Special Occasion? Look Your Best Instantly With These Radiance Boosters

Have a special occasion coming up? Meeting someone you really want to impress? I've found the best of the best to make your skin look amazing, making you feel confident, perfect and radiant! It seems everywhere I look, I'm seeing a lot of products boasting instant radiance, but are they worth it? After testing loads of them, I've found several I consider to be totally worth the time, effort and money.

Best Mask for Instant Radiance

VINOPERFECT Radiance Revealing Mask delivers instant hydration and radiance that lasts for hours. Skin is instantly left looking radiant and bright, while gentle grape acid exfoliates the face, revealing fresher, new skin. Use this mask as often as you like for an instant, lit-from-within look. Over time, the look of fresh, hydrated skin will become yours all of the time!

Best Eye Brightening Therapy Patches

Naive Beauty Magnet Eyes Under Eye Algae Masks are the first product to launch from this Australian Beauty guru. Naive Beauty is proud to ignore the hype that normally surrounds products and delivers honest products that work without all of the fuss that goes into many marketing campaigns. I was wowed from the first time I used these. These very soft, flexible discs fit under the eye and deliver the perfect amount of hydration, brightening, while diminishing fine lines. These are great pre-party or to hide the effects of the party the next day. I'll do a full review of these little wonders shortly (including before and after snaps!)

Best Total Kit for Weddings or Girly Group Outings


Orlane's Absolute Radiance Lightbox kit contains all the steps to give you glowing, gorgeous skin: Dazzling Under Eye Patches, Eye Contour Serum, Shimmering Skin Masque Cream and Powder and the Evanescent Cream. Your face will look hydrated, radiant and luminous after one use. The results aren't permanent, but for special occasions, you can't go wrong. While the kit is $200, it contains enough for 6 uses, so share it with friends for an at-home spa treatment.

Best Masks For Reversing the Clock
I love Jan Marini's Age Intervention Regeneration Mask. It's packed with kaolin clay to pull out the excess oil and blackheads. It has a stable glycolic acid at the proper pH level to help resurface the skin. Packed with antioxidants and anti-inflammatory ingredients, it can make your skin look luminous, smooth and plump. The anti-inflammatory ingredients like green, white and red tea extracts help soothe the skin, help protect it from sun damage, reduce redness and diminish the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. This mask is packed with ingredients to help repair your skin at a cellular level. While the benefits of the mask are obvious immediately, the long term effects also visibly stack up.



jeune d'âge 5% Glycolic Pumpkin Peel is built on pumpkin which is full of antioxidants, nutrients, Vitamins B, C and E and a protein that provides essential fatty acids. It's great for helping turn over new skin and for decreasing sun damage. This mask also contains 5% glycolic acid (which you can feel so you know it's working). The masque takes five minutes to work and costs less than $25! In this price range, there is no better masque. In fact, this masque still goes toe to toe with its higher-priced competition. It does not disappoint!

Best Retexturizing Scrub


This one is a no-brainer. It's Prep Microdermabrasion by YBF. Prep is a fine-grain manual (instead of chemical) microdermabrasion treatment. It contains teeny, tiny little grains that exfoliate your skin in a way that is more satisfying than another granular scrub I have tried. It also contains peptides, botanicals and vitamins to treat your face after you have used it to exfoliate. Leave it on longer and get effects past the scrub. This is one of my holy grail scrub/masks without a doubt!

Some of these products were sent for the purposes of review. Some were originally sent for review and have since been repurchased. Out of all of these products, all are cruelty-free, with the exception of Jan Marini, whose testing status is difficult to determine.

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Let's Talk Antioxidant Skin Care: jeune d' age organics

There is a lot of hype around skin care products. With hundreds of new additions to the marketplace each year, it's a lot to get excited about. Everyone wants that perfect, airbrushed, unattainable (just being honest) skin. I am the first one to say that perfect magazine images have made me squander money and question my self-esteem far more often than I would like to admit. How do you find the right product, without falling prey to the glossy hype machine?

There are a few key things you need to look for in an antioxidant skin care product to make it worth your while.

1. Stable packaging is the most important thing. Many ingredients, like Vitamin C, a valuable antioxidant and protectant against UVA/UVB photo damage (Journal for Investigative Dermatology, Feb 2002.), need stable packaging to make sure your ingredients work. Vitamin C can become unstable and therefore ineffective when sunlight or air are able to get into the packaging. If you take the top off of a jar or dip your finger in to remove product, you are likely to be wasting your antioxidant product, not to mention your time and money.

2. Added fragrances may irritate your skin, negating their effectiveness. For instance, if you are trying to lessen redness by using calming ingredients and your product smells of delightful cotton/fruit/flowers, it possible that the scent may cause a reaction in your skin. It's just not needed.

3. Use the right stuff. Look for proven antioxidants without extras you don't need, like parabens. Parabens have been linked to cancer tissue, formed by their accumulation in hormonally sensitive tissues. (Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, January 2002)

How do you find skin care products that won't waste your time? Do your research. Look for products that contain proven antioxidant ingredients, like Vitamin C, E, A and CoQ210. Here's the Cliff Notes version of what they do:

Vitamin A (the entire molecule) is the Retinol molecule, which has been shown to help create better, healthier skin cells. (Cosmetic Dermatology, January 2005)

Vitamin E helps to prevent sun damage and other oxidative stress to the skin. (Journal of Molecular Medicine, 1995) This doesn't mean you shouldn't use a sunscreen, though. Honestly, using a good sunscreen will go just as far as the most expensive cream on the market.

CoQ10 has been shown to be somewhat effective against wrinkling (Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, March 2006) , and while nothing is a magic cure, this ingredient is a step in the right direction.

I know. Get to the point. What do I recommend that seems to meet all of my above criteria? Right now, I am loving jeune d' age organics ( Young of Age) Anti-Aging Skin Serum. Jeune d' age organics includes all of the above ingredients, plus a few extras like acai and hyaluronan (a natural moisturizer). It is also free of added fragrances and synthetic chemicals. The best part? It comes in stable, single use packets that are incredibly generous. Each day, you use one packet at night (thanks for that tip, Dr. Oz!). Be sure to use the extra on your neck, decollete and the backs of your hands. This serum remains stable, since it doesn't come in contact with sunlight or air. This product is also vegan-friendly and comes in a nifty box that can be planted to produce wild flowers.




I have been using it for about 3 weeks and am seeing some real results. I have had fewer problems with my skin feeling dehydrated and my skin has seemed slightly more firm and looked very radiant. It keeps getting better - this product only costs $39.95 for a one month supply of the Anti-Aging Serum, plus the attractive container to store your packets. After the first month, you can purchase the refill kit for $29.95. Jeune d' age organics can be purchased online at www.ToBetterSkin.com.

I love it! Check it out!


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