M.A.C. Face and Body Foundation

I've been eyeing M.A.C. foundations for quite a while now but due to their price (and the fact that I currently have 100€ invested in Bare Minerals foundations that I am reasonably happy with) I was reluctant to go hit-and-miss online ordering spree.

So it wasn't until 2 weeks ago that I finally got a chance to match them at a store.
And this is where the first disappointment came: I was set on buying a product with SPF, however none of their SPF foundation lines came with shade light enough to be a match for me.
Only near match (still a bit too dark to be perfect) was lightest Face and Body, C1.

I pondered on the implications for a bit, but decided that since I use SPF30 moisturizer and have a translucent SPF15 touch-up veil coming my way, I could give it a go.

I wore it Monday through Thursday and I was absolutely in love.
Faux-tanned a shade and a bit shinier than usual, but the texture was absolutely lovely. I wasn't too happy about the smell which was quite intensive and - I think - help for quite a while, but gods, my skin looked so good, and with sheer coverage only, too!
It didn't keep my oily skin in check at all, however blotting did work (albeit I had to do it more often than with a powder foundation) and the overall appearance was kind of working and I was generally extremely pleased.

Until I got to wash it off that is.
Washing it off was not a walk in the park either, my usual powder foundation comes off easily with gentle Body Shop Aloe Face Wash, M.A.C. - not so much. Not a problem of course, I had a Camomile Waterproof Make-up Remover (also Body Shop; more precisely meant for eyes and lips, but I use it as general remover). But underneath I though I saw my blackheads got sort of a boost... I could swear I saw new big ones that was not there in the morning. Not something I wanted to see during my No-squeeze challenge of course.

By Thursday my blackheads got so annoying that I failed the challenge :(
I decided to go back to Bare Minerals on Friday and improvement was quite obvious after just one day.
This is a huge disappointment for me, especially because of how great M.A.C. made my complexion look.
I will definitely keep the bottle and maybe use it for those special occasions. I might also give it another try - I have not found a single user review complaining about M.A.C. face and Body being comedogenic to anyone else, so maybe if I calm down my skin some more, this could work. Hopefully.

30 days No Squeezing challenge: Day 9

It's been over  a week already?

Things have been progressing nicely on the challenge frontier.
As predicted, "usual suspects" reappeared pretty quickly, but apart from that no real damage. Blackheads exist like they always did in-between evictions, roughly same size they always grew to. No magical disappearances,  however skin seems to be in much better shape. I think - and  I hope it's not just wishful thinking - that less irritation has led to less sebum production.

I might actually earn myself that Pureview... :D

30 days No Squeezing challenge

Squeezing is my little dark guilty secret.
I´ve been `doing it`for more than half of my life and I could never stop. I could give up smoking or drinking or even eating sweets `cold turkey`, but I could hardly go a day without this.

Sometimes I torture myself thinking how much better my skin would look if I didn´t squeeze black and blue for years, but since it´s pointless, I try not to dwell upon that for too long.

However, it's never too late to change.
And change comes today. Not tomorrow, not on New Years, but today.
I will refrain from squeezing for 30 days. I will not try, but I will do it. There is no try.

Challenges

Apart from the obvious difficult breaking of a long-established habits, there's the part where I am afraid my skin might actually need squeezing by now no to look like a strawberry. After so many years - I theorize - my pores I probably so misshapen that no amount of proper treatment will really fix them getting stuck... We shall see.

Reward

Yes, there's that little carrot on the stick.
If I manage full 30 days, I will treat myself to Nokia 1020 Pureview.
It's a nice pun I guess, 'Pureview'. And maybe my skin will actually get better so I can use the amazing quality of the camera on my own face?

Footnotes

I won't be posting everyday, that would be a waste of space.
I think.

Body Shop: Wild Rose Hand Cream SPF15

While cursed with oily T-zone, rest of my skin tends to get very dry; I know a lot of you are foundation or nail polish or eyeshadow hoarders, I am definietly a moisutizer hoarder. I stock up on  lot of body lotions (currently 5 bottles ^^), lip balms (6 sticks?) and hand creams.

I think I've already mentioned it, but I'll have to stress this again: Netherlands is not the best place to buy cosmetics. The choice is pretty narrow, mostly well-known brands worldwide brands, not too much locally. I discover that over and over again when looking for somethign specific, in this case a hand cream with SPF. There was not a single one in my drugstore! I was bummed.

Then I went online and saw that Body Shop, company I in genegral respect, though have an ambivalent opinion about their products, does have a product with SPF. Not a fan of rose smell but I could overlook that.

Let me cut right down to the point: hand's down worse hand cream I've ever had. Ever.
This products dries my skin more than it moisturizes. I was looking at the ingridients list expecting to see low molecular weight alcohols there to justify hwo drying it is, but they do use fatty alcohol so I will put that effect on teh amout of perfume the product has.

Never again.
Shame on you, Body Shop!

Epilators: Philips SatinSoft vs SatinPerfect

So while Braun SkinSpa was not the epilator I was looking for, I still needed a new tool.
I decided to go back to the technology I used so far (rotating discs) and immediately after requesting a return for for the Braun, I’ve put latest model of Philips SatinPerfect epilator (HP6581/00) in my basket.

As usual with Bol, package arrived the next day (next day delivery, quite popular with bigger retailers, is one of the very few good things about shopping in the Netherlands) and I was very excited to open the box. But impulsive shopper is not a happy shopper.

 

Philips SatinPerfect HP6581 comes – at least in the edition I bought it in – with an additional “precision epilator”, a separate tool. Now that wouldn’t be too bad, however this one is battery-powered and not chargeable on it’s own, while the main unit does not come with a precision / sensitive area head or cover.
I wouldn’t mind an extra tool – especially since it’s pretty handy and small, perfect travel size – but for regular use I would much prefer simply a cover. More tools = worse deal for me. More hassle, more charging…

But what was the deal-breaker –  though absolutely my fault for not noticing what was clearly visible on the product photos – was that the main unit’s discs were made of plastic.

Are you kidding me? Okay I can understand that metal discs make more noise plus I kind of suspect are more expensive to make, but the overall quality of the product plummets! Plastic, even best quality, will erode much faster than steel, especially on something under that much contact stress as rotating discs that constantly come in contact with each other.

I didn’t even turn any of the units on. I’ve put everything back in the box, asked for another return and ordered another Philips – this time double-checking the discs will be made from steel.

 

Now, Philips SatinSoft HP6522 did not disappoint. The edition it came in was much less “packed” with goodies than either SkinSpa or SatinPerfect, but unlike those, I will probably actually use what came with this unit. Probably except the electric shaving head, but who knows.

No surprises on the effects – like my previous rotating blades epilators, my hair is actually pulled out and not broken / cut at the base. SkinSpa was more successful in grabbing shorter hair or hair sticking out in other directions and it does take more time with the Philips, but honestly, there is no contest here: Philips one pulls them out.

Unlike SatinPerfect (at least the edition I got, remember I ordered one with separate sensitive area unit), SatinSoft came with sensitive area cover which is the option I definitely prefer to separate unit.

There are 2 things I could complain about: sensitive area cover is awkward to take off. I have weak nails and I prefer not to put any strain on them, but it’s hard to take it off without a lever of some sort. Maybe I’m attempting it wrong though, who knows. The other on is that the few times I’ve used SkinSpa, I’ve learned to appreciate the extra light directed at the head, it was nice to see precisely what I was doing. SatinPerfect also had one, but I didn’t get to use it, however I would suppose this means never Philips models should come with one. I just really hope not all models will come with plastic discs.

Braun Silk-épil 7 SkinSpa

My old Torture Machine was at the end of it’s life cycle, hence I needed to find a replacement quickly.
Bol.com offered a wide range of epilator products and SkinSpa seemed to have very positive reviews so – reasurred by the policy of 30 days no-questions-asked return policy – I decided to try it out.

…and I am very glad I can return it.
When I used SkinSpa epilator head for the first time the tweezer system it employs did feel less painful than the rotating disk one I always used before and indeed it seemed like the tweezers were able to grab the shortest hairs. Together with the extensive set of related extras it seemed like a good option.

I was not really sold on the brush – way too delicate in my oppinion, would not be able to revitalize skin in any meaningful way.

Shaving and trimming caps were also pretty much useless for me, but the whole package seemed really decent.

Until 2 days passed, that is, as this is when I discovered to my utter surprise and dissapointment that – at least in my case – Silk-épil’s tweezer system breaks my hair off at the base rather than pulling them out… The hair just grew back like after shaving, while with my previous rotating disk epilators the period before it would grow back was longer and indeed the hair growing back would have fine tips indicating it’s new hair growing back.

I did a shave test too – shaved one armpit and depilated the other.
The results were conclusive, both areas grew back exactly the same!

Now, there seem to be a lot of positive reviews for tweezer systems out there that seem objective so I’d like to stress out taht – as in most cases when it comes to personal beauty routines – personal is the keyword. But at least in my case, this system simply does not work at all so I am returnign the set and purchasing a familiar rotating disk one (though I am still considering Philips Lumea system as well).

Paula's Choice

I must admit, my interest in beauty products did not rise until quite recently.
For the longest time – since my teens – I’ve kept to a few common sense ground rules, but I did not give too much though when buying beauty products.

Well, I got a bit more vain recently. Combine this with the fact that as I got older, I became more and more of a conscious customer, a time came when I looked at the cosmetics I was using, asking myself Can I truly improve something here?

This was a bit of a rhetorical question – of course there was room for improvement, but unfortunately the type of information about cosmetics that were of interest to me were not really easy to find.
I was on the lookout for facts, real trials and not company spin doctor claims.

Thankfully, someone has done it before me! Truthfully, I was a bit shocked how little unbiased, in-depth reviews are there on the multitude of websites that deal with beauty products on the internet. Beautypedia was one of the few that actually went more than skin-deep, including extensive ingredients explanation and that has led me straight to Paula’s Choice (Dutch retailer) – the brand of Beautypedia’s founder, Paula Begoun (the self-proclaimed Cosmetics Cop).

Pros

• working ingredients
  a lot has happened in research about beauty products in recent years, but in short: there is a lot of science and trial supporting some ingredients as actually working, and no support for others that get a lot of attention because they are “natural” or have hyped names
• not perfumed
  perfumes are irritants, I don’t buy my creams for nice smell, but for effect
• no colorants
  colorants are also irritants and truly, I care not what color my cream is (unless it leaves a colored cast)
• mostly alcohol free, strictly no low molecular weight alcohols
  together with the 2 proceeding points, this one is of very high importance to me: I have a very sensitive, combination skin, strongly reacting negatively to presence of low molecular weight alcohols
• some unique products, following latest in beauty scientific research
  there are plenty of AHA products on the market right now, some better and some worse, but BHA products (better for oily skin prone to comedos) are harder to find; not to say impossible in Europe!
• packaging beneficial to the products
  most actually beneficial ingredients are volatile, which means they will be lost with time if packaging is not as air-tight as possible – thus jars, plain and simple, suck and make you loose money
• not tested on animals

Cons

• price in Europe
  Paula’s Choice is not only a top quality brand (because of the research support they base their formulas on), but is also very reasonably priced… in USA, where they cost as little as drugstore brands.
  But not in EU. For some reason, prices go 2x their retail value in America here and are on level with prices in Australia and Japan!(!!) and anyone reading up on beauty products probably knows that those countries get usually the most ridiculous price overhead.
• personal problems with specific products
  some of Paula’s products and not a match with my skin and cause irritation :(

May be regarded as Cons

• not perfumed
  I see many reviewers put a great deal of emphasis on beauty products’ fragrance. While I can understand this attitude, it’s totally missing the point, in my opinion: as long as the smell does not last (and it disappears almost instantly once creams set in), it really is not important how a cream smells, but if it works and if it is actually beneficial to your skin. Perfumes are known irritants and I really don’t see a pay-off in applying one to your skin, it’s undermining the rest of the effort and the rest of the formula!
• consistency
  getting rid of irritating, ineffective or downright harmful ingredients comes at a price: many of these are usually used to maintain an uniform, creamy consistency drugstore brands made us used to. If you get rid of them, the consistency changes as well – Paula’s cosmetics are a bit more watery and most require (or could benefit from) some shaking before use.
  I think this trade-off is more than fare, again: I want to buy beauty products that are effective, not pretty. While the consistency might be a bit runny, all of them set in quickly and well, so I don’t see any prblem at all.
  Truth be told I am happy that there is a brand that emphasizes on good effects rather than customer (missed) expectations

Summary

Paula’s Choice is definitely on the top of my brand list, together with Olay.
If you’re looking for products that actually do what they claim they do and are beneficial to your skin, go for it! But drop your superstitions before-hand.
If it wasn’t for the ridiculous price mark-up in Europe, I might just use it exclusively