This month feels like a (comparatively) light month for empties for me. Between being slammed at work and having a new puppy, I didn’t always take the time for myself and my full-fledged skincare routine. It’s always interesting to see the rate at which I go through products, though — it feel like I empty wash-off masks within two months and serums every 2-3 months. Next month’s empties will feature a lot of toners, no doubt, since they seem to be offset on my skincare cycle.

Wash-Off Products

🌻 Then I Met You Living Cleansing Balm

I’ve dug the aesthetic of Then I Met You for so long, and the Living Cleansing Balm looks so nice and so many folks love it that I really wanted to love it. But my first impressions were pretty much right on: this does not melt down easily, and so it takes a lot to get enough coverage to really massage in and emulsify. The ingredients in it are lovely — sea buckthorn oil, olive oil, grape seed oil, etc — but there are better cleansing balms out there that are way more accessible. For what it’s worth, I also wasn’t impressed by their Giving Essence, but I do want to give the brand another try before writing it off entirely.
Opened: March
Rating: 7/10
Price: $38 USD / 90 g; shown in the $6 USD / 10 g travel size

🍵 TONYMOLY I’m Green Tea Hydro-Burst Morning Mask

TONYMOLY products are always cute, and the price point on the I’m Green Tea Hydro-Burst Morning Mask made it a must-try for my self-care loving self. This is a green gel mask, which scoops out easily to spread all over face, neck and chest. I used it frequently after using exfoliating masks, when I must admit it was not very nourishing or restorative. But then I tried it in the morning before showering and, well, that’s probably why they called it a morning mask. It was cooling upon application, and kept my face shielded from the hot water of the shower. While I don’t think this gave me any skincare results per se, I did enjoy it.
Opened: February
Rating: 9/10
Price: $15 USD / 100 mL

Toners and Serums

🥛 SANA Soy Milk Wrinkle Care Lotion N

The SANA Soy Milk Wrinkle Care Lotion N is a lotion that’s actually a toner — it’s a Japanese brand, where that naming convention is common. This includes retinol, retinyl palmitate, as well a a bunch of soy ingredients: fermented soybean milk, soybean seed extract, soy protein, soy isoflavone. Isoflavones, the main antioxidant in soybean, has really interesting implications for anti-aging in terms of increasing skin thickness, so pairing it with retinol just makes sense. SANA doesn’t disclose the retinol percentage in this, but if you’re retinol-wary it might not be a bad place to start. By the time I finished using this, I was using three layers of this every night as part of my toning step. I will say I’m not sure how effective it was, to that end, but wow was it a cost-effective option.
Opened: October
Rating: 8/10
Price: $22 USD / 200 mL

💚 Purito Centella Unscented Serum

The Purito Centella Unscented Serum is without a doubt one of the most popular products from Purito, and possibly one of the most possible k-beauty products in the western market. Most folks use this as a peptide serum, and western brands tend to price gauge for peptides. This has 49% centella asiatica extract, as well as niacinamide, ceramides and, of course, four peptides. Unfortunately I found this to be pretty fussy to use. Going on by itself, it felt a drying and tacky, even with a mist applied after to attempt to rehydrate it. I tried cocktailing it with my essence (the Benton Snail Bee High Content Essence), but then I couldn’t immediately use my ascorbic acid without worrying about denaturing the peptides. Suffice it to say, I wanted to love it but I just don’t.
Opened: January
Rating: 6/10
Price: $20 USD / 60 mL

💛 Epicuren Noni Skin Elixir

I picked up the Epicuren Noni Skin Elixir from The Spa at The Brown Palace when we did a staycation in Denver for my 34th birthday, and used it all through the window as a serum for my Nuface, as well as the occasional hydrating serum. The main base of this is aloe vera, but of course it also includes noni, an increasingly common fruit ingredient in skincare due to its antioxidant content. It was fine — nothing to write home about. Really the biggest drawback to this serum was its smell, as it just always smelled like Play-Doh.
Opened: January
Rating: 6/10
Price: $25 USD / 60 mL

Creams and Lotions

💧 Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel

I picked up this sample of the Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel ages ago a while ago for my husband. I never got him into it, and I never really got myself into it. In fairness to this moisturizer, I probably should have gotten the much more popular Neutrogena Hydro Boost Gel-Cream with Hyaluronic Acid for Extra-Dry Skin (the fragrance-free one), but I just never made this work for me, and I disliked the smell to boot.
Opened: January
Rating: 2/10
Price: $11 USD / 14 g

🩹 First Aid Beauty Ultra Repair Cream

The First Aid Beauty Ultra Repair Cream is super popular, and I can see why. Given the branding, I expected this to be quite heavy, and it does take a bit of blending to avoid streakiness. That said, it’s a nourishing but medium-weight cream, with some emollience and hydration but no inclusive. Key callouts here are colloidal oatmeal, shea butter, ceramide NP as well as green tea and licorice extracts.
Opened: March
Rating: 8/10
Price: $38 USD / 6 oz; shown in a 1 oz travel size

Zeroid Intensive Cream

I picked up the sample of the Zeroid Intensive Cream when hitting up a good Atopalm sale, and, in short, I’m mad at how much I like it. I really like this.This is a really nice, plush cream that looks simple on the surface but is actually so nice. Atopalm is the same brand that does Derma B, dermArtology and Real Barrier, and their big claim to fame is their MLE (multi-lamellar emulsion) technology which functionally reinforces the skin barrier. This also includes phytosterols and a synthetic ceramde, which between the two can help prevent the breakdown of collagen in the skin. I used it as my PM moisturizer once I ran out of the FAB and I will definitely repurchase someday. Unfortunately, Zeroid’s a bit hard to find, so that will probably be through Atopalm’s actual website.
Opened: this month
Rating: 10/10
Price: $32 USD / 80 mL; shown in a sample size

👄 Aquaphor Lip Repair

For all that I love fancy, esoteric skincare, you really can’t go wrong with Aquaphor Lip Repair. When my lips feel wrecked from the weather, from red wine, or whatever other abuse I’ve heaped upon them, this gets them back to feeling not-painful in record time. I keep a tube stashed on my bedside table so that way I’m never tempted to enter the awful cycle of licking my lips to make them less dry, only to have that dry them out.
Opened: who knows, it’s a win to have emptied it without losing it
Rating: 10/10
Price: $4 USD / 10 mL

Other

👀 Fourth Ray Beauty Chill Sesh Hydrating Eye Masks

I’ve become an eye patch convert, and Fourth Ray Beauty Chill Sesh Hydrating Eye Masks are some of the best I’ve tried. I never try to use them during my routine — I don’t want the rest of my skin to dry out — but I love them for a mid-day pick up. I find that eye patches can really help reduce eye strain. These are nice because they’re the only ones I’ve found so far that don’t pill up after removal. No one want to be mid-video call picking balled-up skincare off. These have a very delicate material, however, so it can be easy to rip them if you YOLO it and pick them up with your fingers rather than the provided spatula.
Opened: November
Rating: 9/10
Price: $15 USD / 30 pairs

💈Some By Mi Cica Peptide Hair Loss Treatment

I do not have a lot of hair, so while maintaining it is important to me, it took me a while to go through the Some By Mi Cica Peptide Hair Loss Treatment. I was experiencing a lot of hair fall last year — I would literally feel it falling from my head onto my shoulders in the bath, for example — and there is some evidence that peptides do help keep hair from falling out. At the price point, I figured there was no reason to not test it out. In the last year, my hair really has gotten thicker, to the point that now I’m rocking a long undercut without worrying about my recessive balding pattern. I’m moving onto try other hair loss products now, but I can see myself coming back to this.
Opened: March 2021
Rating: 10/10
Price: $8 USD / 50 mL

🛁 Neutrogena Body Oil

If you’ve been here for a while you know I love the Neutrogena Body Oil. I take baths long enough to really wreck my skin barrier, and having an oil in the bath is an immeasurable help. This has some surfactants in it, so doesn’t just float on top of the bath, like some body oils. (Incidentally, this is what makes it a great cleanser for dry body skin, or even a first cleanse for the budget conscious.) I do wish that this big size were easier to find and available in the unfragranced version, as I much prefer it that way, but at the rate I go through bath oil I’ll take what I can get.
Opened: December
Rating: 10/10
Price: $30 USD / 946 mL