By Abbie Stokes

Skin care is something that everyone can truly enjoy- everyone has skin, and skin needs moisture, especially nearing the winter months when dryness is most despised. I went on a quest to find an all-around solid moisturizer that is good for all skin types. 

What I found was the “Peach Slices Snail Rescue Oil Free Moisturizer” from Korean-American brand Peach & Lily. It boasts a variety of acne-fighting and moisturizing ingredients, including snail mucin, birch juice, strawberry extract, cica, and hyaluronic acid- all great ingredients for dry, winter skin. Price-wise, it’s $16.99, which isn’t bad considering the typical price range of good quality skin care products.

The most foreign ingredient to many would be the snail mucin. Yes, it is in fact what it says: a filtered form of the slime that snails leave behind when they move about. Peach & Lily says it’s “[a]n antibacterial, cruelty-free ingredient that’s harvested from natural surfaces that snails slither around on. It’s purified, filtrated and then included in our formula…it’s a humectant that binds moisture to skin but also helps naturally exfoliate and target dark spots, fine lines and wrinkles.” It certainly caught my eye when I was searching for products, since it’s pretty popular in Asia, and I had heard good things about the ingredient in other products and brands. 

I will preface this experiment by saying a couple things about my own skin: I have oily-combination type skin, and I have a handful of pimples as well as large(ish) pores, a few dark spots and some light scarring from previous breakouts. My skin is by no means perfect or clear, so my skin will be a more realistic base for the trial. This trial was also only for one week, so take any results with a couple grains of salt. Results will surely vary from person to person, and at least slightly with different skin types!

Thus, my skin care trial started.

Days 1-3: Good beginnings

I mostly noticed that my skin was firmer than normal, most likely due to the plumping effect of the hyaluronic acid that’s in the moisturizer. It definitely was a solid moisturizer from the get-go, and worked just as well as my standard moisturizer that I had been using prior to the Peach & Lily one. The Snail Mucin moisturizer also has no scent to it, which meant there was nothing to get used to. I’m personally pretty sensitive to strong scents, so having it be scent-free is a plus (as well as the fact that heavily scented products typically cause more irritation than those that aren’t). I have generally sensitive skin, and if there is anything that my skin will react to in a product, it will most likely react within the first few uses of a product. So, with nothing bad happening in the first few days, I was optimistic that this would be a solid hit of a moisturizer.

Days 4-6: A solid way ahead

I mentioned previously that I have some healing and present blemishes on my face–at this point they seemed to be healing quite well; but I will not solely attribute the healing to just the moisturizer since I was using other products at the same time. However, I will say that the combination of the pimple patches I was using along with the Snail moisturizer was quite the powerful combination, and no doubt helped calm down some of the rougher patches of my skin. As for the rest of my non-blemished skin, it was looking glowy and plump, as it had been for the past few days.

Day 7: Final thoughts

At this point, the state of my skin was pretty happy: no large amounts of dryness or tightness, my blemishes weren’t overly angry at me (at least no more than normal), and it seemed as if the snails had done their job. It was more of the same as it had been for the past week, and I couldn’t complain. With skincare and skin in general, it’s better to use something that gives minor improvements over time than something that seems to change you overnight. Time and effort, as well as good quality products, are key in both skincare and life in general.

Overall, I think this moisturizer performed quite well for how much it was and the types of ingredients it contained. Although it wasn’t life-changing, I believe that this would be the product that would be a staple in someone’s basic morning skincare routine as a solid base for other products or even makeup.