Last week, I was at the grocery store and happened to spot these St. Ives Exfoliating Peel Pads. They looked similar to the Philosophy Microdelivery Peel pads I used to use when I worked at Sephora, which were amazing, but they were $55 a jar!
The thing I loved about them was that I didn't have to use a scrub to get the dead skin off...just wipe the premoistened pad over my face, and let the gentle acids devour my flakes. Super easy!
So, I wondered...could these $5 St. Ives pads be a dupe? Let's find out!
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The thing I loved about them was that I didn't have to use a scrub to get the dead skin off...just wipe the premoistened pad over my face, and let the gentle acids devour my flakes. Super easy!
So, I wondered...could these $5 St. Ives pads be a dupe? Let's find out!
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The main ingredient in the Philosophy ones, aside from water, is lactic acid, which is derived from milk (that's why milk baths make your skin glow!). Lactic acid is gentler than glycolic acid, which is in a lot of exfoliating cleansers and can be irritating to some people's skin. Philosophy's version also contains Alpha Hydroxy fruit acids, such as tangerine, grapefruit, lemon and orange.
So I checked out the ingredient label on the St. Ives pads, and right there after water was lactic acid! Also on the list are orange and lemon fruit acids, so of course I bought them! How did they work? Let's find out!
This jar has 60 pads, compared with 100 in Philosophy's version. They are very saturated with product, which is nice, and gave me a lot to work with. I was able to sweep it over my face, neck and décolletage. One downside is that the pads are thin so they are hard to get out of the jar. They stick together in two's and three's so you have to pull them apart.
Each pad is fairly large, about the size of my hand.
When I used these, it made my skin tingle a tiny bit (not burn!) so I could feel those acids going to work. It stopped after about a minute and I didn't experience any redness. Afterwards my face felt so smooth and ready for makeup. Since I have dry skin, and this type of product can be drying, I'll only use these a couple of times per week.
Even if you're oily, you may want to start with every other day and increase to daily after a week or so.
These are pretty gentle, and shouldn't irritate most skin types but if your skin is sensitive, I recommend doing a test on a small section of your face first and see what happens.
I am so happy I found these, as they are a total Philosophy dupe for $50 less! I'll be pinning this to my dupes board on Pinterest for sure!
