Fiddy Snails has been proclaiming her love for Taiwanese beauty brand My Beauty Diary sheet masks since forever, and now we finally have them. Here, her faves you need to *add to cart* now.
Taiwanese sheet masks can be a whole new world of wonders even for a seasoned K-beauty fan. A great place to start your T-beauty exploration is with the vast array of affordable and high-quality sheet masks that Taiwan offers, and a great place to start within the world of Taiwanese sheet masks is My Beauty Diary, arguably the best known and most accessible T-beauty brand in the West.
My Beauty Diary actually sparked my love of sheet masking in general years ago. The very first post I ever wrote on my blog featured MBD masks, and although the products have gone through several updates since then, I still find them consistently reliable, with great bang for the buck. So now that Beautytap carries MBD too, I thought it would be fun to go through my current top five MBD masks!
What to expect from My Beauty Diary masks
No matter what variety you choose, you’ll find all of the basic line of MBD masks, like the ones this site carries, have a few things in common.
The sheets themselves are quite thin and translucent, giving a fairly invisible effect once they’re on. I’ve used other thin masks that cling more closely to skin, but the MBD material adheres fine, and the masks are cut to about a medium size, with fairly large eye holes, so they should fit a variety of face sizes. If you need to adjust the fit at all, the best way is to snip with scissors wherever you need the mask to lie flatter on your features.
Each sheet comes packaged with a generous 23ml of essence. These are very moist and very drippy masks. I call this the waterboarding style of sheet mask. There’s plenty of essence in the pouch for arms and legs, and I’m a fan of spreading the mask drips down my neck and chest to hydrate those areas, too. The masks stay moist for a long time, around 35 to 40 minutes for me if I’m running the heater, and about 45 minutes if I’m not. The essences are fragranced, but the scents are light and vague, not overpoweringly perfumey.
And, for me at least, the masks are absolutely wonderful for hydration and brightening. MBD essences are thoughtfully formulated, with plenty of anti-inflammatory and skin-brightening extracts paired with the key ingredients and the base humectants and water. They leave my skin juicy and glowing every time.
My top 5 My Beauty Diary masks
5. Mexico Cactus
These are fairly new to me, but I’m glad I finally got around to trying them. With aloe, gingko, licorice, and calendula extracts in the ingredients list, I find these wonderfully calming. They reduce moderate redness nicely and feel refreshing on my skin.
4. Red Vine
Is it “vine” or did they mean “wine”? Either one works, since these masks use antioxidant-rich grape extracts in their essence, along with hydrolyzed elastin. On my skin, these masks have a nice immediate firming and lifting effect that helps to tighten things up when I’m feeling a little saggy.
3. Japanese Sakura
Brightening effects come to the forefront with this MBD variant, which uses licorice, arnica, and cherry blossom extracts to quickly calm skin, producing a visibly more even and translucent skin tone immediately after use. Also, these smell really pretty, even though the generic cherry blossom scent is not actually what cherry blossoms smell like (I’m told they don’t really have a scent!).
2. Black Pearl
Speaking of brightening, MBD’s Black Pearl variant kicks it up several notches. Something about the essence of these masks, which includes pearl extracts, brightens my skin tone so much that you can see the line of demarcation where the mask ended on my forehead after I take the mask off.
1. Hyaluronic Acid
Yes, it sounds completely boring, but MBD’s Hyaluronic Acid Hydrating Mask is my true My Beauty Diary holy grail. I’ve gone through God only knows how many boxes of these masks in the last few years. It’s not just the hydration, either, though the Hyaluronic Acid Hydrating Masks plump up my skin to incredible heights. There’s something about the formula that also smooths and softens my skin and gives it a gloriously supple texture. I think it’s the possible very, very mild exfoliating potential of the pineapple and sugarcane extracts in this formula. Or maybe it’s the ginseng. All I know is, I think I need to re-order some more.
But my favorites are just the beginning. Even I know of many MBD varieties I haven’t tried yet (I can’t quite bring myself to try the Natto variety, for example), and more appear fairly regularly online. I hadn’t tried the Mexico Cactus or Japanese Sakura until I was getting ready to write this article. They reignited my love for this tried-and-true brand. I think I’ll have to try some more soon.
(Probably not the Natto, though.)
Have you tried any My Beauty Diary Masks? Which ones do you love?
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