Clarisonic Review

My First Impression:
I was doing a lot of online research and consulting with a friend of mine Louise of Cosmetics Bee when I was introduced to the Clarisonic Skincare System.  Many other of my favorite bloggers also recommend the use of this system including Tiffany of I am Stylish.

According to the Clarisonic website regular cleaning of your skin still leaves behind dirt and oil trapped in the pores.  I believe this to be true as I wear makeup everyday and even when I used an exfoliating cleanser I still found that my face was not entirely clean.  When I dried my face after washing, makeup still appeared on the towel.  The Clarisonic system is designed to remove 6x more makeup and 2x more dirt and oil than regular cleansing.  The first time I used the Clarisonic system I didn’t have any traces of makeup showing up on my towels!  This is how I knew it was doing its job.

Changes to my skin:
Besides my skin feeling cleaner, overall I feel that the texture of my skin is more even.  As I mentioned I have oily skin but occasionally (especially in the Winter) I would get dry flaky spots often around nose and mouth.  I’ve found that since using the Clarisonic I haven’t noticed the problem.
Another thing I noticed after about a week or so is how my moisturizer went on.  I don’t know if any of you would know what I’m talking about but sometimes at night when I put my moisturizer on I didn’t feel like it was absorbing into my skin.  The best way I can describe is it that is just felt like it sat on top of my skin rather than penetrating.  When I would rub my skin (I know, I know I’m not supposed to do that – it’s kind of a bad habit I do when I’m reading or thinking in bed!) the moisturizer would rub off kind of like when you scrub your body and dead skin falls off (gross, I know I’m sorry).  I chalked that up to the moisturizer being too heavy for my skin.
Anyway, I noticed that since using the Clarisonic this doesn’t happen anymore.  My skin actually feels like it’s absorbing the moisturizer like it’s supposed to.  Perhaps all the dead skin the surface had been removed?  The same thing goes for putting on my makeup.  My makeup goes on more evenly and is much easier to blend.  Since I no longer have those dry patches I don’t have to worry about my foundation caking up in those areas.

Change to my dark spots:
I haven’t really noticed a difference.  I’m not sure that the Clarisonic brush can help in that area other than to continually exfoliate the areas and get rid of the older layers of skin more quickly.  I’m thinking about other methods to reduce the appearance of these spots but I will save that for a later post.

Chang to my acne:
Unfortunately I still break out.  My acne is stubbornly appearing around my mouth area which I have been told is indication of a hormonal imbalance (yay 30’s!).  When I was younger I used to break out mainly on my forehead and nose and while occasionally I’ll get a small spot in those areas every now and then, I don’t consider those areas a problem anymore.  I will say however that the cycle of my pimples seems quicker.  What do I mean by that?  Well those that have acne may know that a pimple seems to start out of nowhere.  For me it starts below the skin even before it’s really visible – I can feel it under the surface of my skin and it’s quite sore and tender.  The next stage is when the pimple actually appears – a red bump on my face.  Then the pimple seems to develop into a pustule (pimple filled with pus – GAH gross, I know I’m sorry!!!).  The pustule will eventually break and then it begins to heal.  This cycle for me personally would usually take quite a long time – probably at least a week.  I’ve found that since using the Clarisonic this cycle is much quicker – perhaps a couple of days I would estimate.  However, this still does not solve the original problem of me breaking out!  I’m still working on a solution to that.

Overall thoughts:
I love this brush and will continue to use it.  I do have to figure out how to control or get rid of my acne but for the rest of my “good” skin this brush has been really, really great.  Please keep in mind again I have only been using it for just over 2 months.  I decided to cut back to using it only at night as over exfoliating or cleansing can also lead to breakouts so I thought I would experiment.   I also recently read this post by Janine Falcon of I Am A Beauty Geek which convinced me.  I also switched to using Spectro Jel for blemish prone skin again as per Louise’s recommendation and because I used to use it when I was in University.

It is quite a pricey system which is why it took me a few months of research before jumping in and buying it.  It is available at Sephora however I got mine from http://www.eskincarestore.com/ and they often have a 20% off sale.  Check my deals and coupons page for updates.  In Canada they offer free shipping over $200 (kind of high but worked with this purchase), free samples and a free gift with a purchase of over $120.  At the time Clarisonic was also offering a free gift with the purchase of the system so I got an additional brush head for free.

Here are pictures of my kit: