Hi, Beautiful Blossoms! I hope the week ended on a good note for y’all, and yes, I am on track with this week’s Currently Obsessed! wOOt! Not only that, tonight’s entry is unique in the sense that I’m actually using two products of the same company based on the fact that my skin type is combination: I’m oily on the T-zone but as far as my lower cheeks, mouth, and chin area? Dry as a desert.

So what got me into Lancôme’s toners?

I read an article about toners on Yahoo! where the author pointed out that men aged better than women due to the fact that they use toners after shaving, which kept their skin more taut and delayed the sagging process. Now, I don’t know if there is any truth to that, since a universal agreement in the skincare arena is very, very rare, but I figured it was worth a try.

Armed with the knowledge that I have predominantly combination oily, I hit my local Sephora and bought me a Lancôme Tonique Pure Focus toner. Why Lancôme?

Because it’s what I grew up with. My ma hammered the idea of using Lancôme into my head when she was trying to get me to be more serious about skincare. But being the lazy, stubborn ass that I was in my youth, I couldn’t be bothered to use a toner as my night time skincare regimen when all I wanted to do was fall flat on my bed and sleep.

And for my negligence, I was punished with sizable craters on my left cheek. It took me a while to stop kicking myself mentally for being neglectful in my younger years – what’s done is done and I can only do as much repair as possible now that I’m closer to being over the hill age-wise. I thought using Benefit’s POREfessional primer would fix the potholes. Nope. I couldn’t mix it with my CoverFX anti-acne primer. It was one or the other, so I decided to give the POREfessional a try as a primer.

My face melted when I hit the fry-n-bake subway station. So I had to give up the POREfessional. So what was I to do? Then I came across the article about toners and I figured, why the hell not?

Admittedly, I didn’t do my research – I don’t really know what toners are supposed to do. Heck, skincare experts are still debating whether toners have a purpose in any skincare regimen altogether. But I figured I had the means to give toners a try.

So I hit the Herald Square Sephora in the hope that Lancôme had a toner for oily skin. I would have gone to Macy’s but I didn’t feel like dealing with the pushy salesperson and I figured I might as well earn the VIB points while I was at it. I almost didn’t find the Lancôme Pure Focus toner because I was searching for it in the Lancôme makeup section rather than the skincare section. Yep.

Once I got the Pure Focus, I made sure I used it every night after I washed my face and right before I applied my Burt’s Bees Radiance Night Cream. One thing that I learned from my skincare disappointment (and reiterated by YouTuber Stephanie Nicole) was that I shouldn’t expect the toner to do its magic overnight. It will only work as long as you stick to a regimen with it. And with that in mind, I was determined to use the toner every time I washed my face.

Slowly but surely, I started to notice that the craters on my left cheek started getting less noticeable. Holy shit, I thought to myself. I almost went bonkers trying to find SOMETHING to fill those damn craters and all I had to do was use a freakin’ toner???

But the joy of the discovery was short-lived: while my pores got smaller, the lower half of my face got drier. I was peeved: I knew I had oily skin and the Pure Focus was designed for oily skin, so why was half of my face showing signs of dehydration?

It wasn’t until I used a good chunk of the Pure Focus toner that I realized that I would have to use a different toner for the lower half of my face. Crap, I thought. This isn’t good. So my face isn’t as oily as I thought it was.

So it was off to my Ma’s makeshift vanity to see what she used as a toner: the Lancôme Tonique Confort. And that’s when I realized that my ma’s skin was dry while my dad’s skin was oily. I inherited both their skin types on different parts of my face.

Back to Sephora I went and this time, I had to look for a smaller version of the Tonique Confort because I used a good chunk of the Pure Focus already and I didn’t want to run out of it before I used up all the Tonique Confort. Unfortunately, there was only one size available, so I had to make do with it.

Now, I use both toners every time I wash my face – both day and night. My pores are still in the process of slowly shrinking and my face has a bit of a healthier glow to it now. I need to be more heavy handed with the Tonique Confort because I don’t use enough to keep my dry areas hydrated after the washing process. I can’t guarantee the same results if you decide to try toners yourselves, though: skincare is a very subjective scene to dive into, after all.

EDIT: I finally got the iPod to be recognized. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ

And that’s it for this week’s Currently Obsessed! Next week, I’m going to round up the products I’ve mentioned for the month of March and tell you the best places to get them!