Let’s Start at the Very Beginning: Moisturizer I

If it wasn’t already clear to you, I’m very picky about my moisturizers. I struggle with getting moisturizers to soak cleanly into my skin without leaving a film (ick) or making me oilier than I am on my own (double ick). Why can’t I just be wrapped in lusciousness like everyone else, damn it?!

Resigning myself to my suffering.

I’m not asking for my moisturizer to change the world; I’m looking for a barrier between the outside world and my skin. Caroline Hirons likens moisturizers to putting on a coat; Cat of Snow White and the Asian Pear calls them occlusives that seal in moisture underneath. My point is that I don’t need a moisturizer with lots of fun things in it.

Hirons talks about tailoring your moisturizer choices to your skin type rather than your skin condition, and that’s what I’d be doing except that my skin is SO PICKY. Does it have oils in it? NOPE. Is it oil-free? NOPE. Is it a cream? NOPE. Is it thin and runny? NOPE. Does it have SPF? SUPER NOPE.

Revenge of the Yip Yip Martians.

Reeeejected: Cleansers and a Mask

This is exactly what the title says: a collection of things I’m totally done with for various reasons. All of these are things I disliked enough to get rid of them before they ran out, which, considering my broke-ass college student life, is a pretty significant statement.

Let’s Play Catch (Up)

My brother’s baseball dream-team is composed entirely of these two. Let’s not talk about how I made a throwing pun but picked a batting picture…

In my last post, I mentioned that I wanted to talk more about some of my current skincare decisions, but I’m going to get a bit more specific than that: I want to talk about the products that I made detailed plans to try before the break. I’m limited right now since I have things that I purchased to help my skin during its freakout, but now that it’s beginning to recover, I’m ready to start planning out future purchases.

Welcome Back (?)

Remember when this blog was a thing? LOL me neither.

I probably should have warned you before taking a 3+-month-long hiatus, but in my defense, I didn’t know I was going to be taking a hiatus either.

Guys, it was a really rough semester. I wrote my English thesis (!), got really comfy with my OBGYN (!!), and underwent round after round of allergy testing (!!!). Translation? My skin SUCKED, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. There’s only so much progress a dedicated routine can make in the face of stress and hormonal acne, and that’s assuming that your skin hasn’t, ya know, decided to throw a temper tantrum at every one of your products.

YEAH. IT WAS BAD.

I’m still undergoing food challenges periodically to determine what specific seafoods I’m allergic to, but my GYN and I have worked out a plan for dealing with my wackadoo hormones (which, we think, got thrown out of balance by the severity of my allergic reaction). Finally, FINALLY, my skin is coming to a place where skincare is starting to make a difference again, so I’m back and ready to write more ridiculously long posts whether you want to read them or not. Birds of a feather suffer together, or something.

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning: Skin Cleanser I

Listen: this was going to be a great post right up until I had a bad reaction to my cleanser. Now I’m not entirely sure what this is going to become.

I would have preferred a planned dip in the pond, but here we are.

My cleanser was the Pixi Glow Mud Cleanser. I debated about whether or not I wanted to say exactly what I had problems with (eagle-eyed readers will notice I carefully avoided doing so in the post where I talked about the reaction), but I ultimately decided that I needed to be open and honest with you all in order to cultivate a relationship built on trust. With that in mind, here’s what I’ve said about the Pixi cleanser in the past:

Ideally, I’d like to have more than one cleanser, but right now I just have Pixi Glow Mud Cleanser. This stuff was great during the summer when I was constantly sweaty and oily, but now it’s just kind of there. I tend to like it more in the mornings as a single cleanse than I do in the evenings as part of a double cleanse.

As you can see, I’ve used an entire tube of this stuff in the past with no problems. After The Seafood Incident of Christmas 2016, however, my skin has done a 360 and now hates everything. I’m not going to get into this because I already wrote about it back here; I’m just setting the scene so that it doesn’t surprise you when I say I don’t have a skin cleanser.

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning: Makeup Remover II

I’m ready to receive instruction from the governess of skincare.

In the past, though my skincare knowledge has come from the blogs I follow, most of my skincare purchases have been made on the basis of constructively-random Googling. That’s not to say that I’ve been ignoring the advice I’ve been getting; on the contrary, I take notes and compare products just as critically, if not more critically, when I’m Amazon-ing something random. However, I have noticed that there tends to be a yawning gap between blogs with good advice and the price ranges of products that those blogs recommend. There’s nothing wrong with that; I’d take La Mer press samples, too, if only someone would send them to me. If it’s a damn good product, maybe it’s worth the higher price. On the other hand, there’s always something that’s going to work just as well at a lower price point. Like I said in my last post, I want products that fall right at the intersection between those two perspectives.

All of that is to say: today I’m comparing a bunch of different makeup removers to each other to see if there are any I like (in theory) better than Clinique’s Take the Day Off Balm (TTDO).

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Broadcast: When Products Light Your Face on Fire

While I was going about my routine skincare a few nights ago, I suddenly had a bad reaction to a cleanser I’d used with no problems in the past. I’d suspected something was up because I had begun breaking out around the same time I had begun using the cleanser, but I had also started my period around that time, so I was leaving the product in my lineup until I could rule out hormones as a cause. But no! The breakouts were definitely a reaction to a product! How do I know? IIIIIIIT BUUUUUUUUURNED.

Within 30 seconds of applying the cleanser, I had turned green, shrunk several feet, and burst into flames. My childhood invisible friend Sammy Sosa snapped this photo for posterity.

In the grand scheme of reactions to products, it really wasn’t that bad: I felt a mild burning sensation on and around my nose. I didn’t actually realize it was a product at first; I thought my poor nose was just raw after two days of constantly blowing my nose (colds suck). When I wiped the cleanser off, however, I could clearly see that my whole face had turned a lovely shade of splotchy red.

Go straight to Panic. Do not pass Go; do not collect $200.

In a rare stroke of proving-I-actually-have-a-functioning-brain, I went straight to the fridge, pulled out the yogurt, and slapped on a DIY mask. I picked yogurt because (1) it’s cold, (2) it’s hydrating, and (3) dairy generally has a basic pH, and the cleanser I used contained 5% glycolic acid, so I was hoping to neutralize any of the acid still left on my skin. After I felt like my skin had calmed down, I rinsed the mask off and rewashed my face with the gentlest cleanser I own (Clinique Take the Day Off Balm) to restore my skin to the right pH (skin is around 4.5-5.0 whereas acid products in skincare are generally 3.0-4.0). And showered. Definitely shower after you put dairy all over your face because what if it gets in your hair? You’ll smell like spoiled milk. I’m getting anxious on your behalf. Just take a shower.

All of that is to say, here are my thoughts on treating newly-sensitive skin after a bad product reaction:

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning: Makeup Remover I

All I wanted was a GIF of Julie Andrews singing, “Let’s start at the very beginning,” but it proved impossible to find.

Even if you aren’t interested in Asian beauty products and trends, I think the guides on the Asian Beauty subreddit page are some of the most helpful for skincare beginners or those (like me) who are doing a major overhaul of their skincare wardrobe. In particular, I really like this post by mynomdeplumeisplume on starting your skincare purchases with the foundation of your routine, so over the next several days, I will be making posts evaluating my makeup remover, skin cleanser, moisturizer, and sunscreen. While this is what you’ll see on the blog, there is also a behind-the-scenes layer to this: my first two-week block of 2017 has begun! I have blocked out Sunday, January 1 to Saturday, January 14 to test my base routine, which you can read about in my last post.

If you’ve already forgotten what you read in that last post, my current makeup remover is Clinique’s Take the Day Off Balm (TTDO), and I’ve been using it for about three months. EDIT 1/7/17: It’s $29.00 for 4.2 oz or $6.90 per ounce, which I somehow managed to forget to put anywhere in this post. EDIT 6/4/17: Since this makeup remover emulsifies, I’ve tested its pH which came in at 7.5. Here’s what I’ve said about it before:

Clinique [TTDO] is the balm-dot-com. I rarely wear makeup, but it absolutely destroys it whenever I do, so I know it’s doing a good job of cleaning away my daily SPF. I wipe it away with a wet washcloth rather than splashing it to emulsify, and it leaves my skin feeling like a blank canvas (of skin; sorry for the weird mental image…).

… and here’s what I have to say about it now. I’ve organized my thoughts based on my skin type and skin concerns so you can easily see how I think TTDO interacts with each facet of my skin.

The Sunday Special II: Routine Skincare

This part of my super long Sunday beauty regimen is actually the least special since it’s what I do every morning and night (in some capacity).

“Given the blank look upon your face, I assume you have not completed your task.” – Dr. Patricia Tannis, Borderlands 2

This post is brought to you by Dr. Tannis because she (unlike Zed) hasn’t lost her medical license. Granted, she never had one to begin with, but the point still stands. Like Tannis, I have an intellectual understanding of how to create and execute a daily skincare routine, and like Tannis, the application of that knowledge comes out with a dose or two of insanity. My daily skincare routine is the second part of my full-out Sunday spa night: (1) bath and body, (2) routine skincare, and (3) three-step facial; in my last post, I covered bath and body and my three-step facial. As a refresher, here’s what I said in that post about the purpose behind me going through my entire beauty routine:

[…] on Christmas Day 2016, I developed a severe seafood allergy. Among other reactions, I turned red from head to toe and broke out in itchy hives. Since then (just over a week, if you count the days), I’ve noticed that my skin has been increasingly sensitive: my facial skin turns red faster after less chemical exfoliation than usual, and I’ve actually broken back out in hives from a few of my body scrubs, no matter how gently I use them. My immediate priority in the coming weeks is to reduce my exfoliation from head to toe (with one notable exception; stay tuned!) and to remove anything from my routine that seems to be too harsh for my poor, unfortunate skin.

And now, we’re ready to dive in head-first!

Are you an Ariel or a Sebastian on your skincare journey?

The Sunday Special I: Bath and Body Care and the Three-step Facial

Now that you know what my skin is like, let’s talk about what I’m doing to it.

“I’m legally obligated to tell you that I ain’t a real doctor.” – Dr. Zed, Borderlands 2

I’m not quite Dr. Zed levels of medical-license-shmedical-license, but I do have a fairly large skincare routine that was mostly formed haphazardly. Luckily, it’s a Sunday night as I’m beginning to write this post, so I can walk you through the entire process, head to toe, because Sunday is the only day of the week that I regularly go through my entire beauty routine. It basically comes in three parts: (1) bath and body, (2) routine skincare, and (3) three-step facial. Since this post became a length-monster, I’m turning the section on my regular face routine into its own post. Three massive posts in a row! If you’re groaning or rolling your eyes at me, just know that Dr. Zed and I enjoy your suffering 🙂

Fun fact: the single biggest factor in me actually starting to blog about my skincare routine was so that I could have a way of recording my product usage and reactions. Why? Because on Christmas Day 2016, I developed a severe seafood allergy. Among other reactions, I turned red from head to toe and broke out in itchy hives. Since then (just over a week, if you count the days), I’ve noticed that my skin has been increasingly sensitive: my facial skin turns red faster after less chemical exfoliation than usual, and I’ve actually broken back out in hives from a few of my body scrubs, no matter how gently I use them. My immediate priority in the coming weeks is to reduce my exfoliation from head to toe (with one notable exception; stay tuned!) and to remove anything from my routine that seems to be too harsh for my poor, unfortunate skin.

I see you over there, Ursula, casting your magic spells and trying to kill me with seafood.