I haven’t posted a review of an actual makeup product in a while, and I wanted to get this up as soon as possible because it was a Lunar New Year Collection. Like many other people since COVID-19, I haven’t been wearing makeup very often. So, adding the Etude House #MilkyNewYear line into my personal collection was basically a note to myself that I should probably do my makeup more frequently. It is my relaxing, “me” time where I unwind and just embrace my creativity.
Things to know about the Etude House #MilkyNewYear Collection:
Things that are in this collection:
- Soon Jung Hydro Barrier Cream (I will go into ingredient breakdown of this in a second)
- Milk Tone Up Base SPF 30 PA+++
- Etude House Milk Cheek (in 3 shades):
- Banana Milk (warm yellow tone)
- Blueberry Milk (purple/ cool pink tone)
- Strawberry Milk ( neutral/warm pink undertones)
- Etude House Play Color Eyes (in 3 shades):
- Banana Milk (warm yellow tone)
- Blueberry Milk (purple/ cool pink tone)
- Strawberry Milk ( neutral/warm pink undertones)
The Soon Jung Hydro Barrier Cream is formulated with the following ingredients that are good for your skin:
- Glycerin is a hydrating agent that pulls water into the skin. It is perfect for dry patches, and great for winter.
- Madecassioside is an ingredient (a component of the Centella Asiatica plant) that can help with collagen production and inflammation.
- Scutellaria Baicalensis Root Extract, also known as Skullcap Root Extract, is an ingredient commonly used in Chinese medicine that has been shown to help improve discoloration and dark spots on the skin. There hasn’t been much research to show how high of a percentage is needed for the ingredient to be effective, but it is estimated that you need somewhere between 0.1 to 0.3% to be effective.
- Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract (Green Tea Leaf Extract) is an antioxidant that can be linked to reducing the risk of skin cancer. It also has anti-inflammatory, anti-aging, acne-fighting, and hydrating properties. It is a true skincare superstar.
- Vitamin E is excellent for cellular restoration, soothing burns, and an irritation stopper.
This Soon Jung Hydro Barrier Cream is formulated with the following ingredients that are “bad”* for your skin:
- After checking the ingredient list, there is nothing in this formula that could cause any irritation or negative reaction. It is incredibly safe and gentle for the skin.
K-Points: 9/10
So, for beauty reviews, unlike my album unboxings, I will be much harsher on because this can directly impact your health, where buying K-Pop albums does not. It just impacts your wallet. As such, all of my beauty reviews will be out of 10 points. I will not be going over that number.
If you want to watch my first impressions of this entire collection, you may do so here:
Besides the tone-up cream, which I need to fiddle with more to get a solid opinion on it, I absolutely love this collection. The Hydro Barrier cream (as well as probably most of the Soon Jung Line is about to make its way into my “default” skincare rotation with Pyunkang Yul). This line of products is perfect for any skin type and is great for sensitive skin. If you start seeing more reviews of both of those brands start showing up as product reviews, don’t be shocked.
As for all of the makeup products in the collection, I like how they go outside the box a bit of what is Korean makeup. These products aren’t the normal pinks that you see in K-Beauty. They have heavy white undertones and feature a palette of pale yellows and pale purples. On top of that, the blushes go even farther away from your typical blush shades. I think this is one of the first times that I have seen a pale yellow and pale lilac blush. The colors are a bit more daring than I’ve seen before in K-Beauty
What are the Koreans saying?
I was digging through reviews on 화해**, a Korean skincare app that lists out the ingredients of products from many brands for people to look through as well as post reviews. The Koreans absolutely love the Soon Jung line because it is incredibly gentle on the skin, yet effective at the same time. For many Koreans, like me, it is one of their go-to lines if they have any skin irritation or their skin needs a reset.
You can’t really find on 화해 makeup reviews, as it is meant for skincare, but I do watch a number of Korean Youtubers who did a number of looks with the eye palettes and they all talked about how the eye shadows were different, yet absolutely beautiful. They talked about how easy it was to build the color on the eyes as well as how blendable the shadows are. They mentioned, just like I do in my video though that all of these palettes are better for fair skin tones because of all of the white in the pigments.
Where Can I Buy It?
Whenever I buy K-Beauty, I do shop at a couple of different places. If you want to see all of the places that I shop at, you can check them all out here. I picked all of these products up directly on the ETUDE House website. But, with a number of the other sites on my list, such as Sephora and Ulta, you can use Rakuten for cash back off of your purchases on their site.
What is Rakuten?
Rakuten is a cashback site that gives you money for purchases you may have already made. They even have an extension for multiple browsers so when you go to a website that uses Rakuten, it will automatically pop up the cashback button to make sure you are saving money. I use this all the time, and I got over 80$ back from them for purchases I was going to make anyway. That’s about 3 more albums I can buy!
If you’ve never used Rakuten before, you can use this link to get $10 when making a qualified purchase of $25 when using Rakuten. You will also get whatever percent cashback is being offered from the site you are purchasing from. Sephora, typically has 4% cashback, through here. Ulta typically has 3%. These are just some of the companies on the website, but there are other major retailers are on there as well!
Rakuten also has a Google Chrome extension that will tell you as soon as you log onto a site that has cashback with a little pop-up in the corner, so that you can ensure you are saving money!
What do you think of this ETUDE House collection, K-Nuggets? Would you buy it? Let me know in the comments down below!
사랑합니다!
–Rachel
*I put bad in quotes here because everything is subjective. Just because an ingredient that may have some amount of research on it that it can cause issues in the skin exists in a product says nothing about how it is processed and refined when making the product. It also says nothing about where that particular ingredient came from and the quality of that ingredient. It’s just like with cooking you can have all the same ingredients to start, but depending on what you do with those ingredients, you can get two completely different end products. Liah Yoo, Youtuber and now the owner of the brand Krave Beauty, made an excellent video talking about this. You can watch that here.
**Note: 화해 still only exists in Korean, but some of the products can be searched for in English.
