Spring Clean Your Skin....

It's spring cleaning time, and I love throwing open the windows and filling the house with the scent of fresh linen, clean floors and polished wood. After you've tackled those dust bunnies under the bed and dusted down cobwebs from the corners, spare a thought for your skin. After a long winter of cold wind and dry, forced-air heating, things are bound to be a bit of a mess.  Once a week, I like to do the skincare equivalent of a quick hoover 'round with a quick and super-effective exfoliating mask - working like a gentle peel, they leave skin soft, smooth and bright. Sweep dead skin, splotchy pigment, blocked pores and general dullness out the door, leaving skin deep-cleaned, glowing, and rejuvenated.

I love the Dr Sebagh Deep Exfoliating Mask for it's heavy duty, deep-cleaning prowess - a 10 minute spa treatment in a jar, it brightens, smooths and reduces hyperpigmentation with azelaic and lactic acids. A cult classic (I've already gushed over it here) with a price tag to match, it's available in two strengths,and is worth every penny. 

The REN Glycolactic Radiance Renewal Mask is the perfect mid-range workhorse - effective enough to show instant results but gentle enough to be used regularly, it harnesses glycolic and lactic acids from fruit sources for cleaner, smaller-looking pores and smoother skintone. Extra points for the tidy and hygenic bottle.

Juice Beauty's Green Apple Peel exfoliates with alpha hydroxy acids from its organic apple, grape and lemon extracts for a fresh smelling, quick acting clean - available in sensitive and full strengths, it's gentle, effective and utterly natural.

If you're planning to use a gentle peel this spring, remember the basics - apply to cleansed skin, and always start slow - three minutes is a good gauge of how your skin will react. Acids tingle and sting slightly as they work, but shouldn't feel unpleasant or burning. Remove with a warm washcloth, and follow up with a nourishing moisturizer - skin should look glowing or slightly flushed. Obviously, be careful you have incredibly sensitive, reactive skin - though for the record I have quite sensitive skin and have used all three of these with good results.  Most importantly, remember to be vigilant about the sun after any sort of acid exfoliant - all that baby-soft, delicate new skin needs to be protected!

How do you spring clean your skin? Have a favorite product? I'd love to hear from you below...

Shall We Glow?

First of all I'd like to apologize for the fact that when faced with an empty title box I seem to inexplicably fill it with a pun or childish alliteration. I can't seem to help it.

Now onto the glow - this is really quite expensive - $115 for 50ml. It's not going to dress up your vanity at all either - it's utilitarian and simple looking, with plain block lettering. When I spend huge amounts of money on a product, I usually like to know it. It's a smallish company, without a lot of advertising or fancy logos - most of the products look like lab vials and jars, and don't particularly shout luxury beauty product.

Regardless, the Dr Sebagh Deep Exfoliating Mask is incredible. I mean REALLY incredible. As in you look about 30% prettier after you use it. That's not a scientific fact, but it's what it feels like. It uses Azelaic, Lactic and Glycolic acid to exfoliate deeply without stripping the skin too severely - speeding cell turnover, letting your moisturizer sink deeper and work more effectively, and giving an incredible smoothness, brightness and glow to skin. It fades scars, lightens sun damage and smooths imperfections. Countless products tout these effects - this is one of the few that actually delivers on them.

Dr Sebagh is the French plastic surgeon who helped make Botox famous. You'd think that if you made your name with Botox, you wouldn't release a product that was this effective - it seems counterintuitive. But be thankful he did. I have ridiculously sensitive skin that gets dried out and stripped by most every exfoliant - only this can give me such powerful results without any redness or peeling. It comes in two strengths - the regular and sensitive, both of which my skin tolerates well.

It goes on cool and smooth, in a thin layer, and you can leave it on up to about 10 minutes - wipe off with warm water, and follow up with a richer, more healing moisturizer than usual, preferably a serum too (see below!), to really pull all the moisture deep into those cleaned up pores. 

This is of course all hypothetical, because I certainly can't afford this anytime soon, but I'm glad that there's a product out there that actually begins to live up to it's price - compared to the professional treatments you would need to achieve this kind of result, it's almost affordable. If you're a glass half full sort of person. I try to be:)