Obsessed with Asian/Korean stuff - taking your skincare to level 3!

[FrugalFashionista]

Asian and Korean skincare products are big thing right now. We love them!
Tailor your multistep skincare routine here! (or see this pic)

Some of our favorite products so far...
Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Essence SPF 50 Sunscreen
Missha Magic Cushion BB Cream #21
Lioele Dollish Veil Vita in Purple
Holika Holika Petit Jelly BB Cream
CosRx Returning A-sol
Scinic Propolis Serum
Mizon Hyaluronic Acid Serum
Missha Time Revolution Night Repair Science Activator Ampoule
Missha Super Aqua Cell Renew Snail products & trial kit
Mizon Snail Repair Cream
Mizon Returning Starfish Cream
Mizon Good Night White Sleep Mask
Innisfree Wine Jelly Sleeping Pack
My Beauty Diary Imperial Birds Nest and Hyaluronic Sheet Masks
Innisfree Trouble Care Sheet Masks
Innisfree Real Squeeze Sheet Masks
Tony Moly Avocado Mask
Nexcare Acne Patches

Our favorite sellers:
UK-based Bits and Bobs of Beauty
EU-based Missha.ee, Missha.de
Korean Innisfree
On eBay f2plus1, sing-sing girl, Iamlove, blueprint21
Orders from outside the EU: £15 or less are VAT free!

Blogs and other resources
Reddit Asian Beauty, Fifty Shades of Snail, Snow White & Asian Pear, Skin & Tonics
more resources here...
Vol 2 of this thread here and Vol 1 of here

Please come and share your questions, experiences, links and best shopping tips!

Wow sorry about super sloppy spelling

GERTI so happy that your CC stays on your face! I found Asian BB creams when my mineral foundation became a soggy mess in tropical humidity.

Dd1 gets stress related excema Frugal, usually on her neck and chest. Hopefully they are just down to the stress of moving and nothing more.

Gerti, I've ordered from Jolse - value of parcel marked down, arrived within a couple of weeks and loads of interesting samples to try

The samples are one of my favourite part!

sing-sing-girl on ebay also send samples; I ordered my foaming face wash through them and there were 3 (maybe 4) in with that as well. Shipping took a little bit longer with them though. That was one of the parcels the postie stopped me with.

I'm very interested in the Sulwhasoo products - which range is it? Ginseng doesn't really help narrow it down because apparently it's the key ingredient in most of their stuff!

Quick tip - I use a stippling blush to make foundation look more natural after application. I prefer a light look and even my superlight foundation feels too heavy before I use the brush. It would probably do the same job for a BB cream.

The iamlove shop on eBay sends out lots of samples, I ordered 2 sheet masks and there were 5 or 6 in.

Scrambled I started with a kit containing the following (there are a few of the same sets on eBay):

First Care Activating Serum
Essential Balancing Water
Essential Balancing Emulsion
Essential Renewing Eye Cream
Concentrated Ginseng Renewing Cream

I use the first four in the morning after my Skinceuticals CE Ferulic Serum and before the Biore sunscreen. And the HH Aqua Jelly BB of course

I layer all five after double cleansing every other evening but on alternate evenings I use Skinceuticals Retinol 0.5, leave it for an hour or so then use the eye cream and ginseng cream over the top.

I've tried loads of brands over the years, but Sulwhasoo really seems to be making a difference

Thanks LittleMy! I'll put it on the Most Coveted list. I'm enjoying lighter skincare at the moment so will probably order it towards the end of summer.

Have been reading fanserviced-b's blog and have also added the Goodal Waterest range to the list. It sounds fantastic for my somewhat oily, dehydrated and congested skin.

Ok, quick update about the hand masks I tried earlier on - they're like footner bags but for hands iyswim, impossible to do anything much wearing them.

The lotion inside was quite light in texture rather than being a cream if that makes sense (it should do, I hope ). It smelled nice enough - nothing out of the ordinary though.

When I got bored took my hands out of the gloves there was a tonne of lotion to massage in and more left in the gloves - have folded them back up to see if they'll do another use or not. If they dry up then they dry up.

Overall, quite impressed - my hands look and feel soft, plastic gloves make it hard to do anything so will stick to my cotton ones regularly but as an occasional thing in front of the box they're alright.

I'll still be looking for something heavyweight though to replace my 8hr cream (little less ££ would be nice) for night use with the gloves

Sheet mask did not happen - the girls only went to bed half an hour ago & dp's day/night out was a washout so I gave up on anything else for tonight

I used the Innisfree Super Volcanic clay mask tonight. It's a very, very good clay mask. When I washed it off my skin felt soft, smooth and very clean. My pores also looked smaller but I think that's temporary.

I hope it helps calm my skin - I've had a shocker with very disrupted sleep recently and I'm starting to get the resulting breakouts. Although thanks to the red wine sleeping mask I'm not half as covered in spots as I normally am.

Am on episode 8 of My Love from Another Star. It's really enjoyable. I can't watch it with DH though, he thinks it's terrible!

Scrambled, I'm going to investigate this k-drama you've been watching on Monday when dp is on afters shift. Got to be better than the dire choices on telly

Iamlove shop on ebay, f2plus1, and Jolse all send samples.

Moomin (or anyone else using sulwhasoo), what'd you do whether samples ran out please? I love the sound of great looking skin, but looking at the sample sets, they look like they'd last 2-3 days, then the full size products look v expensive on ebay. :(

Also, which seller did you get the samples/ full sizes from - huge variety in prices and when it's expensive you don't want to risk fakes.

Actually leeloo, all the samples in the set other than the Ginseng Renewing Cream (small pot) have lasted a month, and there's still some left! The eye cream in particular should last a good while, as you only use a tiny blob twice a day.

What I've done is order a load of individual samples (some in bottles, some in sachets). It is more expensive than most of the Korean skincare, but this makes it far more affordable. And still less expensive and way more effective than the western products I had been using.

I use a seller called topinkgirl who I had seen recommended on a couple of blogs, she takes a couple of days to despatch but the prices and products are good.

Leeloo some AB bloggers and Redditors buy Sulwhasoo sample packs of 10 or more repeatedly, they are cheaper that way. Sulwhasoo is a high end line in the US, sold at Bergdorf Goodman or Neiman Marcus iirc, but it is very popular in Korea, number #1 in some products, probably because they target more mature skin.

My chin has calmed down, I put nothing except salicylic and Effaclar on it. Will be very careful with CosRx.

I got my eye cream from an eBay shop called makozzang and the face cream from pretty cosmetic. Both items came quickly.
The samples are a cheaper way of buying the products per floz/ml.

I got 40ml of the 'time treasure renovating eye cream' and 30ml of the ginseng renewing cream. Total: £24!
Will definitely be repurchasing

Scrambled do you have a brush for putting on the mask? I find I can squeeze a little out of my tubes and apply with the brush and it goes further than using my fingertips.

Good morning all, I have a couple of questions.

1. I'm still confused with the BHA toners, I was applying this 20 mins after I'd washed my face and then using Missha Cell Renewal Snail Skin Treatment which I consider to be a toner. Have I got this wrong? Should I wash my face, then add the Missha, wait 20 mins and then use the BHA?

1. I'm off on holiday later this week - normally at home I have my shower, put on my PJs and do my evening routine and generally spend the whole night topping up. But, on holiday, I'll be coming in, having a shower and then putting on makeup. My question for people with more active social lives than me, is do you just wash, tone and moisturise your face before putting on your evening makeup, and then do it all again with the extras before you go to bed (or as many extras as you can fit in if you're shattered). I know this is a first world problem but my skin is only just starting to pick itself up now and I don't want it to stop.

I've caught myself reading more blogs now than I ever have before - I was going to have a look at a konjac sponge because someone had spoken about them in a blog.

No, the bha must go on first because it is an acid toner. The snail one is not an acid and does not require a low ph environment to work.
Does that make sense?

brittany, I have been doing the same as you - double cleanse, wait 15 then bha then will add my hada labo when it arrives. The step before the bha would be a ph adjusting toner like in my links upthread somewhere from yesterday. The Mizon aha/bha one seems popular.

Wrt taking off and reapplying - I did double cleanse, snail gel then sunscreen and make up - saved the whole routine for when we got in.

The sulwhasoo stuff sounds amazing, have put on my list for when all my current stuff runs out in a couple of years

brittany I've been reading loads of blogs as well, mainly to build up a list of recommended products to try - the fact that you can get samples so easily makes it a lot easier to try out stuff without investing too heavily. Also am learning as I go along and recently have put all my products in lists so I can see where I am missing stuff and where I have too many items to get through. I didn't realise I had 5 cleansers and 1 essence so am researching essences atm

frugal could it be purging from using the BHA? I have a few spots on my nose/cheek area since using dragons blood and Cosrx BHA and I am usually spot free - I'm hoping its purging from using a BHA, I haven't had any new ones and hoping for these to pass quickly

Morning all, oh god, keep me away from ebay!, I ended up ordering An etude house collagen face care set-not samples -for about 12 quid and Bergamo snail serum-2 for about 6. I found sulwhasoo sets of 6 first care balancing serum and firming daycream for about 12 too. One of my colleagues loves it, her son lived in Seoul and she became addicted there.
I'm trying to persuade my adult son to try the vit c serum and snail serum fir his angry acne, but he has as and dislikes cotton wool and different textures.

Thanks for the help, I was worried I was doing things wrong and not getting the full benefit of the BHA. I'm using Liquid Gold as my AHA every two or three nights, which I think is suitable.

I have a massive wishlist in Ebay for when I come back from holiday, and hopefully will have some money left to buy it all. It's taken me quite a while to get my head round all of the products out there and I'm still not 100% sure. I'm concentrating on skin texture/hydration first, once I've got that sorted I'll look at toning and brightening products.

I'm using a couple of French pharmacy products at the moment because they were available in the timeframe I had, but the Korean products (from reading the blogs) appear to be cheaper and more effective - still it's going to cost me a fortune when I do get round to buying it all. But I can't work out if it's double cleansing or using the BHA but the pores on my cheeks and top of my nose are much smaller, the ones on my chin are shrinking, I'm still waiting to see a change in the craters at the side of my nose but all in all I'm very happy with the improvement in skin texture.

I've got loads of empty sample packets sitting in my bathroom cabinet of samples I've tried and liked, so I can remember to buy full sized versions.