Review: Daiso Skin Products Part II

So like I said in my earlier post, in Part II of this Daiso Skin Product review, I'll be reviewing the Daiso Natural Nose Pack and Charcoal Natural Pack

So first let's start off with a little background on the products.

Daiso Charcoal Natural Pack
Description: Forumlated with the natural ingredients from Oak trees, it removes oils and all dirt and deeply clean the pore, leaving your skin clearer with less visible pores. *Do not use more than twice a week.


Daiso Nose Pack
Description: Natural extracts remove oils and all dirt and deeply clean the pore, leaving your skin clearer with less visible pores. 

So I think the description of the Charcoal natural Pack implies that the activated charcoal essence used in this natural pack is obtained from oak, however, the 'natural extracts' mentioned in the Nose Pack are completely unknown to me. That's the difficulty in Japanese products is that although I do know a significant amount of Japanese, I  can't seem to decipher the ingredients list on this thing, so I can't be entirely sure. And this is where the leap of faith suddenly rides because for all I know, these products could end up badly inflaming my skin and leaving me permanently scarred. But that's probably the worst case scenario.

Scientific Basis:
This pack supposedly works under the premise I explained in my earlier review, without the physical abrasiveness factoring into its formulation. How most face packs or peels work is through chemical adhesion and tightening of skin through the drying of whatever formula they use. Because of this fact, in stark contrast to the Charcoal Cleansing Cream, these peels end up badly drying your skin if used excessively or left on for too long, so fair warning. Because I don't exactly know how the white skin pack works, I can't say much for how it's backed up chemically or scientifically, but what I can tell you is that the stuff smelled like flower scented Elmer's Glue, and surprisingly the Charcoal Natural Pack has a much more tolerable smell than its cleansing cream counterpart. In fact, I'm not afraid to say that it smells almost pleasant haha.

So the Charcoal Natural Park is meant to be a full-facial peel whilst the White Nose Pack was meant for use on the, doy, nose. But because I don't have much trouble with other parts of my face, I decided to concentrate on just my nose. Take my word for it, my nose is horribly problematic skin wise. There are times when it's terribly oily and I'm plagued with blackheads, and other times when it's just as dry as a desert and while I don't have to worry about blemishes at those times, I end up having flakes of skin that peel off randomly. I know, it's horrible.

So as a basis of comparison of the efficacy of both, what better way than to place them both on my nose for a side-by-side comparison?

You look like an idiot, Ada.

Directions:

After cleansing your face, evenly apply on the nose area and let it dry for 10-15 min. If completely dried out, peel it off starting at the bottom, pulling toward the top. *Do not use more than twice a week. (Nose Pack)


After cleansing your face, evenly apply on the nose area and let it dry for 10-15 min. IF completely dried out, peel it off starting at the bottom, pulling toward the top. *Do not use more than twice a week. For sensitive skin, apply facial essense before using and slowly peel it off starting at the top toward the bottom (Charcoal Natural Pack)

Okay, on the get go, the Nose Pack (white on the right) dries much more quickly than the Charcoal Natural Pack (black on the left). But I stand firm on my observation, the Nose Pack definitely has the consistency of thickened glue haha. One thing I noticed about the Charcoal Natural pack is that when it dried, patches of skin would peer through my application, even after layering it on to get them covered up. I was worried that the splotches would mean patches of my nose would end up being left untouched, but that's what reviews are for right? To see if something works or not.

Upon drying and peeling, I noticed that the white pack was much more elastic (again, like glue) than the black pack when peeling. In fact, the black charcoal felt more like paper and I didn't feel much adhesion when pulling it off. To put it simply, the white pack was 'hurt' more peeling off than the black one. I put quotations on 'hurt' because there wasn't actually any pain to be specific. It just felt more sticky and uncomfortable to pull off.

Those splotches of uncovered skin on the black pack turned out not to be uncovered after all. In fact, the product just happened to be unevenly distributed due to the differences in oil concentration on my nose. In other words, there wasn't much to cling to there, so it went to other places where there was more oil or organic matter to cling to. Whoo, science.


Warning, gross pictures ahead.

click to enlarge

I doubted the effectiveness of the Charcoal pack at first because I didn't feel much tension on my skin, but lo and behold it still managed to pull out some peach fuzz and pesky blackheads. The trick to reviewing these things and to see how much of the dirt in your pores it actually removed is to stretch the peel that you removed from your face. You'll see after stretching tiny little bits of dried up and oxidized sebum. If you don't see those, your face is either immaculately clean and perfect OR your product did absolutely nothing.

click to enlarge

The white pack did a pretty good job as well, and if I may say so myself, was much more hardcore. You could feel the little beads of sebum slowly being extracted from your skin haha.

All in all, The Charcoal Natural Pack seems to be a gentler formulation than the white Nose Pack, which happens to be more adhesive. Upon further inspection, I suspect that the White Nose Pack is better for the nose and t-zone where sebum tends to end up being more deep-seeded whereas the gentler formulation of the Charcoal Natural Pack makes it ideal for more sensitive parts of the face.

So yeah, they pretty much do what they say they'll do, and for 85 PHP a piece, they're well worth it.

So while my pores don't exactly look any smaller, my face looks a lot cleaner and it's pretty obvious that my blackheads of cleared up significantly. I think with diligent use I can actually keep this up. Oh yeah, again pardon my pictures in this post and on the last one. No-makeup face Ada is a bit of an odd, if not horrid sight haha.

Overall: These products both get a 3/5 It's just like any other drugstore nose peel, but for a fraction of the price. Hope this review helped y'all :P

Now if only I can get my hands on a good lip balm for my ugly chapped lips. Any suggestions?