Pore form!

I know, I know..what a pore joke.

*ahem*

I'm forever banging on about pores. Pores in the morning, pores in the evening, pores all over the damn shop.

Why are some products called pore perfectors and others called pore minimisers? I know you can't get rid of pores full stop so shouldn't they all be called pore minimisers? If pores were perfect, they wouldn't be there!

I bought a pore minimiser the other week..got home and realised I also had a pore reducing serum that I'd never used so I decided to put them both to the test.

I should point out that one is marketed as a pore minimser and one is a marketed as a pore minimising serum.  I'm not too sure what the difference is there but the instructions on both aren't identical.

The first is this baby, L'oreal Derma Genesis Pore Minimising Serum:

I'm not too sure where this came from..I assume either Boots or Superdrug.  Going by the hazy nature of its acquisition, I'm not sure of the price.

This is marketed as a serum and the instructions state that you should put it all over your face but not near your eyes.

I take issue with that, for the following reasons:

It says smooth all over your face but not the eye area..I count the eye area as stopping where the eye socket bone is.  So I didn't put any there but instead whacked it over the rest of my face.  It stung me so bad I had to remove both it and my moisturiser.

So now I have pores which are being minimised and pores which are being left out..not the results I really wanted.

Anyway, once you've had a bit of trial and error with it, how does it hold up?  Hmm..I like it BUT I have to be careful when applying it due to the sting factor.  It does minimise your pores and it keeps your skin nice and non greasy looking throughout the day.  I put a fair bit on my nose and it didn't dry it out at all.

It does have problems.  It smells pretty potent.  Not a nasty smell, just an in your face smell.  It smells like Comfort washing liquid.  The pump which dispenses the serum always has that one bit of cream on it which was left from last time and has since hardened.  The annoying thing is that it lives inside the pump so you can't expel it all at once.  You don't need to use much to get decent coverage of your face so in that respect, it's pretty good.

Another "negative" thing..I always thought that pore minimisers did just that..minimised your pores on application.  I couldn't see any immediate minimisation..

The second is this, Almay Pore Minimizer.

This directs you to just smooth it over wherever you have prominent pores so I put it on my forehead, my nose and the sides of my nose.

It did dry my nose out a tiiiiiiiiiiiiiny bit so I had to add some extra moisturiser.  The L'oreal one didn't do this.  However, for the sake of science, I applied this all over my face too (including the scene of Sting-gate) and it did sting me.  HOWEVER, atleast this one tells you where you should put it.

Another massive plus point, I COULD SEE MINIMISATION OF PORES! The area surely looked a lot smoother than it did (immediately) after I applied the L'oreal serum.

Which do I like better?
For foolproof application: The Almay one.
For not giving you a sliiiiiiiiiiiiightly dry nose: The L'oreal one.
Price wise: The Almay one was £1 from the Pound Shop, I think the L'oreal one is about a tenner?
For best all over results: The Almay one.

By the way, when I was Googling a face photo, Google Images suggested this which freaked the hell out of me.

You can buy it as a piece of art for your house but looking at the link online scared me enough, I can't think of anyone who wouldn't be a bit spooked seeing that staring back at you in the middle of the night.

Anyone had any success stories with pore perfectors/minimisers/serums? Let me know because I'm still on the lookout.