My first “favourites” of the year is here and I am so excited! I love taking the time to look back on the month and see what products stood out as my most used or most loved out of the everything I have and for January, these are it!

SUKIN HYDRATING MIST TONER £8.10

Ingredients: Water (Aqua), Rosa Damascena Flower Water (Rose), Glycerin, Chamomilla Recutita (Matricaria) Flower Extract (Chamomile), Citric Acid, Phenoxyethanol.

A few months ago I got to meet and work with the sweetest Aussie girl and through her got introduced to this Australian natural skincare brand. She was kind enough to leave this product with me when she left (thank you, Jess!) and I have been loving it ever since. Hydrating toners can seem like an unnecessary extra step but I love them, especially during this time of year when I find my combination skin leaning on the drier side. What I love about this toner is it has simple but skin loving ingredients and comes without some really important ones like alcohol, propylene glycol and synthetic fragrances. I have used all kinds of hydrating mists from Serozinc, to Caudalie’s Grape Water and this is now one of my favourites. It’s uncomplicated but lovely to use and is an excellent price (I have seen it as low as £5/$7.50). I thought it would be hard to get a hold of in the U.S. but lots of British beauty sites (all ones that ship to the U.S. for free) sell Sukin and a few people have told me they have even found it in their local TJ Maxx so check them out because I will definitely be trying more from this brand.

JUICE BEAUTY BLEMISH CLEARING SERUM $29/£27.50

Ingredients: salicylic acid 1%, inactive ingredients: juices of pyrus malus (apple) juice,* citrus medica limonum (lemon) juice* & aloe barbadensis leaf juice,* saccharum officinarum,* salix alba (willow bark) extract, glycerin, botanical extracts of taraxacum officinale (dandelion) leaf,* melissa offficinalis (lemon balm) leaf,* salvia officinalis (sage) leaf* & camellia sinensis (green tea) leaf,* algae extract,* ubiquinone (coenzyme Q10), magnesium ascorbyl phosphate (vitamin C), tocopheryl acetate (vitamin E), retinyl palmitate (vitamin A), panthenol (vitamin B5), allantoin, phospholipids, sodium hydroxide, sclerotium gum, phenoxyethanol, benzyl alcohol, potassium sorbate, tetrasodium EDTA, xanthan gum, limonene, linalool, lavandula angustifolia & commiphora myrrha pure essential oils. * certified organic by a USDA approved agency.

This purchase was borne out of necessity – my little sis had “permanently borrowed” my beloved Kypris Clearing Serum and being the the good little shopper blogger that I am (lol) I decided to take this loss as an opportunity to try something new. Juice Beauty had been on my radar for a long time and I thought this was a great chance to give them a try as I loved the sound of this product and it seemed like it would be a great purifying serum to try and I wasn’t wrong. I have been getting a lot of questions about this product so I have a blog post coming up about it in a few days so I won’t say much more about it here other than it’s a great product and Juice Beauty are one of my new favourite brands.

NIOD COPPER AMINO ISOLATE SERUM 1% $60/£38 for 15ml or $90/£60 for 30ml

Ingredients: Aqua (Water), Sodium Hyaluronate Crosspolymer, Glycerin, Ethoxydiglycol, Pentylene Glycol, Copper Tripeptide-1, Myristoyl Nonapeptide-3, PPG-26-Buteth-26, PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Ethylhexylglycerin, Chlorphenesin, Phenoxyethanol.

CAIS is having quite the social media moment right now so it needs no introduction at all but I just had to include it in last month’s favorites as this current bottle is my first time using the updated formula (see full blog post on the changes here) and I am fully madly in love with it all over again. #CAISclub is in full swing and I love seeing this serum pop up on so many people’s routine posts now. As I have blogged about this already and posted about it so many times, the only thing I wanted to add is about how the product is packaged. A few people have mentioned that they thought upon arrival the powder (old formula) had melted or the liquid (new formula) had evaporated during transit so I wanted to address this. When you receive your CAIS, you will notice that the bottle containing the copper amino isolate is not full, but don’t panic because this is how it is supposed to be. There is only a very tiny amount of it but when you mix in the activator, you will be left with one full bottle of blue serum. I hope that helps clear up any confusion or worries about the quality/quantity of your serum because CAIS is a brilliant product and I highly recommend it to everyone.

OSKIA RENAISSANCE 360 ANTI-AGEING AND BRIGHTENING SUPREME CREAM

Oskia is easily one of my favourite brands, so when I saw the amazing Cult Beauty Goody Bag from last November included a pre-release sample of this new product I just had to get it. As you know, moisturizers are not my thing at all, but after loving Odacité’s Oleosome’s Time Release Delivery Crème and already loving everything I have tried from Oskia, I had a good feeling I would like this one and I was right. It’s a beautiful product with excellent ingredients and a great addition to the already stellar Renaissance range. Every time I feature this product in one of my routine posts I get quite a few questions about it, so I have a full blog post coming up next week, where I will give you all the info and tell you exactly why I have been loving it. This cream is not being released until March so until then, check out Oskia’s amazing Renaissance Cleansing Gel which is one of my all time favourite cleansers and is a great place to start if you’ve never tried anything from the brand.

NUDE DETOX GENTLE BRIGHTENING FIZZY POWDER WASH $42/£38*

Ingredients: Glyceryl Starch, Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Methyl Cocoyl Taurate, Citric Acid, Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate, Citrus Aurantifolia (Lime) Fruit Extract, Citrus Limon (Lemon) Fruit Extract, Maltodextrin, Sodium Chloride, Sodium Sulfate, Ascorbic Acid, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Lipase, Subtilisin, Euterpe Oleracea Fruit Oil, Plukenetia Volubilis Seed Oil, Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea Fruit Extract, Vaccinium Myrtillus (Bilberry) Fruit/Leaf Extract, Malpighia Glabra (Acerola) Fruit Extract, Tocopherol, Amorphophallus Konjac Root Powder, Water.

I was very kindly sent this by NUDE before it officially launched in Sephora last month and I absolutely love it! It’s a powder exfoliator that you mix with water to create a light, mousse-y paste, which becomes a bubbly, creamy lather when you massage it all over your face. I have the original formula (which includes rose hip seeds for a more manual exfoliation) and I must say that my sensitive skin much prefers this gentle version and because it doesn’t have any abrasion action, I can use it more often and I have been loving the results. Compared to NUDE’s other products, this one is much more on the synthetic side of the spectrum (but I’m guessing that’s because of the powdered formula) and at first I was skeptical and a little worried about how my skin would react to it but it’s been perfectly fine. Whenever I use this my skin is left incredibly soft and smooth and almost squeaky clean but without that bad for skin squeak. The only negative I have noticed is due to the season my combination skin is more dry and if I use too much of this or keep it on my skin for too long, I do feel a tad dry afterwards but that is quickly remedied when I continue with the rest of my routine. I think this would be great for those with combo/oily skin and I can really see myself loving it in the summer when my skin is oilier (and sweatier) and will definitely need a product like this to keep it in check.

Let me know what you’ve been loving this year so far and have a great weekend!

Arly

*denotes gifted products.

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