Obsessed with Asian/Korean stuff - taking your skincare to level 5!

[FrustratedFrugal]

Are you curious about Asian/Korean beauty products?
Please join us and share your experiences and questions!

Check out past threads for product and vendor recommendations.

Remember, orders of £15 or less are VAT free!

This is keeping me busy on my bus journey to work

Matt brown eyeshadow www.muastore.co.uk/matte-eyeshadow

Not yet Angela, they're on my list though. Are there any you'd recommend?

Thanks very much muddling, I have saved those to favourites ready for next week.

Agree with Angela the tosowoong masks are very good and def on my rebuy list. I have the deep sea and dr troubex masks and so far the deep sea are my favourites. They were only £6.50 for 10 so very cheap as sheet masks go. Going to try the propolis and green tea ones next

Thanks mowglik, I'll take a look at their propolis ones.

Hmmm, once I factor in shipping, the cushion is still going to be around the £14 mark anyway. Maybe I'll go with the cheaper 'plain' option for the moment to try it and look for a fancy case at a later date.

I've added a Simple Kind to Skin toner with a ph of 5-6 to my Tesco order since I ran out of witch hazel & I think it should be ok as a ph reducing step - mornings do not run smoothly with a 20 min wait time included. Still dithering about something to replace snail temporarily though.

Lucy if it helps I use LRP Hydraphase and it's great. Changed to it after using Estée Lauder for years and am really pleased with it.

wicked I also want to try rerun A for dun damage. Let me know what you find out. Im slightly unsure about ordering things like that from eBay, there could be anything in the tube. Don't want to be a sad news story about the lady who scarred her face using dodgy cosmetics bought online

lucysmam I'm actually going off to the pharmacy this afternoon to see if I can get LRP Redermic R. I'd read good reviews of it on the internet. I've also used LRP Redermic UV all summer and have really liked it (it didn't have good reviews once I checked after I bought it). But it brightened my skin up and gave reasonable sun protection and good moisturising. I have high hopes of the Redermic R. I'll let you know how I get on.

I'm waiting for my Korean order of moisturiser to come (which I paid extra for fast delivery and is actually slower than normal delivery from other suppliers) so I've actually gone back to my Nivea blue tin for a bit of added moisturiser. Now that my skin is not the dehydrated sad mess it was when I started down this Korean skincare path around 3 months ago, I find it absorbs much better than it used to. Still want my Missha Aqua moisturiser though.

I've been using the white wine sleeping mask for the last few nights and whilst it feels nice my skin doesn't feel quite so plump and glowy as it does from using the cheaper Missha Pomegranate sleeping mask. Also I have a spot on my chin, I never get spots, wrinkles and massive pores yes, but I can't remember the last time I had a spot. I'm not sure if it's a good cream for me.

Yes, please do brittany. Maybe I've just looked at the bad reviews so far if you've seen good ones.

Is there something in the sleeping pack you're sensitive to? Or could the spot be hormonal? Mine appear on my chin and jawline mainly around my period.

Stevie, yes, you're right about buying retin-a from overseas being a risk, but a lot of the more easily available products here are out of my budget & patch testing is probably a sensible idea to check for strange reactions anyway.

I'll check out the LRP Hydraphase later on - just off to a meeting at school

DH hasnt found the missha shop where he is and has been up and down the road several times otherwise i would ask him to pick one up lucy and i could forward it on to you. I had given him a shopping list for missha as well

I've bought the LRP Redermic R Intense for night times - 34 euros so not cheap but seems to be a decent size tube so hopefully I'll get a couple of months out of it. I really want to try it tonight but I've got a job interview tomorrow and daren't go with a red flaky face, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow night. Maybe I can just put it on my forehead, I have a fringe I can hide behind.

I did look at the Ebay sellers, but I don't want to buy anything dodgy, at least this way I know I'm getting a reputable brand.

Ah, thanks muddling, I'll get one once I try a cushion - or one to diy maybe. Hope he finds the Missha shop for your list though - tell him to try Google maps .

I think the trick with retin-a is lots and lots of moisture brittany. Or at least it seems to be! I'll wait for your feedback on it & keep looking for now.

He might go to Seoul and see if there is one there. He looked on google maps and was standing outside it but it wasnt there lol and he is pretty good with directions and not getting lost (thats usually my trick!)

Loved this - Korean flight attendants' guide to K-Beauty from the Coveteur.

Hmmm...I made an interesting discovery tonight. I used a little bit of fucidin on a jawline spot that was looking a bit suspect (I thought it looked like impetigo - we'll see).

Anywho, I used a clearasil pad around but not on the spot so as not to interfere with the fucidin but must have applied it further around the spot than I thought. The fucidin reacts with the clearasil pad, turning it a foundation orange colour. I had to swipe elsewhere with the micellar water to check I had actually cleansed my face.

I'm going to google and see if it'll tell me why.

Aaand, I think I may have been mis-reading my skin all these years . Can one of you with dehydrated skin describe to me how your face feels/looks after washing, please?

And I made a disappointing discovery about my Dragon Blood Essence . There is a good half inch ish left in the pump bottle...the tube thingy it comes up through doesn't reach all the way to the bottom of the bottle so I can't get the rest out .

The only vaguely useful idea I've had for getting the rest out, so far, is sort of cutting the end off a skinny straw to turn it into a spatula ish thing. I think if I shake, I'll end up with more essence than I can use so possibly waste it & I don't want to do that!

Ahem, that was longer than I thought it'd be!

Almost forgot; brittany, how did your interview go?

Hmm, I'm not turning up much about why the fucidin reacted with the bha

So far, no answers on reddit either. I thought someone there might have been able to shed some light!

My first wishtrend order arrived!
They are much faster then testerkoreaor RoseRose in regards to postage.
So I now have Cosrx AHA, Cosrx BHA, OstC20 and Asta-Z cream. I got two samples (can't remember what) which wasn't that impressive considering I bought four things.
Now the experimenting begins.

Apparently the Korean government support their beauty industry.

Makes sense since KB/AB are becoming more and more popular.

Is there room for another?

I've been following these threads since the beginning but not been able to post.

I have oily skin and my pm routine is as follows:

Oil cleanse with dermalogica precleanse (will change to another type once used up)
Balance me face wash
Hado labo toner
Benton snail bee essence
Missha longer name ampoule
Balance me face oil

Also love the cosrx bha - its made my sebaceous filaments practically disappear - I use it every other evening.

I've tried a few bb creams and like the holika clearing one but have also just ordered the missha cushion in 23. I'm olive toned so hoping this will suit.

I'm also waiting on some
koelf royal jelly eye patches.

I've definitely noticed fewer hormonal spots but the snail bee seems to sort them pretty quickly - my skin doesn't seem particularly troublesome other than that.

Other loves are the skinfood salmon undereye concealer - a dupe of Laura mercier and the innisfree sebum powder.

Phew!

A few mini reviews on some of my newer products for anyone that's interested :)

I've used the Cosrx blackhead power a couple of times now, seems to be keeping my pores clear and definitely less drying and irritating than Clearasil pads but too early to say more.

Hada labo - 10 days in and already a HG product for me, my skin looks much more resilient and less dehydrated. It's such a lovely simple product, just perfect for me.

Mizon snail gel - been using for about a month, nice and light and all the silicone makes it a good day cream as is doubles as a primer. Not that special or moisturising but it doesn't break me out or increase my redness so I'll stick with it until I've nailed the rest of my routine. If it ain't broke don't fix it!

Cosrx sleeping mask - only used twice, it goes on shiny and sticky but by morning has sunk in so well there's no need to wash off. Moisturising enough that the dry patches my Holika Holika bb was flagging up have disappeared. Will continue with this one, actually going to use it as an evening moisturiser for a couple of weeks and see what happens (because I'm scared of trying new stuff!)

Cosrx whitehead power - unmitigated disaster relegated to tackling KP on my upper arms (doing a decent job there but on my face it produced a very angry, red, spotty face). If anyone wants a decant of this to try let me know.

I'm actually really happy with my skin at the moment, I need a new serum and moisturiser eventually but find myself terrified of undoing the good work a touch of hada labo and Mizon snail gel are doing so far, despite having some lovely AB stuff waiting to be tested (Benton essence, Banila co honey oil and TM goat milk cream)
Anyone else actually NOT wanting to test new products??

Lucysmam I read this book on Korean culture recently - very interesting and a nice read. They have invested in different kinds of cultural imports in a big way for quite some time now.

I did some wikipedia sleuthing - fusidic acid has weird side effects, it can turn your skin yellow and your poo white and your urine some other strange color. So it was probably interacting with salicylic acid in some way.