skincare reviews

My Skin Care & Makeup Hits of 2022 | Diwablog 1

/ Srishty / 2 Comments

Sounds like an year end post, but let’s take it as a mid-year taking stock, shall we? I am going to dive right into it, please tell me your skin care & makeup hits in the comments! I would love to know yours.

Also, go till the end to see the star of this post!

Shesha Ayurveda Rose Water: Admittedly, I haven’t used a wide variety of rose waters, but this is a way purer upgrade than the widely popular Dabur Gulabari. Now, to be honest, I consider this also expensive for something as frivolous as rose water, but considering people are into buying rose water from way more expensive brands in India, I would consider this a sweet spot – pure as well as not super expensive. I wholeheartedly recommend.

Jo Malone English Pear & Freesia: I have already talked about it in my favorites here. Jo Malone fragrances are love. Nothing more to be said. As I am exploring more fragrances by them, its becoming increasingly difficult to choose just one as the most favorite.

Earth Rhythm Sunscreen: Its difficult to explain my love for this one. I basically started using this brand for supporting a cause. Have written about it here. I have lately started to feel that it doesn’t stand for that anymore. However, like I have mentioned in the post as well, I use some of their products for the feel good factor and that’s where this sunscreen comes in. I’ll stop using this the moment I find a better alternative but here’s why I love it – extremely comfortable on skin, no white cast, some people say it makes my face glow. As for helping with tanning, I don’t know. I have never felt with any sunscreen that they help me with strong sun rays.

Aroma Magic Sunscreen Cucumber: This was a fun product to use – what I mean is this brand has been in our lives since a long time, probably when our parents were kids but it has evolved over time to suit the customer demands, be it in terms of products or packaging. I admire them for it, their jazzy packaging is always appreciable and for this one, I loved both the fragrance and feel of the sunscreen on my face. Not to mention this product is extremely cheap!

Disguise Cosmetics Eyeshadow Palette: This is one of those eco-conscious, new-age, hipster cosmetics brands in India and I just happened to try it randomly. To be honest, the eyeshadows are very basic, nothing amazing and nothing bad but they still feature on my favorites purely and purely for the packaging. I mean look at it!

indian makeup products
My holographic makeup box is pretty (and entirely the reason for buying it 😦 )

Fashion Color Makeup Spray: The star of this post. Here’s the story on how I ended up using and loving this completely local, unknown makeup spray that I seem to love more than the Benefit Super Setter. There, I said it. I basically was at a local cosmetics shop near my home a couple of days before my wedding to get a few jewelry pieces rented that we didn’t get made as part of my customized gold and diamond polki set (examples) (those were things like headpieces which don’t get used later on). In India, its pretty common for some local cosmetics shops to have these things as well. So, I was there for that and my mom and I just happened to discuss that I am going to buy a makeup setting spray. This woman at the counter overheard us and she literally forced me to buy this particular makeup setting spray. I was not keen as it was an unheard of brand but I went along since there was no reason why she would force as buying another brand would have meant more money for her. Its one of the best makeup products I have used over the years in terms of ‘getting the job done’. I don’t know if its available outside India, but I have linked it so that you can see how it looks and purchase it whenever you see it!

That’s it from my side, now its your turn! 🙂

Need a petty suggestion! | Monday Mumbles

/ Srishty / 6 Comments

This is probably my most impulsive post ever. I was reading some new posts in my feed when a thought caught me and I wanted a suggestion from readers of my space. Incidentally its also Monday. So, its a Monday Mumbles post in its truest sense. 😀

If you don’t know what this Monday Mumbles series of mine is, you can read old posts here and this post on what it is.

So, here’s the thing – I love reading all these low-buy skincare posts and, in general, product empties kind of posts. I realized I would love to do these myself, but the thing is I am not a product hoarder, so I don’t have a lot to show when it comes to empties or low-buy. I am anyway on low-buy. 😀 I am definitely considering doing an annual empties post but that also means keeping bottles etc with me till the end of the year. That thought isn’t too exciting. I wanted your suggestions on how I can incorporate these fun product opinions kind of posts in my blog and, actually, what you as a reader, would also enjoy? To seed your thoughts –

  1. Would you like reading single product reviews of something I am using? If that seems interesting, I can even considering food products, something I actually use a lot of. 😀
  2. Maybe a monthly favorites? This seems really interesting, but, of course, requires effort and keeping an eye out for what you are enjoying.
  3. Time to time just reviewing my stash of things – lipsticks, books, coffee – the likes?

Do leave in your comments, even if it means you saying I don’t care or enjoy any of these kind of posts. 🙂

If you want to share or ask something in the next Monday Mumbles, please drop me an email at srish.myblog@gmail.com.

If you liked this, check out more of my latest posts:

My 2 year long relationship with Earth Rhythm

/ Srishty / 3 Comments

Earth Rhythm is a skincare brand in India (previously known as Soapworks India). Their brand ethos is to create non-toxic skin care products that can be used by anyone who is sensitive to OTC skincare. I think it launched because the founder’s son had a syndrome due to which he couldn’t use OTC skincare.

I have been using Earth Rhythm for more than 2 years and I remember that because I started using their products right after my wedding. It was when this brand was known as “Soapworks India”, in case anyone knows. Just for the record, I loved the older name more.

I started using them simply because I loved their eco-friendly packaging at that time and not just because it was sustainable but also because the packaging was hell cute while being at it. I decided to write this post essentially for two reasons –

  • I have used a lot of products from their product lines. Something that would be true for very few cosmetic brands as I use very few products in general and they are usually picked with a purpose in mind, so they may or may not be from a single brand.
  • At the time Earth Rhythm launched, it was a fairly new concept in India – Indian skin care brands that are standalone and Indie and running their own production for whatever reason (Sustainability, clean beauty – a term I am not aligned to btw)

As I mentioned, I wanted to buy their first product because of their beautiful packaging but I ended up picking a basic looking moisturizer as I needed one at the time. I ended up enjoying it. I have several empty jars of the same stashed at my home even now (they were running a recycling campaign at that time so I saved them but they shut that campaign due to COVID).

Since then, I have used their cleansing balms, lip tint, a propolis serum, their solid shampoo bar (one of their cult products) and one sunscreen. I have also recommended their shampoo bars to curly haired friends because I see rave reviews online by curly haired people and my friends loved the bars. I think I am in a good position now to say what I feel about their products –

1. I love using most of their products. Almost all of the products have a soothing feeling to them. You know, like instant feel good on application.

2. What baffles and disappoints me as a customer is that almost none of the products have stood out for me as a solution to a problem. Not even the lip tint. The lip tint gave very basic tint which was barely visible after few minutes and because their products are formulated in a ‘natural’ way, the lip tint formulation in the pot also changed pretty quickly. I loved using the moisturizer, sunscreen, the cleansing balm and propolis serum because of the way they felt on my skin, so soothing and loving, but they didn’t do anything as a problem solution. For example, one of the cleansing balms mentions black head removal on usage which I don’t think I was even counting on and, of course, it didn’t happen. Essentially, I would not go for these products if I was looking for a solution to acne, wrinkles etc.

3. This brings me to my third and most important point. What do you feel about the term ‘clean beauty’ or non-toxic skincare? There are a lot of beauty brands these days who are marketing their products as ‘clean beauty’. This means a product formulated on the principle of “you only put on your skin what you can eat”. I don’t see a very relevant point here and I sort of agree with those beauty gurus who believe in solution based formulations. Just because something is a ‘chemical’ and is not edible, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be put on your skin. In fact, everything is a chemical composition. So why not put something on your skin that’s coming from an expert and is proven to provide a solution to your skin worries? Earth Rhythm is not a brand who harps on the concept of ‘clean beauty’ so it’s not like they are doing any deceptive marketing. But what they do is that they have tried to create a plant based or some other alternative of a proven chemical, something I am not able to appreciate (as i didn’t see a lot of results).

4. Their topmost cult products are their shampoo bars which seem to be working great for a lot of people, including me. I’ll be honest – it’s a pain to use a solid shampoo bar compared to the conventional liquid shampoos that we are used to. Comment below if you would want me to explain how to use solid shampoo bars. Nevertheless, you notice the good effects of a solid bar from the first use itself. Solid shampoo bars in general are less harsh for your scalp and hair, and these Earth Rhythm solid shampoo bars are just gold standard. If you are planning to start your journey with solid shampoo bars, you should definitely try Earth Rhythm’s solid shampoo bars.

In conclusion, I would like to mention that this is a brand I truly enjoy using for the feel good factor and I may continue buying from them, especially things that fit very well into my routine like cleansing balms for makeup removal, reusable cleansing pads, solid shampoo bars etc, but if I was looking for a solution to a skin problem, I would go for solution-based product or, better still, go for dermatologist recommended products.

Don’t miss the no-plastic packaging