… that’s a question I’ve been asking myself quite a lot over the past few months.
The BB in BB cream stands for “beauty balm” in Western markets (“blemish balm” and so on in Eastern markets). I learned this from my dear friend wikipedia. To all those of you who don’t know what I’m blabbering about and if this sounds like Jabberwocky to you, here’s a little introduction into the subject:
BB cream is a skin care product sold mainly in the Eastern market (I believe it originated in Korea) but has been introduced to the Western beauty market about a year ago. It is one of those magic all-in-one products that’s supposed to replace serum, moisturizer, primer, foundation, and sunblock. One can use it alone as a tinted moisturizer, over your own moisturizer as a sort of foundation, and under powder. It is said that some BB creams have skin-regenerating properties, which I can hardly believe. But you never know what’s in those products concerning weird chemical additives. I’m not a dermatologist but a frequent patient there and I’m sure that you couldn’t sell such a miraculous tincture at the drugstore, without requiring any prescription. Just saying…
BB creams are very popular in Asia, where our Western foundations seem to be too “heavy” for the women’s (and men’s) beautiful white and soft skin; so BB seems to be a great alternative. Because of it being a multi-tasker and its easy way of application, the creams were merchandized with high success in the West and you’ll get low priced drugstore products as well as high-end maniacally overpriced creams. The Ferraris among the BB creams, so to speak of.
Somehow, I’ve always been suspicious about BB creams and even after my little “Magic Monday Experiment” I still don’t expect unicorns exploding from it. So on Monday I started using a BB cream by one of my favorite makeup brands (I won’t name any products here – not quite sure if I can do this on the web without getting into any trouble). I only used this because I got a free sample when I last hit 500 points with my “beauty insider”-card. Love free samples, especially if they are by high-end names thats products I use anyways! 😉 So here’s a little description of how my experiment worked out and my findings:
- I decided to wear the BB cream over my moisturizer to even out my skin tone and used compact powder on top of it.
- Moisturizer first. Afterwards, I put on the BB cream with my plain fingers. YES, with my fingers! Just like using any other moisturizer. It’s supposed to be a replacement, right? So why not using it just like the product it replaces.
- At first, the cream kind of looked like as if I’d put on a foundation (using my fingers), with streaks all over the place. So I slightly tried to even out everything by “massaging” the cream into my skin. Et voilà! It worked!
- To my surprise (as I still am suspicious), my skin looked GREAT! Great in capital letters indeed! Skin tone and texture were completely evened out. Pretty cool! And all in just a mere seconds and without using any foundation. Which means no cleaning brushes afterwards. 😉 Also, the version for “light” colored skin, which to be honest looked really dark when I squeezed it out of the little pack, actually matched my skin tone. Little drawback: you could actually see that I’m wearing some sort of product. Because I expect my foundation to look natural, I was a teenytiny bet disappointed.
- To get the right amount of coverage and to avoid shiny spots, I put on regular compact powder. The same stuff I use on top of my foundation. And so I could “hide” the other product somehow.
- Looks great, really! I felt like I’m gonna buy and start using this! However, my skin does not feel regenerated, but I guess I’d have to use the cream for more than just half a week to see any changes. IF there will be any changes at all…
- After about half a day of wearing the product, I looked at my face in the mirror. And – oh dear shocked me – my skin looked all dry, drier, sandpaper. This might not be entirely the cream’s fault because I tend to get dry skin, especially during winter. Which is quite normal. But I was very surprised to see my skin basically peeling off on some spots. However, my skin didn’t feel dry, which is a good thing, I guess.
- I decided to hang in there and used the product again the next day. And hey, it started getting better. My skin looked still very dry, but not as bad as on Monday. So I guess it’s all to do with how I’m using my moisturizer along with the BB cream, the humidity of the room I’m spending the most of my day in and of course the amount of water I drink.
- Today, on the fourth day of using the brand-named BB cream, my sample unfortunately is used up. However, I decided on giving it a chance and I’ll head to the store next week to buy myself some of this mixture of magic. Maybe not the super expensive version, but a drugstore brand for a legitimate price so I won’t regret spending my money on a product I might not like anymore after using it for a few days.
This was quite a long post just for saying that I used some BB cream, didn’t like it at first but then started liking it and will used it again…!! 😀
So this was my “Magic Monday Experiment” and I hope you liked what I had to say about one of the up-and-coming beauty and skin care products of the present time.
Stay beautiful, my dear readers, and share your own experience with me!
xoxo
ginatravelstheworld 