How to Soften Up a Hard Face Mask and Why You Have to Do it

Sunday 22 February 2015

How to Soften Up a Hard Face Mask and Why You Have to Do it

How to soften hard face mask - pressure spray
Unsuccessful attempt to buy
a water spraying bottle 
Recently I tried out a few face masks that got hard very quickly. Some of them state that you need to keep them on for 15 or so minutes, but they get hard within a minute or two. They start pulling skin so badly that there is no way you can last the recommended time without doing anything about it.

Clay masks go through three stages: the damp phase, start of the dry and the dry phase. During the damp phase skin absorbs all the nutrients, the start of the dry phase exercises capillaries and stimulates blood flow and the dry phase draws moisture out of skin. You don't want to reach the dry phase, you need to wash the mask off before then if you want to benefit from the product rather than cause dry and possibly itchy, flaky skin. I don't know if all the other masks draw moisture from your skin in the same way, but I believe that they do. Even if that wasn't the case, how can you possibly benefit from keeping a face mask for, let's say, one minute instead of the recommended 15 minutes? Most of the masks are too pulling!
How to stop facial mask from drying out
Toothbrush is a great way to spray water on your
drying out face mask

So, what do you do? How do you stop face masks from getting hard to get all the goodness out of them?

Don't buy masks that pull your face!!! No, I am only joking. The first mask that kept drying out very quickly was the mask that I received from Ogra. Luckily I read their instructions, which said that you need to keep spraying water on your face, and this is when I figured that I had to do the same with all the other masks that were drying out too quickly. At the end of it it was worth it, Ogra's mask and a few others all worked very well on my skin, leaving it beautifully smooth with that super clean feeling, so don't be put off by that drying feeling. Carry on reading to see what I do to solve this problem.

It can be a little bit tricky to spray water unless you have a special bottle spraying mist. My first attempt to buy such bottle ended up in failure as it doesn't spray mist, it sprays water like a hose as it's a pressure spray bottle, so no way I could use it on my face. The bottle will do a good job in summer though when we play water guns with my kids. I'll use the bottle as my secret weapon to unsuspecting children!
How to correctly use a face mask - add some oil
Add some oil to stop face
mask from drying out too quickly

Let's forget the guns for now. I use a toothbrush to spray water on myself when I am wearing a face mask. It gives very fine mist and it's perfect for applying a little bit of water on my drying out face. It keeps the mask moist and allows me to keep it on my face for as long as I want.

Thesis skincare brand has their advice regarding face mask softening. They say that in winter face masks get hard a lot quicker due to low humidity levels and one way to rectify this situation is to add a few drops of oil into a face mask. I haven't tried this method yet, but I am definitely going to give it a go next time I am using Thesis products.

I hope this gave you a few ideas. What type of face masks do you use if you use them at all? What's your favourite?

No comments: