For the last couple of weeks I have been testing out a few products that were sent to me by Biore. I had previously seen this brand in Boots, but never tried any of their products so was keen to see how they would work with my skin.
First up I tried their daily deep pore cleansing wipes.
These wipes are textured to provide gentle exfoliation and clean deep down into the pores. Biore claim that they remove oil, dirt, and make-up - even waterproof mascara.
You get 25 good size wipes in a pack for a reasonable price, but this is where the positives end.
Although, I like the idea of them being textured since they are a little on the dry side you have to rub at your skin a lot more to remove makeup, and this can lead to irritation. The first time I used these I noticed they had a very pungent scent of alcohol. They also really stung my eyes when I tried to remove my eye makeup, though surprisingly the wipe only smeared most of it, and barely touched my mascara.
After looking at the list of ingredients I realised that after water the second ingredient was alcohol denat. No wonder my eyes were hurting and sore! I would never recommend anyone to use makeup remover with alcohol around the eye area, and yet this product claims to remove waterproof mascara (it really doesn't!).
In the name of research I foolishly tried these again, though keeping them far away from my eyes. Though they did do a pretty good job of removing face makeup they once again left my skin red and irritated. In the morning I also noticed that my face was extremely oily, probably due to the wipes being too harsh and stripping my skin of all its natural oils. We all know this only causes one thing- more oil production and clogged pores! I will therefore be sticking to my super mild Johnson's wipes from now on :).
The second product that I have been trialing is Biore's deep cleansing pore strips:
These are meant to instantly pull away oil and dirt build-up as well as blackheads in one use. Each pack comes with 6 strips, which should be used about twice a week. They are pretty simple to use, you just wet the skin on your nose, stick the strip on and leave it to dry for 10-15 minutes. After this comes the excruciating pain of peeling it off. Now, I am not one to complain about pain being the price for beauty (far from it!), but these really do hurt, especially if you have sensitive skin.
I won't scar you all with an image of a used strip, but I will describe exactly what it removed. First off, as you can imagine when you are peeling something that has been firmly stuck for 15 minutes you are definitely going to remove a layer of skin. I think this is actually a plus as if you have any dry areas on the nose these will be lifted in a much more effective way than with a scrub. However, this does leave the nose very red afterwards, so it's deffinitely a treatment to use at night, and not before dashing out into public looking like Rudolph.
The other thing that this strip removes very efficiently is the teeny tiny white hairs that everyone has on their face. You may not think you have any, but if you look really closely you will see a miniscule amount of baby fuzz. This is probably not what Biore intended these strips to do, but it does make the area look and feel slightly smoother. Apparently some celebrities get their whole faces waxed to make them look smooth, so perhaps there is something in it.
Unfortunately, these strips didn't remove many blackheads, about 5 per use. I think (and how can I phrase this in a pleasant way) these could have been 'exctracted' manually much quicker and with a lot less pain. Then again, the pores on my nose are really not all that big, and the only blackheads I have are in the creases on the sides of my nose, so this area is difficult for the pore strip to stick to efficiently.
Overall, I think these could work for you if you have large pores and mainly blackheads running through the centre of your nose.. or else if you fancied an at home face wax ;).
Sorry for the rambling.. it is late, and I hope that this review was helpful to some of you!!
