REN

Miss A’s Review – REN Jojoba Microbead Invigorating Facial Polish

by Annabella on June 15, 2011 · 6 comments

Hello ladies, I’m back! This time I’m reviewing the REN Jojoba Microbead Invigorating Facial Polish that Annabella kindly sent me.

I’ve written about REN products on my blog and am totally in love with their Clearcalm range (designed for oily, blemish prone skin). This product I couldn’t find on their website BUT I’m guessing it’s the same or almost the same as their new Jojoba Microbead Purifying Facial Polish?! I hope it is, ’cause I’m going to copy REN’s blurb about this product (just to show you what it promises to do):

A deep cleansing yet gentle facial polish, formulated with microbeads of Jojoba Oil, that will leave your skin feeling purified, invigorated and smoothed.

Results:
* Removes dead skin cells
* Deeply cleanses and purifies
* Restores a healthy looking complexion
* Cools, freshens

So what do I think? Well, I’ll start with saying that I quite like this facial polish. It could be because I have loads of gritty face scrubs and this one’s very different but I can find numerous pros (and hardly any cons). It’s a very gentle polish that feels, erm, gentle on my face. I haven’t tried many products like this one – it IS gritty but the microbeads are very very gentle. The consistency is creamy and quite lathery and the polish smells really nice. At first I wasn’t sure whether those tiny, weak-looking microbeads could scrub my face. I wasn’t convinced they’d do a good job at purifying and smoothing my skin but after using this for 3 weeks, I can definitely say that it works very well!

I’ve used the facial polish three times a week and it’s actually helped with some stubborn blackheads on my nose! Also, my face looks generally healthier and fresher and my often bumpy skin is actually a bit smoother too. Hard to believe as this product isn’t some harsh scrub! (this is where I’ve been going wrong methinks – harsh, overly gritty facial scrubs used to be my best friends. Or so I thought.) I love that it hasn’t irritated my skin at all and I wish I could use it every day (think it may be a bit too much for my sensitive face though).

One of their promises is completely spot on: REN Jojoba Microbead Purifying Facial Polish restores a healthy looking complexion. Yes! I read some reviews prior to writing this post and noticed a lot of people complaining about how gentle this is and how it doesn’t do much. I’m not sure what kind of miracles they’re expecting from a facial polish but I certainly think this product is a winner. The key is to stick with it, to use it regularly and then… You may end up falling in love with it just like I did! REN Jojoba Microbead Purifying Facial Polish (I do hope it’s the same product I’m talking about – they’ve only changed one word in its name: Invigorating -> Purifying :-P ) is available to buy on REN’s website and costs £18 (you get 150ml for the price).

Will I repurchase once I run out of this? Yup, most definitely. Annabella, thank you so much for this – you’ve made me fall in love with REN even more! Again, it’s been a pleasure :) Thank you for reading xo

Thank you for the thorough review Miss A!

Annabella’s Review – REN Enzymatic Smooth Radiance Facial Mask 50ml

by Annabella on July 2, 2010 · 5 comments

This is available at John Lewis!

REN makes ‘Clean Products that are free from skin-unfriendly ingredients including: Synthetic fragrance, petrochemicals, sulfate detergents, synthetic colours, animal ingredients and parabens’. In addition to this they make they make sure they don’t include a whole host of other nasties in their skincare. They also care about the environment so this should be great right?

This is one of those things that I looked at, saw the ingredients and went into my Skin Scrubs fantasy land. Vitamin C, Papain, and Barbados Cherry. Yes I thought little Caribbean cherries would be dancing around in the tube waiting to make my skin all sparkly and fresh. Unfortunately I hate this mask! I tried it four times just to be sure and every time I used it I hated it even more that the last. Let’s start with what I did like. I really love the scent and it must be the Arctic Blackcurrant oil because it smells lovely and fruity. I like the packaging, you get a little plastic thing to cover the pump so it doesn’t go all over the place when you aren’t using it. This is where the pleasure ended. This is supposed to gently exfoliate, detoxify, boost cell renewal and leave the complexion smooth.

Okay the instructions say to apply a generous amount to clean skin – check. Leave for 10 minutes – check. Pat and lift with fingertips – nope didn’t happen. Rinse thoroughly with warm water – i.e. make a mess in the bathroom. I will say this did make my skin soft but (and there is a big but coming) the amount of faffing around to put the mask on and take it off wasn’t worth it. The texture is a little thicker than honey so as you can imagine it goes all over the place. Being a gel mask I was expecting this to dry so I could lift it off in one go like Leatherface does in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It never dried. I was never able to peel it off as I’d hoped. I tried leaving it on longer – no dice. I tried putting less mask on – no dice. I tried two more variations of this trying to get it to work. I really wanted it to work! I wanted the cherries from Barbados to dance on my face. I fully accept that sometimes consumers have no idea how to apply beauty products and they don’t follow the instructions. Well I tried four times and each time it was a mess.

This says it’s for ‘all skin types’ but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I think it would be better for someone with drier skin….like Leatherface.