Giving Sleeping Beauty a run for her money with the Dermalogica Overnight Repair Serum…

About a month back, I was invited to hear more about the latest addition to the Dermalogica AGESmart family – the Overnight Repair Serum and was kindly given a bottle to try out. After using it for a few weeks now, I figured it was time to share my thoughts on this nifty little product.

Description:

Dermalogica Overnight Repair Serum is a powerful peptide serum with Argan and Rose oils to help stimulate cellular repair overnight. Maximise night time skin repair to help minimise fine lines and increase luminosity. Smooth this serum into skin or blend with your night time treatment cream for dramatic age-fighting benefits: the supercharged peptide serum helps stimulate collagen production to help firm and renew resilience while potent Argan and Rose oils revitalise lacklustre skin and smooth away fine lines. Free of artificial fragrances and colours.

The Verdict:

Design-wise, the serum comes in a small (but solid!) opaque screw-top bottle with a relatively large opening at the top as you can see from the picture above. However, dispensing the serum is a breeze – all you have to do is tip the bottle upside down (no need to shake, just be patient and the serum will come out in drops).

At first sniff, the serum actually has a pretty strong scent – I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think it’s from the Vitamin E and Rose Hip Seed oil in the formula. It doesn’t bother me though, and feels a bit like aromatherapy since I feel quite relaxed after smelling this. To be honest, the serum should really be classified more as oil than a serum since it is essentially a runny oil (see above) and behaves as such.

The instructions recommend 4-6 drops for your face, but I believe 4 drops (which is the amount you see in my palm above) is more than sufficient for my face and neck especially when blended with my moisturiser. I’ve tried patting it directly into my skin and mixing it with my moisturiser, and both methods seem to work fine. The serum is absorbed quickly, and I wake up to almost glowing skin in the morning.

Given that I have a super oily T-Zone but dry cheeks, this serum has actually helped to even out the oilies somewhat so that I wake up to a less-oily T-Zone and nicely moisturised cheeks (Didn’t know you could use oils on oily skin right? I didn’t either!). Did I become a sleeping beauty? LOL maybe not, but my skin feels pretty darn close to it!

The Overnight Repair Serum is supposed to help increase skin elasticity, firmness and collagen renewal while minimising discolouration. I can’t say I’ve noticed drastic improvement in my skin texture in the past 3 weeks or so, but I’m majorly happy with the morning-after effect, the frown lines between my eyes have stayed away (despite major stress at work) and I reckon my jawline has gotten a teeny bit more defined (or maybe it’s a placebo effect, but either way I’m not complaining!)

Of course, if you want maximum results, Dermalogica recommends that you go for their free Face Mapping® skin analysis and AGE Smart® prescription, but for now I’m quite satisfied with the results from this serum and am happy to continue using it.

Ingredient list for those interested

As with most Dermalogica products, this serum doesn’t come cheap but it is worth the SG$138 you’d have to fork over. While 15ml may sound like a tiny amount, you only use a few drops at a time – I estimate this little bottle will last me a good 6 months at least.

Dermalogica Overnight Repair Serum retails at SG$138 for a 15ml bottle, and is available from all Dermalogica outlets or authorised spas and salons. Alternatively, it is also available from the Bellabox website.

Rating: 4 / 5

Value: $$$

Puffiness be gone! :D

How was the weekend? Singapore had a long weekend thanks to National Day, but OMG if the traffic wasn’t completely horrendous coming back (I took a bus). If you had followed my tweets, you’d have read my rantings and ravings on the traffic and *ahem* Singapore drivers, but beggars can’t be choosers I guess.

With that, I only got back to my place about 9.30pm, effectively killing my sleep time yet again. However, on the upside, I at least remembered this lovely eye massage serum I’d gotten from Clinique a while back which I religiously applied before going to sleep.

Description:
Clinique All About Eyes Serum De-Puffing Eye Massage is an instantly cooling rollerball that deposits a liquid gel-serum to help massage and refresh puffy eyes on contact, reducing the appearance of dark circles and brightening your eyes. Think of it as a new solution for eye puffs – refreshingly non-irritating. Allergy tested, 100% fragrance free, oil-free, non-clogging, dermatologist and ophthalmologist tested. Safe for contact lens wearers.

The Verdict:
It would seem that the Clinique people have finally caught the hint with this Eye Serum (the above name is way too long!) in terms of design, since now I can see exactly how much is left in the tube. :) Nothing more irritating than using it halfway to find out its finished and you don’t have a replacement.

I’ve tried a few other eye roll-on formulas so far (including the famed Garnier Brightening Eye Roll-On) but so far, this has been one of the best. Where the Garnier under eye roll-on took a while to see the results, I saw reduced puffiness in just under 15 minutes. Better yet, the formula is scent-less, is very easy to work with and absorbs quickly, which is great.

The Clinique Eye Serum contains Amentoflavones and Humulus Lupulus Extract, both of which are ingredients with soothing properties. When added together with caffeine to reduce the appearance of irritation and puffiness, the results are pretty good.

You can actually reapply this anytime you need a pick-me-up for your eyes, but I don’t like the thought of my eye serum picking up my makeup into the tube when I use it during the day, so I tend to roll it onto my finger and dab under my eyes instead. At night after my shower, I apply it directly using the roller. Oh, and did I mention it’s always fun to play “rolling rolling” with the little roller ball (not too hard though!)

It’s rather pricey at RM125, but well worth the money for decent results. At least, I think so anyway… :D


Clinique All About Eyes Serum De-Puffing Eye Massage retails at RM125 and is available at all Clinique counters nationwide.


Rating: 4 / 5
Value: $$

Getting clear(er) skin with Cellnique – Part 2…

After using the Cellnique Advanced Bio Renewal Masque in my previous post, I usually leave my skin alone overnight save for a light moisturiser until the next morning before resuming my usual skincare routine. For the past couple of months, I added just the Skin Action Sebum Gel to my usual lineup of sunscreen, base and moisturiser. It was supposed to promise results in 10 days…so did it?

Cellnique Skin Action Sebum Gel

Description:
Cellnique Skin Action Sebum Gel is a phyto bio-engineered formulation gel for all skin types to reduce both blackheads and whiteheads on affected skin areas without painful extraction. This daily maintenance gel also reduces oil secretion, leaving the skin clear and producing smooth visible results within 10 days.

The Verdict:
The instructions said to pump a small amount onto your fingertip, apply on your T-zone or congested areas and follow with moisturiser which is what I did. One pump is actually more than enough to cover my T-zone as well as my cheeks and chin, which is where I usually sprout blackheads…*eeps*

The clear serum has a distinct ‘cool’ smell to it – no surprise as the product contains Tea Tree oil, Peppermint oil and Eucalyptus oil. It can come across as a bit strong for some as I got a tingly feeling on my skin when I first used it, but I reckon my skin’s gotten acclimatized since I don’t get that anymore. I’ve heard that there is something similar under the B.Liv line but as I haven’t tried it I can’t do a comparison. If anyone has though, do feel free to let me know how the two match up?

As for the 10 day claim to smoother skin, I would say it’s definitely up to your individual skin type and condition but for me, it took me 5 days or so before I noticed that my skin was getting a bit smoother, plus the blackheads were rapidly diminishing. And with the enlarged pores on my nose, that’s saying something!

The only thing that I didn’t like about it was that the bottle is opaque, which means there’s no real means of telling how much more product there is left inside (hence no idea when I need to repurchase until one day nothing comes out!) plus the pump on my bottle was a little stiff which made it a little difficult to dispense in small amounts. I’m not sure if it was just my bottle since no one else seems to have a problem with this but just including it anyway.

Those things aside though, what I said previously about the Skin Action Sebum Gel and Advanced Bio Renewal Masque having me sailing through Aunt Flo’s visits holds fast – and it’s not something that I’m going to want to give up anytime soon (I’m shuddering thinking of the alternative!) heck, if someone is willing to sponsor me a lifetime supply of this stuff I’d be in seventh heaven…*winks*

Cellnique Skin Action Sebum Gel retails at RM159 for 30ml bottle which will last roughly 2-3 months with daily usage…*ouch* on the pocket to be sure…but I find that personally it’s worked quite well for me. In fact, combined with my Estee Lauder CP+ Perfectionist and Clinique Moisture Surge, I think I may have just found my dream trio right there!


You can also read what some of the other ladies had to say about this product:
Paris
Jessie
Xin