Quick disclaimer: all products are my own, bought with my own money. No sponsorship and all views are my own. All prices quoted are as at June 2022 taken from and linked to the brand’s own website where possible.
Please remember that everyone’s skin is different. These are my personal opinions and you might find that your reaction may vary.
Whilst I wait for my three months skin renewal period to be up (end of June… bites fingernails…) and my first assessment, I thought I’d go over the products I’ve mentioned in previous posts and on the Skincare Basics pages. Some I like, and there are also some I didn’t include as I was very disappointed.
This is also a thing I thought you might all find interesting: I’ve checked the ingredients of each thing on the Inci Decoder list. This skincare database is a game changer, going over the ingredients in skin care products and their use within the formulation. I use it to compare and try to work out what ingredients I might be reacting to, and also to check that I am not layering too many products with actives such as hylauronic acid or niacinimide. There’s more information on the site, so I’ve added links for each item to the Inci Decoder site.
(I warn you: if you are as excited by ingredients as I am, you will find that site ADDICTIVE! )
Cleansers:
My History
(comparatively recent.. I might go further back in another blog post if anyone would be interested in my skincare over the last 50 years? Let me know in the comment box below.)
I have always been a terrible skincare gadfly. I switch up and back all the time, then if I find something I like, I’ll use that for as long as it continues to work with my skin, and hop! I’ll leap onto the Next Best Thing I find new and shiny.
Back in 2015 I got my first pot of Clinique Take The Day Off balm (TTDO) as a free gift with some Clinique purchases. I loved it, but when it finished, I changed over to REN Purity Rosa Centifolia balm (which someone recommended online and I LOVED it. It’s not cheap (£24 for 100g), but not so expensive I wasn’t prepared to give it a try. The Inci decoder link is here:
I would buy the larger size online from REN’s website: a nice, fat tub. But, for some ridiculous reason, and despite loads of customer complaints (see the reviews…) , they have stopped making the tub, and now the only packaging available is a tube. A tube with a tiny exit hole. It wass IMPOSSIBLE to squeeze the balm out of the tube, so I sliced the bottom off the tube and up the side so I could open it right out, and took the whole lot out with a spatula. Now, handily, I had the empty tub from the Clinique TTDO balm, so I moved it into that. Result. But seriously? Could I be faffed? No, not really but I loved the rose scent.
So, I was browsing in Sainsbury’s and found a (then) new brand with a rose range: Super Facialist. I can’t find this anywhere other than in supermarkets, though I’m sure it must be. I bought the Rose Hydrate Calming Creamy Cleanser. It’s nice, but not particularly amazing. It’s also annoyingly in a tube. Tubes are so wasteful. When I got to the end of the tube I cut it open as I had the REN (more faff), put it into my nice TTDO tub and got enough product for another three months cleansing – twice a day, used as a balm with a hot cloth. Inci decoder is here:
I think that to find another three months use from a product that appears to be empty is a disgrace. Thankfully, this cleanser isn’t extraordinarily expensive (£9 for 150ml (reduced to £6 at time of writing 10th June 2022)), so the loss isn’t dramatic, but even so.
(During this time, I bought some more Clinique makeup and moisturiser, so I got another tub of TTDO balm, which I popped in a drawer as I used up the other products. )
And so on to the worst cleansing period of my life, and to which I attribute a lot of the dullness and wide pores I am now fighting.
The time of the wipe.
I think an advert came up in my Sainsbury’s online shopping list during lockdown, and Simple Wipes were in a multipack for £3.50. Those sound worth a try, I thought. Easy and cheap, and Simple is a well-trusted brand.
At first it all seemed good. It was lockdown; I wasn’t going out, so I wasn’t wearing any makeup. I didn’t need anything efficient, just clean skin without drying it out. Sensitive Skin wipes like these certainly didn’t dry my skin, and they seemed to leave it clean, if not glowing. ( INCI listing here )
But as time went on, my skin grew dull. Wipes don’t get deep into the pores so sebum and dead skin builds up and any large pores become more visible. I would never say that wipes are awful, and for speed and in a pinch, they are much better than sleeping in makeup, but they aren’t good for long term use, as I found out to my cost. I’d used wipes from the start of lockdown through to February and my skin was looking sad and grey.
continued in Part two… March and April 2022