Skincare Haul ft. Skinfood+Moonshot+More

A few weeks ago I enjoyed a short trip to Korea + Taiwan. As you’d expect, I had one main goal to achieve – buy alllllllll the things. When I spent the night before returning home packing and shoving and throwing out all the beautiful, beautiful packaging I thought I had done pretty well. I had left Australia with about 8kg of essentials and returned with a fat and bloated suitcase clocking in at just over 20kg (damn you Cathay Pacific and your cut off dates. FYI if you book a ticket with them now you get a 30kg allowance)

Now that I’ve finally had time to sit down and photograph my spoils I’m disappointed I didn’t check off more stuff from my wishlist, but there are good reasons other than the weight issue. I knew a lot of the items I wanted were going to be heavy so I was prepared to stock up on more items and ship it over. Turns out it wasn’t necessary.

SO IF LUGGAGE ALLOWANCE WASN’T AN ISSUE,

WHY DIDN’T I BUY EVERYTHING ON MY WISHLIST?

Not all the cosmetics are cheaper in Korea. I was unlucky enough to go at a time when the sales were tame and for a lot of items, the prices online were definitely cheaper/the same.

FAIR ENOUGH, SO WHAT ARE MY TIPS MY BUYING COSMETICS IN SEOUL?

Check out this post for my experiences and tips when I was in Seoul.

COOL BEANS. SO WHAT DID YOU GET?

Let's take it from the top.

C L E A N S E R S

Clockwise from top left

Moonshot Perfect Cleansing Oil

Neogen Green Tea Foaming Cleanser

Skinfood Black Sugar Cleansing Oil

Belif Cleansing Stick

Centre

Unpretty Rapstar Master Cleansing Balm

Originally I wasn't keen on Moonshot skincare but the pretty pink cleansing oil was half price wooooop. I've got another confession to make: sometimes, gimmicks get to me too and the Neogen Green Tea Cleansing Foam was a very attractive product with real green tea leaves slow dancing in the bottle. Apparently the pH is higher than 5.5, so I promise you and me both that if this screws up my face it'll be the last gimmicky cleanser that I buy XD

T O N E R S

Left to right

Holika Holika Good Cera Toner

Land Museum Toner

Goodal Water Oil Toning Lotus

Son&Park Beauty Water deluxe and full sizes

Toners can be a grey area. Some are pH adjusting, some are an initial hydrating step and others form part of the 'triple cleanse' ritual. For a while I was very content using the Klairs Supple Preparation Facial Toner because I thought it did all of these, then I started testing the Beauty Water on one side of my face. I compared them side to side on a cotton pad and boy it is so much better at removing residue.

S E R U M S

Left to right

Goodal Moisture Barrier Liquid full size and sample size

Bio-essence Bird's Nest Serum

I didn't know how to classify the Goodal Moisture Barrier Liquid - according to the package it's a multipurpose product. The Bio-essence Bird's Nest Serum was a purchase I regret buying and I haven't even used it yet. The story is I was too mousey to stand up for myself at a Watson's in Taiwan. The sales assistant was being really pushy and wouldn't leave me alone, so I bought this and fucked off to another Watson's where I could browse shit in peace.

M O I S T U R I S E R S  +  L I P  B A L M S

I don't even know how to describe the positioning of these products lol

Etude House Honey Cera Lipbalms

Aritaum Ginger Sugar Lipbalm

Bycream Waterful Cream

Goodal Moisture Barrier Cream

Holika Holika Good Cera Ultra Emulsion

Apparently Bycream is one of the newbies of the magical skincare realm. I was at Watson's and they had a dedicated salesperson who roped me in with one of those skin analysis tests where they taste multiple HQ photos of your skin and you see how awful it looks, freak out and buy the jar of salvation that must be the answer to saving your skin. 

H A N D  C R E A M S 

Goodal Hand creams

These all came in a heavily discounted Goodal gift set. I've only used the cherry blossom so far which hides my dry flaky skin for about 30 minutes.

S U N S C R E E N S

Top, left to right

Land Museum 

A'Pieu Pure Block Aqua Sun Gel

Middle, left to right

Scinic Mild Sun Essence

Too Cool For School Waterfull Sun Essence

Bottom, left to right

Scinic Aqua Fresh Sun gel

Moonshot High Cut Sun Cream

I don't know how this happened. I went to Korea wanting just the A'Pieu sunscreens and then there was a 60% sale for Scinic products that somebody raved about on IG. Aland had a 1+1 sale on sunscreens and I'm slightly obsessed with Too Cool For School and Moonshot.

Right. That's how it happened. 

Anyway, that's the end of my haul. Have you tried any of these goodies before? Tell me about you love/hate relationship with them, I do love stories.

Until next time,

Vivien | IG @vistillhere