Review – DCL’s C Scape High Potency Night Booster 30

In my previous review for the DCL Detoxifying Clay Mask (Read full review here!), I had mentioned that the mask was a free gift (GWP – gift with purchase) that was given to me as part of the promotions running on Cult Beauty for the launch of DCL brand on their website. The product that I was actually purchasing is this – DCL C Scape High Potency Night Booster 30. Now that I’ve had it for around 3 months, I think I’m ready to tell you guys about my experience with this product.

As usual, ingredients for the product are listed below:

Ingredients

Isohexadecane, Ascorbic Acid, Ethylene/Propylene/Styrene Copolymer, Butylene/Ethylene/Styrene Copolymer, Isononyl Isononanoate, Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate, Tocopheryl Acetate, Citrus Paradisi Peel Oil, Citrus Aurantium Amara Peel Oil, Squalane, Ubiquinone, Isomalt, Hydrated Silica, Limonene, Hydrolyzed Corn Starch, Phenoxyethanol, BHT

How does the DCL C Scape High Potency Night Booster 30 fare?

DCL’s C Scape High Potency Night Booster claims to be a collagen-boosting dynamo formulated with a 30% concentration of L-ascorbic acid, plus a ground breaking Vitamin C complex that are gently released into skin both immediately and over time for maximum efficacy and absorption. Advanced technology strengthens skin’s other structural components to improve elasticity and help fend off lines and wrinkles. Intense hydrators deeply moisturise, as antioxidants valiantly safeguard skin from environmental assailants. Meanwhile, focused brighteners even out skin tone creating a healthier, more radiant and beautifully uniform complexion. TLDR; it’s a dedicated Vitamin C serum with a 30% concentration.

I bought this product solely based on Caroline Hirons’ recommendation. If you have read some of my previous posts, maybe you would know that one of my problems that I hoped to correct for  my skin is the PIH marks that were left over after my hormonal acne subside each month. I’ve found that those marks on my face do not really respond to my constant use of acids or retinol. Only by diligently using Vitamin C serums do I see a slight improvement. Therefore, I’m constantly on the lookout for great Vitamin C products that would help me.

First of all, this product is an anhydrous formulae (meaning that it does not contain any water) which greatly aids in the stability of the Vitamin C and prevent it from oxidising so fast. My main beef with quite a lot of Vitamin C serums is that they oxidise so quickly! Although you could prolong their shelf life by placing them in the fridge, sometimes you just want your products kept where you can grab them easily. Therefore the fact that this product is kept stable by eliminating water (which is the main cause of oxidisation for Vitamin C products) wins quite a lot of points with me.

The moment this product reached me, I slather it on my face that very night. The product itself is a white gritty cream (very unlike most watery type of Vitamin C serums) and I felt a strong tingling sensation when I applied it. Because the texture of this product is so thick and gritty, I find that I could only layer a moisturiser over it and call it a night. If you want to layer a lot of subsequent products over it, you will have “rolling” and this product will just flake away. The next morning, I was blown away by how bright and clear my skin looks! I thought that I had found the perfect Vitamin C serum!

Unfortunately, after trying this product on and off for 3 months, I find that it’s just not suitable for my skin for a very simple reason. This product makes my skin break out! Although I was blown away by its results the first night, subsequent uses saw my cheeks and forehead break out in tiny little bumps. I knew my skin well enough to recognise that it’s a sign that this product does not agree with my skin. I tried again on and off over the next 3 months without much success. It’s always the same pattern. I would see great brightening effects the first night and yet with subsequent uses, I would always find my skin breaking out in places where I normally don’t. You know, I wanted to like it so much, or even love it because it’s quite expensive and my mama didn’t raise no quitter! However, as with all skincare, your mileage will vary (YMWV) and not all skincare will work for your specific skin type. You just need to experiment to find out what your skin likes or dislikes. Therefore, I’m not going to bash this product because I could totally see it working for someone else. Sadly, that person is not me!

Where can you find it?

I bought this product from Cult Beauty Online. It retails at £108.00 (30ml sized).

Thank you for reading!

 

Review – Drunk Elephant C-Firma Day Serum

Drunk Elephant is a skincare brand that I was always curious about. It is a skincare brand from the US that claims to use only “clean” ingredients that are both safe and effective. I was looking for a Vitamin C serum which would give better results than what I had experienced with the Wishtrend’s one and came across rave reviews on the Drunk Elephant C-Firma Day Serum. Therefore I ordered this product from their website just to try and see if the rave reviews were justified.

As usual, the ingredients of the product are as below for your reference.

Ingredients

How does the Drunk Elephant C-Firma Day Serum fare?

Drunk Elephant claims that this serum is a super-potent vitamin C day serum packed with a 15% potent antioxidant complex of L-Ascorbic and Ferulic Acids plus Vitamin E. It helps to “neutralise” pollution, environmental stressors and damaging free radicals while replenishing lipids and visibly reducing the appearance of dark spots and wrinkles. Formulated with pumpkin ferment and pomegranate extracts, C-Firma™ enzymatically dissolves dead surface skin cells for smoother texture. Sodium hyaluronate crosspolymer quickly penetrates skin and provides intense hydration. The result is a noticeably diminished appearance of photo damage, replaced by incredible radiance and luminosity.

A genuinely drunk elephant who just wants another fermented Marula fruit! *LOL*

When I first applied this serum to my face, I was surprised by its texture. I was previously using the Wishtrend’s C21.5 Vitamin C serum and that product has a watery texture typical of Vitamin C serums. However, the Drunk Elephant C-Firma Day Serum has a gel-like/ oil-serum texture which threw me off a bit. Due to its texture, I find that I needed to adjust the amount of hydrating serum, which I usually apply after my Vitamin C serum, to be lesser than what I would normally use during my daytime routine or risk looking overly dewy by mid-day. I believe that its special texture comes about due to the inclusion of Sclerocarya Birrea Seed Oil (aka Virgin Marula Oil) in its formula. Since this product is fragrance-free, you can literally smell the metallic scent of Vitamin C when you apply it. Sometimes I would even catch whiffs of it on my hands mid-day. Although this is not a con for me, I’ve seen reviews from some people that couldn’t stand the scent. Another detail which I need to inform you is that this serum has a light golden hue. Normally for colourless Vitamin C serums such as Wishtrend’s, having the colour changed to be more golden or even amber signifies that the Vitamin C has already oxidised. But I’ve noticed that since the ingredients in this product itself includes the anti-irritant tetrahydro curcuminoids (which naturally has a yellowish colour), this golden hue didn’t seem to be due to the Vitamin C oxidising. Nonetheless, I would still recommend that you keep this product in the fridge in order to prolong the potency of the Vitamin C content of this product.

After cleansing and toning with my Mizon AHA BHA Daily Clean Toner, I would apply 2 pumps of this serum to my face. Then I would wait for about 15 minutes before I continue with the rest of my routine. Unlike the Wishtrend’s Vitamin C Serum, I’ve never experienced any stinging sensations from the usage of this serum. The initial results from the application of this serum came fast. In fact, I noticed as early as 2 days in that my face was looking more glowy than usual and had a luminous quality to it (think of the glowing skin that chaebol heiresses in Korean dramas possess). The brightness in my skin was always amplified whenever I use this product so I knew that this is the special product responsible for the glow. One other effect which I’ve came to notice after around one month of usage is that my dark circles seemed to have lightened a bit. I usually do not use a dedicated eye cream as my eye area is very prone to milia seeds. No matter how light the texture of the eye cream is, I would still get more milia seeds if I’m using a dedicated eye product. Therefore I would usually just swipe a bit of whatever serum that I use on my face at my eye area. I was also doing the same thing this time with the Drunk Elephant C-Firma serum and was surprised to find that my dark circles seemed to be lighter. Unfortunately even after around 1.5 months of using it, my PIH still hasn’t lightened too much. I guess I would really need around 1 year of using dedicated Vitamin C serums to see a significant difference. *le sigh*

 

Where can you find it?

I bought this product from the Drunk Elephant online website. It retails at US$80 (30ml sized).

Thank you for reading!

Review – Wishtrend Pure Vitamin C21.5 Advanced Serum

Vitamin C is such a superstar active that really provides a whole range of benefits to the skin when added to your skincare routine. This potent antioxidant helps to brighten age spots and hyper-pigmentation, or discoloration of the skin, including age spots and dark circles under the eye. Additionally, it has been shown that topical applications of vitamin C serums helps to boost collagen production in the skin, leading to reduction as well as prevention of signs of ageing such as wrinkles and loss of elasticity. Out of the many different types of Vitamin C, Ascorbic acid—also known as L-ascorbic acid is the royalty of Vitamin C and is backed by the most skin-related research proving its effects.

To be honest, I was quite apprehensive about adding Vitamin C to my skincare routine despite all the benefits that it’s touted to have. It was because I had a bad experience when I used Paula’s Choice Vitamin C booster serum. I started developing red rashes on my neck area while I was using that particular product. Since then, I developed a phobia of using a dedicated Vitamin C serum in my skincare routine. The reason why I wanted to incorporate a Vitamin C serum back into my skincare routine was because I discovered that I was developing post-inflammatory hyper-pigmentation (PIH) marks from my hormonal acne. The PIH either took a really long time to fade or still stubbornly remains there despite my best efforts with using acid toners. I knew that Vitamin C was key to fighting PIH. So I searched on the internet for some suggestions on Vitamin C serums to try and that’s the product that we are going to talk about today.

Wishtrend’s Pure Vitamin C21.5 Advanced Serum is a relatively inexpensive Vitamin C serum, formulated with Ascorbic Acid, that seems to be popular. I had been using it for around 1.5 months and I’m ready to share with you my thoughts on this product.

As usual, let’s check out its ingredients, shall we?

Ingredients

Hippophae Rhamnoides Water (70%), Ascorbic Acid (21.5%), Sodium Lactate, 1,2-Hexanediol, Sodium Hyaluronate, Panthenol, Cassia Obtusifolia Seed Extract, Allantoin, Xanthan Gum, Ethyl Hexanediol

How does the Wishtrend Pure Vitamin C21.5 Advanced Serum fare?

The Wishtrend Pure Vitamin C21.5 Advanced Serum is an upgrade from their original C20 serum. In the new formula, the percentage of Vitamin C has been increased from 20% to 21.5% while the sticky feeling that the old C20 serum has been lowered. I hadn’t use the C20 serum before so I couldn’t really make a comparison for you guys.

As I had mentioned earlier, I wanted to use a Vitamin C serum mainly to combat my PIH left behind from my hormonal acne. If I experience any other beneficial effects from Vitamin C, I’ll take it as a bonus. When I first used this product, I applied a whole pipette-full of product onto my skin after using my pH adjusting toner. I felt a strong stinging sensation and my face actually heated up and was slightly flushed. I think that amount must be too much for my skin to take in at once. Even though the stinging went away after around 10 minutes, I was worried about agitating my skin (remember my previous bad experience with Vitamin C serum that I’ve talked about above?). Thereafter I adjusted the amount of product to be just 5 drops and it was much better tolerated by my skin without any stinging. I noticed from the get go that this product is rather drying so I pair it with my hyaluronic acid serum after I let it sink in for around 15 minutes. I also need to adjust the amount of moisturiser I use in order to combat the feeling of dryness. However you need to note that I’ve got combination dry skin so if your skin is oily, you might not be hit so much by its drying effects. Anyway, this product doesn’t offer instantaneous results. In fact, I only noticed some initial results after about 3 to 4 weeks in. My skin tone was more even, brighter and also rosy. Surprisingly I also noticed slight firming of my cheek areas and the nasolabial lines are less noticeable. As for my PIH, I noticed very slight lightening on my left lower cheek around the 5 to 6 weeks mark but not much improvement on the right side. I’ve read that it takes about one year before a significant improvement could be seen so I’ll continue using Vitamin C in my routine to see better results.

Below are my photos showing my skin condition before and after around one month of use. Please note that the lighting in the photos are not exactly the same. The small red arrows show the location of my PIH. The PIH right at the bottom is slightly lightened while the older PIH at the top are still around.

Left: Original Right: Around 1 month later

You’ll need to note that since Vitamin C (and especially Ascorbic Acid) is notoriously easy to oxidise, it’s best that you keep this product in the fridge to extend its lifespan. Applying oxidised Vitamin C is not only of no benefit to your skin, it might actually further introduce free radicals to disrupt your skin. This product is basically colourless and that’s how you know that it’s fresh. Oxidised Vitamin C has a very dark amber colour that is unmistakable so stop using your Vitamin C if it has changed colour.

Left: Fresh Vitamin C Right: Oxidised Vitamin C (Image from Yesstyle)

Where can you find it?

You can purchase this product from Wishtrend’s online shop. It retails at US$24.99.

However, I bought this product from Q010.sg. It retails at S$29.80 (30 ml sized) when I bought it but I think that it was a promotional price.

You can also purchase it from MyBeautyMoments.com. They have a promotional price of S$28.50 for this product.

Thank you for reading!