My face is better! No tight, scaly, dry skin. No intense itching. No hives. And pretty much no acne!
After the miracle of Calendulan I needed a moisturiser, as Calendulan is too emollient for me to use continuously (duh, it's a burn salve!) So, there is this cruelty free Dutch cosmetics company called Biodermal who is one of the oldest and foremost leading dermatological skincare developers in the country. They were founded in 1975, and outside of Holland I'm not able to find much information on them. I usually go by Paula's Choice Beautypedia evaluations on products, but they have nothing on this brand. I think I've seen it on sale in the UK somewhere before though, as I recognised the brand without having tried it before. But I digress!
I'd been meaning to try this brand since recognising it in the drug stores here. It's not the cheapest of products, retailing at around €15 per item for their every day skin care ranges, and over €20 for their specialised ranges, but it's cheaper than Paula's Choice in this country. So I decided that now was the time to trial the brand.
I bought one of the every day skincare moisturisers for very dry skin. You get a day and a night creme to choose from. I went for the day thinking it would have SPF in it. It doesn't. So I was very worried going outside with how damaged my skin was.
Regardless of the lack of SPF, it's actually a darn good moisturiser! I was peeling so badly by this point that I had to have two showers a day in order to loosen the dead skin on my face so I could exfoliate it off with a towel, and this moisturiser did sting when I applied it on the raw skin. But even though it stung, I immediately noticed a difference in the texture and tightness of my skin. The "raw" skin was still damaged, and so dried out really quickly when exposed to air. Within a few minutes of being out of the shower it would start to go tight and scaly. This day creme soothed it remarkably, but I had to apply it very liberally. As in large white dollops on my face liberally. If I rubbed it in, it would only be perhaps twenty minutes before I'd have to reapply , where as I could go nearly two hours without having to reapply the creme if I dolloped it on. It also didn't break me out, which is remarkable.
It's the third week since the incident and my face is almost completely recovered. It's taken a lot of babying though. The Biodermal day creme comes in a 50ml jar and I have gone through it in a week. €15 on my face in a week! Well, I suppose facials costs twice as much and last for maybe as long. I don't know if it's still residual damage from the Benzoyl Peroxide or if it's just the composition of the creme is that good, but I'm considerably less oily than I was before. The last thing you should do with oily skin is introduce a thick, heavy moisturiser to it, but so far I've gotten away with it. I intend to repurchase the creme, but in the night formula, to use before I go to bed or if I don't have to go out of the house that day. I wonder how long my skin will let me pump moisture back into it before it decides to regurgitate some of it back at me..
As my skin is no longer dry and peeling, I can start my makeup reviews of Meow Cosmetics and Darling Girl Cosmetics! Actually, I'll debut a look on the 19th of this month with some of the products. Mr Blue Eyes and I have got tickets to the midnight release of Hunger Games 2: Catching Fire! Squea! So excited! I haven't read the books, but I have a huge girl crush on Jennifer Lawrence. So I'm incredibly excited about this midnight manatee.
Also, I've learned that my local gym offers a pole dancing class. Guess who's going to throw themselves around a pole! And probably fall off and bang their head against it! I'm also going to start Zumba and Kick Boxing for extra cardio. Now that my sweat isn't irritating my skin, I've been hitting the gym again and LOVING IT! Seriously. I'm actually a gym nut. I'm working on strengthening my joints at the moment, but after Christmas I'm going to start doing a proper weights routine. I'm going to have a beach body by next summer, damnit!
