Bronze Summer Skin, Please Stay A Little Longer…….

While summer rudely leaves us at some point in the year, it doesn’t mean you can’t rock your sun- kissed glow pretty much all year round if you want to! A few skin care tips and a couple of helpful products and you can look like you just stepped off the vacation-plane; every day!

Glow Girl

So, let’s address the glow part! It’s that enticing sheen that a healthy skin imparts. To achieve this, do not be shy of exfoliation. This gets rids of dead skin cells and build-up, ensuring the fresh, new skin cells are out on top giving off their glow. While some people feel that exfoliating will “take away” the tan, it actually helps prolong it and also keeps the skin prepared for the other great tan-booster – moisture and hydration. For skin that is super polished, try La Prairie Cellular Mineral Face Exfoliator. This decadent treat ensures complete exfoliation of dead skin to clarify the complexion, while providing a moisture boost. 

La Prairie Cellular Mineral Face Exfoliator  

Moisturise, moisturise, moisturise

You should use every opportunity to moisturise your skin in summer, as a hydrated skin looks beautiful and feels healthy. With the additional swimming, sweating and showering you will be doing in summer, we also tend to strip the skin of moisture more, and therefore should pay some extra attention to replacing this moisture as often as possible! If you really need an excellent moisture boost, it is worth splashing out on the exceptional Dermalogica Super Rich Repair cream. This miracle in a tub delivers immediate hydration benefits, making use of peptides to stimulate collagen production, a smoothing complex for elasticity and tone and shea butter and oil of evening primrose to soften and replenish. Add some antioxidants to help shield against environmental elements and you have yourself a new, super-moisturised skin in an instant!

Dermalogica Super Rich Repair cream

Top up tan

You can also help your tan stay a little longer by topping it up with a gradual tan moisturising product or some tan towelettes, allowing you to target areas and add that subtle extra glow. Use a product like St. Tropez Gradual Tan Everyday Body Lotion. A nourishing moisturiser that has a touch of bronze that builds up gradually over time (use it every day), to prolong and create that gorgeous, golden glow. 

St. Tropez Gradual Tan Everyday Body Lotion

Shimmy into shimmer

Nothing enhances a tan like a bit of shimmer, and you can sprinkle some golden fairy dust on your face to keep that glow alive. Jane Iredale 24-Karat Gold Dust Shimmer Powder can be brushed over the cheekbones and forehead to highlight and add warmth to your face. Use Tom Ford Shade and Illuminate Brush to highlight and contour the face with precision. This luxurious brush is made with synthetic hair to achieve a radiant glow without creating streaks or unnatural lines. The handle is specially designed for true comfort and balance.

Jane Iredale 24-Karat Gold Dust Shimmer Powder

Tom Ford Shade and Illuminate Brush 04

Don’t let the weather dictate your look, keep your inner and outer glow alive for as long as you choose!

Mini Haul at COSME-DE.COM, Featuring: Noa Quiroz

The elegant and articulate Noa chats about her COSME-DE.COM beauty haul, featuring products she wanted to achieve a radiant, iridescent, natural spring and summer beauty look. She demonstrates the Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector, Laura Mercier Loose Setting Powder and Matt Baked Powder as well as Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk Foundation. Noa sets your mind at ease by delving into the protective packaging and free shipping she experienced using COSME-DE.COM, making her online shopping experience a great one!

Products mentioned:

Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector in Opal

Laura Mercier Loose Setting Powder (Translucent)

Laura Mercier Matte Radiance in Highlight 01

Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk Foundation

Ways to Keep Your Hair Damage-Free, Tangle-Free (Protect from the Heat and the Sun)

If there’s one thing that makes a girl feel great, it’s having a good hair day! Our hair is just so “on display” all the time and a large part of our overall style is wrapped up in our hairstyle. Whether your hair is long or short, curly or straight, dark or blond, groomed or wild, it needs a bit of love and care to look fantastic all the time.

Always protect

Our hair can be the brunt of a few too many stresses that can leave it dried out, split, frizzy and dull. The sun, swimming pool chlorine, heat styling, dying and over-washing can strip it of the natural oils needed to keep it healthy, shiny and soft. It’s time to give your hair the love and attention it deserves!

Let’s start with the basics! Just as we all know to protect our skin from the sun, we need to protect our hair too! UV rays break down the cuticle of the hair shaft and leave hair dry and frizzy. Luckily for us, our hair actually protects our scalp from the harsh sun, but we need to give it a little protection here too if we want a shiny mane of healthy hair! When you are going to be outdoors for long periods, a stylish and highly effective method of protection is simply a hat! No mess, no fuss, no damage! If you swim in a chlorinated pool, wear a swimming cap to protect your hair from the chemicals that will dry it out and possibly affect the colour too!

Another way to protect your silken strands is to use a sun protective spray – you can use a spray that you use on your skin, and make sure you pay particular attention to the skin of your parting, which could get very burned if not protected. You can also use a leave-in conditioner for days that you will be outdoors. Try Macadamia Natural Oil Nourishing Leave-In Cream for a moisturising boost for dry, difficult-to-manage hair. The moisture transforms unruly locks into a well-behaved, shiny tumble of softness. What’s more, it has a built-in UV protection that keeps your hair healthy as well as protects any colour from fading.  

Macadamia Natural Oil Nourishing Leave-In Cream

Give your hair some love and care

Paying attention to your daily hair routine is also worth doing to keep your hair looking great. If possible, try not to wash your hair every day, as this strips the hair of natural oils. Using gentle, natural products will also keep your hair and scalp healthy, instead of harsh chemicals. I love the shampoo and conditioner from Le Couvent des Minimes Hair Care from the Root. The “Gentle Beneficial Shampoo” is suitable for all hair types and makes use of plant care with stimulating rosemary, sage and nettle and fortifying mint. The hair and scalp are gently cleaned and nourished without any silicone, and the result is soft, light, shiny hair. The “Root Beneficial Conditioner” includes olive oil to infuse moisture into the hair and impart that scintillating shine!

Le Couvent des Minimes Hair Care from the Root Gentle Beneficial Shampoo (For All Hair Types)  

Le Couvent des Minimes Hair Care from the Root Beneficial Conditioner (For All Hair Types)

All the wonderful products in the world won’t be of use if you “abuse” your hair afterward with vigorous towelling! If you towel dry your hair, just pat and rub it very gently to absorb moisture. By rubbing your hair, you roughen the hair shaft, making the hair appear frizzy and dull, so very gently does it! Once a week (or even more if your hair is excessively dry or you use heat styling often) give your hair a treatment mask to really give it some deep moisturisation and help restore any damage. For a decadent hair treat, you can’t go wrong with the Molton Brown Mer-Rouge Deep Conditioning Mask. Seaweed and amino acids add strength and shine to the hair, while vegetable proteins enrich and smooth each strand for soft, tangle-free and lustrous locks.

Molton Brown Mer-Rouge Deep Conditioning Mask  

Style Queen

And of course, we have the styling. There is no denying that blow drying, flat irons and curling wands can damage the hair, but they make us look so good! So, where there is a will, there is a way! Use your styling tools, but protect your hair first so that you can have your cake and eat it too! Give your damp hair a good mist of Giovanni 2chic Ultra-Sleek Blow Out Styling Mist, and make sure it is evenly distributed throughout your hair, and then go for the blow and style away until you are happy with your perfection! The Brazilian Keratin and Argan Oil give moisture, a silky bounce and zero frizz!

Giovanni 2chic Ultra-Sleek Blow Out Styling Mist   

It is worth thinking about what kinds of styles are most similar to your natural hair state, and work with that as closely as possible to avoid excessive styling and treatments. For example, if your hair is black and straight, a mass of blonde curls will be hard to achieve and maintain and your hair will go through quite some trauma to achieve the look!

So, no matter what you were born with, make sure you treat your locks with care and love, for everyday good hair days!

Everyday Beachy Waves for Mid-Length Hair Tutorial ft. Ashley Ahn

In this tutorial, the beauty pro Ashley Ahn shows you how to achieve the gorgeous “beachy waves” look on mid-length hair. This style looks gloriously natural and effortless, and Ashley shows you how to achieve the look in around 5 minutes. She uses Amika Un.Done Texture Spray and Touchable Hairspray, for a stunning style that smells fantastic too. So whip out your straightener and learn from a pro! 

Products Mentioned:

Amika Touchable Hairspray

Amika Undone Texture Spray

Light, Bright, Porcelain Perfect Skin is Yours

We all have a different look, thank goodness, or the world would be a really boring place! I was posting recently about achieving and maintaining a gorgeous, golden summer tan, which is really beautiful. But on the flip side, there is another look that is equally as beautiful, and that is the radiant, even tone of porcelain perfect skin.

Smooth and Even-Toned

Gentle lightening and brightening of the skin can bring out a youthful radiance, a perfectly even skin tone and even help diminish uneven pigmentation and scars. Now who would say no to that? No one I know! A word of caution though when it comes to lightening, is to make sure you use products that list their ingredients. There have been lightening creams on the market before that contain hydroquinone, which can lighten your skin, yes, but possibly burn a hole in it too, so be careful! There is no need to do anything damaging with so many wonderful products out there, with safe and natural, listed ingredients and at all price ranges!

Some of the best natural brightening ingredients include liquorice root, arbutin, songi mushroom, lemon peel and resveratrol (grape seed extract) – you can look out for these ingredients and others when choosing your brightening products.

Where there is a will, there is a way!

If you want to jumpstart a “brightening skin” campaign, you could treat yourself to a salon microdermabrasion or professional peel. This gently removes the top layer of skin to give you a refreshed, radiant start to healthy skin functioning and boosted collagen turnover. Then, you need to habitually follow up with excellent lightening and brightening products.

As always with our skin, we start with cleansing! I suggest you give the wonderful Clarins White Plus Total Luminescent Pearl-to-Cream Brightening Cleanser a try. The name is long and the effects long-lasting! It is a fine mousse textured cleanser, rich in clarifying plant extracts that promote a luminous transparency to the skin. This is a great product if you have any pigmentation, as it includes Spergularia and Alchemila extracts to even the tone and stop further pigmentation.

Clarins White Plus Total Luminescent Pearl-to-Cream Brightening Cleanser   

Another wonder-brightening product comes from SK-ll, the Whitening Source Clear Lotion, packed out with nourishing hydrators and texturisers. Micro fine visual modifiers bring an instantly uniform tone to your skin and a soft, glowing effect. After your cleanser, you dispense a little into a cotton pad and pat gently over the skin, pressing in with your fingertips to get all that goodness in it.

SK-ll, the Whitening Source Clear Lotion

For the final brightening, whitening, even-toned skin whammy, follow up with a radiance wonder-product – CAUDALIE Vinoperfect Radiance Serum – the no. 1 anti-dark spot product in your arsenal. This milky, moisturising serum creates a radiance in the skin that looks lit from within. It’s suitable for all skin types and contains free radical blasters that are 62 times more effective than vitamin C.

CAUDALIE Vinoperfect Radiance Serum   

So, with a little care and attention, and some perfect brightening skin products, you too can be mistaken for a porcelain doll!