GENERAL HEALTH AND BEAUTY TIPS

WELCOME,

The key to more beautiful skin and hair is to start with simple steps that benefit your overall health. Regular workouts, lots of water, not smoking, and an earlier bedtime? You're looking better already!

 Reduce Stress

Stress can take a serious toll on your health. But did you know that feeling anxious or under pressure can also affect your looks? For one thing, stress can make you break out — or cause psoriasis or rosacea to worsen. It can also lead to hair loss and dehydrated skin, which in turn can become more easily inflamed or irritated.
While it may not be possible to eliminate stress completely from your life, you can learn how to manage it better. Popular relaxation strategies include exercise, reading, spending time with friends or a pet, and meditation.

Get Enough Sleep

A lack of z's constitutes a one-two punch to your skin. After just one night of tossing and turning, chances are you'll wake up with dark, puffy circles under your eyes. If your sleep deprivation is chronic, your body will start to produce more of the stress hormone cortisol, which can lead to the breakdown of collagen (important for younger, smoother, more elastic skin) as well as acne breakouts.
If you have a hard time falling asleep, create a bedtime ritual. Try turning off all your electronic devices an hour before bedtime, taking a warm bath, or giving yourself a quick massage with a scented lotion to make drifting off to sleep easier. 

Exercise Regularly

Regularworkouts not only keep your weight in check and improve your overall health by boosting circulation — they can also improve your appearance. Getting your heart rate up through aerobic exercise, such as walking, spinning, or swimming, increases blood flow to all your cells, including skin cells. Your skin thereby gets a boost of nutrients and oxygen, while free radicals are flushed from your body.

Eat Colorful Foods

Fill your plate with a rainbow of foods: Orange, red, deep green, and blue foods are full of valuable nutrients, including vitamins, flavonoids, polyphenols, and fiber, all of which will help your hair and skin look their best. Think squash, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, beets, berries, spinach, and broccoli. Round out your diet with high-fiber grains such as oatmeal and quinoa; lean proteins, including chicken and fish; and healthy fats like olive oil.

Moisturize Regularly

A quick layer of lotion can do a world of good: It helps lock in water and supports your skin's ability to block irritants and allergens. To boost your moisturizer's power to lock in hydration, apply it after a shower or bath, when skin is still damp. During the day, use a moisturizer with an SPF of at least 15 to prevent sundamage even during the winter months. However, if you're going to be out in the sun for any length of time, use sunscreen with SPF 30 or higher and reapply every two hours.

Use a Humidifier 

This handy machine adds moisture to the air, thus helping keep your skin hydrated. If you live in a dry climate, keep a humidifier running year round. Otherwise, use it in the winter months, when the air outside and inside tends to be dry.
An ultrasonichumidifier is the quietest, a cool-mist version will help cool a hot room, and a warm-mist humidifier will help warm a cool room. Whichever type you opt for, be sure to clean it regularly to prevent the growth of mold and bacteria. 

Say No to Sodium

The quickest way to reduce puffiness in your face is to cut out the salt; you'll definitely want to avoid Chinese food and microwave popcorn in the days before a big event. If the damage is done, drink plenty of water to flush out the salt, and dab on an eye cream that contains caffeine.

Say Yes to Water

 

In general, you should drink about half your body weight in water daily to keep your skin and body hydrated. You should drink more on warm days or after a vigorous workout. Not a fan of plain H₂O? Pour yourself a glass of flavored seltzer, or try eating your water — fruits with a high water content, such as grapes and watermelon, count as part of your daily intake.

Find the Best Skincare Regimen for You

In general, products with salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide are best for people with acne. Hyaluronic acid is a good ingredient for those with dry skin, and retinols are the best choice for those who want to fight the signs of aging. What makes a skin care regimen the right one? It's the one you enjoy using and will use every morning and night — it doesn't matter how fancy it is or how much you spend on it if it sits on the shelf unused.

Use Natural-Looking Makeup

When worn the right way, makeup enhances your features and minimizes the appearance of skinimperfections. Try a CC cream or a tinted moisturizer for more flawless skin, a quick swipe of mascara to make your eyes stand out, and a sheer pink lipstick for a youthful smile.

Keep Up With Hair Cuts

Whether you wear your hair long, short, or in between, all good hair days start with the same thing — a good haircut. Layers will give you more volume, bangs can balance out a long or round face, and regular six- to eight-week trims will keep your hair its healthiest. You'll know you have a good haircut when your hair lies right even on days you don't style it, and when it frames your features and balances the shape of your face.

Add Shine to Your Hair

Blonds, brunettes, and redheads all crave the same thing: shiny hair. To heighten your shine, use a conditioner regularly — healthy hair is shiny hair. You'll also want to finish off your hair washing with a cool rinse to seal the hair cuticles, and always aim the nozzle of your blow-dryer down your hair shaft to encourage the cuticle to lie flat. Limit your use of styling products that contain alcohol, which can dull the hair, and keep your use of hairspray and dry shampoo to a minimum.

Take a Power Stance

 

What else can you do to look and feel your best? Consider your posture and body language. For an instant confidence boost, stand with your legs spread and your hands on your hips. Studies show that this posture can increase your testosterone level, making you feel more self-assured and powerful in just 30 seconds. Another trick is to smile broadly, cheering not only yourself but others!

                                       Stay Beautiful dear...

MAKE-UP TIPS for Beginners: How to Use Concealer

       

Talking about Concealer is that beauty essential that can brighten up aface, cover up blemishes and minimize under-eye circles and discoloration. Italso tends to be one of the first categories of makeup that people buy—butchoosing the correct shade or formula can also be a bit stressful.

LESS IS MORE

You can camouflage an imperfection with concealer before layering a fuller coverage product onto the skin. But if you are not subtle with it, the concealer can feel heavy and look cakey. How do you prevent this? Apply foundation first to see how much of the dark circles, blemishes and spots that the foundation can cover on its own. Then, if you need more coverage, go back in with a thin layer of concealer directly on the area. You will be amazed at how little product you actually need.

UNDER THE EYES

When choosing under-eye concealer, choose a color that is one or two shades lighter than your skin tone. You always want your foundation to match the skin but with concealer a shade lighter will help give a lifting effect. A big mistake many people make is choosing the wrong shade.

FOR PUFFINESS

 

When trying to hide puffiness under the eyes, you must remember that make up does not hide texture. You can’t completely cover up puffiness. But, you can use concealer to make it less noticeable. My favorite method is to use a luminizing pen concealer that has a highlighting property, and then apply this only where you see puffiness. The liquid formula is easy to use and adds lift and light. Once applied, use your ring finger to softly tap the highlighter into the crease to give the effect of perfectly smooth skin.

Beauty-tips recommends: BY TERRY Touch-Expert Advanced Multi-corrective Concealer Brush

FOR DARK DISCOLORATION

 

When deciding what product to purchase for concealing, dark spots need something that is close to the shade of your foundation. To eradicate the dark pigment, I suggest the fuller coverage of a cream concealer. Cream concealer has a fuller texture but will need to be set with powder so it will last longer. I recommend applying the concealer with a soft shadow brush only where there is darkness, and then setting it with an invisible powder.

Beauty-tips recommends: OCC SKIN: Coneal and OCC Brush #008 Small Shader Brush

FOR BLEMISHES

 

Most blemishes tend to have a hint of red discoloration. They also have texture and are raised from the skin. My preference for blemish concealer is to use a camouflage pencil directly on the blemish and on the surrounding area. Then use your ring finger to blend it in. Set with powder, and you are good to go.

EXTREME COVER FOR BIRTHMARKS OR TATTOOS

 

For covering tattoos or birthmarks, choose a full-cover cream that is one or two shades lighter than the area directly onto the tattoo/birthmark. The lighter shade will add lift and allow you to make the coverage look like skin. Next, apply a thin layer of foundation and build it up until you have the coverage required. Set it all into place with a translucent powder.

Beauty-tips recommends: Cover FX Cream Concealer and Cover FX Total Cover Cream Foundation

There are more advanced techniques that can be explored once you’ve mastered the basics. But essentially, the goal of a good concealer, like all makeup, is to be undetectable. You want to be the only one in the room that knows you are wearing it.

                                    Stay Smart; Stay Beautiful!!

New to EYE LINER? Here’s how to pull off basic eye liner !

Like most people say,I love eye liner. I love the precision and perfection of a well-drawn cat eyewith liquid liner; I love the smudgy bedroom eyes that a pencil can create; Ilove the wet-looking, deep vinyl look of gel. Rummage through my makeup drawers, and you’ll find 19 eye liners in varying shades of black, brown, navy, white, grey. I have even less-frequently-used eye inners (hot pink! red! turquoise! silver glitter!) in a huge box in my closet. But for anyone new to makeup, or just starting to experiment, getting the hang of eyeliner can be an exercise in frustration. Do you line just the upper lids? Or the bottom lids, too? What’s a waterline, and how can eyeliner possibly stay there? Do you use a spoon, tape, or just freehand it when you’re trying a cat-eye? Liquid or gel? Powder or pencil? What about a brush? And hey—do you look cool? Do you look crazy? HOW DO YOU KNOW?
Deep breaths, newbies.
If you’re just starting out with eye liner, you only really need one product. And that product is a simple, creamy black waterproof eye liner pencil. Nobody has to get spendy—this Inglot pencil is smooth, water-resistant, and $12.
Or there’s the foolproof Charlotte Tillbury Rock ‘N’ Kohl if you want something with which you can learn how to get a super-smudgy look. Let’s keep things simple and save the liquid- and gel-liners till after you master the pencil.
A rich, emollient black pencil liner can be used in several ways. We’re going to talk about three of the most popular looks right now.

Tightlining

Tight lining is when you (gently!) poke the eye liner between your lashes to make them look fuller and more lush. It looks like you’re not wearing much eye liner—you just look like you naturally have thick, full, darker lashes.

Take your sharpened pencil and carefully, carefully apply liner in between your lashes on your top lid, filling in any spaces and teensy gaps you might see (please do not stab your eyes.) It might take a few times, and you might be going, “UGH is this even worth it?” but trust: tight lining gets a lot faster the more you practice, and your eyelashes will look like they belong to an adorable cartoon kitten.

Waterline

Waterlining means to line the actual rim of your eyelids—the waterline is the place that your eyeball touches. Waterlining, like tightlining, can help your lashes look full and gorgeous, like you were born with an extra set of lashes inside your lashes. With waterlining, where once you had mascara and maybe some liner on your top lid, you now have subtly deeper, brighter, more intense eyes, and it’s hard for others to put a finger on exactly why. But we know why: it’s waterlining! It’s a technique that took me a long time to warm up to. I just couldn’t get over the idea that I shouldn’t be putting makeup on my waterline, but now I do it all the time!
Use your pointer finger to gently pull your top eyelid up towards your eyebrow. See that strip of smooth flesh under your lashes? That’s where we’re going to put the pencil. Run the pencil very lightly over the waterline, look to see how much color is being deposited, and then do it again to cover any gaps. If you want, you can also do your bottom waterline as well before adding sweeps of mascara. There! Instant subtle drama in just a few sweeps of the pencil!

Cat Eye

Gently pull the outer edge of your eyelid taut. This is to make sure your pencil doesn’t snag on any loose skin; we’re looking for a defined line, not wiggles! Ok: with your sharpened pencil (it’s important to keep your pencils sharpened), start at the inner corner of your eye and line a nice, dark line as close as you can to your lash line, ending at the edge of your eye. Now, to achieve the famous cat eye, draw a dot with your eye liner pencil where you want the pointed flick to end. (If you’re trying this for the first time, don’t go super dramatic and have the flick end drawn way out on your eye.) Then just connect your liner to the already-drawn dot, ending with a point!
Please Note: the cat eye takes a little timeto master, and there is no shame in keeping a Q-tip moistened with makeupremover on hand to buff away any lil’ mistakes.

Do Your Favorite Foods Make You Break Out?

There’s a handful of foods out there that are major acne triggers and they’re hiding in your kitchen (and at the convenience store candy counter). But don’t purge your fridge just yet—esthetician and nutritionist Cassandra Lanning explains that “bio individuality”is a key component in acne triggers. “Everybody is going to have different triggers of food, stress, etc. that can cause a breakout.” This means that anything from genetics to blood type to metabolism can affect our skin adversely when it comes to what we eat.
But still, there are foods out there that can increase oil production, hormone imbalances, and inflammation—all which can lead to pimples no matter what your body is like.
Below are some of the most common acne triggering ingredients. If you notice your skin condition worsening, maybe these sneaky edibles are getting the best of you.

Dairy

The hormone factor alone makes milk products a major factor where acne is concerned—even growth hormone-free milk is still naturally full of hormones. But there’s more. “From a nutrition standpoint, low fat and no-fat milk is nothing but a sugar bomb” says Lanning, going on to explain that removing the fat content from milk leaves nothing behind but the sugar—a whopping 12 grams per cup. The fats are there to help break down milk’s fat soluble vitamins A and D for better absorption. Without the fat content, these vitamins may not be properly absorbed and you’re left with a sugary cocktail that could leave your skin in hormonal disarray.

Sugar

        Acne is, most essentially, an inflammation, and one of the biggest inflammation triggers is refined sugar. When sugar enters our body it causes our insulin levels to spike, which results in inflammation of our system. For the acne prone, that means a fresh crop of pustulars. What’s more, combine sugar with hormonal milk and you’re brewing up trouble. “If a patient tells me chocolate is causing them to break out, it almost never fails that it’s milk chocolate of which the key ingredients are milk and sugar. There’s your two triggers right there”, Lanning explains. Can’t give up your chocolate addiction? Choose the darker varieties. ”If you are indulging in 70, 80, or 90% dark chocolate, which is low in sugar and higher in antioxidants, it’s going to be less likely to trigger breakouts.” Bottom line is pick your poison, but make sure to choose wisely.

Peanuts

This favorite legume is a secret zit trigger that we never saw coming. “We ask acne-prone people to avoid peanuts and peanut products because they contain a type of hormone called an androgen that can irritate follicles on your skin by increasing sebum production, which then exacerbates breakouts.” Lanning told us. This means that PBJ (or that yummy deep fried egg roll) could have you on the fast track to oil city! Look for peanut oil in potato chips too which can be commonly blamed for surprise breakouts. Lanning cites “intelligent label reading” as the first step to a clearer face.

Iodine

        Not just for wounds, iodine is lurking in most all of our favorite foods. Iodized salt is a staple on most dinner tables, but the trigger also comes in high doses in seaweed. Sushi lovers take heed. Algae is another iodine vessel, and if you’re a fan of green smoothies or super food supplements, the admittedly beneficial green is definitely a part of your diet. “Algae is typically a very hydrating ingredient, and it can also offer antioxidant benefits, along with sun protection. However, it can also exacerbate acne breakouts, so it depends on what type of algae it is and how it’s derived, and those are things we are still learning about” Lanning says of the sea growth. ”We want to not give an algae product to a person with an acne problem because there is the potential for it to break them out.” However iodine is even present in veggies such as asparagus. Studies show that small amounts of iodine-rich foods (3-4 servings a week) are less likely to aggravate acne, but going overboard could trigger pimples in certain people.

Finally, contrary to popular belief, it takes 60 to 90 days for acne to form—that’s up to three months to brew a crop of pimples! If you think the foods you’ve been eating are triggering your breakouts, try laying off one ingredient at a time for a month and see if you notice a difference. Skipping that Snickers bar tonight may not ward off tomorrow’s breakout but stick with it and you may notice a clear-up down the road.