3 Tips To Keep Your Skin Looking It’s Best

Hi guys! So recently, the Dollar Shave Club contacted me and told me about how they are trying to spread the word about how to properly take care of your skin as the weather shifts and spring starts to set in.

So they have asked me to share some of my best tips when it comes to taking care of your skin in the spring.

However, as I have frequently lamented, my country is so hot you could probably cook a steak on our sidewalks. So I really don’t know anything about taking care of your skin in any other season except summer.

So I thought that today I would give you three tips to keep your skin looking its best. These tips are things that you can do (and should do) no matter the season.

1. Keep it cool

Everyone loves a hot shower. That is, everyone except your skin. Make sure that you don’t shower or have a bath in water that is too hot. When you use water that is too hot, you can end up drying out your skin. I know spring time means its still kind of cold outside but resist the temptation to boil yourself like a lobster.

One of the things I like to do especially when its very hot outside (everyday) is to take an ice cube and rub it over my face till it completely or mostly melts. You can use the ice cube directly on your face if you wish but don’t do it when the ice cube is straight from the freezer because you could break the capillaries under your skin and while I personally don’t know what that means, it sounds pretty bad.

Doing this not only cools your skin but helps blemishes, makes your skin look clearer and even helps your makeup stay on longer.

2. Exfoliate

Exfoliating is my favourite thing in the world to do. I just love the feel of scrubbing (this word is used loosely here. Don’t actually scrub your face please) my face and having it feel so smooth and clean and wonderful afterwards.

If you have yet to discover the wonders of exfoliating, let me just say that you are missing out on much more then a satisfying end result. You are also allowing your pores to remain clogged. You are allowing dead skin to remain on your face and dull your complexion. So exfoliate.

I usually like to do it twice a week. Be careful to not exfoliate too often because you could damage your face.

3. Moisturise + SPF

Moisturising is the single most important thing when it comes to maintaining your skin. So make sure that you are using the correct moisturiser not only for your skin type but also for the weather that you live in.

Since my country is constantly 1000000000 degrees hot, I have to make sure that my moisturisers (and even my powders actually) have a good enough SPF to make sure my skin does not die. A good estimate is to get something with an SPF of 30 or more.

Another important thing to remember is that you need to use a face lotion. Not body lotion. You wouldn’t use shampoo for your feet would you? Same logic. The skin on your face is much more sensitive and it needs proper care.

So there you have it. Three tips to help you keep your skin looking its best no matter the season. I hope it helps you and if you are in the middle of spring where you are, enjoy it because some people (me) cannot.

More tips from the Dollar Shave Club

3 Tips To Take Care Of Your Skin

I have never had the best skin. And I’ll admit that it’s largely due to the fact that I used to be quite lazy when it came to my skin care and about generally doing all the things that you should to get healthy skin.

This month though, I decided that I finally wanted to try my hardest to make my skin look good and healthy. So I slowly started introducing some lifestyle changes and while my skin obviously isn’t magically all clean and perfect now, I feel like I’m finally at a stage where I feel happy with my skin and I feel like I’m doing enough to keep it looking good. So today, as part of the last in my 3 part beauty series, I decided to tell you guys about the changes I have made in my life to keep up with my skin’s health.

1) Drink More Water

Okay Okay! I know. Everybody and their mother’s tell you to drink more water. But it’s true. It really helps. Not only does it help to clear up your face and make it look more vibrant but it has tons of other benefits for your entire body.

So I used to be chronically bad at drinking water. Literally I used to sometimes just forget to drink more then 200ml of water a day. That’s one glass if you’re wondering. I have now managed to increase that to an average of about 1600ml a day. How? Well I discovered a stupid little app.

I’ve tried many apps for drinking more water but nothing has really worked. This month though, I rediscovered Plant Nanny. I say rediscovered because I knew it existed. I’ve actually tried it before but it didn’t work. I guess this time I was a bit more determined.

So this app basically calculates how much water you will need per day and then it gives you a plant. Your task is to keep this silly little plant alive by watering it. So say you drink 200ml of water. You would then go into the app and log that down. So you get 200ml of water and your plant gets 200ml. If you slack on your drinking, your plant will get sad and eventually will shrivel up and die. It’s quite effective I would say.

This is my little plant:

Okay honestly, I just chugged 650ml of water to get my plant all happy and fresh for this screenshot. Not gonna lie. I feel like I’m drowning.

2) Make SPF Your Best Friend

 

I live in a very hot and sunny country. Which means that it is impossible for me to evade the sun. So I actually started using moisturisers with an SPF of 15 from the beginning of this year and I’ve really noticed a difference.

So make SPF a must when you are leaving the house. It doesn’t matter if you live in Singapore where the sun will literally burn you alive or if you live in freaking Sweden where they once only had 20 minutes of sunlight. WEAR SPF.

*By the way, an SPF of 15 is the bare minimum so look out for that before buying one*

3) Establish A Skin Care Routine…And Stick To It!

This is one of the most important steps because you can drinks gallons upon gallons of water (don’t do that. There is such a thing as too much water) and you can slather on  an SPF of 800 but if you aren’t regularly cleansing and moisturising your skin, you really won’t be doing yourself a favour.

I like to follow this three step rule to my skin care routine. Cleanse, Tone and Moisturise. So you can use that as a basic outline when coming up with your skin care routine.

I recently did a blog post where I walked you guys through my night time skin care routine. So if you want some elaboration or product suggestions, you can head on over to that post as well.

So those are my 3 tips on taking care of your skin. I still have a whole load of other tips so if you would like a part 2, let me know. Also don’t forget to tell me what your favourite skin care tip is if it isn’t in my list.

I will be resuming my bookish posts after this and I just wanted to say thank you for supporting my 3 days of beauty posts. I really enjoyed sharing my night time skin care routine, my favourite lip products and my skin care tips with you guys. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it as much as I did.

xoxo

My Top 3 Favourite Lip Products

My favorite part of doing my makeup has always been my lips. I love picking a lipstick colour to match my outfit and then glamming it up with a touch of lip gloss. It’s just always been my favourite thing to do. Not to mention that I’m a firm believer in the fact that just a touch of lipstick can immediately make someone look 10 times better.

So today, as part of my series of beauty posts, I thought I would tell you guys about my top 3 favorite lip products from each of the general lip categories. Lipstick, lip gloss and lip balm.

1) Lip Stick

I love a good lipstick. I feel like it really gives a person charachter. Not to mention that you can really let your personality shine through your lipstick.

I personally associate darker shades with more of a bolder and confident type of person and softer, more subtle colours with a milder and more gentle charachter.

Which is why my favorite lipstick is Maybelline’s Colour Show in Nude Mocha (305). This lipstick might as well be the only one I own because I rarely use any other.

It’s a matt lipstick and while it is under their pink palette, it has red undertones which I love. It’s very soft and not as jarring as a lot of other lipsticks which make it the perfect one to wear on a daily basis. If you choose to apply it very lightly, it gives your lips a very subtle lift and basically makes sure that you don’t look like a zombie on the Walking Dead.

You can also choose to build it up if you’re going to an event or something and it’s perfect because it goes very effortlessly from a subtle day time look to something that you would wear on a night out.

Basically it’s the only lipstick you will ever need.

2) Lip Gloss

Like most girls, I started my descent into the world of makeup with a simple lip gloss. I had a couple on hand already but when I discovered Nivea’s Fruity Shine Strawberry Lip Gloss, I pretty much dumped every single one of them and pledged allegiance to this baby.

It’s a lip gloss with a red tint to it and a very pretty glittery shine. I used to wear it in place of lipstick when I was still really crap at keeping my lipstick on my lips and off my teeth. Now that I do know how to use lipstick properly, I like to use this lip gloss to glam up a matt lipstick. I’ll usually just slick it over my lipstick to give myself a more fun look when I’m going out to an event or party.

3) Lip Balm

  

Burt’s Bees has always been my go to when it comes to lip balms. I completely trust them and they have never failed me. My ultimate favourite though would be the Burt’s Bees Replenishing Lip Balm with Pomegranate Oil. This is a very light but effective lip balm. It comes out clear and it smells heavenly. Pomegranate is actually my favourite smell ever so this is perfect. I used it during the day when I was in Seattle and Portland and my lips didn’t crack or dry out once.

So those are my top 3 favourite lip products. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I will be putting out a post on how to take care of your skin within the next two days so stay tuned for that. Until then, don’t forget to follow me and let me know what your favourite lip products are in the comments below.

xoxo

My Nightly Skin Care Routine

When I first started my blog, I used to focus mainly on beauty posts. I took a lot of photos and I talked endlessly about hair and makeup and the joys of exfoliating.

As my blog grew, I slowly came to the realisation that my passion lay mostly with books. While I love makeup and anything beauty related, it did take a backseat to my love for reading.

However, that didn’t stop the ideas. Oh the ideas for beauty related posts were endless. But these kinds of posts requires more photography then I could do while in school. And there was also the fact that I was now a book blogger and not a beauty one.

So I thought I would finally indulge myself (and hopefully you guys too) by doing a series of beauty posts over the next few days. Sounds good? I think so.

As you can probably see by the title, I am going to be walking you guys through my nightly skin care routine today. Now I would just like to say here that I am by no means someone who is very on top of their skin care. I am terrible at it actually. I usually skip steps, forget to do things or just plain pretend my cleanser doesn’t exist.

That said though, this month I decided to start taking my skin care more seriously and that started with establishing a regular routine for myself. Of course I did my best to make it the quickest and most efficient one and considering that I’ve pretty much stuck to it, I think I’ve succeeded.

1) Cleansing

This is the first and most basic step in any skin care routine. You need to make sure that you clean your face and get rid of all the grime of the day.

For that, I use Pond’s Acne Clear Multi Action Facial Foam and Scrub. I could go on for days about how much I love this product.

So first of all, it’s the type that lathers. I love pretty much anything that lathers because I feel like it really lets you stretch your buck. You can use just a little bit and it will lather up to be able to cover your entire face and then some. So you can use this for ages before you have to replenish it.

Secondly, it’s a very gentle exfoliant. Now you know I love my exfoliants. This product has a few little exfoliating beads that clean your pores without being too harsh on the skin (because you do know that you can’t use a harsh exfoliator on a daily basis right?). So I’m able to fulfill my intense desire to exfoliate without ruining my skin. Yay!

So I use the Pond’s Facial Foam every evening except for Sundays. Sunday is my deep clean day. So I usually skip my facial foam and just use my beloved St Ives Apricot Scrub on Sundays.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you would know that I LOVE this product. It is the first thing I would recommend anyone. It is basically an exfoliator in and out except that unlike the Pond’s one, it is much more intense. So you unfortunately can’t use it everyday (I tried it once and while it is incredibly lovely in the moment, the long term effects aren’t so great). So I use it once a week just to really properly clean my face. It leaves my skin feeling so smooth and soft and delightful.

Now you don’t have to choose Sundays to be your deep clean day. You can pick any day of the week. I decided on Sunday because I only start school in the afternoons on Monday. Which means I get the whole night and morning to be makeup free. And if you haven’t caught my drift yet, it basically means that after a deep exfoliation, I can give my skin and pores the maximum time to breathe before I put on my makeup.

So pick a day that suits your lifestyle and try to allow your skin to breathe as much as you can after a deep clean.

2) Toning

 

The next step is to tone your face. Now I’m fairly new to toning and all I can say is that if you’ve never tried it, you need to asap. Because it feels heavenly. 

What toners do is that they basically provide an extra cleaning for your face. It tightens your pores, it balances your PH levels and it basically makes you feel like you can rule the world.

I use the Himalaya Herbals Refreshing & Clarifying Toner every night. You just dab a little onto a cotton pad and rub that all over your face. The cotton pad should come away slightly dirty even if you’ve just cleansed your face. That’s because cleansing doesn’t remove all the dirt from your face. Toners do. Toners clean your pores and your face crevices. Trust me. It’s amazing.

If you’re in a rush though or perhaps extremely tired, you can choose to just tone your face or just cleanse. I recommend doing both but if you really can’t, pick one. At least your face will have some semblance of being clean.

3) Moisturising 

Once your face is dry from the toner, you want to moisterise to lock in that moisture and to make sure your skin doesn’t dry out.

For that, I use the Nivea Night Whitening Body Lotion. This stuff smells amazing and it makes your skin feel very cool and soft. I absolutely adore it.

If you have sensitive skin, another favorite of mine is the Johnson’s Baby Bedtime lotion. Don’t judge me. Baby lotion is freaking amazing and don’t tell me you don’t want to smell like a baby when you sleep. Plus it’s clinically proven to help babies sleep better so who’s the real winner here?

4) Lip Balm

This step is optional because it really depends on how you sleep. I use lip balm because I sleep in an air conditioned room and while my lips don’t really crack or get dry easily, I like to protect them and make sure that they are well moisturised. If anything, it’s for my future.

So I use the Burt Bee’s Ultra Conditioning Lip Balm with Kokum Butter. I discovered this back in April when I was in Seattle. I used it every single night and it was amazing.

I will admit though that this lip balm is very heavy. It’s a clear balm and the kokum butter is very noticable. For people who aren’t used to using a lip balm, this can feel rather strange and uncomfortable. So I would recommend that you apply it about a half hour before bed just so that it settles and it doesn’t feel like you need to be ultra careful with your lips like if you were wearing lipstick (because who wants that when you’re all ready to snuggle into bed?)

If you really can’t handle such a heavey lip balm you can go for my second favorite and just as effective lip balm which is the Burt’s Bees Replenishing Lip Balm with Pomegranate Oil. That is usually the one I use in the day time under my lipstick because it’s a lot more lighter.

So that is it for my night time skin care routine. It’s pretty basic and I usually do it while watching YouTube videos or reading so it doesn’t require you to really set aside time to do it.

I hope that it helps some of you who want to start establishing a routine and don’t forget to let me know in the comments if you have any extra steps in your routine because I know mine is still pretty basic.

I will be putting up a series of beauty posts over the next few days so follow me or subscribe to keep up to date.

Xoxo