Can I turn a buttercream bar of Skinny Dip back into a shower gel?

December 13, 2005 9:13 AM

Lush has discontinued their shower gel line of Skinny Dip and my wife is irreconcilable. Help me bring a smile back to her face.

Skinny Dip is only available now as a buttercream bar. Is there a way to melt the bar down and turn it into a shower gel, or just liquify it somehow? Could it be combined with some sort of noncoagulating chemical? If I could succeed at this, my wife would be happier than the time she found a piece of chocolate under the car seat.

posted by bjork24 to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (13 answers total)

While it has been discontinued, there may still be time for you to buy up a stockpile of the stuff for her. My mom was using Protein 21 shampoo for about a decade after it was discontinued because she built a stash.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 9:21 AM on December 13, 2005

Skinny Dip in the liquid form is gone. And no, there's no real way to melt down the buttercream. It's just not the same. Skinny Dip and Potion were my favorites and both have been discontinued. Lush UK does runs of discontinued products from time to time, though. They announce them on their discussion forum. Lush NA has plans to do the same, but hasn't yet.
posted by astruc at 9:24 AM on December 13, 2005

Some on eBay!
posted by fionab at 9:26 AM on December 13, 2005

She could find people who want to swap at MakeupAlley. Here's the list of people who have Skinny Dip and want to trade it for something else.
posted by MsMolly at 11:27 AM on December 13, 2005

My wife has bought a bunch of stuff from our own Dejah420, who is a soap maker. She might be able to help you figure out a solution (or to whip up a batch of something similar).
posted by MrMoonPie at 12:32 PM on December 13, 2005

She could also hit up the Lush forums and especially the UK ones and see what people have and are willing to trade.

(And it's way worse than that -- they've pretty much blown away the whole shower gel line. I'm glad I've got a lot of Slammer left.)
posted by mendel at 12:34 PM on December 13, 2005

Well, "my wife is irreconcilable" brought a smile to my face. What? I am helping—with the "smile" part.
posted by bricoleur at 12:35 PM on December 13, 2005

I would take astruc's recommendation and keep in touch with the Lush stores. My wife's favorite body lotion line from Victoria's Secret was discontinued about three years ago. But, every now and then they bring a bunch into the stores and sell them during the big sales. She has been stockpiling it with every sales and has never run out of it during the three year period.
posted by tuxster at 12:55 PM on December 13, 2005

How bad do you want to console her? There's another vendor at the street fairs I work who sells one product, a skin cream that he and a chemist he hired formulated. In his case it was a unique formulation based on his daughters' reviews of other creams they had used but I don't think you've have a terribly hard time getting someone to do their best to duplicate an existing product.

Of course, you'll be buying a few thousand bottles of it.
posted by phearlez at 1:45 PM on December 13, 2005

Lush keeps discontinuing every product I like. This does not make me think more highly of them. Anyway, as people have suggested, the Lush forums have lots of people willing to trade, and they also combine to order limited edition reissues when Lush UK does those.
posted by litlnemo at 3:23 PM on December 13, 2005

I am so pissed about the shower gel situation. I hate these stupid jellies.
posted by k8t at 4:05 PM on December 13, 2005

What if you took a bar of the soap, scraped off shavings with a cheese grater into a container, and added some water? I think that the right ratio of soap (measure the dry weight with a diet scale) and water (measure by volume or weight) would solublize it and make it gel-like. Experiment, and let me know how it worked.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:41 PM on December 13, 2005

Prolly also want to stir awhile with a spoon to dissolve the shavings. Maybe start with warm/hot water to accelerate the dissolving.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:43 PM on December 13, 2005