honestskin Archive | Berries in the Snow

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Review: Nature Republic Collagen HD Essencial BB Cream

22. January 2015

Here is the last review from the products I received in the honestskin Special Gift Event, the Nature Republic Collagen HD Essencial BB Cream. I only have tried a few Nature Republic products, but I like their brand’s appearance and often also the packaging which reminds me of Innisfree. This BB cream claims to be formulated with 502 mg Triple Collagen Complex and be very nourishing for your skin. It should give your skin a radiant glow. Let’s see how this BB cream worked for me:

Nature Republic is a Korean brand focusing on natural cosmetics. Their brand ideology is to take what nature gives and use it for our benefits. They focus on specific natural ingredients from all over the world. Their packaging reflects this ideology by using recylcled paper and soy ink for their cardboard boxes. This is also one of the reasons the brand reminds me of Innisfree. The Nature Republic Collagen HD Essencial BB Cream comes in a cardboard box like this. The packaging design is simple, but contains a lot of description on the sides. Most of the description is in Korean, but you’ll also find a short description and ingredients list in English.

The ingredients of this BB cream are mostly green and yellow flagged according to COSDNA. You can look up the ingredients >> here <<. This BB cream contains Titanium Dioxide and Ethylhexyl Methoxycinnamate for UV protection. It has SPF 27 PA++, which is nice. It also contains soluble collagen and hydrolyzed collagen as moisturizing ingredients, but also some plant extracts. What I really like about the cardboard packaging is the braille for blind people, so they now what they are grabbing.

The Nature Republic collagen HD Essencial BB Cream comes in a plastic tube packaging. Unfortunatelly, the tube doesn’t come with a pump. The tube contains 50 g of BB cream which is a good amount and will last you for some time. The plastic tube has a good quality and doesn’t seem to be any cheap plastic at all.

A short description is written on the backside of the tube in Korean. You’ll also find the production date imprinted on it.

The BB cream itself comes in only one shade which is a lighter one. It has a creamy, lightly fluid structure and a slight scent, which is not overpowering. The scent isn’t recognizable after application anymore.

When performing an oil test on a blotting paper you’ll see that it shows some oilyness after 1 hour. I have dry skin, so I didn’t see any oilyness on my face while wearing, but for oily skintypes it could be better to use a loose powder over this BB cream.

Here you can see how it looks on my skin. I applied my normal moisturizing skincare routine before. After it adsorbed I applied the BB cream with my fingers. The coverage of this BB cream is medium, but buildable. If you have only some red spots like I do in the image, it will cover it up properly. I would not say that this BB cream has a dewy finish. It has no matte finish either, so it is something inbetween. You see that my skin has the same dewyness it had after moisturizing. I think this BB cream adapts nicely to the skintone and leaves a natural finish. I also like that it doesn’t give a white cast in flash photography. The staying power is not super long, after some hours it tends to fade away, especially at the T-zone. If you have very dry skin it might get flaky, so I would advise you to use a facial mist inbetween.

All in all, this is a nice BB cream for a adequate pricing. It looks natural and doesn’t make you look like a ghost. The coverage will be good enough for people with only light skin concerns. The Nature Republic Collagen HD Essencial BB Cream retails for 12.78 US$ at honestskin Unfortunatelly, this item has been discontinued by Nature Republic :(. Did you try out this BB cream already? Do you have any favourite BB cream from Nature Republic?

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Review: Iope Super Vital Cream VIP Kit

15. January 2015

Here is another review from the honestskin Special Gift Event about the Iope Super Vital Cream VIP Kit. This kit comes with 5 products from the Iope Super Vital Extra Moist line, and honestly speaking it is the first Iope skincare line I’m trying. I was really happy therefore, that this kit was part of the gift event I received.

Iope is a Korean high-end brand and part of the Amore Pacific family, similar to other brands like Laneige, Innisfree and Etude House (and many more of the known Korean cosmetic brands). The brand focusses on innovative biological technologies in their cosmetics. Thus their brand image and approach is not cute or girly, but rather mature and scientific. The product packaging reflects this by being elegent and high quality. Also here the Iope Super Vital Cream VIP Kit comes in a golden reflecting cardboard box. It looks very luxurious (but makes photography hard due to reflecting material).

The description on the packaging is not very detailled and it is in Korean only. Probably it lists what kind of products is included in the VIP kit. This set contains 5 products in total: The Super Vital Extra Moist Softner (20 ml), the Super Vital Extra Moist Emulsion (20 ml), the Super Vital Extra Moist Serum (5 ml), the Super Vital Cream Bio Intensive (7 ml), and the Super Vital Extra Moist Eye Cream (3ml). You’ll find some of the ingredients for the products on COSDNA (Softener, Emulsion, Serum, and Cream). Most of the ingredients are green flagged, but you’ll find some irritating ingredients like alcohol, PEG and Triethanol amine. You’ll also find some great ingredients like niacinamide, titanium dioxide, ascorbix acid, and various plant extracts. You’ll also find caffeine in some of the ingredient lists.

The products in this kit are all travel sized and come in a plastic packaging. Unlike the fullsized products, the packaging looks less sturdy and elegant, but still the golden color of all of the products gives it a luxurious touch. The softener and the emulsion do have normal bottle packaging. The serum comes with a pump dispenser. The cream comes in a tiny jar and the eye cream in a tube. It was harder to get ptoduct out of the softener and the emulsion, because the plastic of the bottle is very hard. You have to shake it a couple of times. The pump dispenser also needed a few pumps before the first product could be pumped out. Other than this the packaging was fine. The back side of the tubes, bottles and jars contains a short description in Korean, too.

I swatched the five products on my arm below and as you can see the softener is a liquid toner with a bit of a gel-like structure. It has a soft flowery scent and feels moist on the skin. After a few pats it will absorb and leave your skin soft. The eye cream has a rich creamy texure which melts away on the skin nicely and leaves the skin moisturized and nourished. The eye area feels hydrated for quite a long time. The serum has a gel – like consistency and the same flowery scent as the softener. it has a slight stickiness to itself, but feels also moisturizing. It is not oily after application. The emulsion and the cream are my favourites out of this set. The emulsion has a light milk-type formula. It feels lightweight and yet deeply moisturizing. Actually, although I have dry skin I only use the emulsion during daytime, because it delivers enough moisture especially with the serum in advance. The cream has a butter-like creamy texture and is a VERY rich cream. I’m apllying it during the night and the next morning my skin is still moisturized and my T-zone is even shiny. Both have a very nice flowery scent which I liked a lot.

The Iope Super Vital Cream VIP Kit is very recommended to people with dry to very dry skin. Also people with dull skin will like this. The products in this kit are highly moisturizing and very nourishing. The Super Vital Cream Bio Intensive cream is not recommended for people with oily skin. It made my dry skin oily on the T-zone when I applied it over night. People with super dry skin might love to try this out. The eyecream was rich and hydrating and is great for people with lines. The extra moisture and lipids will make your lines appear finer. If you only have dry lips you might want to try the Laneige Waterbank Eye Gel instead. A downside is the price, of course. Since it is a high end brand the Iope Super Vital Set with the fullsized items (not the travel sized items I showed you here!) retails for 95.34 US$ at honestskin. Before you go ahead and buy the fullsized product I would advise you to look for a trial kit like the one I showed here.

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Review: Etude House Color Lips-fit

8. January 2015

I showed you previously the products I received from the Honestskin Special Gift Event and the Etude House Color Lips-fit was one of the products I received. This liquid lipstick line from Etude House was released in summer 2014. I’ve been curious to try it since then, but I had too many lipsticks around and moreover I wasn’t sure if I would like the matte texture, which it is supposed to provide. Here is my impression on the Etude House Color Lips-fit:

Some words about Etude House to start with: Etude House is one of the best known Korean brands for cute packaging. If you are a lover of cute, girly and pink packaging, reminding you of being a child and the princess you always dreamt to be, THIS is your brand. Their packaging is usually so adoreable that you cannot keep yourself from impuls-buys – only because you saw the packaging…Also here, the packaging design looks lovely. You’ll find dots and bows and stars all over the packaging. The color of the cardboard packaging is pink, of course. There are 7 shades available for the Color Lips-fot, plus a glossy top coat, if you prefer a glossy finish instead of a matte one. I received shade OR201 called “Dream Fit Coral”. I rarely buy light shades myself, because it usually lookd awkward on me, if it is not even and opaque enough, because my natural lip color is darker. I was especially curious, having received this shade, how it will turn out on my lips.

The cardboard packaging contains descriptions in Korean and English. Since Etude House has opened also an online worldwide store, you’ll also find the English description there, plus the ingredients for the products. According to COSDNA the ingredients of the product are safe. It even contains titanium dioxide as sunprotection.

The bottle itself has a beautiful design, too, with the same stars, bows and dots as the cardboard packaging. It is a see-through plastic bottle, so you see the color of your liquid lipstick. As you can see in my images, the color looks a bit uneven in the bottle. Keep in mind to shake the bottle before you use it. It contains 10 g of product and comes with a white cap with an attached angled applicator sponge.

The product itself feels soft and smooth while applying. It dries off to a matte product after a while and feels velvety on the lips. It is not transfer proof, unfortunately, and smears off easily, as you can see in my swatches below.

Since it is a bright color is is unforgivable to dry lips and it will settle in all your lip lines and make the product look patchy. This makes it difficult to apply an even and oaque layer. If you have pigmented lips the challenge will be harder. I’ll show you the Etude House Color Lips-fit on my lips below. It is a very bright coral shade, almost neonlike…definitively a summer color.

Since it is not smear or transfer proof it is also not long-lasting. It wears off very quickly and in the case of this shades also leaves a ugly stain on the borders of your lips, which I don’t like at all. If you have brighter lips naturally, the effect might be different on you, but if you have darker lips than this color it will not look very nice. I’d love to try a darker shade to compare, but for the moment I personally would not rebuy the Etude House Color Lips-fit. Apart from the color, the short staying power and the feeling of dry lips after half an hour puts me off. The velvet finish on the other site is a nice one and also the texture glides smoothly on the lips while applying. You can buy this product from h onestskin for 6.71 US$, which is agood value. Shipping depends on the amount of products you buy. Oh, another thing, you will get some points when you register on their page, and you can also collect more points for doing reviews of the product on their. These points can be spent as money for your future order. Check out about this >>here<<.

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Honestskin Special Gift Event

20. December 2014

As you know there are a lot of different retailer selling asian cosmetics products in the world wide web. I’m trying to check out different shops in order to see which one offers the best service and good prices on the same time and it’s been a while that I subscribed for honestskin‘s newsletter. But somehow, although they have a lot of discounts, I never ordered anything myself, but after I read about The Beauty Code’s experience I was curious and applied for the Special Gift Event– and I was lucky to be one of the selected winners of a gift package. So here is my experience with honestskin so far:

Honestskin is an online shopping mall run by the Silicon Two Inc. in Korea. They claim to have authentic products, a huge range of different products and fast delivery. They ship internationally, too. Their page is easy to navigate and already displays all the different brands they offer on the front page.

As I said, I follow their newsletter for quite some time and I recognized that they offer a lot of different discounts and special sales. The only downside is, that they don’t offer free shipping. Instead, they have a way to collect the shipping price in dependence to the amount of items you buy. If you buy 1-3 items you pay 5 US$, for 4-6 items you will already pay 9 US$…(see details >>here<<) Actually, it would be better to pay for the weight instead of number of items.

So, apart from their regular discounts they have also this so called special gift event you can apply for. They also seem to have other events from time to time, like the Sponsor Event they offer at the moment (if you are a blogger you should try to apply for it ;) ). In the event I took part, I received a package containing three korean beauty products. The parcel arrived after 11 days of shipping, which is a good shipping time for packages from Korea. All three items were packed in bubble wrap. I received Iope Super Vital Cream VIP Special Gift, Etude House Color Lips-Fit in shade #OR201 Dream Fit Coral and Nature Republic Collagen HD Essencial BB Cream. The products were undamadged, too :)

Oh, another thing, you will get some points when you register on their page, and you can also collect more points for doing reviews of the product on their page. These points can be spent as money for your future order. I always like the idea of being rewarded :) Check out about this >>here<<.

I’m happy about my gifts and I will review them within the next time, so if you are curious about any of these items watch out for future posts. I hope this quick shop introduction was helpful for you :)

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