Fifty Shades of Snail
Finding the best skin care products since 2014. Started with a focus on Korean skincare and grew from there. Skincare tips and beauty tips that work, maybe some hamster butts too
recent posts
- Protected: Fluorescent bulbs and SPF
- How I Grew My Thinning Hair Back Thicker and Stronger Than Ever Before (with no drugs or medical treatments)
- Sponsored: The Best of Skin1004
- How to Ask for Skincare Advice Online, Part Two: What Questions to Ask to Get Helpful Answers
- How to Ask for Skincare Advice Online, Part 1: What Not to Ask
about
Category: Shopping Guides
-

10/12/2022 note: This article originally appeared on the now-defunct Kalista Edit. At some point I wasn’t aware of, both the site and my article vanished. I’ve edited this lightly and am republishing it here because, well, I wrote it, and there will always be someone who could use it. Welcome back! In the first part…
-

Happy Black Friday and welcome back to the 2016 Holiday Gift Guide series, hosted by me and my friend Christina Hello! In our first installments, I gave my skincare gift recommendations for Asian beauty product beginners, while Christina focused on K-beauty makeup intro sets. This time around, we’re talking gift giving for more seasoned beauty lovers, specifically…
-

Holiday gifting season is almost here (AGAIN, wtf, where did the year go?). If you’re anything like me, you’re feeling the temptation to use the gifting season as a reason to spread the love…of skincare! Be warned, though. Gifting skincare can be hazardous, especially if you’re giving it to a skincare newbie. It can be…
-

While recording the Snailcast a while ago, Chel and I got to reminiscing about the early days of AB life. Just a couple of years ago, hauls were major events that demanded planning, patience, and possibly a Hangul cheat sheet. These days, US-based Asian skincare fans can get a solid routine and plenty of extras, like…
-

As a beauty blogger, I make a lot of skincare purchases. Many more, I imagine, than a typical non-blogger beauty consumer would. We’ve talked a bit about blogger shopping habits here and there on the Snailcast, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned mine in passing elsewhere, but I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and walked…
-

There’s a predatory side to the beauty industry, a shadowy underbelly where cosmetics marketers reinforce societal pressures and exploit consumers’ personal insecurities to sell product. One way to deal with this ugly reality is to trust no one and side-eye everything…but I don’t have it in me to pickle myself in the salty brine of cynicism, and I don’t…
-

So I was idly browsing Memebox US and adding things to my cart, as I do, when I realized that a shopping guide would be a much more constructive outlet for my window-shopping energy. Memebox US, one of my favorite shops of 2015 thanks to generally reasonable prices and fast domestic shipping, is always one of the first sites I…
-

In the AB world, the graveyard of regrettable purchases stretches for miles in every direction, a barren and blighted necropolis marked by inexplicably cute headstones and forever haunted by the souls of dollars wasted, never to return. Every day, even more products suffer an untimely trashing and even more dollars drift away. We all fall into the BUY…
-

The shop featured in this post is a Fifty Shades of Snail sponsor and, along with other Fifty Shades of Snail sponsors, provided some of the products mentioned below for review. Press samples are marked with an asterisk. This post does not contain affiliate links. Hey, guys! Who loves sales? I love sales! I love…
-

If you’re just getting into Asian skincare through the coverage it’s been receiving in the Western media, you may be feeling really overwhelmed. It’s all too common for articles about K-beauty to emphasize the OMG 12-STEP SKINCARE ROUTINE!!! and to feature ridiculously expensive (or ridiculously overpriced) products, which ends up making the whole thing sound ridiculously…