My Skincare Secret | Showing My Skin The Love It Deserves

Hello Everyone!

So as part of the Simple Skin Social campaign, I thought I'd share with you how I keep my skin healthy!

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Now we all know spots can be a right pain, and even when we take really good care of our skin, they can still pop up and  look like Yellowstone is about to irrupt off our chin! A lot of this can be down to Mother Nature paying us a visit (TMI?) or our hormones going awol, but it also has a lot to do with our lifestyle and the way we take care of our skin. So lads, this can apply to you too!

I don't really know if I can call these my skincare secrets, as I know a lot of people will do the same as I, but it's surprising how many people I know don't actually have a routine- and my skin feels a lot healthier because of it! However, todays post is about how lifestyle can affect your skin, maybe I'll do a follow up on my actual skincare routine if anyone's interested?!

If you saw my 12 Days of Christmas series, I mentioned that one of my resolutions for 2014 was to drink more water. And if you saw Zoella's most recent video Little Ways To Change Your Life, you'll see that I completely agree with her; drinking more water really does help your skin! It keeps you feeling hydrated and helps stopping your skin getting too dry. I saw a noticeable difference within the first couple of weeks.

I've never been a big fruit fan- give me a big plate of veggies over a bowl of strawberries any day! It's mainly to do with the textures of fruits (yes I realise I'm a little weird), but recently my parents bought a smoothie maker, so I've been having smoothie's everyday for breakfast and I honestly think it has really helped not only clear my skin, but give it a healthy glow... probably because I'm getting more vitamins and healthy sugars into my diet!

I came back from my holiday on Thursday, and I honestly think a week in the Greek sunshine has really helped my skin a lot. Whilst over there I had no spots, and any spots I did have disappeared straight away; it was like the sun was some kind of miracle worker! Obviously I'm aware that the sun can actually do an awful lot of damage, so I was wearing factor 50 on my face every day, but I believe the vitamin D from the sun, mixed with the vast amount of water I was drinking out there to keep hydrated really did wonders for my skin! So basically, just spend some time outside and get some fresh air. Not only will it help you clear your head, but it will help keep your skin clear and fresh too- as long as you don't burn!

Not that you can see my face that well, but loving life in the pool!

Spot free and (almost) make-up free, with a cocktail in a watermelon, what could be better?!

Another 'secret' that isn't really a secret of mine is to eliminate as much unnecessary stress from your life as possible! Obviously that was near impossible during exam season when I had my A-Levels to compete with which took a serious toll on my skin, but as soon as they were over I gave myself a few days to relax and do nothing. I'm pretty sure these few days consisted of hours of Netflix, a few countryside walks and not much else, and I'm very thankful for these!

©Alyce Burton Photography Back from a shoot mid-exam season at the beautiful Ingram Valley in Northumberland.

I hope this post has helped some of you see how you could alter your lifestyle ever so slightly to help your skin reap the benefits. It certainly helped me!

Cheerio x

12 days of Christmas | Day 6

On the sixth day of Christmas, Stacey gave to me, six make-up tips, 5 favourite blogs, four amazing people, three recipes, two cute doggies and a new blog post every day.

I'm not a beautician, nor am I a professional make-up artist, but I thought that today I would share with you 6 make-up tips that I swear by, enjoy!

1. Use make-up brushes

This may seem like I am stating the obvious, but a lot of people don't actually use make-up brushes, yet using them really changes the way you apply your make-up and makes the finished product look so much better. For example, using a foundation brush means that your foundation won't appear streaky and you will have even coverage and a flawless finish.

Here are 8 basic brushes which make-up artists believe help with your application:

1. Foundation brush (these can either be flat or round, depending on which you prefer)

2. Concealer brush

3. Fluffy powder brush

4. Blush/angled contour brush

5. Small blending brush

6. Flat eyeshadow brush

7. Precision angle brush

8. Lip brush

2. Concealer

Your skin is made up of a lot of different colours, and sometimes you want to eliminate these for example, the redness around your nose or chin, the redness of spots or the dark blue circles under your eyes. Using the same concealer for different colours will not help eliminate the beasties.

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Opposite colours actually cancel eachother out. So, if you look at the colour wheel, a green pigmented concealer would eliminate redness, which is perfect for spots, and an orangey-pigmented concealer would eliminate the blueness of under-eye bags.

3. Filling in eyebrows

Sometimes we go a little crazy with the tweezers, making our brows look a little sparse, or they are just simply not the shape we want them to be, so we turn to filling in (or drawing in, in some cases) our eyebrows.

My first tip would be to use a powder rather than a pencil, because you don't want your eyebrows to look drawn on, you want them to look as natural as possible. I would suggest getting a matte eyeshadow matching your natural hair colour, unless your eyebrows are naturally very dark, then go for a slightly lighter shade. For example, if you have black eyebrows, go for a dark brown colour to fill them in. If you do use a pencil, use light upward strokes and don't draw your eyebrows in as if you are following a dot-to-dot.

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This photo here shows you how to shape your eyebrows.

Line A: To find where you should start your brows, follow a straight line up from the side of your nose.

Line B: To find where the highest point of your brow should be, follow a straight line up from the outer part of your iris.

Line C: To find where your eyebrow should end, follow a line from the side of your nose up diagonally to the outer corner of your eye. Where line D crosses is where your eyebrow should end.

Remember, eyebrows are sisters and not twins; it's okay if they aren't exactly the same.

4. Contouring

Sometimes we don't like the shape of our face, other times we want to accentuate our features. Contouring is the art of highlighting and shading different parts of the face, to 'alter' the shape. The image below shows you where to highlight, and where to shade your face. When contouring, apply in circular motions so you don't get a harsh dark line. This obviously isn't the finished product, I've been much stronger with the contouring than normal so you can see what I mean.

5. Colours for eyes

Some eyeshadows do not suit certain eye colours, however if you put colours that cancel eachother out next to one another, they can help eachother stand out.

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For blue eyes, because orange is the opposite colour, use eyeshadow with orangey undertones such as gold which will really make the blue in your eyes 'pop'.

For green eyes, red is the opposite colour, use eyeshadow with redish undertones such as plum to make your eyes stand out.

Brown is a neutral colour meaning any colour will work with it, however the most 'stand out' colour would be your purples.

6. Smokey eyeshadow

I'm not going to lie, it has taken me a good few years to perfect the smokey-eye look, and some days it still looks pretty bad, but hopefully these tips will help you create your perfect smokey eye.

Start off by choosing 4 different shades. For this look I went for a black smokey eye so you could see the effect better. 

1. Begin by using a flat eyeshadow brush and packing the second-lightest colour  all over your lid as your base colour. 

2. Using a blending brush, put the lightest colour in the inner corner of your eyes to brighten them and open them up.

3. Using a blending brush again, blend the second-darkest colour over the outer corner to the middle of your eye and also through the crease.

4. With a clean blending brush, soften the edges of the eyeshadow outwards and upwards.

5. Again with the blending brush, blend the darkest colour into the outer corner of your crease and up.

6. So the black doesn't look too sharp, use a clean blending blush and blend the colours together.

I hope you enjoyed reading today's blog post and have come away with some helpful tips. I'd really appreciate your comments because although this post took hours, it has been my favourite to do and I am tempted to do more of these in the future.

See you all tomorrow!

Cheerio x