A slam dunk gunkfest: snap-prone stack pots

Travel pots going nowhere with offending sliver

It's been a while since I last wrote a beauty-related post...As you can see in the side bar, I have a(n) (wholly) involuntary Ebuzzing beauty blog ranking to maintain(!), so I thought I would take this opportunity to vent my frustration at a recent beauty product malfunction - one that has happened several times in fact, and to products from different retailers - to wit, stack pots made of such flimsy plastic that bits shear off at the drop of a hat.  Or rather they break off if you attempt to screw the pots together, which is rather the point of a 'stack', I would have thought.

The trouble started with a set of stack pots from Superdrug which I was using to decant travel-sized portions of various lotions: typically foundation, night cream and texturising 'product' for my hair (my beloved Label M to be specific).  In no time at all a sliver of plastic had sheared off the pot containing foundation, with dual consequences: air gets in and dries out the foundation to a useless crud, and a messily coated - and sharp - shard of pot drops into one's sponge bag or (God forbid) handbag, gaily smearing foundation on everything it touches.

I was irritated, but put it down to experience.  Perhaps I should spend a bit more and invest in more robust pots, which is the argument I always use when I persist in buying cheap Tupperwares from Poundland with flaps that detach from the lid with the ease of a wiggly tooth hanging by a thread.  Maybe if I put the broken flaps under my pillow the Poundland fairy would give me my pound back?  (On the premise that there must have been some inflationary effect since the sixpences of my youth.)

Congealing, not concealing...

So anyway, I toddled along to Boots and bought another set of stack pots that cost a little bit more - though it isn't exactly a premium item to be fair- and proceeded to fill them with more unguents of one sort or another.  Several days later, the same thing happened - at multiple points in the stack.  More splinter shrapnel - 'you could put your eye out with that', I can just hear my mother intone - more wandering gunk syndrome, more desiccated residue in the broken pot.

And now I feel stuck...I go away quite a bit, and would balk at the prospect of having to take full-sized containers of all my various items of beauty gubbins.  But these so-called travel pots clearly can't be trusted to travel - or not even not to travel - merely to behave as orderly receptacles on my dressing table seems to be a big ask.

Has anyone else experienced this particular travel aid malfunction or any other one involving a beauty product which they would like to get off their chest?  A claggy mascara, perhaps, or a lipstick with an ill-fitting cap?  I must say I get quite cross with bottles of shampoo and suchlike whose nozzles clog up when they are only half used.  I invariably have to take the flippy lid of the pump dispenser off and try to squeeze the stuff out through the inner tube below.  'Used by professionals' it says on the label of my Tresemme conditioner, to which I would add: 'but only once'.

Or perhaps some reader could have a crack at topping this alliterative description of the problem:

'Shockingly snap-prone stack pots shed sharply sheared-off shards'.

Oh, and my google image searches of 'stack pots beauty products' - just to check I was calling them by the correct term, you understand - threw up this unexpected image in the first row...  These giraffes from Anthropologie are undoubtedly cute and arguably more robust than small plastic containers, but conspicuously lack a reclosable lid.

Oh, and I know it is nothing to do with beauty products, but have you noticed how the walls of cheap PET bottles of drinking water are getting thinner?  Take a single swig and they contract in the middle like a wasp-waisted Victorian in an unforgiving corset.  This phenomenon is called 'panelling', I do remember from my time as a fruit juice product manager in the 80s.  But knowing its name doesn't make the imploding trick any less annoying.

Garnier Miracle Skin Perfector Daily All-In-One B.B Blemish Balm Cream Review - A Palate-Cleansing Scentless Post

In a comment on my previous post, Katie Puckrik teased me about the ambitious scope of my two hour speed romp through Zurich's finest perfume outlets:

"Judging from the amount of perfumes covered in this post, you have fully lived up to your Flittersniffer moniker. I'm wondering if your Miller Harris ennui had something to do with the fact that you'd already given the best of your love to the 79 fragrances previously sniffed."

I realise that my sniffathon in swish Swiss shops was the perfume equivalent of a supermarket trolley dash, but that is the thing about living in the sticks, as I do most of the time: when you are lucky to find yourself in one of Europe's scent meccas, you want to pack as much in as possible. But between the afternoon in Zurich, the session in Parfumerie Hyazinth in Basel, and the cafe grab-fest that preceded it, I guess I am feeling a bit sniffed out now, while readers' heads may also be spinning. And so I decided to take a break from perfume and write a palate-cleansing post about a beauty product instead.

This is also a cynical move on my part to boost my flagging Wikio Beauty Blog ranking, given that I managed to acquire this mysterious categorisation in the first place. And ideally, I guess I should be taking a chocolate-based beauty product as my subject matter, the better to bolster my emerging Klout reputation for chocolate-themed writing. Quite by chance, I did once feature such a product following my initiation into eyebrow waxing, but you can't pull a stunt like that off every day.

So in the meantime I would like to sing the praises of a new all-purpose beauty product that is getting rave reviews in the media, and of which I received three complimentary samples at the time of its launch: Garnier Miracle Skin Perfector Daily All-In-One B.B Blemish Balm Cream. The name of this cream is a bit of a mouthful to put it mildly, but then this is a multi-tasking product with a lot of benefits to convey!

In a nutshell, Garnier B.B Cream (as I will call it for short) is a light foundation and moisturiser combined that hydrates the skin, evens out blemishes (thanks to its mineral pigments), and gives reasonable yet sheer coverage. It has SPF 15 sun protection and is ideal for people like me who dislike the faff of a multi-stage beauty routine.

Here's the official blurb on this product:

"B.B. creams (short for Blemish Balm) are hybrid products which combine the benefits of skincare and make-up in one.

Initially developed by a German dermatologist in the 1950s to soothe skin and provide coverage, B.B. Creams were made famous in South Korea by an actress famed for her beautiful skin."

Now as a rosacea sufferer, I have been loyal lately to the very wonderful (leaving aside the matter of the missing "u") Revlon Colorstay 04 foundation in Sand Beige, which is just a foundation, but covers redness brilliantly and stays put - and stays matte - all day long and all night, should your lifestyle happen to be a tad more exciting than mine.

Given my usual levels of spot outbreaks and ruddy complexion, I wouldn't have touched this product with a bargepole, for I can no more entertain a product offering merely "sheer coverage" than I could wear a diaphanous blouse without a camisole underneath. As it happens though, the launch of Garnier B.B Cream coincided with my skin being in a very good phase (for me). And so, sold on the convenience of a foundation and moisturiser combined, I did not hesitate to apply for my trial pack of three samples, and tested Garnier B.B Cream every day for about a week. I applied it all over my face instead of just to my nose and chin, as I do with the Revlon foundation to avoid too heavy and mask-like a look.

Well, the first thing to say about the Garnier product is that a little of this goes a very long way, and I got about three days' coverage out of a single sachet. I can only imagine that some users have Very Large Heads and/or a worse distribution of blemishes than even me on a really bad day.

The second thing to say is that Garnier B.B Cream goes on beautifully smoothly and does indeed "melt into the skin" as the sales bumf claims.

"Feel the sensation of the light texture that instantly melts into your skin."

It genuinely is a lovely feeling, doubtless due to the moisturising component of the formulation.

You can build up a bit of coverage in key areas, and Garnier B.B Cream does even out skin tone up to a point, but I don't suppose it would conceal my bad outbreaks of spots or redness - it would be hard to top Revlon Colorstay on that score.

And yes, my skin does feel very soft to the touch with the blemish balm on - "luminous" might be stretching a point, indeed it looks a little greasy if anything, at least initially - but the sensation on the skin once the cream has been on for a while is luxuriantly smooth. So my oily skin does present a bit of a challenge, but I patted powder on top and that takes away most of the greasy aspect. That is the only negative point I can think of really, and for anyone with dry skin Garnier B.B Cream could be just what it is crying out for.

So whilst I wouldn't wear this product on a bad skin day, on a good skin day it is a jolly useful all-in-one product. Like those lipsticks known as YLBB ("your lips but better"), this tinted moisturiser or hydrating foundation or whatever you want to call it in the end is YSBB ("your skin but better"). I shall certainly be buying a tube when I have used up my samples.


UNPHOTOSHOPPED SCARY CLOSE UP ALERT!!!

Just to clarify, in all three photos this is Garnier B.B. cream immediately after I put it on and before applying foundation (ie when at its most shiny!)




And hold on a minute - I just applied some Garnier B.B Cream to the back of my hand to watch the seamless blending in action again, and something prompted me to sniff it. I can report that the blemish balm does in fact smell (very faintly) of something, which I hadn't really noticed before: a vaguely lemongrassy, spa product-type fragrance. A less herbal, more lemony Clarins Eau Ressourcante maybe - something in that ballpark anyway. Now I see that Clarins Eau Ressourcante includes notes of sarsparillia, robinia and longan, and am frankly none the wiser.


Photo of B.B cream from Superdrug blog and Garnier campaign, photo of Lycon wax from Ebay, other photos my own