October Favourites 2017

Hello there readers!

Today I am going to be doing my October favourites as I feel like I fell at the first hurdle after saying in my August favourites post that I would try and do it every month then neglected to do so straight away in September. My excuse is that the end of September was taken up largely by my  Coffee post which kind of acted as the post for that month as I was trying those bits out, so I am going to let myself off the hook.

Anyway. I'll put my excuses aside!

I haven't got a huge amount of products to show this month as the switch in warm to cold weather has reeked havoc on my skin, so makeup and skincare have been minimal. The products I have been using though have been used a lot, so without further ado, here are my October favourites.

As I mentioned above, the change in weather has caused my skin to become very dry, prone to spots, and I also have flaky almost eczema like rashes on my eye lids (attractive I know). I have been sticking to my usual Beauty Pie skincare but have added in a couple of extra steps to keep my skin looking as good as it can! I have spoken about this product before, as in January I was really suffering badly with my skin. I bought this Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%, £5, Deciem and it cleared up my skin within a week. Once again, I have reached for this product everyday the last few weeks and it has improved any aggressive, painful and red spots and reduced them considerably. For such a small price tag, I would highly recommend the Ordinary to anyone who fancies a little dabble with the products available.

As my skin hasn't been it's best, I have been trying to avoid makeup as I feel it actually clings to the dryness and makes my skin look worse. Espcially around my eyes, I have been avoiding all eye makeup apart from mascara as my eyes feel so dry and agitated. However when my skin has been particularly bad and I have had no option but to cover it up with makeup, this No28 Primer Serum, £55.80, Hourglass has been the perfect hydrating base to make sure no foundation clings onto dry skin. I find primers often make the skin feel drier whereas this makes your skin really soft and almost a little oily which I find makes my makeup blend better. Another thing I love about this product is the smell. It has a really natural botanical smell and it makes me feel confident that the product is feeding my skin the healthy vitamins it needs. It contains 28 beneficial ingredients to feed skin to make it look hydrated, luminous, and healthy.

As my lips have been really dry, I have found lipstick hasn't been looking great and a bit patchy (I sound like the flakiest person in the world from this post). My natural lip colour is very pale so I do feel like I need to have something on them to make them look more defined. I have been using this Lip Glow, £21.25, Dior colour reviver balm as it naturally brings out the colour of your natural lips to make them look bolder but also hydrate like a balm. It works with your skin tone and just intensifies the look of your natural lip meaning you don't have to wear lipstick and you just have the feeling of balmy, soft lips.

Next is a fragrance and I have been absolutely loving which is Amber Rose, £55, Shay & Blue. I remember when Shay & Blue had just come out as I was working in a fragrance department. The creator behind the brand is a man called Dom De Vetta who used to be the global manager for Jo Malone and senior Vice President at Chanel. He wanted to create a beautiful boutique brand and he discovered Julie Masse, a 20 year old perfumer who had a flair for creating modern and unique fragrances. Paired together, they have gone on to create this really cute, niche brand which create genuinely lovely fragrances at affordable prices. They only do 100ml and 30ml fragrances, and they are so reasonably priced as they look so expensive.

 I am not a huge lover of Rose alone, and I think these days a rose fragrance needs to have something about it on order to survive on the fragrance market, and this rose and amber fragrance is the perfect balance of sweet and sultry and I have been loving it recently. It isn't necessarily an autumn winter fragrance, I have just found myself reaching for it time and time again.

Lastly is another product that will help with any lack lustre nails this winter time. I am trying to use oil as my nails as I have become a little bit lazy with nail care when it used to be a big part of my night time routine. Nail oils will stop your nails going dry which will stop them peeling and will result in evenly applied, longer lasting nail varnish which is what you want when you're wearing darker, berry shades of nail varnish this season usually requires. Usually in the summer with lighter colours you won't notice a small chip but daker colour can look very scruffy very quickly so regular nail care is a must do, plus it will moisturise the skin around the nail and stop any painful hang nails.

This nail oil is from an Australian brand called Sienna which is a vegan, non toxic, cruelty free brand. The only sell their oil in a set and unfortunately we do not have these products in the UK, but any type of nail oil will suffice and I have found the Phenomenon oil by Jessica is a great one to use!

What products have you been going for this Season?

Do you have any tips or product recommendations for dry skin, particularly around the eye?

Deciem - The Ordinary

Hello everyone!

Today's post is one I'm a little apprehensive to post as it is going to feature some pictures of my skin at the end of last year when it was the worst it has ever been, so please be nice or I'll cry!

If you saw my 2017 New Years Resolution post then you would have seen the first thing I wanted to do was sort out my skin. I was so self conscious about it, and even though now it is is not half as bad as it was, it still makes me feel a little vulnerable putting up pictures when it was at its worst.

That being said, I am going to be showing the products that transformed my acne skin back to being way more manageable and that is exciting, so I hope you enjoy this post and it helps you if you are having skin issues and feeling a little low too.

So I'll just go right ahead and show you my skin before.

I know I look miserable and my hair is a mess but I felt so ugly with bad skin, it just made me want to give up on everything else. Although I didn't have lots of spots, the ones I had were huge, painful and impossible to cover up. I was getting them a lot on my cheeks too, which is such an obvious place and I felt so so down about it.

I did a lot of research about face mapping and how to decipher what was making my skin so bad and improve it. Cheeks for example can be down to having a dirty phone which rests against your face a lot of the time, so I was cleaning my phone more regularly, and trying to drink more water. I do believe you should listen to your skin, as it is a good indication of what is going on inside your body. However when you read things like 'stress can make you break out' that is a little harder to control.

I stripped back all my skincare to basics, with just a cleanser and moisturiser which I know had worked for me in the past, however it still wasn't clearing so I decided to take matters into my own hands and try a new brand I had heard so much about.

Enter Deciem, and in particular the Ordinary range.

I had read so much about this range, as it provides top notch skincare but at a quarter of the high street price and is sold at cost price. This sounded perfect as I did't want to splash out on a product that I wasn't sure would work for me.

I had a scan of the The Ordinary range and read every single description of what each product did.

It is also worth mentioning that I purchased my products from victoriahealth.com and Gill who runs the site puts out a newsletter each month which is so so helpful so shes is worth subscribing to because she wrote some amazing stuff about The Ordinary which was really insightful.

They sell lots of different strengths of retinoids at a really low price, and they are great for acne, however my skin is very sensitive and although my spots were bad, I didn't think they were acne worthy. After a long think, I decided that the Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1% was the treatment I needed to sort my spots. It reduces congestion and the appearance of blemishes and can be used as an acne treatment. For just £5, I put it in my shopping basket and then looked for the Pure Rosehip Oil. I knew they sold this and for the very lovely price of just £9. Organic rosehip oil can be as much as £40 because the process of creating it is so delicate and slow. How they can justify this price tag I don't know, but rose hip oil is great at targetting redness as well as reducing scarring, and as I am someone that can't leave my spots alone, I do tend to have a lot of scarring.

When they arrived, I was so excited and started using them straight away.

The first thing I should say is that I love the packaging. It is clean and simple, and I think it looks really professional.

I use the Niacinamide every morning in replacement of my serum as it soaks into the skin and allows me to put my moisturiser on top.

I will admit that the consistency of this product is really strange! when it first goes onto the skin it almost goes a little foamy, but once it is rubbed in it soaks in and leaves a dry sort of residue.

After just a couple days of use I could see it improving my skin, and I was so happy. The only thing I would say is that it does dry my skin out a bit but that is expected of treatments designed to look after spots, so I have upped my moisturiser to a super quenching one and it is absolutely fine now.

Combating the dryness is the Rose Hip oil as well, I use this at night as it is a bit unsual walking around with a thick layer of oil on your face in the day. It is so hydrating and it is slowly but surely reducing my red scars and blemishes. I also love that they have dark glass to preserve the oil as sunlight can ruin oils like this. As I said before, this product can be so expensive so I love using this little slice of luxury for the small amount of money I paid for it.

So how is my skin now?

Well it is far from perfect and you can see my scars are going to need longer to heal, but as for the spots, they may look raised in pictures but I can assure you my skin is even, and smooth. The redness can be easily covered by makeup and it is something that takes a while to heal so I am not worried about that.

I am so happy with the results of these products in just a short space of time. I've been using these products for about four weeks now and the results are amazing.

If you are having problems with your skin and you don't want to break the bank, the The Ordinary is the way forward. They are also launching so many new products so keep an eye out!