What I used up this August - Vichy Rehydrating Thermal mask/ Peter Thomas Roth botanical buffing beads/ Ren Jojoba Micro Bead Purifying Facial Scrub/ La Cure dead sea mineral salt soap reviews

Still on my quest of reducing amount of skincare in my bathroom cupboards. Here's my effort for this August.

First Vichy Rehydratin Thermal Mask. It's meant to be a light creamy mask that is applied for cleansed skin, leave for 10 min then rinse off. It's supposed to be lightly warming when on the skin.

Comes in a no-fuss squeeze tube, flip open cap, and a pretty small size of 50ml. 

It looks like this...almost like a light moisturising cream. It's easily spreadable and rather light, does not leave an oily residue so doesn't really require a super through rinse off. It does go on lukewarm, has a very typical skincare scent which smells a bit artificial for my liking. 

Honestly, it's a very boring mask- after rinsing off it hardly does anything for the skin. There is no visible hydration. I've tried to leave it on overnight but it seemed to be slightly pore clogging and left my face shiny the next morning (while not intensely hydrating either). Definitely a pass and will not be repurchasing.

Rating is 1/5.

Next item is La Cure Dead Sea Mineral Salt Soap, which is a Jordon company. No idea whether it's a big brand or not, but it's stocked in a few tourist shops and hotels during my trip in Jordon. (and given we stayed in quite nice hotels and western resorts, I expect the brand to be at least up to the standard of those hotels).

It's meant to be consisted of palm oil, palm kernel oil, dead sea salt, glycerin, and some perfume. 

(Sorry, again blogger flipped my image)

Inside it's just shrinkwrapped like below.

Add water - you can see it's slightly foaming.

Overall I think it's clearly a body soap, not for the face. While it says recommended for dry skin, I think that's definitely a climate thing. Yes if you have dry skin while living in Jordon this might be hydrating enough. However when used in the winter cold Sydney, it's very clear there's enough salt in this to be a bit drying. That being said, it's good as a body soap for the back and chest area where you get some congestions or zits ocassionally, and that's what I've been using this soap for. 

It's especially good after I use a hair masque, and the masque residue leaves a slippery feeling on my back (which cannot be good for the skin), I double cleanse with this soap quickly and my back has been congestion free this season and generally smoother to touch.

The soap is a smooth soap, no granules or anything. It's quite nice for what I'm using it for, but I'm sure  a lot of soap brands out there can do similar things as I usually find soap to be a bit more drying than body washes for me.

Rating is 3.5/5. Nice product for my purposes, but entirely replaceable by probably a dozen brands out there.

Next is Peter Thomas Roth Botanical Buffing beads. It's for face and body , supposedly with sebum emulsifying jojoba beads, whole leaf aloe vera  and botanical nutrients.

When I first got really interested in makeup and skincare a few years ago, this was one of the highest rated products on www.makeupalley.com for a scrub (mainly for face).

I used a very small travel sized bottle and decided to buy a full sized bottle. Which is 250ml and comes in a really no-frills looking plastic bottle.

It comes in a click open cap like this- which is always clogged when product dries inside. Not the best mechanism- they need something with a bigger opening.

Product looks like below. It's a lot of super smooth, small jojoba beads suspended in a light blue gel. The scent is light, slightly cucumbery sort of scent. It's a pretty neutral scent so I'm sure guys won't have problem using it either.

Add a bit of water: you can see it spreads really easily, it's non foaming.

Massaged in and rinsed off:

It leaves the skin polished and not overly drying. It really was a staple for quite a few years for me, not too abrasive on my thin skin, yet sloughes off dead skin lightly and gently. However it's very similar to other products such as Ren Jojoba Micro Bead Purifying Facial Scrub or the Laneige Multiberry Yoghurt peeling gel which I reviewed before. In fact out of all 3, Laneige Multiberry Yoghurt peeling gel may be the better of it all, because the Ren Jojoba Micro Bead purifying facial scrub is similar to Peter Thomas Roth, while there's jojoba beads inside, the base is a usual cleanser base. The laneige base is an enzyme cleanser so not only do you get a light physical exfoliation with the jojoba beads, you also get a mild exfoliation overall with the enzyme in the Laneige cleanser.

Rating for Peter Thomas Roth is 4/5. It does the job, comes in an extremely generous size (honestly I had it for 2 years and used at most about 60% of it, even after using it as a body scrub occasionally). Personally I think it's too mild as a body scrub.

While I'm at it, here's the Ren Jojoba Micro Bead Purifying Facial Scrub. I quite like the Ren product concept and range in general, so this was a quick purchase on a whim.

It comes in a 150ml squeeze bottle. You may notice the bottom of the bottle seem a bit odd- basically most of Ren products come in these pump bottles which are refillable, the product itself is actually in like a plastic bag, which you pop into the bottle. While I think the whole refillable idea is nice, but honestly this isn't something like handwash where you would go through bottles constantly, so the refill idea isn't exactly super practical. (in addition it's inevitable that the bottle gets damaged or the pump gets blocked at some point, so it's hard to see the bottle lasting more than a year or two).

Active ingredients is jojoba oil, juniper oil and peppermint oil.

Ren says it's a deep cleansing scrub formulated with microbeads of jojoba oil. Apply on damp face, gentle massage then rinse.

Comes in a squeeze pump, which is easy to use and no blockage yet occurred.

You can barely see the jojoba beads below, but basically any white bit is the jojoba beads. The more gel bit is the cleanser base. There is a lot of jojoba beads and they are very small and round, it's pretty much like Peter Thomas Roth botanical buffing beads.

Added a little bit of water, massaged out. You can see it's a bit grainy looking, which is the jojoba beads. 

The jojoba beads do not melt or anything, it just rolls around the skin gentle as you massage it in.

Overall it's exactly like PTR botanical buffing beads. The Ren product has pretty minimal scent, but also rinses off just as easily. Like both products, the jojoba beads sometimes do get trapped slightly between eyelashes  as you rinse off, so just rinse off a bit more carefully. 

The Ren product has peppermint oil which means it has a very, very slight tingle/ cooling sensation and a very slight minty scent. It must be a very low concentration because after using it for a while, it's almost un-noticeable.

Rating is 4/5. It does what it says. Mild exfoliation.  For those needing a more serious scrub like those microdermabrasion type of scrubs (e.g. Dr Brandt or the Lancome version), this is probably too mild for you . But again, suitable for those with sensitive skin who only need a light scrub (more like polish actually) once a week.