The Face Mask Edition

 It’s no secret in my family that I like face masks. When I lived at home, it was pretty much guaranteed that if I wasn’t out, I would have a face mask. Even in freshers (two years ago, eek!) I did one a couple of times a week. However, since then it’s slowly declined to rarely or never. I think my acne had something to do with it, as it got worse when I used more products. Even spot reducing products, how unfair is that!

Now my skin is on the mend, I’m left with practically thousands of acne scars and I hate it, plus my skin is just so uneven with dull and oily patches dotted around like nobody’s business. I got given about 20 face masks for Christmas, plus one in the Michael Todd skincare set I received so I’ve decided to do a face mask minimum once a week in an attempt to love my skin back into shape, on top of my morning and night routine and lashings of aloe vera gel and coconut oil.

Today’s mask was a 7th Heaven volcanic mud exfoliating mask with 100% natural ingredients. I’ve had a peek at the ingredient list and it’s stuff like aloe vera juice, pumice, clay, cocoa butter, tea tree oil, rosemary and cloves and all that jazz. It comes in a tear shaped pack which I have deduced to it being likened to a drop of heaven (clever right?) and I’m excited to whip my skin into shape!

It looks like an ordinary clay mask when I’m squeezing it out the pack, but as soon as I put it on my skin and rub it in I can tell how exfoliating it is (i.e, extremely). It has tiny tiny gritty bits that feel like they are sloughing off any skin not attached to your face: not in a painful way mind, in a ‘yep that is definitely working way’. I only use half the pack to get a nice even coating on my face (I never use a whole mask, isthat the same for everyone or do I have a tiny face?). As with all clay masks, it soon starts to dry and tighten, rendering me a silent grey faced mute for 20 minutes. Obviously this is when the door knocked and I had to answer the door in my bright red tartan PJs, unable to speak to explain myself. The postman genuinely gasped before composing himself. My face was so stiff I couldn’t even laugh to myself! I washed this off in the shower. It came off pretty easily, and had the bonus of an extra exfoliation.

What I love and hate about clay masks is that they bring all your blemishes to the surface. Because the spots I get are cystic, they are normally deep deep under my skin. After the face mask, my skin felt very soft and a few of my smaller spots were a lot closer to the skin than before. Still not sitting on the skin, but enough for me to trick myself into thinking it could be squeezed (I knowwww it’s super bad for you but I am completely addicted to squeezing spots, which is another reason why having cystic acne was the bane of my life) which, as I knew really, it couldn’t, cue big red lump on my cheek. I put a bit of spare mask over the spot overnight and rather than being horribly infected, which is what usually happens when I squeeze my spots, it was slightly reduced in size and closer to the surface than before.

I am in no way condoning squeezing spots but if you want a good exfoliation and a way of bringing your spots to the skin, this mask is great. And it only costs like 99p

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