Beauty must-haves: the old faithfuls

I'm as much of a sucker as the next person for the latest and greatest (and most gimmicky) beauty products. But however much we spend on our cosmetics, all of us have in our cupboards the old faithfuls - the no frills basics with the price tags to match that may have even been in our mothers' cupboards. These are the ones we keep coming back to time and time again because however basic they are they do their job, and they do it well.

Mine are:


Neutrogena Norwegian Formula Hand Cream
I have tubes and tubes of different hand creams dotted around the house, but the one you can always guarantee will be tucked away in my bedside draw is Neutrogena Norwegian Formula. For moisturising even the driest of hands this stuff is the bomb, and wonderfully economical because a little of it goes a long way. It does have a bit of a greasy feel for a few minutes after application, so I don't put it on if I'm about to do something that requires dextrous hands, but I slather it on at night before bed for soft hands in the morning.


Vaseline Intensive Care Dry Skin Moisturiser
Much like my hand cream collection, I have numerous bottles of body lotion of varying prices and promises. But for a quick shot of moisture that is absorbed quickly and doesn't irritate my post-shave legs as some do, Vaseline Intensive Care is the winner all the way, and it's cheap as chips. Plus the smell takes me back to long summer days spent soaking up the rays, and long summer nights spent slathering Vaseline on our sunburn (those were innocent days!).


Amolin Baby Cream
No, your eyes do not deceive you. Yes, that is baby cream. As in, cream for putting on babies' bottoms. And yes, when my kids were little it was the best, bar none, for their nappy rash. It is, however, so much more than that. When I was growing up there was always a tube of this in our medicine cabinet and we used it for everything from scratches and grazes to chapped lips (and probably my baby bottom too, I don't remember). And it's for chapped lips that I still use it to this day. My lips are naturally very dry, not helped by my being a compulsive lip licker, and nothing equals Amolin for soothing and moisturising them. And for approximately NZ$8.00 a tube it lasts forever.


Chapstick Moisturiser
As much as I love my Amolin, experience (and several ruined handbags) have taught me that it's not the most practical thing to carry around in my handbag, so for lip moisturising on the go Chapstick Moisturiser (the stuff in the blue tube, not the original black tube), is always with me. Plus it doesn't just work on lips.

So, what are your old faithfuls?

Review: Seche Vite Top Coat

My obsession with nail polishes means I read a lot of blogs and websites devoted to nails, and the one product that comes up again and again is Seche Vite top coat. I decided I had to get some to try for myself, which turned out to be not as easy as it sounds because I can't find any places here in New Zealand that sell it. I did track down some American e-tailers that stock it AND ship to this side of the world and ordered myself a couple of bottles (oh and some China Glaze polishes while I was at it because seriously if you're going to go to the trouble of ordering products from all the way over in America it seems pointless to just order a couple of things!).


My package arrived a couple of weeks ago and I've been giving the Seche Vite a thorough trial since then, not just on my nails but on my daughter's nails and her friends' nails and my friends' nails, and we even ordered a bottle for the Eccentric English Boyfriend's mother in England when he was on Amazon the other day buying her birthday present. And the verdict? This stuff is feckin' brilliant!

Let's start with the application. This is what the Seche Vite website says about applying it:

"Apply thickly, get a nice bead on the end of the brush, then set softly down on the first nail painted and watch how Seche Vite flows over the wet nail polish self levels and will not drag or streak the underlying manicure. It takes time to master the application and when perfected it is possible to apply in only three strokes...keep trying."

As they say it is necessary to have a large-ish bead on the end of the brush, which takes a bit of time to get used to if, like me, you tend to use less rather than more nail polish on your brush (I prefer to apply my nail polish as 2-3 and sometimes even 4 thinner coats). With enough on the brush the Seche Vite does flow smoothly onto the nail and application requires a minimum of brush strokes. However, it is quite thick and does dry very quickly and because of this I occasionally find that I will miss a thin stripe down the side of my nail. Probably something only I will notice, but it does rather bug me.

And what about the wear. Well as I said, brilliant! Seche Vite dries incredibly quickly, to a beautiful diamond-like shine, and unlike other quick dry top coats I've tried which have often muddied the underlying polish colour the colour stays absolutely true and in some cases I find it even intensifies it slightly, which I love. And the best part is, this stuff absolutely does what it says - it makes your polish last and last. I have the most appalling soft nails and normally my polish starts to flake off within hours of putting it on, but not any more. My daughter's nails are better than mine but still very flexible plus she doesn't have the patience to wait for a manicure to dry so her polish very quickly becomes smudged and chipped. She was delighted to find that the Seche Vite dried quickly enough that she didn't smudge her polish, and after several days worth of wear her manicure was still intact with only a little tip wear. And the Eccentric English Boyfriend's mother reports from England that her polish too is lasting much longer than she would normally expect.

I have heard that after a while Seche Vite does thicken in the bottle, which makes application harder. Seche manufacture a thinner (Seche Restore) which can also be used to thin nail polishes too.

All in all this is one product I highly recommend. Admittedly not cheap, but shop around the online suppliers for a good price. I get mine from TransDesign, who are quite reasonably priced (even if shipping to New Zealand isn't cheap), and also stock a huge range of nail related products including OPI and China Glaze polishes.

A new use for an old favourite

I have a confession to make. I'm a Perpetual Pimple Picker (do you see what I did there, with the alliteration?). Ever since my first spot appeared in my early teens, through to the adult acne that still plagues me now in my (late-ish) 30's, I've been completely unable to keep my hands away from them. I'm well aware that this is a Bad Thing - picking spots spreads the infection, can lead to scarring and half the time makes them look worse than they did before I started prodding at them, but I'm completely unable to stop myself.

A couple of weeks ago I developed not one, but two of Those Spots. You know, the massive, painful blind spots that throb painfully and feel (even if they don't look) like a giant beacon shining from my chin. So of course I had to squeeze and pick and generally mutilate myself, until I ended up with a patch of painful, raw, red skin on my chin, even after the pimples had long since gone. After two weeks of trying every moisturiser in my arsenal and even a bandaid (which looked really stupid and itched like crazy) in an attempt to stop myself from picking at the scabbing and help it to heal, I finally, in desperation reached for the Chapstick I always carry around in my handbag, figuring that if it helps chapped lips then maybe it would do something for my poor, sore chin. And what do you know, it worked a treat. The thick, sticky texture of the Chapstick meant that I wasn't tempted to pick at it, and it very quickly soothed the raw skin. Within a few hours the skin was less inflamed, by the next day it was smoother and the inflammation had gone down even further and now, several days later, I have only a patch of slightly pink skin in place of the social life-destroying monstrosity (ok I may be exaggerating slightly) that was there previously.



In future I'm obviously going to try to stop myself from squeezing pimples in the first place, but I'm also going to ensure that I always have a tube of Chapstick handy just in case.