I love playing with interesting things, and I love getting presents. So when I pulled this out from under the Christmas tree (it was a gift from my little sister) I was SUPER excited. I have a couple of different eye patches in my mask stash that I haven’t gotten around to testing yet, but this went straight to the top of my list. Well played, sis.
Skyn Iceland is, you guessed it, based in Iceland. (Duh.) Their company mission is “to treat and alleviate the effects of stress on skin while promoting a stress-free life full of balance, health, and wellness.” They use recyclable packaging, and their products are paraben, petroleum, mineral oil, and sulfate-free. According to their official website, they do not test on animals and are completely vegan.
Skyn Iceland is so committed to your stress level and how it affects your skin that their homepage includes a personality test, a perceived stress test, and a job stress test. I have no scientific measure of the validity of those tests (and, come on – they’re internet tests. It’s not like they HAVE to be reliable. I mean, who REALLY knows which Westeros House I would belong to?) but they might be fun to take if you’re a little curious.
These eye gels have won several awards (Natural Health Magazine’s Beauty Awards 2013 and Harper’s Beauty Hot 100 2013, among others). They cost $30 for a bag with 8 pairs. Wow, my sister really likes me! Or she thinks my eyes look awful. Or both. These gels are claimed to firm, remove puffiness, and reduce the signs of aging in the under eye area.
Each pair is individually wrapped on its own little tray in its own little bag. This doesn’t seem super eco-friendly to me, even if all of the packaging is recyclable. It still takes energy to recycle things, right?
The patches themselves are fuzzy on one side, and very soft. The side you actually stick to your face has a film on it. You peel off the film (not particularly difficult to do, either), and then slap the patches on your under eye and hope for the best.
I’ve only ever had really puffy under eyes once – and it was because of an allergic reaction to something. I’m much more of an under eye circle kind of girl, as you’ll be able to tell. Here is my eye area before using the patch:
Here’s what the patch looks like on:
The directions tell you to leave the patch on for ten minutes, then peel it off and throw it away.
One thing I can absolutely say the patch does is cool. They are not even lying a little bit about this – it’s almost like sticking an ice cube wrapped in cloth under your eye, only more soothing and less “my eyeball is going to freeze soon”. I can see these patches being super helpful if you’ve just cried a lot. It’s really quite nice. The cooling effect does last longer than the ten minutes you’re supposed to leave the patches on – I peeled one off and stuck it to my cheek just to see, and it was still every bit as cool as it was when I first placed it under my eye.
Here’s what it looked like after I peeled the patch off:
Seems a little bit brighter, but really not a whole lot. It didn’t de-puff anything, but there wasn’t really anything there to de-puff, so I can’t grade it on that. My skin did feel very soft afterwards – and the patch removed very, very smoothly, with no tugging necessary. The product itself isn’t hugely moisturizing.
Bottom line: will I use it again? Absolutely – maybe I’ll save some for this spring, when I will have seasonal allergies, or if I feel like I need a nice pick-me-up. Would I pay $30 for another bag of these? That’s unlikely. I just don’t feel like I got that great a result.
If you want to try these out (and they are very lovely, just not right for me) – you can find them on Amazon (where they are Prime Eligible) or at SkynIceland.com.