My Skincare Routine - Day and Night

I previously wrote about my skincare routine on my old blog, which was in Norwegian, so I thought I should share my routine again with all of you here on my new blog. Some things have changed in my routine, but most items are the same :)

My Skin Type:

My skin is normal/dry, but can actually become extremely dry/dehydrated during the winter months, which is why I use products that leave my skin feeling soft and smooth. I use a ton of moisturizing products like serums and lotions, because if I don't, my skin retaliates and becomes rough and patchy. I had previously thought that my skin was oily as it produced lots of oils to compensate for the dryness, so I had used a lot of cleansers and toners that would strip my skin of the oils, which only made it worse. It was only when I actually started working at Lush and my awesome trainee David told me that I had to put a lot of moisture back into my skin and use products made for dry skin, that my skin started feeling like its amazing self again!

Morning Routine:

In the morning I start off by using Lush's Aqua Marina Cleanser to cleanse my face. This product is absolutely amazing as it leaves my skin feeling soft and reduces any redness that my skin might have. It contains calamine and seaweed, which cleanses and softens the skin while leaving it to soak up the minerals in the seaweed. My skin never feels stripped of moisture with this cleanser.

After I cleanse my skin, I use Lush's Breath of Fresh Air Toner and spray that all over my face and let it soak in before I do anything else. This product works extremely well with Aqua Marina since it also contains many of the same ingredients.

Now comes the fun stuff: moisturizing. I use 3 different serums/moisturizers. The first one is Lush's Full of Grace Serum Bar which I smooth all over my face and massage it into my skin. It really is a miracle worker and it prepares my skin for any other products I might apply. Then I use Loreal's Youth Code Luminizer Serum and let it soak into my skin. This product is supposed to even out your skintone and give you a fresh glow. I haven't used it long enough to give a full review yet, so stay tuned for that. The moisturizer I use is Clinique's Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion. It is absolutely aweome: it is light and sinks into my skin like nobody's business, but it still is plenty moisturizing enough for my dry skin. My skin does not feel greasy or sticky afterwards, which is also a plus.

Then I start my makeup routine. Currently I am using Missha's Perfect Cover BB Cream as my "foundation".

Evening Routine:

In the evenings, my skincare routine changes depending on how my skin feels and whether or not I have makeup on. I usually start off by removing my makeup using Lush's Ultra Bland. I massage it onto my skin and my eyes, and remove it using a wet cotton pad.

Every other day, I use my Clarisonic Mia to exfoliate my skin and deepclean it, and I use this with Lush's 9 to 5 Cleanser. This makes my skin feel so smooth and soft and it gets rid of everything that has been hiding in my pores. I cannot use this every day though, but I love it! I would invest in one if I were you. I did. If I'm not using my Clarisonic, I use my Lush Aqua Marina.

After I have cleansed my skin, I use the same serums and moisturizers as I do in the mornings. The only things I might do differently, is use my Clarins Blue Orchid Face Treatment Oil if my skin is feeling very dry. I only use about 3 drops of this in areas where I need to. I do this about once a week.

I also use Lush's Lovely Jubblies Breast Cream as my eye cream. Yes, I really do!! :D It works wonders for my under eye area :)

Sometimes I use a toner tab from Lush to steam my face and open my pores really well. I do this about once every 2 weeks if I remember it :) I also use face masks once in a while. Some of them are from Lush, while some of them are from My Beauty Diary :)
I have already ordered a few things online to add to my skincare routine. I will let you know what I think of them. The things I have ordered are the Sirius Aurora Light Therapy System, Cure Natural Aqua Gel and a whitening "toner lotion" :) And also a face mask from Skinfood.

Haircare: Lush Shampoos Overview & Review Part 3

If you haven't seen part 1 and part 2 of my Lush Shampoo Overview, click here and here.

Lush Rehab Shampoo:

Rehab is a shampoo for people with dry and damaged hair types that need a little bit of extra care and "lovin". Your hair may be damaged from a lot of different things, namely bleaching, dying, heat, styling products and generally ill health. Rehab contains a lot of different ingredients to tackle all these problems, and to make your hair both look and feel better.

Seaweed leaves the hair feeling soft, jojoba oil and olive oil strengthens the hair and helps the scalp, kiwi and mango gives the hair minerals and vitamins, rosemary gives shine, papaya and pineapple which breaks down dead skin cells and clean the hair thoroughly, and lastly juniper and mint which encourage hair growth.
Yes, that is a lot of ingredients for a shampoo, but I promise you; it works! I absolutely love Rehab, and I think it is my favourite all time shampoo from any company I have tried. My hair had a tendensy to misbehave, meaning it was frizzy, dry, could be a little greasy etc. But by using Rehab religiously for about a month, my hair started feeling and looking a lot better. It helped my hair so much that it even looks great no matter what shampoo I use. I still use Rehab on days that I feel that I have mistreated my hair, meaning; used heat on it without a heat protectant, used hairspray, teased it etc. And afterwards it is so smooth that I can hardly believe it.

Yes, this shampoo smells weird. To me it smells like the After Eight mint chocolates that I used to eat at my grandmother's house when I was younger, but I don't care. I cannot smell it on my hair afterwards anyways, so it's all good :)
If your hair is dry or damaged, you really should try this shampoo. I absolutely love it!!

Ingredients:
Sodium Alkyl Sulfate,Carrageenan Extract,Water, Ammonium Laureth Sulphate,Cocamide MEA, Perfume,Freshly Juiced Papaya,Propylene Glycol, Fresh Pineapple Juice, Fine Sea Salt, Fresh Kiwi Juice,Fresh Mango Juice,Organic Cold Pressed Jojoba Oil , Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Almond Oil, Lavender Oil,Peppermint Oil, Rosemary Oil, Juniperberry Oil,*Limonene, *Linalool,Benzyl Alcohol,Methylparaben,Propylparaben

*occurs naturally in essential oils

Lush Trichomania Solid Shampoo:

Trichomania may be the weirdest shampoo Lush has to offer, especially if you have never tried a solid shampoo before. It is not shaped like a shampoo bar (round and nice), rather it's solid and the person in the store has to cut it up for you. You can decide yourself approximately how much you want cut up, but you will have to find a way to store it yourself. I use a bodybutter tin from Lush to store mine and I cut up the shampoo to fit into one of the tins :)

Trichomania is a coconut shampoo for people with dry hair or a dry scalp, but me having neither of those still love this shampoo. It softens my hair and tames all the frizz, leaving my hair feeling amazing. I never have to blowdry my hair or straighten it to make it behave when I use this shampoo, which is great.

So on days that I am feeling lazy and don't want to do anything to my hair, I use Trichomania, and it works great. A great thing about this shampoo compared to the shampoo bars, is that you don't have to airdry this after every use. I find that it works better when it is already a little moist.

I love the scent of this as it smells like coconuts, and not the generic, fake kind, but the real coconuts you find on islands far, far away.

Ingredients:

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate,Stearic Acid, Creamed Coconut, Glyceryl Stearate & PEG-100 Stearate,Cocamide DEA, Soya Lecithin, Perfume, Vetivert Oil

*occurs naturally in essential oils

Haircare: Lush Shampoos Overview & Review Part 2

If you missed my previous post about Lush shampoos, please click here to read about Big and Godiva and to hear my thoughts about them. This time, my focus is on Daddy-O and I Love Juicy from Lush.

My hair has been very dry and damaged previously due to a lot of bleaching, coloring and by heat styling tools. Now my hair is much better and I have not colored or bleached my hair for about 2 years. The color is a natural medium blonde which in the summer time when exposed to the sun turns a lighter shade.

Daddy-O Shampoo:

Daddy-O is a shampoo designed for blondes or people with greyish hair, who want to visibly lighten or brighten up their hair colors. Blondes have a tendensy to have yellow streaks or tones in their hair, which is not always very attractive. To brighten up their hair color and to get rid of the brassiness, one uses purple pigments in a shampoo to counteract the yellowness. Daddy-O is such a shampoo.

I started using Daddy-O a couple of weeks ago to brighten up my hair color as I wanted more of a cool tone to my hair. Now I use it about once every other week to maintain the results. I leave it on for about 5 minutes to let it work its job and then rinse it out.

I must admit that I haven't really seen much results myself, but other people have commented on my hair color and they say that it is very nice. So I still use this shampoo, not very often, but I do it to keep the results other people say that they have noticed.

I have to tell you that I do not like the smell of this shampoo at all. It says on the Lush website that it smells like parma violets, which I have never even heard of before, but I don't really like it. And the smell lingers in your hair, even though you use a conditioner afterwards. Which is something to think about before buying this product. 

Ingredients:

Fresh Organic Lemon and Toothed Wrack Seaweed Infu, Sodium Alkyl Sulfate,Sodium Laureth Sulfate,Fresh Sea Water,Perfume, Cocamide MEA,Propylene Glycol, Glycol Cetearate, Fresh Organic Lime Juice, Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, Violet Leaf Absolute, Rose Absolute,Bergamot Oil, Cananga Oil, *Limonene, *Linalool,*Citronellol, Coumarin,Isoeugenol, Methyl Ionone, Benzyl Alcohol,Methylparaben,Propylparaben, Colour 42090, Colour 17200

*occurs naturally in essential oils

Lush I Love Juicy Shampoo:

I Love Juicy is a shampoo designed for oily hair types or people who use a ton of products in their hair and need a deep clean to get rid of all the residue. It contains fruit enzymes that dissolve and clean away oils, dirt and product build up and seaweed to maintain softness.

I will say that this shampoo really gets my hair extremely clean and I can go days without washing it again, but the things is that it can dry my hair out pretty easily if I am not careful. I do not have particularly greasy hair, but I still use this if I know that I have long workdays ahead of me and I don't want to spend time washing my hair too often. I also use this when I have been using a lot of hairspray etc to get it all off.

If you have really greasy hair, then this shampoo is for you. I cannot use this more than once a week myself, but it really does work in keeping my hair in shape.

Be careful though if you do not have greasy hair, because you will need a good conditioner afterwards to put on the ends of your hair.

The smell of this shampoo is supposed to be very fruity and fresh, but to me it smells exactly like applecider. It does not smell bad at all, just strange for a shampoo :) But the scent does not linger in my hair, so even if you do not like the smell of it, you will not walk around with an apple cider scent in your hair afterwards.

Ingredients:

Water, Sodium Alkyl Sulfate, Ammonium Laureth Sulphate,Cocamide MEA, Propylene Glycol, Perfume, Lemon Oil, Freshly Juiced Papaya, Fine Sea Salt,Carrageenan Extract,Sweet Orange Oil, Fresh Pineapple Juice, Fresh Kiwi Juice, Fresh Mango Juice, *Citral, *Limonene,Benzyl Alcohol,Methylparaben,Propylparaben

Haircare: Lush Shampoos Overview & Review Part 1

As some of you may already know, I work at a Lush store here in Norway, and I of course love many of Lush's products. I have written a bunch of reviews on my Norwegian blog about a lot of them, but I thought I would share my reviews here as well for all of you who do not understand Norwegian. Keep in mind that even though I work for Lush, I am not paid or even asked to write reviews about these products. I write honest reviews on everything, and there are of course some products that do not work for me and that I do not like.
First up are my reviews on Lush Shampoos. I have divided these into 2 shampoos per blogpost :)

Lush Godiva Shampoo Bar:

Godiva is a shampoobar from Lush that is designed for long and dry hair, since it contains both shampoo and conditioner in one.

Godiva was the first shampoo from Lush that I tried, and I have to tell you guys that I am not a fan. It could be that I just picked the wrong shampoo bar for my hair type (damaged and dry at the time), but this shampoo never really did anything for my hair. My hair turned greasy the next day after washing it, and it was just flat and stringy which is not an attractive look.
I like the whole concept of a shampoo bar and I think I could really like them if I tried a different one. The shampoo lathered up really well and Godiva smells awesome, but I know that some people do not like this scent. Jasmine is a scent that you either love or you hate, and I love it. So I was hoping to love this shampoo, but I don't. I would not recommend Godiva unless your hair is extremely dry and in need of "calming down".

Ingredients:

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate,Cocoa Butter, Cetearyl Alcohol & Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Glyceryl Stearate & PEG-100 Stearate,Propylene Glycol,Perfume, Hibiscus Extract,Stearic Acid, Shea Butter,Cetearyl Alcohol, Camellia Oil, Organic Jojoba Oil,Organic Macadamia Nut Oil, Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, Cupuacu Butter,Jasmine Absolute, Ylang Ylang Oil, Cypress Oil,Palmarosa Oil, Jasmine Flowers, Cetrimonium Bromide, Cocamide DEA,Gardenia Extract, *Benzyl Alcohol, *Geraniol,*Limonene, *Linalool

*occurs naturally in essential oils

Lush BIG Shampoo:

Big is Lush's most famous shampoo and the one that most people really like. It contains sea salt which lifts the hair up from its roots and gives plenty of volume, and seaweed & coconut to make the hair soft, as well as lemon and lime to give the hair lots of shine.

I absolutely loved Big when I first tried it, and I used up an entire pot of it. The thing about Big that I found, was that my hair needed a break from it after a while, since it was quite drying on my hair and the effects wore off after a while. Now that I have had a break and used different shampoos, I can tell you that I have rediscovered Big and that the effects are now as brilliant as they were when I first started using this shampoo.
The consistensy is pretty weird as it looks like.. goo.. to be childish :P The sea salt is coarse and mixed in with the other ingredients, making this shampoo very odd. But it works :) The salt dissolves when exposed to warm water, making the shampoo foam like nobody's business and lifting up the hair, giving it volume. You are supposed to shampoo twice with this product to get the best results, which I find is true.
So if you are looking for a shampoo to give you volume and shine, this is it. Just be aware that your hair might be a little frizzy at first, especially if you don't use a conditioner.
And another thing, after you have shampooed your hair, it feels weird and almost tacky. But that is natural :)

Ingredients:
Coarse Sea Salt, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Fresh Organic Lemon Infusion,Fresh Sea Water, Toothed Wrack Seaweed Infusion,Cocamide DEA, Lauryl Betaine, Fresh Organic Lime Juice, Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, Neroli Oil,Mandarin Oil, Vanilla Absolute, Orange Flower Absolute, *Limonene,Methyl Ionone, Perfume

*occurs naturally in essential oils