Organic Skin Care Blog – Product Reviews & Healthy Skin

Pixi's Glow Tonic has been a cult favourite skincare product, and if you've heard about the brand at all, then chances are, you've probably heard of Glow Tonic. This cult product has raves from virtually every blogger out there, with people excited over how it is both cheap and effective, so I figured it's high time I got around to review it!


In case you're wondering why the Pixi Glow Tonic is such a fabled product, in part it's becuase the 5% glycolic acid, which is pretty rare in a product at that price point. So I do get why it lives up to the hype, with people claiming that it works to give them that glow, even for sensitive skin!


Pixi Beauty Glow Tonic: I've been seeing so many rave reviews for it, so I've decided to see how it stacks up!
So, does the Pixi Beauty Glow Tonic actually live up to the hype? Well, let's dive in and find out! Of course, we'll start right at the ingredients list!
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It's been a while since my last empties post in October last year, and since them, I've accumulated a loooot of empties to show you guys! To be clear though, not alll of these are my empties, there are a few bits and bobs in there that are contributed by my mother and sister, because they do help themselves to some of my skincare products from time to time! I'm happy to let them indulge though, because to be honest, I obviously have way more skincare than I can ever use up!


The products I (with a little help from mum and sis) have used up really run the gamut - every step of the skincare and makeup routine is covered here! But because this would be too long of a post, I've split it up into two. For today, we'll just cover the acne skicare (unfortunately this is all mine, my mum and sis have way better skin than me, sigh), lotions and toners, as well as cleansers and makeup removers.


So, without further ado, let's get started! I'm officially going to cram a bunch of mini-reviews together into this blogpost, so let's hope this doesn't end up being too long!
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Yes it's another empties post! And this post is pretty mega, hence the two-part split. And that's just for skincare - the makeup empties post is a separate post too, to make sure the individual posts aren't too long. So yes, I have indeed been a good girl and using up my products and not wasting them (a perpetual beauty junkie problem it seems)!


Above you can absolutely see the mess of empties, running the gamut from sunscreen to serums. I could probably do all those empties in one sitting, but the post would just be very long. So this time, we'll just be focusing on oil cleansers and makeup removers, normal cleansers, face masks, sunscreen, lotions and toners, and moisturizers! In other words, we'll just be looking at the stuff in the photo today, which is still quite a lot.


Empties: cleanser, makeup remover, lotion, toner, sunscreen, and moisturizer
I realized that quite a few readers seem to like my empties posts (and you can see all of them here) - perhaps, it's because with all my science-y skincare reviews, some readers are curious to know what exactly remains in my stash and gets used up at the end of the day. I suppose the idea here is that if I used up something, then it must be really good! The truth is that it kind of depends - some of these empties I've had for a long, long time, and for various reasons take longer to use up, and some were very quickly made favourites or staples and get used up much faster. As we go through the products, you'll see which is which!
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Etude House's True Relief skincare line consists of 3 products - the Moist Mist Toner, Moist Emulsion, and Moist Cream. As the line indicates, this is supposed to offer "true relief" for sensitive skin, without irritation. This certainly is pretty unusual as compared to Etude House's typical skincare range, which tends to be geared for a pretty young age group, as it seems geared towards a broader age range. So this is actually a fairly unusual step as far as Etude House skincare goes, and I'll be taking a look at how this fares!


If you've read some of my Etude House reviews, you'll probably know that while I do love their makeup products in general, their skincare tends to be something I'm more ambivalent with - in fact, my last Etude House skincare product review wasn't exactly a positive one. This is perhaps because at nearly 30, I'm slightly older than the typical Etude House customer, and a lot of their skincare products are really best for very thick and oily skin. So, I was kind of interested to see if finally, there was a skincare range from the brand that made more sense for my skin type.


Etude House True Relief Moist Toner, Emulsion, and Cream: Slightly different from the typical Etude House skincare products
And as usual, for each of the products - the True Relief Moist Mist TOner, Moist Emulsion, and Moist Cream, we'll start off the review with a look at the ingredients list! We have three products here, so it might be a tad (just a tad, don't worry) longer than the average review, but I'll try and keep it as short and sweet as I can!
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SKII's Facial Treatment Essence, with the acclaimed Pitera as the main ingredient, is one of the most famous products in the world of Asian beauty. It's got a cult following despite the high price, and people swear by it.

A year ago, I reviewed the SKII Facial Treatment Essence (together with the Clear Lotion and the Mask), I talked about the science behind Pitera (aka Galactomyces Ferment Filtrate), and also tried the product on myself. Once the review was up, I had a number of questions on whether there were any dupes for the SKII Facial Treatment Essence. Of course, I had to go and investigate myself!


Initially, when I started in my dupe hunt, I thought it would be an easy task - maybe a handful of products, and that's it. It wouldn't take long to do or be a lot of effort, right? Turns out, I was wrong! Upon closer investigation, however, I found that there were really many ways to make a similar product. There are products that try to mimic the formula almost exactly, while others bank on selling the star ingredient, Pitera, instead. Perhaps it is the popularity of the Facial Treatment Essence that prompts so many brands to create similar products. In fact, I found so many dupes and similar products that I ended up organizing them into categories:

Category 1: Close Dupes of the SKII Facial Treatment Essence
Category 2: 100% Pitera/Galactomyces Ferment Filtrate products
Category 3: Partial Dupes, retaining Pitera as the star ingredient, but don't closely follow the SK-II formula
Category 4: Dupes of the "Older Version" of SK-II's Facial Treatment Essence, with Saccharomyces Ferment Filtrate instead of Galactomyces Ferment Filtrate


That's quite a list! Clearly, even when brands don't put out a close dupe, they do put out tangentially SK-II inspired products, and that's fine by me - the more options the merrier! As for Category 4, I'd like to clarify that while there isn't an "older version" of SK-II's Facial Treatment Essence in that the key ingredient, Pitera, hasn't changed, P&G (the parent company of SK-II) had previously mis-characterized Pitera as Saccharomyces Ferment Filtrate, and later changed it to Galactomyces Ferment Filtrate upon further analysis (you can read more about it in my SK-II review I posted previously). Despite this error, it seems a lot of companies were inspired to create products with Saccharomyces Ferment Filtrate that seemed close to SK'II's formula, so I thought they might be worth a mention, too, for the sake of completeness.

So, as you might guess, we've got a lot to go through! Hence the "Part 1" in the title of this post - I don't know how many parts we will have eventually, but I do know that we'll need more than one post to go through all these!
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Biotherm's Life Plankton Essence was launched last year, and is billed on the Biotherm website as a "Fundamental Skin Treatment". The description for the product goes on to say, "For the first time, Life Plankton is infused at its highest concentration within Life Plankton Essence (5% for anyone wondering). In 8 days, see and feel a new-born skin: more radiant, more even, smoother, hydrated, with greater resilience and fine lines faded. Immediately, the skin is soothed and softened." So essentially, this is a lotion-style essence product, with a high concentration of Life Plankton. This is meant to be used before other skincare products, like moisturizer.


The Biotherm Life Plankton Essence was launched end of last year to much fanfare and raves, and this year has continued to get a steady stream of attention from both mainstream press and bloggers. So I figured it's probably a good time for me to finally get around to reviewing it! How does this product work, and what is inside the product? What is this Life Plankton, anyway?


Biotherm Life Plankton Essence: Contains the highest concentration of Life Plankton at 5%
To answer those questions and more, there's only one place to start looking - the ingredients list! Biotherm has also very kindly helped to answer a few of my questions on the product, to fill in some of the gaps and questions I had when analysing the ingredients list, and I'm really happy that they did - I mean, I'm just a random blogger, not Anna Wintour or anything, and I'm sure the PR people have lots on their plate, so I really appreciate it when I get to ask questions and they get answered! For this review though, I've incorporated some of the answers into my review, rather than having them as a separate standalone section, in order to keep the length of the review shorter and the flow less disjointed, but where the information has been provided by Biotherm, you'll see me mention it (e.g. "Biotherm/the company/the brand informed me that" or something similar). So, without further ado, let's jump right into the review!
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