Avon continues to impress me with their anti-aging skincare. I gave the Anew Reversalist Day Renewal Cream SPF 25, Night Renewal Cream, and Illuminating Eye System a test drive and I’m pleased to report that I think they’re great!

The  Anew Reversalist Day Renewal Cream SPF 25 contains ingredients to lighten discolorations, firm the skin, and make it look smoother. It also has SPF 25 to protect your skin from further sun damage. The texture is light and not heavy or greasy at all, and works nicely under makeup. After several weeks of use, my skin definitely feels smoother!

The Night Renewal Cream is probably my favorite of the three. It contains ingredient that work with your skin’s natural repair processes to minimize fine lines and wrinkles. It also has glycolic acid in it, which exfoliates surface cells for smoother, softer skin. I love this stuff! With regular use I’ve noticed a reduction in blackheads and whiteheads (a near constant problem for me) and the wrinkle between my eyes is noticeably diminished.

The Illuminating Eye System consists of an eye cream and an sheer veil. The eye cream contains ingredients to reduce wrinkles and dark circles, and the sheer veil contains light-reflecting pigments that instantly brighten the eye area. I’m not sure my dark circles changed (nothing has worked, so far, they are genetic), but in general my eyes look younger and brighter when I use this. I love the sheer veil, it makes my concealer go on smoother.

Overall, I can confidently recommend Anew Reversalist products. I think with regular use (you have to be dedicated or you probably won’t see results, as with any skincare system) anyone will notice an improvement in their skin with these products. Good Job, Avon!

Last week I had the pleasure of being in Southern California for vacation, and stopped in to this beautiful shop in Pasadena called LATHER. What a great find!!!

LATHER is a woman-owned company specializing in skin and body care products using essential oils and other quality natural ingredients. The store in Pasadena (they also have stores in Atlanta GA and Scottsdale AZ) is amazingly beautiful and inviting, and the store manager was just as friendly and helpful as can be.

The store had testers of everything, as well as two sinks available for trying anything that involved washing/rinsing. It was fun to walk around sniffing and trying various products. I never felt rushed or pressured to buy anything – the service was the perfect mix of helpful suggestions and the right hands-off approach to let us explore the store.

I seriously wanted to buy one of everything, it is all so fabulous!! I bought four soaps (sandalwood rose, vetivert & grapefruit, seven seed lemon & rosemary, and honey almond). LATHER also has some excellent travel and gift sets that are the perfect way to try out a variety of products at once. I bought the four-product pamper pack, which contains AHA hand creme with evening primrose, lavender & eucalyptus foot creme, bamboo lemongrass foaming body scrub, and manuka body butter with grapefruit & juniper.

Other products I really, really want to try include the almond, milk & honey body butter (smells AMAZING!!), the yuzu sugar cane body buff, aha facial therapy w/copper & borage extract, and the licorice root eye treatment.

My sister bought the ultra light face lotion, which she says is just awesome. It’s the perfect light-weight facial lotion that is super-soothing – I think I might need to order some now!!

If you find yourself in Old Town Pasadena (or Scottsdale or Atlanta) you absolutely MUST check out LATHER in person, the store is just beautiful. Otherwise, order online or by phone and you won’t be disappointed by the products, I promise! I will definitely be ordering more in the future.

I’ve known about Jurlique FOREVER, since some online Australian friends raved about the hand cream a good 10 years ago – but I’ve never tried it. Since then, the line has come to the US and I have finally had a chance to check it out!

I have been miserably sick for the last 11 days (only today really starting to feel like a human being again). Usually when I’m this sick (it was the flu), my skin goes haywire. Breakouts, dullness, bumps and roughness… it runs the whole gamut of Bad Skin. This time around, I think Jurlique’s Herbal Recovery Gel stopped the Bad Skin Blues from happening! I may have felt AWFUL but at least my skin doesn’t have to look like it! Win!

According to Jurlique, Herbal Recovery Gel is:

A potent botanical concentrate, infused with a rich blend of herbs and precious plant oils to restore, firm, hydrate and revitalize the skin. Helps to minimize the visible signs of aging with daily use.

It contains such lovelies as evening primrose oil, licorice extract (a potent skin soother), chamomile and calendula (also skin soothers), and daisy extract – which I recently learned works a treat on hyperpigmentation! All in all, I think this product saved my skin while I was sick.

I love the super-light gel texture and the herbal scent. Some people might find the scent a bit overpowering, but I like it. It soaks in fast, plays well with my moisturizer, and in general just seems to work great on my skin. The only drawback is the price: ouch! But I suspect I’ll be shelling out the bucks when my little bottle runs out, because it’s THAT GOOD. Two thumbs up!

When I saw Lush Dark Angels Cleanser in the last Lush Times, I was intrigued. Rhassoul clay? Charcoal? Hmmm… It sounded like a good treatment for smoothing and softening my oilier skin, and I was right! Lush Dark Angels, FOR THE WIN!

The cleanser/scrub is one of Lush’s products that are sold “deli-style,” by the pound. You can have a shop associate cut you some off the loaf it comes in, or just snag one of their plastic containers with a pre-weighed amount. I’m lazy, so this is what I did.

It contains Rhassoul mud and charcoal powder to absorb excess oil, sugar to scrub, and glycerine and avocado oil to moisturize. It also has sandalwood and rosewood essential oils, which are supposed to soothe the skin (and they also make it smell good!).

It is a bit messy, since you scoop/pinch up some out of the container to use (and I end up getting crumbs on the counter). You’ll want to mix it with a bit of water in your hand until it’s pasty enough to be spread on your face. Spread, rub, rinse! My skin is left with a bit of a glow and my sink is left with quite a bit of black residue… tradeoffs, tradeoffs.

Overall, I like this product a lot. The benefits outweight the little nuisances involved with using the product, and I like how my skin looks and feels after use. Two thumbs up!

I love Lush lotions, especially Sympathy For The Skin, which is still my favorite. Lush recently introduced Coco Lotion, a coconut and pineapple concoction with no added fragrances. How does it measure up?

Coco Lotion has a lighter texture than Sympathy, but doesn’t feel less moisturizing. Coconut oil is pretty emollient, but definitely feels lighter on the skin than butters like cocoa and shea. It sinks in pretty quickly and feels good. It doesn’t have an all-day moisturizing effect like a heavier cream, but it still gets the job done.

The only thing I don’t like is the lack of scent. When I bought it, my nose was quite stuffed up from allergies. I assumed I couldn’t smell anything from the tester because my nose was stuffy… that’ll teach me to read labels more closely. It clearly says it has no added fragrance on the packaging. So I can’t really complain about the lack of scent, since that’s intrinsic to the product. If you love Lush but want something outside of their normally very scented products, Coco Lotion is for you.

Oatfix is a new Fresh Face Mask, the fresh treatments for your face that can only be bought in store. It has bananas, vanilla, and oats, and is supposed to clean, soften, and moisturize the skin. Technically it’s for dry and sensitive skin, which I am not, but I really love stuff with oatmeal in it for my face. (I’m a HUGE fan of Collective Wellbeing’s Cleansing Paste with oatmeal and raspberry.) It smells amazing and leaves my skin feeling super-soft and clean. This is a mask I will definitely be buying again!!

Clarisea is a company making a line of skincare products to treat acne, using sea salts. I haven’t tried it, but have some samples on the way. In the meantime, I’m intrigued by the concept and wanted to share the site with you. Also, they are having a Friends & Family Sale, today through Saturday.

The product line is based around sea salts. Sodium chloride fights bacteria on the surface of skin while deeply exfoliating pores so existing blemishes heal more quickly and emerging breakouts are brought to the surface and flushed out. Clarisea’s salt blend is supposed to be less harsh and irritating than other products, so that the skin isn’t left irritated or red. The product line includes a face soak, scrub, cleanser, and a line of body care products also. If you know someone with acne, it’s worth checking out!

I love serums. They usually pack a lot of bang for your buck, and do good things for your skin. Avon Anew Reversalist Serum is no exception to this. I try out a lot of skincare items, and this one has definitely floated to the top of my “wow” pile!

The Reversalist line is based around Avon’s “Activinol Technology,” which in a nutshell seems to be a way of stimulating your skin to repair itself. As a result, skin should look and feel younger. It also has a pretty decent glycolic acid content, which is a potent skin exfoliator, and will definitely result in smoother skin. My skin is definitely less rough since I’ve been using it, and the fine lines around my mouth have definitely softened. It’s been over a month now, that I’ve been using the serum daily.

What has me really knocked out though, is the total lack of breakouts since I started using this every morning. I’ve been pretty bad about washing my face at night lately, relying heavily on makeup removing wipes instead. Usually, this is a recipe for breakout disaster after a few days. Since I’ve been using the serum, I’ve had nary a blemish. Whoa! I wonder if it’s the skin healing thing that inhibits blemishes? Blemishes are an injury to the skin, after all. Makes a girl wonder, anyway.

It’s a “dry” formula, which means it won’t leave your skin feeling sticky or greasy. Every moisturizer I’ve tried glides on smoothly on top, no problem there. One pump seems to be enough – it’s about a pea-sized amount.

Now for the fly in my ointment: I really hate the packaging. It’s a giant hunk of futuristic-looking plastic. First, it took me FOREVER to prime the pump, so to speak. I was seriously about ready to give it up as defective when it FINALLY started pumping out product. Anyone with arthritis in their hands would have given up much sooner – my younger hands were getting pretty painful with all that pumping. You can’t tell how much you have left, either. I do appreciate that it is very likely an airless pump (keeps ingredients fresh) but that’s the only thing I like. I really hate the packaging and I genuinely hope Avon will change it. The product is AWESOME and deserves better. Plus, all that plastic is so wasteful!

I don’t think the packaging defects are enough to stop me from recommending the product. It really rocks, and as long as your skin isn’t too sensitive (the glycolic could be problematic for really sensitive skins) you will probably love it if you want smoother, softer skin. One and a half thumbs up!