#vita-rays

So first of all I’m going to apologize for taking like a month to do this post when I said I’d do it in a few days.  I got pneumonia a few days after making my last post, then had bad reactions to multiple medicines I was taking for my asthma, then I got an ear infection, and then Friday I got a 24hr stomach flu thing but!!! I’m here to finally share my current skincare routine that has helped me clear my skin and keep it cleared, while also keeping it balanced! (I have combination and acne-prone skin)

So let’s get into it!!!

AM Routine

So for my morning routine I try to keep it simple, so it only has about five steps.

1. CeraVe Foaming Cleanser. I LOVE this cleanser.  It doesn’t foam up as much as other foaming cleansers, so it doesn’t strip my skin and leave it feeling super dry and tight and it’s non-comedogenic, so it won’t clog your pores or cause more acne if your skin is prone to that.  Along with this, it has a lot of moisturizing ingredients that make your skin super soft!!

2. Thayers Witch Hazel Aloe Vera Toner with Cucumber. This toner is awesome if you have acne or sensitive skin.  It doesn’t dry out your skin like plain witch hazel does because of the aloe and cucumber, and those ingredients also help calm the skin instead of just making it dry.

3. Benton Snail Bee High Content Essence. I started using this a couple months ago after seeing a lot of good reviews for it.  I was hesitant though because of the fact that it’s made of bee venom and snail mucin, which sounds scary and gross, but gOD is this stuff worth it.  It has a more gel like consistency than a lot of other essences, but it doesn’t go on super thick or sticky.  It really helps balance my skin and helps to keep the oily parts of my face from getting too oily and also moisturizes the dryer parts.

4. CeraVe Eye Repair Cream. CeraVe is gonna pop up a lot in this post because I love their products so much.  I have sensitive skin, especially around my eyes so thicker and fragranced eye creams make my eyes burn real bad.  This eye cream is thick, but it’s unscented and gentle so it doesn’t bother my eyes AND it actually works (it takes a couple weeks to see results though).

5. Garnier SkinActive SPF 30 Moisturizer with Hyaluronic Acid. I’ve been using this moisturizer daily for a couple years now.  It’s kind of runny and not super thick, so it doesn’t make my skin super oily.  It also doesn’t leave a white cast on my skin like a lot of other moisturizing sun screens (like CeraVe’s does, unfortunately).  It has a slight fragrance, but it’s light enough that it doesn’t bother my skin.

And that’s it for my morning routine!  It’s super short and only takes like 10 minutes MAX.  My night routine is a lot more involved though, lol.

PM Routine  

Okay so my nightly routine is literally just... so extra and I absolutely love it.

1. L’Oreal Micellar Cleansing Water. I wear a lot of waterproof eye makeup and using the cleansing oil I use on the rest of my face mess with my eyes, so a couple weeks ago I started using this take my eye makeup off and it works pretty good!  You don’t have to do a lot of rubbing and it doesn’t make my eyes super dry.  The only thing is that it leaves a kind of oily feeling behind for a few minutes, but I usually rinse it off anyways.

2. The Face Shop Natural Rice Water Light Cleansing Oil. This cleansing oil is step one in my double cleansing (which everyone should be doing) has been in my nightly routine for like.... a year or two now?  And it’s awesome.  It’s light enough that it doesn’t clog my pores like some of the thicker cleansing oils do.  It gets pretty much all of the makeup off my face and makes my skin feel super soft as well!  Rice water is really good for fading the dark spots that acne leaves behind and I think this has been one of the key products that’s helped me with that!

3. CeraVe Foaming Cleanser. 

4. Exfoliate/ masks. On Tuesdays and Fridays I exfoliate with Ebanel Ultimate Brightening Peeling Gel.  This is only the second peeling gel I’ve tried but I like it.  Peeling gels are way better for your skin than physical exfoliants because they don’t scrape and rub at the skin.  It sounds gross but when you rub a peeling gel on your skin it picks up the dead skin cells and turns them into these little... pills of grossness that you rinse off with water.  On pretty much every other day of the week I use a mask, and I’ll try to make a post about my favorites soon!

5. Thayers Witch Hazel Aloe Vera Toner with Cucumber. 

6. Instanatural Vitamin C Facial Toner. So I use a second toner in my PM routine because I wanted to add vitamin C into my routine because it’s good for fading dark spots and minimizing the look of pores and lemme tell you this stuff is amazing.  It makes my skin feel so soft and helped with my acne, acne marks, and pores in like a week.

7. Benton Snail Bee High Content Essence. 

8. Nature Republic Soothing Moisture Aloe Vera 92%. Aloe vera is really, really good for people with sensitive skin and acne.  It’s super lightweight and soothing and no matter how hot wherever you keep it is, it’s always going to feel cool on your skin when you put it on.  I’ve also noticed that it’s helped fade my dark spots too, which is awesome.  Also, this stuff is super cheap and you get a lot of it, too, because I got the tub I’m using around this time last year and I’m just now starting to finish it up.

9. The Ordinary Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%. This is a recent addition to my PM routine, but boy howdy is it a good one.  I always kind of thought that The Ordinary was over hyped, but it’s so worth they hype.  It’s cheap and it works!  This serum is specifically for acne-prone skin and it helped clear up my skin when I was taking like three different steroids when I had pneumonia a couple weeks ago, that’s how good it is.

10. Complete Organics Organic Marula Oil. Okay I know it seems really counter intuitive to use an oil as thick as marula oil on acne-prone and combination/ oily skin, but hear me out.  Using non-comedogenic oils on your skin can actually help your skin produce less oils.  When you put oils like jojoba oil or marula oil on your skin, it kind of tricks your skin into believing that there’s already enough oil, so it won’t produce as much, so moisturizes the skin without clogging up your pores.  Marula oil is also high in fatty acids that really hydrate your skin and reduce redness.  It’s also good for fine lines AND makes your skin super smooth as well!

11. CeraVe Eye Repair Cream.

12. CeraVe Skin Renewing Cream Serum. This has got to be my all-time favorite skin care product because it targets so many different things.  I started using it after reading that retinol can help with acne and minimizing the look of pores, but I wanted to get a retinol that wouldn’t dry my skin out, as a lot of strong retinols have the tendency to leave skin dry, red, and flaky.  This serum has hyaluronic acid along with moisturizing ceramides in it that prevents this from happening.  I started using this also about a year ago, and even though it didn’t work immediately and it alone didn’t clear my skin, it’s one of the major products that did.  If I go even a day or two without using this my skin starts to act up again, so it’s definitely one of the major players in my skincare routine.  All the moisturizing ingredients in it also make my skin feel super smooth and soft, which is another plus!

13. AcneFree Sulfur Mask. AcneFree is one of the best drugstore brands I’ve come across, no lie.  I don’t use this as an actual mask because sulfur is too drying for my skin, but I do use this as a night time spot treatment and it works so well!

So that’s my AM and PM skin care routines.  My nighttime routine is SUPER long, and probably looks super intimidating to some of you who are just getting into skin care, but let me just say that:

1) I didn’t start out my journey in skin care with this long-ass routine.  I’ve built this routine over the last 3 or 4 years by slowly adding more products to it.  No matter how excited you are about starting a routine, introducing a huge number of new products to your skin is going to make it angry.  It’s better to slowly add more products over a couple of weeks or even months so that if your skin starts acting up, you know what product caused that, and so that your skin will have time to get used to a product before you add a new one

2) It’s so worth it.  Having a long skin care routine might seem time consuming and annoying, but after you see the results of all of your hard work, you’re going to start loving it.   Like it’s nice to be able to see my skin finally clear up after 12 years of struggling with my acne and skin problems and I absolutely love coming home after work and doing this routine because it’s super relaxing and it just feels nice to pamper myself, especially after a really hard or stressful day.