The skin changer mask

Anyone who reads my blog regularly will know I’m a huge fan of Alpha-H. I interviewed the founder, Michelle Doherty at the beginning of the year who hailed glycolic acid as reinventing and saving her skin – she suffered from terrible acne from the ages of 14 to 28. She asked herself if she was ‘ballsy’ enough to put acid on her skin. The answer was yes and she’s never looked back.

However, what really struck me about our complexion chat was her belief that you have to take skin out of its comfort zone to reap the results. “For skin to start producing its own collagen, it needs to drop down to a warm and tingling level,” she explained. Before discovering Alpha-H I was a bit namby pamby when it came to hard core skincare. I would shy away from words like acid for fear of looking like that scene in Sex and the City when Samantha Jones had a peel. Red, blotchy and raw. The stuff of skinmares. But with complexion confidence growing, I’ve been using Alpha-H Liquid Gold for nearly a year now and it’s really made a difference in terms of clarity.
  
Their Alpha-H Liquid Gold Smoothing & Perfecting Mask is my newest skin arsenal. Almost masquerading as a peel, glycolic acid is the fifth ingredient on the list, so it kicks pores! 15% is the concentration and in this measure will help resurface, build collagen and improve the plumpness of the skin. It’s not a mask you use more than once a week, and be warned your skin will fizz throughout the 10 minutes it’s left on. Although not suitable for delicate skin, I would say mine can be sensitive and it doesn’t cause any adverse reactions. But if you do experience any stinging or burning stop using. The term pick-me-up can be overused for under-performing products, but it certainly doesn’t apply to this one. Skin feels incredible soft after and looks so much fresher with fine lines and wrinkles taking a back seat. I would even go as far to say skin looks positively loved up. And who wouldn’t like cupid struck skin?


Alpha-H Liquid Gold Smoothing & Perfecting Mask, £43 available from www.lookfantastic.com and www.qvcuk.com

Clinique's lullaby skin

MY THREE DREAM CATCHERS

To improve the way your skin looks in the morning, action needs to be taken at bedtime. I rise at 7am, and looking in the mirror is not always a pretty sight. Skin can face the world looking sad, creased and dehydrated. Three good things that have helped improved my AM skin is: a good book. For too long now I’ve been reading emails, tweets and news stories on my iPad before sleep. The upshot? I toss and turn with thoughts running through my head. Now, give me a good book and I’m out like a light. My second skin saver is a silk pillowcase bought from John Lewis for £35. Pillow creases now never happen. That’s all I need to say. And thirdly, my beauty bonus is Clinique’s new Moisture Surge Overnight Mask.

MY BEDSIDE SKIN STAPLE

I can always tell my skin needs a slug of something serious if I put the palms of my hands on my cheeks and push up. I can see a myriad of fine lines caused by dehydration. With central heating pumping out, winter is a time skin needs PM SOS. To be honest, I don’t really know what the difference is between this and a night cream as you don’t need to rinse it off. I suspect the mask just makes it sound more hard working, but whatever it gives the results. It certainly goes on like a night cream; it sinks in readily and doesn’t leave any mask like tightness or residue on the skin. It feels luxurious, giving intense hydration with moisturise trapping hyaluronic acid along with sodium hyaluronate which delivers an instant burst of moisture. This VIP (very important polymer) is able to hold large amounts of water within the skin so it’s left feeling plumped. It’s not an exaggeration to say, my morning skin is now getting a much better (looking) wake up call!

Clinique Moisture Intense Overnight Mask is available nationwide from 1^st January priced at £28. www.clinique.co.uk