh, floral, and feminine but also have a powdery finish, and it does live up to that. The top notes are listed as violet leaves and mimosa with neroli as the middle scent and precious woods and heliotrope as its base. To me, it smells a lot like a floral powder mixed with soap. When I was using it, that's what I smelled. But for some reason when my husband used it it smelled a lot like a pine tree air freshener combined with a powedery scent. I'm not sure if it's just his skin or something else he used, but we've gotten that result more than once.

How long does the scent last?

It's hard to say because I usually end up putting something else on immediately after my shower. On my husband, I was able to faintly smell it most of the night when he showered in the evening, but it was gone by morning. The bathroom smelled slightly of it for an hour or two after the shower though.

Ok then. How well does it work?

It lathered as well as every other bar of soap I've tried to use. I got some nice soap film to rub around with light bubbles, and it washed off very well leaving me feeling squeaky clean. My husband had the same results. I don't normally use bar soaps because I normally end up feeling itchy and dried out afterwards and unfortunately this one was no exception to that, but a little bit of lotion cleared it right up.

Neat! What about the ingredients? Anything I should be worried about?

I found ingredients for this on the product page, and they're listed as Sodium Palmate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Water, Glycerin, Fragrance, Palm Acid, Palm Kernel Acid, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter) Fruit, Sodium Lactate, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Avena Sativa (Oat) Kernel Flour, Methyl Gluceth-20, Sodium Chloride, Titanium Dioxide, Tocopherol Acetate (Vitamin E), Red 33, Tetrasodium EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate. If you know you have issues with glycerin I'd avoid using this, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be too much that might affect a large group of people.

Anything else I should know?

Be careful not to drop it, it can get slippery when wet.

Haha, thanks for information I already knew. Got a picture?

I do have one of the bar I have! I couldn't get my camera to focus on it for the life of me, so the logo is a bit fuzzy unfortunately.

I do like the scent, but for the price I'm not sure I'd ever buy these bars on their own. The handmade soap I usually buy from Etsy works out to be about $4 a bar, and these work out to be about $10 a bar. Even if you factor in getting the awesome case, it's still a bit pricey, so I can really only recommend it to those who love the scent and can't find something comparable for a lower price. It works well as soap, but the price is something I just can't really get past.

Since I had my husband using it as well, I asked for his opinion. He wasn't as fond of the scent, although it didn't bother him to smell like it at all. The weird thing is that after he put it on and started using it, all I could smell was pine like the tree shaped air fresheners with a touch of powder underneath. I have no idea what caused it, but both times he's used it have yielded the same results. That made him like it a bit more because he wasn't terribly thrilled about smelling like floral powder, but it's still not something he'd have picked out on his own.