Sleepless Travels Reloaded

La Prarie cellular anti-spot
ageing cream

Cenovis - vitamin c 500mg

crushed vitamin c + Oil of Olay
moisturising lotion

The background story
My friend and I went to Rundle Street today to do some shopping. Part of that shopping included shopping for my friend’s Mother’s Day present.

She wanted to get some La Prarie skincare creams for her mother. This appears to be a very exclusive, very expensive brand. For example, the “smart cream” was AUD 320 for a 30ml bottle.

I got bored so I started questioning the other sales assistants at the same time. Apparantly the “cellular anti-spot brightening serum” would be quite ideal for my skins since I have acne scars. It works by using vitamin c - it not only brightens the discoloration, it also helps the repair damaged skin cells. Hmm.

I asked if there was any special delivery method - was the vitamin c tacked on to some other metal/compound? Exactly how does it get absorbed by the skin? The sales assistant didn’t seem to give very satisfactory answers - kept diverting the questions, but from what I could gather, because the molecules in the serum were “thin”, they could get through beyond the skins epidermis into deep inside the skin to repair the skin cells below. Moisturising cream doesn’t penetrate the upper layer because the molecules are too big, which is as it should be since moisturiser is meant to seal and protect the skin. She said the concentration of vitamin c was a secret, which I thought was a bit dodgy because as if you can hide that sort of information!!

The vitamin c was in a very stabilised form too - magnesium ascorbate phosphate - which means the vitamin c doesn’t break down in the tub, leaving you with no vitamin c after a few weeks. This is true, vitamin c does break down very easily.

She also said I’d be able to see a difference in 12 weeks.

Aim
To produce an external solution/cream/lotion for my face to get rid of acne scars.
To produce results in 12 weeks, same as the La Prarie serum.

The experiment
So okay, as long as I have lots of vitamin c, and mix it in a cream with small molecules, and do it for 12 weeks, I should be able to replicate the results right? I could crush vitamin c tablets. I wouldn’t have to worry about vitamin c breaking down too because I’d just make up the mixture fresh everyday.

I took a couple of macro shots of my skin for “before”/”after” reference purposes. My goodness, it looks terrible!!!

So what I did was grabbed some of those chewable vitamin c tablets (500 mg, ascorbic acid + sodium ascorbate), crushed it up with a mortar and pestle, and mixed it in with some Oil of Olay moisturising lotion with a pate knife.

I had to do it quickly since I didn’t want the vitamin c to start breaking down on me. I didn’t have any “small molecule” base I could mix the vitamin c tablet powder in with, so I used Oil of Olay as it’s a pretty light, not heavy moisturising lotion. Maybe next time I could just use water? Hmm. Hard to handle though.

I tried it first on a small patch of just to make sure I wouldn’t get any allergic reactions to it (vitamin c is an acid after all).
Then I used the rest on my legs because it’d be a waste to chuck out everything else!

Conclusion
I feel so sticky now!
Yes, I used those chewable vitamin c tablets that has saccharin in it - sticky!!
I have to find those vitamin c tablets that have to be swallowed instead. That’s a good idea because I’ll be getting a “purer” tablet, without all the flavourings and sweetners and whatnot that makes chewable vitamin c tablets bearable. I know these have existed…at some point in time at least, because I used to eat them in Singapore.

In the end much less than 500mg got on my face because today was only a test round.
I still have 12 weeks to go in my experiment >:D

Let’s see if I can replicate the results of a ~$230 bottle of serum >:D