Curiosities: Skin Food Oatmeal Hand Mask

I'm horrible at keeping up with this blog, and I'm so sorry.  Being unemployed, moving to another state, job hunting, stints in the hospital - my life's been a friggin' mess.  But I'm shooting to update this three times a week with things that aren't all beauty related, and a lot of reviews of old stuff that I haven't used yet.  (I have about 500 nail polishes and I swear I've only used like, fifty.)

So!  Here's something I tried ages ago, took photos for, and never got around to writing up.  Asian beauty bloggers and fans alike are pretty familiar with sheet masks for our face, but when I saw one for my hands, I did a quick double take before purchasing it as an oddity.

They're basically just like the gloves you get when you do at home hair color, except they have the papery sheet mask material inside coated with essence.  They didn't smell too bad, just a clean sort of oaty smell that I didn't mind at all.  Skin Food recommends rubbing your hands together to massage the essence in, which I did.  Did I do it for the whole fifteen minutes they recommended?  Hell no, I've got things to do.

Did they work?  Eh.  Yeah, my hands were softer after I used these.  Were they softer than if I'd just used lotion?  Not really.  And therein lies the problem.  If these had made my hands amazing and if I'd not been able to live without them, sure.  I'd recommend them.  If you really want to try them out, feel free to grab them on a lark.  But I wouldn't get these if you have really painfully dry hands.  Just snag some Eucerin.

I think I got these from RoseRose Shop for around 2.00 USD, but I honestly don't remember.

Disclaimer: This product was purchased by me.  No compensation was received. All opinions are my own.  I am not affiliated with this seller.

Skin Care Saturdays - The Face Shop Vitamin B Hydro Gel Mask Sheet

I'm a fan of sheet masks, but I was unfamiliar with the "hydro gel" mask.  So what the hell, I figured, let's do it and try it out.

The packaging is also adorable as fuck.

Okay, so I could handle this.  Basically, it's a sheet mask that has this plastic backing on it.  You stick the part that had the backing on your face, just like a sheet mask, only the mask itself is made of a more plasticky material.  One thing I did like about this mask is that it came in two parts, so it seemed to fit a lot better on my face.

It also makes you look like a serial killer.  But that's fine!  It smelled pretty decent, not fruity like you'd expect from a star fruit product, but just the sort of clean smell I've come to expect from Face Shop products.  After twenty minutes, most of the essence was absorbed into my skin and I didn't have much left over.  It also seemed to help with my dark circles, somehow.  The only downside to this is that it was more expensive than other sheet masks I've gotten from The Face Shop.

If you're a serial killer on the go who wants a little extra hydration, these are a must.  I guess if you're a normal person, it's good for you too.

Skin Care Saturdays - The Face Shop Real Nature Sheet Mask in Kelp

I love skin care.  I wasn't blessed with good skin, so for me, it's honestly less about vanity and more about 'how do I avoid painful cystic acne outbreaks that will take a month or so to resolve'.  Emphasis on the painful.  So doting on my skin, lovingly putting on toner and masks and creams - that's just me hoping that pimples won't happen.  But they always do, because life is cruel and unfair and likes to smash your dreams.  (I'm still waiting to become a vampire lawyer, world.  Four year old me is disappointed this never happened.)    But we'll still always try new stuff.

Which is why I snagged this sheet mask.

Protip for the non-beauty inclined: if you see "purifying" on face stuff, it's good for oily skin / blackheads / pimples nine times out of ten.

I'm sure one of you guys reads Hangul, so have at!

Some of you may be wondering what a sheet mask is.  It's basically what it sounds like; it's a sheet of fabric that's soaked in whatever awesome essence that mask is gonna help your face soak in.  Some of them will fit well, most of them won't, because we all have different faces.  They're way more popular in Asia than here in the US, though.

The first thing I liked about this mask was that it was hella saturated in the mask.  Some sheet masks give you a puddle of essence in the package but not much on the mask itself. So I felt I got my three bucks' worth.  As for fit, well.

For a sheet mask, this is the best fit I've ever seen.  It actually gave me enough room to get it on all of the blackheaddy parts of my nose.  (That's a word now.  I say so.)

It smelled really good too, which I like.  If something's going to be on my face for fifteen minutes, it'd better smell good.  I left it on until it dried out, so about thirty minutes, and noticed no ill effects.  My skin felt soft and not greasy, and a pimple that had been threatening to surface came to a head - a sure sign that the mask helped extract some gross nasties from my skin.

If you're cursed like me, I highly recommend these.  Don't be scared of kelp!  It's in your toothpaste, you know.  I've seen these for 1.50 each at resellers; I paid 3.00 at The Face Shop directly.

Loot! - The Face Shop

I love finding out about other cultures.  I love eating other cultures' foods and watching their movies.  I adore reading their books and listening to their music.  Since I'm a Culture Sponge (it seriously is a thing - I'm listening to French kids' music right now while I'm typing this, and the book next to me is a gender studies textbook about Japanese hostessing clubs and I'm eating some random peanuts that I couldn't tell you what they are because I don't speak Spanish), I also love - and might love the most - sampling other cultures' beauty products.

I work in a part of Houston they call the International District; there's a lot of Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, and Mexican places all within a few miles of each other.  I love it; where else can I get good butter chicken and pho without having to drive too far from each other?  I also just like signage that's not in English or romanized lettering.  It just makes me happy for some reason.  But now I have another reason to love it here: FACE SHOP STORE FIVE MINUTES FROM WORK ERRRMAHGEERD.  I'm not even kidding, I nearly skipped into the joint on my lunch today at work (and very nearly stole one of the posters of the gorgeous Kim Hyun-joong they have plastered all over).  Here's what I got (which isn't nearly half of what I want, but at some point I think I might need food again).

TREASURES.

I got this BB cream for 14.00 USD.  I've been looking for something to replace my beloved SKIN79 hot pink, and this feels (on my hand at least, I used the sample) much lighter.  I'll review it later!  It's kind of a smallish bottle, so I'm not sure if it's the same bang for the buck as hot pink.  I'll keep you posted.

Herb Day cleansing wipes for 8.00 USD.  I use wipes to take off my makeup at night, and also when I'm lazy.  Since the voyage from the car to the store and then back again in 107 F heat left me feeling not so fresh, I tried one of these at my work desk.  It left me feeling clean, left no weird residue behind, and tingled.  Mama likey, and that's pretty cheap for 70 wipes.

Nature Garden Cleansing Bar in sebum controlling.  I got this for 5.00 USD.  I'll use it and let you guys know how it does on controlling my sebum.  Sebum sucks.

Speaking of sebum, I love me these sheet masks.  They're a teeny bit expensive (3.00 USD each, and they're one use each), but they work so well I try to get them once a month.  Now I don't have to pay for international shipping when I do that.  Kermit arms, y'all.

And y'all know I couldn't leave without some nail polish.  The top one ran me just 2.00 USD (I know, right?)  That color is GR501 (I know, unfortunately no cute names here).  The bottom one was 5.00 USD and is BR801.

After work tonight, I'm going to go home, shower, fight some sebum, and do my nails.  ... and try not to think about next week when I get paid and probably go back to spend/waste more money.

Sewame Skin Care - PXE Anti-Blackhead Pore Refining Stretch Mask

Hello, internet.  I'm sorry I took a break from this for a while - I was feeling a bit under the weather.  But now I'm back to your lovely bosom, and I look like this.

What is that, you say?  I still don't look well?  In fact, I look like a burn victim, or someone who has just had a terrifying amount of plastic surgery?  While I cannot argue that I do look like both of those things, neither are true.  In fact, I'm just wailing on my pores with a sheet mask.  Sheet masks are little cloth masks soaked in good for your skin junk (the junk varies, depending on the mask you get) that are super popular in Asia.  And I see why.  I love face masks, but god, they're a pain in the booty to get off.  Once I'm done with them, I just want to be done with them.  Sheet masks let you do that.  You just peel the cloth off, rub whatever extra junk your skin didn't absorb into you, and throw away the cloth.

The mask I'm using today is Sewame's PXE Anti-Blackhead Pore Refining mask.  I got a box for 12.60 USD that has seven masks in it from SaSa.com.  They're pretty much what I use for all of my Asian beauty product needs. 

from SaSa.com

This is my first sheet mask by Sewame, and I love it.  It tingled the whole half hour I left it on (twice as long as I was supposed to, but that's more me getting involved in World of Warcraft than anything else).  My skin didn't look noticeably tighter after I took it off, but I've yet to use a skincare product that offered me immediate results.  I've got six more masks to see what it's going to do besides make me look like a mummy and make my skin tingle.

Do you guys like sheet masks?  What weird beauty stuff do you use?