embrace your own personal beauty-love who you are today and every day -robert jones

I could not agree with Mr. Jones more, and as an esthetician it is my goal to assist you in discovering ‘Your Own Personal Beauty’.  I would like to explore a series of posts and videos that would lay the ground work for this.  The first post in this series is an soft introduction to face shapes. Understanding your face shape is very important as it will influence your makeup, eyebrows, hairstyles, and neckline. As information becomes available to me I will build on this.

Tiffany

If you want great skin give this a try:

Smoking Ain’t Hip

Cigarette smoking falls under the category of bad habits that are pretty hard to break.  After learning that it not only has been linked to cancer, it is also responsible for premature aging, and the dreaded wrinkling of  skin.  This may give mokers (that’s how my daughter used to say smokers) a little more of an incentive to kick that bad habits boo-tay.

Yeah I am sure you get that smoking is really unhealthy for your lungs, but OMG the damage that is does to your skin is insane.  First, it totally causes your blood vessels to constrict, on your skins outer layers (too much of this causes wrinkles).   Second, it has been known to cause dry skin, aka sand paper hands.  Third, um…if you smoke long enough, you’ll probably end up with smokers lips.

FYI- If you are not willing to kick the habit, but suffer from smokers lips, there are inject-able solutions that can help reduce the appearance of wrinkles around your mouth.  Go a reputable plastic surgeon, that has experience with this procedure.

Quench That Thirsty Skin

Moisturize, Moisturize Moisturize. Our skin can’t survive without it.  If we deprive it of moisture it can cause irritation, dryness, itching, and the socially unacceptable ashing of the skin (a/k/a ashy).

Rub, Rub, Rub Away

Exfoliating your skin once a week is an amazing treat.  It removes dead skin, bringing the fresh new skin to the surface.  It gives you a glow, that won’t stop. FYI- I am enamoured with Guinot’s Gommage Biologique

Don’t sleep in your Makeup

This is something that I have heard my entire life, but when I was in beauty school our instructor said “sleeping in your makeup can age you 10 years”.  Now that is very, very scary.  Get in the routine of washing your face with a cleansing milk every night before bed, tone, moisturize and sweet dreams.

To deny that great makeup looks better on beautiful skin would be nothing short of insane. In our western culture, we are negligent when it comes to our skin. In her book The Color Of Beauty, Iman said that she was taught that “the skin you take care of in your teens and 20s is the skin you inherit in your 30s, 40s, and beyond.”

When I read that statement, it struck a nerve. I remembered a conversation that I had with my Aunt Sheila (my dad’s sister) back in 1999 when we were roomies down in Georgia. I’d gone in her room to say good night, and there she was standing in her bathroom with a white mask on her face.

That moment opened up a ritual of weekly masks and girl bonding. We would wash our faces and put on our masks and talk. Now my aunt Sheila has the most beautiful skin I have ever seen on an individual. Her complexion is perfect, but so is her skin care routine.

Every night she cleanses her face. “I don’t care what time of the night it is. I never wear makeup to bed.” She learned that from her mother. She will occasionally use a toner if she feels oily and uses plenty of moisturizer and avoids her oily zones.

Now her excellent skin care habits totally rubbed off on me and played a part in my decision to add esthetician to my makeup artist resume. Flash forward to 2009 and here I am makeup artist/ esthetician with my own blog about skin care and beauty.