Fry chips in your bare hands (Avon Glycerine Hand Cream with Silicone)

Member Name: chrisandmark

Product:	Avon Glycerine Hand Cream with Silicone
Date:	18/12/03 (298 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Makes my skin feel nice and soft, A good moisuriser

Disadvantages: Smells horrible... for ages..., Feels greasy and sticky, Usually a horible clinical looking tube

My mum filled in for a week while her Avon lady went on holiday last month and when Barbara got back she gave her a bag full of Avon products to say thanks. Included in the bag was a tube of Glycerine Hand Cream with Silicone. My mum has to use medicated hand cream as she's got severe excema so she gave me this to use. Now I usually use Atrixo hand cream for the simple reason that it's effective and my local chemist sells it for £1.59 instead of the usual £4.50 so I stuck this Avon cream in the bathroom cabinet and forgot about it. But the trouble is I always leave buying a new tub until I've used the last... and the chemist's run out. So here I am with the forgotten tube of hand cream.

To be honest, it's something I've seen in the Avon book but never considered buying it. It just looked, well, cheap. It usually comes in a plain white plasticy tube with a horrible green box on the front, really naff! lol But mine's different. It still comes in a typical upside-down tube but Avon have jazzed it up for Christmas (well it was September! lol) and the plain white clinical look has been replaced by a slightly shimmery off white tube with snowflakes of various sizes in burgundy and silver giving it a vaguely festive appearance.

The thing I like about Atrixo is it contains glycerine, which is known for it's intensive moisturising properties, and when the weather starts to get cold my hands get really dry so a decent hand cream is a must. I've used Atrixo for the last two years and have noticed a difference in the skin on my hands since I switched from my previous hand cream, especially in the winter months, so I was naturally a bit dubious of a 'lesser' brand which appeared to be making similar claims. Having no choice I decided to give it a try, I'd already run out of Atrixo and even not using hand cream for a couple of days would make my hands sore so I squeezed some out of the tube.

While I rubbe

d the cream in I cursed Avon for reminding me about Christmas so early. And I had plenty of time to curse them. I must have rubbed my hands together for five minutes before the cream was anything like absorbed. Really. It squeezes out like wood glue and smells worse. To be fair, as you're using the hand cream it doesn't smell too bad but after a couple of hours you'd expect the smell to fade - but it doesn't. If I rub it on my hands in the morning, I can still smell it on my palms at lunchtime when I like to reapply my hand cream. But the lingering smell makes my hands smell stale so I find I have to wash my hands every time I apply my hand cream. That's bad point number one. Onto bad point number two. The texture of this hand cream is awful. It feels sticky, very greasy and thin. I think it's the grease which makes the cream so difficult to rub in properly because the actual cream disappears fairly quickly and you're left with the impossible task of rubbing a sticky film of oil into your skin. Atrixo comes in a pot and is a thick gloopy cream which comes out of the pot in cooling dollops and because of this consistency it rubs in nicely but this stuff just sits on your hands for ages and refuses to absorb. Every time I use this Avon hand cream I end up having to wipe a greasy residue onto a piece of tissue when I get bored of rubbing my hands together.

But the thing is I'm still using it. The chemist's gone bust and although he'll be re-opening a few doors down, that won't be until the beginning of November. And this Avon cream makes my hands even softer than Atrixo did. I'm presuming it's the addition of silicone as this can prevent further drying of your skin while the glycerine does it's thing, but it could just as easily be the horrible grease adding suppleness to my skin. The hand cream does it's job brilliantly - as a moisturiser I can honestly say it does a better job than Atrixo and u
nless
your chemist has a similar offer, it's less than half the price. But it's too obvious it's cheaper. The benefits of smooth skin on my hands are far outweighed by the awful sensation of rubbing oil into my skin. The hand cream is very economical, you could say you only need a small amount to make your hands feel horrible! I'm going to use this tube up because I had some freebie sachets of Boots hand cream and if I alternate the different creams I find I can just about tolerate the greasiness until my chemist opens up again and I can get some more Atrixo. But after this tube I'll never use it again.

You can only buy this hand cream from the Avon brochure or website and it costs £2 for 125ml, compared to Atrixo which costs £4.55 for 200ml. If you fancy placing an order for this or any other Avon product, visit www.uk.avon.com, where you can also order a brochure or find a representative.

Thanks for reading.

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