Queen Helene Mint Julep Masque

This is a little bit of an icon in the world of clay masks and I wanted very much to try it when I saw the many reviews of it online. It promises to do many great things to the average face and heck I wanted a piece of that paradise too!

I got a huge tube thanks to the 33% more product promo - I guess the clay mask Gods knew that my face needed the extra work to get it looking super sweet!

The first thing about this product I noticed was the fact that it was quite hard to squeeze out because of how thick it was but that's ok as I can live with it. I ensured that my face was clean and my hair was pulled back so it would be easy to apply the mask. I applied this on my face with clean fingers and there was a noticeable stinging around the area of my nose. I was a little alarmed at first but this is normal and for me it was only around that area that there was a stinging. Elsewhere on my face, the mask just felt cool. 

There was also a very strong minty smell and reminded me very much of toothpaste or gum. But once the mask is spread evenly on the face, the smell is not as overpowering. 

I settled in to read a magazine for about 15 minutes and I felt the clay mask hardening and tightening my face at the same time. It went from a light green to an almost whitish color as it dried out. My little girls were so amused at the antics of their sligtly eccentric mother and asked me to save some of the clay if they ever needed to play the role of a ghostly apparition for their future school plays!

The magic was seen once I washed the mask off my face. My face was smooth, cleaner and slightly fairer and my pores were visibly smaller!! I do not have blackheads but I believe that this mask is good to remove that as well as you can see from the instructions on the back of the product below. Indeed it draws out impurities because my face truly felt clean after.

Here is the list of ingredients and as you can see, Kaolin is listed as the second ingredient. And for those who like a bit of trivia, Kaolin is white, chalky clay named after the region in China where it was used to make porcelain during the Tang Dynasty (about 1,200 years ago).

My verdict:- I do love this mask because I think it is a heavy duty, impurities cleansing, pimple drying mask which every girl needs for those emergencies when you find huge zit on your forehead and need it to shrink fast! I tried spot applying a small amount of the mask overnight, on a pimple on my chin once and it had shrunk when I got up in the morning. Nice!

What about you, dear readers? Do you use this mask? What other masks do you use that is good? Do let me know.