Veet Institut Warm Wax - Review

Hi ladies.  Today I thought I'd review something I've had sitting on my bathroom shelf since the summer - Veet Institute Warm Wax.  I must admit that I have quite hairy legs, and I suffer terribly from ingrown hairs and rashes if I use hair removal creams (or even worse, shave) my upper thighs and bikini line.  So I do like to get my top legs professionally waxed.  However, I've been incredibly lazy and haven't waxed my legs since the summer!  I did use a hair removal cream a couple of months ago as I just couldn't stand my hairy legs any more, but since then I've gone for the natural look - not good. 

I bought this wax pot on a whim, as I've not used a warming wax since I had an incident heating one up on a stove, back in the late 1990s.  I forgot I was heating it when my then boyfriend rang me to dump me - nice!  It let to a mini explosion and a ruined saucepan and I was lucky I didn't break the cooker, cause a fire or anything worse.  So, understandably, I've not really been into warm wax since then.  However, those sticky strip waxes don't really work very well for me.  They are very fiddly, don't work that well and leave a horrible sticky mess all over my legs.  I've honestly NEVER sucessfully waxed my legs with them - despite that I keep on buying them - not sure why.

This pot looked good as it says that the wax is water soluble, and so you can wash away any sticky mess.  I thought that would be a good feature, as it is a messy business.  It also contains essential oils.

The wax comes in a screw top pot with a spatula, instructions and 12 fabric waxing strips.  I heated it up in a microwave for 60 seconds as instructed and prepared myself for the pain of a home wax.  I haven't shown it on the photos, but the spatula actually has a great little feature - it has a small temperature gague in the part that you put into the was which says 'No!' if the wax is too hot.  Mine did say No! so I busied myself for a couple of minutes until it was the right temperature.  It was actually still a bit too hot for my skin, so I'm really glad I didn't slap it straight on after the microwave.

I have to say that I was quite impressed with this product.  It worked so much better than waxing strips at removing the long, course hairs I get on my upper thighs and removal was relatively pain-free and clean, with very little sticky residue left on my legs.  I managed to do my bikini line and the front and sides of one leg quite well, before moving onto the other leg.  At this point, I realised that I only had three fabric strips left.  I used them as best I could, trying to do the hairiest areas first, but I quickly ran out of the strips.  So I wasn't able to finish both legs on this use. 

I found cleaning the strips, my hands, my legs, and a bit of wax I glooped on the bathroom floor pretty easy.  I had a shower and the wax easily came off my skin.  I peeled off the worst of the wax from the fabric strips and put it in the bin, and washed them in the sink - it took about 5 minutes and they are now hanging up to dry, almost as good as new.  The wax also just wiped up off the floor - no mess in sight!

However, I will have to go back and finish the other leg tomorrow.  At least there's not too much to do.  I was never going to manage to do the backs of my legs, especially as my hair there grows in loads of random directions, so I'm going to wax as much as possible, and use a cream to get the rest off.

The wax stayed hot enough to do all the waxing without needing to reheat it.  If I'd had a few more fabric strips, I probably would've blasted it for about 30 seconds again just to make it a bit more melted.  I used about a third of the jar to do my 1 1/2 legs, so I reckon you could get two proper waxes from this.  I think this is quite reasonable, at around £10 per jar, considering a salon wax will cost at least £20 for just one wax.  And Veet is always on offer at Boots and Tescos.

It is a fiddly process though, and you do have to be able to stand a bit of pain and discomfort to remove the strips (although less so than strip wax).  It took me about 40 minutes to do my legs, and I think it will take about 20 minutes to finish them tomorrow, followed by more washing of the strips.

So in terms of cost, ease of use and finished results this gets a Bristol Beauty Blog thumbs up.  But why did they only provide 12 fabric strips?  If there were 20, my legs would be completely smooth and hair free by now.  It is also a fiddly and time consuming process.  I did this today when I have the flat to myself, but my boyfriend already complains about the length of time I spend in the bathroom.  Add on the time for waxing my legs, and he'll be having a serious whinge!

By the way, I must apologise about the rubbish quality of the photos with this post.  Unfortunately my camera decided to break yesterday and is not working at all now, so I used my computer webcam for the pictures.  My phone camera is even worse!  I have some photos already taken for some up-coming blog posts, but I will need to get a new camera pretty quickly, as I use it almost daily for work as well as for blogging.  My current, broken camera was an Olympus point and shoot, and it wasn't very good quality at all.  If any bloggers use a good point and shoot camera for under £150, which doesn't wash out colours and has a good macro setting, please let me know your recommendations.  Unfortunately I'm skint at the moment, and have already requested Christmas presents from friends and family, so I'm going to have to crack open my savings to get a new camera...it is essential though.

Thanks for reading!