It happens to the best of us. It might be a celebrity you admire endorsing what looks like a promising product, or some very clever Instagram marketing that catches your attention and numbs that part of your brain responsible for rationalising, analysing, researching… So you end up clicking on add to cart, and the rest is history. Here are my latest more or less unfortunate beauty buys that are definitely not going back to my cart again!

Origins By All Greens Foaming Deep Cleansing Mask (£32 / 70ml)

Potentially one of top 10 most idiotic reasons for buying a skincare product: Madeleine Shaw had just become the Origins Glow Girl of the Year and she was endorsing this mask, so I just acted impulsively and didn’t even bother to do any research on the formula before I added it to basket. The main reason it was such a disappointment is very simple: By All Greens is far too expensive for a foaming cleanser! £32 worth of expensive, to be more precise. It wouldn’t have been a high price to pay for a mask, but I believe this product is highly misrepresented – and misleadingly called a mask when you’re not even told how long it’s meant to be left on the skin etc. As most foaming cleansers, it is quite drying and stripping skin of its natural oils, while the so-called detox effect is something very hard to testify for since it’s just one of those empty marketing words that everyone is crazy about, although nobody knows what they are even meant to do. Probably not the best purchase as my first Origins product…

TruSelf Organics Ocean Mineral Moisturizer ($19 / 2oz.)

Again, top 10 worst reasons for choosing TruSelf Organics Ocean Mineral Moisturizer, this time for having fallen victim of what looked like some very appealing Instagram campaign. I bought the Clear Skin Kit with a cleanser, powder mud mask and this moisturiser, and have only managed to finish the cream and cleanser so far. How do you describe a moisturiser that leaves your skin dry (and even dryer and tighter than it was before application)? Not even sure how that is possible, but at least this is the effect it had on me. I blame the alcohol for this (as I didn’t check the ingredients before buying), despite the other goodness in the formula that was meant to promote skin’s natural moisture and stimulate collagen production etc. It also took forever to arrive from the US, and I did not receive the free utensil kit with the promotion they were running at the time. Needless to say, definitely not repurchasing.

TruSelf Organics Clear Skin Foaming Cleanser ($16 / 1.8 fl. oz.)

I know foaming cleansers are not the best for your skin, but I found TruSelf Organics Clear Skin Foaming Cleanser quite gentle and not very stripping as it lacks the harsh sulphates in other formulas. As it is based on naturally foaming coconut oil and anti-bacterial tea tree oil, the all-natural cleanser is fairly healthy and safe for the skin. I also liked the compact size of the pack as I’m always in search for minis to include in my gym bag and make my morning on-the-go skincare easier. Having said this, this product’s pump pack ended up leaking all over my bag and covering everything in a sticky foam, making it useless for carrying around and defeating the purpose of a small size tube.

MONU Skin Moisture Rich Collagen Eye Cream (£29.95 / 15ml)

Now this is a slightly different story, as I did research this product when I bought it a year ago and just wanted to try the MONU Skincare brand that Feelunique were promoting by selling it in a gift set. All I wanted was a super moisturising eye cream, as most of the lines around my eyes are clear dehydration lines, so a collagen-based formulation sounded like the right idea at the time – now I’m more inclined to believe that hyaluronic acid will probably be the most efficient ingredient, so lesson learned for next time. The MONU Moisture Rich Collagen Eye Cream did virtually nothing to my under-eye area and it was even less nourishing than the far cheaper and way better value face cream in the same range, which was actually quite a decent product. It also put me off eye creams a little bit, encompassing all those reasons that end up making some eye creams a ripoff – double the cost cost with the reduced size of an already existing product.