After complaining about no snow in November and December, January has finally packed a wintery wallop. The weather and darkness outside, combined with life stress, has my skin not super happy this month: itchy body skin and the return of breakouts around my mouth. At the same time, given my weird “I run out of serums after two months” cadence (I guess I must use .25 to .5 mLs per “serving”) makes for a big batch of openeds this month. Read on to see what I’ve been slathering on.

Wash-Off Products

🧼 SkinRX Lab MadeCera Cream Mild Whipped Cleanser

I just can’t get excited about cleansers, and so I broke my rule of “only one product of <x> type open at a time” and opened the MadeCera Cream Cleanser to bring some spice to my life. This has a lovely thick lather and, unlike the rest of the line, not strong smell. I grew up using a cream cleanser (when I cleansed … which wasn’t very often — it was the Neutrogena one, of course) and it’s fun to have one back in my life again. It’s very non-stripping. Ingredients-wise this is actually a really interesting cleanser: madecassoside and ceramide, from which this entire line takes its name, as well as olive oil, shea butter, a bunch of other cica derivatives besides madecassoside, sea water and algae.
Price: $15 USD / 100 mL

🏅Peter Thomas Roth 24K Gold Mask Pure Luxury Lift & Firm Mask

I picked up a Peter Thomas Roth mask sample pack last Christmas, and frankly forgot about the 24K Gold Mask Pure Luxury Lift & Firm Mask for a while, so I’m only opening it now. Thus far, my take with this one is the same as my take with the other Peter Thomas Roth masks: I think it would have been really great, say, 10 years ago, when it was hard to find non-drying wash-off masks, but given the current market it seems very over-priced and gimmicky.
Price: $85 USD / 150 mL; shown in a 14 mL sample size

🍷 Neogen Bio-Peel Gauze Peeling Wine Pads

The Neogen Bio-Peel Gauze Peeling Wine Pads smell like wine insofar as wine smells like grapes. (Fun game: go look at wine and find a red that does NOT have red berry notes.) Definitely more Welch’s than Vega Sicilia, that’s for sure. In addition to the physical exfoliation from the pad itself, this uses glycolic and lactic acid (and fruit extracts) to exfoliate, and resveratrol (from said wine) for an antioxidant boot.. I tried the internet’s recommendation of cutting them in half and found that a bit annoying to use, but since they’re only supposed to be used twice a week, I just use the rest of the pad on my body after I use it on my face, neck and chest. It’s recommended to wash this off after use, which I think is more due to the sticky texture than the strength of the product. Note: I did receive this as part of a giveaway from Nudie Glow US.
Price: $27 USD / 30 pads (200 mL)

First Essence & Toner

🍶 SK-II Facial Treatment Essence

Y’all, I’ve finally done it. After a year and a half of a galactomyces and first essence obsession, I’ve finally popped my SK-II Facial Treatment Essence cherry. Nothing says “I just got a raise” like immediately dropping $200 on skincare and then stashing it to give it to yourself for Christmas, am I right? SK-II is the original galactomyces/first essence brand, as their scientists “discovered” its use for skincare, apocryphally by seeing the large discrepancy in age between sake brewers’ faces (old) and hands (young). This does actually have a sake smell to it, in a way no other first essence I’ve used has. It’s like you can smell the nutrition. I really appreciate that this large size has a pump bottle, too. Too soon to know how this will compare in results to my tried-and-true Missha, but my hopes are high even as my wallet fears for its future.
Price: $200 USD / 325 mL via Costco; standard size is $185 / 160 mL

🖼 elmt Advanced Calming Solution

I picked up the elmt Advanced Calming Solution when By Wishtrend (the parent brand) had a good sale. The elmt line is characterized by synergies between two hero ingredients — in this case, centella asiatica and polysaccharides. Centella asiatica, or cica, is of course renowned for its calming abilities, and this includes the leaf water, leaf extract and root extract (though there’s panthenol and allantoin for soothing, too!). The polysaccharides come from snow mushroom, and are helpful for moisturization as well as promoting the skin’s native microbiome. I love a good watery toner, and this layers up well after my first essence and before other toners and essences.
Price: $20 USD / 150 mL

Serums

🥭 Glow Recipe Guava Vitamin C Dark Spot Serum

The Glow Recipe Guava Vitamin C Dark Spot Serum got mega-hyped when it launched, and so I couldn’t not try it — for all that I skincare, I just can’t seem to kick some PIE (post-inflammatory erythema, or red marks left by blemishes). Though I already have a dedicated Vitamin C serum (Good Skin Days, below), I am hoping that the derivatives in here, plus the tranexamic acid, can finally get rid of some of this pigmentation that I’ve had for what feels like a decade now. Thanks to the all the plant extracts it has an incredible smell and is as pink as the bottle.
Price: $45 USD / 30 mL

💚 Purito Centella Unscented Serum

I don’t know how I’ve gotten so far into my skincare obsession without trying Purito, but here we are: I’m finally trying their Centella Unscented Serum, with its four centella derivatives (centella asiatica extract, asiaticoside, asiatic acid and madecassic acid). This serum is popular for being a cheap peptide option (it has four different types of peptides), but it also has niacinamide, panthenol, green tea extract and adenosine. I find that this has a bit of a tacky finish, so I like to refresh my skin with a bit of a mist after to make my next layer go on nicely.
Price: $20 USD / 60 mL

🍒 Good Skin Days C’s The Day Serum

If this isn’t the first of my posts that you’ve read, you’ll know how much I love the Good Skin Days C’s The Day Serum. I have officially been using it for over a year, and don’t even know how many bottles I’ve gone through — though my guess would be about 6, since each bottle lasts around two months. This is supremely non-sticky and nice and gentle with 10% ascorbic acid.
Price: $26 USD / 30 mL

🍯 I’m From Honey Serum

I’m such a fan of the I’m From Honey Mask, and know so many people who love the I’m From Honey Serum, that I had to give it a go. It has a thick honey texture a bit like the Beauty of Joseon Glow Serum, though I think this is even a bit thicker — intriguingly so, since it’s a relatively low percentage of honey (30%) and propolis so I think it must have some other thickener. There’s a fragrance to it that I can’t place but don’t particularly care for — I’m not against fragrance in skincare, but if you’re going to put fragrance in a honey serum, go the Some by Mi route and make it smell, you know, more like honey.
Price: $28 USD / 30 mL

💜 Missha Time Revolution Night Repair Probio Ampoule

If you’ve been looking for a cheaper dupe for the Advanced Night Repair Serum from Estée Lauder, you should probably look into the Missha Time Revolution Night Repair Probio Ampoule. With a revised formula every year (this is last year’s formula and bottle), the backbone of this ampoule is always probiotics — specifically bifida ferment. While the elmt Advanced Calming Solution helped feed the microbiome, this helps replenish it directly. The formula also includes a variety of fun plant extract, like carrot, eggplant and blueberry extracts. In proper k-beauty style, it also tucks in a bit of ceramide and cholesterol. Despite the name, there’s no reason this would need to just be used at night.
Price: $54 USD / 50 mL; shown in a sample size

💛 Epicuren Noni Skin Elixir

I don’t always go in for salon brands, but when I got a facial with Epicuren products for my birthday, I decided to pick up the Epicuren Noni Skin Elixir. Noni is a fruit that I’ve really only heard about from skincare (iUNIK makes a noni oil that I got on Black Friday), but being a fruit it is, of course, a great source of antioxidants. This also includes aloe, witch hazel and radish root ferment. In my opinion it smells like a bit like playdo, but that can happen without masking fragrance. My intent was to mostly use it as my gel with my NuFace, but I find myself using it generally in my routines for a bit of extra hydration.
Price: $25 USD / 60 mL

🍇 Rhonda Allison Hydrating Grape Seed Serum

I used to love Rhonda Allison Drops of Essence, which is basically grape seed oil and essential oils, so I was prepared to like the Hydrating Grape Seed Serum, which is basically the same thing. That said — that only had geranium and lavender oil. This has a bunch of citrus oils and other fragrant oils, and nearly has a fake cinnamon smell to it, to me. The smell also doesn’t fade down. I’ll be using this up on my body to keep myself from having to smell it so strongly.
Price: $58 USD / 50 mL; shown in a 10 mL sample size

Moisturizer & Sleeping Mask

💧 Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel

I picked up the small size of the Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel … a while ago, hoping that I could interest my husband in it. But I ended up getting him into Stratia Liquid Gold, so this has been languishing in my stock for long enough that I needed to use it or lose it. I’m unimpressed so far. Granted, this is not the popular Neutrogena Hydro Boost Gel-Cream with Hyaluronic Acid for Extra-Dry Skin (the fragrance-free one), but I just can’t get excited about a moisturizer whose only claim is that it includes hyaluronic acid (yawn) and sodium hyaluronate at that. K-beauty has spoiled me, but it has enough dimethicone in it that it’s working well under sunscreen so far.
Price: $11 USD / 14 g

🌊 Laneige Water Sleeping Mask

Blue gels are apparently my thing this month, as I also opened the Laneige Water Sleeping Mask again. I usually really enjoy a sleeping mask at the end of my routine, but up until this month the Farmacy Honey Halo Moisturizer + Derma B Intensive Barrier Multi Oil had been thick enough I hadn’t wanted one. This has a nice, gel-like texture that’s actually very cooling and calming at the end of my long PM routine. This does have a bit of fragrance to it but I find that it fades down quite readily.
Price: $25 USD / 70 mL; shown in the 15 mL sample size

🍉 Glow Recipe Watermelon AHA Lotion

If you thought the Glow Recipe Watermelon Glow PHA+BHA Pore-Tight Toner smelled like watermelon candy (I don’t, I think it smells like cactus, its primary ingredient), you will be utterly bamboozled by the smell of the Glow Recipe Watermelon AHA Lotion. Now THIS is watermelon candy in a bottle — and they do add some fragrance to really make that happen. This lotion has watermelon, mango and bacuri butters and oils to nourish the skin, with hibicus AHA to exfoliate. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to use it much — I got a perpetual case of eczema, beaten back only by antihistamines, this month, and didn’t want to layer this on and make it worse. But when I have been able to use it, I can attest to how emollient the skin feels after.
Price: $28 USD / 240 mL