I’m all about new beauty products. I’m willing to try anything—plus, opening new product is like Christmas morning to me!
The latest trend to hit stateside is K-Beauty, or Korean beauty. The Korean culture ingrains the values of great skincare into its girls from birth, and of course, I’m always looking for that “magic” product that will give me baby smooth skin 24/7. It’s certainly a lot to get into for the first time, especially if you’re seeing all of the kind of weird ingredients in the products, including bee venom, donkey milk, and snail secretions. But I took these strange ingredients as a challenge and headed down to my local Ulta to see what I could find.
I purchased TONY MOLY’s Intense Care Snail Hydro Gel Mask for $8 which includes snail mucus filtrate, an ingredient that stimulates formation of collagen in the skin (think the stuff that makes your skin elastic). This wasn’t my first foray into the sheet mask game, but it was certainly a new experience. The gel with which the mask was made retained moisture much better than those that I’d tried previously, and it was most definitely slimy, just like a snail! It didn’t gross me out as much as it fascinated me.
This mask came in two pieces: one for the eye and nose area, and one for my cheeks and around my mouth. You can see the jelly like texture in the pictures, but that also helped it to stick to my skin without budging, so I could walk around my house and scare people without it falling off. I kept it on and relaxed for about 45 minutes, and even after I took it off, I could tell there was still a ton of moisture in the mask. I rubbed the leftover serum into my skin and voila! I was glowing! The next morning, I could still feel the softness of my skin without adding on any extra moisturizers. I would say this mask was worth the price tag, and it’s something I’d purchase again.
The Korean beauty community obviously knows what they’re doing. Sheet masks are a fun, inexpensive way to have a mini spa day in your own space. Overall, I found it fun to try something new from another culture, and I can’t wait to do it again. Now that I’ve tackled snails, there will probably be more “weird” beauty products in my near future. Bee venom, I’m coming for you!