Gosh, I never knew that Polyvore was so much fun! So here I was, on a wet Tuesday afternoon, on the computer, and I thought I’d try it out. Ten minutes later, voila! I made my Christmas wish list. Okay, some of the stuff are way, way beyond my reach, but a lady can always hope, can’t she?

• Makeup train case
• Chanel Blush Duo Tweed Effect
• Guerlain Midnight Butterfly Meteorites Voyage Pressed Powder
• Marc Jacobs Daisy
• Chloe Paddington
• A trip to Paris with my hubby
• A pair of black Christian Louboutin patent leather pumps
• Dior Creme de Gloss lipgloss

Go on, Polyvore your Christmas wish list this year and show us! 🙂

Do you know that you don’t need a lot of toner on your skin? (there’s been a lot of talk on whether you’d actually need to use toner in the first place, but I’ll leave that to another post) I know of people who practically soak their cotton pads with a lot of toner, when in fact, you don’t need that much to remove that last trace of dirt from your skin. Especially if your toner contains alcohol (which I do not recommend using, but hey, if it works for you, it works for you).

Nowadays a lot of toners come in bottles with an additional plastic cap on top, with a hole in the middle to prevent you from pouring too much liquid onto the facial cotton. Before, they didn’t introduce the use of such caps, and most of the time, I’d end up using an unnecessary amount of toner. Previously Clinique didn’t have these hole-y caps, and neither did Neutrogena (another brand of toner which I’ve used). If you weren’t careful in tilting the bottle at just the right angle towards the facial cotton, you’d end up either pouring far too much, thus soaking the entire pad, or worse still, spilling access toner onto your fingers, your dresser, etc.

This isn’t just messy; it’s also very wasteful.

What I like to do with my toner is that even with the hole-y cap on the bottle, I’d decant the toner into a plastic spray bottle. This way, I’d use less of the toner, as needed for my skin. This prevents spillage of liquid, and wastage of toner.

To prove my point, let’s proceed with an experiment, shall we?

My current toner – Clinique’s Clarifying Moisture Lotion 3

The plastic hole-y cap on the bottle

Decanted my toner into a plastic spray bottle

*pours toner directly from the bottle into one cotton pad, and sprays decanted toner onto another cotton pad*

*add cling-clang noises for experiment sound effects*

Voila! And we’re done.

Check out the difference between the two cotton pads below:

This was poured directly from the bottle. And by pour, I meant placing the facial cotton right over the hole tightly, and swinging the bottle twice. You know what I mean?

Toner sprayed twice onto the facial cotton.

See the difference? The first cotton pad is literally soaked with toner. Even though the surface area of the toner seemed small, the liquid soaked the cotton right through. As the second cotton pad, the spray covered a larger surface area of the cotton, but less toner was used.

By decanting my toner into a spray bottle, I use only an adequate amount for my skin. A bottle of Clinique toner lasts me more than a year when decanted. Ahh … what savings, eh? 😉

If your toner already comes in a spray bottle, good for ya! If not, how about giving this method a go? You might find that you won’t need to replace that bottle of toner that quickly after all.

Note: Remember to sanitise the decanter bottle first with some rubbing alcohol before use. Give it a wash, dilute a few drops of rubbing alcohol into a cup of distilled water, pour it into the bottle, give it a few good swirls, pour the contents out, and leave it to dry naturally. If you’re worried about the lingering smell of the alcohol, then use antibacterial wash instead.

Salicylic acid is also referred to as Beta Hydroxy Acid (BHA). There are a variety of AHAs (see Ingredients Dictionary: Alpha Hydroxy Acid), but only one BHA – salicylic acid.

It is a multifunctional ingredient that addresses many of the systemic causes of blemishes. For decades dermatologists have been prescribing salicylic acid as an exceedingly effective exfoliant, but it also is an anti-irritant. This is because salicylic acid is a derivative of aspirin (both are salicylates — aspirin’s technical name is acetylsalicylic acid), and so it also functions as an anti-inflammatory.

Another notable aspect of salicylic acid for treating breakouts is that it has antimicrobial properties It is also well documented that salicylic acid can improve skin thickness, barrier functions, and collagen production. As an exfoliant, in concentrations of 8% to 12%, it is effective in wart-remover medications. In concentrations of 0.5% to 2%, it is far more gentle, and, much like AHAs, can exfoliate the surface of skin. In addition, BHA has the ability to penetrate into the pore (AHAs do not), and thus can exfoliate inside the pore as well as on the surface of the skin, which makes it effective for reducing blemishes, including blackheads and whiteheads.

The main difference between alpha hydroxy acids and beta hydroxy acid is their lipid (oil) solubility. Alpha hydroxy acids are water soluble only, while beta hydroxy acid is lipid (oil) soluble. This means that beta hydroxy acid is able to penetrate into the pore which contains oil (sebum) and exfoliate the dead skin cells that are built up inside the pore. AHAs are much less able to do this because they can’t get through the fat content of the oil. Because of this difference in properties, beta hydroxy acid is better used on oily skin with blackheads and whiteheads. Alpha hydroxy acids are better used on thickened, sun-damaged skin where breakouts are not a problem.

Beta hydroxy acid appears to be less irritating than alpha hydroxy acid even though it penetrates deeper into the pore. This occurs because salicylic acid is, again, derived from acetylsalicylic acid, or aspirin, and salicylic acid retains many of these anti-inflammatory properties. Despite this fact, beta hydroxy acid can still cause skin irritation. Symptoms of irritation include redness, burning, itching, pain, and possibly scarring. People with darker colored skin are at a higher risk of scarring pigment changes with beta hydroxy acid.

Both AHAs and BHAs lost their effectiveness as a product’s pH level goes up and the concentration of the ingredient goes down. AHAs work best in a 5% to 8% concentration, in a product with a pH 3 to 4, whereas BHA works best in a 1% to 2% concentration, in a product with a pH of 3 to 4.

For those who are keen on trying out DIY aspirin masks as a method of exfoliation, please ensure that you are not allergic to aspirin, as some people can be.

An example of a beauty product with BHA is Clinique’s Total Turnaround (with 1% concentration of BHA).

Source: Beautypedia, About.com: Dermatology, The Beauty Bible