Cold sores are up there on my list of “most hated” when it comes to my skin, makeup, and feeling confident. They are a fact of life, and I remember getting cold sores every once in awhile as a kid in grade school, feeling so embarrassed about the big, round sore on my lip. Even as an adult, I feel self-conscious if I get one, almost like everyone is staring directly at my lip every single time. While I’m sure some of it is self-exaggeration, it’s definitely a hindrance to your makeup routine and your smile, not to mention your confidence can really take a hit when you have one. I’ve been using Abreva for years, since it was first released, and I faithfully apply it every single time I might even think I’m getting one. Introducing the brand new, non-medicated Abreva Conceal Patch! This solves the pesky problem of having to cover up your cold sore, and protects it from contaminants in the air, as well. I put these new patches to the test inside,
The product comes with instructions that are really clear and concise. The product itself is really easy to use and you can apply one of these in just a minute. I don’t currently have a cold sore at the moment, and my skin is pretty blemish-free, so I demonstrated this patch over a small area of my lip where I have a mark from a past breakout.
How To Apply Abreva Conceal Patch:
The first thing you want to do is make sure your face, skin, lip area, and hands are super clean. You don’t want to be working with dirty fingers or skin that has any makeup remnants on it. Each patch comes in a small sealed packet.
Once you take the patch out of the packet, you’ll notice that the back of the patch is numbered. You simply peel away the paper tab marked “1,” holding the patch by a small, rectangular, blue tab that sticks out from the round patch. Then, peel away the tab marked number “2” and apply the actual round tab straight to your cold sore. Use firm pressure to hold it down for approximately fifteen seconds.
At this point, your patch will look something like this. You want to slowly peel away the rectangular tab, leaving behind just the thin, clear, round patch.
What you’re left with is what you see above. The actual patch is very thin, very invisible looking, and really quite comfortable to wear. It doesn’t feel strange on your skin and lip, and you can still eat, drink, and talk as usual. It almost blends into your skin and lip entirely. I liked that it wasn’t uncomfortable to wear, which is really important for a product like this. I don’t want to feel like I have something foreign stuck on my face, and I certainly wouldn’t want others to stare even more, noticing something strange on my face. This blends incredibly well and is almost purely invisible.
When it comes to applying makeup over top of the patch, I find that less is more. I used a tinted moisturizer compact and patted the makeup on top of the patch. It blended really well, and applying lipstick on my lips was also a cinch. It seamlessly glided over the part of the patch that was on my lip. You can blend concealer, foundation, bronzer, lipstick, lip gloss, and lip pencil over top of this patch. Basically, anything you would use in your normal makeup routine will work. I did find however that the patch looked incredibly invisible when I used a very light hand in applying my foundation. It almost appeared more invisible to me when I was wearing no makeup in that area, but this will vary from skin tone to skin tone.
And so you can see the general size of the patch and how it looks after you remove it, this is my lip area after I peeled the patch off:
You can see the area of my lip that has the small blemish mark from a past breakout. The patch did a really excellent job at covering it up without it being very noticeable at all.
Overall: I feel like this is a product that is so genius, I have no idea why it wasn’t developed sooner! Cold sores can be embarrassing and annoying, and this is a wonderful non-medicated patch that can conceal, hide, and prevent contaminants all in one. No more feeling like you want to cover your lip area with your hands, or duck out on professional meetings because of an embarrassing cold sore!
[Disclosure: Compensation was provided by Abreva via Glam Media. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Abreva.]
[ALL PHOTOGRAPHY ON THIS SITE IS TAKEN BY REBECCA KAZIMIR. NO PHOTOGRAPHS ARE TO BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION.]
Leave a Reply