All used up in May

I’m not allowed to buy more skin care products until I’ve used up the stash that’s been collecting in my drawers. This month I made at least some headway in this department.

The one thing I am allowed to buy since I constantly run out of it is hand cream, though. Here a sad empty pot of Absinthe Purifying Hand Butter by the body shop can be seen. This was very helpful with my hands and nails too I believe. Or maybe it was the body shop nail file I purchased along with it. I liked that unlike most body shop products the scent of this wasn’t so in your face.

Alverde Pflegedusche Vanilleblüte Mandarine (shower gel): This has been in the back of the drawer forever. I finally put it in the gym bag and used it up. I liked the gentle sweet smell. But since I had it for so long I don’t even know if this exists anymore. I often have this problem with Alverde or Balea products…

Kiehl’s Powerful-Strength Line-Reducing Concentrate: Includes 10,5% of Vitamin C. Here is a sad blurry pic of the ingredients list:

Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid) is the third listed ingredient, which means, yes there is a whole lot of it, even more than silicone. Usually you get mostly silicone. It did feel very silicon-y though, kind of dry. But I could use it all over with no additional moisturizer, so it’s good. Yes I know it says it’s a wrinkle concentrate but I really can’t be bothered applying a cream only in certain areas, also I advocate the use of anti-aging products against acne-prone skin. I think it did well in this regard. I didn’t have many spots while using this at all, not even during that time of the month (but note that I am on acne medication – the best face cream in the world cannot help me without that). Sometimes my face was a little red after applying it, but not always. My skin always warmed up right during application though, so not good for very hot days. The feeling stopped after a minute or two. It took me a while to realize it but this also creates a metallic smell on the skin. I think it’s the Vitamin C getting to work? *shrug*

Biotherm Homme Aquapower: Since the Kiehl’s product made my face red sometimes I needed something gentle for the mornings because I don’t want to look angry red before I leave the house. Aquapower proved to be great for mornings. It is a light gel, you can’t feel it at all after application and it moisturizes nicely. I was surprised how much I liked it, despite the scent that I found to be strong. I don’t have a thing against manly men perfume, in fact I like it lots, I am simply no fan of scented face products. List of ingredients, also blurry I am so sorry:

There’s a whole lot of stuff in there that I do not know what it does, but some of it is nice and moisturizing, like Urea and that Parkii Butter stuff. Anyway, since it’s a product targeted towards men it says it can be applied right after shaving. Minus the perfume, which is at least the very last ingredient, I enjoyed this cream a lot and am tempted to buy a full size for myself – should I ever run out of face cream which I am not sure will happen. Being a glossy box subscriber doesn’t help in that regard…

Nivea Q 10 Anti-Falten Augen Roll On (anti wrinkle eye roll on): It claims to cool and reduce swelling but I wouldn’t agree here. As an eye cream it’s good though. When I applied too much, my eye area would be puffy the next day. I think it’s because it tries to reduce the appearance of wrinkles by puffing the skin up from the inside. So while a little product is good, it was hard to control how much product to get out because of the roll on. Sometimes there would be nothing, and then way too much.

CD Q 10 Dusche (shower gel): I swear I didn’t buy Q 10 products on purpose, but they were both 50% off… Don’t have much to say about it, it’s a good shower gel.

List of ingredients for the shower gel.

Sensodyne Fluorid: mostly as a joke, my tooth paste. I heard it’s how you gauge internet fame; if people care about your tooth paste you made it. 😉

And very last, a sample of Nivea Aqua Effect Mattierende Tagescreme (mattifying day cream) for combination to oily skin, SPF 15. It says it’s combination to oily, but it’s very drying so I can only recommend for skin that is oily all over.

 

All used up in March

Eucerin Hyaluron Filler

This came in my Feb Glossybox, please excuse if I reuse the pic, but the “empty pot” pic looks no different. This face cream is for combination to oily skin. I have combination skin, but I’m always weary about products for combination to oily, since they are often very light and don’t give enough moisture to my skin. Oily skin needs moisture too! I should have been more trusting, since it even has “hyaluron” in its name, not just the ingredient list.

Upon opening it though, the product looked like a normal cream for dry skin. Application was rich and moisturizing, made my skin super glowy and obviously moisturized! This of course made me worry that it might be too rich and break me out. But that didn’t happen. I think my pores even looked a bit better with this. All in all a great product and I can only recommend it. I would repurchase it if I didn’t have what feels like 8672364 creams to use up.

Also used up and also no new picture, this time because I forgot to take one before I threw the empty packaging away:

The Body Shop Strawberry Puree Body Lotion

Before I can even talk about the product I have to complain about the packaging. These little body shop bottles are a chore! The first time around they are normal and nice to use, the second time, when there’s only a little product less in the bottle it’s already harder to get it out and from the third time onwards it’s absolutely impossible! Squeeze the bottle all you want, shake it, stick your finger in – this goo stays firmly inside! I’m sad I can’t show you a pic of the used up lotion because the bottle was very battered.

The lotion itself smells strongly of fake strawberry, so strong I could smell it washing off when showering the next day. It’s sticky and goopy. It moisturizes the skin a little, but not well enough to put up with the downsides.

Hildegard Braukmann exquisit Rose Dew Cream Mask

This was a left over from my obsession with natural cosmetics. It is supposed to moisturize the skin, if I remember properly. The scent was certainly like roses, which is a scent I personally do not like, but I’m sure there’s lots of people who love it. Of course even if I liked the scent, perfume in face products is a pet peeve of mine. The mask certainly did something to my skin, as it was usually red when I washed this off and red means my skin had exfoliated/soaked something up, but after the redness faded I could tell no difference.

Korres Pomegranate Mask

Another left over from my natural cosmetics days. I don’t usually buy natural cosmetics anymore because I was allergic to a Korres eye cream and was very sad about that.  Especially since Korres try to be careful about ingredients. (Of course you can be allergic to anything, but still I’m more wary about natural cosmetics now.) Well I wasn’t allergic to this mask. It’s a typical white clay mask with lactic acid, which exfoliates your skin. It’s good, but not “omg wow”. There are both better and worse masks out there.

Also used up but no picture:

Balea Olive Hand Cream: Very good, very cheap.

La Roche Posay Effaclar face cleanser: by this I mean the micellaire cleanser, not the other one. LRP does two different micellaire cleansers, one for normal skin (with perfume) and one for oily and irritated skin (without perfume). The one for oily and irritated skin is the Effaclar one. It is very good at removing makeup, didn’t irritate my skin and I believe there were less break outs while I used it. This may have been connected to anything on earth of course. You never know with acne. Anyway, this one is good for eyes, lips and all over the face. Would repurchase if I wasn’t trying to try out aaaaaaaall the micellaire cleansers!

By the way I’m using the word micellaire because I find it looks better than micells (Mizellen)… The ingredient to look for is Poloxamer *insert three-digit number here*, since not all the products put “micellaire” or a similar word in the name or description.

Glossybox Österreich Februar 2013

Here’s what Glossybox Austria sent me for February:

20% off for Body Shop.

DKNY pure perfume tester as an extra.

Anny nail polish in “sporty snowflake“. This is a very pale grey with blue and pink/purple duochrome. Very modern. Can’t wait to wear it. This is my first Anny polish so I have no clue about the quality of it. Full size 15ml. (review)

Body Shop Body Lotion in Strawberry Puree. Great, I just ran out of my old lotion this week. Mini size of 60ml.

Schwarzkopf Professional BC Bonacure Moisture Kick Spray Conditioner. Sadly, this one is FULL of silicones. I’m only fussy with silicones in my hair and on my scalp, somehow I don’t care when I have them on my face or body, but I really can’t stand them on my hair. Mini size of 50ml.

Eucerin Hyaluron Filler face cream for combination to oily skin. Excited to try this, sadly I still have so many other face creams to try… Mini size of 20ml.

Aok Pur Balance Seesand Peeling. This is a full size of 100ml, oh dear! I’ll never use this up! I’m not the biggest fan of peeling per grains and this has no alpha or beta hydroxy acids in. Well, I’ll see if I like this or not.

All in all, the box is pretty ok. I prefer sample sizes to full sizes these days because I just have so many products! And the sample sizes in this box are all pretty big anyway. Glad to see nail polish instead of yet another eye liner.