These two products have saved me plenty of times the past week or so – I’ve been unusually busy and both pampering and blogging (sorry, darlings!) have had to wait. But when I could find a minute or so to spare, these two babies did a wonderful job.
♮Decléor Hydra Floral moisturizing mask does exactly that: moisturize. I wouldn’t call my skin dry, but this year’s harsh weather has got to it and given me some dry patches. My skin also feels tight after I’ve taken a shower, which is when I usually grab this yellow little tube. You can, of course, use it as a mask, and apply a rather thick layer of this and leave it on for 5-10 minutes. This is no good if you’re in a hurry, though, which is why I like that it can be used as a rather thick moisturizer, too. I apply a smaller amount (just enough so there won’t be a layer of it on my skin) to my entire face, and then apply makeup. If I have any dry patches, I put on a thicker layer just there, and let the mask do its thing while I fix my hair and get dressed, then swipe it off before applying makeup.
♮Seba A.S.A.P. Nail Polish Activator is a strange sort of oil that you drip on your freshly painted nails to make the polish dry faster (I got mine at Neglemakeriet, but it seems they don’t have it any more). First of all, I have to tell you that I do think there are better products out there that does the same job – although this one definitely makes several layers of polish dry in about five minutes, it does seem to make them slightly less shiny. Still, it’s a real lifesaver if you were silly enough to think you had enough time to paint your nails and then realize you have to be out the door in twenty minutes. Drip it on, wait five minutes and you’re good to go. I didn’t even know a product like this existed until about half a year ago, and I’d really like to find an excellent kind. “Everybody” seems to love Seche Vite, so I’m thinking about trying that one next, but the one I’ve got still does the trick in a pinch.
I do hope you’ll forgive me for being slightly absent lately? It seems things are slowing down a bit now, which means more time for blogging again – huzzah!
Filed under: Beauty, Look what I've got..., Makeup, Movies, My Life, Playing With the Camera, Skincare, fashion
From the paper for the No Siesta, Fiesta!-festival. Translation of the circled part: The costumes of a samba parade are especially important, naturally. This year they’ve had help to dress the participants of the parade. – We’ve been fortunate enough to have Maria Hansen Troøyen (me!) to help us with this. She’s very good with clothes and fashion, and has an eye for the original, so I think this will be really good, says L-Jay.
I first read about evening primrose oil (or “nattlysolje”) in this Norwegian blog, and I have to confess it sounded a bit like a hype. The oil from some flower was not only supposed to make my skin much more beautiful and blemish-free, but also ease symptoms of PMS such as mood swings and all that stuff (you know what I mean, girls)? I was sceptical.
Then, around Christmas, I was really fed up with my skin suddenly acting all crazy due to a change in birth control method, and I decided to give evening primrose oil a shot. I bought the box in the picture at a health care shop (“Life”) for 199,- NOK, and started taking two capsules a day. The weeks went by and I couldn’t see any change, and I started getting a bit fed up with the whole thing.
Around the second week of February I got a really bad cold and couldn’t bear to swallow those capsules, so I stopped taking them for a while. The day after I stopped taking them my skin suddenly started looking a whole lot better. It was definitely more matte, and the impurities seemed smaller and less aggressive than usual. Weird. “Perhaps it’s because I stopped taking the capsules,” I thought, although this made no sense either – evening primrose oil couldn’t possibly make my skin worse, because there’s nothing in them that can clog pores.
I decided to try an experiment and stopped taking the capsules for about a week. My skin stayed nice for a day or two, then got worse again. I gave it a week, then started taking the capsules again, two every morning. At first I didn’t notice any difference, but after almost a week my skin suddenly cleaned up again and looked a whole lot better. Sounds a little too easy, I know, but it’s true.
I’ve now been taking two capsules of evening primrose oil every day since the end of December, with the exception of one week in February, and I’m telling you, these things are magical – for me, at least. It took a long time for them to work, but my skin is so much better now it was definitely worth the wait. And not only that, but the usual two-days-of-inexplainable-sadness-and-hating-the-world-in-general-and-my-life-in-particular I always get before that week seem to have gone away.
I’m not going to write a whole lot about what evening primrose oil is, what it is used for, possible side effects and such things – you can learn about that by clicking here. I just wanted to let you know that it’s worked brilliantly for me, and it might be worth a shot. Just remember that it might take a month or two before you notice any results, so be patient.
Do you have any experiences with evening primrose oil? Do share in the comments’ section, I’m sure other readers would appreciate it!
