Pour some sugar on me.
I got my Smooth Lab kit in the mail a few days ago. Honestly, I was a little nervous about using it. I have never sugared or even waxed anything, not even my eyebrows. I shave my legs, under arm, and bikini line but this summer for some reason I have been getting terrible razor bumps and I was desperate to try something else.
All the sugaring supplies that I need come inside the cute Smooth Lab Kit tub. Smooth Lab has several different kit designs. They all have the same supplies inside but different cute designs on the outside. I got the one called Achiever which has a woman on the front in a Dodgers baseball cap, sunglasses, a tied-up white t-shirt, denim skirt, and classic black Vans on her feet.
As I mentioned I have never sugared before, so I launched into research and I learned a few things about how to prep my skin for sugaring.
First, you want to consider lightly exfoliating your skin. This is mostly to make sure all the hairs are broken through the skin. For example, on my bikini line I am prone to getting in-grown hairs and sometimes all the hair is not exposed. Now, I said lightly exfoliate because the skin can get irritated and according to my research you do not want to sugar irritated skin. It was even recommended to wait a day to sugar after exfoliating.
Next, the professionals clean the skin and then apply baby powder. The baby powder is to make sure your skin in completely dry. Because the sugar paste is water soluble, you want to make sure your skin is completely dry.
The sugar paste comes in a little glass jar. You take off the lid and pop it into the microwave. I did 10 seconds to start. I felt the sugar with my finger and thought it could be a little warmer and then nuked the paste for another 10 seconds.
Now that the sugar was ready and my skin was ready, I took one of the wooden spatulas (tongue depressor), which are included in the kit, and spread the sugar on my skin. One of the most important things I learned from my research is to spread the sugar so that your hair goes in the opposite way that it naturally lays.
This is such an unoriginal thought but all I can do it hum a little Def Leppard: “Pour some sugar on me.” :)
Then, I took one of the provided woolen strips and lay it on top of the sugar and smoothed it out a few times.
Finally, I held my skin taunt with one hand, took a deep breath, and ripped in the direction that my hair grows.
I think it hurt a little more than taking a band-aid off but a lot less than ripping duct tape off your skin. The great part about using sugar is that you can just clean off any excess sugar with a little warm water.
As per my research, I moisturized my skin. I think that it did a great job of taking off the hair. I recommend doing small sections until you get more comfortable. Also. I discovered that there are a lot of spots on the body where hair does not all grow nicely in one direction. That is another reason to do small sections at a time. Overall, it looks good, it was pretty easy, and is certainly better than the razor bump ridden job I usually do.
One week later:
I am checking back in. I am still able to wear a bathing suit without shaving. And I do not have any in-grown hairs! So far so good. I am likely to keep sugaring…at least until winter hits. ;)