I received a free product in exchange for my honest review.
This post contains Amazon Affiliate Links.
Having worked with Cleopatra’s Choice for many Adovia product reviews, I was thrilled when they offered me the chance to review their Pure Shea Butter – Raw & Unrefined for free.
I knew Shea Butter was in a lot of lotions but I didn’t really know about the different grades it was sold in.
There are various grades of Shea Butter – A,B,C,D and E. Grades D and E are contaminated with pollutants and are rarely sold for personal use so we don’t even need to go into them here too much. Grade A is the purest form – the original way it is after it’s extracted from the Shea Tree nuts. This version of the butter is the one with the absolute highest concentration of vitamins A and E and therefore has the best healing and beautifying effects on skin and hair. Grades B & C are ones that have been “processed” and had the vitamins and nutrients extracted from them for use in other cosmetics. Obviously the loss of these key vitamins and minerals greatly reduces the benefits of the butter for skin and hair.
-Information from Cleopatra’s Choice.
One thing I love about this Shea Butter is that it is Fair Trade. You have probably heard of brands of coffee that are Fair Trade, and this situation is a similar concept. When you purchase a jar the total retail price of that product gets split up between the women actually grinding the shea nuts to produce the butter, the companies that package and export that shea butter and the retailer of the product (Cleopatra’s Choice). Fair trade means that a reasonable portion of the final retail price gets to the people actually producing the butter, while the other parties in the transaction take a bit less profit. Fair trade also means that the production is done in a way to reduce the amount of environmental impact on the environment of the places where it’s made. Finally it also means decent working conditions and benefits for the women making the butter.
The women collect the shea nuts from trees and then crack them. Next the kernels are collected and at this point the real hard labor of production takes place – the crushing of the kernels into something that gets close to resembling a sort of shea paste. This is traditionally done with mallets in clay, stone or wood mortars by the women who produce the butter. This process can take hours and is hard, physical labor.
The crushed nuts are then roasted oven an open wood fire, during which process they must be constantly stirred with wooden paddles to prevent burning.Next the roasted kernels are ground further, then the villagers add some water and mix into a fine paste. The water helps to separate out the shea oil from the butter. The oil rises to the top and is removed along with excess water. The rest of the water is lost via evaporation from the hot sun. Finally the resulting butter is collected and shaped into large balls and prepared for shipping. After that it can be packaged into smaller containers or formed into blocks of five or ten pounds, which is the form in which you are able to buy it today from Cleopatra’s Choice.
There are so many benefits of this product on both the skin and hair :
- Shea butter is very effective and helping to prevent stretch marks, including during and after pregnancy as well as after significant weight loss or just from the natural aging process of the skin.
- Deeply hydrates and moisturizes dry skin, making it softer and smoother
- Reduces itching and irritation as well as flakiness caused by extremely dry patches of skin
- Helps reduce skin peeling and irritation from sunburn
- When used on hair, helps restore the hair’s sheen and luster, making it silky and giving it a naturally healthy shine
- Dramatically restores elasticity to the skin and helps to reduce the appearance of blemishes and wrinkles
- Great moisturizer for certain skin conditions such as Eczema and Psoriasis
- Reduces dryness and flakiness of the scalp and hair
- Helps reduce the symptoms of various skin rashes
- Dramatically softens tough and cracked skin on hands and feet
The high vitamin A and E content of makes it an excellent treatment for sun-damaged or wrinkled skin. Two different Sundays I went to Buffalo Bills training camp wearing shorts and forgot sunblock. My legs got fried both times. 
The first week I tried an aloe spray which cooled my skin, but the moisturization didn’t last long. Then I remembered the Shea butter. It had just arrived in the mail a few days before, and I hadn’t tried it yet. The butter is pretty solid and hard in the tub, but if you just rub your fingers over the top, it will start to melt and make it easier to get out of the tub. A little goes a long way with this Shea Butter but it does take a little bit more of rubbing into your skin than a regular lotion. I believe this is because it is solid at room temperature, so it needs your body heat to help melt it. I have been putting the Shea Butter on every night when I get home from work (I work night) and let it absorb while I watch tv for a bit before bed. So far my skin hasn’t peeled and my skin is staying hydrated almost the full day – sometimes before work I add a tiny bit of Shea Butter to the really burnt areas of my legs. I later found out that the antiseptic properties of Shea Butter make it the natural choice for treating burns and minor skin abrasions!
Now this Shea Butter does feel a bit greasy when you first put it on, but it does absorb within a few minutes and the greasy feeling goes away. I haven’t had any issues with the butter leaving grease stains on my clothing, but I did see that one Amazon reviewer had that problem. I am guessing she didn’t let it melt a little in her hand before she put it on.
I have also been using Pure Shea Butter 
I do want to be honest and say the packaging of this Pure Shea Butter wasn’t as nice as the Adovia brand products I had reviewed from Cleopatra’s Choice. The plastic tub had nothing on it except a label on the lid that had a few spelling errors. Now obviously in no way did the packaging affect the product, it was just something I felt worth noting.
I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.
