The Skincare Line Up: February 11th, 2022

That’s right my darlings it is time for my favorite post of the week. It’s the skincare line up where we look at the products in motion and how I feel they are performing. The good, the bad and the indifferent. Are you ready? Fabulous! Then let’s get to it.

The Daytime Line Up

Cleanser: Malin + Goetz Grapefruit Face Cleanser

Toner: Kopari Coconut Rose Toner

Essence: 111Skin Antioxidant Energizing Essence

Serum: Grace and Stella Hyaluronic Acid Serum

Eye Cream: Glam Glow Bright eyes (discontinued)

Moisturizer: Polaar Eternal Snow Youthful Promise Cream

This is kind of a fun week as we have a lot of products on the way out. The first item is the Malin + Goetz Grapefruit Face Cleanser. Now many of you may think to yourself, wait a minute, that hasn’t actually been in the line up that long. And you are right, it hasn’t. the bottle is still a little over half way full. My babydoll loves grapefruit scented anything and has decided he really likes the scent of it, so it is being transferred from my morning routine to his. I am more than happy to pass it on (despite the fact that I love it) because he is very picky about what products he will even try so if he will use the cleanser I will give it to him and just purchase a new one. It is a great cleanser and I know it will return.

The Kopari toner is also a good item in terms of how it performs, but I have to admit, the scent is a bit trying. I decided the sample sized Buttah Skin toner that came in my Macy’s bag was the perfect excuse to take a little bit of a break from it. I will come back to it because it is a good toner and I hate to waste product, but a little break is not a bad thing. In fact this toner for me works best in short bursts. I generally am okay with it for a week or two before the scent gets to me. I figure if I use it for a week or two and then roll in a sample or even my Thayers toner to give myself a break I can use it up in the most enjoyable way possible.

The 111Skin Essence and Grace and Stella HA acid are still top notch and still going strong. I am about halfway through the Grace and Stella serum because so little is used. Very little of the essence is also used so that level is dropping slowly bit by bit. I will be keeping both in the line up this week to continue using. And I am very happy to keep using them in the line up.

The eye cream is almost empty as is the Polaar moisturizer. The eye cream has been discontinued but the Polaar is a moisturizer i can’t wait to use in the full size. I actually have a full size of the product waiting to be used, however I think I want to roll through a few more samples before I give it a try. I have a few more days of this sample left so I have a little time to think about it, but I really do like this moisturizer. The big reason I’m waiting is that when I try it I want to try it out as both a day and a night cream so I want to finish the night cream I am currently using before giving the Polaar a full trial. Plus I don’t mind clearing out a few sample sizes.

Those were more or less the highlights from the day time line up, shall we venture into the night?

The Night Time Line Up

Cleanser: Elemis Balancing Lime Blossom Cleanser

currently this cleanser is 30% off and in my opinion, so worth stocking up

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Toner: Kopari Coconut Rose Toner

Essence: 111Skin Antioxidant Energizing Essence

Serum: Serumkind Purple Cabbage Drops

Eye Cream: Glam Glow Bright eyes (discontinued)

Moisturizer: Kate Somerville Exfolikate Glow Moisturizer

Lip Mask: Laneige Lip Sleeping Mask

Facial Oil: Byroe Fig Renewal Oil

Elemis as always is working fabulously. I absolutely love the scent of this lime Blossom Cleanser. Since I am rolling in a new cleanser this coming week, I may set this to the side for a bit. Partially I want to give the new cleanser a full trial, but mostly because if anything goes wrong with changing out so many products, i want to have this cleanser waiting on standby. It is gentle enough that I know any irritation caused by any other product won’t be exacerbated by this cleanser. I’m not anticipating any problems, but I like to err on the side of caution. Plus I’ll need to give the new cleanser a full trial.

The serumkind serum isn’t as annoying at night as it was in the morning. The trick to getting the serum into the dropper is to take the dropper out of the bottle completely, squeeze the rubber nub down as much as possible to get all the air out, then insert the dropper into the serum and let go of the top. This way the serum is pulled up. I know everyone knows how a dropper works, but if you try squeezing it while it is in the bottle all you will do is push air bubbles into the serum and not get any serum into the dropper. This is a trick I remember much more clearly in the evening than I do first thing in the morning. Hence the reduced irritation. I still can’t see much of an impact on my skin from the serum so my plan is to keep using it until my IPSY bag comes in. I added on a Korres Serum I have been itching to try. I’ll feel justified in jumping it to the front of the line if use up enough of this serum. At least that is the plan.

The Kate Somerville is still a good night time moisturizer. The longer I have it open, the more intense the scent of the cream becomes. I don’t need a whole lot of the cream so it has lasted a while. Some how it seems like the lemon scented cleaner scent of it is becoming stronger. I don’t know if I’m just becoming more sensitive to it or if it is actually intensifying. The scent fades pretty fast once the moisturizer is applied, but I can’t say the scent makes me love the cream. I like the way it feels on my skin, but I’m not so sure I’d purchase it again.

This week i do have one new product in my night time line up. It is the Byroe Fig Renewal oil. A friend of mine told me that she has been using face oil on the fine lines around her mouth and loved the results so I decided to give it a try. Partially because I have fine lines around my mouth that i don’t like and partially because I have quite the collection of unopened facial oils. It is one of those categories i don’t use very often, so if i can use t for this, I am happy to do so. This far this Byroe oil has been fast absorbing and not at all greasy. Plus it smells like figs, which I really like, the green part of figs not the sweet jammy part. I think the jammy scent would just make me feel sticky. This just smells and feels fresh and clean. I took before photos and I will give it a full run to see how it performs. I also have to say, I like the look of this sweet little pink bottle on my bathroom shelf. I know looks aren’t everything, but I do like the look of it.

And so my darlings that is the skincare line up for this week. I know, not a lot has changed since last week, but next week is going to have a lot of changes. So think of this as the calm before the storm. Not that i think there will be a storm. Or at least i hope there won’t be. There will however be several new products to check out. And won’t that be exciting?

Dropping the Purple Cabbage

They say that looks aren’t everything. Yet they are often what draws you in. This Serumkind Purple Cabbage Drop Serum is no excerption. Just look at it. The slim glass bottle, squared off instead of simply round, but with the corners rounded off. The purple serum that almost glows in the light. Through the serum you can make out the thin glass dropper.

It is a thing of beauty. And it is clear that someone spent some time thinking about the design. And it is a lovely design. It also matches the other products from the Serumkind line. I went on their website and they have a Youth Glow Serum that looks like orange, yellow and red dots glowing in the tube. All of the serums look sleek and beautiful in the packaging.

But as beautiful as it looks, it is ultimately what is inside that counts. So what is inside this $49 serum? Let’s look at the product page shall we?

“Soothe and replenish with purple cabbage.”

Purple cabbage from Jeju Island contains beta-glucan which helps bring radiance and breathes live into dull and malnourished skin. The high concentration of anthocyanin and lysine provides anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits.
Serumkind

INGREDIENTS: BRASSICA OLERACEA CAPITATA (CABBAGE) LEAF EXTRACT, GLYCERIN, AQUA/WATER/EAU, METHYLPROPANEDIOL, METHYL GLUCETH-20, BETAINE, HYDROXYETHYL ACRYLATE/SODIUM ACRYLOYLDIMETHYL TAURATE COPOLYMER, C12-14 PARETH-12, COCCINIA INDICA FRUIT EXTRACT, 1,2-HEXANEDIOL, ECLIPTA PROSTRATA EXTRACT, TREHALOSE, XANTHAN GUM, MELIA AZADIRACHTA LEAF EXTRACT, MELIA AZADIRACHTA FLOWER EXTRACT, ETHYLHEXYLGLYCERIN, SORBITAN ISOSTEARATE, BETA-GLUCAN, ALOE BARBADENSIS FLOWER EXTRACT, SOLANUM MELONGENA (EGGPLANT) FRUIT EXTRACT, OCIMUM SANCTUM LEAF EXTRACT, CORALLINA OFFICINALIS EXTRACT, CURCUMA LONGA (TURMERIC) ROOT EXTRACT, FRAGRANCE/PARFUM

※ Purple Cabbage Drop contains a very small amount (0.04%) of allergen-free fragrance to cover the raw material(Red Cabbage Extract) scent which can be unpleasant to some customers.

First off, I am very pleased to see that the ingredient the serum is named for is actually listed first. That’s right cabbage comes first. There is also a small, and admittedly childish part of me that finds it amusing that they dimmed the cabbage scent with allergen-free fragrance to cover the scent of cabbage. One of my favorite summer time meals is a spring roll salad which has both purple and Napa cabbage in it so I am familiar with the scent. Like most of the brassicas thee can be a somewhat sulfurous scent associated with them that is also associated with breaking wind. It is slight in the uncooked cabbage but I am childishly amused that they saw fit to remove it.

The scent of the purple cabbage drops is that of purple cabbage with the sulfurous bits removed. It is an oddly pleasant and fresh scent. Perhaps some of that is due to the added fragrance though. If so, it still seems like a natural and fresh scent. I was quite pleasantly surprised. The serum is thick and somewhat viscous when dispensed onto the hand. While it absorbed well onto the skin of the face, my hands felt somewhat sticky after applying the serum so I always washed my hands immediately after putting the serum to my face. Since I apply moisturizer over my serums and stickiness left by the serum on my face was neutralized.

In the past month of use the biggest issue I have had with this serum has been the pretty, pretty bottle. Or more precisely the long thin dropper in the pretty, pretty bottle. The thinness of the dropper stem, while delightful to look at, it too thin to adequately get the serum out of the bottle. And it is a problem that grows with each use.

At first the dropper picked up enough serum with each draw from the bottle for one use. This quickly ceased to be the case (as in less than a week). It was then a two or three dip procedure with the dropper to get enough serum out to apply it. The serum is simply too thick for the dropper.

the air bubbles now trapped in the serum

As the product level dropped it became harder to pick up the product. And each use of the serum and dropper combo introduced more air into the serum so that often you are getting more air bubbles than serum. I am concerned that mixing so much air with the serum is going to cause the serum to spoil more rapidly.

One thing I did find is that if you take the dropper out of the bottle completely, pinch the dropper shut making sure that all air is expelled from the dropper, then put it back in the tube, it will draw the product in. But it you squeeze it at all while it is in the bottle of product, it will just push more air into the product.

It is usable, it just requires a bit of thinking. And to be honest, I don’t do my best thinking in the morning. I tend to put on the coffee, then apply my skincare, which means I’m a bit slow. Even after I figured out that I needed to remove the dropper, expel all the air and then reinsert the dropper to get the serum, odds are I would have already stared stupidly at the air bubbles and lack of serum dispensed before I remembered. which just made it somewhat aggravating to use.

It did not help that in the past month I’ve been using this serum, I can’t point to a single beneficial thing on my face that I can attribute to this serum. My dark spots are the same shade. My skin does not look any brighter. The redness that might have been calmed, wasn’t and most of the nourishing seemed to come from the moisturizer I applied after. I tried leaving it off for a few days and thee was no noticeable difference. I wanted to like this serum. Partially i wanted to like it because it just looks stunning on my skincare shelf and because I could easily picture other items from the brand lined up with it. And in part I just like the thought of purple cabbage being used as skincare.

And if it had some impressive results then I would put up with the minor annoyance of the dropper. And the fact that it tries to make me think before I have had my coffee. But the results are minimal and the pretty bottle isn’t enough to triumph over the annoyance. Without distinctive results, to me this serum simply isn’t worth repurchasing. I will use it until it is gone, but I will not repurchase the Purple Cabbage Drops from Serumkind and I will have to think long and hard about whether or not I want to try another serum from the brand. Pretty may draw me in, but it isn’t enough to get me to stay.

The Skincare Lineup: January 7th, 2022

Good morning my darlings. It is time once again to look at all the skincare products in this week’s line up. I always look forward to this post. and I hope you enjoy it. This week was interesting. On a couple of products I am approaching the one month mark which means full reviews are eminent. A couple of products are still new and I am trying to get a feel for and a few, I’m just not sure about. Kind of a nice mix. So let’s get started with it.

The Daytime Line Up

Cleanser: Elemis Balancing Lime Blossom Cleanser

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Toner: Glow Recipe Watermelon PHA + BHA Pore Tight Toner

Essence: 111SKIN Antioxidant energizing Essence

Serum: TerraVibe CBD Age Defying Eye Serum with hyaluronic acid

Moisturizer: Kate Somerville Exfolikate Glow Moisturizer

Okay, the elemis Cleanser I have been using off and on for over a month now and absolutely love it. I will be posting a full review with all sorts of details hopefully next week but here I will just say it is a fantastically gentle cleanser. Even when I had issues with some sort of allergic reaction, this cleanser worked well for me. Cleanses without irritating. It doesn’t hurt that Lime Blossom is one of my favorite scents.

I can’t say I feel as warmly about the Glow Recipe Toner. There are some products from Glow Recipe I love and others that i don’t. I happen to really like the Avocado sleep mask. I really don’t like this toner. For me it is mostly the scent. As a toner product it seems to work well. Normally the watermelon scents of Glow Recipe’s products don’t bother me, but something about this smells off to me. I think it might have something to do with the BHAs and PHAs added to it. Somehow that seems to have altered the scent so it still smells like watermelon but it smells like watermelon mixed with stale water. I am working my way through it though and will continue to use the product up. I will not be repurchasing it.

I will probably repurchase the Terra Vibe Serum though. This morning I hit exactly thirty days of use and will be taking my after photos to go along with the before ones I already took. I;ll have to see what the photos say, but I do feel a really big improvement in the texture of my skin, so I am pleased with this product. I will be posting a full review on Monday. But I am a fan.

And finally we reach the Moisturizer. This is an interesting one as I am currently using it as both a day and night cream. And to be honest I feel very different about it in the day and night time uses. To put it bluntly, it is too heavy for day time use with my skin. It is just too moisturizing. At night it is perfect, but it is not a cream I can wear in the day. I’ve noticed each day I am taking less and less for application onto my face. So I think I am going to shift this to just night time use and roll in a day cream for this next week’s line up. of course night time use is completely different. Let’s take a look at that.

The Night Time Line Up

Cleanser: Elemis Balancing Lime Blossom Cleanser

Toner: Glow Recipe Watermelon PHA + BHA Pore Tight Toner

Essence: 111SKIN Antioxidant energizing Essence

Serum: Serumkind Purple Cabbage Drop

Moisturizer: Kate Somerville Exfolikate Glow Moisturizer

Lip Mask: Laneige Sleeping Lip Mask

Okay a lot of the products were the same from day to night so we will focus on the differences. The first difference is the Serum. Because I was testing out a serum with hyaluronic acid in the day, I went with a brightening serum for the night so that i could tell what was doing what. Because let’s face it if you have three hyaluronic acid products how do you tell if it is just one or all of them combined giving you the results. Or worse, one who is masking their ineffectiveness behind a rock star product?

So I separated the products. While I used the Purple cabbage drops for a few days prior to this week, it is still a very new to the line up product. Thus far I haven’t used it long enough to actually see any results. And to be honest there were a few days this week where I think I forgot to use it. I’m fighting a cold at the moment so there were a couple of days where my night time routine was reduced to taking off the makeup and slapping on the moisturizer before crawling into bed. So I can’t really say too much about this serum yet. I do like that it is a thick feeling serum that absorbs rather quickly and has only a light fresh scent to it. I was kind of worried it would smell like cabbage. Well not just cabbage, over cooked cabbage I suppose. It does not. Hopefully after this coming week I will have formed more of an opinion.

While the moisturizer is the same as I used in the day time line up, the night is where it belongs. This moisturizer provided enough moisture that I didn’t feel myself needing to reach for an extra dose of night mask. The scent is vaguely lemon cleaner-y but it isn’t too heavy and I find I don’t mind it. I think that my nose tips it more into the lemon verbena category than the industrial lemon cleaner scent that gives me fits with the Balance Me products. This moisturizer does take a little while to absorb, but it left my skin feeling beautifully soft and hydrated when i woke up the next morning. It is another reason that it is better used at night. Even with a small amount in the day time, you just had an hour or so of shiny face in the morning while it takes it’s time absorbing in. It is worth giving it the time because it is a good product, but I just don’t have that kind of time in the morning. I will happily keep using this moisturizer at night, but i will swap in a day time cream as well. This is a night time product only.

Also used only at night is the Laneige Lip mask. I really like it for night time moisturizing of the lips. As I have been fighting a cold it has been especially helpful this week. Whenever i have a cold my lips tend to dry out fast. This mask has been helping to keep that drying to a minimum. So I am happy to have it in the line up. Mine is the Berry Scent and I have used it before. I do want to branch out and try their other flavors/scents. Do you know they have one called Gummy Bear? that sounds like fun. It will take me a while to work my way through this jar though, so a repurchase is far into the future.

And there you have it my darlings, the weekly skincare line up. After a previous bad reaction, I feel like my skin is now back on solid ground, While this week’s products don’t have universal praise, it isn’t all in all not a bad group to kick off the New Year.