Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Face and Makeup Beauty Tips

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Makeup has been around for centuries; even Cleopatra in ancient Egypt decorated her face. Women throughout history have regarded makeup as essential. Make up does not do magic, it only enhances the beauty that you already have.


Whether you are a stay-at-home mom, a career woman, a teenager, or a doting grandmother, here are some makeup and beauty tips for you.


Exercise and Diet
Naturally, you need to take care of your body in order to have that healthy glowing skin. Exercise and proper diet is still required. The stress that your body feels can be very much reflected on your face, so make sure to de-stress yourself. Hydration is also important, drink more than the required 8 glasses of water a day.


Follow a skin care regimen. The simplest is the 3-step method: cleanse, tone and moisturize.


Cleansing
Cleansing is the most fundamental step in facial care.

It gets rid of the dirt your face has accumulated during the day and old makeup. Cleansers come in the form of creams or lotions. Get the one that is perfect for your skin type. Never use ordinary soap as a cleanser. It has ingredients that may be harsh on your skin.

Toner
After cleaning your face, use a toner. It gets rid of residual dirt from your make up and the environment. In addition, it can help hydrate, revitalize and balance the pH of your skin.


Moisturize
The final step is moisturizing. Moisturizers keep the skin from drying out by rehydrating it. Before buying these products, make sure to read the label and stay away from products with chemicals that may damage your skin.


Note: Since cleanliness is an integral part of skin care, make sure that your brushes and sponges are clean before you apply cosmetics to your face.

Brushes and sponges can be cleaned with your regular shampoo. Also, do not use expired cosmetics - keep track of their expiration dates.

After you have completed these three steps, here are a few simple tricks to help you put on your make up and enhance the natural beauty within you.


Start by applying cosmetic foundation over your face.


Eyes
Unless you are going to a party, bare minimum is the best. You can even get away with just applying mascara to make your eyes fuller. Nevertheless, if you insist on putting on an eye shadow, go with the browns. Make sure that your eyebrows are well groomed. It gives a more polished look. To help you camouflage those dark circles around the eyes, dab on a small amount of concealer makeup, but not too much to avoid that cakey look.


Lips
If you want a long wearing lip color, try this quick tip: Outline your lips with a lip liner that is a shade darker than your lipstick. Next fill it up with your lipstick starting from the middle going out. The last touch would be the lipgloss. Just like the lipstick, apply it from the center and avoid putting it on the corners of your lip to avoid smudging. Now, you have that sexy pouty lip.


Adding a bit of cheek color/tint (stick blush) is the last and final step.

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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

5 Top Pregnancy Beauty Tips

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Achieving a great pregnancy beauty routine need not be difficult. Our natural beauty is more often than not enhanced during pregnancy, all you need to do is make some simple lifestyle changes to make the most of it:


Drink Plenty of Water:


During your first trimester you may experience an influx of spots, this is due to a drastic rise in hormones. You may be desperate to rid yourself of them, but using your usual acne cream as part of your pregnancy beauty routine may not be advisable, so you should instead focus on clearing your spots from within. Once you get past the first trimester, water will then serve to enhance your pregnancy glow.


Water can also help reduce pregnancy stretch marks. We need to maintain a great fluid intake to enhance collagen production, which will in turn make your skin more supple, leaving it able to adapt to expansion.


Maintain Your Omega-3 Intake:


Eating 2 portions maximum of salmon per week will ensure you do not over do it on your fish intake during pregnancy and it will also enhance your pregnancy beauty.

Jennifer Lopez is famed for maintaining her fantastic skin tone through a diet that has her eating salmon regularly. Many women find that they have to abandon their usual anti-ageing routine due to the retinoid content in their chosen products, but don't fret just yet Omega-3 can help prevent wrinkles naturally. Much like water, it can also enhance that natural pregnancy glow.

Switch Moisturisers:


By switching from your usual moisturiser to a pregnancy moisturiser you are keeping your beauty routine safe. Try one from the Burt's Bees range, their all over body moisturiser can really provide you with an enhanced glow.

Moisturising is essential to preventing pregnancy stretch marks, hydration is the key!

Yoga:


Yoga routines designed for your child bearing year will help keep you supple, maintaining your natural pregnancy beauty and preparing you for labour. Yoga can prevent stretch marks, maintain muscle tone and prepare your pelvic floor for your impending childbirth. It can also be used during labour as a pain management technique.


Balance Your Nutrition:


It goes without saying that you should maintain a balanced and healthy diet for optimal foetal development and maternal health. A balanced diet throughout your child bearing year will ensure your skin stays clear and glowing, it will prevent you from putting on unnecessary pregnancy weight and it will keep your hair super shiny.


So maintaining a great pregnancy beauty routine does not always mean having to put in extra effort, all you need to do is make a few changes to your usual lifestyle and you will be looking gorgeous with that bump in no time.





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Monday, October 13, 2008

Men's Fashion Tips For All Occasions

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Today, unlike in the past, men too pay a lot of attention to looking good and presentable at all times like women and they do not feel apologetic about it. Let us have a look at what tips can be had for men's fashion for all occasions.

It is better to have a little common sense, pick up the right tips and importantly choose something that gels with your personality rather than being focused on what other people are wearing - after all, what you select should enhance your personality and not diminish it.

It would do good to look at yourself in the mirror after dressing up and see who you look. You could also take the advice of people whom you trust such as your wife, your parents or even your children or friends. You could also go through various men's fashion magazines to pick up the latest trends - after all, it would be great if people perceive you as one who is in touch with the latest trends in men's fashion.

Apart from what you wear how you carry yourself, it is also very important for you to have the confidence to go with your choice of clothes.

Blazers are like jackets but which are brought separately from your trousers. If you choose a few good, smart blazers (the convenient colors would be black and navy blue) with classy, shiny, golden buttons, it would look very nice with the correct choice of trousers - for instance, a navy blue blazer would look very smart with beige trousers. It is not necessary that the shades should always be similar - sometimes, an appropriate contrast would also make you look really smart (like what has been described above).

Sport coats are less formal as compared to blazers but can also look very nice. Worn with leather shoes, will make you look a little more formal as compared to wearing them with sports shoes - it depends on what the occasion is. If you wish to be bold you choose a purple satin sports jacket whereas if you wish to be a little less flashier then you can opt for a beige colored sports jacket with brown trousers. Sports jackets are normally worn with tapered dress shirts and jeans.

In the world of men's fashion, classic suit jackets are not stand-alone unlike blazers -they usually come with a pair of trousers which are made of the same fabric and color. The common colors would be navy blue, tan, grey, black and olive green. Normally, there would not be patterns on the suits but if there are they would be quite subdued, not very prominent - pinstriped, herring bone or windowpane - the reason behind this is that normally a suit is worn for a formal occasion and it would be better to look as businesslike as possible.

For really smart look for an important occasion, it would be appropriate to select a suit of navy blue color, with good quality black leather shoes, a leather belt with a gold buckle, gold cufflinks and a golden watch. This should help you to stand out. Your hair should be well combed, you must have had a good shave and it would be difficult for you then not to be noticed.
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Monday, October 6, 2008

Beauty Tips From Picasso

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Art is the elimination of the unnecessary, said Pablo Picasso, and I wonder about symmetry being unnecessary to him. Picasso is one of those artists who has made a wild and important impact on the world of art, and yet, I will quickly admit that I dont always understand what is so great about painting a woman and putting both her eyes on the same side of her face, her lips down on her chin and her right cheek up on her forehead. What is he trying to say, I wonder?

My little son is an artist through and through. By three years old, he was creating things at his art table in 3D, and I knew that paper and crayons would only be his medium for a short time. I had a feeling he would be on to bigger and bolder art very soon. I had no idea that he would skip right over woodworking, or just cut and paste, and move directly to metal work. That is what he did. He is a welder, and finished his first major welding project a metal workbench with adjustable legs so it can grow taller as he does before he lost his first tooth. His dad and he work out in their garage with all sorts of safety equipment, but also with sparks flying almost as fast and furious as their vivid imaginations.

When he was only four or five years old, my son became obsessed with Picasso. Honestly, the only thing he knew about him was from a tiny line in the childrens movie by PIXAR, Toy Story. There is a scene where the Mr. Potato Head character puts all his parts on in the wrong place, strikes a pose and says, Look, Im Picasso. When the pig says, I dont get it, Mr. Potato Head retorts fiercely, Uncultured Swine!

That was it that was all it took, and my artist son started drawing faces with the nose on the chin or the lips down on the neck. He did Picasso cut and paste. He did Picasso paintings. My folks started buying art books for children that would give him a little background on who Picasso was and the types of art he created.

One time, when he was in a classroom situation where all the kids were doing puppets and theyd been told where to put the eyes, where to put the upper lip on the folding paper bag, and where to put the lower lip so that it would actually form a workable mouth; my son experimented with his Picasso fascination and put the lips in a creatively alternate place. When the teacher tried to correct him, he looked straight at her, and in his tiny voice, told her that his lips were exactly where he wanted them. He was doing a Picasso puppet, he said. She took a step back and smiled. Clearly, she understood that there is no right or wrong when dealing with a true artist.

When I consider that Picasso felt that art was the elimination of the unnecessary, I become more and more intrigued by what he was trying to say. In our beauty obsessed world, could we take a clue from Picasso and not worry if we dont look like the woman on the cover of a fashion magazine? How many of us can actually compete if that is the measure of true beauty? Arent we better off to eliminate the unnecessary and burdensome aim for outward perfection, and instead fine-tune the areas of our heart that bring us most the most joy, that fill our eyes with a light from within the moment we speak? Inner beauty is what fills the eyes and face with radiance anyway!

How odd, that I can find beauty tips from Picasso! But here it is, October 25th, his birthday, and I think he understood women and beauty and fashion better than most of us. He would focus on an eye and paint it beautifully. He wouldnt care exactly where it went, as long as it was captivating. He would focus on the curve of a hip, the curve of an eyebrow, the lobe of an ear. All of these things can be beautiful on a woman. All of these things can also make us think we are not good enough, if we dont have all the curves in what we think are the right places. We can stress about whether the dimensions are right, or if the symmetry is as it should be.

Picasso revolutionized art. The Beauty World could use a revolution! I say, have a Picasso day! Lets focus on the things that are beautiful, and not worry so much about the whole picture. Lets wake up to our inner artist who can see beauty in the most upside down or backwards places. Lets smile because we can see our various parts as out of alignment with the worlds standards of beautiful as they may be as works of art in their own right! Happy Birthday, Picasso, and Thank You!


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