Quarantine Glow - Kate Somerville ExfoliKate

The Exfolikate Introductory Kit - £33

So being the self confessed skincare addict that I am, I'm always trying new products to find the magical combo that will have my glow competing with the sun itself. That being said, it's been quite a while since a product has blown my socks off after the first use. Enter stage left: Kate Somerville's ExfoliKate Intensive Exfoliating Treatment.

I had heard lots about it, it's had cult status amongst the skincare powers that be for over a decade, but the £70+ price tag put me off trying it for myself. Whenever it comes to trying out new skincare I am the travel size/mini queen! It's my failsafe for my wallet, because the way my account is set up, I cannot be flinging hundreds of pounds at products that might not agree with me. This is an expensive hobby as it is! So I found a set of mini's, known as the Introductory kit on cult beauty's website for £33. It contained 2 other products; the ExfoliKate Cleanser and the ExfoliKate Glow Moisturiser, bargain!

ExfoliKate Glow Moisturiser

Let's start with the moisturiser: It's got glycolic and lactic acids for resurfacing as well as fruit enzymes plus some fruit extracts to boot. It's got a nice light texture and mild pleasant smell. I have reached for it several times for the lightweight texture rather than feeling a massive difference, a nice to have, but 'meh' in my opinion. 

The cleanser is where it starts getting good, I am in LOVE! Again featuring the same AHA's and the fruit enzymes (pineapple, papaya and pumpkin). A little goes a long way, and you get a generous 50ml sample. Its a gorgeous cleanser, the skin feels smoother after use, but with zero irritation and it doesn't feel stripping at all. You know the holy grail of using a cleanser that feels like you haven't cleansed afterwards, but rather moisturised? Not moisturised in the sense of there being any residue or film left on the skin, rather my skin was left feeling soft and like I had just rinsed off a cute hydrating mask. Knocked it out of the park! I have used this almost every single day for the last 3 weeks and the full size is already on my wishlist for repurchase, once this starts to run low.

Now the star of the show, the exfoliating treatment: it's a very small 15ml (same size as the Moisturiser) tube, the texture is thick, grey and has tiny grains of silica in it. I stopped using physical exfoliation a long time ago, but don't let that put you off, this stuff BANGSSS! The key here is that this is an intensive treatment, and they mean intensive. I used it in the morning, applied it to my wet face, massaged for 30 seconds and left it on for the full 2 minutes as per the instructions. I was very gentle with the massage as the product doesn't have much slip and I was weary of the silica grains. 

When I rinsed the mask off, my face felt 'ok' clean, refreshed. So I finished off my routine with my toner, hydrating serum, a super hydrating moisturiser and followed with a generous helping of sunscreen. That evening when it was time to cleanse again, I was flabbergasted. As I was massaging in my cleansing balm, I kept thinking 'My face feels ridiculously smooth, what's going on? Maybe I used too much balm!' when I rinsed that sucker off and touched my naked face, I almost fell over, not even exaggerating. It was like touching a baby's bum! Smooth AF! This was after one use! A single, 2 minute use! Wow! In the days that followed my skin was glowing like God had adjusted the ring light in heaven to shine on my face! 🤣

Although the sample size is small, I'm very sure I could get 5+ uses out of it easily. Which would give me a month's use as I have been using it once a week since then. The directions say it can be used once or twice a week, AM or PM. I prefer AM and make sure my sunscreen is slathered on all day, but this is so powerful that I would worry that using it more than once a week would damage my skin barrier as I also use a retinol treatment on other days. One thing to note from my use is that I wouldn't use the cleanser and treatment together, the second time I used it, I washed my face with the cleanser and when I applied the treatment straight after my face was tingling a lot! It wasn't burning, but it did become pretty uncomfortable and so I rinsed it off my face after about 45 seconds. That's the only time I've experienced that reaction and so every other time I've used it, I have cleansed with my favourite 'do nothing' cleanser, Simple's refreshing facial wash.

Even if the price tag was £100+ I wouldn't hesitate to repurchase, because this works! Instant results and it's not often that I come across that! 

Rose

xoxo

Good Vibes Only - Why staying positive online can be so damn hard!

Positivi-Tea!

For me mentally it comes from a place of lack, I focus all my attention on what I don't have, what I have yet to achieve and where/how many times I've messed up. We welcome Auntie 'Comparison-is thief-of-joy' with big open arms to help us tally it all up and it equals a big fat fail. Meanwhile, in the back of our minds we are well aware that it's not an accurate score of our real lives, so whyyy do we do it?

First things first, we're not crazy y'all, there's a name for this *laughs hysterically* - It's been identified as the social media comparison trap. We're grown, we know the lines about social media, with all its pretty pictures are highlights and blahhhdy, blah blah, and yet here we are. Trapped. Perhaps you've moved to a new home and fixed it up to a standard that's comfortable for you, you finish and take a step back. You could think to yourself "Wow a few months ago I was dreaming of a new place to live, now here I am this is amazing!" Instead, of following this our good friend sense, you finish all of your hard work, take a step back, pull out your favourite tool of comparison (looking at you Instagram and Pinterest...) and say "Look at this rubbish, I've worked so hard and it's not good enough! Look at X,Y, Z their's is so much better than mine. Mine will never be good enough!"

I did this for a very long time, and to be perfectly honest it's something I have to mentally fight all the time to stay away from. It's why I've been so inconsistent with my YouTube channel in the past, it's why I shut up shop with Bowë back in 2014 even through things had been going well. I took my eyes off my own lane, went to shine my eye on everyone else's and decided mine was below par. Closed the online store, stopped selling at markets and pop up shops. Just stopped everything. Seriously, like seriously!

There's absolutely nothing wrong with swooning over aspirational content on any platform, aspiration is a big part of what pushes us forward. Gives us the nudge to keep going, keep trying and give life our best. The problem comes in when that energy moves from positive encouragement to negative comparison. And the switch can happen almost seamlessly, especially now where we're consuming more content than ever with #StayAtHome. We can spend hours on end mindlessly scrolling through content that has been curated and edited to perfection, when we look away from the screen real life doesn't have the pretty preset and featured music for every moment. 

I have to make a conscious effort to stay on the side of positive encouragement, some days are harder than others, but these days it's a battle that I'm on the winning side of *fist pump* - A big realisation for me is that having big, lofty goals and leaving it as that is a big no-no. It's like having a glorious vision board on your wall and doing nothing with it. Imagine looking at that board day after day, yet taking no action towards making those visions a reality. It's like a neon sign screaming at you "This is what you don't have bih!" I look at the big goals and then work backwards, break them down into smaller and smaller chunks, all the way down to little monthly, weekly or even daily activities I can complete. This way, at the end of each period I can look back and see, I started at A year ago and now I'm at G or D or even A.5, progress is progress.

It means that when you look at your big dream, you can see how you're moving towards it, rather than knocking yourself down and thinking you'll never get there. You know what else is great about making an action plan for achieving your goals? You'll be too damn busy to have time to belittle yourself in comparison to someone else. You'll be so proud of what you've been able to achieve, you'll see others that are where you want to be or also on their journey and think "I'm right there with you!" 

Take it from me, being on the side of negative comparison taints everything, even the goal itself. When you find yourself slipping, stop scrolling. Walk away for a while. Like most things in this life, staying positive is all in the mind, it's a choice in perspective. It doesn't mean it's always easy mind you, but absolutely possible!

Rose 

xoxo