My local Ricky’s NYC recently shut down (RIP), so I guess I’ll need to find another neighborhood joint to satisfy my skin care fix. Ricky’s NYC always carried a great mix of luxury and affordable skin care and hair care products there, as well as international imports, including the Japanese sheet mask I’m going to review today. I bought this Pure Smile Pearl Sheet Mask because I was intrigued by the name. At first, I thought it was just a brightening/whitening mask…

Every few months, I get a big, angry pimple that refuses to subside (either in size or redness) for weeks at a time. When you get a pimple like that, there’s nothing you can really do except apply a pimple patch or a benzoyl peroxide spot treatment at night, and hope that the pimple gods smile upon you eventually. Dr. Lin Acne Spot Corrector is one of the spot treatments I’ve tried, and it falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between “totally useless” and…

Remember when I visited the DECIEM store back in April? The store associate recommended mandelic acid for smoothing the texture of my acne scars, and alpha arbutin for lightening the appearance and redness of the scars. The store was sold out of alpha arbutin at the time, so I was only able to give mandelic acid a try. (Read the review here). Finally I was recently able to order some alpha arbutin directly from the DECIEM website. I’ve been using it once or twice a day for a few weeks now,…