beauty brawl

 

Welcome to our very first Blogger’s Christmas Beauty Brawl review! Over the next 10 days, along with four other beauty bloggers, I will be reviewing 10 products using Top Trumps cards to rate them.

 

Each day we’ll all be reviewing the same type of product, such as a face cream, and scoring them all in the same way, so that it’s fair. When it comes to our reviews, they’ll be as honest as possible. If we don’t like something, we’ll say so by giving it a low score. At the end of our 10 day beauty brawl, the blogger with the best products will be winning some lovely prizes. (Wish me luck!)

 

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For our first product, we decided to focus on face masks. I couldn’t be any more excited about mine, as it’s a lovely Calming Clay Face Mask from local beauty company, Aromatika. (If you follow my blog on a regular basis, you might remember that I recently reviewed another one of their fabulous products – a Mini Facial Kit, you can read the review here.) The Calming Clay Mask is made up of a mixture of dry blended ivory clay and is ideal for soothing and brightening the skin.

 

The thing that I love about this mask is the fact that it’s all natural and suitable for sensitive skin. I have skin that’s super sensitive and often find that face masks tend to irritate it, causing redness and soreness. But thanks to the all natural base of this face mask, I had no such problems. It did tingle a little, but as the Aromatika website states, because the clay masks are active, they tend to cause a slight tingling.

 

The clay used in this mask is ivory clay, the gentlest type of clay. All clays do different things, while some soothe, others purify or tone, pretty amazing, right? (You can check out Aromatika’s other clay masks here.)

 

So what did I think of the mask? It was a little messy, but I loved the results. Unlike most face masks, the Calming Clay Mask comes in a powder form and has to be mixed with toner or spring water to be transformed into a paste. (I mixed mine with a lovely Aromatika Rose Toner that smelt AMAZING!)

 

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I didn’t expect the clay powder to smell of anything, and so was pleasantly surprised when I opened the lid and it smelt wonderfully herby and earthy. Unlike some face masks, because it’s all natural, the smell wasn’t overwhelmingly strong, it was nice and subtle.

 

As the instructions stated, I mixed one teaspoon to clay to two teaspoons of toner to create a smooth paste. I popped the clay and Rose Toner into a small bowl and mixed it with a teaspoon. It was a little messy to apply the mask, so I used the back of a teaspoon instead of my fingers. I loved the fact that the mask could be mixed up at home, instead of being ready made like so many other products. (The reason that the clay mask is left dry is so that it doesn’t need any preservatives added and is as natural as possible, something which I love about this product.)

 

When applied to my skin the texture of the mask felt a lovely and smooth, it tingled and then slowly dried. The instructions said to leave the mask on for no more than eight minutes, so after seven minutes, using tepid water and a flannel, I washed it off. I was so surprised that my skin didn’t sting, normally face masks cause all sorts of odd reactions.

 

When I removed the mask, my skin looked great. I suffer from redness, and I noticed that some of the pigmentation in my skin had gone down, leaving me a little less pink. I also noticed that my skin felt lovely and smooth, and was much cooler and calmer. 

 

Priced at £14.95 for a 30g pot of clay mask powder and £9.50 for a 60ml bottle of toner, it might seem like this mask kit is a little over priced. However, for all natural products like these, that are free of chemicals, handmade locally and organic, I would say that the price is right. When it comes to beauty products, you get what you pay for, so it’s always worth investing in your skin care. 

 

Would I recommend Aromatika’s Calming Clay Mask? Yes, I most definitely would. It’s a high end product, and although it may be a little pricey compared to drugstore masks, the quality makes it worth every penny. Want to give some of Aromatika’s all natural beauty products a try? You can visit their website here, or if you live in Devon, you can pop into their Exeter shop.

 

Fancy reading another of our Beauty Brawl posts? Check out the lovely Kara’s review here!