I can’t help picking this up, and trying to up my game on concealing and color correcting.
Link to the same video on Tiktok: https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSFTmemQv/
My thoughts: I’m still lazy with concealing and color correcting. With my fingers I pick up too much product. With a brush I can blend it much much better. Definitely still need to improve my skills at this.
Yes this blog is being resurrected and I hope to be consistent here. 😀
I actually hate to maintain my hair in any way and I think you can see that I pay more attention to my skin than my hair if you have been following me on IG. Recently I do realise though that I need to pay more attention to my hair if I wanna be a all-round pretty person or all-round vain person. I’ll be trying different hair products to see which ones suit me!
My scalp does get itchy some time in the afternoon. I wash my hair at night usually! I figured it’s itchy because my scalp is oily. My hair is extremely dry and looks like grass since I have not been taking care of it. I have coloured my hair for years and I do not do hair treatments. I just use conditioner and hair oil sometimes. I don’t trim my hair regularly either. Alright! I think that’s something I should work on.
In addition my hair has been thinning since 30s probably due to slower metabolism and hair growth. I feel like it is half of what I had in my youth.
This review will be on the shampoos and the body washes.
The main ingredients for this would be ginger root and dandelion, several plant extracts and amino acids. Both are said to be good for hair growth Amino acids help to hydrate hair. The texture is something like a paste. It does smell good though! They have a “nose” to design fragrances for their whole line of products.
This does help me with the oily scalp and it doesn’t feel itchy any more in the afternoon! I use this to prevent hair loss too! Hair loss is not really my high concern now though.
I like the fragrance of this too! It does help to make my hair smoother but it doesn’t really help with my oily and itchy scalp. So sometimes I will shampoo my hair twice and use both. This has plant extracts, dandelion essence, Vitamin E and Vitamin C! I feel like my hair is smoother after use but of course I still need conditioner/treatment after this for my dry hair.
This contains more than 7 plant extracts and has macadamia nut oil, olive oil, camellia oil, shea butter, avocado oil, palm oil, almond oil and other plant extracts as well as amino acids to moisturize the hair. This conditioner does work very well too and I love the smell for this!
This is supposed to be rose scented but I don’t feel like there is any rose smell. I have to shake this before use each time as it is biphased – pretty but quite annoying actually and it doesn’t come with a pump. Smell wise is alright and it’s not drying but it’s really too watery.
This is a gel form and comes with a pump and is supposed to smell like lavender and ylang ylang but I don’t feel like the lavender is smell is strong and seems citrusy instead. I really don’t know how to describe smells very well. Texture wise it’s pleasant and not drying so I don’t mind repurchasing this.
IG @laughing_cheesy
I finally finished this bottle of Sephora cleansing milk after about 4 months? Here is the evidence:
I like writing the date I open a product on the bottle.
I have tried this cleansing milk out in Sephora stores which I thought was ok and I bought it. I previously bought the Sephora Micellar water which I was ok with as well but I decided to stop using Micellar water and turn to cleansing milks and oils.
Anyway, this was before I got into studying ingredients list. Well, imagine my shock when I saw that many of the ingredients are not really safe. Let’s go straight into it.
Ingredients List: Aqua, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Propanediol, Dicapryl Carbonate, Macadamia Ternifolia Seed Oil, Glycerin, Cetearyl Alcohol, Cetearyl Wheat Straw Glycosides, Sodium Polyacrylate, Xanthan Gum, Tocopheryl Acetate, Parfum, Phenoxyethanol, Potassium Sorbate, Citric Acid, Sodium Dehydroacetate, Sodium Phytate, Limonene, Linalool, Cassia Angustifolia Seed Polysaccharide, Tocopherol, Benzyl Salicylate, Alcohol, Hydroxyethylcellulose. I typed out everything 😦
Note: Acne/irritants are in bold. Safety scale in yellow on CosDNA are underlined. Safety scale in red on CosDNA is in bold and underlined.
Ingredients analysis on CosDNA
Surprisingly Alcohol is not listed as an irritant? I am not really bothered by alcohol though I thought I probably should avoid it since I consider my skin sensitive.
I did a search on macadamia nut oil‘s profile and Wikipedia says that it is 60% oleic acid, 19% palmitoleic acid and 1-3% linoleic acid which probably makes it not so good for my acne-prone skin (I googled once again that I should go for oils with more linoleic acids which are the thinner oils) (my bad, I can’t get it in my brain though I watched both Liah Yoo’s oil video and Gothamista’s oil video).
Honestly, limonene and linalool scared me when I googled on them since they might cause sensitivity. Cassia Angustifolia Seed PolySaccharide is probably the only soothing thing I see in the ingredients list.
Price: SGD24 for 400ml (very cheap imo) from Sephora
Texture and feel: Creamy, and I can spread it out over my face easily. I also used it on my arms to remove sunscreen. I do rub it very vigorously over my arms and sometimes it ended up on my floor and furniture. I don’t like to use it with a cotton pad as it just doesn’t get absorbed into the cotton pad easily so I figured the easier way is just to use my hands.
It does a decent job of removing makeup on my face. I don’t use it on my eyes though, since I don’t really want it to get into my eyes. When I kept it on after wiping off with tissue paper, my skin doesn’t feel dry. It emulsifies quite easily and rinsed off easily BUT it leaves a tacky film behind, which I don’t really like.
Conclusion: I don’t think it has irritated my skin in any way. As for cleansing power, I am also pretty satisfied. I am worried about the ingredients though and I don’t really think I should give it any more time in case they irritate my skin. My preference now is to try more cleansing oils. Last but not least, the film it leaves behind is the most annoying thing about this cleanser, which was bearable considering that I almost always wash it off immediately with my second cleanser anyway.
Will I repurchase?: No.
This is a summary of the 2 videos I watched on how to choose a sunscreen. Sunscreen should be non-irritable – doesn’t cause acne – and effectively block the sun.
First video: How to Choose.
Chemical sunscreens tend to clog pores and irritate skin.
Physical sunscreen ingredients are zinc oxide and titanium dioxide.
The 2 safe chemical ingredients are Tinosorb M and Tinosorb S.
Avoid avobenzone, benzophenone-3 and oxybenzone.
Second video: How to Test.
To test whether it stays
Smear a patch on the mirror. Spray some water on the patch half an hour later. The water that drips down should be as clear as possible. 4 hours later, spray the patch again with water mixed with some dish-washing detergent. The water that drips down should be as clear as possible.
To test whether it is penetrable
Apply the sunscreen on arm. Run tap water on it half an hour later. The water droplets should look “round”. For the next 8 hours, test again and run under tap water for every 2 hours to make sure the water droplets are still “round”.
Below are the 2 videos from which I took the information from (in Chinese!).
It’s humid. It’s humid. It’s really humid. It’s humid all year round. Your hair is forever frizzy.
I’ve lived in Singapore all my life. I’m not really well travelled unfortunately so far, only been to nearby Asian countries. But I must say, Singapore is the humid-est of all!
It means that the moment you step out of the house, you perspire. It means perspiration creeps out of my pores when taking the lift down from the apartment and walking a 50 metre distance to the train station. The lowest temperature I ever truly felt was 22 degrees, and that was considered a freak temperature by our standards. It felt really cooling. It was still humid by the way.
On a normal day, the weather app tells you it feels like 36 degrees celsius out there when it is 29 degrees.
I’m an OL, so it means that I step out from the aircon room in my house, into the heat, onto the train with air-conditioning and then into the heat, and then into the office. In the office, since the air-con is on, the air is pretty drying. The air-conditioning is centralized, so you have no control over the temperature. Depending on where you sit, it could be really cold, or normal. It’s the worst when you get blasts of cold air on you and it cause you to fall sick easily. I know of people who wore winter jackets and have blankets in office.
Once I reach home, I turn on the air-con, cos it’s really too hot in ‘ere. The building traps the heat of the day time and the room just feels really hot and stuffy. I sleep in air-con all the time cos I don’t like to wake up being drenched in sweat. Maybe “drenched” is being too exaggerated, but surely my back will be wet, because I have to sleep with a blanket. And it’s really too hot to sleep without the air-con.
I guess you can say that my skin goes through some changes in temperature every day even though we don’t have the 4 seasons. It’s perpetually summer all year round! I do understand why my skin could be dehydrated though, since I’m in air-conditioning all day long.
My scalp will feel itchy if I don’t wash it everyday. This is another aspect of skincare I will have to take care of.
I wondered very long about what to write as my first post and I got my inspiration today! Generally this post is about my skin so that you can determine if I’m your skin twin! I’ve been to many facials before and beauticians loved to make many many comments about your skin so that they can up-sell you more and more packages and their products, but I guess what they said about your skin must be true to some extent for them to recommend you products and treatments that worked.
I used to have acne on my cheeks, and now and then I still have acne mostly on my jaw. I do experience clogs very easily, even with products that claimed to be comedogenic. I also didn’t really care about my skin that much. I went to see a doctor before about the acne. The topical cream the doctor gave me caused my skin to peel really badly. When you stop applying the creams, the acne just came back. What saved my skin from acne was facials! I went through very very painful extractions. The beauticians loved to tell me, oh your acne are all trapped inside your skin and it’s very difficult to extract them. I wish I knew about BHA and AHA then and maybe my facials wouldn’t be so painful!
Picture in 2009 with acne on left cheek.
Through numerous extractions and painful squeezings (ok, maybe not all of you agree with this method, albeit done professionally) and IPL, the acne slowly just stopped. Maybe, maybe, it could be age. I’m really not sure. Anyway the scar marks are still there, as commented by beauticians some time last year.
Picture of me in 2010, showing acne on right cheek.
I have milia seeds around my eyes too, and dark eye circles. I’ve tried to apply products on my neck too, having read some advice to apply whatever you apply on your skin to your neck and this resulted in milia seeds on my neck too. The lines on my neck are very pronounced though. My skin also seems to be sagging. Pores on my cheeks are larger as compared to the rest of my face. I have a lot of blackheads on my nose. They also mentioned my skin is thin. They claimed my skin is sensitive because my skin will turn red really easily when it is touched. I do notice my skin do looked kind of patchy and red sometimes, even my arms, and it happens when I’m cold or hot. My skin is also oily and dehydrated. I did see some improvement in their comments after I started on BHA in probably end of 2016. I still did extractions but the extractions are no longer so long and painful.
Well, now I’m 35 grand years old, I’m starting to notice lines on my face (lucky me with oily face!). Lines below my eyes and the lines around my mouth and nose are more pronounces. There are also patches of dryness and flaky skin around my mouth and nose sometimes. I really try not to raise my forehead too often, I guess I don’t have that many obvious lines there. I think I also have water retention on my face and probably some lymphatic blockages on my face, I probably need to do some gentle massage on my face. The beauticians never wanted to do any on my face as they are afraid that the massage will over-stimulate my skin.
Just a side note on my hair – Thank God I also do not experience white hair much, haha, maybe I experience one strand once every 10 years. I hope that doesn’t change!
Thank you if you’ve read to this far, I shall just perhaps do a summary of what my skin is prone to here.
Grand summary: Oily, dehydrated, prone to clogs, hormonal acne, lines and pigmentation due to acne scarring.
I really hope to update this blog regularly to document my journey on my skincare. Better late than never I guess!
Belinda Jonelle 