Review: St. Ives Naturally Clear Green Tea Scrub

I've been in need of a new face scrub (I love ya, MAC Volcanic Ash, but you are kinda pricey!) so I thought I'd try to find a budget-friendly option that fit my needs. Skincare, perhaps second only to fragrance, is one of the most subjective beauty items; what I look for in a scrub or an exfoliant may not fit with what you like. So I'll start off this review by explaining what I like in a scrub so you can compare your preferences to mine and see if the product I chose might be something you'd enjoy too. :)

I prefer a thick, dense scrub that has lots of little microbeads/crystals/whatever-you-want-to-call-them that I can feel against my skin. I hate anything too watery that just has some little beads floating around in it. I need a bit of grit--nothing too harsh, but enough so that I can feel like the scrub is really doing what it's supposed to! As I've mentioned on here several times before, I also have oily, acne-prone skin, so if a scrub has clarifying benefits, then that's a big bonus for me.

If this sounds like you, then you should check out the St. Ives Naturally Clear Green Tea Scrub! The Green Tea Scrub comes in a tube containing 4.5 oz. of product and retails for around five or six dollars.

The ingredients. This scrub is hypoallergenic, oil-free, cruelty-free, paraben/phtalate-free and vegan.

This is very different from St. Ives' famous Apricot Scrub. It's nowhere near as coarse and delivers a much finer, but still very effective, form of exfoliation. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the Apricot Scrub--I think it's too harsh and those jagged, ground-up apricot cores in the scrub are really rough on your skin--and I like the Green Tea Scrub much better!

This is a dense scrub that is absolutely filled with little beads! I love how rich it feels on my skin. A little bit goes a long way. It gives a deep clean that never feels harsh or uncomfortable. The scrub itself is green and there is a fresh, fruity scent to it that I really like.

Here is a bit of the scrub spread across my forearm. It's not the most appetizing-looking thing in the world, I know, but it feels like heaven on my skin!

This scrub also contains 1% salicylic acid to help fight acne and it's been working wonders for my skin. Lately I've been having a little recurrent patch of blemishes right along my left jawline and they finally settled down and went away in the week or two I started using this scrub. It definitely has been helping to keep new acne at bay as well. I use it virtually every day and it hasn't dried out my skin, but keep in mind that I'm pretty oily, so you may have to limit your usage to a few days a week if you're more on the dry side.

I highly recommend the Green Tea Scrub if you love thicker exfoliants and especially if you have acne-prone skin. It's my new go-to! There is a gel cleanser in this same line that I would be very curious to try too once my current one runs out.

Have you tried the St. Ives Green Tea Scrub? Love it? Hate it? I'd love to hear what you think! :)