Get your beauty sleep (Origins Night-A-Mins)

Member Name: glitter_princess

Product:	Origins Night-A-Mins
Date:	01/12/08 (211 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gorgeous smell; helps rebuild your skin; leaves skin soft and glowing

Disadvantages: Expensive

Apparently, night time is a critical time for your skin - it is only able to heal and renew itself overnight while you sleep, which is where the phrase "beauty sleep" comes from! Bearing that in mind, to make the most of this I like to use a night cream once a week to give my skin a little boost and Origins Night-A-Mins is my current favourite. It's packed with vitamins including vitamin A, B-complex, C and E, as well as exfoliating extracts and minerals to help your skin repair damage done during the day and to renew itself overnight. The formula was improved a little while ago to cram in even more vitamins and minerals!

I love the packaging for this - it comes in a 50ml pot designed to look like a pill bottle - the orange glass and white lid. I usually find Origins packaging to be minimalistic and just practical, but this has an added quirkiness. It comes in two forms - a cream recommended for dry/combination skin, and a lotion for sensitive/combination skin. Apparently combination skins can choose from either - I prefer a cream to a lotion so as they are exactly the same price this is my choice.

The cream itself is very thick and rich and you only need a very small amount to cover your face. Despite being so thick, it is easily absorbed into the skin and doesn't feel as if it's sitting on top of it, clogging your pores, as it can do with heavy creams.

The best thing about this product though is the smell - it contains vanilla oils, valerian, neroli and orange, and it's the orange that really comes through. At first I found this odd for a night cream, as I normally find citrus smells to be refreshing rather than sleep inducing, but the vanilla seems to soften it and the smell is very relaxing. Origins do place a lot of emphasis on aromatherapy with their products and do claim that this will help you sleep. I'm not convinced of that, but it is certainly lovely and relaxing and as a lavender hater I'm glad they didn't try to scent it with that just to aid sleep!

The effect this has on my skin is wonderful. When I wake up in the morning I can really tell that I've applied this the night before - my skin is soft as a baby's and looks positively glowing. Because I find this so rich and has such an intense effect on my skin, I don't like to use it too often - I find once a week is more than enough. One thing I love about Origins is that they manage to cram loads of their products with really gentle exfoliators so that the 'dead' layer of skin is removed without any abrasive scrubbing. Who'd have thought a cream could be an exfoliator?!

Like all Origins products this isn't particularly cheap - it will set you back £26.43 for a 50ml bottle, which tends to last me about a year and a half. Origins are great though for giving sample products so it's well worth sampling this before buying. They also do a Night-a-Mins eye cream which I've not tried as my eye area doesn't really need this yet, but I'll definitely be giving it a go in about 10 year's time! You can get hold of Origins products from Origins stores, John Lewis, Boots' online store, or www.origins.co.uk.

Summary: A rich night cream from Origins