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It is totally reasonable if your toiletry bag is almost as big as your actual bag.

The festive season comes with its challenges, and heaven knows the sun, sea, and Christmas stress can leave you feeling, if not looking, a little haggard.

Packing all the essentials to ensure you remain looking and feeling fresh as a daisy as you enter yet another new year is commendable and totally respectable.

We’re overpacking for this season of relaxation and celebration, and we’re totally grateful for it.

Whether for the beach or the bush, packing in those serums that brighten, those sunscreens that protect, those eye creams that put the ‘beauty’ in beauty sleep, as well as those cleansers that’ll keep you feeling fresh-faced whatever the weather, Skin Renewal has got you – and your toiletry bag – covered.

The SPF ‘favourite child’ for the season is anything from the Heliocare range, with either a gel or spray to choose from depending on your preference.

The Heliocare 360 Gel Oil-Free SPF 50 is an ultra-light, mattifying gel that absorbs into the skin quickly, leaving your skin feeling hydrated and yet, not so oily to the touch.

Containing advanced filters and a Bioshield System that provides your skin with broad-spectrum coverage against all radiation – UVA, UVB, Visible Light and Infrared-A – this beach bag-friendly multi-tasker is one of the most comprehensive, cutting-edge sunscreens available.

If you prefer a spray-on, the Heliocare 360 Invisible Spray SPF 50 is an easy-application, transparent photoprotection sunscreen spray format that ensures comfortable protection on wet and dry skin.

While a summer holiday is good for the soul, all the sun, sea and pool chemicals can take a toll on your skin, so be sure to pack (and use) a treatment product or two to help you put back what all the festivities take out.

Keep your skin moist with a hydrating serum like Lamelle Corrective HA Plus Serum, a multi-functional, anti-ageing treatment that contains two hyaluronidase inhibitors and five types of hyaluronic acid.

This means that regular use increases elasticity and hydration, stimulates the body’s own hyaluronic acid and protects existing HA within the skin. This serum also works on plumping up the epidermis and increasing both fibroblast activity and collagen production.

In short, you get to live your best life by day and give your skin what it needs by night.

Then, if you’ve spent the best part of 2022 turning back your epidermal clock, pack a product with age-defying and correcting antioxidant superpowers.

We recommend Lamelle Correctives Recharge CE Complex because it’s a powerful antioxidant – suitable for all skin types – proven to improve the appearance of wrinkles, skin texture, and discolouration while boosting skin cell turnover.

This stable, high-concentration product delivers both a rapid and slow release of ascorbic acid into the skin over 12 hours without any skin irritation, simultaneously repairing your skin and preventing future damage.

It’s the holiday, so you’re likely wearing little to no makeup, but that doesn’t mean you get to take a break from thoroughly cleansing your face before bed.

Falling asleep with sunscreen on, no matter how early in the day you applied it, is a huge no-no. It is also a missed opportunity since the go-to cleansing gel, NeoStrata Enlighten Ultra Brightening Cleanser, doesn’t just leave your skin clean, radiant, and bright after use, but it also exfoliates dark marks and treats uneven skin tone while you use it.

Just as you’ve worked hard all year for your well-deserved break, you may as well continue to work hard on your skin to feel your best in it as you enter a new year.

So, don’t throw in the towel on all the progress you’ve made by forgetting to add all of your skincare essentials to your suitcase.

Just know that Skin Renewal couldn’t be prouder of you.