Review: REN Invisible Pores Detox Mask

Hey girls, me again! ..With REN, again! If you saw my previous post, you'll know that it was all about another of REN's amazing face masks (Radiance Renewal*) which is targeted towards dull or scarred skin and is based with fruit enzymes to give the skin a gentle but effective chemical exfoliation, breaking down and then resurfacing the top layer of skin. To read more on this mask and see my post on it you can click here.

After falling in love with the Radiance Renewal mask I decided to purchase an equally loved mask from REN to continue my mission to 'get perfect skin' and it wasn't long before the Invisible Pores Detox Mask had wormed it's way into my regular skincare routine and is edging it's way towards the top spot of all time favourite products. I ordered mine from lookfantasic.com whilst they had a cheeky 20% off, but you can find the mask on their site here for a full price of £16.20, instead of £18.00 from the REN site.

The Invisible Pores mask could not be more different from the Radiance Renewal mask in terms of texture, function, active ingredients and effects on the skin, however they do look lovely in the bathroom lined up next to each other with their identical, simple packaging with a clean design and effective pump dispenser; the bottles are differentiated by their strips of colour: bright orange for RR, and pistachio green for IP, which also coincides with the colour of the product inside too. Is it sad that I enjoy this simple fact?

Again, REN keeps up the good work with their 'clean skincare' and there's no nasty stuff in these products that will do any harm to your skin, and you can see on the image below that there is lovely extra detailing on the box - packaging can make a difference, as superficial as that is!

Invisible Pores (also known as Minimising Pores) is a clay based mask that is aimed at congested oily skin to give it a really good deep clean and detox by using the French Clay to draw out all of the impurities from deep within the pores and remove any excess sebum that can clog things up and cause blackheads and spots. It doesn't just stop there though, as this mask also contains proteins from Spirulina (that's some kind of a fancy tropical seaweed, you know, just incase you didn't know or anything..) that 'encourages cell renewal while reducing pore size, leaving your skin smooth, toned and decongested'. Wow REN, you really do you know to work wonders don't you!

REN advises you to apply this generously over clean skin, but naturally the thicker layer of product you apply, the longer it takes to dry, and as you remove this in a slighly different way - by rubbing away the dry clay with your fingers to gives a gentle exfoliating effect - it means that you can't remove it until it has dried. I apply quite a thin layer over my nose, a little bit of my cheeks and my chin because they are the area that I suffer with blocked up pores and blackheads, and I usually leave around 15 minutes before removing.

I was quite surprised with the consistency of this mask the first time that I used it as when it comes out of the pump it feels really creamy and soft, kind of like a thick moisturiser. It's cooling on the skin which is loving and refreshing, but it also feels calming and relaxing because of the lavender oil - such a lovely treat! As it is a clay mask, it does of course dry onto the skin and you get the hard plastered and cracking scary looking face when you can't move a muscle or change your facial expression! What I really love about this is that there is zero irritation to the skin, it's really gentle and after removal always makes my skin look less red and angry; it's always clean, calmed and refreshed.

Does it work at improving the skin? Well, like I've just said it is a lovely treat and a pleasure to use; if things are looking a little bit chaotic on the skin then it's a great way to just calm things down, if there's a break out then it helps to stop it looking so angry, and looking across the clogged up areas on my T-zone they do always look like they've had a good little extraction after using this, of course helping to make them look minimised. I don't think it's a miracle product that you can just use and you'll have no blackheads anymore - I don't think there's anything that will ever do that?.. but it could be a working progress towards slowly improving them and definitely giving them a minimised appearance.

REN also advises to use the Radiance Renewal mask and the Invisibles Pores mask in conjunction with each other; using RR first and IP the following day, to be able to gain maximum impacts from both products. So these make for my perfect weekend duo, Radiance Renewal on Saturday to get that top layer of skin broken down and exfoliated away, and then Invisible Pores on the Sunday to give my skin a really good detox and clear out anything that's blocked deep down in those pores! These make for a great skincare pair!

If you want to read more about what I had to say on the REN Radiance Renewal mask, you can see my post on it here, and if you're interested in this Invisible Pores mask yourself then here is a link to where you can buy it: link.

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