Morning Routine

As promised, I'm going to start sharing with you some of my skincare routines. There are basically 3 routines that I follow: Morning, Evening and Weekly. I'm going to show you Morning Routine today. It's a wordy post. :D To start, I'm not proclaiming myself as a skincare guru and I do not claim that my skin is wonderful!! :D There are many people with much more beautiful and well-maintained skin. I just thought I'd share with you this routine because it helped improve my skin. I think my skin is good enough for the age I'm at. I am in my thirties, by the way. It's not a secret but I don't usually "announce" it.

My skin history: I used to have troubled skin, very agitated and sensitive, and swinging between too dry and too oily on different parts of my face. In my twenties, I managed to clear my skin up after I had a bout of bad acne and skin allergies, so now I have enlarged pores as a result. In fact, at this point of writing, I'm having some allergic reaction, I think to some food I ate, rash on my chest and cheeks! The women in my father's side of the family don't have terribly wrinkly or saggy skin and I have been lucky to have inherited some of those genes. My main battle is with pigmentation. My mother has freckles and so do I, even on my neck and arms. These freckles get darker when I am exposed to the sun, so I avoid sun as much as I can. I don't want to have huge age spots when I'm older!! If I ever get any, I'll go get them removed, but my aim is to keep them minimal. Few age spots is cheaper and easier to remove than many, right? Keke. I've always been about skincare. Even when I'm trying to be thrifty I still get all the skincare that I need. For some time, I couldn't use "whitening" products because they were too harsh and caused irritation. I was also keen on simple, because of my hyper-reactive skin, I couldn't use alot of "whitening" and anti-aging products. So, my freckles went abit haywire. However, lately I started using stuff from Kanebo and they worked well for me. Maybe their "whitening" formulations are gentler. Now that my face is clearer (freckles lightened), I feel the need to keep it that way. I am also aiming for uniform skin colour ie. my face, neck, arms and legs are the same colour. That's why I have a routine for my body too, which I'll share later. I'm currently using up my Blanchir items. I've been using Blanchir since March 09, but I intend to switch slowly to Impress IC as it has anti-aging components that Blanchir doesn't. Soon, I will test-drive all the Impress IC samples I received and will review them later. OK, my morning skincare routine. In total, including shower, making coffee and etc, I take about 30-40 minutes to get out of the house.

1. Wash my face with foaming face wash. Currently, I'm using Kose Seikkisho soap. (I'm thinking it's getting a bit drying to use this twice a day though.)
2. Blanchir Whitening Clear Conditioner (Moist) lotion on entire face and neck.
3. Shiseido Bio Performance Super Eye Contour Cream around eyes
4. Blanchir Whitening Conclusion serum on face and neck.
5. Orbis Pore Care or Fancl Pore Essence on t-zone (I'm switching between the 2, they both work equally well for me)
6. Blanchir Whitening Milky Conditioner on cheeks and neck
7. Lavera Faces Wild Rose Liposome Intensive Cream on drier areas (this is another reason why I feel I need to switch to Impress IC)
8. Fancl Sunguard 30 on whole face and neck

This is the end of the skincare portion! LOL. My makeup routine will usually begin with either a primer or BB cream. :D Does putting so much stuff create alot of ickky sticky feeling on my skin? No, it doesn't. All the products absorb well into my skin and don't leave a film one on top of the other. Personally, I believe it's Kanebo's skincare "philosophy" that has helped to balance my skin and the improvement shows on the skin analysis machine. I don't think the machine can lie. My melanine levels really went down and my skin has become normal instead of combination. What I like about most about Kanebo's skincare is the range of "Special Care" items available. It always focusses on hydration and then a whole slew of products for special care (which includes melanine control and pore care) regardless of whether you consider yourself to have oily or dry skin. In fact, I realise Kanebo doesn't usually market products based on skin-types (I'm not sure about other Japanese brands but some Korean brands still subscribe to the oily-normal-dry skin categories). The only difference in product labelling is whether you prefer to have a "refresh" (sometimes this one is called "regular") feeling or a "moisture" feeling. Besides the fact that my skin hasn't reacted badly to the products yet, it has given me a new perspective on how to care for my skin, ie. always hydrate and use specific products to also address skin problems. It might seem weird that this knowledge comes late to me. However, I think it's because of the way most companies "categorise" skin products. These categories always led me to many difficulties - oily skin products that deal with my pores are too drying for me and dry skin products that deal with my dryness are often too "rich" because they don't focus on hydration but pile on the "oily" ingredients. Ie. open pores does not always equate to oily skin. And dry skin does not always equate to no pimples. That is why I think the Japanese/Asian skincare philosophy is better suited for me instead of the American or European skincare ranges. © Copyright. All rights reserved.