Tag: Self Tanner

Jergens Brilliance Flawless Effects

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Once upon a time, there was a BB cream lotion product by Jergens. I loved it dearly for the no-hassle very faint tan it produced on my skin, and I kept buying it until even the close-out stores stopped carrying it. It looks like Flaweless Effects was meant to replace it, given the near exact ingredient listing both of them appear to tout.

This isn’t meant to be a self-tanner specifically, even though the shea butter makes it smell like one, but more of a color corrector. The color of the lotion is an iridescent purple-grey-brown color (is there a word for that kind of color?!), but once absorbed, is colorless. Well, I shouldn’t say colorless, since the pigments in the lotion are meant to cancel out any unwanted tones in your skin, such as age spots or blemishes.

The color payout on the Brilliance product is actually quite apparent a few hours after application. It creates a very light brown pigment over the skin. Compared to the older version which created more of a yellow tint, I like this coloration much better. But the Brilliance lotion is much “dryer” than the BB cream. It dries quickly, therefore is harder to spread around evenly. Rest assured, you won’t experience any “streakiness” a self tanner would give you, but you’ll need to be mindful when applying this product in areas of thinner or thicker skin.

The color is by no means a deep color that is meant to last for days, but rather, maintain your skin tone at a consistent, slightly darker color over the period of a few days. That color can actually last through a few showers.

Though I loved the CC Cream and I think I like this product as well, I’m not sure what the need for a re-formulation was. The ingredient listing looks the exact same, and still contains a few questionable parabens that they could have omitted the second time around. The CC Cream felt more luxurious and plush (ie: actually moisturizing!), while the Brilliance lotion is difficult to work with. It leaves a film behind, which makes me feel oily as opposed to moisturized.

The Brilliance lotion is still a good buy at $10 if you’re looking for subtle color to color correct throughout your body. Like most body lotions, I would not recommend this for the face. But I’m quite impressed with color for this just being a correction cream! ~A

Perceived efficacy: 4/5

Longevity: 3.75/5

How much I actually like this product: 3.75/5

Recommended for sensitive skin: Sensitive skin users might want to patch test. Avoid using this on your face.

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The Altruistic Face Site Updates!

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A brand new header image and avatar were added to blog this evening, and I’m absolutely in love with it! It looks amazing! The art and design were done by Cyan & Sepia. The shop owner is super sweet, and her work is amazing!

Second, I’ve had a huge uptick in visitors the past three months. I wanted to highlight some of my top posts, and my thoughts on why I think they’re trending.

Clinique Moisture Surge – I’m actually a little sad that this post is trending. I know it’s a popular product, but a lot of the search criteria that has come back are a long the lines of “clinique moisture surge fake”. I’m bummed out that these fakes can still be shipped out, and the resellers never seem to be caught!

Aquaphor – a lot of readers seem to be looking into “slug life”! While I don’t necessarily condone Aquaphor as your final emolliating layer for the night, I do think it’s the best lip protection available on the market.

Tanwise Tanning Drops – I really loved this product. I think they are the first– and only– tanning drops that didn’t break me out! They don’t really cause color build-up like others on the market, and it’s a nice additive in your regular body lotion as well. ~A

TanWise Self-Tanning DHA Boost Drops

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Summer is winding down. Actually, by the time this gets posted, I’ll probably be wearing leggings and drinking pumpkin spice coffee. I figured I’d sneak in another Tanwise review before my skincare attentions are turned to heavy moisturizers to combat seemingly sub-zero temperatures. The last Tanwise self-tanner product I reviewed was a total bust (link to that review is here), but fortunately, these drops are night and day better compared to the gel product.

For $11 from Sally’s Beauty, you get 2 fl oz of this water-based DHA formula inside a dropper bottle. I’ve had this for two months and it’s taking FOREVER to go through the bottle, even though I’ve been somewhat routinely (twice a week) putting it in a ton of my regular skincare products. You really only need a few drops to create some color. So, so far, it’s been a fantastic value for the price and the amount of product.

I’ve mixed one or two drops in with my regular moisturizers (Cerave PM, Dramatically Different) and had a magnificent warm brown color turnout after just an hour or two. NOT orange. I’ve also mixed this in with my body lotions (you might need a few more drops for this, depending on the expanse of your skin you need to cover), and also gotten very good color. I suppose it might not be as dark as Jergens, and possibly not as long-lasting (the stuff washes off in a day, two if you’re lucky); but I’m still very happy with it.

As far as the drop’s malleability with other products, this won’t conflict with anything you want to wear for the day — it won’t cause anything to pill since it’s water-based, and the tan will still develop regardless of what you put over it. What’s also awesome is that this product does NOT streak at all — although, it will get stuck under your fingernails, so be mindful of that. Otherwise, it’s basically foolproof. My only recommendation is NOT to stack the product more than one application every two days. That’s when this will turn you orange (trust me on this… I learned from personal experience. Not great.)

Huge bonus: This DOES NOT SMELL LIKE SELF TANNER. It’s unbelievable. Ok, maybe like, a tiny bit, if you haven’t washed it off after having it on for a day. But the smell is so minimal that I could actually forget that I’d applied it… unlike almost every other product on the market, that all inevitably remind you that you’ve slathered DHA over yourself.

Quick skincare tip: self-tanners are best applied at night, and NOT in conjunction with anything that contains SPF. SPF will cause the tan to fade faster. This is a weird little anecdote, since there’s a few self-tanners on the market that contain SPF. So keep your sunscreen in your morning routine, and slap on the self-tanner at night.

Since this didn’t break me out like the Tanwise gel did (no drying alcohols, woohoo!), this is going to be a definite re-buy of mine. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants a quick glow, without the usual glove-and-guide mess that are typical of traditional tanners. ~A

Perceived efficacy: 5/5

Longevity: 3.5/5

How much I actually like this product: 5/5

Recommended for sensitive skin: Yes (if no sensitivities to DHA)


Tanwise Self-Tanning Face Gel

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This stuff works, but at what cost? The cost of your beautiful, blemish-free skin! This self-tanner is king at clogging pores.

This is a cheap find at Sally’s for $7. I went in to Sally’s a few days ago and noticed that the packaging for all Tanwise products had changed since I bought my bottle, so I’m not sure if that infers an ingredient reformulation was done as well.

This comes out as a white gel-cream. The smell is a little tough to describe, and there’s nothing “flowery” or “fresh” covering it up: you know that smell you smell, when you walk into a hair salon…? That’s what this is. It’s easy to spread, you really only need two pea sized dollops to cover your whole face.

The gel will very quickly develop on your skin and turn your skin a reasonable shade of brown, I’d say about 2-3 levels darker than your base even after the first usage, which to me is a pretty good result. And, it’s not orange! I never had an issue with the color getting blotchy or streaky, even after layering other products over it. Which brings me to my next point, this lotion works very well with anything else you use before or after it, moisturizers or makeup. The staying power of this self-tanner is pretty good too, even if you wash your face frequently — two to three days will pass before you’ll need to go in with another application.

The bad news: this stuff makes me break out like crazy! I see benzyl alcohol has snuck in the second line of ingredients. So that might be the culprit (or it might not be, but I’m blaming it on that!). After a day of using this, I tend to wake up to find 4 or 5 brand new spots on my face. Not good.

It’s really too bad because this is a really nice facial tanner otherwise, and it lasts much longer than anything else I’ve tried before. Heck, it doesn’t even devolve into that infamous DHA stink after 12 hours! But it’s definitely not worth the breaking out for. ~A

Perceived efficacy: 5/5

Longevity: 4/5

How much I actually like this product: 2.5/5

Recommended for sensitive skin: No

Tanceuticals Self Tanner

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Tanceuticals is probably one of the best self-tanners I’ve ever tried, at the recommendation of http://www.selftanning.com, where it was one of the only products with a true 5/5 rating. But as with any self-tanner, you still have to play by a few rules to get a good application.

The price point for this product is steep ($28), and honestly, there isn’t a whole ton of product in it — perhaps only 5 to 6 full-body applications worth. The liquid is runny and brown when it comes out of the tube, although, in my opinion, for being so thin, the product doesn’t spread very far and you’ll feel like you need to keep going back to the bottle to get more product. The initial smell is standard fare sunscreen-coconut smell, devolving into equally standard fare DHA-stink after hour eight.

Wear gloves with this product!! I mistakenly tricked myself into believing this could operate similarly to a true gradual self tanner. Do not do that. It will create crazy brown deposits if you aren’t spreading this out thinly, and avoiding the “thin skin” areas.

I think what I love most about this product is that there’s essentially no dry time. It absorbs really quickly, cutting down on the potential to rub your skin against something on accident and smear the color. The color starts showing after a few hours of application. It doesn’t stop there, either: it continues to get darker as the day goes on. It does skew brown, not orange, and never gets too dark, just dark enough to be noticeable to other people.

Onto a few more weird quirks about this product. You CANNOT stack any other product with this in an effort to “enhance” the tan. This will cause extreme streaking and blotching with the original product. My normal MO is to use Jergens Self Tanner every morning to keep the underlying base color, and if I’m going out somewhere special at night, I’ll use a mousse. Forget all of that with this product. It does not play well with others, in fact, I would say don’t even reapply the product itself until day 3 or 4. Also, this product dries the heck out of your skin by hour eight, even if you end up using a regular body lotion later on in the day. This seems strange to me, since the ingredient listing is actually relatively tame (no alcohol, many plant-based ingredients).

For all you sensitive skin users: I did not experience any DHA rashes on my body, but this stuff will definitely make your face break out. I did, however, just recently purchase the face tanner of this product (which is advertised as “gentler”?), so I’ll be reviewing that separately and we’ll see if that does any better!

I know it seemed like there were a lot of complaints in this review, but self-tanners are honestly so hit or miss. There are a lot of components to them working correctly, and every product is different. Overall, though, I was really blown away with the fast dry time and the overall color, particularly because that color does stay steadily intact for three to four days. I also appreciate that the ingredient listing seems more plant-based than most. ~A

Click here to buy Tanceuticals on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/2NrW61o

Perceived efficacy: 5/5

Longevity: 4/5

How much I actually like this product: 4/5

Recommended for sensitive skin: Yes — on body only.

Tanwise Gradual Tan Moisturizer

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I wouldn’t say this is the best self-tanner on the market. I can’t even find it now that I’m googling it, and it looks like Tanwise has rebranded anyway since I bought this a year ago. I grabbed this at Sally’s for $9, figuring it was cheap enough to give it a shot.

This is a brown gradual tanning lotion. Gradual tanners obviously aren’t the answer to getting dark within a day or two, but I tend to think their end result is a little more natural and less blotchy than instant formulations. This product unfortunately missed the mark in both categories.

It went on as a white lotion. No guide, since it’s a gradual tanner. If I recall it was pretty notorious for getting under my fingernails and between my fingers, which is unusual for a gradual tanner, so in hindsight I probably should have used a glove. It does smell really good on application — fruity, very sweet — but after a day, this changed into one of the worst DHA smells I’ve ever smelled in my life.

With most gradual tanners, you should be able to use the lotion every day, causing the color to be darker the longer duration you use it for. But this was BAD in terms of being blotchy, and producing sections of extreme dark tan where another patch of skin would have almost nothing, despite efforts to spread the color evenly. Showering would also cause streaks after day 2, which is also very unusual for a gradual tanner.

The one good thing about this tanner (besides the initial smell) is that I think it’s actually ok for sensitive skin. I wouldn’t recommend it for the face, but for the rest of the body it was fine. Sometimes DHA products can briefly produce a very faint, temporary rash, but I didn’t experience that with Tanwise.

Looking around Amazon, it doesn’t seem like Tanwise has great reviews for most of their products, except for their mousse. Maybe that will be my next purchase, but their gradual tanner was definitely a miss. ~A

Perceived efficacy: 1.5/5

Longevity: 1/5

How much I actually like this product: 2/5

Recommended for sensitive skin: Maybe

L’oreal Paris Sublime Bronze Tinted Self-Tanning Lotion

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loreal paris sublime bronze

Myself and my pasty pale skin have been through many a self-tanner. Sublime Bronze was definitely not my favorite, despite it’s otherwise high reviews for a drug store tanner.

First of all, I noticed L’oreal, moreso than most beauty brands, LOVES benzyl alcohol and alcohol denat, particularly as the second or third ingredient… Sublime Bronze is no exception, so if you’re looking to avoid it, you might want to pass on this one.

The color comes out of the squeeze bottle in a dark brown gel lotion, and has a tinge of sparkle to it. I don’t mind a bit of shimmer in my self-tanners, and the glitter in this isn’t too overbearing, so that works for me personally. Don’t forget to put a mit or gloves on before applying this — it will absolutely stain your hands. This smells… a little banana-y. To me, the DHA smell isn’t too overpowering, even after a day or so.

There is a guide with this lotion (gets dark where you need to blend it in, so that there aren’t streaks!), but it’s relatively useless. I truly hate how this tanner dries. Not only does it take awhile to dry, but it dries patchy and streaky regardless of how much attention you pay to blending and being cognizant of the guide. The color will last you maybe a day or two, even if you’re being careful not to scrub your skin in the shower and not sweating particularly much. Since it’s an “instant” product I can’t say that longevity is necessarily the goal here, although it would be nice if it stayed on for a little longer. Although… the blotchiness and the streakiness of this lotion makes you want to remove it anyway!

Weirdly, this product works AWESOME for the face. It darkens immediately, won’t look blotchy if you mix it in with moisturizer, and for some reason the color sticks around for 4-5 days. But alcohol denat as the second ingredient makes that venture totally not worth it for the health of your skin.

Too bad, L’oreal. I liked the shimmer, the not-too-overpowering smell, and the $7 price tag, but the other aspects of this product just don’t stack up. ~A

Perceived efficacy: 2.5/5

Longevity: 2.5/5

How much I actually like this product: 2.5/5

Recommended for sensitive skin: No