Month: February 2016

Categories
Beauty

Oriflame HairX Volume Boost Series.

oriflame hairx volume boost shampoo

The thing with volumising shampoos — all of them, not just this particular one — is they’re basically a detergent. They are designed to strip away as much oil as possible so that the hairs will feel lighter, ergo appear more voluminous.

The obvious downside to that is it will more than likely mess with your scalp’s natural oil balance. And it is never a good thing.

Did I get the promised voluminous result? Totally. And it would hold beyond first day.

But I also got mild irritation, more skin flaking than strictly necessary (not quite dandruff, but gettin’ there), and an occasional frizz. Which is a total novelty for me. I rarely even get basic static in my hair. With this shampoo, I could probably generate enough voltage to kill a mouse or something. Especially odd since one of the descriptions of this shampoo I saw online says that it helps prevent static.

Nope.

With all that said, I didn’t find the shampoo especially drying to the hair shaft. It didn’t feel any more damaged or brittle after I started using this product. It’s the scalp that suffered.

hair x volume boost leave-in conditioner

I tried using the conditioner in various ways — in combination with masks and/ or simple conditioners or on its own. It works either way. After generous spritz and some blow drying with my head down, I end up with voluminous shiny hair. I worried a bit about using it on its own, as my hair is pretty damaged from my previous experiments with it. But it held well. No tangling, brushed easily. However, I still recommend that you use your actual conditioner at least once a week and also apply deeper treatments as necessary.

The conditioner also worked when combined with other shampoos.

The only complain I have about the leave-in conditioner is its scent. It’s an okay scent overall, but there’s an undercurrent of something sweet that deeply annoys me. And since it’s a leave-in conditioner, it follows you.

Amusing fact: My brother and father both used this shampoo whilst visiting me. One ended up looking like a really spiky match, the other one like a dandelion. They didn’t know what hit them. I kept mum of course. It was funny. And yet more proof that it does indeed work.

(I’m an Oriflame representative in my country. Products bought with my own money. Opinions mine. This is not a sponsored post. Image credit: Oriflame MD.)

Categories
Beauty

Nail Polish: Cairuo in 20.

cairuo mint

I snagged this as I was returning home from a disappointing meeting. I’m a grown-up, I need pick-me-ups to get through shitty days.

The colour is wonderful, but the quality is less so.

The brush is OK, and on the first three nails the formula feels OK too. It goes on thickly but smoothly. However somewhere around fourth nail it begins to streak and gloop and stick something fierce. My right hand looked beyond bad. It’s also a bit hard to control around the edges, so both the root area and the nail end were unevenly painted.

This polish is scented. It smells like any other polish during the application, but begins to smell like a cheapo imitation green tea when it starts to dry. When it dries completely, the scent becomes very faint, but can still be felt if you stick your fingers close to your nose.

No worries, though, you’ll have enough time to enjoy its scent, because it takes its jolly time to dry. So much time.

Also, this is three coats. I went with two originally, but it looked too uneven. so I put on another one in the morning. It chips off fast, and doesn’t do well with water at all.

cairuo mint 20

This is shade #20. Green tea is not the colour’s name, but the indicator of the scent.

I really want to love this because the colour is so good, but alas.

Categories
Beauty

Oriflame Pure Skin Black Head Toner.

Oriflame Pure Skin Black Head Toner claims to prevent break-outs and help clean existing black heads. One of the main ingredients (36%) is ethanol.

I am not a huge fan of the scent. It’s a standard scent of this particular line of Oriflame products — Pure Skin. It doesn’t annoy me, but it doesn’t inspire me either. I’m trying to find adequate words to describe it, but have none so far.

I did get less blackheads on my cheeks, and on my nose too. My chin, on the other hand, especially closer to my jawline, became practically covered with them, with the added beauty of rather prominent pimples.

This toner is drying. Small wonder — the alcohol volume of this stuff is close to that of vodka. Such an attack simply provoked the skin oil production, hence the result of flaky skin and pimples.

I think my main problem with this toner is the age bracket. I’m acne prone, and I have oily skin, but I’m in my thirties. Oil secretion isn’t as intense as it is in teens. Teenagers, I believe, would love this product.

I wanted to make my brother use this product. His skin is similar to mine, but due to gender difference and testosterone and all that lovely stuff, his skin is more… durable, I figure. Unfortunately, my brother is the type of guy who believes that a man’s face should only be touched with a chainsaw. I’m slowly working on correcting that limited point of view. If that ever happens and he uses this toner, you’ll be the first to know.

I will not be repurchasing this product, however I might give the washer in the series a go. I also heard really good words about a limited edition shower gel from this line – the orange one, with the citrus scent.

(Product photo: Oriflame India.)

(All opinions are mine. I’m an Oriflame consultant. This is not a sponsored post.)

Categories
Beauty

VERYME JUST BB BLISS BALM.

I wanted to group this together with other recent make-up disappointments, but then decided that if I review it separately, search engines will have a better chance of picking up keywords for it, and you’ll have a better chance of reading my opinion before deciding to purchase this BB cream.

VeryMe Just BB Bliss Balm

The first thing I noticed about this product was its scent. It’s harsh, considering the fact it’s a BB cream — therefore you’ll be applying it around your nose and mouth. Its texture is on the greasy side. My first impression was that it was a bit like Garnier in that regard, except Garnier felt smoother.

The good thing about this product, in my case, is its colour. It’s pretty light.

veryme bb cream

The packaging is cute, mostly due to the use of one of my absolute favourite colours.

oriflame veryme bb cream

It’s also pretty functional — an upside down tube with a thin nozzle, which makes it easy to measure out as much of the product as you need.

oriflame veryme bb cream packaging

It’s also got SPF 12. But seeing how it applies it’s a desirable but useless add-on. Also, after all the three minutes it’s been on my face, it didn’t break me out.

This is also where all the positive things about it end for me.

I first tried applying it on a badly washed off powder. I used a brush. It didn’t really work. I blamed it on my laziness, quickly fixed a face, and ran out the door.

Then I tried applying it over my moisturiser (another Oriflame product). It glided off my face in these little … pellets. It didn’t even stick to my face for the most part — nearly all of it remained on my hands in an abundance of greasy rolls. I sighed, blamed it on moisturiser (the Optimals one I was using claims to be mattifying, and these types of creams can do this to a foundation), once more cleaned my face, applied some powder, and ran out the door.

This time, the third time, I decided to apply this to a clean face. After all, BB creams promise to be moisturising. My outing wasn’t to be long, and this BB cream has SPF12 in it, so I decided to just go with it.

The result is below.

veryme bb cream application

I don’t think it needs any words, but I’ll add some. As you can see it stuck into my pores. Under my eyes closer to my temples, where my skin tends to be dry, it stuck in weird rash-looking patches. It didn’t cover a bit of a break-out on my chin. It looks downright weird and streaky on my cheeks. As with all the other times, the majority of it remained on my hands.

In a fit of rage, I told my brother to take a picture of my mug because my hands were still dirty. This is literally less than two minutes after the application.

Despite this cream being so hard to apply, it’s also very hard to remove. I washed my face, then I used make-up remover, and then toner — and I could still smell it and see bits of it around my nose.

I love Oriflame — after all, this is why I applied to be their distributor — I trust their cosmetics — and I am eager to blame this complete disappointment on me, but this just ain’t working. I would’ve thought that perhaps it’s because I have a wrong skin type for this product. Some BB creams work better for greasy skin, others for dry skin. VeryMe, though, is targeted at teenagers, who tend to have oily skin in their hormonal majority.

tl;dr: I love the idea of this product – it’s light, it has SPF – but unfortunately I cannot recommend this to anyone. It’s fairly cheap, but for me this was just a complete waste of money.

I used: Oriflame VeryMe BB Cream SPF 12 in Extra Light 30496.

Categories
Beauty

Nail Polish: AVON Speed Dry+ in rebel rose.

avon rebel rose

I have a love/ hate relationship with AVON polishes, and this one is not an exception.

First of all, the colour is amazeballz. This is exactly the shade of hot pink/ fuchsia/ whatever that I love. It’s cool toned and therefore looks great against my skin.

The brush of this one is okay. The formula is great, application wise. If you’re in a hurry, even one layer is enough, although it’s a little bit see-through. It goes on smoothly, and requires minimal clean-up. Also, it dries in seconds.

However.

It chips in seconds as well.

OK, well maybe seconds is a slight exaggeration, but there hasn’t been a case where this polish would hold longer than 24 hours on my nails. Usually it’s far, far less.

Nevertheless, I have since then bought a couple other shades in this range, because you can’t beat that drying time. You just can’t. I’d recommend it for that alone.

AVON Speed Dry+ in rebel rose is a discontinued product, but I’m sure it can still crop up on the likes of Ebay. You can still find the range in AVON catalogues I believe. Give it a go next time you’re on the market for a new polish (which is any time, if you’re like me).