“I regret taking such a good care of my skin.”
-said no one ever-
I love to have makeup on my face (I call putting makeup on my face as my remedy) but also give focus on my skin care regime. I have been changing my skin care regime for so many times like normal person just to find out which one is actually works for my challenging skin type. Especially after every flight, my skin looks dull (and I look older). Dry skin but get pimples easily, all the lines that I feel always look stronger after I landed from a stressful flight. Damn you 55H & 63K that kept asking for whiskey and cola on the rock without ice for the whole 16 hours flight! Don’t ask me where did he get this terminology from. I keep holding my laugh and pity every single time a passenger ask me for this kind of stuff.
Anyway, I will try to put an honest review here based on my personal experience about the skin care product I am using and I have been using them for more than 5 months (some of them are more). I do not get any endorsement or do not mean to offend any brand here. Just trying to share my experience that might be helpful for my reader that are looking for skin care products.
First of all, I have to tell you about my daily life that affects my skin condition. Flying killed my skin. The air in the aircraft is extremely dry plus I have a full makeup face on every flight. Average flying hour per month for me is 100 hours and most of them are 5 hours+ flights. I can get long flight which is more than 10 hours, twice in a month. Not necessarily to be every month but it happens.
I do not get a daily proper sun. I can go from a sunny place in Mauritius to a cold snowy weather in Moscow within 5 days, I get non stop air conditioner exposure, four different beds to sleep within a week and lack of sleep. But thank God I am not a smoker so at least after all the bad stuff I said above, I still have a plus here for my skin. All of the above leads my skin into dull, dry combination and lines. The challenge for me is to nourish my skin without lead it to pimples problem, and please, do not tell me to drink a lot of water. My back is having two bumps like a camel for keeping the whole water I drink every single time.
I tried all the stuff like serum from Clarins, the set of SKII products, Clinique, serum from Estee Lauder. Girl! You name it! I almost give up because I felt that it worked only for 3 months but then it brought another problem to my skin or no progress at all. I do not blame these products because I swear if I could I would invent my own skin care products for a strange skin condition like mine.
The search of a good product finally gave me a result when I found a Korean product under the brand Some by MI. The products are under the line Miracle. I was using the toner, the serum and the moisturizer, with the green packaging.
The result :
One week is the time this set needed to prove the amazing work. My skin started to get better. The glow was slowly appear. Within a month my face was literally got better. The pimples were slowly gone and the pores were smaller. My skin was so smooth and the redness was slowly got off. I have to admit that I was a bit sceptical with this brand. I bought them only because I saw a repetitive advertisement popped up on my phone. My skin was really in a good condition and I used them for almost 5 months until I found that my face skin was getting brighter and the skin tone was increasing. In the Asian dictionary I said that my face was “whiter”, which I hate it. I did not notice there is a whitening ingredients inside the products so I said that I need to change no matter how good they worked into my skin. Because at the end my face looked funny. White face but yellow tone for the rest of my body? Thank you, next!
In this case if you are looking for something affordable but great for your skin, I will totally recommend this product. Especially the ones that want a whiter face skin, this is definitely the right choice.
The search continued after that I found a friend makes calendula oil that can be a moisturizer. I bought few bottles and it worked but only for few days until it clogged my skin and pimples came out like crazy. So I stopped it and found a post from a colleague in a group about the product from The Ordinary. Little did I know, I was using it in a wrong way and later on I will explain how I finally make peace with calendula oil and how it changes the game.
Back to The Ordinary, I started to look for the review of the products and all the reviews convinced me to give a shot for the product that for the first time I tried to trust a skin care line product that cheaper than a lunch delivery in Dubai. I read the website and they have a guidance for every skin problem. It is an absolute great idea because then as a costumer, I know which product I should get without having confusion.
Below is the detail of my current skin care regime. I am really excited to talk about this and I hope you do as well!! Please note that all this regime I do is only based on my comfort and a little knowledge I got left and right. You are free to change as you prefer.
First thing first, removing the dirts. I found it tricky to find the perfect way of cleaning my face. Especially after the flight where my skin is full makeup but dry and sensitive at the same time. I tried many ways to clean my face perfectly without drying it up. The hunting took me almost three years. Previously I cleaned my face only with the makeup remover. I was scared to use oil-based makeup remover as I thought it will make my skin oily and trigger up the pimples to come out. But no other makeup remover did a good job on my face. Until the day I visited Kiehl’s shop and found the oil-based makeup remover with a serious note that I also need a good face wash to help me remove all the dirts. I bought Kiehl’s Midnight Recovery Botanical Cleansing Oil as per the advice from the beauty assistant.
The way of using it is quite tricky (or maybe I was just too clumsy for not reading the direction correctly). I usually pump out two to three pumps to my hand and rub it all softly over my face to remove the makeup. After I feel that all the dirts are peeled off, I wash it with warm water once and again, rub it all softly, if my makeup is heavy I will do another same step with water and then I wash it completely with water until the face has no more dirt. This oil is gently yet effective to remove makeup without drying out the skin. The next step is having a soft face scrub. In my conscious, I do not feel that the skin is clean 100% without a face scrub when I have makeup on. I chose the daily cleanser and gentle scrub from dvna.id (Instagram) to help me cleaning up my skin. A little dough from this scrub, a few drops of warm water, mix them in with both of my palms before rubbing it softly to my face. My face then have confidence to say “free from makeup”. This step will lead to another step which is the use of face wash and I am using Calendula Deep Cleansing Foaming Face Wash from Kiehl’s. A little drop of this face wash is enough to clean the entire face and leave it clean from dirts and sins.
Next step is using the face toner. I am using Calendula Herbal Extract Toner-Alcohol Free- Facial Toner from Kiehl’s. I love the thought that maybe I am using the real good product everytime I see the toner’s bottle with the flower petals.
ps. Being honest, the flower petals inside the face toner was one of the reasons I bought it.
After toner is the starting point of The Ordinary’s products. I use Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1% after face toner. Two drops of Niacinamide for the entire face (I always do tapping method when it comes to set serum or moisturizer on my face skin). Niacinamide in particular is helping to reduce shine and enlarged pores also to balance visible sebum activity.
The regime then followed by Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5, again, two drops for the entire face. I read the review about Hyaluronic Acid that apparently helps to increase the skin moisture and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. But it has to be followed with moisturizer. Based on what I heard from my skin treatment specialist, using Hyaluronic Acid has to be followed by moisturizer otherwise it will only dry up the skin. I always feel my face skin looks healthier after Hyaluronic, it gives healthy glow appearance without oily looks.
The next step is setting up the moisturizer. I have been using is Calendula Serum-Infused Water Cream from Kiehl’s. I really like this weightless water cream does in my face. I can feel the burst of soothing hydration on my skin that helps my sensitive skin absorbs it better. It really calm my skin especially after the flight when my skin is always on its highest level of sensitiveness. I am not sure if its good for all type skin. Please do check with the shop assistant before you buy. But for sensitive-combination skin like mine, for the one that praising the soothing-cooling feeling moisturizer like me, this water cream is definitely a must have in the skin care regime. I put it right away after I set the Hyaluronic Acid on my face. The purpose is to make it blend with the Hyaluronic Acid and they will all lock perfectly on my skin. After that, I always enjoy the moment of silence I have in front of the mirror. Looking at my glowing healthy-looking skin that I praise the Lord for finally finding these whole products.
I then let it all absorbs to my skin for about five minutes to be ready for another step. If its a day off or after flight, I will put calendula oil I bought in dvna.id (Instagram) as the last step. Three to four drops for the entire face. Unless I have an active acne on my skin, I will skip this step. It is because the oil will only trigger my acne to be worse. I love this calendula oil as it works as multi-use oil. It helps to calm the skin from sensitiveness, to help treating the wounds and preventing acne, and also to help the regeneration of the (new) scars on the skin. I tried it once when I had skin-peeled on my nose. I put a drop on the scars twice a day and the scars were gone less than 5 days without any marks. The second time I put it for scars was when I got burned on my left hand and again. I put a drop twice a day to heal the skin.
Many of you may wonder why I chose skin care products contain calendula. I started to read the benefits of calendula when I bought the face toner from Kiehl’s. As they are also written on Kiehl’s website that calendula is helping to reduce skin discomfort, helps skin to look smooth, radiant, and fresh. Basically this ingredient is a natural antioxidant.
Things I have in my skin care regime is basically to give moist to my skin without triggering the acne. To complete the prevention from acne, I put the AHA 30% + BHA 2% Peeling Solution from The Ordinary twice a week, no longer than 10 minutes. The red blood color in it gives me a little fear, when I put it first time on my face, my fear was bigger because it gave me tingling sensation to my skin that I was scared it will have a bad effect after. But this peeling product is life savior to me especially on the days when my skin does not wanna cooperate with me with all the hormonal pimples. It helps to calm my skin and the pimples down. The feeling when its on the face is really not comfortable. But the result after is amazing. This is a must have for me!
Gotta admit all of this really takes my time in general that sometimes I skip few steps and only putting the face mask as the rescue. But to maintain is always better than to fix it so choose wisely. Again, all of the products and steps I write here is based on my own experience. Everyone is different and choosing the best skin care for ourselves is really a hard job. My advice is always pay attention to your skin type or go to the dermatologist to have your skin being checked properly.
ps. I almost forget to mention about the eye cream. Currently using the Avocado Eye Cream from Kiehl’s and still waiting for the miracle to come. Too lazy now to take picture, please just google it. lol!
Thank you all for reading and see ya on the next story!
And the story goes on.. 