Leaf&Botanics MEBUKI Skincare Line

Once again, I purchased a trial kit of a Japanese skincare line, because I just think these little trial kits are so convenient! I had never heard of this brand, Leaf&Botanics, before. It is apparently a brand under the umbrella of Matsuyama, which has several other skincare lines including Millennium Mother, M-mark series, and essential mother soap. Matsuyama was primarily a soap company dating back to 1945, so they've been in the biz for quite some time. Their brands focus on natural and quality ingredients that are gentle on skin. As I am a mama-to-be, I'm trying to be more careful about the things my skin absorbs and passes on to my baby, so a natural brand like this was definitely something I wanted to give a try.

What caught my eye in the store was actually the simplistic packaging. I mean, look at this:

So aesthetic. Just pretty bars of soap with simple brown labels. I love it! Any brand that lets the product speak for itself is attractive to me. So of course, I had to pick up a trial kit. Leaf&Botanics has 3 different skincare lines to choose from, and chose what seems to be their main line, MEBUKI.

To start the routine, we have the Face Cleansing gel. This product removes your makeup just like any cleansing oil, balm, or cream would. This was one of my favorite products from the kit for a couple of reasons. First, the texture is just so intriguing. It starts out kind of like Jell-O. No joke. It's wiggly and jiggly and with the orangey scent it could easily be mistaken for a hospital dessert. Rub it between your dry hands and onto your face and it somehow keeps it's jelly-like texture.

However, as soon as you add water to rinse your face, something magical happens and the product turns into a skim milk-like liquid. WHAT. I'm telling you, it's magic. No Jell-O I've ever had turned into milk. More like juice.

In addition to it's magical changing texture, my skin felt velvety after rinsing the product off. It removed my makeup quite satisfactorily and just like the Minon Amino Moist milky cleansing, I couldn't keep my hands off my face! Sooooo smooth and silky! No cleansing oil I've ever tried has left that feeling and now I'm thinking that I need to stop using cleansing oils and switch to creams or this jelly! Again, the scent is mostly orange with a hint of something herbal. It's really quite delightful and refreshing.

Moving on to step two, the Face Wash. I'm just going to tell you right off the bat that this was the least impressive item in the kit. It also has an orange scent, though this one is slightly more herbal than orange. You can even see little bits of something in the product, but don't be alarmed. They're supposed to be there and they didn't affect the texture.

While I was impressed by how easily and quickly this product foamed up in my hands, I wasn't too impressed by how my skin felt afterwards. It did a good job of cleaning my face, sure, but it left that stripped feeling. You know what I mean? That feeling your skin gets when there's no oil left, no moisture, no softness...almost squeaky clean. I don't like that feeling. My skin felt tight, like if I made the wrong facial expression my nose might just rip off. This face wash just completely stripped my skin of moisture, which might be a desirable result for those with extremely oily skin, but it was not my cup of tea. I would personally pass on this product.

The third step is the Face Water, aka toner. I really enjoyed this product. It was definitely on par with the Mamonde Rose Water toner I've been using for a year. Since I'm on my last bottle of that, I would totally switch over to this one. It also has an orange scent and it replenished some of the moisture lost during the face washing stage. In the trial kit, they give you a fair amount to try out. My cotton pad was totally soaked through! Though honestly, I use cheapo cotton pads from Daiso so it's not hard to soak those through. I'll have to talk about those in a whole other post because I highly recommend them for toners!

Our last facial skincare step is the Face Emulsion. Also smelling pleasantly of orange, the emulsion is a very moisturizing last step to the system. I honestly didn't need to use a cream after this as I normally would. The consistency is quite runny, as most emulsions are. I recommend spreading this across your face rather than

trying to rub it in or massage it in. If you try to rub or massage, you'll end up creating a creamy mess on your face that is even more difficult for your skin to absorb. I just spread it over my face until I couldn't see white, just glistening, and let the product sink into my skin the rest of the way. This is another product I would purchase the full size of should I need to simplify my routine, since there really wasn't a need to use a cream to follow up this product.

Finally, I'll talk a bit about the bar soap. If I'm not mistaken, the company is all about their bar soaps. That was their original product back in the day and they continue to make bar soaps under their various brands. I am personally not a fan of bar soap. It's just kind of troublesome to use a bar of soap and, in my opinion, not all that sanitary. I didn't grow up using bar soap, either. We always had liquid soap in a bottle. It just kind of skeeves me out to use bar soap. That being said, even though I did try this product out and gave it a fair chance, I wouldn't buy a full bar of soap for the reasons above. I'm just a liquid soap kind of gal! I did use this Lavender soap 3 times. The sample size is quite small, but it did make a nice foam in my loofa (that I wash in the washing machine once or twice a week, by the way. I highly recommend it if you don't already do it!) but I couldn't really detect much of a lavender scent. It was a pretty neutral soap scent. It also had the same affect on my skin that the face wash had, a little bit too stripping of natural oils and moisture for my liking.

To conclude, I would personally highly recommend the Face Cleansing, Face Water, and Face Emulsion from this line. Even though a couple of the products in the trial kit didn't work out for me, I would still love to try more products from Leaf&Botanics. They've proven that they do have some really great quality products. They have a couple of body scrubs that I'm extremely curious to try out!

I swear this isn't sponsored, lol. If you're interested in this trial kit, you can actually purchase it from the company's online shop. They do ship internationally and you can change the language on the site to English or Chinese.

If anyone else gives this brand a try, let me know what you think!

#japanesebeauty #japaneseskincare #skincareline #leafbotanics #mebuki