Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Does Makeup Expire, Really?

Makeup isn't like you food, is it? Even if they do claim to use every manner of fruit extract and every exotic natural oil in it to better protect your skin, it isn't like food, is it? Does makeup expire?

Makeup can be expensive. When you buy it and it goes to waste because you haven't been able to use it all up, it can be a bad feeling. You may be tempted to go and use makeup past the expiration date the label mentions, because you feel that it's just a bunch of chemicals that you need to use for cosmetic purposes. It isn't like medicine or food that need to go inside, is it?

Nevertheless, you need to understand that cosmetics do expire. You need to throw them away even if safety seems like a luxury. Even if things are quite uncertain in life, financially speaking, your cosmetic stash does need to be culled periodically to make sure that expired products have no place there.

But you have probably heard enough about how it is unsafe to keep makeup that's past its expiration date. You've heard that before. What you want to know is, why should it matter. Does makeup expire in the way food does? Does it get filled up with dangerous bacteria or something?

Well, since you ask, it actually does do that. Makeup does begin to grow bacteria after a certain period of time. You get streptococci and staphylococci and other such nasty bacteria that give you infections.  But not every kind of makeup tends to expire at the same rate.

When a product comes in a wand or tube - product like lipgloss or mascara for instance, it tends to dry out rather quickly since it's open. Not only does this affect how easily it goes on when you try to use it, it affects how hygienic it is as well. If you're worrying about this, you really should go with products that are cheaper so that you can replace them on a regular basis.

You shouldn't even just blindly trust the expiration date. Any time a product looks like it's changing color or its cracking or separating, it's been with you for too long. But here's a more specific guide that should answer the question does makeup expire.

If you have a product that comes  in a bottle that's completely closed off and the only way you can access it is through a pump, you can safely ignore the expiration date. The bottle completely protects the product inside.

On the other hand, products like lipstick, lip gloss and eye makeup should be regularly replaced. You should never keep any of these past six months. The eye pencil is the one exception to the rule. Even if it's something that's used in the eyes and the benefits all exposed, it tends to last quite a bit. You really have to pay attention to any expiration date on this, unless you plan on keeping it beyond a year.

Sunday, June 03, 2012

It Makes So Much Sense to Learn to Cut Your Own Hair

When you are a civil engineer who needs to work far away from civilization because he needs to create civilization where there is none, how do you manage to look neat, tidy and trim? There isn't even a McDonald's around, leave alone a quality haircut shop. You realize that being an engineer who works out with big machines in the open, you can't afford to have normal 3 inch long hair. It's going to get messy really soon. You need short hair that's really well done. Well, that's why you'll find that civil engineers who work on oil rigs and other far out places learn how to cut your own hair.

If there are even two of you, you can learn how to cut each other's hair. The first thing we did was to buy a set of $50 clippers for everyone. And then, we downloaded YouTube videos off the Internet to see how it was done. We then drove 40 miles to the nearest barbershop to look closely at how a pro did it. It seemed quite simple.

So we were ready. We took out ourshiny new Clippers, figured out which clipper guards to use for the length of hair we wanted, and then we went at each other. Any decent set of clippers will come with a separate guard for different parts of the head. You'll need to be sure that you know which one goes where.

You mustn't be too disappointed with the results you get at first. Remember - if you're cutting a man's hair, it's usually much easier. You have less hair to worry about. To make sure that you always have less hair to worry about, never leave too much time pass between two haircuts. At first, it would be a good idea for you to go to a good haircut shop, get a great haircut, and then only do the trimming at home. To learn how to cut your own hair can be difficult if you start with an unruly head of hair.

As you learn to trim all the time, you'll get a feel for how properly cut hair is supposed to look. Of course, without really investing yourself in learning how to cut your own hair, you won't ever get great results that make people ask you if you're planning on opening your own shop where they could be regulars.

But it'll look quite decent, and think about the savings. When you consider the time you spend on getting haircuts, the money you pay, and everything else, you can easily save $500 a year.

Friday, June 01, 2012

Fun Cover Up makeup Tips

Do you take the greatest care to make sure that your facial skin is spa-treated, well-pampered and totally perfect? Well, then you don't really need to be reading about cover up makeup? For us mere mortals, the only reason we don't look like them, is that we don't have the time or the resources the for such a great care regimen (yeah right! That's the only reason). Well, whatever we want to tell ourselves, what it comes down to is that we need cover up makeup. We need to do something about our under eye circles. We need something done about our eyebrows that are so sparse you can see right through them.

There are so many of these things. Let's just start with these two. For dark under eye circles, what you need is eye cream, a nice synthetic brush, loose translucent powder, and a light concealer that's a little lighter than your own skin tone.

When you try to use cover up makeup for dark under eye circles, at first, you'll notice that it does something very strange. Every crinkle in the delicate skin of your eyes is quickly made extremely noticeable. It's like you're looking at them in high definition. So you need to conceal them first with creamy concealer.

In fact, it would be good idea to start out first of all, with quality eye moisturizer, and then to let it soak in for a few minutes. Once that's done, you need to take out your concealer and with the brush, use gentle strokes to cover everything. Your concealer goes on top of that, and the final coat with the translucent powder, goes on top of that. And that's it - cover up make up accomplished for dark under eye circles.

Next, what do you do about sparse eyebrows?

Your toolkit for this happens to be a pretty simple. You just need an eyebrow pencil, you need powder that's just a touch lighter than the color of your brows, and you need a tiny angled brush.

What is it that makes eyebrows rather sparse? Usually, women get to this state when they thought that their eyebrows rather to eagerly. Do this for too long, and your brows no longer begin to grow back quickly each time.They begin to show patchy areas baldness.

Of course, the situation can be helped. You just need to give your brows some time to recover. Until then, you need to use your eyebrow pencil to fill in the bald spots. Make sure that you don't use the pencil liberally all over your brow.

That looks just artificial. Look for a light textured pencil and fill the areas in with light strokes. Once you're done, you can finish up with brow powder. That's it - cover up make up accomplished.