Summer returned with a vengeance this week with daily temperatures over 25 degrees Celcius (80+ F), allowing me to go back to some much-liked products such as MR GLO. Some months ago I had fooled around with the scent of the normally-unscented Tabula Rasa shave cream, which I never got around to using.

Like Cremo Cream, Tabula Rasa from Berlin is a strange product. I’ve reviewed it before with mixed enthusiasm. In that earlier post I pointed out that this is a cream best used by itself since it does not play well with any shaving soap in the creation of a superlather. Today I used it solo, but with a twist….I added some essential oils to try and re-create the Nancy Boy shaving cream smell…a combination of Peppermint, Rosemary, and Lavender. Pretty nice scent but I think I was a little heavy-handed with all three…better off to use these more sparingly in future. The peppermint oil gave the cream a nice tingly feel. The brush was the Simpson Chubby #2 and the razor, what else?….the ivory (imitation) handled E.J. Chatsworth with a fresh Wilkinson Sword White label blade. Tabula Rasa does not hold water well, and in the shower it tends to thin out pretty quickly every time I re-lather after rinsing off. By the third pass the blade was starting to skip just a little. The shave was excellent nonetheless, and the erstaz-Nancy Boy scent made it all the more pleasant. BTW, I continue to be very impressed by the Wilkinson blades…sharp and smooth at near-TBS (Treet Blue Special) levels. Finish was with Trumper’s Coral Skin Food and a splash of R&G Extra Vielle.