4. HYDRATION - Experimenting with Hydrators: Layering & *Skins*
How to find *Skins* that work for you.
Now that you’ve got a greater understanding of the kinds of products that introduce hydration into your routine it’s time to learn how to use them. This subject is more about technique, rather than directing you on specific products. You will have to discover what works for you. It’s time to become comfortable with the process of EXPERIMENTATION.
EXPERIMENTATION is a crucial part of the Trial and Error approach to Skincare. This is how you play around with the variables and observe how your skin reacts.
There’s a reason why we look at Experimentation at the hydration stage of analysing your routine: it’s hard to mess up with hydration! Because everyone’s skin needs water it’s not so much a matter IF you need to hydrate as it is HOW best to hydrate. Most people need additional hydration as your body will prioritise the water your drink for internal function. Some people have skin that hold onto enough water but it’s rare to find someone who holds too much water (bloating can occur, but it’s more likely associated with non-skincare issues: over-consumption of salt, health issues, etc.)
Previous hydration posts looked into the many terms and various products commonly associated with getting moisture into the skin. Not only the water or water-based products but the products that assist and support the hydration process. Now you need to figure out what will work for you.
Before you begin to play around and the best way to add hydration into your routine you’ve hopefully been able to experience the hydrated feeling you are aiming for. The Hydrating Mask Challenge is a great way to get this feeling and you may want to review the post on dry vs. dehydrated skin in order to see some of the qualities of hydrated skin. A plump feeling. Bounce-back when you poke the skin. Hydrated skin draws products into the skin. Hydrated skin absorbs products better (picture water running straight through to the dish holding a bone-dry plant, as opposed to slightly damp soil holding water within the soil in the way a sponge would hold water).
Hopefully the Hydrating Mask Challenge will have helped you to identify the feeling of well hydrated skin. The next step is to find a way to achieve that same feeling within your daily routine.
The most popular way of doing this is the Seven Skins method. Many other bloggers and experts have explained this method much better than I would so if you’re not entirely sure about it then you might want to do a bit of research on your own (if you find anything good feel free to add the links in the comments for the rest of the group). But basically 7 Skins involves adding layers of hydration into your routine. This method comes from Korean where the word for *toner* is the same as the word *skin* hence the term 7 skins. But for our purposes the term *skin* has basically come to mean *a layer of a product used to add moisture*.
Now it’s time for you to start playing around. I find it works well to have everything in small dropper bottles and to drop the drops in my hand and then rub my hands together and pat onto my face. I don’t generally recommend mixing products ahead of time but having things in separate dropper bottles gives you maximum flexibility for fine-tuning your Skins.
💦💦 Layers vs Hand-mixes 💦💦
The main variables to experiment with is whether to use your hydrating products in layers of single-product skins or whether to hand-mix to combine products. This is where your experimentation begins. Remember that the key to Experimentation is to only change one variable at a time.
This may help you in thinking about your variables: Doing 7 layers of pure Rose Water will provide lots of water to your skin but not much to hold it there (humectant) and not much added value (as you would get from Amino Acids, for example). Your skin might prefer Aloe to Rose Water, or a combination. Your skin may prefer to have HA serum as a first step and then the moisture layered after. Or it may prefer that each skin has a tiny bit of humectant added in.
I won’t lie. There are a lot of variables. But you can start really simply, with one or two products. The important thing is that you’re looking at your skin each time to see what happens. At this stage I would try and stick to one technique per routine. So if you’re layering your hydrators separately then keep them separate (ie, one skin of Amino Acids, or Marine Hyaluronics, then skins of Rose Water). If you are mixing then use the same mix, not a bunch of different ones (ie, 5 drops Rose Water and one drop of Amino Acid in each skin).
Its a good idea to come up with a plan of a few ideas you want to try.
💬💬💬 Decide on three combinations that you can try for 2 days each. The reason for doing it the same way for 2 days in a row is to find a way to remember what you’re doing. It will become habit once you start to find combos that work for you. In the meantime I encourage everyone to add their Experiments to this post!
💦💦💦💦 Happy Hydrating! 💦💦💦💦