I haven’t actually stated what my daily/weekly routine is so just going to quickly summaries it. This routine is what I’ve been following for the last 3 weeks to try and clear my skin.

Daily Morning

• Wash face with “The Body Shop Tea Tree Oil Facial Wash“
• Tone using “The Body Shop Seeweed Clarifying Toner“
• Moisturise using “The Body Shop Seeweed Matifiying Day Cream“
• Eye area using “Olay White Radiance Eye Cream”

Daily Night

• Wash face with “The Body Shop Tea Tree Oil Facial Wash“
• Tone using “The Body Shop Vitamin E hydrating Toner“
• Moisturise using “The Body Shop Vitamin E Night Cream“
• Eye area using “Olay White Radiance Eye Cream”

Others

• Use “The Body Shop Tea Tree Blackhead exfoliating facial wash” once a week
• “Boots Botanics Quenching Facial Mask” or home made face mask every other day or every day
• I drink a glass of water every morning and I try to drink several more glasses through the day
• Replaced my regular milk tea with green tea (so I drink about three mugs of that everyday)

I don’t think I’ll go into too much details about this week progress so just going to do a quick summary.

Overall my blemish have really faded a lot since week 1. Back then I had many dark red blemish/spots and several light small ones. Most of the light colours ones have almost faded and the darker ones have lighten a lot. I believe using the Botanics mask regularly has help a lot because it contains honey. Honey is meant to help with blemish. My face isn’t as discoloured as it use to be.

Blackheads are still pretty visible but they seem to have gotten smaller and lighter. The use of the Body Shop Seaweed toner and moisturiser probably played a bit part in this. It says on the package it will minimises and reduce appearance of pores. It is doing it pretty slowly but still doing the job. I can’t see too much improvement in my blackheads but others have told that it’s much lighter and smaller.

Quick Tip

Does your skin feel and look really dry in cold and windy weather like mine? I cope with this by applying a hydration facial mask (you can use yogurt and honey if you don’t have one) for 10-20 minutes after been exposed to the cold air for a long period. You can also gently ex-foliate before appling the face mask. If you don’t have a very gentle ex-foliating face wash then you can try using a facial brush with a facial wash or add fine sugar to your facial wash or cleanser (apply a tiny bit to the substance on your hands, not to the whole bottle). Gentle ex-foliation will remove dead skin cell or dry skin off the surface of your face so your face can absorb the mask and moisturiser better. It is extremely important that you ex-foliate more often in conditions that dry out your skin.

Remember that this may not happen to everyone and your skin may feel dry in other conditions. You can apply the same method to your dry skin even if the weather isn’t cold.

Just going to quickly list what I plan to get rid of:

• Spots/blemish on one side of my face that isn’t fading
• Some scars
• A few dark spots
• Dark under eye circles
• Blackheads on my nose

That’s quite a bit to work on in one go so I’m focusing mainly on the spots, blemish and blackheads because they’re the most obvious.

Last week I wrote an entry on products and methods I’m trying out to help with the above list: Week 1. I’m just going to give a quick review on how I’m getting on.

Spots/Blemish

I’m using the Tea Tree Oil Facial Wash from The Body Shop  for this and drinking more water. After a week I have noticed a different, it isn’t much though. They’re not as red and big as they were last week. There seems to be less as well.

Dark spots and Scars

These two were not on my list last week. I heard that cucumber juice will help with dark spots with regular use and honey helps to reduce appearance of scars. I have also been reading about home made face mask so I have designed a recipe of each of these two problems. I’m going to try them out for a while then I’ll write a tutorial on it if it’s good.

Dark under eye circles

I’ve placed kiwi slices on my eyes for a few nights and it really did help reduce the dark circles. It hasn’t completely gone away but it has lighten a bit. I’m going to continue with this and hopefully it’ll be even lighter next week.

Blackheads on my nose

Using the Tea Tree Blackhead Exfoliating wash from The Body Shop for this and have started using Seaweed Clarifying Toner from The Body Shop as that claims to refine appearances of pores. I still have blackhead and the amount is about the same, however they’re not as big as before. Seems to be less obvious too.

Conclusion

Overall I think I’m doing good. My skin has not got worse and it is slowly improving. With time I believe I will be able to clear my skin, just need to be patient and not give up like I have done previously. I need to drink more water than because I’m still not drinking enough. We’re meant to drink at least a litre a day but i think I only drink about 400ml which isn’t even half.

I have decided to go for a strict facial routine for sometime to clear my skin. My skin isn’t so bad but there’s a few parts that I’m not happy with.

• I have pretty bad dark circles from late nights and irregular sleep during university (I graduated July 09). Although I am working full time now and getting regular sleep, it isn’t really getting any lighter.
• Spots! I still have a few spots here and there that just won’t go away.
• Horrible black heads around and on my nose and forehead. I have oily t-zone and nose so black heads build up loads around those areas.

My skin use to be pretty bad where it was spotty, dry and full of scars and blackheads. I haven’t really cared for it until a year ago, but still I was lazy on some days and won’t bother with any facial care. I wore make up regularly and I don’t always remove it properly at night.

Only the last 3 months that I really started to care properly for my skin. I washed, toned and moisturised morning and night every day. I already noticed a huge notice as my skin is less dry and fewer spots. I really hope for it to be better.

Over the weekend I bought a new face wash especially for blemishes.  I bought the Tea Tree Oil face wash from The Body Shop. I’m going to be using once on the morning and once a night, off course tone and moistures afterwards as well. Hopefully this will help with my spots. I’ve only used it for 2 days so I can’t really tell just yet.

I also bought the Tea Tree Blackhead Exfoliating wash from The Body Shop tea tree collection. I’m going to use this once a week to help clean out the black heads.

To hopefully lighten the dark circles around my eyes, I’m going to place a slice of kiwi on each eye for 15-20 each night. I read that kiwi is suppose to help with dark circles. I’ll help out after a few weeks.

Along with all this I’m going to drink loads of water. I normally only drink about 1-2 glass a day which is extremely little. Water will clean the inside of the body which will also improve the outside too. If you ask any facial specialist, they will always say to drink plenty of water. I knew this for years and never bothered. I’m going to try at least drink 6-8 glasses/mugs of water a day. Recently I’ve been drinking 4-5 glasses/mugs so that already a big improvement.

I’ll update in a week about the progress.