Max Factor Miracle Touch Creamy Blush #07 Soft Candy review/ swatch

I was overseas and accidentally left my blush in the hotel room makeup bag, so I randomly bought a quick cheap blush in the local Watsons .

I picked Max Factor's miracle Touch Creamy Blush in shade #07 Soft candy.

In the pot it looked like a juicy strawberry red, or fresh raspberry sort of shade. It's rather creamy and not too dry, definitely on the more moist side.

Comes in a rather no-frills type of packaging, a bit cheap looking to be honest. It's a screw top cap, which is lightweight to carry, but the screw mechanism is only a few twists so it can be accidentally opened in your handbag if not careful.

Made in Ireland :

Once applied it goes on like a light tint, buildable, and does not appear to be a heavy 'creme' finish that some cream type of blushes can have. (which makes some cream blushes quite hard to blend since if applied on top of foundation , they can ruin the finish of the foundation).

As with most cream blushes, it's probably best applied before liquid or powder foundations. However I find that after using a BB cream or a liquid foundation, I can carefully dot this on, and lightly pat in, without ruining the base makeup.  (Does not work so well over powder foundation though). 

Sometimes I apply a pretty heavy swipe then wait for it to set (like 15 seconds), then apply other liquid foundation or powder foundation, which then tones down the shade.

When blended out, you can see it really sheers down.  I'm not sure what 'soft candy' shade would really translate to, while I was hoping for a true sheer tint of natural red, it actually comes out more like a red coral, maybe it's with my Asian skintone it adds that yellow to the red base so it really looks like a peach coral on my skin.

This is as sheer as it can look when fully blended out below, which really says how buildable it is.

Overall it's a nice cheap blush, the color is nothing special though and the formula is standard, not bad but not brilliant. Rating is 3/5. It's something cheap to try (was like about $6USD in Asia), but in terms of real value for money, I found I got rather bored of this shade after a few weeks (whereas I'd happily hit pan on my Jill Stuart blushes). Also the surface of the blush can get a bit dirty after a while, since it's best applied with finger rather than brush. So it also makes it less appealing in the makeup bag.

What I used up this August - Vichy Rehydrating Thermal mask/ Peter Thomas Roth botanical buffing beads/ Ren Jojoba Micro Bead Purifying Facial Scrub/ La Cure dead sea mineral salt soap reviews

Still on my quest of reducing amount of skincare in my bathroom cupboards. Here's my effort for this August.

First Vichy Rehydratin Thermal Mask. It's meant to be a light creamy mask that is applied for cleansed skin, leave for 10 min then rinse off. It's supposed to be lightly warming when on the skin.

Comes in a no-fuss squeeze tube, flip open cap, and a pretty small size of 50ml. 

It looks like this...almost like a light moisturising cream. It's easily spreadable and rather light, does not leave an oily residue so doesn't really require a super through rinse off. It does go on lukewarm, has a very typical skincare scent which smells a bit artificial for my liking. 

Honestly, it's a very boring mask- after rinsing off it hardly does anything for the skin. There is no visible hydration. I've tried to leave it on overnight but it seemed to be slightly pore clogging and left my face shiny the next morning (while not intensely hydrating either). Definitely a pass and will not be repurchasing.

Rating is 1/5.

Next item is La Cure Dead Sea Mineral Salt Soap, which is a Jordon company. No idea whether it's a big brand or not, but it's stocked in a few tourist shops and hotels during my trip in Jordon. (and given we stayed in quite nice hotels and western resorts, I expect the brand to be at least up to the standard of those hotels).

It's meant to be consisted of palm oil, palm kernel oil, dead sea salt, glycerin, and some perfume. 

(Sorry, again blogger flipped my image)

Inside it's just shrinkwrapped like below.

Add water - you can see it's slightly foaming.

Overall I think it's clearly a body soap, not for the face. While it says recommended for dry skin, I think that's definitely a climate thing. Yes if you have dry skin while living in Jordon this might be hydrating enough. However when used in the winter cold Sydney, it's very clear there's enough salt in this to be a bit drying. That being said, it's good as a body soap for the back and chest area where you get some congestions or zits ocassionally, and that's what I've been using this soap for. 

It's especially good after I use a hair masque, and the masque residue leaves a slippery feeling on my back (which cannot be good for the skin), I double cleanse with this soap quickly and my back has been congestion free this season and generally smoother to touch.

The soap is a smooth soap, no granules or anything. It's quite nice for what I'm using it for, but I'm sure  a lot of soap brands out there can do similar things as I usually find soap to be a bit more drying than body washes for me.

Rating is 3.5/5. Nice product for my purposes, but entirely replaceable by probably a dozen brands out there.

Next is Peter Thomas Roth Botanical Buffing beads. It's for face and body , supposedly with sebum emulsifying jojoba beads, whole leaf aloe vera  and botanical nutrients.

When I first got really interested in makeup and skincare a few years ago, this was one of the highest rated products on www.makeupalley.com for a scrub (mainly for face).

I used a very small travel sized bottle and decided to buy a full sized bottle. Which is 250ml and comes in a really no-frills looking plastic bottle.

It comes in a click open cap like this- which is always clogged when product dries inside. Not the best mechanism- they need something with a bigger opening.

Product looks like below. It's a lot of super smooth, small jojoba beads suspended in a light blue gel. The scent is light, slightly cucumbery sort of scent. It's a pretty neutral scent so I'm sure guys won't have problem using it either.

Add a bit of water: you can see it spreads really easily, it's non foaming.

Massaged in and rinsed off:

It leaves the skin polished and not overly drying. It really was a staple for quite a few years for me, not too abrasive on my thin skin, yet sloughes off dead skin lightly and gently. However it's very similar to other products such as Ren Jojoba Micro Bead Purifying Facial Scrub or the Laneige Multiberry Yoghurt peeling gel which I reviewed before. In fact out of all 3, Laneige Multiberry Yoghurt peeling gel may be the better of it all, because the Ren Jojoba Micro Bead purifying facial scrub is similar to Peter Thomas Roth, while there's jojoba beads inside, the base is a usual cleanser base. The laneige base is an enzyme cleanser so not only do you get a light physical exfoliation with the jojoba beads, you also get a mild exfoliation overall with the enzyme in the Laneige cleanser.

Rating for Peter Thomas Roth is 4/5. It does the job, comes in an extremely generous size (honestly I had it for 2 years and used at most about 60% of it, even after using it as a body scrub occasionally). Personally I think it's too mild as a body scrub.

While I'm at it, here's the Ren Jojoba Micro Bead Purifying Facial Scrub. I quite like the Ren product concept and range in general, so this was a quick purchase on a whim.

It comes in a 150ml squeeze bottle. You may notice the bottom of the bottle seem a bit odd- basically most of Ren products come in these pump bottles which are refillable, the product itself is actually in like a plastic bag, which you pop into the bottle. While I think the whole refillable idea is nice, but honestly this isn't something like handwash where you would go through bottles constantly, so the refill idea isn't exactly super practical. (in addition it's inevitable that the bottle gets damaged or the pump gets blocked at some point, so it's hard to see the bottle lasting more than a year or two).

Active ingredients is jojoba oil, juniper oil and peppermint oil.

Ren says it's a deep cleansing scrub formulated with microbeads of jojoba oil. Apply on damp face, gentle massage then rinse.

Comes in a squeeze pump, which is easy to use and no blockage yet occurred.

You can barely see the jojoba beads below, but basically any white bit is the jojoba beads. The more gel bit is the cleanser base. There is a lot of jojoba beads and they are very small and round, it's pretty much like Peter Thomas Roth botanical buffing beads.

Added a little bit of water, massaged out. You can see it's a bit grainy looking, which is the jojoba beads. 

The jojoba beads do not melt or anything, it just rolls around the skin gentle as you massage it in.

Overall it's exactly like PTR botanical buffing beads. The Ren product has pretty minimal scent, but also rinses off just as easily. Like both products, the jojoba beads sometimes do get trapped slightly between eyelashes  as you rinse off, so just rinse off a bit more carefully. 

The Ren product has peppermint oil which means it has a very, very slight tingle/ cooling sensation and a very slight minty scent. It must be a very low concentration because after using it for a while, it's almost un-noticeable.

Rating is 4/5. It does what it says. Mild exfoliation.  For those needing a more serious scrub like those microdermabrasion type of scrubs (e.g. Dr Brandt or the Lancome version), this is probably too mild for you . But again, suitable for those with sensitive skin who only need a light scrub (more like polish actually) once a week. 

Schwarzkopf Ultimate Colour Multi-Usage Permanent Colour Foam #400 DARK BROWN swatch/ review

 

 I'm obviously going through my camera photos again... here's a review of the Schwarzkopf Ultimate Colour multi-usage permanent colour foam. This is the darkest brown shade in the series, "400 Dark Brown".

These are a lot more expensive than the Permanent Mousse range, probably because the packaging of the foam hair dye is in a can.  It retails for around 18-20AUD in Priceline in Sydney, the total content is 2 x 40ml = 80ml. (the metal can is pre-designed in two metal tubes, once you squeeze the nozzle it effectively mixes them together, as opposed to the permanent mousse range where you have to mix the solutions together yourself.)

I got this during Priceline sale for about 15AUD, never saw it for cheaper than that.

The color indicator in the back seems to suggest an ultra dark cool toned deep brown shade.

Here's the foam. And a picture of the useless gigantic plastic gloves enclosed which are the worst gloves I've ever used in any brand of foam hair color. They are too big and slips off easily once you are trying to work the foam into your hair.

You can see the foam has white bits and brown bits, this is because the nozzle pumps out both solutions at once. It doesn't affect the application.

Instructions below, click to enlarge.

Basically apply foam to dry hair, massage in, wait for 30 min then rinse off (no shampoo needed), Then condition.

The benefit they are touting for this particular product is that you can re-use it. Which is the same concept as Salon de Pro line (from Japan). I only bought 1 can so used the entire amount this time. In terms of foam, you get a nice dense foam that's better than the Permanent Mousse range. You also seem to get a bit more foam compared to the Permanent mousse range, felt like maybe 10-15% more output (but given the permanent mousse range retails for 14AUD full price and often 10-11AUD while on sale, the price to quantity ratio isn't better).

Here's my hair color BEFORE, which is the Schwarzkopf Permanent Mousse foam colour in shade 3-0 Dark Brown after 4 weeks. There was slight fading.

This is still the BEFORE color, in some lights the fading isn't as obvious.

All pictures below are the  Ultimate Colour Multi-Usage foam in #400 Dark Brown. You can see the ends are visibly a slight different color since the quantity was not enough for a full head coverage to the end of hair. (I prefer to focus all the foam application on the roots for my grey coverage).

Here's hair after styling with my hot curler  (I think I used conair 31mm hot curler).

Top of head- at least I got an even color coverage there and no grey roots. You can see my hair's still reasonably shiny too. (I applied my usual variations of hair masques from various brands for a full week after every shampoo to ensure the foam colours don't damage my hair).

Overall I like the concept that you can re-use part of the bottle, which is ideal for grey roots touch-ups.

I do find this also covers grey hair as well as the usual Permanent mousse range.

Honestly I think this #400 dark Brown is just a smidget darker than the shade 3-0 Dark Brown from the Permanent mousse foam range.  You can probably use 3-0 for full head and then use this shade for grey root touch-ups.

There's also little odour.

Again the only gripe I have with this is I would need two bottles to cover my full head of hair, (which is slightly above armpit length), which means $40AUD at full retail price- that's not much cheaper than going to a professional hairdresser here. (A standard hairdresser in Sydney would charge like $60 for a color touch up for my length of hair, unless you go to a premium hairdresser). I would guess to fully cover my hair with sufficient foam, I need about 1.5 bottles or even the full 2 bottles.

Rating is 4/5. Still easy to use, but as with all Schwarzkopf foam hair dyes, they should give you a bigger quantity. Having to use two bottles is just doubling the cost and defeats the point of going for a DIY hair dye.

Schwarzkopf Perfect Mousse Permanent Foam Colour 3-0 Dark brown 3.0 review/ swatch

I've been meaning to review this foam hair dye from Schwarzkopf for ages, I've used at least 5-6 bottles of this but just never remembered to take photos until now.

This has became my staple hair foam dye for this winter, firstly because of ease of access (sold in Priceline and supermarkets- though I find priceline has the most complete hair color options), secondly the price is great, Priceline often have these on sale for $10-11AUD each. (RRP is about 14-15AUD).

This shade is 3-0 Dark Brown. It looks like the most cool toned brown (with possibly slight green base for that 'ash brown' sort of look, but really subtle). Unfortunately most other shades in the Swarzkopf brown series are red based and warmer colors. This is about the darkest brown in all the available shades, the next shade is 1.0 black.

Usual contents below. 

The application is as usual. Put the content of the black bottle into the large white bottle. put nozzle on. Then squeeze pump to get the foams. Massage foam from roots then work to end of hair. Rinse, condition, then dry hair.

Also comes with a conditioner (which I thought was weak- after first two bottles, I end up never using these and stick with my usual Kerastase or any other brand hair masques).

Also comes with some cheap plastic gloves- they are gigantic and very difficult to use. On a few occasions when I remember, I actually buy those latex gloves from supermarket instead. 

Not much point in showing before color- I find this shade has excellent coverage and does not fade a lot. I mainly reapply each time to cover my few grey roots (I'd say I have maybe a few hundred grey hair, but it's not obvious yet- I'm just really picky about any grey roots).

Here's how it looks after about 2 weeks. 

Indoor light, this is as dark as it looks (I like it since it's a good color for winter, not too light, almost blackened brown so it's good for the office).

Under different lighting this is as light as it looks, a shiny dark brown.

Again here. with flash photography some strands look a bit more chestnut brown, but in reality I don't find it to be as warm and definitely does not fade to a brassy red or orange.

The shade also looks rather natural. I don't do highlights or any special techniques, but it's not flat looking or streaky.

I also want to add the grey coverage is excellent with this shade. It's probably due to the fact I often have to use two full bottles if I was doing my full head of hair. That's a major down point- there is simply insufficient content , you clearly need about 2 bottles for any hair length over the shoulder.  (Mine is just above armpit length). I have a lot of hair so it also means you need 2 bottles to ensure even foam coverage, otherwise 1 bottle may barely cover the roots, not even enough to work a bit to the ends to make it look natural.

I also leave this in for 30-40 minutes (I count the 30-40 minutes from the time AFTER I applied everything and massaged it in, so that excludes any application time. Though it only takes me 10-15 min to apply).

It also isn't too drying so my hair doesn't turn into straw afterwards. However would still strongly recommend using a hair masque regularly if you use foam hair dyes (just swap your conditioners with hair masques).

Overall:

Pros: - good grey hair coverage, relatively cheap, does not have strong odour, easy to apply.  Rinses out easily (instructions says rinse with water until water runs clear, then apply usual masque. i.e. do not shampoo. Also does not stain the skin very much. Very little fading. 

Cons-  too little product inside, compared to any other brand I have tried. The foam product is 35ml + 35ml mixed together so that's only 75ml.

Loreal sublime mousse only contains 39ml + 26ml so a total of 65ml- however the foams come out and feels like maybe 10-20% more than Schwarzkopf in terms of application areas.

- the gloves are rubbish- they are very loose and hard to use. Also very cheap and flimsy. Latex gloves are much easier to use (though I guess some people are allergic to latex).

Rating is still 4/5 since I just like this color. The fading is much better than a lot of other foam hair dyes and grey coverage is miles ahead of Liese and Prettia. Loreal sublime mousse has decent coverage too but I just didn't like any of the L'oreal colors.

Please note if you have anything other than naturally black hair or dark brown hair, this color may easily turn out way too dark for you, most foam hair colors really tend to go on darker than it looks.

Fancl U Zone Firm Up Mask & Bioderma Sensibio Soothing Mask review

Didn't realise I was away from the blog for so long! well things have been busy and I was also on a few weeks holiday so now I'm back again.

Quick review of two masks I tried recently, firstly it's a sheet mask from Fancl called the "U Zone Firm Up Mask".

(Click to enlarge picture below)

The mask is meant to be limited edition, and with Fancl's signature HTC collagen complex and it's aimed at overall firming in the "U" shaped portion of lower face. i.e. to remove the double chin or bloated look.

It has a really interesting shape like below:

The masks come in box of 3 separate satchels. Retails about $130HKD in HK (which is like 17USD).

Here it is on me- the picture is so small since I think it looks so silly. But you can see the mask is a typical sheet mask material. It's not particularly damp actually, unlike many other brands of mask where you get leftover serum to apply to rest of your body or arms if you like, the mask is only moist enough for that 20 minutes on your face and does not drip.

I think in terms of the face hugging, it does what it says due to the design of the mask. It hugs the chin and cheek area really well. After application I can see a (temporary) firmness and extra supple looking skin (which can be achieved with most moisturising masks). However there is no real visible long term effect. This is clearly one of those feel good products, just use it as a normal moisturising mask I suppose. Not on my repurchase list unless I can find it on sale or something.

Next one is Bioderma Sensibio Mask. I truly love the Bioderma micellar water as a makeup remover. So I also grabbed a few other items. The Sensibio line features red prints on white tube packaging, and it's targeted at sensitive skin.

Just a typical flip up squeeze tube.

The instructions say spread a light layer on cleansed skin, wait 10 minutes then wipe off or rinse off. It has a light creamy consistency that is non oily.

However, the overall effect was pretty bland. I think I didn't even finish the whole tube before it actually expired so I had to throw it out. While it's comfortable to use, and convenient for e.g. applying it to cleansed skin before shower, then hop in the shower , wash your hair , then rinse off this mask at last step and you get a bit of extra boost of moisture, it is very weak compared to most moisturising masks out there.

It was non-irritating on my sensitive skin as advertised, but I did not feel it moisturised very much compared to any hyaluronic moisturizer masks or serums out there. Definitely a pass for me.