Lip Lock Love

Do you ever find that the gorgeous lipstick you absolutely have to have
changes color when you put it on?

Or maybe
the new look is a very pale gloss,
and the full bodied color of your natural lip color keeps
showing through?

Some lips have a blue undertone to them,
othertimes our natural pH just goes ahead and changes the lip color we've applied.
Hmmm.

Well, not to worry.
Gotcha covered.
MAC has a fabulous product called Lip Erase.
Its not a new product, but with all the pale lips heading our way its one you should know about.




Lip Erase is a flesh toned balm that neutralizes and erases natural lip color.
Its shine free and texture free, so you can even use it under a very pale gloss
and not see built up product on the lip.

It comes in two shades for use on pale and medium skin tones.

Fabulous fab-u-lips.






xo

C

Skincare 101 Keeping It Moist

So lets move forward with our new year's skin care regime.

After cleansing many ladies move on to toning.
Not a huge fan.
I often find toners just strip the skin.
So if you really, truly are oily, or need to lift away a little excess from the T zone
or if you like to use a little toner on a mini break out
go for it.

But moisturizer?
Crucial.
Crazy important.
And we break it down to daytime and night-time.
Because they each are equally important, and do very different jobs.


Lets look at your daytime moisturizer.
Firstly it is of course charged with hydrating your skin.
But it also serves several other important functions.
It helps to protect your skin from environmental pollutants.
It helps protect your skin from UVA and UVB rays.
A is for aging, B is for burning.
The twin devils we must avoid.





You can get your daily moisturizer with SPF in it,
or you can add a free standing moisturizer to your regimen.
I do both.




Every morning you must put moisturizer on your clean face.
Every morning.
Leave it on a few minutes before you start your makeup routine, so that it can soak in.
I normally put mine on, then go make my coffee or tea, before I go back and get started on my makeup.

Final word on daytime moisturizer?
Get the best that you can afford and keep using.
Makeup will never look great on dehydrated skin.
Dehydrated skin looks old.
Dehydrated skin ages more speedily.

Be your beautiful best in 2010!

xo

C

Fun Stuff!

Is it still plagarism if you fess up to it???

I really truly wish I had found this one myself, but it came to me via one of my favorite beauty blogs, the entirely lovely
Beauty School Blog.
And frankly it was entirely too genius to pass up.
I was compelled to share it with you.
I hope you get as big of a giggle out of it as I did!

Oh, and Jen at Beauty School Blog - you are truly fabulous!

Makeup Clean Out!

So just as we did with your skin care products, we now need to take an inventory of your makeup products.
Generally a bigger, badder, bolder job...

After a decade of shopping for odds and ends you're bound to have all kinds of goodies tucked away here and there.
But now its a new decade, and you need to sort, store and purge.



Organize your makeup.
Keep the good stuff.
You'll find things you forgot you had.


Rule of thumb: if it
smells weird
looks odd
changed color
has an odd consistency
or an odd texture
has any visible decay or bacteria
toss it.

Mascaras that are drying out or crumbling when you put them on
need to go.

Pencils that have a whitish film
need to go.

No past its prime product is worth the sheer hell of an infection.
Just get rid of them.
I googled pictures of skin reactions to expired products, but they were too yucky to post.

While you're at it, shampoo all your brushes. I'll put a link to the brush care tutorial video
at the end of this blog post.
Get them all super clean for the new year, then decide
which can stay and which must go.

And make sure you click in and read tomorrow's blog.
Its kinda funny.

xo

C

click here for the brush care tutorial...

Eye Love...

Yesterday's post about cleansers was a little on the long side, so today I'll keep it brief.

Today I'm staying on the skin care topic, and moving on to eye make up removers.
Most of the gentle cleansers out there will remove eye make up too, but if you wear waterproof eye make up (not my favorite thing. At. All) you'll often need a separate product to get it off.
Also some of the cheapie mascaras are super tough to remove.
I'm not an advocate of them either.



The skin around the eye area is the most delicate, thin skin on the body, and needs extra care.
It's also the first place we see aging.
So in order to be the fabulous creature that you really are, you must take care of the eye area.

I'd say lose the waterproof mascara unless you'll be swimming or crying, and definitely get rid of the cheapie mascaras...

And when you are dealing with products that wont budge, use an eye make up remover.




Sens Eyes by Make Up Forever is my favorite.
I use it in my make up kit.
Super gentle, even those with ultra sensitive eyes can use it. Its great too because makeup can go straight on top of it too, so if you're doing a quick make up change you'll look flawless.


Shiseido makes a good oneand Lancome Bi-Facil has been around forever. Its pretty good too!

When using an eye make up remover, soak a cotton pad with the product and hold it against the eye, so that it can soak in and start dissolving the make up. Then gentle lift away.
Never rub or scrub.
Never.

Eye make up remover is the best thing to remove a lip stain or super bold lip color, such as high velocity reds or burgundies.
Same thing, soak a cotton pad, press, hold and lift away.

xo

C

Keeping It Clean

So now you've (hopefully) started paring down and tossing out your old skin care products that are no longer serving you well.
If they ever did.

Have you noticed how the great claims they make on their advertising don't seem to find their way to your skin?
I often wonder exactly who are these test groups that they get their data from?
They certainly don't seem to be anyone like you or me...

So anyway, today we're going to look at how you're cleansing your skin.
Because believe it or not, plenty of women get this part wrong.



The first thing you have to do is analyze your skin, and figure out your skin type.
And this is where women get it wrong.
I can hear a bunch of you out there saying "oily".
And I bet you're not.

You see most of us getting a tad oily/shiny through our T zone
and have normal/dry cheeks.
This is in fact, normal/combination skin.
If you wipe your finger across your cheek and it comes up wet,
you're probably oily.
If not, you're not.

And the big mistake I see over and over is girls thinking they're oily and using a cleanser for oily skin, thereby stripping their skin of essential oils and moisture.
And when this happens you are drying your skin out and prematurely aging it.

When you've cleansed your skin it should never feel pulled or tight. It should feel supple.

So.
Unless you are really, truly oily, avoid foaming cleansers.
Like the plague.

Instead, I want you to invest in a really good milk cleanser. And I will introduce you to a few. Some oil cleansers too.
Your cleanser needs to dissolve make up and clean your skin. Most milk or oil cleansers will also dissolve even the most stubborn eye make up.
But I'll show you some good eye make up removers tomorrow.


Neutrogena Extra Gentle Cleanser costs under $10
And its a great little cleanser.


Clarins skin care products are a bit more expensive, but are fabulous.

I don't advocate too many Lancome products, but here and there they have something I like, and Galatee is one of them. Its been around forever, and it is a really good cleansing milk.



And now for the oils.
Many people cringe at the thought of using oil to cleanse your skin, but actually, its pretty fab!
The MAC oil cleanser is often found on set for either pre-make up cleansing or for post make up removal. Its very gentle, and really quite lovely.

Shu Uemura makes truly amazing oil cleansers. They have quite a few for all different skin types, so get the girl at the counter to help choose which is right for you.

Oil lifts away oil, so an oil cleanser can be great fro the oily skinned girls too!

When you are building your skin care wardrobe make sure you are staying within your budget. Find the price point that works for you and work from there.
That way you can maintain some consistency.

And unless you are one of those genetic mutants who were born fabulous, having great skin is like getting great thighs. It takes work and consistency.

xo

C

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone!!

There's nothing quite like a brand new year and a brand new decade to get a girl to evaluate all that she has going on.
Time to get some new goals on the table, time to sort out finances,
and time to give your make up and skin care a thorough clean out.

Today we are going to start reviewing your skin care.

The first thing I want you to do is to get all your skin care products out, line them all up and see what condition they're in.
Anything that you haven't used in ages, or anything thats looking
(or smelling) icky needs to go.

There is no time like right now to pare your supplies down, and really get set up with the essentials. Think of building your skin care wardrobe like building the perfect clothing wardrobe. You want good, classic, well built products as your building blocks.

I've found from talking to vast numbers of women from all over that
A) too many of you don't believe that you can have flawless, beautiful skin
B) too many of you are mis-diagnosing your skin and consequently using the wrong products
C) too many of you are misunderstanding what various products do and can do for you.

So I am going to devote tons of blog space to going over all these things over the next few weeks,
and making sure that you all can get the gorgeous skin you deserve.

There are also going to be some fabulous giveaways coming up.

But for now what we want to do is get rid of products that are old/past their prime/not right for you. And together we are going to start transforming your skin!