Review: Seche Restore

Unlike it's hard to use relative (Seche Vite), I actually like Seche Restore. With Seche Vite, I get awful goopy results, along with any other quick dry top coats.

Use Seche Restore to thin out your old polishes and resurrect them from their old, dried, clumpy state. Unfortunately, this comes with a couple of cons.

1. The packaging is horrible.

Look at the picture. To the right is the pipette for the Restore. I have no place to put it, so I keep the original packaging since I don't want it out in the open.

2. If you look at the ingredients list or the warning label, you will see that it contains toluene. It says that this product may "cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm." A quick search on the internet shows that toluene can cause neurological damage. Also, due to schoolwork, I have found that substances such as toluene can cause taste and smell disorders. It may not seem like much compared to the others, but it IS a valid concern, and the one I'm most worried about right now.

I will not repurchase this product, though it does work (though I have been doing worse, what with my constant exposure to formaldehyde :( ). It's not worth the risk. Hopefully, they will find something better to replace it. Good bye old polishes. At least until something better comes out.


TIP: DO NOT over expose yourself to your nail stuff. Once a month will do and be sure to have open air circulation.

On that note, given the love of air conditioning, how many nail technicians have been overexposed to toluene and the like?

Patch testing

I often do not patch test for allergic reactions. It's bad, I know! I want to do this for box dyes but I don't know HOW am I supposed to patch test these products.

For those that have separate bottle for the peroxide and a tube of dye, you can put a little of both in a separate container, mix them, then test on yourself. Unfortunately, the boxes I've bought have a non-sealable container for the peroxide. Then I think to myself: this stuff will decompose pretty quickly and I need to keep this on for 48 hours (H2O2 -> H2O). So I end up putting it on anyway without a patch test :( I take it all off if it itches, but it's not a good way to do it.

I do patch test for facial products (because it's really easy!). However, recently, I patch tested a product on my jaw line for 7 hours. It was fine. However, when I used it the next day, it seems I had an allergic reaction after 5 hours on my face! It was horrible :| I'm still paying for it right now.

Urgh. I don't know how to explain it. Maybe my face is just weird.

Mouthwash

Although I know that mouthwash isn't strictly necessary, there's just something about it that I love. Maybe it's because:

1) It freshens breath
2) It wakes you up

I don't really care that much about the germ-killing effect (with possible temporary dryness), though I hope it helps since I'm horrible at flossing (how do you floss your molars? I've never been able to do it :( ).

Although, you still have to be careful that the mouthwash you use doesn't stain your teeth (Chlorohexedine). I use mouthwash only 3x max a week because I drink a lot of coffee and tea.

What does make me curious is how come most people prefer to use a dilute version of mouthwash versus a concentrate. The concentrated solution is just a bit more expensive, but you get at least 3x more of the product. Sure, the diluted version is good for kids (who cannot be trusted NOT to check the label before swilling a mouthful of concentrate) and for travel, but the concentrate does it's job longer. I love the fact that you can control how hot your mouth will get by changing the amount of water you use. I just don't see why diluted mouthwash is more popular than concentrate.

Cleansing Oil: An experiment

Today I'm going to be experimenting with 3 cleansing oils (because I REALLY don't want to study for my exams tomorrow)!

Warning: very picture heavy.




These are the three I'm going to review:

DHC Cleansing Oil (left) Shu Uemura Skin Purifier (center) Elianto Green Tea Cleansing Oil (right)



First I drew this on my arm: 1) Water only 2) DHC 3) Shu 4) Elianto 5) Control



After 5 strokes of each substance (i washed and dried the finger i used to apply to avoid contamination), it looked like this. The water looked to be the most effective.



After 5 strokes with water, it looked like this. Elianto looked to be the "murkiest."



After 5 more strokes: At this point, it seems as if the Elianto was taking out the most dirt.



Now DHC looked "cleanest." But...



After putting a tissue over, it seems that 3 (Shu) took a lot of marker with it.



But my arm looked like this after it dried. Close up, you can see that the DHC (2) cleaned up most of the line, but left the most residue. Shu (3) and Elianto (4) cleaned up equally well, but Shu (3) left the more residue than Elianto (4).

I don't know if you can generalize it for make-up, but if stain removal on skin is what you're looking for...

General Conclusions:

1. All three cleansing oils (2,3 and 4) did better than the water only (1) condition.
2. Water (1) still had a significant effect compared to the untreated condition.
3. Using a cleansing oil still means you have to rinse it off well.


I, myself, would prefer Elianto as a cleansing oil because of the price difference between it and Shu and DHC.


Edit: You can actually get rid of the marker stain by rubbing it like a madman, but I doubt that's what you want to do with your face.