The first mask I am going to review is the Pure Smile Strawberry Essence Mask. Pure Smile seems to be a Korean brand, at least this mask was manufactured in Korea, but the packing is all Japanese, so I am not sure whether it is a Korean mask also sold in Japan, or a mask produced in Korea but only sold in Japan. You can find around 30 different kinds of masks by Pure Smile in Japan, so it's hard to decide what to get, but I like fruity stuff, so Strawberry had to be one of my choices.
The Pure Smile Strawberry Essence Mask is a sheet mask, suitable for all skin types. It contains fruit extract, vitamine E, collagen and Hyaluronic Acid as active ingredients and is supposed to nourish and hydrate your skin.
You just put the sheet on your washed face and leave it there for 15-20 minutes.
The mask is dropping wet and I had quite a fight trying to unfold it.
I expected it to smell fruity, but my first impression of the scent was quite bad. Rather than fresh strawberries it reminded me of strawberries that are starting to go bad. The scent was a bit too tang for my taste. But luckily the heavy unpleasant cent seemed to volatilize pretty fast and by the time I managed to unfold the sheet and put it on my face it was gone and I could indeed smell a faint strawberry-like scent.
With these sheet masks I always have the problem that there is no way to make them fit my face. They are too short and too wide, my nose is too big, my eyes never seem to be placed in the right position for them, which is why I am always a bit frustrated with these masks. The Pure Smile mask also clearly was designed for different face features. It fits better around the nose and mouth then other sheet masks I had tried, but is very unfitting around my eyes, which seem to be too high up in my face and too big fr the mask.
I always feel like these masks just don't reach the parts of my face that need treatment the most, like for example the area around my nose.
The mask felt incredibly fresh and very cool the moment I put it on my face and after 20 minutes my skin felt super refreshed and smooth. I think this mask is really good as an instant boost for your skin, but I cannot really see any long-time effects. Maybe you would need to use the masks on a regular weekly base for that.
What I really didn't like was that it was ill-fitting like all sheet masks I tried so far and that it didn't reach areas around my face where I felt I needed nourishment the most, like around my nose. I had other ill-fitting masks, that at least coveredthe part around my nose, but the Pure Smile mask is cut out too widely there. That's, like always, my greatest complain about sheet masks. Maybe one day I will find one that hasthe right shape for my face.
