2 weeks ago on a Friday I decided to try a BB cream that is highly raved from almost every corner in the world. Been reading so many good review on this so I finally got it. I had bought this 2 weeks earlier and I think it’s time to put this to a test and do a review on it. I put this on around 8am and just before I step out for lunch I had a slight itch and burning sensation on my forehead. I thought I was just feeling hot so I didn’t pay much attention to it. After lunch I took a look in the mirror and I can see that my forehead swell up a bit and the texture is uneven. I guess that’s what people called as “bee hive” which will only happen if you have allergy. I am fortunate to have the type of skin that I can slap on anything so I have not had this before and I was clueless. By the time I got off work I couldn’t stand the increasing itch on my face. After I reached home and removed my makeup my mum commented that I was looking pink. By night time I can see that I turned to red and my face is slightly hot when I touch it. Then I knew something is not right. I didn’t apply any skin care that night. But my face was so itchy that I applied Clinique Moisture Surge on because the gel cools my face down. I couldn’t sleep properly that night as it started to get painful. I remember waking up at 3am to look at the mirror. I guess I was hoping that everything will be okay after a sleep but I was wrong. I was still quite red as before and this time my face is swollen. The next morning I woke up with burning hot, maroon color, itchy and painful face. When I looked into the mirror I was horrified. My entire face was so burning red and I was a few tone darker. My face swelled up quite a lot too. I looked like I had severe sun burn. By 9am I rushed to the nearest skin specialist clinic bringing along the said BB cream. Doctor confirmed that I had severe skin allergy and it’s quite bad judging from the fact that I only had the BB cream in less than 9 hours. I was so worried that it’s going to be a permanent damage as my neighbor had the same thing too and it’s permanent for her. Doctor said it is not but will take a longer time to recover so I need to bear going out with this face for some time. I kept asking the doctor if it’s going to be permanent for several more time before leaving the clinic. I was prescribed with anti-itch med for morning and a different one for night as well as a face cream. The culprit? It’s the famous Garnier BB Cream. Hell yeah.

When I mentioned that I had severe skin allergy all I get is “nah, it’s just a normal allergy…it’s not that serious”. Well sorry to say but damn you. You can say that because it doesn’t happen to you and you’re just being naive or shall I say mean? I don’t expect you to understand but try to be sensitive a bit. I do get a lot statement like “why would you try new product on your face”? Huh? Hallo?? If a beauty blogger doesn’t try it on her own face abuthen (the slang for common Singaporeans for “oh yes, it certainly is”) I should try it on your face? You’d be surprise to know these statement are from friends, blogger and even readers. Oh well. These pictures below are as it is. I’m not going to shrink it smaller so that you can see that this is indeed a serious type of skin allergy. So to the insensitive one tell me this is not serious to you???

Day 1 – Saturday

I met up with a friend who had tried the BB cream before and she immediately knew what went wrong when I told her what cause me this. According to her there’s a particular ingredient called Lemon Fruit Extract which can cause such allergy as it’s a very very strong substance for face and it’s meant for whitening. DAMN YOU GARNIER. Don’t you know this?? Or you’re just taking a short cut in terms of whitening? I know lemon can be a powerful remover for household washing detergent but for face?? Are you kidding me Garnier?? I did some search online and it turns out there’s also people who suffer allergy after using this BB cream. Just that they didn’t mention in detail and there’s no picture on how the allergy is. So you can figure out how clueless and devastated I am to have a maroon face for a week. The worse I read is there’s even fluid coming out from the eyes. I’m lucky because I never apply base makeup to my eye area. For some reason I just don’t like to put foundation or BB cream to my eye lid or near my eyes. So thank goodness for that I don’t have things oozing out from my eyes. But I do have burning hot eyes and I hardly can open my eyes because my face is so swollen and stiff at the same time. A lot of people asked me why is both side of my face are more serious than my forehead. That’s because I don’t have much to cover on the forehead so I applied lesser base makeup. My face the the areas that I’d applied more to cover the marks etc. That explains why the redness are all on my face not my forehead. I was practically still the same on Sunday. At that point of time I think the meds and cream are not working. Same thing for Monday. My face are so stiff and painful that I couldn’t smile, laugh or even open my mouth to eat. And I have pimples popping out because my face are burning hot!

Day 3 – Monday

On Tuesday there’s a sudden drastic changes with my skin. My face are still as red as before, itchy and painful. But it started to peel badly. I couldn’t do anything about the peeling because my skin are so sensitive even to touch. There’s no way I can scrub it off or use a toner to remove it because my current skin care sting and painful on my face. Due to the peeling the itch has come back. The so-called bee hive are patchy and getting worse. I lost all hope for recovery from that day after looking at the swelling face and bee hive. For some reason the area around my lips are getting more serious. It started to peel badly and it’s painful to even talk or smile just a bit. When I talk the skin around my lips especially my chin crack and it’s itchy and painful at the same time. Bad combination. And it got worse on Wednesday.

Day 5- Wednesday

When the peeling became bad I started using Marula Oil. Thank goodness it doesn’t sting or painful on my skin. I didn’t warm up the oil like usual because my face couldn’t take it so I only apply in one swipe direction and piled the oil generously on my face at night and another time before I go to sleep. If previous I only need 2 drops for the whole face, this time I need 2 whole dropper amount. This oil gave me the necessary hydration needed as my face are so dry and because of this method the skin on my face are more hydrated especially the severe area around my lips. I even apply Marula Oil before I go to work to help to keep my skin hydrated. It works actually as I can talk, smile, laugh and eat! By Friday my skin started to get better thanks to Marula Oil healing properties. The peeling has lessen quite a bit too. I can see that the bee hive and the swell had tone down quite a lot. At that time I looked pink from near but looked tan from far.

Day 7 – Friday

Here’s the close-up on the area around my mouth. It’s still red but recovering. I should have taken the picture of Tuesday and Wednesday when it’s at the most horrible state. Basically I couldn’t apply any skin care and I was relying heavily on the doctor’s cream. When I ran out of the cream (it’s a very small pot) I got panic and demand to go back to the doctor for a bigger jar of cream. After I calm down I realize I should stop replying the doctor. Afterall how long can I do this. I was lucky to have a bottle of Marula Oil at home which act as a moisturizer and healing oil for my face. No toner, no eye cream no nothing else. On Friday I attended a mini event and I chatted a bit with the beauty trainer on my skin allergy. I told him I can’t put anything on and I didn’t know what to do and what to use because my skin now is so thin and sensitive but dry at the same time. He told me when he had skin allergy and sun burn previously he only can use Simple. Simple is very very mild and it’s meant for sensitive skin. Or he said I can opt for Cetaphil. I’ve heard about Cetaphil and I decided to buy it from Guardian after the event. He said it’s quite pricey but I think it’s around 50+ for the cleanser. So I went to Guardian to check out Cetaphil. I thought of getting the moisturizer too but it’s quite pricey so I walked over to Simple to look around. Gosh. The cleanser or moisturizer is not more than RM20! Then I saw a trial kit selling for RM20 and I bought the kit. So far so good and it suits my skin very well. Huge thank you to this wonderful person who intro me to Simple For the past 1 week + this is what I used or take to treat my skin allergy.

If you ask me if I regretted using the BB cream I’d say NO. If I didn’t use it I wouldn’t know it’s this crappy and causes such problem even to no problem skin like mine. And I’m glad I used it first before posting up a review otherwise those with sensitive skin might get the allergy too. I can always post up something on the BB cream but I’m not that type of a blogger. This is what I do as a beauty blogger and there’s no regret. I’d still continue to try new products even after this experience but this time I’m going to do a 24 hours patch test first. I left a Facebook message on Garnier wall asking for the brand person email address because there’s no “PM” function available and apparently they decided to ignore me. Stupid move. You must at least attend to my message and not ignoring when problem arise. So Garnier if you read this you better contact me. Ignoring what happen to me doesn’t solve the issue. Just because I’m being nice doesn’t mean you cant treat me like a piece of trash. If it’s not because I’m busy treating my face I’d have make a big fuss already. CONTACT ME! Now my face condition is stuck at what you see from Day 7. Slightly less red but uneven skin tone and my face is at least 2 tone darker. Seriously this product looks like ACID more than BB cream.

The post My First Severe Skin Allergy + A Bit of Rambling appeared first on Street Love. by Fiona

First of all sorry for the super late review post that I was suppose to post up earlier. I was piled with lots of backlog last month and I’m glad I can finally get to my precious Marula Oil review now. Hope it’s not too late!

Last month I attended the Malaysia launch and did a brand introduction post on Marula Oil from The Leakey Collection. I also helped with inviting a few of my blogger friends to attend this exclusive and intimate launch. Hope you’ve been reading that previously as I’m not going to elaborate deeply into how, what and why but instead I’m going to review the product after using it for more than a month now.

Marula Oil is an East African product long-renowned for it’s superb anti-aging and healing properties. It is wild-harvested from marula nuts in East Africa and cold-pressed to retain it’s full goodness. Did you know that a 54 kilos of marula nut is needed to produce into this 50ml bottle? Now you know. Marula Oil is different from any other beauty oil that you’ve heard for example argan oil. It contain more oleic acids and antioxidants than grapeseed or organ oil.

Each bottle is packaged in a paper box securely. The inner lid with a hole tucked on the top cap of the bottle so that the bottle is not able to move that easily in the box. The shelf life of the product is 3 years. Once opened it is recommended to finish the bottle within 6 months.

Marula Oil from The Leakey Collected is the purest facial oil that I or you can find in the market. It is expensive because it is so pure that it’s made from 99% of Marula Oil and the rest is a blend of essential oil fragrance. There are other brand of marula oil selling cheaper but it’s not 99% made from marula oil therefore it’s selling for a cheaper price. I’m glad I didn’t see any other brand of marula oil in the market here in Malaysia beside this

Each bottle is sealed with a security sticker bearing the name Marula at the back. I’m always excited and happy when I see a security sticker. It is an assurance that the bottle is new and unopened. Tear it off and you are good to go!

Call me a noob but I’ve never seen such a dropper bottle before. Marula Oil bottle comes with an automatic pump glass dropper! When I twist the cap, the top part of the cap automatic revealed itself. That means it automatically pumped the oil up to the glass vial. All I need to do is to gently press on the top of the cap to drop a few drops onto my palm. That’s it. It’s really very easy and convenient to use. Making me not lazy to implement this facial oil into my night regime.

The first thing my nose picked up when I took off the cap is lavender. I’m sure my nose picked up a tiny bit of marula oil smell but I guess lavender dominant it lol. Not too bad since I like lavender and it’s really calming taking a sniff even before patting on the face.

I was told that just 2 drops is enough and sufficient for the whole face and neck. At first I used 2 drops but later on finds that I needed more so I put on 2 drops first and another one or two drops on top. I always go with 2 drops first.

Marula Oil is different because it is fast absorbing. Due to its high levels of oleic (omega-9 acid at 60-70% concentrations) it easily penetrates the skin and provides longer lasting hydration. It is also an excellent source of topical antioxidants. This free radical fighting capability is very important for skin healing and anti-aging. It is also an excellent moisturizer that can help plump up skin to reduce fine lines. Just look at how plump the back of my hand is as soon as the oil absorbed in! The before and after picture below says a thousand words

Besides it’s anti-aging and hydration power, Marula Oil is also known for it’s healing power and are currently widely used by women who undergo cancer radiation treatment.

Dr. Kaidi undertook a 24 patient clinical study to determine the efficacy of Marula Oil in treating damaged skin following radiation therapy for breast cancer. Patients were divided into 2 treatment groups. Patients in group 1 were instructed to apply the Marula Oil to affected skin twice daily for skin healing, while group 2 patients were instructed to apply a skin moisturizer. The patients were examined weekly for 6 weeks. The Marula Oil treated group had a more rapid resolution of erythema and edema. Patients described Marula Oil as soothing and fast absorbing.

I’ve been using Marula Oil continuously every night after eye care before my usual skin care. It gave me a similar result that a hydrating moisturizer gave me. The only different is this only require 2 drops. I always woke up to a supple skin. To be honest ever since I started using Marula Oil my foundation glides on smoothly onto my skin. Not only waking up to a supple skin, I find that I have brighter skin too. It’s amazing that this bottle have all the goodness; anti-aging, hydrating, brightening. Soon I can foresee myself cutting down the rest of my skin care in the nearest future. Being an avid beauty/facial oil user I kinda like this one. It’s pretty much like a skin care comparing to Clarins Lotus Face Treatment Oil which is more like a treatment oil for oily or breakout skin. So there’s a different with Marula Oil if you ask me.

On the weekend where I don’t put on any skin care or make up, I will only put on Marula Oil. I don’t find it oily or sticky at all eventhough I’ve been walking around town for some errands. And when I took a short afternoon nap I woke up with a beautiful brighter skin. Oh and I know you must be wondering if it broke out on me. The answer is NO

It’s hard to put in words how wonderful Marula Oil is to the skin unless you try it personally. Marula Oil is suitable for all skin type even oily skin. This will balance out the oil secretion if you have oily or combination skin. If you are allergy to nut, apply a small amount on the back of your hand and leave it for a few hours. If you have no irritation or allergy effect that means it is safe for you to use. It takes a lot of courage to put oil onto the face. But once you’ve tried you’d fall in love with facial oil like me

Disclaimer: Product was sent to me for review consideration. This doesn’t affect my judgement in the review in any way.

Want to try Marula Oil too? Here’s how you can get a sample sachet from me courtesy of Newage Sdn Bhd! Only 20 sachet available.

Email me (fiona[at]street-love[dot]net) a picture of your problem skin condition and tell me briefly the skin condition that you are facing currently. Also include your Name and Address as I’ll be posting out the sachet if I find that it is suitable for you to try.

The post Review: Marula Oil; The Purest Facial Oil From The Leakey Collection appeared first on Street Love. by Fiona

Happy Monday girls! I’m away on an eco-camp today but I’ve not forgotten about you. Here’s another new brand introduction that as launched not more than 2 weeks ago. Be back real soon. *Hugs*

I believe everyone had heard of Argan Oil before but have you heard about Marula Oil? The word “oil” triggers my interest level to the maximum because I’m an avid user and firm believer in facial oil. When May from Newage Sdn Bhd contacted me about this new product blogger launch and that she needed my help to gather my blogger friends, I jumped right in.

The new product that I was talking about is Marula Oil – The Leakey Collection. It has only been in the market since January 2012 and it’s now in Malaysia.

So what is Marula Oil? Marula Oil is an East African product long-renowned for it’s superb anti-aging and healing properties. It’s the first and a part of The Leakey Collection.

The blogger launch is held at Delicious Mid Valley. It’s a small intimate group of bloggers gathered to meet Katy and Philip Leakey who’s the Founder of Leakey Collection; a lifestyle company focusing on fair trader enterprises. The company deal directly with the Maasai community to ensure that they are reimbursed in full for their work. The company created thousand of job, empowering the African communities they work with as well as encourage economic savviness and independence among the local women who are traditionally viewed as non-breadwinners.

Philip Leakey was raised in Kenya and Tanzania. He’s the third son of paleo-anthropologist Drs. Louis and Mary Leakey. In 1979 he became the first and only white Kenyan elected to Parliament. He was also made a full Cabinet Minister for Environmental and Natural Resources in 1992. In 2002 the company Leakey Collection is founded with his lovely wife; Katy.

Katy Leakey was born and raised in Southern California. She’s an artist, public speaker, columnist and entrepreneur before marrying Philip and relocating permanently to Kenya in 2001. Her parents founded the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, named for Dr. Louis B. Leakey and funding various anthropological studies worldwide.

This lovely couple is the most interesting people I ever met. Both of them are so in love with what they do, their product, full with passion and their community works. Katy and Philip reminds me very much of my ex-CEO Kate and her husband David.

The nuts you see in the below picture is called Marula Nuts. It’s wild harvested in East Africa and cold-pressed to retain it’s full goodness. It contains more oleic acids and antioxidants than grapeseed or argan oil. Suitable for all ages and skin types, this light oil quickly absorbed into the skin to moisturize, combat aging and repair skin damage. As a results the skin is more softer, supple, more elastic, free from fine lines, wrinkles and blemishes. Exactly what I need.

Marula Oil has also proven especially beneficial for breast cancer survivors where it’s use accelerated the healing of burns and blisters from post-radiation treatments. Women using Marula Oil found their surgical scars faded more quickly and healed faster. All these is based on clinical studies conducted by Dr. Ashton Kaidi.

I like the bottle design and the dropper system. Not gonna explain in detail here. You gotta wait for my product review which is coming real soon. All I can hint to you is that it’s not greasy, it’s scentless and fast absorbant. Each bottle of 50ml will need 54 kilos of Marula Nuts as it’s 99% of Marula Oil! Go figure

All of us took turn to ask questions about Marula Oil, it’s benefits, usage, future plans and expansion and many more. Here Katy is explaining to us on how superstitious belief of not to apply oil onto combination or oily skin is not true at all. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve mentioned many times before and I need to mention this again. If you have combination or oily skin you really need to apply facial oil. Facial oil will give you that hydration your skin needs and your skin will produce lesser oil. This is from my personal experience

Katy was kind enough to share with us interesting pictures on their life in Kenya such as the Maasai people and their community, Maasai wedding ceremony, the marula tree, their pets, managers and many more.

There are so many photo opportunity going on and I couldn’t resist asking for a picture with the lovely couple.

And lastly a group photo.

The post Brand Introduction + Blogger Launch: Marula Oil – The Leakey Collection appeared first on Street Love. by Fiona

More than a week ago Katy and Philip Leakey met up with a few bloggers on their “miracle oil” called Marula Oil here in Malaysia. Personally I’m obsessed with facial oil so I was pumped up and excited the whole session

Yesterday we are featured in Marula website! I was mentioned in the article too that I’m proponent about facial oil. So true.

For the full article you can visit http://www.marula.com/_blog/Marula/post/Welcome_newest_Marula_Beauties/#.UJN6lWlrbom. I will post up the brand introduction of Marula Oil as well as product review soon after that.

Stay tune.

The post I’m Featured in Marula Oil Website appeared first on Street Love. by Fiona