Liz Earle Sun Protection: Mineral Sun Cream and Aftersun Gel

Liz Earle, the award-winning, much-celebrated UK skincare brand, has two products that are meant to help skin cope with the rough summer sun. One is the Mineral Sun Cream SPF20, for use before sun exposure, and the other is the Botanical Aftersun Gel, which is for use after sun exposure! Looks like we're pretty nicely covered here.

Both products come in sturdy, practical plastic tubes with flip-top caps. Both are also purple - the Mineral Sun Cream is a light purple tube, while the Aftersun Gel is a dark purple tube.



The Mineral Sun Cream SPF20 is a skin-coloured cresam that is meant to be used on the face as well as the body. I quite like the idea of a tinted sunscreen - you can actually use this in place of tinted moisturizer, and you can cover your spots and still get some sun protection! However, although I liked the colour, which is just the right shade of light beige, I felt that the product was a little too sticky for my liking. Also, being a physical (as opposed to chemical) sunscrren, you do need to blend in the product well to avoid that white sunscreen cast. However, since it's a physical sunscreen, it would most likely work well on most skin type without any issue, so girls who find their skin exhibiting sensitivity to chemical sunscreens could definitly turn to this and see if it works for them.



However, as you can see from the photos above, the Mineral Sun Cream does blend in pretty well into my NC20 skintone, and once blended in, looks pretty okay. I know you aren't supposed to rub your sunscreen too much as it decreases the sun protection afforded (since sunscreen is supposed to form an unbroken layer on top of your skin in order to be effective), so I'd recommend caution when you apply it - minimal rubbing if possible!

The Aftersun Gel is definitely my favourite product of the two. This one tingles with a cooling feeling when you apply it, and is really excellent at cooling and soothing sunburned skin. And it also absorbs pretty well. Definitely worth checking out if you are one of those girls who burns easily!



In fact, why stop at using the Aftersun Gel for just sunburns? This product is mainly emulsified aloe vera anyway, (the first five ingredients are Aloe barbadensis (aloe vera) leaf juice, Polysorbate 20 (a wetting agent), Glycerin, Tocopherol (vitamin E), Cucumis sativus (cucumber) fruit extract), so I can definitely see this being a multi-purpose product. I'm thinking it could potentially be an aftershave gel for girls with sensitive dry skin, and if your skin doesn't react to natural plant oils, this can even be used in face masks! I'd totally use the Aftersun Gel as a base for a DIY aspirin mask. If you know anything about DIY masks, you'll know that aspirin masks are so easy to DIY, and so effective too. Just crush the uncoated aspirin to a powder, mix it with some of the Aftersun Gel, apply to face, wait for 10mins and rinse off!

So would I recommend these products? As I'm sure you know, the Mineral Sun Cream is good if you want a tinted physical sunscreen, but the Aftersun Gel is something else altogether. It's a great multi-tasker, and I suspect I'm going to be keeping this around not just for aftersun care, but for other types of skincare uses as well!

(Product was sent for review. Review is my complete and honest opinion. I am not affiliated with/compensated by the company.)