It hasn’t featured on this
blog too much yet, but I love eye makeup. Eyeshadow, eyeliners, I love the
colours and the awesome duochromes (and the fact that I don’t have to reapply
is a distinct bonus), and it is actually why I became interested in makeup. Since
I frequently wear eye makeup, I was worried that the skin around my eyes was drying
out from the constant cleaning off of makeup, and decided to get an eye-cream
for moisturisation.
There are a lot of
eye-creams out there and most are relatively expensive and trumpet their
anti-aging properties like there’s no tomorrow. I chose this one because it
didn’t specify anti-aging properties, which were not my main concern, and
because it was cheaper. Plus I like Natio as a brand. Natio is an Australian
skincare brand that uses plant based ingredients and is certified cruelty free,
is overall vegan friendly with exception to some of their makeup, which
contains carmine and beeswax, and some of their skincare products which contain
beeswax and/or honey (the specific products are listed in Natio’s FAQ).
The product itself is a clear
odourless gel that spreads easily and takes a bit to dry, getting a bit sticky
in the process, but it’s barely noticeable. The gel dries after ~15 minutes,
and it feels like there’s nothing on your skin. It’s moisturising, but it’s
light, not a heavy-duty moisturiser that will still be there when you wake up.
The gel feels lightweight on the skin, which is great because who wants to feel
like their eye cream is dragging their skin down and creating wrinkles? Since I
bought as a result of eye makeup, I do apply this gel on my eyelid, despite it
technically being for the eye contour or whatever. A pea-sized amount is enough
for both eye sockets, including the eyelid and under the eye in a roughly
circular area. This gel is meant to be used in the morning as a light treatment,
but I’m too lazy in the morning :P.
I used it quite
sporadically at first, so I didn’t see it making much of a difference, but
after a week with less sleep than usual, I thought the skin around my eyes
could do with a treat so I put it on more regularly. I did notice a difference
where before when I squinted, the tiny wrinkles that appear were deeper than
they were (say, last year) and after using this gel almost every night for a
week I noticed that the tiny wrinkles were back to the previous depth. Not a major difference but since I don’t
have many wrinkles yet (touchwood), the results were never going to be
startlingly different. I wouldn’t call this actually wrinkle fighting, I think
the skin around my eyes just needed some hydration and that’s what this gel
provided.
The first 3 ingredients of
this gel are water, propylene glycol and glycerine, the latter 2 of which are
both humectants. Next on the ingredients list are the extracts mentioned on the
front of the tube (chamomile, cornflower, calendula and cucumber). Chamomile
and calendula are both reputed to be calming (chamomile can also lighten hair),
and cucumber juice is mainly water, although I’m not sure what ‘extract’
entails. These extracts might help in the advertised dark circles treatment but
extracts aren’t usually in high quantities so the bulk of the gel is likely the
top 3 ingredients.
This eye gel does contain
parabens (methylparaben and propylparaben), but unless you’re allergic to them
they aren’t really a concern for the rest of us. Apparently there was some fuss
about parabens giving people cancer, but there’s no scientific evidence of this
at this point (I only know about this fuss at all thanks to faces and fingers informative post, go there for more comprehensive information or just google
scholar it). Parabens are generally used as preservatives and therefore need
only be around 1% concentration, therefore anything after that on the ingredients
list is <1%, and therefore unlikely to have any effect on your skin.
I would recommend this eye
gel to people in their 20s or teenagers who feel like the skin around their
eyes is drying out or could do with some moisture, but don’t want to put normal
moisturiser on. This eye gel is a really basic humectant gel with some extracts
that might help your skin, but overall it doesn’t contain emollients so it
won’t actually moisturise per se (humectants stop more water from escaping but
they don’t introduce more moisture), and it has no anti-aging properties so if
you’ve got wrinkles, this gel won’t do anything for them.
Effectiveness:
6/10
Feel:
7/10
Formulation:
6/10
Packaging:
7/10
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