beauty,

Korean beauty products- Facemask edition

04:55 Lox 0 Comments


What I have used and loved/hated


Living in Korea for so long it was inevitable getting their beauty products, and I have heard about them for a long while now, even before all this craze started. I have had Korean friends that sent me products a long while back and whilst I did not think them amazing at the beginning, I thought they were good. Things have long changed since then, and most of all now I had the freedom of choice.

Living in the UK, it is not as easy to get Korean products here, mostly I would have to buy them online, and to pay £13 for a pack of 10 facemasks, when I could get them in Korea for as little as £6 makes no sense. Thus I bought them once, loved them, cherished them, but never purchased them again. Now, with going to Korea, I got to go crazy- well as crazy as my budget allowed me to go. Before I left home I had it all planned, there was no use to lug beauty products with me when I could buy and experience new ones. I have to admit though I did go with my essentials in tow- I can never go anywhere without my John Frieda Frizzease. My hair does not allow me any other products. The rest of them? Left them home happily.

Now, I will have to say though, Korean products are mostly engineered for their skin, meaning, you can find many products that are good for sensitive, breaking out, dry skin. But since my skin is very close to breakout free and not that sensitive or dry, but rather oily, I found products with much difficulty. Moreover, Koreans tend to use a whole range of products that were very unfamiliar to me. I am talking toner (which I have tried to use before this but my skin does not take lightly to it so I stopped), emulsified cream (which is a lighter version of a full on cream), serum (once again a whole category on its own- much lighter than the emulsion) and cream (here is the trick, their creams are thick! Unless you get a watery based one such as cucumber, green tea- mostly creams for oily skin). And they use them all. In one go.  As much as I love using face products, there is a limit to it, and my skin is not as thirsty. Thus, too many products make me feel like I tried to drown my face in oil, which make it produce more oil, which make me breakout.

So I stopped with only face washes, facemasks, cream, and the occasional use of samples, because lord knows when you go into a beauty store in Korea you buy two products and leave with a houseful of samples-I am not complaining!

As beauty brands go, you have again a variety- from high end ones like Hera (the Nicholas Kirkwood collab was amazing) to not so high end but still pricey like Etude, to decently priced ad good ones like Nature’s skin and itsskin etc. I can’t say I have tried them all, but I have tried a few of them. I will post separate posts on them however. Should be too ashamed to admit I have tried too many for one blog post but I will admit it proudly.

Facemasks


A great brand that I have found for affordable and good facemasks is The Face Shop( Online orders here). They have a variety of facemasks for different types of skins or areas you might have problems in. These are the ones I ordered for a ridiculous amount and loved. You have Green Tea, Kelp face masks for oily skin and clearing up, you have lemon and rice for brightening, you have pomegranate, blueberry for antioxidants, you have cucumber for hydration etc. There is a wide variety to choose from. The only problem is that they sell them in 10s and very rarely can buy individually. Now that wouldn’t be a problem if not for the fact that you get 10s of the same one. If you don’t have a favourite one, it is a bit inconvenient. What if you don’t like the one you got and you still have 9 to go through?


Some other brands that I have liked when it came to facemasks have been a very weird knockoff brand that looks very similar to Soap&Glory products. Faith in Face is a company apparently set up by experts from Canada, Korea and UK. However, it appears to be a brand based in Hong Kong. I could not find it in the UK, I could only find it in Korea and to order from Yesstyle and their own website (here). They are not pricey at all and you can only find them in Korea at a store similar to Sephora (or for UK people Superdrug or Boots) called Olive Young. They have different type of facemasks that are good for exfoliating, cleansing, purifying etc. I have used them the most ad I have to admit they are amazing.

For a more casual type of facemask I would say, ones that once again I have found in that store, Olive Young, Ariul 7 days Mask. (here )


I have to add though, Olive Young sold only foreign products, so technically it is not exactly Korean, but I found it in Korea so it doesn’t count. I have found these products online as well so I will put links to everything I found. However, some of the products, more specifically the very Korean ones I could only find on Amazon, Ebay or Yesstyle for a bit more than I got them.

Another facemask that I have loved is the Shingmulnara mask. It is a brand that is owned by CJ and can only be found in Olive Young. I liked them for the handy packaging and the fact that their masks are ‘portion size’ and clear masks. For me that was a saver on the plane. I used them on my flights to and from Korea. Easy to carry around and to put in a Ziploc bag for security purposes and it being clear it is easy to apply on the plane and leave it in for those 8 dreadful hours and it will leave the skin pampered and refreshed. Of course without getting weird looks from your in-flight neighbours. As I stated in my previous blog post, on long haul flights I enjoy pampering myself and taking care of my skin. Makes the time pass faster plus it is a good way to not feel so Debbie Downer once you land.  


Miscellaneous masks that I have used and decently hated I would have to admit were some of the masks from The Face Shop, before I realised the masks were for different types of skins I have used majority of them, and some for example the overly hydrating ones such as the cucumber ones and the blueberry one my skin hated and broke out the second day. Another one that my skin did not appreciate as much but it fared better than with the previous ones would be the TonyMoly Goat Milk Moisture Mask Sheet. These smelled amazing, I will have to give them that, however my skin did not like them. They are highly moisturising, maybe a tab bit more than my skin needed. My skin felt overwhelmed with all the moisture that it did not know what to do with it and transformed it into shine for at least two days after using the mask. For a natural glowy look those would be amazing, I am more the matte type of girl though.


These would be all the facemasks that I have used and loved/hated. Wished I have tried on more than that, however I cannot load my skin with product or else its response would’ve been more forceful than I was ready to take.

Lox

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advice,

Back from Korea- Surviving the after effects of being away for a long time

03:00 Lox 0 Comments




Getting home, into a queen sized bed, in a room that is fit for a queen, and by that I mean in size, all feels amazing. No matter how much of a traveller, it is still amazing to have someplace to call home. No matter how much I love seeing places or how much I love sitting on a plane for hours on end- that is a lie by the way because let’s be honest who enjoys being dehydrated, lacking sleep, having cramped legs and bottom and looking overall as good as the character from The Covenant, I am happy to properly sit and enjoy the feel of ‘home’. A cup of tea in hand, a book, music, the smell of cooked food, people that have known me all their life- this is all the elements that make ‘home’ for me.

Having enjoyed the feel of home for at least 2 weeks now, and reality settling in, bills to pay, houses to move, getting back into that old routine I had set up and realised that I missed, I am also realising that this all feels strange to me now. Kind of like when you miss important bits in someone’s life and you don’t know how to greet them because you are aware you have been out of their lives for a while- somehow the familiarity is still there but there is something hindering that long, friendly hug that you want to give them and instead settle for an awkward handshake or pat on the back. Reality and home is nice, but after 8 months you tend to have residues of them still stuck onto you. I can’t say how many times I have looked on the street and seen Korean fashion everywhere- probably because right now the Korean fashion is the fashion rave of the moment. Korean beauty products certainly seem to be. I still have bits and pieces of things, including the way I act, that are still stuck in Korea. They’re slowly going away, and somehow, I am sad to see them go away. Having acquired them all throughout this amazing experience and still experiencing them, is a great proof for my own self. That I had actually been there, that it did happen.
So, getting back into things is decently difficult after spending some time away from them. Especially since a lot of things have happened around here (Brexit, new PM, blah blah). Being on another continent kind of made me feel as if I’d been living on a remoted island away from civilisation, when in fact I had been living in the heart of it. So how I get back into things?

1.       Moving

Moving is not much fun really. I mean yes, you get the new fresh start of things so it does not feel as if you have to get back again to being used to a place you lived in, at the same time it does not exactly feel like home. So make it at home. Moving is a great way to start afresh. And I don’t mean yes, you have to move to feel better about being away from things. No, just change some things around the house. Make it ‘look new’ if not new completely. Change up the furniture arrangement, buy that new duvet, get fresh bed sheets, buy new picture frames (all those polaroids have to go somewhere don’t they). Get creative.

2.       Walk

Yes, walk. It is a great way to get reacquainted with the places you have known like the back of your hand but now seem more like a dream. A walk through the city centre, a walk into that park, pub, cinema etc. Plus, you get your daily dose of exercise, so why not kill two birds with one stone?
3.       Visit some of your favourite places

For me I can say, city centre, cinema and the library were my favourite places. And now that I am back at it again when visiting them, I get the chance to fall in love with them all over again. It reminds me why I had been loving them so much, and it gives me a new opportunity to look at them with fresh eyes and notice little things I have not before. So get back on those horses and see what has become of your favourite places. What do you know, maybe on the way you find new ones, or even fall more in love with the old ones.
4.       Call up people you have been spending time with before

It might come off as a surprise- or not, but I am fairly bad at keeping in contact with people. I don’t do it on purpose, I just find it very hard to keep looking at my phone whilst I have other things to do. Not like I have been dead, and with social media it was quite easy not to lose contact with them. Yes, it feels weird at the beginning, because communicating through messages for months is still not at intimate and close as communicating face to face, however, it gave me an opportunity to keep up with them and not encounter awkward answers such as ‘my boyfriend and I broke up last spring’ when you ask them how they’ve been. But meeting up with them now that I have the chance is a great way to catch up properly.
5.       Start afresh

Nothing stops you. Make a new routine, enjoy new things. I have realised I have changed quite a bit during this year, impossible not to. Nothing says I have to keep up with the old routine. I just have to make a new one, change things up a bit. Start afresh. (yes, that means now I brush my teeth after I eat. No, it does not mean I eat lunch for dinner and dinner for lunch…maybe breakfast for dinner)


So these are all the things I do/did to ease myself into that certain lifestyle I had up until leaving for Korea. It was not that hard, the thing that probably made it a bit worse was my own imagination that things have changed that much when in the end they did not. I did. So I had to figure out a way to get this new person to fit back into this unchanged scenery.


Lox

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