Product Review: Clarisonic Mia

So as I mentioned previously, Husband got me a Clarisonic Mia for my birthday. I've wanted one for a while: between QVC and other bloggers, it seemed like every time I turned around, there it was, assuring me that it would make my skin cleaner and clearer than it's ever been.

The original sized Clarisonic is close to $200 (available here). Now, I may seem like a bit of a compulsive shopper, but $200 is one heck of an experiment. I don't even know if I like this contraption! So when I saw the Clarisonic Mia, priced at around $150, but eligible for a 20% off coupon at Skinstore (click here), it seemed much more reasonable.

I've never really had what you would call "problem skin". I occasionally get a pimple here and there, but nothing ever really that serious...until last year. All of a sudden, my cheeks were covered with little red marks. It wasn't acne per se, but it was annoying. I changed cleansers to the philosophy line (available here) and saw tremendous improvement, but the faint marks were still there.

Finally, I reasoned that the issue was my makeup. I'm a makeup fiend and wear it every day. If I wasn't taking it off completely, I decided, my skin was never really "clean" and it made sense that I'd have some irritation and redness. In my mind, the Clarisonic Mia would solve that problem.

Okay, so immediately after opening the box, I tore into my new skincare acquisition. Luckily, I read the instructions first: charge for 24 hours before first use. ARG! The charger plugs into the wall and then magnetizes to the unit. It buzzes to indicate that the connection is good and then a light blinks until the unit is fully charged. According to the manual, a charge is good for 20 uses.

Exactly 24 hours later, I grabbed my Clarisonic Mia and trotted into the bathroom. There are two options for use: either rub cleanser directly onto your face or apply cleanser to the brush and apply to your face that way. I prefer rubbing the cleanser on my face myself. When I apply cleanser to the brush, it gets rather runny and concentrates in certain areas of my face (i.e. there's tons of cleanser on my forehead since you use the unit there first, but then not much cleanser on my chin since that's last). The cleanser also ran down my face into my eyes, which was rather unpleasant, when I applied it to the brush first.

Using the Clarisonic Mia is ridiculously easy. You press the large button on the handle of the unit and it turns on for 60 seconds. During that time, you start with your forehead and drag the unit across your face. I've been using it around my chin/jawline as well just because I had experienced some redness/bumps there. I've found that there is plenty of time to clean my entire face and then go back over my face a second time before the unit automatically turns off. There's a plastic cover to keep the brush clean and the unit is waterproof so you can use it in the shower or bath.

As I write this, I've been using my Clarisonic Mia every night for the past two weeks. I've noticed a bit of improvement in my skin. The redness is almost entirely gone and my face is much smoother. I love the way my face feels too, especially right after I use the Clarisonic Mia.

The company recommends changing brushes every three months. A set of two brushes is about $40. The unit comes with "sensitive" brushes, but there are also "regular" and "delicate" brushes available.

I'm glad I decided to try the Clarisonic Mia and I'm definitely a convert!

Review: Dr. Denese Self Tanning Gloves

Every summer I attempt to find a sunless tanner. I'll buy a bottle of something, use it once or twice, Husband will complain about the smell, I'll whine about the streaks and wear pants for a week, and the bottle will sit unused in the bathroom closet until I replace it with my next purchase.

I've been interested in trying tanning towels for a while now. The idea is simple: rather than a spray or foam in a bottle, the tanning formula is on a towel (like a moist towelette). You rub it on yourself and presto - a pretty summer glow.

After researching different brands and reading customer reviews, I ordered Dr. Denese Glow Younger 12-ct Pro-Peptide SelfTanning Gloves (*whew* That's a mouthful!) from QVC (see here). QVC has a nice 30 return policy on anything (cosmetics included) so I figured if I absolutely hated the towels, I could return them and only be out the shipping (which would be the equivalent of the towels I had used). Mathematically it made sense and since the gloves were the Today's Special Value, they were marked down almost $10. Score!

The towels arrived on Wednesday night. My first dilemma: do I use the towels now, during the week or do I wait until the weekend where I can hide out in the house for two days if a self tanning disaster occurred? I figured, "What the heck?" and decided to go for it.

The glove itself is pretty straightforward to use and there are even instructions on how to apply on the package. The recommendation is to start on your legs, when you get to your torso, turn the glove over and do your upper body. Then turn the glove inside out and do your face and neck.

A note regarding smell: there is none...initially. After a few hours that same fake tanning smell set in, but it wasn't overwhelming (i.e. Husband was able to stay in the same room as me. Usually he's very sensitive to cosmetic smells). The next morning after I showered, the smell was gone.

I took some before and after pictures for comparison. The pictures were taken exactly 24 hours apart in the same lighting and I'm even wearing the same clothes! Look at me with my little controlled environment for my experiment - I should be a scientist!

Here's my leg (before and after, respectively):

Here's my arm (before and after, respectively):

Here's my face (before and after, respectively):

And here's a full body shot (before and after, respectively):

In addition to Dr Denese's tips for applying, I took even more caution. I showered first and exfoliated like a mofo! When I started on my legs, I ran the towel along each of my calves and my thigh once before I started to rub it in. I didn't want too much formula to collect on one particular limb. Then once I had covered my calves and thighs, I went back and did my knees and ankles. I did the same thing with my arms, saving my elbows for last.

It was with tremendous trepidation that I used the tan towel on my face. I can wear pants to cover leg splotches, but it's too warm now for a ski mask and it wouldn't be court appropriate anyway. By the time you get to your face and turn the towel inside out, the towel is just about dry so not too much formula is left. I basically have a nice warm glow - like I used a bronzer.

It's subtle, but it's also natural. My skin tends to get really red (you can tell in the before pictures), but not because I'm sunburned. I just have a rosy undertone to my skin. Several people commented today that I looked like I had been in the sun. I was actually really impressed with the coverage and I ended up with only a few blotches (on my wrist and I knew this was going to happen because it always does. You wash your hands and end up with a line of demarkation! ARG!) I wore some bracelets today to cover up the line and nobody noticed!

The auto-delivery plan at QVC is set for every 60 days. With 12 towels per order, that suggests that I should use one every 5 days. That will take me to Sunday so I'll be interested to see how much of my tan is left by then or will I have to reinvent the wheel every time I use these things.

One negative I will note is that it was difficult to keep the glove on my hand. It kept sliding around as I was running it over my skin. A bit of elastic on the end would have been nice to help keep it in place. I didn't find this to be such an enormous flaw that I wouldn't use these or order these again.

Day 2: While stepping out of the shower this morning, I noticed some "tan" rubbing off on my nice white towels. Whoops! Better dust off the older towels for next time. The tan is holding up nicely. I think my biggest enemy is going to be dry skin so I'm moisturizing like nobody's business. It still looks really natural too. I would say that as the towel dries, it deposits less of the formula on your skin. I did my stomach last and it is significantly lighter than the rest of my body (that may also be because it started out significantly lighter). Just something to consider - when I reapply on Sunday, I'm going to do my stomach first and my arms second when I get to my upper body.

Day 3: The tan is definitely starting to fade, but seems to be doing so naturally. No flaking or peeling leaving me looking like a tiger (i.e. orange streaks). I'm supposed to reapply every 5 days but I'm going to reapply tonight (at the end of 4 days) to see what it looks like to try to "build" a tan.

Overall I'm impressed and I'd recommend these to anyone looking for a natural and safe summer tan!

Mally Make-up Review

I used my new Mally make-up kit yesterday morning and figured I'd write out a quick review.

The sampler kit I got is no longer available on the website. I'm not surprised it sold out. They were pushing it really heavily all weekend and seriously for $25, how could I not order it? "Very easily," my husband would say. Be quiet, you!

The kit contains: a mini-mascara, a mini-lipgloss, a mini-eyepencil, and a full sized dual eye compact.

First impressions? The eye compact is nice. It has a nice wide mirror that I can actually see a good portion of my face in. The mini sizes are relatively big. It all came packaged in a pretty pink box (which I'm a sucker for). I'm definitely pleased with the amount of make-up I got for under $30 (remember I did pay like $5 shipping - bah!)

So here I am without any make-up on:

Here I am with my Mally make-up on - please ignore the hair towel. My hair insists that I follow a really specific series of steps when I'm styling it each morning and even photos being posted online cannot deviate from that process:

The eyeliner was really nice. It literally melted onto my eyelid. No tugging or pulling at all. The shade is midnight which is a really dark blue. Normally I stick to traditional browns and blacks with eyeliners, but this isn't totally outrageous so I can deal with it. There was a minor moment of panic initially when I couldn't get the top off, but I finally gave it a little bit of a twist and it slide right off. Crisis averted.

The eye primer and eye shadow seem nice. They are nice big sizes and I really like the compact they come in. I didn't have to use much of either product so I can see this lasting a long time. I can't remember the last time I only used one eye shadow though so I couldn't stop myself from doing a little bit of highlighter (this in Sugar Sugar) along my brow bone and in my tear ducts. Mally sells a product that does similiar highlighting so I'm sure she would approve.

The mascara is really nice. Mally claims that she used to spend hours recreating this look before she invented this mascara. Now, I don't know if I buy that, but I will say that the mascara made my lashes (which are already relatively dark and thick) look pretty darn good. I also didn't have any issues with the mascara clumping off during the day and rendering me blind (which frequently happens when I wear mascara and is one of the reasons why I rarely wear it).

The lipstick is a nice muted pink shade and smells really tasty (I can't put my finger on exactly what it is though). The applicator is a pointed brush so you can use it to line your lips and then fill in the color. I liked the color on but it does tend to come off relatively quickly. By lunch I had already reapplied three times. I guess with a larger size, I wouldn't mind so much but with this mini, I was afraid that the lipstick would be gone at the end of one day! It's still a cute size and a nice color so I'll keep it in my make-up bag for mid-afternoon touch-ups.

So writing the last section about the lipstick coming off made me wonder - what about the rest of the make-up? Mally famously puts eyeliner on her hand and then rubs it furiously, claiming that it won't come off until you take it off. We'll see about that.

This picture was taken at the end of the day. The mascara held up really well (and didn't get in my eye once all day!). The shadow is still there but is covered up by the enormous smear across my eyelid that was my eyeliner. Now, I will admit that I am traditionally very heavy handed with eyeliner and this happens to me pretty much every day. I note, however, that more actual liner appears to have stayed where I put it than usual so that's a good thing. On my next attempt, I'm going to have to use a lighter touch to apply this stuff lest it end up all over my face by the end of the day.

Overall impression? It's a cute kit which I'll definitely keep. If I was a regular mascara user, I'd definitely pick up a full size (and I might become a regular mascara user after today's experience!) I'll probably pass on Mally lipsticks unless she comes up with a longer lasting formula. Eyeliner and shadow are something I could really see myself interested in. I'll give it a few more days of use will determine if I'm ready to make a bigger investment when my current Clinique shades run out.

I intend to spend the morning playing with my new Anthro purchases. If I can't make them into three outfits, they are going back. Last night I had a dream that I returned the cardigan and I wasn't too torn up about that so we'll see how this all plays out.