About Me

Hi,
I'm Pea - 46 year old mother and wife, self-employed business owner, selling vintage and antique oddities and curios, books and ephemera.

Why late to the party?

Well, I've been wearing make-up since I was 16 and obviously doing the basic day-to-day skincare all my life, but I have only quite recently become just a little bit of obsessed with Korean and Asian skincare and beauty. The seven and ten step routines amused me at first, and then intrigued me, and then absolutely had me by the balls!

I was initially piqued by the crazy and cute packaging (TonyMoly!!) and the curious sounding product ingredients and names. Snail mucin, bee venom, donkey milk - I had to try them out!
And this stuff works! It's not only fun to shop for, fun to try out and makes your daily skincare routine a really pleasurable and oft-thought about process twice a day - but it really does seem to have proven results (well not all, but at lot of, and this is where this blog comes into it).

My other loves, after my family - who will always come in at the top of the charts) are mostly based around finding stuff. And this is the one area I know I'm pretty good at! I'm great at finding the vintage things I collect and sell.  I love shopping and particularly shopping to a tight budget - I love nothing more than finding great bargains, whether it be marked-down food in the supermarket or where to buy the latest skincare at the best price I can get it. I love nature - I love walking and watching and finding things - I love what nature is and what it can do. This love of nature has transferred onto my love of natural ingredients used in skincare. I love to continually learn and find stuff out. If I had to choose one word to define me, it would be curious. Always curious, forever learning.

See? There is a link between all of these things!

And so I may be late to the party - late to blogging, later in life to start really concentrating on my skin, but better late than never. I haven't missed the boat - I've just been dawdling in duty-free before I get on the boat! And I'm not afraid of being closer to fifty than forty, because it's all about the journey, all about being curious and learning, all the time.

So, what am I working with?
See this photo above? It might be the only selfie you see. I was INTENSELY uncomfortable taking that picture (hence the slightly hesitant smile!) and even more uncomfortable posting it publicly. But if I'm going to be writing about my skincare education then you need to see (just once and just quickly) what I look like. Overweight certainly! With combination skin - becomes oily-ish in the T-zone as the day progresses; dry sometimes in other patches. I'm starting to get sensitive skin more and more these days I find - I don't really get spots but I often have itchy and irritated skin, particularly along the jawline and sometimes under my eyes at the top of the cheeks. I'm guessing this is a combination of older skin, introducing too many new products to my skin at once and possibly because of my job, I do have my hands in some yucky dusty places at times when buying and sorting stock and I'm a face-toucher, so I probably irritate it in that way. My smile lines have always been quite deep even as a child and have always been part of my features but I do have two quite deep vertical frown lines between my eyes (although these have definitely lessened since paying attention to my skincare) and I also have way more lines around my eyes than I realised! So, I tend to look out mostly for products that hydrate and products that promise to diminish fine lines and wrinkles. But actually, I kind of look out for all products as I will relate further during this blog - I'm a sucker for the new, the interesting, the promises, the sparkly...