It's all about the face: My go-to products!

Hello fellow beauty-addicts!
This post is completely and utterly, 100% dedicated to my face. Yeah, that's right. I'm so self absorbed. 

Okay well that's not entirely true, it's more about the products I use on my face either on a daily or weekly basis to keep things healthy. As mentioned before in my older posts, I have combination skin. So I get super oily on my T-Zone whilst I also have dry patches around the edges of my nose and forehead. This puts me in a bit of a complicated situation because if I moisturise too often, I have to deal with my makeup ice-skating all over my face, and if I don't moisturise enough... my makeup clings for dear life onto my dry patches. *Sigh*

SO, these are my go-to products and my general routine when it comes to caring for my face. Some products are used every day, others weekly or even monthly. I obviously own more 'luxurious' products that I use to pamper myself or treat myself with but I'm leaving them for a separate blog post :) DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL. I'M NOT EVEN REALLY THAT GOOD AT ALL THIS MAKEUP STUFF. I JUST GO WITH THE FLOW AND ENJOY WHAT I DO. Therefore, this may be the 'wrong' way/order of doing things. But this is my general routine, it does change depending on how my face decides to behave (like now it's getting colder weather  I'm having to moisturise a bit more) and we all know our faces can be pretty unpredictable. Well mine is anyway. 

Right, this probably doesn't surprise many of you. But the Garnier Micellar Cleansing Water is now the only way I remove my makeup. I used to use makeup wipes because they were a lot more convenient however I love the fact that the micellar water doesn't pull at my makeup - it literally glides over my face and sort of politely scoops up the makeup without putting up a fight. (Why do I word things so strangely?!) In other words it's much more gentle to the skin.
As you can see I just use normal cotton pads. It doesn't leave my face red or irritated, and there's no scent so I just feel generally clean after using this!

Another plus side to this is that it's so affordable, it's only £4.99 for 400ml. This product is actually on sale in Superdrug for only £3.29 at the moment* and that's also for a 400ml bottle!

The next thing I use is
the L'Oreal skin protection 'velvety soft toner.' For those of you who are unsure of what a toner is used for, (like I was up until 7 months ago) basically it repairs and restores your skins natural goodness. It removes all of the extra crap that your cleanser may have missed, whilst giving your skin some extra TLC. Good toners tend to shrink your pores and leave your skin feeling generally smooth and healthy.

Anyway, I like this toner because it simply does what it says on the tin... (well, bottle). It does leave my skin feeling really revitalised, and the 'velvety' aspect of it is very much true. 

However - I have to admit, this toner is subject to change pretty soon - as for some strange reason it has been leaving my face feeling EXTRA velvety lately. And no I don't mean fluffy or hairy, I mean velvety as in OILY :( And believe me I do not need any extra oils on this face.

With this in mind, up until now it has been my go-to product and I've repurchased this three times, which is why I wanted to include it in this post. I am keen to try a rosewater toner as I've heard brilliant things about them. Orrrr I know Garnier have a 'shine be gone' toner which actually sounds perfect for me so I think I may be trying out some new products very soon. I'll keep you posted.

This next product is the Vitamin E moisture cream by The Body Shop. This isn't just my go-to moisturiser, this right here is my holy grail moisturiser. This is the only moisturiser that I can use on a regular basis without it a) making me really oily b) giving me spots. It has no scent which I really like, because if I'm slathering this all over my face I really don't want to be able to smell strawberries/vanilla/blueberries/chocolate/peanuts/marmite/whatever other scents exist etc for the rest of the day. This product is packed with vitamin E which is skin conditioning, anti-inflammatory, anti-ageing and also has lots of healing properties. This is good stuff. If I don't use this I can really tell the difference as when I apply foundation my dry areas are way more visible so the moisturising effects of this are honestly great. 

Lastly, I'd like to give a little mention to this Simple oil-balancing facial scrub. I don't use this often, maybe once every 3 weeks or so as I don't really feel I need to use this weekly. The main thing that attracted me about this product was the 'oil balancing' statement as, yes I'll say it again...
 I hate looking oily. I also have quite large pores along with dry patches (wow, I'm painting a beautiful picture of myself here aren't I? An oily, large pored, flaky young woman... hot).
ANYWAY, the first time I tried this I was really impressed. It simply scrapes away all the dead skin and makes my pores look a lot smaller. The oil balancing part? I'm not so sure as like I said, I don't use this regularly enough therefore I can't say I've noticed it balancing out my oil situation. It certainly doesn't make me more oily so that's a good thing.
I've tried facial scrubs before but all of them are usually really heavily scented and have made my face burn like a mofo. Smelling like a mango but burning like a chilli? No thanks, I'll stick to my unscented, Simple facial scrub.



So, those are my go-to face products. I didn't include luxurious products such as face masks as I want to dedicate a whole separate post to my pamper evenings. I hope this post wasn't too boring - but I wanted to share with you some of my regularly used facial products. Especially seeing as it's getting colder and our faces are going through some hard times. Well, mine is at least.

Thank you for reading! Let me know what your favourites for your face are, do you have any holy grail products?
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