REVIEW: Guerlain Abeille Royale Youth Serum

What an absolutely luxurious delight this serum has been! Often times we dismiss luxury brands as not having effective skincare, that you may just be paying for the "name" more than anything. 

This particular serum helps to dispel that notion! Yes, it costs $160 for an ounce. Yes, the gorgeous glass bottle is far larger and heavier than one would ever think an ounce of product would require. But for someone serious about anti-aging, with a little extra cash burning a hole in their pocket, this serum is a must have!

The gorgeous glass bottle has a hexagonal shape through the top of the gold lid. A golden dropper with a little embossed bee is built right into the lid, which is a thing of beauty in and of itself. The bottle is quite heavy, so keep it somewhere safe. A little knock could send it crashing to the floor! (I would cry)

The main active ingredient, Royal Jelly, is very close to the top of the ingredient list. There are also other goodies, like Hyaluronic Acid, Centella Asiatica, and various peptides. The promise from Guerlain is that tiny micro-tears in the skin cause wrinkles, and Royal Jelly helps to speed up the repair process.

What I do know is that after using this serum twice a day for just a few days my skin was positively glowing! After about 10 days there was a new firmness along my jaw line and my eyes felt brighter (I tapped this serum right up to the orbital bone). 

What most surprised me about this product is the lack of silicone. There is a Dimethicone blend in there, but it's most of the way near the bottom of the ingredient list! Often when anti-aging products claim such fast results (cough *Olay* cough) they are using loads of silicones in the creams (combined with non-scientific, in-house, perception studies...not independent clinical trials).

After about a month of using this amazing serum I have to say...I am definitely in love (wouldn't it be a shame if an expensive treatment sucked?!?). My skin glows! Hydration levels are definitely up (even though I have started occasional Retin-A...more on that another time), my moisturizer works better, and my eye area is luminized!

A little goes a long way with this product! If you are in the Toronto area, get yours from Murale at Shops at Don Mills...the girls there will hook you up with loads of great samples to make the purchase even moreso worth your while! 

If you are buying it online, click on the Sephora.com logo below

REVIEW: Burt's Bees Radiance Night Cream with Royal Jelly

After my pretty awesome experience with the Burt's Bees Cream Cleanser I thought I might try one of their creams to help battle my suddenly-dry skin. I know I haven't been drinking as much water as I should, and I know it's cold out and hot inside...but REALLY! My skin is pretty crazy dry.

I spent a considerable amount of time in-store reading the boxes for the various Burt's Bees moisturizers and decided to try the Radiance Night Cream with Royal Jelly.

The good folks at Burt's Bees claim that Royal Jelly is "very nourishing, royal jelly is made of nectar, pollen, flower parts, vitamins, minerals, bee hormones and other natural ingredients". To be honest, I just learned about the "bee hormones" part, which kind of gave me the giggles.

As a minor health fanatic, I have heard lots about the health benefit of Royal Jelly. If you do some research, you will learn that it does some amazing things for bees. Royal Jelly is what is fed to the Queen Bee, it is what makes her so much bigger than the other bees, and it is what makes her fertile (all other female bees are infertile). Royal Jelly is loaded with amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins B5 & B6, as well as the same anti-bacterial properties renowned in honey!

In the end, I figured since I'm the Queen Bee of my household I should try this moisturizer.

And it hasn't disappointed!

Despite a heavy load of oils in the Ingredient List (Sweet Almond Oil is second from the top, and further down you'll find Sunflower and Vegetable oils), this cream feels closer in texture to a lotion. Royal Jelly is the 9th ingredient from the top, and is followed by other awesome natural goodness, like Lemon Peel extract, Horsetail Extract, Rosemary and Pine Tree extracts, hops, etc.

The texture was very light, and even slightly sticky. The sticky feeling disappeared pretty quickly and wasn't off-putting, it just felt a little unusual at first.

The cream absorbed right in and did not feel heavy at all! My skin felt nourished, it looked beautiful and didn't feel dry! My skin has actually been so dry, that I was using this cream either (and sometimes, both) day or night!

This cream's ONLY downfall was its fragrance... it was the EIGHTH (!!!) ingredient from the top...meaning there was more perfume than Royal Jelly in this product. The smell was lovely, dont get me wrong, but surely it can't stink enough to warrant *that* much fragrance, right?

Hopefully that is something the good people over at Burt's Bees can fix sometime soon!

Also, at over $30 a jar, this product is WAY too expensive to not have tester jars out. There are Vichy, La Roche Posay, NeoStrata, etc creams at that same price range... and THEY have testers. **cough cough, are you listening Burt?**

This cream was lovely and nourishing that it actually encouraged me to buy the matching eye cream as well!!! I will review that another time...

In the meantime... TRY THIS STUFF!