Guest Post - 10 DIY Skin Care Recipes

Let’s face it – being beautiful can get expensive. Cleaners, lotions, makeup, exfoliators, night creams and makeup tools are all part of a typical beauty regimen, and the cost can add up. While there may be some splurge products (hello, mineral makeup!) in your beauty arsenal, others may added to the “save” category. Here are 10 great DIY skin care recipes that can save you money and make you feel beautiful.

Moisturizing Milk Bath – A bath can help you relax and regroup, and it’s even better when it improves your skin, too!  Milk is known as a soothing force on the skin, and has been found in many masks and products. Combining powdered milk, oatmeal, powdered almonds and other ingredients will give you a moisturizing soak, and the recipe (found here) will last you for many, many baths.

Honey, Egg and Olive Oil hair mask – Sometimes your hair just cries out for moisture, and when it does, answer with this easy and affordable recipe for a deep-moisture hair treatment.  Mix eggs, honey and olive oil, smooth through your hair, then cover with plastic wrap for up to an hour. Rinse and wash for beautifully shiny hair.

Brown Sugar Scrub – A good sugar scrub can remove dead, dry skin and moisturize. Gel-like exfoliators are great for dry skin, but this slightly drier recipe  can be good for problem areas and as a facial exfoliator. You’ll need brown sugar, extra virgin olive oil, honey and vanilla. Scrub in small circles for 30 to 60 seconds, then rinse.

Citrus Hand Cream – A good hand cream will leave your fingers feeling great and smelling amazing! This DIY Moisturizing hand cream includes orange essential oils, wax pellets, shea butter, olive oil and vitamin E. Microwave the shea butter, wax pellets and olive oil, and then add water and oil and blend. This cream can also make a great gift.

Peppermint lip balm – This great lip balm is no only moisturizing, it’s also refreshing (and not to mention super-portable. For best results, use high-quality cosmetic-grade products (you can find them at Whole Foods or many organic food stores.) You’ll need Shea butter, sweet almond oil, beeswax pellets, and peppermint essential oils. Mix the wax, oil and Shea butter over a double boiler, then add essential oils and pour into small containers.

Moisturizing Coconut Lotion – This easy-to-make lotion is affordable and easy to make, especially if you have dry and sensitive skin. You start with baby lotion, coconut oil, and vitamin E cream, and then whip with a mixer. You can also add essential oils to create your own scented lotion.

Moisturizing Orange Face Mask – Orange extracts are known for adding moisture and glow to your skin, thanks to antioxidants and zinc. This moisturizing orange face mask uses pantry and fridge ingredients for a mask that’s good enough to eat! Mix oatmeal, juice from an orange, Greek yogurt, honey and orange peel until it’s thick enough to coat your face. Add extra oatmeal to thicken if necessary. Leave the mask on for 15 to 30 minutes, then rinse off.

Are you ready to try any of these moisturizing beauty products?

Amanda is a social media manager for a health care organization by day and a blogger and freelance writer by night. She's also a mom to an amazing 2 year-old boy and wife to a great guy who indulges all her celebrity gossip. Amanda loves coffee, fashion, Twitter, makeup, nail polish, and cats (not always in that order.) Her work has been published on family.com and blogher.com. For more celebrity gossip, fashion, beauty and DIY, visit Amanda's blog, It's Blogworthy (http://itsblogworthy.com) or follow her on Twitter and Google+.

 

Guest Post - Deodorant For Women

How Can You Find The Best Deodorant For Women Online?

Deodorants have been quite popular among both men and women especially in the countries that experience the hottest climate. We are in the habit of slogging throughout the day and to avoid the sweat a deodorant is essential.  No one wants to sweat sitting inside the office premises, the dark spots under your shirt is really embarrassing for anyone. A nice fragrance builds a personal image for an individual, everyone starts recognizing him with his ‘good smell’. With various online sites offering a plethora for deodorants for women it has become quite easy to get the deodorant of your choice. Moreover, these online portals offer great deals and offers on buying deodorants from their site.

Let us check out a few ways in which you can purchase your favorite deodorant online

•    Search for the query in various search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. When you search for the term ‘deodorants for women’ a list of results will appear before you. Choose the site that displays a choice of your favorite brands.

•    When you have shortlisted a few sites start browsing them to find the deodorant of your choice. Check out the brand, deodorant, price to be confirmed about availability of products you are looking for. But you should concentrate on more varieties so that you are left with more choices once you are not satisfied with the brand you prefer.

•    If you like another deodorant better than your regular choice, then you can check its samples available on the site. Since you are not familiar with the fragrance you can order a small bottle and make a wise decision.

•    The online sites that sell deodorants have filters that make your search a lot easier. These filters narrow down the search and help you in getting the deodorant of the exact brand.

•    Once you have selected the deodorants you want to buy start adding them to the shopping cart. You must be careful while filling the shopping details. If you want you can pay your cash on delivery and spare yourself from the shipping option.

Benefits of Using Natural Deodorants

Those who suffer from skin problems, it is always advisable to use natural deodorants for complete skincare. The natural deodorants block the bacterial growth without even clogging pores. These make used of organic ingredients such as lavender oil, rosemary oil, coconut oil and arrowroot extract. They even soothe as well as moisturize the skin instead of drying it for preventing perspiration.

If you are very serious about skincare, then try switching to the best natural deodorant. These deodorants are even found in many online portals that care about your skin.

Most popular online shopping portals are concerned about the skin care of their consumers. Thus the deodorants found on their site does not cause any harm to the skin. While choosing a Deodorant for women try and stick to the branded products as they prove good for your skin and offer sweet fragrances.

By Guest Blogger -

Mona Gupta is a beauty expert by profession and runs a beauty salon. She is the guest writer of a fashion magazine and writes on a number of topics including Deodorant for women.

Guest Post - Hard Gel And Acrylic Nail Art

Okay, show off my nails again.  I did glitter french tips with hard gel, plus acrylic ribbons and flowers for nail art.  First time doing hard gel and acrylic nail art, must say I really love them.  So shiny and pretty ~

Last shot of my lovely nails.



By Guest Blogger - Ying Jie

Blog - EIJGNIY

Guest Post - Pale Pink Nails

I did my nails again.  Weekends are manicure days. 

Pale pink (OPI sweet memories) nails with hand-drawn roses, half-moon french tips on the fourth fingers, plus gold glitter along the cuticles.



The more I look, the more I like my nails. Starting to like super duper light pastel colors, shall get more polish of this tone soon.

By Guest Blogger - Ying Jie

Blog - EIJGNIY

Guest Post - Vintage Floral Nails

My super chio vintage floral nails that I bragged on twitter about.  I took the photo before cleaning up so not very neat, but very pretty, especially from afar ... hahaha.

By Guest Blogger - Ying Jie

Blog - EIJGNIY

Guest Post - Pastel Gradient Nails

This design requires multiple layering and takes a lot of time to dry.

I super love them.

The polishes used are Seche Clear Base Coat, OPI Sweet Memories, OPI Rumple's Wiggin', The Face Shop BL602, China Glaze Fairy Dust and Seche Vite Top Coat.

After base coat, apply a thin layer of pink polish on the whole nail.

Apply purple polish on two-third of the nail.

Apply pink polish over the bottom one-third of the nail again to blend better.

Apply blue polish to top one-third of the nail.

Apply purple polish to the middle section of the nail again to blend well.

Apply blue polish over the top of the nail again. (I need this step because The Face Shop polish is not very good. If you are using better polishes, I guess you can skip this step).

Apply a coat of glitter polish to further improve on the blended look, and end off with a top coat.

I'm happy with my first try at gradient manicure.

By Guest Blogger - Ying Jie

Blog - EIJGNIY

Guest Post - Using My Dotting Tools

I ordered 5 pieces of nail art dotting tool online and they finally arrived.  The shop owner added in purple and white strawberries in the package.

I had fun with them.  I tried my hand at marbling, as well as drawing polka dots. Both marbling and dotting done over my pink gel base, that explains the gap between the color and my nail bed.

These are the first 2 nails to get marbled, also the only 2 that are nice. But still overall is a super messy job, I need more practice.

These are the awful ones.

I did black french tips for some nails because it's too tedious to dot every nail. I re-dotted quite a few times.

If you look carefully, actually the right hand ones are not really nice.

But still, I love my nails.

One of my gel nails chipped when I bathed, so I plucked them all out. This time round, my nails don't look very damaged after plucking.

By Guest Blogger - Ying Jie

Blog - EIJGNIY

Guest Post - Gelish Manicure

My friends and I went to do a gelish manicure.

While doing some shopping, my first ribbon dropped off, not even 5 minutes. 

I heard before that they tend to fall off very quickly but I really didn't expect it to be this fast.

Got it fixed of course, but along the way and before I reached home, all 2 ribbons and 2 blings fell off.  The last bling fell as I washed my hair.

I glued the 2 ribbons back with Uhu glue.

My left hand and Right hand.

Our nails.

By Guest Blogger - Ying Jie

Blog - EIJGNIY

 

Guest Post - Cupcake Nails For My Sister

What I did for my sister ~ My long-term customer.

Okay, I force her to lend me her nails, tempted her with my own cupcake nails.

Polishes that I used.  (Left to Right)

Seche Clear Base Coat

OPI Sweet Memories (this is for cupcake base or any other nail, colour is up to you. On my sister's nails, I used blue green pink and purple pastel colours)

Etude House White Polish

China Glaze Poinsettia

Etude House Gold Mini French

Seche Vite Top Coat

Yay! Success.

Okay, I haven't clean up the sides yet, but nice right.

I think this is one of the first few times that my sister is satisfied with what I painted on her nails. I always did it awfully.

Last picture.  Blurry.  She was too impatient for me to take many photos of my artwork.

By Guest Blogger - Ying Jie

Blog - EIJGNIY

Guest Post - Cupcake Nails

I was bored with my nails, since the big ribbons dropped, so I decided to make them more interesting.

I added cupcake and dripping ice cream design to my pink gel base.

This is my first time doing this, luckily it turned out not bad.

Cute.

I did 2 cupcakes for each hand, and all other nails have the dripping ice cream.

By Guest Blogger - Ying Jie

Blog - EIJGNIY

Guest Post - Kimchi Mermaid Violet Lens

Hello, I'm wearing new lenses from Duffy Beau.

This is my first pair of 16.2mm violet lenses. They are super pretty, with flecks of blue inside.

 

When worn ...

In brighter light ... I know this photo is a little blur, but the blue flecks are showing up so well here.

  

Comfort : 5/5 - comfy comfy.

Enlarging effect : 5/5 - 16.2mm.

Design : 5/5 - I super love the design.

Color : 3/5 - Color is not very obvious though.

Kimchi Mermaid circle contact lenses contain a lovely Star-Leaf design that will light up your look and create a bright, large awake eye day or night.

Mermaid contact lenses available in 3 tone pigmentation.

Diameter : 16mm

Water Content : 55%

Power Range : 0.00 to -8.50

Life Span : 1 Year

By Guest Blogger - Ying Jie

Blog - EIJGNIY



Guest Post - Nail Trend : Free Hand Cloud Nail Art (Tutorial)

This is a super duper ultra easy nail art to perform and all you need is your nail lacquers.

Excited? Here goes :

OPI My Private Jet

OPI Second Honeymoon

1. Paint a base coat and wait for about 3 minutes (Optional).

2. Paint a coat of polish colour of your choice over the entire nail. This will be your base colour.

3. Wait for it to dry completely. I waited for about 5 minutes as I only did 1 coat of the base colour.

4. Using your “cloud colour”, turn the brush sideways (if you are using OPI nail lacquer), starting at the corner of the nail, paint a strip down from the middle till the nail tip in one stroke.

5. Paint another strip right beside the first strip but this time round, start a couple mm shorter than the first one.

6. Repeat step 5 with each strip you paint slightly shorter than the previous one.

7. Each nail will only require 3-4 strips.

8. End your look with a top coat (Optional).

SIDENOTE : I’m using OPI Second Honeymoon as base colour and OPI My Private Jet as “cloud” colour.

Variations :
Paint a couple of layers of “clouds instead of just one (which is what I did here) or do an experiment with the colours. Mix around with other colours and you may get something you’d really love.

There you go. Simple free hand cloud nail art look complete.

xoxo,
Ada


By Guest Blogger - Adeline Choi
Blog - ah-da-lin: meanie @ work

Guest Post - DIY Beauty : Make Your Own Dotting Tool For Nail Art

Chance upon TheBeautyDepartment.com on Pinterest ( if you do not know, read this post: I’m on Pinterest ) and found some really cool stuff and I’m sharing one from them now.

If you like to paint your own nails and explore creative ways of doing it, I’m sure you will know about the dotting tool. Prices for such dotting tools vary depending on where you buy them. But why buy it if you can easily make your own with resources you probably already have in your home? Don’t know how? Let’s find out.

Photo credit : todaybeautytips.com

If you don’t know what is a dotting tool, this is it.
Click on image to read about how to use a dotting tool.

 Photo credit : TheBeautyDepartment.com (Kristin Ess)

Photo illustration on making your own dotting tool.

Quote from TheBeautyDepartment.com :

1. Get a straight pin. You’ll notice there are different sizes when you’re at a fabric store ( we used superfine for this ).

2. Get a number 2 pencil with an eraser or one of those retractable erasers as seen above.

3. Insert the pin into the eraser. Try to keep it straight. If you push it into the eraser and notice it’s crooked, just bend it a little to center it. That will insure you get a perfect dot every time.

4. Dip + dot.

 Photo credit : jeealee.tumblr.com

Perfectly dotted polka dots nails.

Say hi to perfect little polka dots nail and dot away now.

xoxo,
Ada


By Guest Blogger - Adeline Choi
Blog - ah-da-lin: meanie @ work

Guest Post - Nail Trend : Gradient Nail Art using Sponge Technique

My gradient nails using really simple sponge technique.

Previously I saw this gradient nail colour and I was like “I have to do that”.  The “standard/old” way of doing it is to paint a base coat colour, wait for it to dry completely before using a sponge to add the next colour.  I thought that it would actually take up much time as you need to wait for each coat to dry before layering on the next colour.  However, I did a little research and found that there’s alternative method that saves a lot of time.

Happy manicure!

What you will need :
various nail polish colours
a cosmetic (make up) sponge
Base coat and top coat (optional)

1. After applying your base coat (optional) and while waiting for it to dry, choose your gradient colours. In this tutorial I’ve chosen China Glaze in “Naked”, China Glaze in “Bare if you Dare”, OPI in “Malaysian Mist” and The Face Shop in “WH002″. Get your sponge ready too.

2. On the flat side of the sponge, paint a line across. Be generous with the amount. (China Glaze in “Naked”)

3. Next paint the second colour just below the first one. (China Glaze in Bare if you Dare”)

4. Continue with the 3rd colour, painting it just below the second colour. (OPI in “Malaysian Mist”)

5. I’m using 4 colours for my gradient so I painted the last colour just below the 3rd. You can use as many (or as little) colours as you want. Trick is to layer the colours onto your sponge. (The Face Shop in “WH002″)

6. Now that your sponge nail stamp is ready, stamp it onto your nail. Go over your whole nail as many times as you want to achieve the right gradient and intensity of the colours. If you find that your lacquer on the sponge is drying up, just re-colour the sponge and stamp again. Don’t worry about mixing up the colours a little. The effect is actually a very nice and blended in gradient. Re-colour your sponge and do the same for the rest of the nails.

7. You’d probably end up having colours on your skin as well. Not to worry, simply use a remover to clean of the edges. Wait for it to dry before finishing with a top coat (optional). Now you are done.

Variations :
Like I’ve mentioned earlier, you can use as many or as little colours as you like. Do a rainbow or a gradient of a shade (like what I’ve done here) or even a mix of random colours.

xoxo,
Ada


By Guest Blogger - Adeline Choi
Blog - ah-da-lin: meanie @ work

 

Guest Post - My Week (Seen and Heard) on Pinterest – Nail Art

Status : 10 minutes before I heard back to the books! (I feel like a blogging addict lol)

Since time is short, I am showing you guys some great pictures I came across. Hopefully this is inspiration to some of you.



Moustache Nail! reminds me of the Moustache Cushion I’ve seen from @Bonny_Boutique!

Peter Pan collar nails! cool TTM.



Colour Block nail! love colours recently.

xoxo,
Ada


By Guest Blogger - Adeline Choi
Blog - ah-da-lin: meanie @ work