Happy Saturday my lovelies! I can’t believe we’re already half way through September! Everyone keeps saying how they can’t believe shops are already putting out Christmas decorations and presents but for me, I love it! Plus, the seasons are changing so you can’t blame shops for prepping early.
And speaking of seasons changing, two things that I change with the seasons are my hair routine and my skin routine. As for today, I’m going to be taking you through my skincare routine!
Here’s the products in my routine:
My morning routine:
Step 1: Face wash. First up I wash my face with my face wash and warm water, rinsing it off with cold water.
Step 2: Cleanser. I put cleanser on a cotton pad and use circular motions all over my face.
Step 3: Toner. I put toner on a cotton pad and swipe it all over my face, and let it absorb for a few minutes before my next step!
Step 4: Eye gel. I dab a small blob of eye gel under each eye and eye lid to help with puffiness and dry eyes.
Step 5: Serum. After letting my toner sit and applying my eye gel, I apply two pumps of my serum onto my face and gently rub it in.
Step 6 : Moisturiser. I then add moisturiser to my entire face, especially because I tend to get dry skin.
Step 7: Suncream. Finally I add a little sunscream to top it all off because you can never be too careful with those uv rays.
So that’s my AM routine! And as for my PM routine, it’s very similar but it goes like this:
(Potential Step 0: Micellar water. I only use this to take off my makeup at the end of the day if I’ve been wearing it, it’s much gentler than makeup wipes and is a quick way to take off makeup.)
Step 1: Cleanser. I first cleanser my face of everything my skin has been in touch with during the day.
Step 2: Toner. Next up I tone my face and let it sit for a minute of two like in the morning.
Step 3: Eye Gel. I then refresh my eyes with my eye gel, after staring at screens all day this is a must.
Step 4: Serum. Two pumps of serum is then swiped over my face and left to sink in for a minute.
Step 5: Retinol. After my serum has sunk in I use a small amount of my retinol cream (the retinol cream I use is my Adapaline acne cream) on the zones of my face that need it, and with retinol less is more rather than more is more trust me.
Step 6: Moisturiser. After I’ve let my retinol cream sink into my skin I add my moisturiser. And that’s it! All done and ready for bed.
So that is my entire skincare routine from waking up – to going to bed to get my beauty sleep haha.
Whenever I try anything new for skin I always get a bit worried because I’ve suffered with adult acne for a few years and I get worried that new things will set it off again. Medication seemed to be the only thing that helped my skin clear up for the last two years, and I’ve recently tried to come off of all of my medications except my retinol cream.
Since starting this new routine my skin hasn’t yet exploded with spots other than the first week adjusting to it so so far so good! I like to use any time that I spend on my hair and skin and just general appearance as some selfcare/me-time.
All of the products I use for my skin are from Superdrug’s own brand and Wake Skincare; I like trying to use products from the same brand and line because I find they always work better together, but it takes time to see what works out for you.
What’s your favourite skincare staple? Have you got a specific skincare routine or are you more of a wash and go kinda person? Let me know in the comments if there’s any skincare brands you’d like me to try!
Happy Saturday lovelies! So this week I’ve finally managed to sit down and write a post you’ve asked for a few times, my acne journey. Just putting this out there now, this is my journey with my skin and what has worked for me, this may work for you, this may not work for you; so please don’t assume all of the products I talk about in this post will or will not work for you. Also, I’m definitely not saying my skin is the worst ever or best, I’m just sharing my story.
Skin is such a personal thing because everyone’s skin is different and needs to be taken care of a certain way to suit that person. After all, skin care is very important since the skin is the largest organ in the body and protects us from so much. So why wouldn’t you want it looking it’s best!
Let’s get into this; so, my journey with my skin has been a long, stressful emotional journey and is by no means over yet. When I was younger I had little to no problems with my skin, being a carefree kid I never did anything to it and lucky for me, that was what worked. Then puberty hit, and again I was lucky enough to only suffer with a spot every now and again, nothing major.
I wish I had appreciated those day more now that I’m a bit older. Especially because as soon as I hit my 20s I developed adult acne, rosacea and my psoriasis began flaring up. Not great for someone who was already a little insecure because she wasn’t happy in her own skin anyway.
I’m now 22 and I’m happy to say that my skin (touch wood) is at a point where I’m reasonably happy with it, I still get the odd angry spot (or mountain/volcano/crater, you decide haha) ever so often but it’s ok.
For my skin to get where it is today, it took a lot of trial and error. To begin with a tried doing face masks about 3 times a week because I thought that maybe something was clogging up my pores and that they might make my skin less red and calm down a bit. For me, this didn’t work. That was when I bought the ‘La Roche-Posay Effaclar 3-Step Anti-Blemish Kit’ in the hopes that this would clear my skin up..long story short is that it made my skin a million times worse.
Which led to me deciding in February this year to finally decided to go to my doctors to get some medical help with my acne. So, here’s what my skin looked like before I did anything and after starting the ‘La Roche-Posay Effaclar 3-Step Anti-Blemish Kit’; also, please excuse my facial expressions in these photos as you can imagine how having acne makes you feel as also, I took these before bed over several weeks to document my skin journey! (It took around 6 months from starting my acne journey to where I am now)
Also, just thought I’d mention that it was at this point that I decided to drink pretty much only water from then on; that was hard at first but after about 2 weeks of making myself do it, I didn’t need to force myself to drink water anymore! It just became routine.
Here’s my skin before trying any treatment.
My skin after using ‘La Roche-Posay’ treatment for a week.
As you can imagine, after trying this acne skincare treatment for a week and my skin only getting worse and really irritated, I decided to stop it. Also, side note; I’m not saying that the ‘La Roche-Posay Effaclar 3-Step Anti-Blemish Kit‘ is a bad product, it just didn’t work for me, you never know, it might work for you!
So, After this I decided that I was finished blindly trying to clear my skin up without really any knowledge on what was causing it. So off to the doctors I went! To begin with, I was prescribed a different contraceptive pill called Cerelle, because at the time I was taking the progesterone only pill which has no oestrogen. I was also prescribed an antibiotic topical treatment called ‘Zineryt (erythromycin, zinc acetate)’. I took this for about 2 1/2 months and here’s what happened!
So, after using the ‘Zineryt‘ topical cream for 2 1/2 months my skin was looking a lot better! And I was feeling a little better about my skin and appearance, which was when it stopped working. Which was a huge bummer!!
So back I went to the doctors again in the hopes that they can give me something really powerful to stop my skin re-erupting!! Which is when I was prescribed ‘Co-Cyprindiol’, ‘Adapalene’ and ‘Doxycycline’. I was lucky that I was prescribed this amount of stuff to tackle my skin at once, I will say that I was a little apprehensive about having to use ‘Co-Cyprindiol’ as this had to replace the pill that I was on because it’s so much oestrogen!! 2000mg to be exact and the doctor told me that you usually have about 20mg..
Also, this pill isn’t classed as a contraceptive pill as you can’t take it for long periods of time so all I was thinking is what happens if it works and they stop me taking it and my skin reverts??! The other medication I was prescribed was the topical cream – ‘Adapalene’ to apply every night before bed, the other medication I was prescribed was ‘Doxycycline’ which is another antibiotic that I have to take every morning with breakfast!
If any of you suffer or have suffered with acne then you know how anxious switching up your skincare and medication can be. Which is why when I switched to these new medications and my skin started reacting badly, I freaked out and called the doctor asking to be taken off them.
Lucky for me, the doctor told me I had to give the medication longer to work and to give it 3 months to see any effect on my skin; because after about 3/4 months of taking all these meds my skin started to clear up!!
I’m so so so glad I stuck with the medication, because after taking everything for a few months, the doctors allows me to continue all of these meds for longer than typically recommended because I wasn’t having any side effects and my body was reacting well.
Now, I’m on a lower dose of ‘Co-Cyprindiol’ in order to continue the treatment safely alongside the other meds. An important note with this is that I do have to go for regular check ups with these pills in order to stay on them. But this is just so the doctors know how my body is coping with the hormone levels.
I also use a microdermabrasion skin care machine once a week to exfoliate and remove any blackheads. I got my machine from amazon for £20 when it was on offer and it’s rechargeable so I haven’t got to worry about paying out for batteries. Here’s the link to the machine I use!
And here is my skin now!
As you can see from my face here, I’m a lot happier with my skin now than ever before!
I’m so much happier with my skin now then ever before, it’s something that I had struggled with for a while and it really got me down to the point where I didn’t feel comfortable going outside at times! And if you’ve ever suffered with acne or currently do, you know what it can feel like and what it can do to your mental health.
I know that with my acne journey I have been pretty lucky in being able to find a treatment that works for me and that not all people are as lucky as I have been. Moral of the story is that if you are struggling with acne or any skin issue, go see your GP because they will be able to help you; and if something isn’t working for you, keep going back and eventually you’ll find something that works. It just takes some trial and error.
Hope this helps any of you suffering with acne or skin issues!! Have a great weekend lovelies! Love,
Today’s blog post is all about my recent journey of not wearing makeup for a few months. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love wearing makeup and feel great in it and I think it looks amazing on other women and men. You’re all definitely more skilled than me!! And I still love watching makeup tutorials on YouTube and putting on a full face every now and again for special occasions or if I just feel like having a play. But recently I decided to stop wearing it all the time and go bare faced pretty much everyday.
For some people, going makeup free will seem like nothing, but for me this was quite big, partly because I suffer with acne and rosacea. So when I say that I’ve not been wearing makeup, I mean that I’ve gone from wearing heavy foundation, powders and concealers to wearing nothing on my skin on a daily basis. Now I only wear mascara and very thin eyeliner when I’m off out. It’s amazing how much time I have to spend on other things in the morning now!
After the initial few weeks, it’s been surprisingly easy, when I first started this it was for a few reasons:
I started a new acne treatment and wanted to get the best out of it. (update on that in a future post)
I wanted to feel better in my own skin and not feel like I need to wear it in order to feel pretty.
I wanted to be able to hug people without my face transferring everywhere..
I didn’t want to go around worrying if I’d smudged my face.
I wanted to be able to go to bed without having to think of taking my makeup off.
Week one was definitely the hardest, my acne was bad and all I wanted to do was cover it up. And because I’m so pale, my rosacea was really bad. Oh and I tend to go bright red easily so I was panicking about that.
I was so scared about what people would see and think that I did my best to avoid going out and only showed my face to the people I am closest to. And the funny thing was that when I went into work I got compliments about how bright and fresh faced I looked!! And no comments that I looked tired, ill or red or that my skin looked bad, but nice things that gave me so much motivation to go makeup free for the long run.
So.. that was about 3 and a half months ago, and part of the reason why I’m writing this now is because I’ve only just realised this week that I’ve not been thinking about putting makeup on to cover up my skin to go out at all!
I still love wearing makeup, and I wear it for special occasions, but only when I feel like it and can be bothered to put it on. One thing I’ve noticed from doing this is that my skin has definitely got better, whether that is a result from not wearing makeup or my acne treatments, or both, I’m not sure. My skin isn’t completely clear yet, and it’s still got a long way to go before it’s completely clear, but for now I don’t totally hate it (well.. at least on a good day). I’ll do a post about my acne pretty soon when I reach the end of my treatment.
Something I’ve noticed from going makeup free is that funnily enough, no one gives a shit. No one said anything horrible or made comments, I wasn’t stared at in the street and no children ran away from me screaming after seeing my face. All a bonus really haha..
If you’re thinking about going makeup free and you’re worried about what people will say, just know that it’s not as bad as you think, and it’s quite refreshing to have clean skin out and about. Also, if you aren’t sure you can go completely makeup free straight away, work your way up (or maybe down is more appropriate?) to it but gradually using thinner layers of makeup and cutting certain things out of your routine over a few days/weeks, whatever works for you!
What I think you should take away from this post is that you’re all beautiful in your own skin (mushy post alert!) and deserve to feel amazing in your own skin without having to worry about what anyone else thinks. And if you want to wear makeup then you should! And if you don’t want to wear makeup, then don’t wear makeup!! Do what makes you feel good, and that’s what’s important.
Don’t let anyone tell you you should wear makeup and don’t let anyone tell you you’re wearing too much makeup. And if they are saying you’re wearing too much then tell them that that’s good because you paid good money for that makeup so you’d better be able to see it! If someone tells you you should wear makeup then tell them that they should go fuck themselves because you don’t have to conform to their beauty standards!
I hope you all have a great weekend my lovelies!! Love,
The Weight Of My Worlds 