Brand Sisters: Cosmetics companies you never new were related

If you're like me who has spend 5 USD for a very entertaining and enlightening read about personal care and cosmetics from Romanoski and Schueller's It's Okay To Have Lead In Your Lipstick, then you've probably seen a lot of nifty, money saving advice which felt like "insider information". One of such is to keep note of which companies own your favorite cosmetics/ skin care brand. Apparently, brands which are owned by a common company sometimes the same ingredients even if those brands are sold in different price points. In other words, cheap and high end may have the SAME ingredients if they're owned by a common company!

So I compiled a list of companies which own several cosmetics and skin care brands for our reference. Here's what I've Googled.

Do you need a separate sunblock if your moisturizer has SPF?

Summer is near so I am often asked by my friends if they need a separate sunscreen or sunblock for their faces if their moisturizer already has an SPF (an example of such moisturizer with SPF is this cream from TONYMOLY).

Short answer: YES.

Long answer: NO - you don't but there are conditions that must be fulfilled.

No one's too old to start with sun protection.
(Image By Bill Branson, via Wikimedia Commons)

Review: It's Skin 2 PM Sunblock

In my quest to find a no white cast, can-be-applied-every-two-hours sunscreen, I've searched high and low thru COSDNA (here's how I use COSDNA to find products with a small, pre-determined ingredient list), various Korean cosmetics shops in malls (while shamelessly reading ingredient lists and not buying if I did not like the UV filters) and blogs. I was looking for a sunscreen which does not contain titanium dioxide and had no denatured alcohol in it. 

Thanks to COSDNA, I was able to find a sunscreen from Korean skin care brand It's Skin. It's Skin's 2 PM Sunblock fits the bill of not having white cast and alcohol, but can it be more than just a pretty ingredient list? 

Image from en.koreadepart.com

How to find products in COSDNA like a wizard

Have you ever tried to search for products with a preferred ingredient list already in mind? For example, I've always wanted a sunblock with no titanium dioxide and alcohol but must have zinc oxide. Instead of searching the web for each sunblock and checking the ingredients one by one, I use COSDNA's not-really-hidden feature of searching for products with inclusions/exclusions of ingredients. 

Read on to find out how to use COSDNA to its potential.

Review: St. Ives' Timeless Skin Collagen Elastin Facial Moisturizer

I remember a promise I made on my New Year's beauty resolutions post where I said I will switch gradually to cheaper skin care products. The moisturizer I am about to review now is an accidental fulfillment of this resolution, following my misadventure with Nature Republic's Bamboo of Damyang. On the same day I wrote the former blog post, I had to buy a new moisturizer I can use that night. Unluckily, I only had 500 pesos and all I can afford was a drugstore product - St. Ives' Timeless Skin Collagen Elastin Moisturizer.

If you're a beauty skeptic, you probably know how collagen and elastin in skin care products do not really work simply because their molecules are too big to pass through our skin barrier. So why did I buy this moisturizer? Did I somehow had a lapse in judgment because I needed a new moisturizer ASAP?

Image from stives.com

Review: Too Cool For School Roll Lip Pop

If you've been following this blog, you probably know I am not easily swayed by brand names, marketing ploys and packaging. Also, I do not believe in the tenet of "the higher the price, the better the quality" - a belief unfortunately shared by most skin care and beauty junkies. 

Too Cool For School is one of those brands with such amazing packaging and branding, and if product quality is never a consideration, TCFS is my number one Korean brand. But alas, I have mixed reviews on their products. Today, I'm reviewing Too Cool For School's Roll Lip Pop. 

Cute artful packaging aside, will this lip balm be a winner or a flop? Read on to know more.