Etude House Precious Mineral Moist Any Cushion Swatches and First Impressions

Etude House's Precious Mineral Any Cushion line of BB Cushions is one of their most popular products, and in November last year, the brand introduced the Etude House Precious Mineral Moist Any Cushion - yes, the word "Moist" indicates that this is a new line to the BB cushion range, and the line is new. The Moist Any Cushion is supposed to give you the dewy, moist-looking finish favoured by so many Kbeauty looks, and also, according to Etude House, contains some skincare ingredients too.

Etude House Moist Any Cushion: A new addition to the Precious Mineral line of BB Cushions

Just so you aren't confused, the "regular" line of Precious Mineral Any Cushion is just called "Precious Mineral Any Cushion", and is the original BB cushion launched by Etude House. To this range, Etude House added the Precious Mineral Magic Any Cushion in 2014 (the "Magic" word denoting the line), and these were basically colour-correcting primers/bases in BB cushion form, which I had swatched and reviewed before. And in 2015, Etude House added the Precious Mineral Pearl Aura Any Cushion, where the "Pearl Aura" is supposed to denote a nice, dewy "pearl-like" finish, reviewed before too. So as you can see, although the products are different, they do have similar names, and if you're new to the brand, it can get a tad confusing!


Etude House Precious Mineral Moist Any Cushion: The 3 shades in the Moist Any Cushion line
Given that Etude House already has a "Pearl Aura" BB cushion to help give skin a dewy finish, I was curious as to why they launched a "Moist" BB cushion. Wouldn't it be a bit of a duplication? So, the other day when I was in store, I got some swatches of the Precious Mineral Moist Any Cushion, and although it's a little overdue, I guess it's better late than never to share these swatches!

Kiehl's Masques Review: Tumeric & Cranberry Seed Energizing Radiance, Cilantro & Orange Extract Pollutant Defending

Kiehl's Tumeric & Cranberry Seed Energizing Radiance Masque and Cilantro & Orange Extract Pollutant Defending Masque are two new face masks that the brand has launched for the new year. As you probably know, I've reviewed quite a few Kiehl's products over the years and am a fairly huge Kiehl's fan, so I was pretty excited about these. I've actually recently used up a (pretty large) tube of their Rare Earth Masque, which was featuerd in my latest empties post, so I'm pretty excited to see how these masks (is it masques or masks? I'm just going to use them interchangeably, because other than the more French-looking spelling of "masques" I can't really discern any difference in meaning between the two) fare.

Kiehl's Tumeric & Cranberry Seed Energizing Radiance Masque and Cilantro & Orange Extract Pollutant Defending Masque

The two masques each come with different claims: the Tumeric and Cranberry Seed Energizing Radiance Masque claims to "recharge your skin's youthful glow" and "brightens dull, fatigued skin", while the Cilanro and Orange Extract Pollutant Defending Masque claims to "replenish essential nutrients to depleted cells" so that "lines are minimized, rough texture is smoothed and dullness is diminished". So depending on your skin type, you might prefer one or the other - or you could even be happy with both masks!

In line with the new trend of multi-masking, I was also told that you can use more than one mask at a time. so for example, if your T-zone is oily but the rest of your face is dry, you can use one mask on your cheeks, another on your forehead and T-zone area, and so on. You can either layer masks on top of each other, or apply different masks to different parts of the face. The possibilities are endless!


The Tumeric & Cranberry Seed Energizing Radiance Masque and Cilantro & Orange Extract Pollutant Defending Masque are the first launches of 2016
So, let's take a closer look at both masques, and we'll start right at the ingredients lists! From there, we'll be able to see what's in the masques, and how they work, and better help us decide whether these are the right masques for your skin.

Bounce Up Pacts and Pore Putty: Chosungah22, Ver 88, Stila, Peter Thomas Roth: Do They Work?

One of the trending things in the beauty scene now, particularly the Asian beauty scene, is Bounce Up Pacts, as they are called by Asian brands, or Pore Putty as they are called by Western brands. For those who may not have heard, this is basically a base makeup, akin to foundation, and functions quite similarly, in that it comes in a variety of skin-like shades, and is meant to provide coverage and a smooth finish to the skin.

Bounce Up Pact, Pore Putty: New and trending here!

What's different and new about these Bounce Up Pacts/Pore Putties, though, is the texture. These have a hybrid texture that's sort of similar to a dough, or Play-Doh, which you can roll up, ball around, squish, and so on. You can depress your finger into the pact, and like Play-Doh, your finger will leave a print on the surface, but you can smooth it out. So these are sort of like, not as liquid as traditional cream foundation, but not as dry as a powder, and the "Putty" or "Bounce Up" name is a reference to how malleable the products are. On Youtube, you can find all sorts of videos demonstrating the more interesting properties of this product, as you can see below.

A Play-Doh, putty-like texture gives a feeling of novelty to the product (Source)

Interestingly though, this new generation of products aren't actually the first to use the phrase "pore putty". Back in the early-to-mid-2000s, Japanse brand Sana came out with a range of products called "Pore Putty", although none of them had a malleable, dough-like texture. Rather, the range's name was indicative of the supposed claims of the products - to hide your pores - and came in a range of liquids, powders, and creams, with BB creams, mineral powders, makeup bases, concealers and so on.

I guess this Bounce Up Pact/Pore Putty thing must be pretty huge right now, because I received two real-life queries from friends about this class of product, as well as one online request via Twitter. So I figured, why not? Most of the questions I got were centred around 1) whether the Bounce Up Pacts/Pore Putties were really novel, new or groundbreaking, as well as 2) what are the ingredients that give the product its interesting texture? So we'll attempt to look at these two questions in this post!

hello, @musicalhouses :) would you like to do ingredients analysis to Ver. 88 Bounce-Up Pact? It has been hot item these days.

— a (@justletterA) December 14, 2015

The best way to get blogpost ideas: Reader suggestions! Thank you for the idea!
If you know my blog, you know what I'm going to say next - we're going to look at ingredients lists! It was quite hard to find the ingredients lists for some of the Asian brand Bounce Up Pacts, but after searching the internets and asking other bloggers, I managed to get the ingredients lists for 4 products: the Chosungah22 Bounce Up Pact Master, Ver 88 Bounce Up Pact SPF 50/PA+++, Stila Perfectly Poreless Putty Perfector, and the Peter Thomas Roth Pore Putty. With two "Western" Pore Putties, and two "Asian" Bounce Up Pacts, this should give us plenty of material to work with! So let's get started!

The Body Shop Drops of Youth Review: Eye Concentrate, Bouncy Sleeping Mask, Essence Lotion, Cream, Youth Concentrate

The Body Shop's Drops of Youth collection of skincare products has launched, and this range targets the first signs of ageing and delivers hydration to skin. It is a surprisingly comprehensive range, with a Essence Lotion, Eye Concentrate, Youth Concentrate, Youth Cream, and Bouncy Sleeping Mask. So yes, a total of five products are being launched!

The Body Shop Drops of Youth: A skincare range to target the first signs of aging

Some of you may remember my old review last year of The Body Shop's Drops of Youth Concentrate, which is part of the Nutriganics Line. And while I didn't review it last year either, the Nutriganics line also had a Bouncy Sleeping Mask too. The packaging of the products in the Nutriganics line is slightly different - the "older" Bouncy Sleeping Mask, for example, has a white cap rather than a black one, while the Concentrate had a different lid and dropper.


The Body Shop Drops of Youth: Five products, ranging from lotions to concentrates to masks
Anyway, we'll be looking at all these products in the Drops of youth collection - Lotion, Eye Concentrate, Youth Concentrate, Cream, and Bouncy Sleeping Mask, and as always, we're going to take a closer look at how these products work! Since there are quite a number of products to go through, this post is going to be a tad long, so buckle your seatbelts, and let's get starte!

SK-II Facial Treatment Essence Dupe Part 1: 10 Possible Dupes with Pitera

SKII's Facial Treatment Essence, with the acclaimed Pitera as the main ingredient, is one of the most famous products in the world of Asian beauty. It's got a cult following despite the high price, and people swear by it.

A year ago, I reviewed the SKII Facial Treatment Essence (together with the Clear Lotion and the Mask), I talked about the science behind Pitera (aka Galactomyces Ferment Filtrate), and also tried the product on myself. Once the review was up, I had a number of questions on whether there were any dupes for the SKII Facial Treatment Essence. Of course, I had to go and investigate myself!

SK-II Facial treatment Essence Dupes: Some of these products are said to be dupes for SK-II

Initially, when I started in my dupe hunt, I thought it would be an easy task - maybe a handful of products, and that's it. It wouldn't take long to do or be a lot of effort, right? Turns out, I was wrong! Upon closer investigation, however, I found that there were really many ways to make a similar product. There are products that try to mimic the formula almost exactly, while others bank on selling the star ingredient, Pitera, instead. Perhaps it is the popularity of the Facial Treatment Essence that prompts so many brands to create similar products. In fact, I found so many dupes and similar products that I ended up organizing them into categories:

Category 1: Close Dupes of the SKII Facial Treatment Essence
Category 2: 100% Pitera/Galactomyces Ferment Filtrate products
Category 3: Partial Dupes, retaining Pitera as the star ingredient, but don't closely follow the SK-II formula
Category 4: Dupes of the "Older Version" of SK-II's Facial Treatment Essence, with Saccharomyces Ferment Filtrate instead of Galactomyces Ferment Filtrate

SKII has something of a cult following, particularly with its Facial Treatment Essence

That's quite a list! Clearly, even when brands don't put out a close dupe, they do put out tangentially SK-II inspired products, and that's fine by me - the more options the merrier! As for Category 4, I'd like to clarify that while there isn't an "older version" of SK-II's Facial Treatment Essence in that the key ingredient, Pitera, hasn't changed, P&G (the parent company of SK-II) had previously mis-characterized Pitera as Saccharomyces Ferment Filtrate, and later changed it to Galactomyces Ferment Filtrate upon further analysis (you can read more about it in my SK-II review I posted previously). Despite this error, it seems a lot of companies were inspired to create products with Saccharomyces Ferment Filtrate that seemed close to SK'II's formula, so I thought they might be worth a mention, too, for the sake of completeness.

So, as you might guess, we've got a lot to go through! Hence the "Part 1" in the title of this post - I don't know how many parts we will have eventually, but I do know that we'll need more than one post to go through all these!