Beauty Talk - Testing serums

I was at Shoppers Drug Mart a few weeks ago and I wanted to look for a face serum.  The cosmetics girl introduced me to three different brands:  Biotherm, Clarins, and Dior.  Serums are not cheap so if I'm going to invest in one, I have to try them out first.  So the girl gave me a sample of each and told me to try them out and see which one I like best.

Serums are designed to penetrate to the deeper layers of skin, while face creams only moisturize the surface layer.  They are quite concentrated so you don't need to use a lot of it.

First up was Biotherm's Skin Vivo serum - $80 for 50 ml.
When I first tried this, it had a weird smell but the weird smell quickly went away.  It was replaced by a light fragrance which was really quite nice.  You apply this with a dropper and it dispenses just enough to cover your entire face.
My first impression of this serum was that it really left my skin feeling soft and hydrated.  It didn't feel greasy and after the 2nd day of use, I had two people tell me that I looked like I was refreshed and glowing.  Wow.  This stuff is miracle in a bottle!
Price wise, it's priced fairly well.  It's still a bit on the expensive side but it actually works well for me.  I'm seriously considering buying this.
I was really sad when my sample ran out.  I made sure I got every single drop of this out of the container.  :)

After a day of no serum use, I started on my second sample.  Clarins HydraQuench Intensive Bi-Phase serum.  The cosmetics girl really recommended this one.  It comes in a 30 ml size at $60.  She let me try some on the back of my hand at first and it felt really nice and smelled good too.  However, the sample I tried was not impressive.  It has a slight floral scent - not bad.  But when I put it on my face, it felt greasy!  The texture was more like a baby oil than a serum.  I heard that you have to give the bottle a good shake before dispensing it.  But I didn't like it on my skin.  It makes me feel like I'm going to break out because of the greasy feeling.  So far, I wasn't impressed.

The last one to try is Dior's Capture Totale One Essential super serum.  This is the most expensive one of the three at $100 for 30 ml.  I have not tried this one yet.  I'm still working on the greasy Clarins one - I'm determine to give it a good try before declaring it 'not for me'.  But the cosmetics girl had an interesting story to tell me about the Dior products.  She told me that she is required to take classes on the different brands sold at Shoppers Drug Mart.  So she attended one for Dior and the Dior representative was an older lady.  She had one really nice soft and young looking hand, and her other hand was old, wrinkly, and full of age spots!  The hand that's soft and young looking was due to years of demo-ing/testing Dior stuff on her hand.  She is a walking testimonial on how good Dior stuff is.  And here I thought we were just paying for the name.  I tried this at the store as well and this one was really nice.  At $100 ... ouch.  But I'll blog about how this one turned out.