Clarins Pure Melt Cleansing Gel Review (and brief comparison with Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish)

You know how you make a mental note to do things and then those mental notes stack up like pancakes (mmmmm, pancakes.... ) and you never get round to eating (doh!), I mean doing them?

Well, I have shelves and drawers crammed full of products I've been meaning to review and instead they just pile up like Mr P's shirts waiting patiently to be ironed. I prefer the pancake analogy, but anyhow....

So, a skincare review.Yay! Hopefully this will be useful :)

I'm a Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish addict. My addiction began back in 2005 and I've never looked back. It really is the best cleanser I've found and the only one which removes eye make-up properly at the same time as cleansing the rest of the face. I love everything about it, the smell, texture, the cloth that comes with, the way my skin feels afterwards. But there are a gazillion reviews of this on the net and I'm not going to add to them. Just know from me that I adore it.

But you can't buy it in Belgium. Sob. And I stupidly let myself run out of it back in June. Double sob. So I figured I should try and break the addiction and hunt down a similar product which would cleanse and remove eye make-up in one fell swoop. After about a week of futile searching and the trauma of me butchering the French language in an attempt to explain to the shop assistants what I was after, I actually only found one product which looked like it could do the job of C & P.

The Clarins Pure Melt Cleansing Gel is an elusive little tube of orange gloop which seems to hide away behind the myriad of other Clarins cleansers on offer. It's a thick smooth gel which you massage onto dry skin and as you do so it transforms into a light oil. You can take it all over the eyes and remove eye make-up too. It then transforms into a light milk when you apply water and rinse it off. You can also use a washcloth to remove the excess.

I'll tell you straight off, this is not a bad product. In fact, it's a lovely product. You only need a small blob about the size of a 5 pence (or 5 cent) piece to cover the whole face. The gel seems to magically spread once it becomes an oil and it feels quite luxurious  to massage into the skin. The scent is clean and 'soapy'. It's a bit more artificially perfumed than I would like, but that's because I'm totally in love with the fresh eucalyptus scent of C & P.

Now the big question... does it perform as well as C & P?

In short, no. I can get every scrap of eye make-up off with C & P. This leaves me with areas of black in-between my lashes and under the eyes which I have to go over sometimes with a separate eye make-up remover. I also find that if I tone my skin after I'm still removing a bit of make-up and grime which does not happen with C & P.

Also, this stings my eyes if it runs into them when I'm rinsing it off. C & P does not sting my eyes at all.

As cleansers go I actually like the Clarins one despite that fact that it's not perfect. Most face cleansers are either milks, lotions or straight oils and you need a separate eye make-up remover. This one is  truly an all in one product.

In the last few weeks my skin has been breaking out a lot so I've changed my skincare regime. More on that soon. I don't think the break-outs are due to using this cleanser but I've gone back to C & P just because it's comforting to me when my skin is stressed like it is.

I still have quite a bit of the pure melt gel remaining and I've been using it all summer. I picked up two C & P pumps last time I was in London and I couldn't help but start using it again despite the fact that there is an ample amount of the Clarins still left in the tube. Naughty, naughty.... but like I just said, I feel like my skin needs it.

I would score Clarins Pure Melt Cleansing Gel at 7/10 which is a respectable score. I'm sure that I would love it more if I hadn't already had C & P in my life.

Clarins Pure Melt Cleansing Gel is €21.20 here in Brussels and £18.50 in the UK, although prices vary on different websites so shop around. Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish (with cloth) is £13.75.