Jamela Skincare Lavender After Sun Restoring Sleeping Gel Facial Mask

Jamela are a brand who made both my 2011 top picks list here and my skincare brands to watch list here for good reason. They’re a fairly niche brand who make natural, vegan-friendly (no animal testing or animal ingredients) masks and treatment serums.  Their speciality are sheet masks which I’ll review soon, but the main reason I’m a convert to this line is due to my experience with the Sleeping Gel Facial Mask.

The mask comes in a tub and is a really thick gel that doesn’t really smell too strongly of lavender.  You use it by applying it all over the face and leaving it on overnight.  Obviously it’s really easy to use and totally foolproof, plus, a little goes a long way.  This is a product that kind of bridges the gap between an overnight treatment and a mask as it’s not really a mask in the literal sense – you don’t have to monitor the time it’s on and it doesn’t feel like a mask once it’s dried – but it doesn’t absorb into the skin either so it still sits on top of the skin a more traditional mask.  The thing that I was worried about when I first used it was that it would be too mask like; whenever I wear a mask I can never really relax as I’m too aware of the presence of a mask on my skin, plus for some reason I always get an itchy nose!  Thankfully this is a mask that you can apply and once it’s dried you have no idea it’s there unless you touch your face, which will feel ever so slightly tacky, but not intrusively so.  The instructions advise that you use warm water to wash the mask off the following morning, but I find that a cleansing water works fine.

After using the mask, the next day my skin looks a lot more toned and refined.  What’s interesting about this mask is that it does seem to really calm down my spots – especially the cystic ones that are just under the skin – but it also doesn’t strip the skin of moisture so skin just feels refreshed and more balanced.  As the name suggests, this can also be used as an after sun treatment which I imagine it would be really good for as it feels very gentle and soothing.

I’ve been experimenting a little with this and another thing that I also think this is good for is ‘trapping’ spot treatments on the skin.  I apply a spot treatment, let it dry, then apply the mask and I feel that this ensures the treatment is locked onto the skin overnight, rather than being rubbed off by my pillow.  I can imagine that this sort of approach would work really well for locking-in treatment serums too.

As I said, this was the first product I tried from the Jamela range and it’s made a real impact; I’ve tried a couple of their other products (reviews to follow) and all of them have delivered really good results, so if you’re looking for specific treatments and masks that work then I’d heartily recommend having a mooch through their range, which can be found here.  This mask can be found here and costs £17 which is mid range for a treatment mask, but a little goes a long way and I’d say you could comfortably get at least 25 treatments from one tub.

*PR Sample