So like…I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but I looooove sheet masks. (Also, hydrogel masks.) Masks aren’t just an occasional indulgence for me, but a staple of my daily skincare routine. In addition to their numerous hydrating, plumping, antioxidant-injecting skincare benefits (and the unspeakable pleasure of plopping a chilled sheet mask onto my face at the end of along, hot day), sheet masks are a fantastic way to get some variety into my routine and to go hog-wild with whatever skincare ingredient I’m currently fancying.

With all that being said, not every sheet mask I’ve tried is a winner, and I can’t always will one to be a winner just because I like one particular thing about it. And thus begins the journey of disappointment that I embarked upon when I opened up my first Skin Factory Real Honey Moisturizing Ampoule Mask.

Purpose: Skin Factory Real Honey Moisturizing Ampoule Mask is a sheet mask that claims to moisturize skin, improve firmness, and accelerate healing.

Do not use if: You are sensitive to butylene glycol, castor oil, fragrance, or anything else in the ingredients list.

When and how to use: After cleansing and toning or after your toner, essence, serum, and ampoule steps, cut a small opening in the mask packet along the dotted line numbered “1” at the bottom right corner of the pouch. Pour a generous amount of serum out in your palm and apply to face. Repeat if desired. Lightly pat in and then cut or tear mask pouch open and remove mask. Unfold and apply to face. Wear for 20-30 minutes as directed by the packaging copy, or until the mask sheet feels like it’s getting dry. Remove, pat in remaining serum, and apply an occlusive moisturizer to seal it all in.

Skin Factory Real Honey Moisturizing Ampoule Mask ingredients:  Water, butylene glycol, glycerin, betaine, PEG/PPG-17/6 copolymer, PEG-60 hydrogenated castor oil, phenoxyethanol, scutellaria baicalensis root extract, hydroxyethyl acrylate/sodium acryloyldimethyl taurate copolymer, bifida ferment lysate, panthenol, allantoin, dipotassium glycyrrhizate, xanthan gum, ethylhexylglycerin, disodium EDTA, 1,2-hexanediol, caprylyl glycol, PEG-32, ricinus communis (castor) seed oil, lactobacillus ferment, camellia sinensis leaf extract, artemisia princeps leaf extract, houttuynia cordata extract, junos fruit extract, honey extract, caprylhydroxamic acid, ubiquinone, hydrolyzed collagen, fragrance

CosDNA analysis of this mask’s ingredients comes up very clean.

Notable ingredients: There are a lot of nice ferments and other anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and moisturizing ingredients in this mask, but look how far down on the list honey extract is. It’s all the way near the bottom. This is less of a “honey” mask and more of a generalized moisturizing ferment mask with a couple of drops of honey in it.

Performance

Agh. Sigh. This mask. This mask caused me so much sadness and frustration.

Like most other “ampoule” sheet masks that I’ve tried, the Skin Factory Real Honey Moisturizing Ampoule Mask’s main claim to fame is the amount of serum each packet contains. Most sheet masks give you 20ml of liquid to a mask; the Real Honey gives you 30. It’s so much liquid that the packets feel like bags filled with water. It’s so much essence that you can layer on dose after dose of serum without emptying out the packet and have enough left over for a full-body treatment. It’s so much essence that you could easily get a second mask session out of it if you had any cotton pads or dry mask tablets on hand. Just one of these packets provides as much product as a small bottle of serum; if you have two or three, you can decant and have months’ worth of a nice hydrating product to use. I managed to pat in a whopping 6 layers of serum before I couldn’t take it anymore and moved on to the actual mask step–and I was able to smear plenty of serum over my arms and legs, too.

The excessive amount of serum in these masks is a wonderful bonus, as the Skin Factory Real Honey serum feels quite nice. It’s light and slippy but very moisturizing, with a faint and pleasant honey/floral fragrance. As a standalone product, in fact, it would make a wonderful hydrating serum. We’ll come back to that concept later.

So if the serum is so nice, why am I so disappointed in the mask?

It’s because I’m disappointed in the mask. The actual mask.

Skin Factory bills the Real Honey Moisturizing Ampoule Mask material as “cellulose,” which is a nice way of saying “paper.” These masks definitely feel like paper.

I hate the mask sheets with the fire of a thousand suns. In the first place, they’re cut very strangely. They’re too narrow even for my face. And in the second place, the paper is too stiff to cling or conform properly to facial contours, tents around my nose, and pleats and wrinkles up all over the place.

A sheet mask should be a decently comfortable and relaxing experience. This mask sheet ruins that. I spent 25 minutes endlessly adjusting the sheet in an effort to make it fit better so that the lovely, lovely serum could absorb, and I couldn’t wait until I could rip it off and put a proper, good mask on. Really a bad experience.

In my experience, cellulose (paper) mask sheets dry out more quickly than cotton or silk ones, and the Skin Factory ones are no exception. The mask sheet was dry enough to remove after 25 minutes, which is nothing in the Fiddy Snails Mask Time Scale.

As soon as I removed the mask sheet, my internal pendulum swung back from “hate” to “love.” My skin felt and looked great: bright, even, plump, and smooth. It almost made up for the poor masking experience.

Getting creative with the Skin Factory Real Honey Moisturizing Ampoule Mask

What the hell do you do with this mask, then? I have a couple of suggestions. My first suggestion is to get the masks (which are decently inexpensive, as you’ll see below), and use them for DIY sheet masks or patch masks. To do so, all you have to do is soak a dry sheet mask tablet or a few separated layers of an Asian-style multilayer cotton pad in the serum, then apply to your face like any other sheet mask. You can get DIY sheet mask materials at Japanese markets like Daiso, Mitsuwa, and Uwajimaya, or on Amazon, perhaps at the following (affiliate) links:

• 10 tablets for $2.22 with free shipping
• 100 tablets for $5.99(!!!) with free shipping
• 60 4-layer Muji cotton pads for $6 with free Prime two-day shipping (these are, by the way, my favorite cotton pads for toners, too)
• 140 4-layer Muji cotton pads for $7.40 with free Prime two-day shipping

If DIY sheet masks aren’t your thing, you can also decant one or two of the mask packets into an empty dropper bottle and use the liquid as a standalone serum. Done this way, the Skin Factory Real Honey Moisturizing Ampoule Masks become an incredible deal: a couple of bucks gets you a full-sized bottle of a very nice skincare product! You can find dropper bottles in various drug, craft, or herbal stores as well as on Amazon at (affiliate) links such as the following:

• 6 1oz (enough for 1 mask pouch’s worth of serum) dropper bottles for $5.92 with free Prime two-day shipping
• 6 2oz (about 2 mask pouch’s worth of serum) dropper bottles for $6.78 with free Prime two-day shipping

Conclusions: Can you tell I feel conflicted about the Skin Factory Real Honey Moisturizing Ampoule Masks? The serum is so soothing and hydrating, but the mask sheets are just so awful that I can’t with them. I’m not one for DIY or mask serum decanting, but in this case, it’s the only way I can think of to reap the benefits of the serum without having to suffer through a session wearing the masks. Luckily, the masks themselves are cheap enough–and generous enough with that lovely serum–to make creative off-label use of them an attractive option.

Rating: As a total sheet mask experience, Skin Factory Real Honey Moisturizing Ampoule Mask rates a 2, but as a standalone moisturizing serum, I’d give the liquid a 4.

Rating scale:

Where can I buy Skin Factory Real Honey Moisturizing Ampoule Masks?

Remember how I said that these masks are inexpensive enough to make decanting the liquid for DIY purposes an attractive option? Currently, they can be had from Memebox for just $1 apiece. Memebox offers free shipping for orders over $30. Here are some discount codes:

• 15% off your first order: WELCOME
• 15% off skincare products: LOVEYOURSKIN
• 15% off of makeup products: makeuplove
• 10% off of all orders: SOOTHING10

If you need to do a Wishtrend haul, perhaps for that C21.5 vitamin C serum that only Wishtrend is authorized to carry, you can also purchase the Skin Factory Real Honey Moisturizing Ampoule Masks from there for $2.50 apiece or $22.50 for a box of 10.

What’s the worst-fitting mask you ever used, and did the serum and results make up for the mask sheet fail?