#TFWOC Project Week #7 - St Moriz Instant Dark Self Tanning Lotion Review

We’re in the final week of #TFWOC. Boo! It’s been such a great experience and I’ve learnt so much – I’ll do a round-up post once the project has officially ended.

The penultimate product in the #TFWOC project is the St Moriz Instant Dark Self Tanning Lotion*. Of all of the fake tans used in the project, this is by far the cheapest, with prices starting at just £3.

I really like this tan, it’s cheap and cheerful and pretty much does what it says on the tin. St Moriz says that this tanning lotion is designed to give you a nice golden tan and leave you with a feel good glow, and I definitely agree.

I used the St Moriz Self Tan Applicator Mitt to apply the product to my legs, although I feel like I could have probably done with two to really work the tan into my skin and get a nice even coverage.

On the mitt the tan is a very intimidating deep brown. It smells gorgeous, kind of like shampoo. But as with most tans the smell disappears after a while, leaving behind the all too familiar biscuity scent.

My legs are the palest part of my body, don’t get me wrong, they’re still pretty dark but compared to my face and chest they’re quite pastey. When I took my before pictures they were a little on the dry side so they look a lit lighter than they do normally!

I applied one coat to my left leg and immediately saw a huge difference, the colour had deepened really nicely and looked very bronzey. It also looked very healthy, the colour of my un-tanned leg started to worry my slightly …

Another coat intensified the colour, but didn’t increase it too much. I’m sure this wouldn’t be the case on lighter skin tones so you’d have to be careful not to overdo it. I’ll admit that the back of my leg did streak slightly, but I think it’s because the tan dries so quickly so applying it with two mitts would have probably been more beneficial.

In terms of longevity, St Moriz just doesn’t cut it. Two days later my legs were back to their chalky colour, giving me slight tan withdrawal.

Bottom line: The colour is gorgeous, perfectly bronzed, no red tones, and a lovely glow. It doesn’t last very long so it’s probably best to treat it like a one-day tan. But at such a decent price you can’t really complain. It does contain parabens, so when I do use it again I’ll be cautious to keep it away from certain areas of my body.

Prices for St Moriz Instant Dark Self Tanning Lotion range from around £3 to £10, and it’s available to buy in most major supermarkets and drugstores. I found it on the CheapSmells website for £4.98.

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#TFWOC Project Week #6 - Vita Liberata pHenomenal Long Lasting Tan Mousse in Dark Review

Before I start this review I just want to apologise to Annie & LaaLaa for being SO behind with this write up, I’ve been so busy with planning #BBloggers Christmas!

Anyway, last week’s #TFWOC was Vita Liberata pHenomenal Long Lasting Tan Mousse*. This tan contains ‘a special combination of natural nourishing extracts’ and is 100% paraben, perfume and alcohol free. All winning points for me, but most probably the reason for the hefty £37.50 price tag.

This is the only tan that lasts up to three weeks (according to Vita Liberata!), which is think is great if you’re a tan addict or like to keep your tan topped up.

The product pumps out a frothy, brown mousse that’s generally pretty easy to apply. (Ignore the colour on the mitt; the camera was having an off day it seems!)

The first thing I noticed about the tan was that it smells. It’s really unpleasant. It reminds me a lot of silly string, almost quite rubbery I think. I appreciate that people don’t like perfumed products (I personally love them), but to be perfume free I think your product needs to be completely unscented. Well that’s my opinion anyway.

In terms of colour I didn’t find that it did a lot for my dark skin. On lighter skin tones I think the pay of would be amazing, but on me not too great. It definitely deepened my skin tone, but the colour is quite flat as there was no ‘glow’ after application. I only applied one layer at first but when I applied the second layer the colour didn’t really intensify.

By the next day I found that the colour just wasn’t vibrant at all. In fact it had pretty much disappeared, and when I got in the shower whatever was left on my arms just washed off. Now I’m not blaming this all on the tan, it could have been application issues too but I know a few other girls on the project also had issues with it lasting.

I tried it again a week later and found that it lasted a bit better if I applied the coats with 24hrs or so in between, over the course of 2-3 days. This way the colour did last longer – not 3 weeks, but 7 days later I could still see traces of it on my arms.

Bottom line: Again, I’m on the fence. I think if you sit in the pale-medium range on the skin tone spectrum then it’s perfect for you. The colour, the longevity, the streak-free application – all winners. But not for WOC. The scent is horrid so I think it’s best to apply in the evening before bed so it has time to settle in. at £37.50 for just 125ml I think it’s really expensive for what it is, but if you’re in the market for a more natural tanning product then it’s probably worth the price tag.

  

Vita Liberata pHenomenal Long Lasting Tan Mousse comes in Fair, Medium and Dark and is available to purchase from the Vita Liberata website for £37.50/125ml. The Vita Liberata range is also stocked in larger Boots stores.

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#TFWOC Project Week #4 - Xen-Tan Dark Lotion Review

Next up in the TFWOC line of fire is the Xen-Tan Dark Lotion*. Even before the project started – back when I was a tanning novice – I’d heard of this award-winning brand.

Again like MakeBelieve, Xen-Tan has different tanning levels – the Dark Lotion is designed to produce an olive colour. When I read that I was a bit sceptical about how effective it’d be for a WOC (again, hate that phrase), I’m a tad past olive already.

The product itself is a thick, muddy-brown colour, with a bit of a green tinge. The tinge put me off slightly as I was worried I’d end up looking like Shrek, but it applied really smoothly – just like a body butter.

The smell is probably the best out of all of the tans we’ve tried so far throughout the project, and actually lasts quite well. As nice as the MakeBelieve tan smelt, the distinctive biscuity scent soon fought its way through, but this one held a pleasant smell for hours after application.

The colour pay off with this tan is what lets it down; although I can’t decide it it’s a good thing or a bad thing. After one coat I barely saw a difference in my colouring. After two coats I thought I saw a bit of change – but the pictures tell a different story …

Before

One coat

Two coats

As you can see they show that after one coat my skin looked a lot brighter – and slightly more yellow I think – then two coats really intensifies the colour.

The picture below is slightly more true to life. The blue line indicates the area with no tan, and the red line indicates the area with two coats. I’ve drawn the grey box in the middle to show my ‘tan line’ and as you can see it’s a very marginal change and very natural. I personally wouldn’t say I look ‘sun kissed’ but it definitely evens out the colouring in my arms.

Honestly speaking I’m not sure how long it lasted. Just because the colour wasn’t as defined as the last few tans, so after a couple of days I wasn’t sure whether I was looking at my natural colour or my ‘tanned’ colour.

I like this because it shows how natural the colour is. I didn’t feel uneasy about looking an unusual shade. On the other hand, we tan because we want to see a real colour pay off, right? We want to look darker/more bronzed – and we also want to know it!

Bottom line: The jury’s still out. I like it, but I’m just not sure how effective it is for WOC. I definitely think that on lighter skin tones this would give a gorgeous colour. But on me, I just don’t know. The fact that it smells gorgeous definitely helps (don’t worry, it’s a subtle fragrance), but I guess you can’t have it all right?

Xen-Tan Dark Lotion is available to buy from the Xen-Tan website, and is currently on sale (huzzah!) for £24.64/236ml.

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TFWOC Project Week #3 - MakeBelieve Self Tan Lotion Review

The next brand up in the TFWOC Project is a brand called Make Believe. Before the project I hadn’t even heard of this brand, but I’m quickly falling in love with it.

Before I start my review though, I just want to send the lovely people at Make Believe a huge thank you for their generosity in the project.

I’ll be reviewing the MakeBelieve Self Tan Lotion with Bronzer* today, however reviews of the other products will come soon!

I had high expectations of this product after trying Abi O’s Shimmer Tan Boost and Karamel & Brown’s Glow Fast. And honestly, this really exceeded my expectations.

For starters the branding really does it for me. Packaging is very important (fickle, I know!), and Make Believe looks affordable yet decadent.

Available in five different ‘zones’ I received Zone 4, which aims to provide a golden tanned look. I love how the zones enable you to control what kind of look you’re after, wave goodbye to the oopma-loopma look, eh?

The lotion comes with plastic gloves, however I found these more of a hindrance than help to be honest. Latex gloves or a mitt would make the application such simpler, but for the sake of the project I used the gloves and was pretty pleased with the result!

The lotion itself reminds me of the chocolate sauce you get from an ice-cream van, not completely chocolate coloured but a very dense brown. And the smell, oh the smell. It’s gorgeous. It’s quite sweet, nothing like the usual biscuit or curry odour complaints. I will admit that the smell dissipates after a little while into a slight biscuit-y scent, but nothing overpowering.

I love the colour it gave me; golden tan is definitely an accurate description. This look was achieved with two coats of the lotion. On the slighter side of my arm it removed all of the yellow tones in my skin, and on the darker side it removed the red tones – so it definitely adapts perfectly.

It’s also very moisturising, so I didn’t need to apply anything on my skin after applying the tan – no ashy skin here!

I see myself using the Make Believe tan more than the other tan I tried – simply because I like how adaptable it is on the skin. Again, I wouldn’t use it all the time but definitely fairly regularly.

My only issue with the lotion is time it takes to dry. It took ages to work the tan into my skin, and then slightly longer for it to dry. It was hardly an age but obviously when you’re waiting, two minutes can feel like 10. I also found that the colour looked less vibrant after 2-3 days, but the lotion is easily applied so that wasn’t too much of an issue.

Bottom line: LOVE, love, love. This is definitely the tan that has shown me that dark-skinned women can use fake tan! At £24.50 it’s quite pricey, but it’ll definitely last a while!

TFWOC - ★★★★★

You can buy Make Believe Self Tan Lotion with Bronzer directly the MakeBelieveBeauty website, priced at £24.50/200ml.

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