Now I know what you’re thinking, these beauty hacks are getting out of control. I know, I know - some of them seem far-fetched. But as a self-proclaimed beauty lover, I have to at least give them a shot.

When I was scrolling through Instagram one day I happened to come across a beauty video. Now if you know me, my Instagram feed is either beauty pictures or puppies. So coming across a beauty video wasn’t that strange. This video was going pretty normal, going through the motion of makeup application. At the end however, I watched the woman stick her face of makeup into a bowl of water. I was completely confused as to why she would wreck the beautiful base of makeup that she had just made. After 30 seconds she took her face out and patted it dry. Her face, oddly enough, looked absolutely flawless. Supposedly, this hack created a flawless base of foundation that looked like you had nothing on.

Was this it? Was this the trick that I had been searching for to help my makeup look flawless? I needed to know more. There wasn’t much hype about this trend yet. Other than the Instagram video and one YouTube video, I wasn’t given much information, but I did happen to find out that this technique is a Korean Beauty trick that is known as Jamsu (meaning to submerge). However, I’ve been let down by beauty hacks before. Tips and tricks that look perfect on Pinterest but are nothing more than a disappointment in real life. Nonetheless I decided to try it in order to give you the real scoop.

I had already done my eye makeup (I wasn’t planning on doing this and when I came across the video my eye makeup was already done) but I would not recommend trying this with eye makeup on. I went through the steps of foundation like the video suggested-moisturize, primer, foundation, concealer, and setting powder. The beauty guru in the video applied extra setting powder, similar to the baking technique. I followed by applying more setting powder than usual. And then I took a swim.

I filled up a bucket I had sitting around with water. I didn’t know whether to have the water cold or hot so I kept it lukewarm with a little bit on the colder side. I put my timer for 30 seconds and dove in. I made sure to turn my head to each side as the bucket was not big enough to fit my entire face.

When the timer went off I lifted my face out of the bucket and started to dry it off. I was surprised to find that as I was drying my face off, none of the makeup was rubbing off on the towel. I immediately got excited as I thought this was a sign that it had worked. I walked over to the mirror and needless to say I was surprised.

IT LOOKED HORRIBLE.

It was cake city like no tomorrow, plus is was still tinted white because of the powder. I was so upset because not only did it not make the makeup look flawless, it made it look significantly worse.

I chalked it up as a beauty hack fail that was too good to be true and grabbed a makeup wipe to take it off.

As I was taking it off I noticed something. If I used the makeup remover in a dapping/pressing motion, it was improving the situation greatly. It was taking off all of the caked up makeup which revealed a quite flawless finish. My pores weren’t that noticeable at all and the foundation looked like skin like. I was so surprised that it looked this good considering how awful it looked before.

Long story short, I guess you could say it works but it’s not as easy as just dumping your head in a bucket. Maybe it was an error on my part, maybe I used too much powder or didn’t have the water the right temperature.

I guess my final thoughts would be to use that technique only for special occasions and even then you might want to practice before to make sure you got the technique down.