Oil and Oily Part II: The OCM

Hello pretties!

First of all I have to give a shout out to Dominican Enigma over at BeautyLogic for being the first person that is not related to me to comment on my blog! Thank you for reading. I'm adding you to my link love.

Anyway, on to Part II of the Oil and Oily series with what I consider to be one of the greatest inventions of all time - The Oil Cleansing Method. I don't know who came up with this but this cleansing method is an oily, clogged-pore, blackhead-plagued girl's best friend.

When I first heard about it I was skeptical; how can slathering my grease-mania face with oil help me when oil is what I'm trying to avoid? But apparently oil attracts oil or something and this method is the best way to get deep down clean. I don't remember all the science behind it, but if you're curious you can read up on it here.

As I may have mentioned a time or two million, I have extremely oily skin. I also have tonnes of blackheads and clogged pores; which is not helped by the fact that the air here in Toronto is absolutely disgusting and I'm a stinky smoker. So I have about a million bumps and blackheads on my nose and cheeks. Prior to discovering this, the only thing I found that even remotely helped with this was a pore cleanser like this one:

Mine isn't as fancy as this one but you get the idea. Anyone know anything about these? I feel like they must be really bad for my skin somehow but I love them. I use mine now in conjunction with the OCM.

Now on to my experiences with the miracle that is oil cleansing. I discovered this somehow on makeupalley.com (click the link to read the reviews) and then did a lot of additional reading before I tried it. To make a long story short, it's all about using castor oil as your main oil and then adding another lighter oil. The mixture then basically sweeps all the yuck out of your pores.

So what I do is mix 75% castor oil with 25% sweet almond oil which I bought at the spice store in Kensington Market for like $2. I rub it together in my hands and then massage it all over my face. I spend a lot of time on the massaging part, partly because it's soothing and also because facial massage is good for you. I use the method I learned in beauty school many moons ago but any kind of gentle upward/circular strokes will probably do. I do that for about a minute or two, and while I'm doing that I put a clean facecloth in the sink and run hot water over it. I make the water as hot as I can possibly stand it. Then when you're done massaging, you squeeze the excess water out of the facecloth (this hurts because the water is so hot) and then you drape the cloth over your face. This is basically just a cheater way of steaming your skin. Hold the cloth over your face until it begins to cool. I do this about four times and when the cloth has cooled the fourth time I wipe the oil off my face. That's it! As soon as I've finished my skin looks brighter and clearer and extractions are waaay easier at this point. So of course I thought, this is the perfect time to use my pore cleanser!

Sidebar: Is everyone familiar with these pore cleansers? It's basically a little vacuum cleaner for your face. You wet your skin and then run the cleanser over it and it sucks allllll the yuck out of your pores. You think a Biore strip is fascinating? You should see this shit!

Anyway, using the pore cleanser right after the OCM really allows you to get all the yuck out. Those little bumps completely flatten and almost all my blackheads get sucked out. Even the small amount of milia I have on my chin is vastly improved by this. When I'm done with that,I usually tone with witch hazel and then sit around and let my skin breathe for a little while before I apply moisturizer/night cream. Some people don't even use moisturizer after doing this, but I like moisturizer so I do.

The best part about the OCM? You can do it with your makeup on and it will remove every last speck. No need to pre-wash. I'm telling you, this is the best thing since...well I don't know what. But it's great.

So the wiwfm verdict is....yes! yes! yes!