Never Again! The Ultimate Beauty Duds – Part 1

Hi there! I’ve tried and tested countless products in my life. Most of them were good, some were great, and some were disappointing. So I thought I’d to a Top 10 (in no particular order) of binworthy products. 🙂 OK, here we go!

10 Gliss Oil Nutritive Shampoo & Conditioner

These two products did smell amazing. But they made my hair feel and look greasy within hours after washing it. Not good.

The conditioner is one of the worst I’ve ever had. It robbed my hair of its elasticity and flexibility, and I had to double-condition after each wash because detangling my hair was like the new ‘Mission Impossible’. Fortunately the conditioner only lasted 7 days (yes, this means I emptied the bottle in 7 days). In the end I used the leftover shampoo to wash my scarves – well, it smelled really nice!

9 Paperchase Blackcurrant, Strawberry and Cherry Lip Balms

We all love Paperchase, don’t we? Quirky cards, cute stationary, lots of geeky gadgets (I might show you my cat lamp some time), button badges… and lip balms!

Whilst these Paperchase lip balms were moisturising, they tasted like… plastic!

That’s not OK when they promise you blackcurrant, cherry and strawberry flavours…

I tried to use these lip balms because I didn’t want to be wasteful. But I had to throw them out.

8 Miss Sporty Morning Baby BB Cream 001 Nude Radiance

Miss Sporty’s BB cream. I’m still laughing about this one!

I bought this BB cream to use it as a primer. I find the majority of primers too drying for my dry skin. And as I have eczema, primers tend to highlight my dry patches.

Some women with dry skin use BB creams under their make-up. So I thought I’d try a cheap one to see how it goes. I think it’s fair to expect certain benefits from a BB cream – sunscreen, moisture, a natural complexion… And this BB cream actually claims to moisturise skin, to erase imperfections, to make skin look and feel smooth…

And what did it do? First of all, this products wasn’t moisturising. I found it drying. And it doesn’t contain sunscreen – ? This BB cream also didn’t cover up any skin imperfections. It highlighted them! Simple redness turned into shiny redness.

And at the same time this BB cream made my skin look orange. And on top of that, this BB cream balled up!

7 Original Source Skin Quench Pineapple & Coconut Oil, Peach & Apricot Oil, Watermelon & Jojoba Oil

These three shower gels sounded really promising. Last year they were brand new – and they were on special. So I picked them up. These shower gels share a single benefit – they’re actually moisturising, but that’s it!

The Pineapple & Coconut Oil shower gel smelled like… almost nothing. It’s very, very faint. And from what little I could smell I wasn’t impressed. Below average. The Peach & Apricot Oil shower gel was horrible. It smelled like furniture polish. I’m not surprised this one was discontinued quickly. The Watermelon & Jojoba Oil shower gel was the winner of the three – because it smelled OK. Still, the scent wasn’t special at all and it was very faint.

6 B. Pure Sensitive Micellar Cleansing Wipes

Superdrug gave these away for free if you spent £5 on skin care. I ended up with four packs because I bought several skin care products in several transactions. Yes, I know how to get multiple freebies out of a single promotion. 🙂 However, these micellar wipes for sensitive skin aren’t great. They made my face tingle in an unpleasant way and they’re definitely not suitable for use around the eyes.

Another thing that grossed me out is that these wipes leave a film on my skin. Why Superdrug thinks these wipes would replace a face wash and a toner, I don’t know. And why Superdrug thinks these wipes prep the face for moisturiser and make-up, I’ll never understand. These wipes leave a sticky film and this film really needs to be washed off!

I’m now using these wipes for swatches – so I use them on my arms only. And since then I’ve also noticed that these wipes leave a sticky film on my nails too. How disgusting is that? I think these wipes are useless at best because you need to wash whatever area of skin these touch anyway.

5 Poundland Make-Up: Make Up Gallery Colour Story Eyeshadows

I was so excited when Poundland launched its own make-up line. We were promised foundations, powders, blushes, lip gloss, eyeshadows, lipsticks and other make-up basics for £1 per item.

I ended up with one lipstick (the only wearable shade), one nail polish (glitter) and three eyeshadows.

The eyeshadows are rubbish. They’re chalky, they’re not well pigmented, and they’re not buildable at all. Definitely the worst eyeshadows I’ve ever tried.

4 Olay Regenerist Luminous Dark Circle Correcting Eye Swirl

If you read my blog regularly, you know I’m a total Olay nut. I love Olay. I’m an Olay girl!

So whilst I usually find Olay products excellent, this eye swirl disappointed me.

Olay Regenerist Luminous promises to fight signs of ageing and to make dark circles disappear.

Let me be clear, this eye cream didn’t do anything for me. I didn’t see any improvement in my fiine lines or my dark circles.

So whilst the shimmer particles in this eye cream reflect light and can make dark circles invisible, this effect is only temporary and it’s gone as soon as you cleanse your face.

Another problem is that eye cream is too rich. Because of this I couldn’t use it under my make-up. You could say ‘use a different foundation’, but I’m certainly not giving up on my holy grail foundation for an eye cream I don’t really like.

So in the end I could only use this eye cream on homeworking days (= when I don’t wear make-up) and before I went to bed. Not what I wanted or expected…

3 & 2 Sweet Snuggles Chocolate Vanilla Hand Cream & FCUK Pure Bodyspray

I lumped these two together because I tried (and disliked) them around the same time. And in the interest of recycling photos that I’ve already uploaded, I let these two stay together. Also, I don’t have these products anymore, so I couldn’t take photos even if I wanted to.

So, I really hated this hand cream. I used it once and it moisturised my hands well. But this hand cream had the most sickly sweet vanilla scent I’ve ever had the misfortune of smelling. The FCUK fragrance annoyed me just as much. The strong white pepper note reminded me too much of the raw meat smell at the butcher’s. And the drydown was all about violet and, again, sickly sweet vanilla. I just couldn’t stomach smelling these two products so they had to go.

1 MUA MakeUp Academy Matte Lipstick Lilac Belle

MUA’s matte lippies are probably the worst matte lippies out there. I’ve read a few positive reviews (?), but I can only guess the reviewers never had a decent matte lippie to compare MUA’s offerings with. Or they never actually tried the lippie. Or they found it rubbishy too, but didn’t want to be negative. Who knows?

Now why is this lipstick so horrible? Well, this lipstick is very waxy. It’s almost impossible to apply it properly, it’s poorly pigmented and it’s drying. And because it’s so difficult to apply, my lippie broke off the first time I’ve used it. Rubbish!

So, this was the first edition of The Ultimate Beauty Duds. Like I said, the Top 10 weren’t in any particular order because I disliked all these products (more or less) equally. 🙂 I’m not saying that no one could ever like these products (some of them are probably still around). So if you do like any of these products, that’s good for you.

As always, thanks for reading!

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