Beauty: mixing up my skincare routine

Hi guys! Let's talk skincare. It's the heart of winter right now, and I had noticed my skin being a bit out of it - a mix of dry patches and some breakouts. The cold + dry air tends to do that to me, and at some point at the beginning of the new year I almost always notice that my skin just needs a bit more effort put into it. However, deep-rehydration wasn’t enough. Instead, my skin needed a kick up the butt to get it back to where it needed to be: exfoliating and rebalancing. I'm not someone who sticks to a couple of holy grail products, I like to switch it up since I get to try out so many different things as a beauty blogger, so watch me delve into my stash and experiment to help my skin get its groove back.

my skin at its worst - my skin after the skincare revamp

I'm generally pretty blessed when it comes to my skin - I mean yes, I have loads of redness, but that doesn't bother me nearly as much as dry skin and zits do. Those are much harder to cover up with makeup. 

 I wish I had taken a clear "before" pic of my skin when it was at its worst - Now I feel like someone who is making empty promises! However, I did not quite expect to see the result of my change of routine as quickly as I did. This is the best "before" I can show you , a picture from late January 2017 when my skin was at its worst.

In this picture I had applied my foundation quite thickly to cover up my blemishes, making my skin look even more dull (and wrinkled). You can still make out the zits, mostly on my lower forehead and between my brows. However, about a week and a half after adopting this new skin care routine, my skin was back to normal.
 My weapons:

- the l'Occitane Pivoine Sublime perfecting exfoliator/scrub to get rid of dead skin and breakouts, used at night so my skin's redness had subsided by the morning
- the Delbôve Masque Plénitude, applied thickly and used a couple of nights in a row to rebalance and nourish my skin
- and a lightweight daytime moisturizer to keep further breakouts at bay: the Kruidvat Hydro Dagcreme.

While the l'Occitane and Delbôve products have been part of my stash for a while now (I have reviewed them in the past - you can search for the reviews using the tool in my right sidebar), the Kruidvat hydro cream is a new addition. When I was experiencing my skin issues, I did not have a light moisturizer in my drawer since I usually go for heavier creams. When looking for a light moisturizer, my googling turned to Kruidvat. I had been using Kruidvat's moisturizers on and off over the past few years (my boyfriend loves their vitamin E moisturizer). I try other day creams at times when I have one specific skincare goal in mind: soothing redness, deep moisturizing or rejuvenating my skin. However, after a while I always come back to Kruidvat’s creams, and we always keep a pot in our drawer.

Since I have always been able to depend on Kruidvat, I wasn't surprised to find out that the Kruidvat Hydro Dagcreme had been tested by Test-Aankoop next to top tier moisturizers by La Mer, Estee Lauder and Biotherm and come out on top for its similar performance in moisturizing, at a super affordable (€2,25!) price tag. This has earned the moisturizer its “beste van de test volgens Test-Aankoop” title, which is definitely something to brag about ;-) I have a Kruidvat 5 minutes from my office, so I picked up a jar and added it to my skin-rescue-routine.

Even though I normally reach for dry-sensitive skin products, I chose this normal-oily skin version because I felt like my T-zone was getting smothered by my richer day creams. The moisturizer has a light, fresh fragrance that I associate with blue coloured skincare products: it reminds me of the sea or algae or something similar ;-) The cream’s texture  feels moisturizing yet light, leaving your skin slightly sticky for about a minute after applying. However it doesn’t feel oily like after using products formulated for dry skin. It’s perfect for use on my forehead, now that I have bangs - nothing ruins bangs like an oily forehead!

Not to toot my own horn here, but I have to say: the combination of lighter moisturizer during the daytime plus exfoliating and nighttime masks has absolutely revived my skin. I’m happy to notice that the dry patches are gone and that my breakouts have largely subsided. You can already notice the improvement in the no-makeup pics above, but it's also clear how beautifully my foundation lies on my skin now compared to the cakey before pic. Of course, the lighting is different, but the change is huge.

Et voila! Sometimes something good doesn't have to cost a lot of money ;-) Do you have any drugstore lifesavers you'd like to share?