Face Good

It's been awhile since I last wrote an article about DIY beauty methods! Given rising costs of living and worsening inflation, I'm back to experimenting with home remedies that are comparatively cheaper to branded facial products in the market.

Some fruits and vegetables, when in contact with your skin, produces natural moisturizing and nourishment effects and can remove wrinkles in the long run.

Brinjal Mask
Mash up a brinjal (unskinned), soak it in a small jar of rice wine and add about 2 to 3 tablespoons of natural honey. Keep in a sealed jar and refrigerate for a week. It helps to smoothen skin and remove wrinkles.

Banana Mask
Mash a banana, add half a tablespoon of olive oil and mix evenly until the mixture is very fine. This masks helps in eliminating wrinkles.

Water melon wipe
Wipe your face with a clean piece of watermelon skin and then rinse your face with clear water. This helps to refresh and moisturize your skin, thus preventing the formation of wrinkles.

Snake gourd mask
Juice a snake gourd and mix the juice with half a cup of rice wine and 2 tablespoons of honey. Apply it to your face and rinse off when dry. Snake gourd is effective against wrinkling skin.

Cucumber mask
Probably one of the most popular and easiest methods. Simply place slices of cucumber over your clean face. It helps to refresh your skin as well as soothe wrinkled skin.

Tomato Mask
Mix 2 tablespoons of honey with a glass of freshly squeezed tomato. Tomatoes protect skin against sunburn and premature wrinkling.

All masks are to be applied directly to skin for about 15 to 20 minutes unless otherwise stated, and washed off with clean water. However, before applying these masks to your face, always apply a bit of it to the back of your ear or neck to test for allergy reactions. Instead of applying the masks to your entire face, you can also do spot treatment by applying it just to drier, more wrinkled parts of your skin and monitor its progress to see if it works. As with all products, results and effects vary from person to person.

In my previous article, I wrote about the wonders of milk, and using fermented milk to make masks. However, it seems some people really dislike it (my mum. oh dear. she nearly threw up because of the smell). So if you think that fermented milk smells too bad for your liking, here are a few more milk masks, made from fresh milk! Take your pick!

#1
Mix three tablespoonfuls of fresh milk with three tablespoonfuls of pearl powder and stir until it becomes an even gooey mixture. Apply it all over your face. Once the mask is dry, wash it off with warm water. You should only use this mask twice a week or less.

#2
Mix a tablespoon of fresh milk, a few drops of olive oil and 1 table spoon of pearl powder together until you get a nicely even mixture. Apply it to your cleansed face. When it dries, wash off with warm water. This helps to reduce wrinkles and maintains your skin’s suppleness and elasticity. Similarly, only do this no more than twice a week, and if you use one, don’t use the other.

#3
Mash 50g of strawberry. Juice it by placing the pulp in between porous sheets or a porous bag. Pour the juice into one glass of fresh milk and stir evenly. Massage this all-natural strawberry milk mixture over your face and neck. Wash off after 15 minutes. This cleanses, tones and moisturizes your skin and prevents wrinkles!

This article is shared at Face Good on Facebook! Please join it if you have a facebook account, and discuss and contribute!

I’m back with my first post for the New Year! I hope everyone’s New Year started out great! My new year was tonnes of fun, but I’m so exhausted! I’ve been staying up past 2am for the countdown and parties. My poor skin’s gone through the mill! To make up for the late nights and unhealthy food and beverages, I’ve been giving my skin a treat – milk masks!



Since historical times, milk has long proven its worth in beauty and skin care. Concubine Yang, one of the four great beauties of China, was famed for taking a milk bath everyday. Even in modern times, Fan Bing Bing, touted as one of the greatest beauties in Chinese entertainment, revealed milk baths as one of her beauty secrets!

However, milk baths are rather extravagant, and not all of us have bath tubs to begin with! On the other hand, using milk on your face once in a while is pretty affordable!

For this week and the next, I'll share with you some recommended DIY treatments and masks derived from milk!

Wrinkle-removal & whitening mask

Milk is rich in dairy fat, vitamins and minerals. It has natural moisturizing properties and is easily absorbed by the skin. It prevents skin from drying, and reduces dry wrinkles. It is a great all-natural skin care product!

First of all, place a glass of milk in a warm part of the house for a few days. This will cause the lactic acid in the milk to ferment, thus releasing its anti-bacterial properties. Scoop up about 2 tablespoons of milk and set aside. Add a tablespoon of pearl powder paste to the rest of the milk and stir until it becomes a gooey mixture that is thick enough to stay on your skin surface.

Do not choose low-fat milk or skimmed milk. Freshly collected, unprocessed milk straight from the farms is the best, but this is not very conveniently available, so you can make do with packet milk.

Here’s how to milk the treatment for all its worth!

1. Using some milk from those 2 tablespoons of milk that you previously set aside, apply it onto your face. Massage it all over your face for about one minute.

2. Wipe your face clean with a warm towel.

3. Apply the milk mask thickly to your face. Rinse off with warm water after 20 – 30 minutes.

4. Dab green tea water or alkaline toner (because lactic acid is acidic) to your face and wait till it dries.

5. Massage the remaining fermented milk all over your face. You don’t have to wash this away. However, if you can’t tolerate the smell from it, you can use fresh milk, or mix fresh milk with fermented milk. Pure fermented milk is still the most effective though!

After doing this five or six times, you should find that your skin looks visibly better!

Tune in next week for more!

On another happy note, I've created a Facebook group for Face Good! It's still rather empty but I'll spruce it up soon and invite more members. Apart from discussing my articles posted here, you can discuss anything and everything to do with beauty. So do come and join up and contribute your wealth of knowledge, and invite your friends!

For the 40's and above

More mature skin tend to have problems such as uneven skin pigmentation and wrinkles. All these flaws can be concealed with appropriate concealers. Skin also tends to be dryer, so liquid foundations and moisturizing foundations should be used to make skin look more moisturized and less wrinkly. And yes, indeed the same type of make-up can be used for even older women in their 50s and 60s, if you have been taking good care of your skin. Always remember to start caring for your skin as soon as possible, don’t wait until the flaws start showing.


Steps

1. Apply skin tone correcting foundation on your entire face
2. Apply undereye concealer to conceal eyebags and wrinkles

3. Apply a concealer with a pearly shade over your undereye (makes your eyes look brighter and more refreshed)
4. Cover your facial flaws with concealer of similar shad to your skin tone
5. Use a concealer stick with max concealing properties to apply concealer over your cheeks.


6. Use a powder puff to blend the concealer
7. Apply concealer to your forehead with a concealer stick and blend with powder puff.
8. Remember to use a small brush to reach areas unreachable by powder puff.
9. Apply a little loose powder over your under eyes.

10. Use a make-up brush and gently swipe loose powder over your whole face.

Tips

Before applying undereye concealer, apply a deeply moisturizing primer around your eyes to keep your eyes well moisturized and prevent caking.

If you skin is dry, use a large make-up brush to swipe on loose powder. The effect is much more natural looking than using a powder puff.

Don’t forget to apply sunblock and moisturizing cream before applying make-up. It helps to protect your skin and makes make-up application easier.

Use a small make-up brush to apply concealer over fine wrinkles instead of running your pigment stick over it. This prevents caking.

Use mineral foundation with light-reflective minerals. It makes your skin more smooth-looking.

And this concludes the end of this series. 

Eat Right!

Apart from ridding poor lifestyle habits like sleeping late and smoking, maintaining happy or calm emotions and selecting suitable beauty products, food also goes a long way in combating wrinkles!

Foods rich in collagen or nucleic acid help to maintain elasticity and radiance in your skin. Chicken skin (boiled, not fried), fish, caviar, oyster, animal livers, mushrooms, black and white fungus, and pollen are examples of such food that you should frequently include in your diet.

Prepare it right!

Food preparation methods affect nutritional content in your diet and ultimately, your skin too! Oily, fried food especially, contributes to facial wrinkles. Here are some tips on how you can still enjoy that oily meal once in a while without jeopardizing your skin.
When preparing fried food, you can coat it in a layer prepared by mixing flour, egg, sesame and coriander fillings.

When preparing fried meat, stir-fry it together with onions, coriander and garlic. When stir-frying fish or any kind of meat, you can wrap it in green vegetables to fry. You should also eat fried food with minced raddish or garlic as garnish.

The trick is to consume as little oil as possible and ensuring that you still eat your vegetables without turning your meal into a salad (not a bad thing for people who don’t mind their veggies, but for those who do mind, this will be useful).

For the most part, choose steaming over frying and avoid deep-fried, stir-fried and grilled/barbequed food. Try to consume fresh vegetables half-raw instead of fully-cooked, as fully-cooked vegetables usually have the least nutritional level. Vegetables should just be boiled to get rid of the germs. When eating grilled fish, have it with minced raddish. When eating grilled meat, have it with fresh, raw vegetables.

Foods that cause wrinkles

Canned beef, canned fish, typical mayonnaise / tartar sauce salad dressing (ah who says all salads are healthy?), food that has been frozen for too long, dried scallop, dried shrimps, chocolate, cake, instant noodles and fried food are examples of food that speeds up the wrinkling process.

Frying and freezing food are popular food preservation methods, but do not keep them past their expiry date as expired food can change for the worst and affect your skin in a big way.

Consuming a lot of salt also results in wrinkle formation.

You can also make masks out of certain types of food and fruits to reduce wrinkle formation! I’ll blog about it in my next post. Stay tuned!

Even premium facial products can turn harmful or lose effect when misused, so always use them with care!

Spot diminishers
Upon turning 30, freckles tend to appear rapidly. Fortunately, there are spots diminishing products that will help to reduce the appearance of these pests. However, it is inadvisable to use such products for prolonged periods of time. These products are specifically targeted at diminishing spots, so their effects are usually visible after a short while, but your skin may become over-dependent on it and lose its natural ability to repair dead or damaged skin cells, which are responsible for dark pigmentation. You should cease usage after about 3 months (typically the time needed to finish up a bottle).

Make-up Remover Oil
Make-up remover oils are generally touted to be more effective than water-based make-up removers, especially when it comes to removing thick eye make-up. However, in sunny Singapore, many of us are subjected to combination and oily skin, and our skin also tends to be more vulnerable to break-outs. If you’re not applying heavy make-up, refrain from using make-up remover oils and use cleansing milk instead. It is usually gentler than make-up remover oils.

Eye moisturizers
Most people tend to just massage their eye moisturizers around their entire eye in any random motion. You’d just be wasting your eye moisturizer or worst, making your defects looks worst by rubbing them the wrong way (no pun intended!).

For different problems, you have to deal with them in different ways. For example, if you’re targeting the wrinkles at the corner of your eyes, use two fingers on one hand to straighten out the creases (one finger above the creases, one finger below and gently pull vertically in opposite directions). Hold on in this position and using a finger on the other hand, dab on the moisturizer. Then massage with your index finger in one direction from the corner of your eye to your temples.

If you’re targeting dark eye circles, concentrate on massaging the moisturizer over the dark patch below your eyes.

Cold Masks
Cold masks are great for tightening pores and improving skin texture, but the coldness of a mask that has just been removed from the refrigerator is very harsh on the skin. There’s another more economical and kinder method to tighten your pores involving cotton pads and toner. I’ve described the method in this previous post.

Time interval between product application
In our mad rush to work or school in the morning, we often contract our beauty regime into a casual routine under 10 minutes, going immediately from one cream to another and then jumping straight into make-up.

However, skin requires time to absorb nutrients, hence there should be at least a 10-minute interval between applying your last facial cream and putting on make-up. Otherwise, you’ll also find that your foundation cakes because there’s already cream on your face which has yet to be fully absorbed. Of course, this also means that your skin care regime isn’t thorough since your skin isn’t absorbing all the nutrients.

The time interval between each application of a different product should be at least 30 seconds to 2 minutes long. This sounds time wasting, but while waiting, you can massage the product into your face gently with your fingers. Not only does this speed up the process, it also facilitates blood circulation!

Honey is a natural food product. It contains natural sugars and does not need to be digested to be absorbed into the body. It is healthy and nutritious, and also renowned for its value in skin nourishment. Here are some hassle-free methods on how you can put these beautifying values of honey to good use!

1. Direct application to skin
Honey contains glucose, fructose, protein, vitamins and essential minerals which would nourish the cells in our skin and increase their metabolism rate so that old and dead cells are quickly replenished by new ones. As such, applying honey to your skin helps maintain skin elasticity and reduces occurrences of wrinkles.

2. As food
The glucose in honey helps to strengthen weak body constitutions. When you’re healthy, you’d naturally look healthy and glowing too! Honey also contains anti-oxidants, which helps with detoxification. In the long run, regular consumption of honey prevents the emergence of wrinkles and age spots so that you’re always looking fresh and youthful!

3. Honey Bath
Add honey to your bath tub or face washing basin for a delightful honey wash! Organic honey is expensive, but you won’t break your bank account for this because an approximate ratio of water to honey would be 1:100. That means about a teaspoon of honey to your basin and a few tablespoonfuls to your bath tub! Honey water rejuvenates your skin, making it feel smooth and fresh!

Here’s an additional tip for a DIY luxurious fragrant honey bath.
You will need: 500g of natural honey, 100g of fresh jasmine flowers or 25g of dried ones
Boil the jasmine flowers, filter the juice and remove the residue. Add the juice and honey into the bath tub. After soaking for 20 minutes, shower to wash away the honey. Do this three to five times a week and you’ll see profound improvements to your skin. If you have body odour, fragrance from the bath will help you to coat the smell too.

Did you know that the language you speak affects the age your face looks? Research indicates that Spanish women are prone to sagging chins because when they talk, their jaw movement is rapid. The way German women pronounce their words causes their foreheads to crinkle, so they are more prone to developing wrinkles on foreheads.

Did you realize that your skin always looks more tired and wrinkles look more pronounced at night as compared to day time? Skin is affected by gravitational pull. At night, skin tends to sag further, causing wrinkles to increase by approximately 10%!

Why does your husband/boyfriend/brother who is about your age look younger than you do? Men’s skin has 22% more collagen then women’s, and hence age slower. If both of you are 30 years old, and you don’t take good care of your skin, you may look older than him by as much as 7 years! Just try the following formula: 30 x (122/100) = 36.6

Plump faces sag more easily than thin ones when they reach middle age. On the other hand, thin people’s faces tend to become sunken in.

This is expensive, but boy, is it worth every penny! Of all the moisturizing creams I’ve used so far, this is the best of the lot.

It does everything a good moisturizing cream should – moisturize, soften lines and even out skin tone. It's very thick and rich, and feels smooth and refreshing to the touch. Upon application it is absorbed into the skin within a couple of minutes, so my face doesn't look or feel oily. After having used it daily for about three weeks, I find that tiny hints of imminent wrinkles at the corner of my eyes have faded! Hallelujah!

The bottle looks tremendously small, but I don’t actually use a lot of it each time. The cream is really thick, so I scoop up a small blot of it and spread it out with my fingers. In this way, I don’t waste the excess or end up with an oily face.

1. Even complexion
I received a beauty tip from a Taiwanese author for reducing uneven pigmentation. You can mix your liquid concealer together with milk (powdered milk without adding other substances) in the proportion of 1:3 and apply the mixture below the eyes and on the edges of the nose. The two substances are easy to mix and help to achieve a smooth texture for the skin. I’ve tried it, it works and the foundation doesn’t look cakey! The additional step may be troublesome, but beauty doesn’t come with laziness.

2. Using eye cream to conceal wrinkles
Eye cream has the function of moisturizing the skin around your eyes. Healthy, moisturized skin is able to effectively absorb your concealer, and also reduces the problem of eye bags arising from wrinkles. After your eye cream has been absorbed into your skin, apply concealer sparingly. Use your fingers to pat gently the areas covered in concealer. If your eye bags are your obvious, you can apply foundation in place of concealer.

3. Mixing shades to conceal dark pigmentation
By applying a mixture of violet, pink and pearl white eye shadow, the reflection of light will create an illusion, causing your eye shadow to look extraordinarily luminous. Do not use the small brushes that come with your eye shadow, but use a large and round-tipped brush instead. To make alterations without caking or spotting your make-up, gently brush away the offending areas. Applying yellow shades of eye shadow over yellow-tinted concealer yields a pretty good effect.