Color Me Perfect

After applying primer to perfect the surface appearance of the skin, and highlighting or brightening flawed areas, it is now time to apply foundation for an even skin tone. This is not a maditory step...unless you are going to be in front of a camera, and let's face it, in these technologically savvy times, we're always on camera.

For those lucky folks that have clear, even skin, a light powder over a little highlighter can do marvelously well. For the rest of us, there are three types of foundation: creams/liquids, wet/dry pressed compacts, and loose powders.

As was true for cleansers, the same applies for foundation: choosing the best product for you is dependent upon your skin type. Creams and liquids were designed for those users with dry skin. The added moisture provides a "binding" benefit for the skin. Wet/dry pressed compacts tend to be the most versatile products, giving levels of coverage depending on whether they are used wet or dry with a sponge or a brush. These compacts are ideal for normal/combination skin. Loose powders are ideal for oily skin types. The powder absorbs oil, binding it to the skin for the longest wear without becoming shiny.

Foundation should be light on the skin, and hardly noticeable. Your skin should look soft, supple, and perfected...never dry, never oily, never painted on.

If you choose the proper product for your skin, the only other consideration is the proper tool for application. Brushes will give you the softest finish, and a light to medium coverage from most products. A sponge deposits the most pigment and provides a heavier coverage. Used together, a brush and sponge can create beautiful effects on the skin.

Don't be afraid to layer products to get the best coverage. If your liquid is too light, don't apply more liquid, but set the liquid with a wet/dry powder using a brush. The combined coverage of the two products will make a huge difference and provide a soft finish together.

Next up: Bronzers and Blushes

Highlighting Your Flaws = Younger Looks...?

Once your skin has been cleansed, treated, moisturized and primed, the next step is to highlight your flaws: dark circles under the eyes, broken capillaries, hyperpigmentation (sun/age spots) and blemishes.

It's okay, you can pick up your jaw. I heard it hit the floor.

Yes, I meant to write highlight instead of hide.

Most of these imperfections will show through foundations, and then we reach for concealer. This building up of pigment over these areas can lead to a heavy-handed look and can make them appear even darker. The idea is to mute these areas before applying foundation.

Some companies offer face primers in sheer tints... green to counteract red, mauve to counteract green, and yellow to counteract purple. It comes down to basic color theory... complimentary colors, those colors that fall directly across from each other on the color wheel, cancel each other out... create a neutral. For instance, using a green tinted primer over Rosy cheeks can mute the redness and allow for a more even color in the foundation.

If that's too much thinking for you, try using a highlighting pencil... make sure that it has a soft, creamy "lead" that can be easily blended with a concealer brush or fingertip. The brightening effect of a highlighting pencil can usually provide muted coverage for these trouble areas. Once, these discolorations have been highlighted, your foundation application will usually kick these highlighted areas back toward the shade of the foundation.

This is a technique that is very useful and cost-effective. You will hardly ever need concealer, or the tinted primers. If you bought every primer needed to balance all of the tonalities of your skin, you'd go broke!

The highlighting pencil has a lot of uses:

1. Highlighting Imperfections;



2. Lifting the Brows;



3. Making Eyes appear brighter;



4. Making Lips appear fuller;



5. Correcting noses;



6. Counteracting sinking cheeks...

... just to name a few.

So, before you apply foundation and grab the concealer, try highlighting those little imperfections and watch them disappear! It's a nifty trick that is inexpensive and can increase your face value.

Perfecting the Canvas

You may have already taken the steps to change your skin care regiment, thus investing in your face value. It is the essential step to looking younger and feeling better about yourself. The next step is makeup.

Cosmetics and using them wisely can go a long way to hiding the flaws and taking years off of how old you may look, increasing your face value. However, makeup also has the potential, no matter how young and fabulous your skin may look, to put you in a face value deficit! We've all seen the pretty young thing who, with the help of some bad makeup choices, looks like a fifty year old divorcee on a bender.

Once you've invested the time and energy into getting your skin to look amazing, your makeup choices should also reflect that same investment. Makeup alone can not save your face value. Think of it like this... using makeup alone to look younger is like spending your quarters and saving the pennies. It may work for a while, but debt (age) is going to catch up eventually!

The first step in properly using cosmetics to benefit your face value is to use a primer. Primers are designed to perfect the skin, giving you a soft, smooth surface on which you can apply makeup for better coverage, less redness and shallower lines and pores. Without primer, makeup goes on like watercolor on a stone wall. You'll see the color... and everything else!

Some companies use a plant-based silicone called Dimethicone as the base of their primer. This silicone acts as a barrier, a cushion over the skin, filling in fine lines and enlarged pores, giving you a smooth texture on which to apply cosmetics. Some of them contain tints of green, pink/mauve, and yellow to counteract discolorations in the skin. While they work well, these products require a few minutes for the silicone to set before applying a powder or liquid foundation over them.

Certain watchdog groups have alleged that Dimethicone, although plant-based can be toxic. Beyond this, the silicone does tend to break down in the oils produced by the skin, thus blocking pores and leading to irritation from it occlusive nature under makeup. While great for photo shoots, these primers may not be the best for all-day wear.

Other companies use botanical ingredients which act like skin treatments, fortifying the skin from the inside out. Usual ingredients in these products include Aloe Vera, cucumber and melon extracts, chamomile, hemp, and antioxidant vitamins. Due to their lightness, the ingredients are absorbed quickly and save time in the application process. Also, because these ingredients are absorbed by the skin rather than sitting on top of it, these primers tend to hold makeup and keep the skin looking smoother for longer periods of time.

Whichever you choose, a primer is necessary for smoother, younger-looking skin... and will give you the best results in using makeup to increase your face value!

It's Like Money In the Bank

The question has been posed: "What ever happened to the idea of aging gracefully?"

Making an investment in your face value is aging gracefully. The idea of spending thousands, hundreds of thousands even, of dollars to look younger is not a part of our philosophy. Increasing your face value isn't about injections and going under the knife, it's about caring for and enhancing your natural beauty without all of the fillers, inhibitors, nips and tucks.

What some people spend on a single injectible, could actually care for their skin for a year!

Skin that is damaged and looking old, can be synched, filled, and buffed, and the muscles paralyzed, but it's still going to be old skin. Gravity will still have its effects. However, utilizing a skin care regiment with products that can help to fortify your skin, change the way it functions, and correct damage can actually make your skin function and look like younger skin.

Sometimes grace needs a little help.

Genetics can only take you so far. Without proper skin care, contemporary environmental changes, medications and treatments, and even the air we breath can decrease our face value by speeding up the aging process. Growing old naturally doesn't mean the same thing as it did when our grandpaerents were young. We now have three choices; we can age "naturally", we can spend a fortune having injections and having our skin pinched, or we can take an active role in the aging process and invest time and care, rather than money, in our face value.

Increasing your face value, making that investment, doesn't mean breaking the bank. It's more an investment of time and being educated about your skin, about the ingredients to care for and repair the damage in your skin.

In the coming weeks, we will begin a discussion of makeup and how it can be used to enhance your natural beauty and make you appear more youthful!

To Serve and Protect

Sixth and Final Step: PROTECTION

The final step to any skin care regiment is to apply a layer of protection from the sun. Skin that has been deep pore cleansed and exfoliated is succeptible to damage from the sun; not just direct contact with sunlight, but the sun's reflection. It can also be harmful.

Skin that has been revitalized and refreshed can only stay that way if we take the proper provisions to protect it.

The sun not only hardens and knits collagen and elastin cells, forming wrinkles, but also activates melanin which can lead to hyper and hypopigmentation. Dehyration also occurs from sun and heat exposure. Healthy skin must be protected.

So, the billion dollar question... what is an SPF rating? How does it work?

SPF, or Sun Protection Factor, is essentially the base of an equation for the level of protection provided by a product or ingredient.

S x B = X... or Level of SPF (S) times the amount of time you can be in the sun before burning (B) equals how long you can now stay in the sun before burning (X).

If you can be in the sun for ten minutes before you begin to burn, and you apply an SPF of 30, that would mean that you can stay in the sun 30 time longer. You would now be able to stay in the sun for 300 minutes before you begin to burn.

That's 5 hours, folks! 4 hours and fifty minutes longer than without any sun protection.

So, when you're told that anything over an SPF of 45 is just a marketing ploy, the truth is that for even the most sensitive skin, there is hardly ever a time that you would need to be in the sun for 7 hours!

There are two types of SPF:

1) Physical

2) Chemical

Physical protectants include minerals like Titanium Dioxide, which reflect the sun off the surface fo the skin. Chemical protectants include compounds like Parcol 1789, which absorb UV rays. Some products contain only one or the other types of SPF, but the most successful protectants contain both, and provide what is called "full spectrum" protection.

Full-spectrum protectants manage to deflect and/or absorb UVA (aging), UVB (burning) and UVC (cancer) rays.

If you are concerned with tanning, and a person who is hoping to increase their face value is not, then you can apply an SPF of 15 to your body and SPF 30 to your face. You can still tan with SPF, it just takes longer. Which brings us to the next million dollar question... are tanning beds really that bad?

And the answer is: ABSOLUTLEY!

If the sun is bad enough on its own, what do you think putting youself inside a plastic tube with lamps radiating UV rays over ten times as powerful is doing to your skin... and in particular, your face?

For a healthy tan, there are definitely alternatives... sprays, cremes and gels... and times have changed. They no longer turn you orange. Powder bronzers give you wonderful layers of colors, too. There are alternatives to tanning.

However, before we get into bronzers and cosmetics, let's wrap up the skin care regiment. When you have finished the process of cleansing, exfoliating, balancing, treating, and moisturing your skin, take the final step and apply an SPF of 30. It's that simple. These six steps... a full skin care regiment... can do wonders for your face value.

Make the investment and start here. The results... younger looking skin... being mistaken for thirty-five when you're forty-three... is well worth it!

As Fresh As the Morning Dew

Let's chat moisture, folks.

There are a lot of misconceptions about moisturizers. Some people believe that without oil content, a moisturizer can't possibly work. Other think the opposite. What is the truth to this question?

Moisturizer... moisture... has to do with water content. Oil has nothing to do with hydration, but does meet a need in terms of lubrication and moisture retention, and to function properly, your skin needs both!

In order to clean deep within the pores, to break down the dirt and debris trapped in those tiny pockets of oil, we have to strip the skin of its oil content during cleansing. For someone with dry skin, they lack oil production and therefore also lack moisture retention. So, their skin readily accepts any moisture from the products used on it after cleansing, although without products that contain some oil, their skin will never hold onto that moisture.

For someone with oily skin, once their skin has been cleansed, their skin immediately begins to produce oil again. In this case, moisturizing is key. If the skin is trying to overproduce oil to protect the moisture balance, without applying moisturizer can lead to what can effectively be referred to as a grease slick!

The skin produces oil to keep the dry, flattened protein cells that make up our outer most layer of epidermis, called the corneum, pliable. This oil on the surface of the skin also helps to keep moisture from evaporating, and thus protects the skins moisture balance. If we don't drink enough water or spend a lot of time in a hot, dry climate, even oily skin can become dehydrated. The reproduction of skin cells and cell health does not require oil, but water.

So, how do you choose the perfect mositurizer?

If you have dry skin, meaning that you have very little oil production, you want to use a rich emollient. A heavy-weight creme that contains both oil and water. The skin will absorb the water, while the epidermis will stay lubricated and soft as it keeps this new dose of moisture from evaporating.

For somone with oily skinm stay away from heavy cremes and choose lighter moisturizers that are oil-free. You produce enough oil. What your skin needs is moisture, and this dose of moisture will keep your skin from overproducing oil to make up for a lack of water.

People with combination skin should choose a moisturizer that meets the need of the majority of thier skin. Combination types often lean more towards oily or dry rather than being an even split. So, combination skin types tending toward oily skin should use the oil-free moisturizer... the lighter cream. The combination type tending toward dry should use the heavier creme... the emollient.

Remember that healthy skin is well moisturized and lubricated. There has to be a balance of both oil and water for proper skin function!

We're almost to the last step: SPF!

Treat Yourself Right

Eye gels and creams, serums, complexes and masques are all treatment products. They contain active ingredients that further enrich or nourish your skin beyond just keeping it clean. These products can brighten skin pigments, even out tones, promote collagen and elastin production, decrease line and wrinkle depth and so much more.

Again, applying a treatment product to moist skin will ensure a deeper penetration. Massaging your face lightly with tapotement/percussion of your fingers to stimulate the skin will also allow for deeper penetration. Treatment products should never be smeared or rubbed into the skin, but pressed or tapped into the desired areas.

In some instances, a professional will use a form of direct current (and there are some at-home versions) to carry active ingredients on a current of electricity into the lower layers of the epidermis, and into the dermis itself. While home-care versions are hand-held, professional electrotherapy machines often consist of a grounding rod which is held by the "patient" and an active electrode that is rolled or smoothed across the skin. As the current travels from the active electrode to the grounding rod, it carried the positively charged active ingredients deep into the skin.

Common ingredients used in treatment products include botanicals and minerals, antioxidants and peptides. Vitamin C is very popular due to its versatility. It promotes collagen and elastin production, which leads to firmer skin, brightens pigmentation and evens skin tone, and fights free radicals! Vitamins A and E are also very popular. While E strengthens cell walls, A promotes cell turnover, which in essence keeps your skin active and youthful.

Peptides are strings of proteins that have the benefit of repairing damage on a cellular level, which can decrease, stop and reverse the signs of aging. Pairing two or more peptides forms complexes, and now through modern technology, ingredients like Pepsyn allow for a stable blending of peptides and botanicals for more powerful, natural treatment products.

While not a necessary part of the skin care regiment, treating your skin can do much in the way of increasing your face value.

Next up: Moisturizing.