Influenster Venus Vox Box Review of Gillette Venus Embrace Sensitive!

Hi Shine and Sparkle Readers!

Thank you for tuning in once again to your weekly S+SR post!  This time we have a very special (and sponsored) post.  See, I told you all in my Introduction Post that I would always be completely honest with you all.  I'm excited because I was skeptical at the beginning of my blogging adventure that I would ever be in a position to have to tell you that a post was sponsored. Admittedly, I had one other sponsored post from Hujan Luxury Skin Care, but that post was from a small local business which I interacted with personally.   In this case, a large company has looked at the lil' old awe-inspiring Shine and Shine and Sparkle Report and determined that we would be a good fit to review their products! I was seriously stoked to see this message in my email inbox:

In case you didn't know, My Profile on Influenster is where I do quick and dirty product reviews of lots of products from all assets of life.  These reviews are nowhere near as in depth as a Shine and Sparkle Report post, but it does help with the visibility and reviewing power associated with this blog.  If you are "influential" enough (get it?), then you can qualify for different sponsored boxes of things to try out! I'm so excited that S+SR has influenced them to consider us worthy of a box!


Without any more gushing, I'm so excited to be able to give you my opinion on Gillette's Venus Embrace "Sensitive" Razor* coming to a store near you soon!

As you might have seen in my excited barrage of facebooking, tweeting, and instagraming, the product looks like this:

Overall, I give it an B+!   In a nutshell, I loved it for large of flat areas (legs, arms, under arms, backs, chests, heads, etc) but I do not particularly like it for harder to reach areas or detailed work.

Packaging/Design: It opens easily by popping open the back of the package (no cutting yourself trying to pry anything open--which is good because shaving has it's own cutting risk without crazy packaging).  It comes with two razor blades which are very simple to attach.  Just peel black the cover and shove in your handle.  Idiot proof!  I also love how low profile the holder for the razor is.  Compared to my other razor (by The-Brand-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named").  The razor itself is much lighter than my old one (though my other one had a battery and a trimmer--which I used a grand total of 5 times).  The razor also has good "swivel" so I don't think it is high risk when shaving legs.  The biggest difference from my old razor is that the 5 blades make up a relatively small percentage of the overall razor head, meaning that the profile of the blade is quite large...  I couldn't find a better way to say that.  I swear!  I was initially concerned that this would make it hard to get into hard to reach places.

Function: I started shaving my legs and I was amazed at how friction-less the shave was.  It also seemed to cover quite a large area in one swoop.  Shaving my legs sped by in a nano second.  The result was phenomenal on my legs, with hardly a follicle showing.  I moved on to my underarms, which needed only two strokes each to sweep off hair with a feather's touch.  I was quite impressed.  Then it was on to the true test, the bikini area.  Let's face it, the bikini area is the hardest with coarser hair, funny angles to reach, an by far the most sensitivity.  The main lawn was attended to with the grace it exhibited on my legs and under-arms.  But, lets just say my fears that the largeness of the head razor blade was not conducive to precision work.  My Brand-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named razor is much better at being precise, it did have an advertisement with women prancing by perfectly manicured topiary for heavens sake.  So overall, I'm very impressed.  My legs had an amazing shave, were not irritated, and were somewhat moisturized (I still needed to use lotion afterwards).  Underarms were a breeze.  But I think I'll leave my bikini area to my old razor.


It wouldn't be a Shine and Sparkle Report post without me actually giving you some tips about what I'm reviewing.  So here are some awesome (and related) quick tips!

• Exfoliate your skin before shaving!  This will help draw out in-grown hairs and get rid of dead skin that might prevent you from getting the closest shave possible.
• If you have super sensitive skin when shaving, try shaving in the direction of the hair.  The shave might not be as close, but it will not be as irritating.
• Try using hair conditioner or hair mask as a shaving lotion instead of shaving cream in a pinch (it leaves your legs so soft!)

As Always,
Shine & Sparkle


* Hopefully it is obvious by the whole introduction to this post, but this is actually a sponsored post (so excited)! I received these products to review complementary from the company that produced them.  However, I have not received any additional monetary compensation other than the opportunity to try them and give you my honest thoughts.