Two Cleansers: L'Oreal and RosehipPlus

I have (or rather had) a stack of empties and I suspect my other half had no idea how many of the containers taking over the cupboards and drawers were actually empty. Otherwise I'd have been in a lot more trouble than the usual grumbling about how many products I have! :D 

So let's get started working through these empties.

Today - two cleansers.

1. L'Oreal Revitalift Milky Cleansing Foam (purchased on sale from Priceline quite a while ago now). Revitalift is L'Oreal's anti-ageing range, designed for 40+ year old skin. I've commented elsewhere that I often find cheaper cleansers drying, but the fact that the tube shouts 'glycerin' comforted me (LHA - beta-lipohydroxy acid - is supposedly fab for treating acne ... which doesn't really make sense for a product aimed at 40+ year olds ... although it looks like it works by removing dead skin cells so maybe that's the idea here - sloughs away the wrinkles! ;) ).

It's a white cream which foams up a little when you add water. It left my skin feeling clean, but slightly tight ... and after some consistent use it was drying. I ended up barely using it and then binning the (probably reasonably substantial) remainder.

Would I buy it again? Possibly a moot point as it no longer appears on either the Priceline site or the L'Oreal Australia site - but no.

2. RosehipPlus Daily Cream Cleanser. At one point I won a fair few RosehipPlus products (thanks to both RosehipPlus and The Beauty Collection AND A Bella Adventure). I've loved them all and because I've ended up with a few duplicates I've been able to share the love with some friends, who've loved them too.

The daily cream cleanser is beautiful - pearly, lightly foaming and completely non-drying (on my skin, at least!). My skin always felt clean but really soft and hydrated. It has a lovely subtle rose scent and my only complaint was that over time this did fade and eventually turn into the sort of scent that unscented products sometimes have (does that make sense?!). I used most of it but did bin the last little bit - it was getting hard to get out and I didn't like the smell.

It's first ingredient is (organic) aloe juice, followed by cetyl alcohol, chamomile extract and coconut oil. Don't be freaked out by the 'cetyl alcohol' - it's not 'alcohol' like ethyl alcohol (ethanol) is. It's actually a fatty alcohol which is used to thicken, to aid with foaming and to prevent emulsions (like aloe juice and coconut oil) from separating.

Would I buy it again? Absolutely. A bargain at $16.95 (even more so if you spot it on sale!). A bonus is that the company is Sydney-based, family owned and operated AND the products are made in Australia. You can buy online and the RosehipPlus website also has an excellent stockist locator (there are tons in metro SA).

So there you go - two very different cleaners - one of which demonstrates you don't need to spend a lot of money on a great product!

Natralus Paw Paw Skin Therapy

Last year I was lucky enough to win a stack of Natralus Paw Paw products from Leah at Temporary Princess. I received three sizes of the Natralus daily skin therapy product. I immediately gave (the smallest) one to a friend of mine who was about to head off on holiday. She loved it so much that it was all used up by the time she got back. So as I hadn't touched the product yet, I gave her the large tube, leaving me with the medium size (75g).

We've been using this for a while on various bits of dry skin on Master 6 but I haven't had any occasion to use it on myself. Until last week when I came down with a cold. After 2 days in bed, one of which was spent blowing my nose non-stop, I needed some serious moisture and hydration to clear up the very flaky red nose I'd acquired!

A great opportunity to give this paw paw cream a try! It's very subtly scented (shea butter) - I love this because it means it doesn't smell horrible (my usual complaint about 'unscented' products) but it doesn't cause you to sneeze when you slather it all over your nose (or make you smell like cake batter - my complaint about products with shea butter).

My nose was rather red and sore and the first application really really really stung. Ouch! But I toughened up and made it through the stinging. The second application a few hours later stung a lot less and by day 2 it didn't sting at all. More importantly, it worked really quickly.

The redness subsided after the first application and subsequent applications worked quickly to soften up all the dry skin that was furiously shedding off my nose.

I was really lucky because the ferocious nose-blowing part of my cold only lasted a couple of days. I started with the Natralus after the blowing had stopped, so it had to repair, rather than repair and protect. If you are still blowing your nose - expect it to sting!

What's in it? The first two ingredients are aloe vera and paw paw, followed by glycerin and soybean oil. The first ingredient I didn't readily recognise was octyl palmitate, which is a derivative of palm oil and is used to adjust products' consistency (it's organic, so it's used instead of various silicones).

The product is free-from petroleum-derived ingredients, parabens, silicons, mineral oil-derived products and artificial fragrance and colour.

Better yet - the product is Australian owned and made! In fact, Natralus is based in Mt Barker in beautiful South Australia!

Packaging has changed since my product - you can see the new look here.

The products are widely available - a list of stockists is on the site and South Australians are (unsurprisingly) well served. You can expect to pay around $10 for the 75g tube.

Would I buy this product again? You bet!

And, of course I am joining Ingrid's Monday Madness Makeup link on Fabulous and Fun Life!

Skin Physics Pore Away Overnight Perfecting Cream

I picked this cream up from Priceline at 50% off. It was marked down to just $30 from its original $60 and I snaffled (I guess) the last tub.

I've not used Skin Physics products before and, in my mind, the brand has a pretty good reputation. The Dragon Blood line seems to rate quite a few mentions. So I had high hopes for this cream. Skin Physics products are made in Australia and that's something I'm always on the look out for.

Sadly, that's mostly where the love affair started and ended. The cream itself actually did a good job of night time moisturising and hydrating - so it definitely gets a big tick on that point. Whether or not it minimised pores - I can't say (which suggests that if it did any pore minimising it was only a little bit!).

However, there were a couple of real downers with this cream. Firstly, while I generally love creams that come in pots, as this did, the Pore Away was so loose it was almost a liquid or lotion rather than a cream. When the pot was full, this meant I had to be careful opening it, because it was too likely to spill out otherwise!

The other thing I really disliked was that this appears to be 'fragrance free' which is fine in and of itself but not great when it actually translates into 'smells decidedly average, verging on off'.

In terms of functionality, I loved that it was so light. It meant it went a long way, it was easy to put on and my skin absorbed it quickly. As I've mentioned, it also did a great job of moisturising.

I suspect that this product has actually been discontinued as it's no longer listed on the Skin Physics website. I'm not surprised - for me at least if I'd paid $60 for it I would have been disappointed. If only because when full so much of it ended up on the bathroom bench!