Skincare, beauty, and occasional mental health, productivity, and hamster butts
Want to know whether you should try a product? Read my reviews to help make a decision. I evaluate products not only based on my subjective experiences with them, but also based on objective analysis of ingredients and formulations, and I promise to always give my honest assessments. No shilling here.
I'm upset. I'm upset to have fallen in love with a product. I haven't been this upset since the last time I fell in love with a lavishly priced Sulwhasoo mask, the Sulwhasoo Concentrated Ginseng Renewing Creamy Mask, and that was back in 2017. The only reason I'm not more upset right now is that while [...]
Lately it feels as if all of my writing is for outlets other than this blog, whether it's for my Instagram (home for reviews and rants that can fit into a single caption and usually only require one picture) or for other sites (which I do have to do, because bills). But I am writing, and [...]
Time rushes on, summer turns into even hotter Second Summer, and I've got a fresh batch of off-blog articles for you! First up, over on new AB shop GlowieCo's blog, I've gathered five of my favorite sheet mask tips and tricks to get the most out of your masking sessions. I’m a very frequent and [...]
Lately I've been realizing that my writing is spread across a few different sites, so I should be better at linking articles here when I want to share them. Here are two recent ones I wrote for Beautytap! Back to School Beauty: 10-Minute Skincare for Busy Students I know I'm prone to very long skincare [...]
This review has been a long time coming. Not just because it typically takes me at least one or two months to determine whether a "serious" (e.g. anti-aging or spot fading) product actually does anything for me, but also because I've had a bias against Deciem brands for the longest time. Especially against NIOD, the [...]
Trendy skincare ingredients come and go, but truly great ones (like ginseng, snail, and propolis) stay in my routine forever. Unfortunately, it's been a while since I've found a new contender for favorite ingredient. My skincare ennui was part of the reason I accepted a sponsorship offer from CBD beauty brand Cannatera. Could these weed-adjacent [...]
May 21, 2019 update: The Soo Ae Donkey Milk 3D Moisture Cream has been discontinued, but together we can bring it back! Soo Ae has offered to bring my favorite barrier-strengthening, all around nourishing, day- and night-appropriate moisturizer back if they receive 5,000 pre-orders for it. To make it easier to reach their goal, they've also [...]
The last time I reviewed a Missha sunscreen, it didn't go well for either me or the sunscreen. Luckily, I had managed to block those bad memories out for long enough that when I was panic-shopping Amazon for a last-minute sunscreen replenishment a few months ago, I was willing to give the readily available Missha [...]
One night a few months ago, a terrible thing happened. I went to put on my eye cream--at the time, I was using the Su:m37 Secret Repair Concentrated Eye Cream--and discovered that I'd scraped the entire jar empty. I further discovered a distinct lack of other eye creams in my beauty product black hole of [...]
There are brands so familiar that despite regular use, I hardly ever think about reviewing them anymore. I take them for granted and project my shameful lack of appreciation on everyone else, too. My Beauty Diary, the first brand I ever wrote about on this blog, is one of the brands I often forget to [...]
