Recent Skincare Purchases

My skin has been acting up lately, and I’ve been getting some decently bad breakouts along my jaw and on my chin. I wish I could blame it on wearing masks, but I don’t go out and about enough for that to really be the culprit.

I’ve been looking at investing more into skincare lately as a result, and these are some of the products I’ve purchased recently, as well as my thoughts on them.

The Ordinary Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%

Pretty certain I’d recommend this product – might need some time still.

I do think this product has helped my skin so far. It feels less oily (typically my forehead becomes an oil slick throughout the day), and my skin just looks generally healthier. I have noticed that I am still breaking out along my jawline, however I have read this could be due to the purging process.

Basically, the product purges all the impurities that are currently in your skin (I remember hearing on a podcast that when you get a pimple, all that shit has already been brewing under your skin for like five days before you even see the pimple), and then once that clears away your skin starts to look better.

This is common with a lot of skincare products – people who go on acne medications like Accutane often talk about their skin getting so much worse before it starts to get better. So, I’m hoping my skin is still going through that purging process, and I’ll see how it looks in a couple weeks.

On the plus side, even if this product doesn’t fully clear away my acne, I don’t feel like it’s a huge loss financially. So many skincare products are so expensive, but this only cost me $10.60 at Sephora! I once spent $52 on a face oil that was 1/4 of the size of this bottle. So, yeah. It’s ridiculous how affordable The Ordinary products are – it makes it so much more accessible for people to test out different products and see what works for their skin, and I love that.

Facial Roller

I would recommend a facial roller.

I don’t think you need to get the super fancy and expensive ones – I got mine for just $27. I do feel that it has reduced the puffiness in my face slightly when I use it in the mornings, but more than that I love using it just for the feel.

It’s nice and cool to the touch, which feels so soothing in the mornings. It also just feels like an amazing massage for your face – even if I wasn’t seeing any results, I’d still be using the tool just for the massage.

I personally like to use my facial roller after I put on moisturizer. I don’t know if this is necessary, but I feel like it glides over my skin better than if I used it without moisturizer. I worry that it would be more likely to pull my skin in that case, and stretch it or give me premature wrinkles.

I use the roller all over my face, but my favourite parts to do are my jaw, and my under eyes. The jaw feels like a much-needed massage if you tend to clench it when stressed (like me), and under the eyes just feels very soothing especially right after waking up.

I would definitely recommend buying a facial roller, and I wouldn’t worry about splurging on an expensive one if you haven’t got the money for that – I feel like they’re probably all relatively similar.

Pore Vacuum

Would not recommend.

In my opinion, this was a waste of money. I was skeptical about pore vacuums to begin with, so I shouldn’t have been so disappointed when it turned out to be a fail, but I felt like I had done my research!

This particular one had great reviews online, and I even went to Youtube to try and see it in action. There was a video where two people demonstrated using it, and you could actually see the gunk getting sucked out of their pores. They didn’t do any kind of prep beforehand on camera to get these results, and they didn’t preface it by saying you should do any prep prior to using the pore vacuum.

I’ve tried it so many times, with all the different attachments, and tried prepping my skin in different ways, but I still got zero results. I tried doing it right after washing my face, and nothing happened. I tried exfoliating first, still nothing. I tried washing my face and then steaming it to really make sure my pores were open – zilch.

I was disappointed because I was really excited to unclog my pores and be able to easily do it at home, but alas. I should have known that it would be too good to be true to get spa-like results with such an inexpensive item – if it really were that easy, why would anyone go to a professional for extractions!

Definitely do not waste your money on this product, it’s not worth it.

All in all though, I would say I had more wins than losses with this haul. And really, the loss was my own fault. I knew before I even purchased it that it likely wasn’t going to get me the results I wanted, but I decided to take the risk anyways!

Do you have any favourite skincare products that you’d recommend? Let me know!

Until next time,
Nadine