I am allll about minimising my pores these days, and I’ve been gasping to try Origins Clear Improvement™ Active Charcoal Mask for ages. It’s been sitting there on my sink for said ages, patiently awaiting its employment. Such was my yearning that I left it there, unusual because even though my own employment has a siginificant amount to do with products that need to be tested under bathroom conditions, I hate to have the sink all cluttered up. This stayed fast, and finally I got around to giving it a go.

The thing is, hot water is an issue in my gaff. Now, the Americans reading this are gonna be all like, ‘WTF?’ It’s not that I don’t have access to hot water, it’s just that it is a pain/very expensive to fire up the immersion {The what, howl the Yanks}, and this mask requires the use of a cloth dunked in hot water and then applied to the face — to open the pores, ya see. My power shower runs off its own heating element, and it took me ages to realise that I could run the shower, wet the cloth, and then proceed. Must be the American in me that continued to equate hot water with the faucet {The taps, shout my Irish readers.}

Got there in the end!

I once tried a charcoal mask, I think it was from Sanctuary Spa, that warmed up on your face, on contact, and it was amazeballs. This is texturally much better than that one, but even with the hot cloth — or perhaps because of it — it didn’t get all that warm, which was a disappointment.

I was very, very happy with the way it — I was going to say ‘dried’ but in fact I am happy because it didn’t dry, it was more like it ‘set’. I do like a nice, tight, squinchy mask {TWSS} but this gave the squinch without the drying feeling. It was pretty perfect, to be honest. This is it, almost dry:

Srlsy, that still has some shine on it, which I take to mean it is not going to dry out yer gob.

How did my pores feel? Shrunken, in the best possible sense. The minimisation project has been going well, and I’ve been noticing a real improvement in texture and general glowiness. I’ve got a few other products that I’ll be talking about soon, but this mask is a great place to start, should you like to join me on my pore-shrinking adventure…

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100mls: €29/£22/$24

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