Elizabeth Arden 8 Hour Cream

Elizabeth Arden's Visible Difference Eight Hour Cream Skin Protectant claims to soothe minor skin irritations, symptoms of chapping, peeling or flaking due to minor burns, sunburn, windburn, scrapes, abrasions or cracked lips.

It was recommended to me by a friend a couple of years ago to help with chapped lips and since then there has been no holding me back. I carry it everywhere with me and have used in under lipstick as a lip salve or on top of lipstick as a lip gloss. As a lip salve it provides instant and long-lasting relief and as a lip gloss it isn't as "slippery" as some traditional glosses. It does not need constant re-application although I find the act of applying it quite soothing in itself and probably use more of the cream than I really need. It also seems to "set" the lipstick quite well - in fact I have been known to use it under the lip stick as a salve and then on top of the lipstick as a gloss!

I've also used it on chapped hands, dry patches of skin on my arms and legs and it was also very soothing when I applied it to sunburn on my shoulders.

Another friend uses it as a face cream on long flights - I find it too greasy for that and prefer to apply it more sparingly to any dry patches that occur or any flakiness. However I do use it a lot as an "industrial strength" hand cream and have recently started massaging it into my finger nails - there has been no dramatic improvement in my nails but my cuticles are softer and less prone to cracking.

There's a rumour that the Swiss Army uses the cream on manoeuvres! I don't know how much accuracy there is in that rumour but it comes in very useful when trying to apply it to a six year old boy's grazed knee!

However, before I get too carried away, there is a warning on the tube not to apply the cream to puncture wounds, infections or lacerations. I got some on a deep cut by mistake once and whilst there was a slight stinging sensation it easily washed off and there was no further stinging.

One downside for me though is the smell, which seems more medicinal than cosmetic and took me a while to get used to. I also find the colour slightly disconcerting - a strange peachy/brown - although it appears clear when you apply it. Although it calls itself a cream, its consistency and texture are more like a gel and as such I find it a bit off-putting applying it to large areas of skin (eg using it as a moisturiser) and prefer to use it on smaller "problem" areas.

The initial outlay on a 50 ml tube is around £17 which sounds a lot for lip salve. However, despite the tube stating "apply liberally", I find you really don't need very much at all and I'm still using the one I got more than two years ago and it shows no signs of running out. Nor has the contents changed at all in those years - the cream is still as good as when I first started using the tube.

Once you get over the smell, colour and consistency this really is a fabulous product.