Beauty Review: Dr Denese’s Advanced Firming Facial Pads

Dr Denese’s Advanced Firming Facial Pads are now one of my favorite skin care products! I'm very impressed with what this product does to my skin so read on to find out the details!

Promise:
"...delivers a profound firming effect over time. Each pad delivers the prefect dose of exfoliation, improves radiance, even out skin tone and clarity. It dramatically reduces the look of lines, wrinkles and it drastically shrinks the look of pores."

Product Profile in Short:
"...professional-grade glycolic peel delivers the perfect dose of daily exfoliation and firming effect. Each pad is infused with innovative ingredients such as peptides, high percentage glycolic acid and alpha lipoic acid to address lines and wrinkles, uneven skin tone, large pores, and lack of radiance to the skin."


Close-up on Active Ingredients:
Water (aqua), Glycolic Acid (+10%), Propylene Glycol, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Polysorbate 20, Hydrolyzed Rice Protein, Avena Sativa (Oat) Protein, Palmitoyl Oligopeptide, Tetrapeptide-7 Glycerin, Butylene Glycol, Carbomer, Yeast Extract, Zea Mays, Ascorbic Acid, Retinyl Palmitate, Tocopherol Acetate, Thioctic Acid, Triethanolamine, Diisopropyl Dimer Dilinoleate, Diiostearyl Dimer Dilinoleate, Orzanol, Ubiquinone, Sodium PCA, Trisodium EDTA, Potasium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate, Phenoxyethanol
The key ingredient of these pads is glycolic acid. What glycolic acid does is exfoliate stratum corneum (higher layer) of your skin and helps your skin to get rid of the dead old cells and expose the new live cells this way effectively helping to improve skin's appearance and texture. Glycolic acid is used by skin care professionals to help reduce wrinkles, acne scarring, hyperpigmentation etc. In addition to glycolic acid Advanced Firming Facial Pads
contain other peeling ingredients such as Ascorbic Acid and Retinyl Palmitate for example. Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C) has strong anti-oxidant properties, it stimulates collagen synthesis and has also been proven to improve condition of photoaged skin and reverse some of the sun damage. Retinyl Palmitate is a form of Vitamin A. When absorbed into the skin it gets converted to retinol which, as most of us know, helps to renew and rejuvenate skin.
I also see several peptides on the ingredient list which boost collagen production as well.
There are some plants extracts among the ingredients. For example, Aloe leaf juice is an effective anti-oxidant and has strong anti-inflammatory properties.

Experience:
Texture: premoistened cotton pads, soft, really soaked in the product
Fragrance: i see no fragrance on the list but it definitely has some artificial fragrance added
I was very afraid to try this product. I have somewhat sensitive skin and I was sure I will just react badly and will be burning red.
According to the directions on the package, those with normal and oily skin can use Advanced firming pads daily. You should start slowly and build up the rubbing time to 30-60 seconds. Following recommendations provided, I rubbed a cotton moistened pad on my skin at night after cleansing my skin. The first time I was so worried I did it for several seconds and then in 10 seconds I was already washing my face scared that the stining was too strong... To my greatest surprise I did not get any irritation. So I continued using the Advanced Firming Pads every evening. In a couple days I built up some courage and did not wash my face afterwards. Results were very impressing and almost immediate! In a matter of days I would wake up to a fresher smoother complexion, looking better with every day! Actually immediately after application my skin felt so soft and smooth to touch it was amazing… I love this product. Skin exfoliation becomes a key to a fresh smooth complexion when you hit mid-twenties because your skin just doesnt renew itself so fast anymore... so all the dead cells just build up on its surface and it starts to look dull and tired and rough. Finding the right product to exfoliate your skin is crucial. It cannot be irritating and it has to be strong enough to be effective. Dr Denese’s Advanced Firming Facial Pads work miracles for me!

Price Tag:
$35 for a jar with 60 pads

Bottom Line:
It's a great product! I would make this product a regular in my routine. However maybe to keep on the safe side I would avoid using it in the summer and reserve it for autumn and spring.


FTC Product Review Disclaimer: The author of this blog received a sample product for this review.

Beauty Digest: Jessica Simpson’s Beauty Show on MTV

Have you seen Simpson’s beauty show on MTV and vh1? It's called The Price of Beauty . I love the idea! Together with her two friends CaCee Cobb, Jess' ex-assistant, and Ken Paves, hair stylist, she is traveling the globe and discovering what’s considered beautiful in different countries. At the same time Jess is learning about various beauty secrets and tricks and sharing her discoveries with viewers. I’ve always been curious about differences in beauty perceptions and beauty values between different cultures. In some places it’s hair or thin ankles that are key attractive features in a woman, in others being thin is beautiful in others the same virtue is considered a sign of sickness. It’s also interesting to find out what the roots of those differences are. And even more captivating is to learn about beauty secrets and measures women take around the world to achieve perfection and to fight skin aging. For example, I know that Japanese women believe in consuming collagen infused foods/drinks to help them fight aging, in Slavic cultures they have hundreds of herb and fruit based recepies to help achieve or retain skin beauty and youth. Unfortunately I don’t have time to watch each and every episode of Jessica’s wonderful show but a couple series I saw were lots of fun and very informative.

Beauty Preview: Dr. Denese Skin Care Products

This is what I love about beauty blogging… You get to discover amazing brands, products and lines that probably you would have never tried… I was contacted by Dr Denese promotional team and asked if I would like to test one of their products… I looked at the website and saw among many other interesting products the Baggage Lost Puff Reducing Eye Gel
You can imagine how curious I got… I mean, any brand that has a special product for under eye bags and eye puffiness is on my must-try list! I definitely think this problem is overlooked by skin care brands. There should be more special products developed to help deal with it.

Here is a bit of background on Dr Denese. Born in Hungary, Dr Denese started creating skin care products as early as 9 ears of age. She has been involved in skin care and anti-aging research all her life. Currently, having world class medical education and extensive experience, Dr Denese develops a variety of products for a wide range of skin care and skin aging issues. Dr Denese says what makes her products different from others is that she uses high concentrations of advanced active ingredients clinically proven to work.

Coming up are 3 reviews of the three products I’ve tried:

the Baggage Lost Puff Reducing Eye Gel

Advanced Firming Facial Pads


Wrinkle Rx - Deep Wrinkle Environmental Shield Serum

Beauty Radar: Poof! Fighting Eye Puffiness!

Here are a couple eye care products I came across recently that attracted my attention. They all target the problem of eye puffiness! I think they look very interesting and would like to try them out:

Kiehl’s Facial Fuel Eye De-Puffer - Contains caffeine and hibiscus and promises to revive tired eyes.

Clinique All About Eyes Serum comes in a tube with a roller ball. Promises to increase blood circulation and reduce puffiness.

The Baggage Lost Puff Reducing Eye Gel by Dr.Denese. It contains almond, aloe, grapeseed extracts as well as the de-puffing caffeine. I actually had a chance to test this one. I’ll post about it next.

Let me know if you have tried any of these and what you think!

Beauty Find: Reusable Revolution - Eco-Friendly Cosmetic Solutions

Recently we had relatives visiting with us for a week and that was not only fun but very educational! I learnt a lot about healthy vegetarian diet, meditation and what it really means to be eco-friendly… One of the new concepts I learnt is the "reusable" approach to things you use in your daily life. Not only can you apply it to your shopping bag but you can take one step further and start using reusable face cotton rounds and wiping tissues! Do you ever think how many of those makeup cotton rounds we use daily, weekly… monthly… I personally don’t even pay attention to how many I go through. But it appears there are reusable cotton rounds to remove makeup from your eyes and face available. They are made from high-quality ecological cotton and are soooo super-soft and smooth. Here, I got a link for you http://betterforgrownups.com/ However, am not sure about the shipping policy and if they are available in Europe…

Beauty Shopping: Dior All-In-One Artistry Palette 008 Smoky Design

Recently I have been drawn like a magnet to Dior makeup. Just about a month ago I invested into a limited edition gold eye shadow. And now I got a palette of 5 shadows. I have been eyeing this palette for a long long time. I wanted a good palette for doing a smoky gray-silver-black eye. What I was looking for is a combination of shades that would allow me to vary intensity of the smoky eye makeup. Dior All-In-One Artistry Palette 008 Smoky Design has 5 shades from white to dark (liner dark black).

Before making the final decision I made sure I consider all of my options and asked the sales assistant to put next to each other various smoky eye palettes to see which I like most. Between Chanel, Lancome, Estee Lauder and Dior, the latter came out the winner.

Promise a review soon!