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Mar. 30th, 2021 06:40 am
Well, hello again!
Hello, Dreamwidth!
I had taken a very long break from this site for no particular reason... I just kinda stopped visiting one day. And just a little while ago I had remembered I once wrote a handy post for how to remove hair color from your hair if you've dyed it a color you don't like. (I died my hair last night and it looks dumb. Moving on...)
So then I thought, "Dreamwidth! What can I use it for? Anything?" I moved over to OnePostWonder after the demise of LJ, and I settled in there. It's a muuuuuuuch smaller audience/user base, but the quality is excellent... plus I know the site creators well and they are top-notch humans. But the trick with OnePostWonder is that you can only post once per day (you can edit/append the post, though) and sometimes I like posting more than once per day if I want to keep things separated by topic or filter.
ANYWAY, all of that is to say: I turn 50 in a few weeks. My dad said to me about 6 weeks ago that this pandemic has aged a lot of people, and me included. He said he thought my years are showing more on my face since lockdown began, and I tend to agree. I was taking skincare pretty seriously at the start of 2020, but when the pandemic hit, it all went to shit.
But, when your own dad tells you your skin looks crappy (he was very kind and lovely about it, truthfully), you might decide it's time to get back on the skincare ship.
In choosing a skincare routine, I wanted to apply as much science as I could, while also enjoying the ritual of caring for my skin and acknowledging that it feels good. I started reading blogs, skincare science journals, whitepapers, and following a dermatologist on YouTube who isn't trying to sell fillers/botox. I thought documenting my skincare routine here could be cool. I have to figure out how image hosting works (or if it works at all) so I can include progress photos.
So, until then, here's my regimen.
1) Double-wash my face. I'm not all that picky about cleansers. In a moment of weakness and pandemic depression, I purchased some foo-foo cleansers from HoliFrog. They are lovely, but ridiculously expensive (though they last forever, which is nice), so I'm still using them now. So, I'm using the HoliFrog "Kissimmee Vitamin F
I had taken a very long break from this site for no particular reason... I just kinda stopped visiting one day. And just a little while ago I had remembered I once wrote a handy post for how to remove hair color from your hair if you've dyed it a color you don't like. (I died my hair last night and it looks dumb. Moving on...)
So then I thought, "Dreamwidth! What can I use it for? Anything?" I moved over to OnePostWonder after the demise of LJ, and I settled in there. It's a muuuuuuuch smaller audience/user base, but the quality is excellent... plus I know the site creators well and they are top-notch humans. But the trick with OnePostWonder is that you can only post once per day (you can edit/append the post, though) and sometimes I like posting more than once per day if I want to keep things separated by topic or filter.
ANYWAY, all of that is to say: I turn 50 in a few weeks. My dad said to me about 6 weeks ago that this pandemic has aged a lot of people, and me included. He said he thought my years are showing more on my face since lockdown began, and I tend to agree. I was taking skincare pretty seriously at the start of 2020, but when the pandemic hit, it all went to shit.
But, when your own dad tells you your skin looks crappy (he was very kind and lovely about it, truthfully), you might decide it's time to get back on the skincare ship.
In choosing a skincare routine, I wanted to apply as much science as I could, while also enjoying the ritual of caring for my skin and acknowledging that it feels good. I started reading blogs, skincare science journals, whitepapers, and following a dermatologist on YouTube who isn't trying to sell fillers/botox. I thought documenting my skincare routine here could be cool. I have to figure out how image hosting works (or if it works at all) so I can include progress photos.
So, until then, here's my regimen.
1) Double-wash my face. I'm not all that picky about cleansers. In a moment of weakness and pandemic depression, I purchased some foo-foo cleansers from HoliFrog. They are lovely, but ridiculously expensive (though they last forever, which is nice), so I'm still using them now. So, I'm using the HoliFrog "Kissimmee Vitamin F
Therapy Balmy Wash" which is almost like an ointment. It dissolves waterproof mascara and long-wear lipstick, which is nice. And then I do a 2nd wash with a glycolic/lactic/salicylic acid AHA/BHA wash I bought on Amazon which is lovely and leaves my skin feeling clean, not over-dry, exfoliated but not raw, and just ready for whatever I'm gonna do next.
2) I will apply a leave-on 2% salicylic acid treatment. These are often expensive fancy products, but I also remembered that old-skool Stri-Dex acne pads from 30 years ago contain 2% salicylic acid, so, boom! $5.29 instead of some $40 thing. I'm debating making this step only something I do in the evenings, but so far, my skin has no problem with this 2x/day. I do not rinse this off, but it dries/sinks in quickly.
3) Once it's dry, I spray my face with water. Sometimes I'll spritz it with tap water, or sometimes I'll use some fancy hibiscus rosewater I got as a gift. Either way, I dampen my face and then apply Hyaluronic Acid; any brand is fine, really. I was using the HA from The Ordinary because it was like $5.60 for a bottle. I recently switched to NXN brand because Sephora was out of The Ordinary and the NXN brand looked good. Hyaluronic Acid occurs naturally in your body; it's basically the cushiony liquid that keeps your skin plump when you're young; it's also what is inside the discs between your vertabrae. Hyaluronic acid molecules, if formulated small enough, can penetrate the skin, so it actually, visibly plumps up your skin. The thing to remember is: HA molecules are like sponges; they soak up and hold water. If you apply HA to a dry face, it will pull moisture FROM your skin and you then look and feel worse. So you must apply it to damp skin so the HA pulls the water from the surface and brings it into the deeper layers of your skin. Will wrinkles disppear entirely? Nope, not after almost 50 years. but it certainly softens the fine lines. (and HA is what they inject into your face if one wanted "fillers."). This also dries quickly.
4). Vitamin C serum for brightening, fading dark patches, and rebuilding collagen. Ascorbic acid is notoriously unstable, so I use a different type of vitamin C called BV-OSC that is way more stable, and also waaaaay more bioavailable to the skin. I also use the NXN brand, and it's lovely.
5) If it's daytime, I'll also use a Charlotte Tilbury "Magic Serum Crystal Elixir" (which is quite possibly the worst name ever because it sounds like total snake oil) for some extra moisture and some brightening. It has the tiniest amount of shimmer that looks really nice during the day and under my makeup. I skip this in the evening though, because it causes my moisturizer to pill up.
6) I'll finish up with a moisturizer. I had been using the absolutely glorious Bobbi Brown Vitamin-Enriched Face Base, which is a thick, shea-butter-based face cream that is the perfect base layer under makeup. It seals in all of the moisture and goodies from my skincare routine, and it also smooths/spackles over some fine lines and wrinkles so my makeup goes on smoothly. It's very thick (which I LOVE), but I'm curious what that'll be like for gigs under hot lights, or for summertime. We'll soon find out! I also recently bought a new moisturizer for evening (though it's also really nice for daytime) called LXMI, which is a fair-trade, organic, no-bullshit, absolutely divine moisturizer that feels SO UNFATHOMABLY GOOD (ALL CAPS NECESSARY) that I find myself wanting to wear it instead of the Bobbi Brown. Before out last CoffeeBreakConcert I did one side of my face with the Bobbi Brown and the other side with the LXMI and they both performed beautifully. So, no real preference right now, but again, that may change when the weather gets really warm.
7) If it's nightime, I'll finish with La Neige's lip treatment, which is some kind of witchcraft. Jenn had turned me onto it when we visited Sephora together in 2018 or so. I still have the same pot of it-- it lasts forever and it is glorious.
So that's the skincare routine. I'm trying to train myself to sleep on my back as opposed to smooshing my face by sleeping on my side. I have a frozen shoulder, so this has been easier. I also bought a pillowcase made out of copper thread, which apparently NASA uses for the astronauts to keep skin building collagen in space. If it's good enough for astronauts it's good enough for me!
My makeup routine has also changed a bit. I've decided to remove silicones from my skincare/makeup as much as humanly possible, and they are in everythiiiiiing... but I've managed to find products without it. Yay!
Anyway, I'm a disciple of Wayne Goss (he's a very down-to-earth, no-drama, very kind, brief-and-to-the-point YouTube makeup guru, focusing on women over 40), and he's a fan of skin that looks like skin, and not skin that looks like makeup. So I've been taking a minimalist approach, which has kinda always been my deal anyway, but now it's more mindful. I might do funky and age-inappropriate eye makeup, but as far as my skin is concerned, less is more. I save full-face foundation for gigs, and for day-to-day, I just use some strategically-placed corrector and concealer, slap on a very light dusting powder, then blush, bronzer, and highlighter, and it looks great. It sounds like a lot, but there's barely any makeup on my skin.
Anyway, I've been taking two photos of my makeup-less face immediately after I do my skincare routine before bed-- one shot from the front (head-on), and another shot from the right-side so we can see this one scar/wrinkle thing I have and use that to gauge improvement.
I was hoping to be able to post those photos here, but it's almost 7am and I haven't been to sleep yet, so I'll do that after I wake up.
Good night/morning!
2) I will apply a leave-on 2% salicylic acid treatment. These are often expensive fancy products, but I also remembered that old-skool Stri-Dex acne pads from 30 years ago contain 2% salicylic acid, so, boom! $5.29 instead of some $40 thing. I'm debating making this step only something I do in the evenings, but so far, my skin has no problem with this 2x/day. I do not rinse this off, but it dries/sinks in quickly.
3) Once it's dry, I spray my face with water. Sometimes I'll spritz it with tap water, or sometimes I'll use some fancy hibiscus rosewater I got as a gift. Either way, I dampen my face and then apply Hyaluronic Acid; any brand is fine, really. I was using the HA from The Ordinary because it was like $5.60 for a bottle. I recently switched to NXN brand because Sephora was out of The Ordinary and the NXN brand looked good. Hyaluronic Acid occurs naturally in your body; it's basically the cushiony liquid that keeps your skin plump when you're young; it's also what is inside the discs between your vertabrae. Hyaluronic acid molecules, if formulated small enough, can penetrate the skin, so it actually, visibly plumps up your skin. The thing to remember is: HA molecules are like sponges; they soak up and hold water. If you apply HA to a dry face, it will pull moisture FROM your skin and you then look and feel worse. So you must apply it to damp skin so the HA pulls the water from the surface and brings it into the deeper layers of your skin. Will wrinkles disppear entirely? Nope, not after almost 50 years. but it certainly softens the fine lines. (and HA is what they inject into your face if one wanted "fillers."). This also dries quickly.
4). Vitamin C serum for brightening, fading dark patches, and rebuilding collagen. Ascorbic acid is notoriously unstable, so I use a different type of vitamin C called BV-OSC that is way more stable, and also waaaaay more bioavailable to the skin. I also use the NXN brand, and it's lovely.
5) If it's daytime, I'll also use a Charlotte Tilbury "Magic Serum Crystal Elixir" (which is quite possibly the worst name ever because it sounds like total snake oil) for some extra moisture and some brightening. It has the tiniest amount of shimmer that looks really nice during the day and under my makeup. I skip this in the evening though, because it causes my moisturizer to pill up.
6) I'll finish up with a moisturizer. I had been using the absolutely glorious Bobbi Brown Vitamin-Enriched Face Base, which is a thick, shea-butter-based face cream that is the perfect base layer under makeup. It seals in all of the moisture and goodies from my skincare routine, and it also smooths/spackles over some fine lines and wrinkles so my makeup goes on smoothly. It's very thick (which I LOVE), but I'm curious what that'll be like for gigs under hot lights, or for summertime. We'll soon find out! I also recently bought a new moisturizer for evening (though it's also really nice for daytime) called LXMI, which is a fair-trade, organic, no-bullshit, absolutely divine moisturizer that feels SO UNFATHOMABLY GOOD (ALL CAPS NECESSARY) that I find myself wanting to wear it instead of the Bobbi Brown. Before out last CoffeeBreakConcert I did one side of my face with the Bobbi Brown and the other side with the LXMI and they both performed beautifully. So, no real preference right now, but again, that may change when the weather gets really warm.
7) If it's nightime, I'll finish with La Neige's lip treatment, which is some kind of witchcraft. Jenn had turned me onto it when we visited Sephora together in 2018 or so. I still have the same pot of it-- it lasts forever and it is glorious.
So that's the skincare routine. I'm trying to train myself to sleep on my back as opposed to smooshing my face by sleeping on my side. I have a frozen shoulder, so this has been easier. I also bought a pillowcase made out of copper thread, which apparently NASA uses for the astronauts to keep skin building collagen in space. If it's good enough for astronauts it's good enough for me!
My makeup routine has also changed a bit. I've decided to remove silicones from my skincare/makeup as much as humanly possible, and they are in everythiiiiiing... but I've managed to find products without it. Yay!
Anyway, I'm a disciple of Wayne Goss (he's a very down-to-earth, no-drama, very kind, brief-and-to-the-point YouTube makeup guru, focusing on women over 40), and he's a fan of skin that looks like skin, and not skin that looks like makeup. So I've been taking a minimalist approach, which has kinda always been my deal anyway, but now it's more mindful. I might do funky and age-inappropriate eye makeup, but as far as my skin is concerned, less is more. I save full-face foundation for gigs, and for day-to-day, I just use some strategically-placed corrector and concealer, slap on a very light dusting powder, then blush, bronzer, and highlighter, and it looks great. It sounds like a lot, but there's barely any makeup on my skin.
Anyway, I've been taking two photos of my makeup-less face immediately after I do my skincare routine before bed-- one shot from the front (head-on), and another shot from the right-side so we can see this one scar/wrinkle thing I have and use that to gauge improvement.
I was hoping to be able to post those photos here, but it's almost 7am and I haven't been to sleep yet, so I'll do that after I wake up.
Good night/morning!
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