NEW SKINCARE REGIME WITH BIO-EXTRACTS

This month I’ve embarked upon a new skincare regime – and it’s one that involves lots of pretty, colourful looking products, too, which… well, which doesn’t really make all that much difference to my skin, I guess (It doesn’t really care how the products I use on it come packaged…), but which definitely makes a lot of difference to my dressing table, which is half the battle, really.

NATURAL FACE CREAM & ORGANIC FACE SERUMS

Bio-Extracts is a range of vegan face cream, hydrating skin boosters and bio moisturisers designed to produce a bespoke system for your skin. The basic idea is one of that, as your skin isn’t exactly the same from one day to the next, why would you use exactly the same products on it, day after day? This is one of those so-simple-I’ve-no-idea-why-I-didn’t-think-of-it myself, ones: I mean, while I do switch up my skincare regularly, and rarely stick to one product for too long, once I’ve bought something, I’ll generally just keep using it until it’s done, regardless of any changes to my skin in the meantime. Which makes no sense, really, does it?

With this in mind, the Bio-Extracts solution is a two-step one: first of all you pick one (or more) of the vegan moisturisers, which functions as the base-layer for your routine. As my skin is boringly normal, I picked – yes, you guessed it – the “normal” version of this, but there’s also a “light” and a “rich” version, which will be suitable for different types of skin.

Here’s what the brand themselves have to say about the cream:

“BIO‐EXTRACTS Multi-Lamellar System^® has a very distinct structural similarity to these natural layers in the skin and mimics the skin’s own lamellar structure. It is designed to act like a hydration “patch” on the skin, restoring its barrier function thus preventing trans-epidermal water-loss (TEWL), improving hydration and protecting the skin from external irritants.”

The cream can be used as a stand-alone product if you want: it’s a lovely, easily absorbed texture, which comes in a tub with a push-down dispenser, and has a subtle floral scent, which I really like. It works even better, however, when combined with one or more of the booster serums, which come in a syringe-like dispenser, and make me feel a bit like a mad scientist when I’m using them. (I mean that as a compliment, by the way: I mean, who doesn’t love a mad scientist?)

HYDRATING SKIN BOOSTERS

There are nine different boosters to choose from, and they’re all designed to address specific skin issues. I found it pretty hard to narrow my choice down to just four, but I managed to resist the impulse to just choose the prettiest colours (You can tell why I’m not a beauty blogger, huh?), and selected the ones I thought would best help my skin, namely:

• FIRMING BOOST
• LIFTING BOOST
• ANTI-WRINKLE BOOST
• PORE-MINIMISING BOOST

Well, what can I say: I’m old, with big pores. *shrug*

The purpose of these four boosters is pretty self-exoplanatory, but, as I said, if you’re NOT old with large pores, there are plenty of others to choose from, to address your own specific skincare issues. The idea here is that you first of all dispense one pump of the moisturiser, then mix in up to four ‘booster’ shots, depending on how your skin looks and feels each day. So if, say, you wake up in the morning and find you’ve aged ten years overnight (Look, it happens, people. It happens.) you might want to focus mostly on the anti-wrinke and firming solutions, whereas if you were to wake up looking mighty fine, with just a few enlarged pores (This, er, doesn’t generally happen for me, but you might be luckier…), you could just go with the pore-minimising boost, and leave it at that.

So far, I’ve only been using these for a couple of weeks, but it’s been a really stressful month for me so far, and my skin has been showing the effects of that. I’m fairly lucky, in that I don’t tend to get break-outs, but my skin will quickly start to look a bit dull and tired (and people will start asking me if I’m sick, which is ALWAYS a welcome comment, isn’t it?) if I’ve not been looking after myself well, and that’s where I’ve been at lately. Within about a week of using these, however, I’d started to see an improvement: I still have larger pores and more wrinkles than I’d like, (I think the philosopher’s stone is the only cure for that last one, unfortunately…) but I’m no longer looking quite so much like death warmed-up, which is a good start, at least.

I’ll report back soon on how I get on with my routine: in the meantime, you can check out the Bio-Extracts website for yourself, and decide which of those pretty pastel serums you’d go for!

[This post is a collaboration with Bio-Extracts]