I don’t know about you, but I hate buying a product that says it will do wonders for my skin to turn out to be a waste of my hard earned money. There are some products out there that just don’t live up to the promise that they make to us. These are often the flashy and expensive products too. I have found some products that are expensive and don’t do what they say they will do.

There are all sorts of products available that say they will do amazing things for our skin, lips, faces and even hands. I have tried lots of beauty products and have come to the conclusion that the following 5 products are not worth buying. They are either an expensive version of a product when a cheaper one can be just as good, or they don’t live up to their promise. I tried lip glosses, cellulite skin firming creams, skin tanning creams, face mists and soap free hand washing liquids.

As far as lip glosses are concerned, I tried lots of great products with lots of lasting color and lip plumping effects. One product that doesn’t do what it says is from Smashbox. It is their lip enhancing gloss.

This product sounds great and at $18 a tube would want to be great. It promises lip enhancing effects and long lasting color in a variety of pinks. My lips looked exactly the same and the color wore off in about half an hour. It contains some good products such as Vitamin E which is an antioxidant and moisturizer. It also contains shiny polymers to enhance and add volume to your lips. As I said, my lips stayed exactly the same. They didn’t look enhanced at all. I also found that it had a real chemical smell to it and tasted like it too. Not a very pleasing product at an expensive price.

We all know about those ugly dimpled patches of cellulite we have on our legs and bottom. I tried some creams that said they would smooth the skin out and cover up blemishes such as spider veins and stretch marks. A product from Murad called Firm and Tone Serum was expensive and didn’t match up to the claims it made.

This tube comes in at between $60 and $75 depending on where you purchase it from. I tried a few of these cellulite creams and none did much to my skin but this was a pricey one too. This product is supposed to treat cellulite and stretch marks by making your skin more elastic and firmer, thereby decreasing the appearance of cellulite. It is also supposed to hide blemishes and bruises. It did none of this for me. It didn’t cover up any marks on my skin and the appearance of my cellulite on my legs didn’t change at all. And to make it work better, I was to purchase 2 more Murad products. This was getting to be an expensive trial.

I tried some skin tanning creams that promised to give you a beautiful subtle glow. They were all quite expensive but this one not only tanned my skin but tanned my clothes as well. This product from Nars called Body glow did not excite me one bit and it was on the dearer side at $59.

It is very thick and needs to be warmed up to use so it spreads over the skin evenly. I saw it on a model on television and thought how great she looked with just a touch of tan to her skin. I didn’t want to turn orange like some old creams made me turn, just a subtle tan to show off my legs and arms. It was okay to spread over my skin after I had warmed it considerably and I looked alright but then I looked at my dress after I had put it on. All up the short sleeve was light brown streaks. Yes, the tan came off on my clothes. I was not impressed at all.

A friend of mine swears by using facial mists. She loves the way they make her skin feel so I thought I would give some a try. Some smelt nice and refreshing and some felt just like being sprayed with cold water. That is what I thought of Skyn Iceland’s Arctic Face Mist. It felt just like icy water spraying on my face. This mist is supposed to calm my irritated and stressed skin with its mixture of vitamins A, B, C and E. I found that my skin stayed the same as it was before I had sprayed it on. Maybe after prolonged use there might have been some changes but at between $29 and $35 I wasn’t going to find out.

I think these work on your mind to make us feel better and don’t do much for our skin at all. I felt refreshed but my skin still looked the same, hot and blotchy.

I am a great fan of soap free hand washes as I am always washing my hands after gardening and they get very dry. So a soap free choice sounded great. I tried lots of these as they are quite cheaply priced except for one. I found this hand wash from Molton Brown called Naran Ji Fine Liquid hand wash costing between $23 and $39.

This is for a hand wash, not a magical cure for a complaint, and also a hand wash that mostly goes down the drain. Okay it smelt fantastic and came in 5 different scents but for me the price put me off more than anything else. It purported to reduce fine lines on your hands with continual use but didn’t contain any of the usual products like retinol or alpha hydroxy acid that other line reducing products contain. Guess what? I have been using for more than a year, it is no better any soap I used before.