Glycolic Acid Peel First Impressions

L and I are currently holding a giveaway where you can win The Skin Regime book and a Glycolic Acid Peel sample. (you can read about it here). The peel was something we were both really excited to try after reading the book and seeing so many positive results from it. The peel strength we tried was 30%. The skin regime site contains well trusted suppliers of peels. With things like this it's really important to only purchase from reputable suppliers.

It's fair to say we were both really nervous to put it on our skin, it is an acid peel after all. It is important to start with really clean skin. We both cleansed with dove soap and a muslin cloth then used alcohol wipes (we couldn't find rubbing alcohol as suggested in the book) the purpose of the alcohol is to remove the oil from the skin.

The solution is a clear liquid. I've dispensed mine into a pot so I can use it again. The solution is put onto a cotton wool pad and swept over the skin, starting on the cheeks and working your way round the rest of the face trying to avoid the corners of the neck and mouth. The cotton pad is then swept over the neck.

This is my skin before, as you can see it has a natural red tone to it anyway.

You only leave the solution on for a few minutes no more. We both interpreted this as 3.5 minutes. It definitely made my skin tingle at first. This is normal and expected. I did consider washing it off at this point but decided to stick it out. The stinging did stop after a while.

It's normal for the skin to appear red after and sometimes peel. Both of us round there was a touch of redness to the skin but no peeling and the redness didn't last. We both did it early evening, in case our skin went red so it would be cleared by the morning.

After the time is up, you rinse it off and then re-cleanse with the dove soap and apply moisturiser. I applied moisturiser again before I went to bed.

My skin after. The photo doesn't show much difference but I think it does look smoother and slightly shinier. As you can see it's not much redder and there wasn't any peeling.

Immediately after removing the peel I couldn't believe the difference. My skin on my forehead looked instantly smoother and my pores looked a lot better. Around my nose was smoother too. Almost similar to when you pull of a pore strip and it's smooth. L noticed her skin was a lot more plumped. We were both excited to see how it was in the morning. L noticed her skin was so soft in the morning and the slight lines on her forehead had almost disappeared  I was impressed with how soft my cheeks felt and how much better the pores on my nose looked.

We both couldn't wait to do another peel but it's not recommended to do it again for another 7 days. I can't wait to do it again and hope the results continue to improve my skin.

Have you tried an at home acid peel? Enter our giveaway to try your own?

Love M

xxx

The Skin Regime and International Giveaway

Skincare is something L and I are both big on and both fully believe (and hope) prevention is better than cure. You're never to young to start taking care of your skin. An interesting fact I read the other day from a study by Escentual.com was that the average French lady starts their skincare at age 15 and the average Britain at 25. The survey found as the French aged they looked younger!!

I'm paranoid about getting bad skin and will do what I can now to start. Over the past year I've started to notice huge changes in my skin (I'm thinking this is partially due to stress from starting back at university!!) it's now sometimes drier than it used to be, something I'm really not used too, and I'm starting to see fine lines appear in my forehead!!

When Dana got in touch to see if we fancied reading her book The Skin Regime and trying a sample of a chemical peel it was something we were both very interested in! Dana takes things back to basics and uses a few simple products, and it's very obvious from the photos she has amazing skin. Fingers crossed I'll look like that. In this picture she is 49 and only wearing eye make up: her skin is clearly glowing!

You can read our peel review here

L and I wrote about how much we love the AHA/BHA exfoliating cleanser from Murad here and the components of this product are found in peels, but in higher concentrations. We love this exfoliating cleanser as it really works so a peel for us would be the next step.

Chemical peels are something I've been very interested in. Dana's book goes into detail about the correct types of peels you can do at home and how to ensure you take care of your skin.

Dana makes some excellent really interesting points throughout the book that really make you think about the money you are spending on skincare. The book is well written and made me laugh at some points. At the moment my skin (and body) in general is really playing up. I'm hoping once my exams are over it'll get better.  At the moment I'm going back to basics and starting to pick up the bits so I can start the peel programme properly once my exams are over. It's pretty simple over 6-8 weeks you use a peel between 7-14 days apart and simply moisturise in between. This process removes all the bad layers of skin. Anyone with scarring and dark spots this is also great for and on her website you can see some great before and after photos! 

I'm really excited to start this new regime. I'm willing to try anything to improve my skin and if the photos on the website are anything to go by I can't wait.

With the chemical peels it's important to do them early evening and not before a big event. As it's a chemical peel it's likely to leave the skin looking a bit read (it is removing a layer of skin after all) think of it like when you get your eyebrows waxed, they stay red for a while!!

I'll be doing a full post on the chemical peels once I've tried it properly. The book is really interesting and I'd recommend it to anyone to read. It's great to make you really think about skincare! You can see her website http://www.theskinregime.com/ for more information, photos and even features Tanning Mom!

M xxx

After reading this book and laughing a lot at Dana's straight forward attitude to skincare, I am reeeeeeeeally excited to try out the first peel and hopefully get skin as gorgeous and glowing as hers at my current age of 25, let alone 49!

Using acids is a great way to exfoliate your skin to a deeper level and I'm personally hoping the tiny lines that are appearing on my forehead (thanks uni stress!) and scars/red marks from the wonderful acne I've been dealing with the past year will hopefully fade away. 

Looking at the pictures on the website lots of people have had great results with improved tone to their skin and decreased lines and I cannot wait!

We'll be posting about our experience with the peels asap :)

L xxx

Dana has allowed us to host an international  giveaway where one of our lovely followers can also win her book and a sample of a low strength chemical peel! Woohoooo! 

We are so pleased we can share this with you!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As always with giveaways there are mandatory and optional choices, but it should be explanatory which are which.

The prize is a copy of The Skin Regime book and a sample peel which will be sent straight to you from Dana herself.

We can't wait to start our boot camps, what do you think of doing your own glycolic peel?? This is an international giveaway.

L and M xxx