Archive for February, 2009:
I just got Sephora’s latest promotional email for new foundations that offer high definition coverage, marketing to the generation of us that are obsessed with high definition since the introduction of blu ray DVD players, high definition television and stations to match, and the ever increasing attention given to the importance of actresse’s complexions since the new high definition quality of pictures tends to emphasize every little imperfection in their skin.
I knew that was true when I saw one of my first blu ray DVD’s “Wanted” with Angelina Jolie, who looks like she has flawless skin the majority of the time, and saw some age spots on the side of her face when she was in a full face shot and in natural sunlight, or what appeared to be in natural sunlight. Other actresses who aren’t so lucky to have gorgeous skin get lambasted when it’s discovered they actually have – gulp – flaws – on their skin!
So this new campaign for flawless “high def” skin is actually very clever, and certainly go my attention. The first one they offer is exclusively at Sephora, and it’s a $40 foundation that is supposed to bend light and help “fill” in wrinkles and other imperfections. Another is a very fine translucent powder that is supposed to give a fresh, dewy finish with minimal shine but also maximum coverage. That one looked really interesting to me because I loved the mineral veil that was made by Bare Minerals, and that was pretty much teh same idea.
Another offering was a bronzer by Cargo, which they say has “light scattering particles” to make you look even more luminous – yeah, now that’s what I’m talking about! It seems like they’re really focusing on the skin, and that’s the most important foundation (no pun intended) for any beauty routine, so I’m always down with some new skin care and foundation ideas, especially when they come from Sephora, who’s kind of the authority on beauty right now.
There are a few products that show up on the list of many women’s “indispensables” as far as makeup goes. Let’s list out the essentials as I see it, and many other women see it, that are on the list of must haves, even if you were on desert island somewhere without anything. So, here are some of the makeup must haves that a lot of women have identified as needing in one way or another, to varying degrees.
The first is lip gloss. This has to be a toss up for me between lip gloss and mascara. I love mascara, and if I were to wear one thing on my eyes only, it would be mascara, although I sure do like the way it looks in combination with eyeshadow and eyeliner. Mascara is one of those products that can open up the eyes instantly and add drama, but not look obviously like makeup if you put it on the right way. The right way being putting it on in delicate, long strokes, instead of gobbing it on the lashes, giving the illusion of tarantual lash, as so often proclaimed by those mascara makers that claim their mascara won’t give you that effect.
If you wipe the wand off every so often and start new, it will also reduce the likelihood of clumping, and will also help to reduce clumping because you will run out of the product since it’s being used up faster, before the product tends to clump on it’s own, which means it goes on the eyelashes all clumpy.
Lip gloss and lipstick are two of the other makeup must haves that women identify as their fail safes. It really helps to add natural and simple definition and a splash of color to the face when you need it. Not to mention, for us gloss and balm addicts, we feel a compulsion to apply it often so that our lips never look parched. It’s also a great way to help the lips stay plumped, since dried out lips look their worst when they have nothing on them, and tend to look much smaller and less defined.
What’s you makeup must have? I could be way off and it may not be one of the two, perhaps it’s eyeshadow for you, or blush, or bronzer!
Ok, so the next anti aging and wrinkle fighting product that’s on my radar to try was a toss up between Derma E Hyaluronic Acid formula, Derma E Peptide formula and the ROC Deep Wrinkle Night Time formula. I’ve been itching to try the ROC one for a while because I keep seeing it in the beauty aisle along with all the other wrinkle and anti aging creams in the drug stores, plus it has a great price, although admittedly a higher one for typical drug store products.
I’ve also been wanting to a try a product that was heavy on Retinol, which I’ve been reading more and more positive reviews about lately, and the ROC night time deep wrinkle formula has a lot of concentration of Retinol. Retinol tends to work in an opposite manner than most other anti aging products, which slough off the outer layers of skin, revealing new skin, and that is how they reveal the newer skin and speed cell turnover.
However, retinol is a little different, in that with several weeks of use, it is supposed to help to thicken the skin instead of strip the layers away and speed the cell turnover, so it is especially helpful for deeper wrinkles and fine lines, although it is not recommended to be used heavily around the eyes because this is a sensitive area. That was the one drawback I read, because this happens to be precisely where I need the most work on my deeper wrinkles and crow’s feet.
I still decided to try it because my crow’s feet actually angle down away from my eyes, so I figured they were distant enough from the paper thin area right around the eyes. I’m going to buy it as soon as my current DMAE, vitamin C and hyaluronic acid serum is out. Gotta be frugal and watch the money like everyone else in this economy! Oh, the product runs around twenty bucks, a little higher in some stores who jack up their prices like CVS or Rite Aid. I couldn’t find the ROC line in Target and I’m not sure if they sell it in Wal-mart, but they do have the whole line on Amazon for a really good price.
I became interested in copper peptides when I was surfing around looking for what the benefits of hyaluronic acids were in skin care products for anti aging and wrinkle reduction, and came upon copper peptides as a complementary treatment to skin care products that strip away the outer layers of skin to achieve brighter, newer skin with less fine lines and wrinkles.
It was mentioned a few times that copper peptide based products were good at wound healing, and they actually sped up the healing process of the skin because of their ability to sort of “rebuild” the vital protein building blocks that make up the skin’s surface and under layers. The first time I heard of copper peptides being used in skin care products for anti aging and wrinkle reduction was when I saw a Neutrogena ad a few years back featuring the gorgeous Angie Harmon, formerly of Law and Order, and currently starring as the wife of a famous professional football player and in some other Oxygen channel show.
I remember it because I had never heard of a “metal” being used in a skin care product, so it piqued my interest, but I never really followed up because at the time my skin wasn’t really showing the signs of aging as it is now. So, what are copper peptides, and what can they do for your skin? Well, copper peptide is a combination of copper molecules with peptide molecules.
They combine well because copper molecules are apparently very attracted to peptides, which are essentially incomplete proteins. They form one bigger molecule, and are supposedly great at helping to mend wounded skin, as well as to help “fill” wrinkles in by making the skin thicker. Thin skin is especially susceptible to wrinkles, and that is why depending on your nationality, your skin may show wrinkles at an earlier age than if you were a nationality with notoriously thicker skin.
It’s basically the difference between European fair complexions, which tend to be thinner skin and more pale, and African American skin which tends to be thicker and more resillient, hence the reason african american women’s skin looks amazing well into their later years.
Here’s what skin care products with copper peptides in them can supposedly do for your skin :
Make it smoother in appearance
Improve texture of the skin
Improve wrinkles and fine lines
Help speed recovery of skin that has been abraded or stripped away, such as with hydroxy acids or microdermabrasion
Thicken the skin
Help improve sun damage
The fraxel laser, which has been hailed as the newest technology in laser therapy with virtually no downtime because of how it treats areas of skin “fraxel by fraxel”, or tiny area by tiny area, and requires many revisits to complete, may also be useful in treating and eliminating those pesky stretch marks that both men and women can get. Women are more susceptible usually because they often get them from being pregnant. The skin stretches out so much during pregnancy that the skin then becomes permanently discolored in those areas.
Dermatologists compare stretch marks on the body to the effect of a rubber band being stretched for a long period of time. Have you ever seen a rubber band that has been around a bunch of papers for a long time? It starts to lose its elasticity and eventually it gets little “stretch marks” of whiteness and it never snaps back into the same size again, which is the same thing that can happen in the skin when something happens that causes great weight gain followed by great amounts of weight loss.
Those that have had the stomach surgery to lose weight many times will suffer from stretch marks because their skin had been expanded for so long, many times over years and years, and suddenly when the body downsizes, the skin never snaps back into it’s place so that it’s all one even tone again. However, people with stretch marks now have the options to get treatments done with the Frazel laser, which some say is one of the most amazing and effective stretch mark treatments around. It is expensive though, but most laser type treatments are.
It is noninvasive, and it penetrates the top layer of skin, and it stimulates collagen. Results are not seen right away, and usually it requires a few weeks of treating the skin and letting it heal before the results become evident. To avoid getting stretch marks the best you can, it is imperative that you choose a good moisturizer on your whole body. Hopefully you do this every day, I know lots of women do their moisturizer after their showers, which is a great habit to get into, because the more elasticity and moisture your skin has, the less likely these spots will ever appear if you happen to lose a lot of weight.
The show “What Not to Wear” has skyrocketed to popularity due to it’s campy hosts and the idea behind it, which is to make women feel like they’ve been renewed, and to take on “projects” which are women who have stuck to the same tired style or really need help with showing off their best assets in a sophisticated, stylish way. Oh, and the fact that the participants get 5 grand to spend on clothes is just too much to stand. I know I’ve never spent even close to that on clothing!
It’s sort of like watching a fairy tale unfold as you watch these shows, because you see a woman who usually dresses in dowdy or outrageous and unflattering clothes turn into a natural radiant, and seemingly effortless style maven in front of your eyes, all in a half hour. What’s not to love? The latest one I saw took a young mom, Misty, who tended to prefer clothes that were goth/punk that were black, combat boots, and jet black hair with severe makeup on her pale but perfect skin.
In the end, she truly evolved, and she really liked it. She had her hair lifted, and came out with a wonderful warm brown color, which was ironically her original color. She admitted that she had dyed her hair jet black on a whim years ago and just never went back because it would have taken too long and too much money to pull the color out. Plus, the stripping of dark colors comes at the price of drying the hair out a lot, so that’s another reason it’s very hard to go from jet black to lighter color without jeopardizing the health of your hair.
The makeup ideas her makeup artist gave her were great. She paired her light, porcelain peaches and cream complexion and green eyes with a nice natural taupe shadow, a shimmery light tan shadow from top to bottom, and a nice brown shimmery eyeliner on the top and bottom lids to bring out her eyes in a look that could have been worn for either day or night. She looked like a new woman, and she looked absolutely beautiful. She also did away with her bright, blue hued red lipstick and picked up a peachy red that complemented her skin tone wonderfully. Talk about a Cinderella story!
I just had a real quick comment about that new frizz beating product that’s creating buzz in everywhere from Hollywood and Beverly Hills to here in the Northeast states of the US, called No Frizz by Living Proof. I’ve now used the product a total of three times, only washing my hair about once every three days since it seems to make my hair looks just fine for three days where normally it starts to look a little dirty and ratty after three days.
What I’ve noticed also though is that it seems to have a bit of a residual effect already if that’s possible. The past two times I’ve washed my hair I have not used it, and yet my hair still seems noticeably less frizzy and more manageable, and the only explanation I have is that the product has a bit of an effect even after it hasn’t been used for a few days, even after washing, or the humidity in the air has been miraculously cooperative with my hair and I’ve had some good hair days in a row.
So far, even with the hefty $24 price tag, this product looks like it’s going to be a winner in that coveted hair care product market because women are always willing to pay for high quality products that actually, even sometimes in a recession, they’ll pick quality over price tag, and with the fact that No Frizz markets it’s product as a tool for not washing the hair as often, it may just come out ahead.
I don’t know, call me crazy, but whenever I see the word “permanent” associated with any type of plastic surgery self improvement, I am filled with a sense of trepidation. When I think of permanent, I think “not easily reversed” or “possibly disastrous”. I can’t help it, I’ve seen too many of those bad face lifts, nose jobs, lip plumping injections with permanent fillers, cheek implants, and tummy tucks (ala Tara Reid’s botched belly job), that end up looking ten times worst than the person pre-surgery that I treat anything that is permanent with severe caution and would research it thoroughly if I were to even ever think about it.
Hence my skepticism on permanent injectable wrinkle fillers, like the newer Artefill wrinkle filler that’s been approved by the FDA. Even many plastic surgeons and dermatologists won’t use permanent fillers because of their higher likelihood of being botched, migrating to other areas and creating a deformed look that requires surgeries to fix them and also serious pshychological issues in those that a botched job afflicts. You may have seen some bad jobs on celebrities, whose lips suddenly look inflated and uneven, or maybe they have facial features that don’t look quite symmetrical, perhaps because of a migration of the inejctable filler, a lot of these may be due to permanent fillers since they are more difficult to reverse.
Artefill is one that is injected into wrinkles and other areas like the lips that fills them out and rounds out wrinkles. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of temporary fillers like Juvederm and Restylane, but it’s because those are harmlessly absorbed into the skin, and they are actual collagen derivatives, so they actually may also improve skin over time. Fillers that are permanent are made to stick around for good, which means higher risk for them moving around to where they are not supposed to be. Read our Revitol reviews for more information on an excellent at home wrinkle treatment regimen that works wonders.
However, Artefill, which was recently approved in 2007 (yes, that’s not that long ago in my book), uses an interesting technology whereby particles of a certain filler chemical are suspended in bovine (cow derived) collagen and then injected into the body, but not enough to actually intantly fill out the area. Instead, what happens is that gradually over time, new collagen is produced by your body, encapsulating what is leftover of the formula, so you are essentially filling in the rest of the wrinkle with your own collagen.
Very cool! However, I couldn’t find much about the safety and the effectiveness of this product, so I would do some prudent research of your own on this aspect – try RealSelf.com for personal sories and experiences with this filler, it does sound like it may have a risk of migration that causes problems. I have to say, it is a very novel concept though, and if it could be perfected, it could be the beginning of a new wave in permanent fillers, but I’d wait for a better alternative to come along, which there inevitably will be.
A friend of mine got me a pamphlet from the place where she goes tanning here in Northeast Ohio in the Cleveland area, on a new product that her tanning salon is offering called the Rejuvasun Omnilux bed, which is a tanning bed style solution to treating your face to the nurturing, rejuvenating soft light phototherapy rays on the face. It is not an actual tanner, but simply a wrinkle-fighting red plate of light that shines only on your face, where you can tan the rest of your body if you’d like, or just lay there with the tanning bulbs off and only the face treatment phototherapy section on for a relaxing, lay down twenty minute phototherapy treatment for anti aging and wrinkle reduction on the face.
The bed-style treatment uses the same technology that many dermatologists use in-office for rejuvenating light therapy called Photo Therapeutics Omnilux. The idea behind soft light phototherapy (which incidentiatlly uses red light, long known to be replenishing to the skin, and used in acne and anti aging treatments in spas for a few years now), is that it stimulates the under layers of skin to create more collagen. It also has antibacterial properties, which is why it is also good for acne treatment. It heals the skin, so it would help speed recovery of acne lesions, as well as help mend old acne scars and smooth out the wrinkles and any imperfections on the face.
The going rate right now is about $200 for eight treatments, which isn’t too bad considering the price charged for similar treatments in spas and Dr. offices can run as high as eighty to a hundred bucks a pop. After the eight twenty minute treatments, supposedly you only need to go once a month for routine maintenance. The 8 treatments round out to be roughly $25 each. I did see one before and after picture of a woman with mild crow’s feet and some redness on her face, and the after showed significantly smoother crows feet lines as well as significantly reduced rosacea and blotchiness, so this treatment may also be a good option for those with rosacea and hyperpigmentation.
The results Rejuvasun says it helps your skin achieve are as follows :
- Clearer, brighter, smoother complexion
- Lightened age spots, sun spots and dark circles
- Diminished crow’s feet (that would be my favorite part)
- Diminished blemishes
- Tightens sagging skin
- Increases production of collagen and elastin (the building blocks of youthful, tight, toned and lifted skin)
Overall, it claims to reverse the signs of aging and improve the appearance of the skin by up to 74%, pretty impressive if it does what it says. I have to admit, this sounds tempting, even though I’m trying desperately not to spend money right now 
Sebastian to me, is kind of a curious hair care product, because for me, I relate it to my younger days in the eighties and the nineties, when I used to watch my mom buy their products in the salon, long before I was old enough to care about buying all the beauty related stuff. It hung in there with a lot of the other early on brands of high end hair care like Matric and Redken, but now there certainly is a lot more competition out there for them.
Sebastian hair care nonetheless still offers some superior styling, conditioning, shampooing and shining hair products, and I just tried one of them for the first time for the bargain bin price of 3.99 because I picked it up at a local TJ Maxx store. The product is called Sateen, and I think it may even be discontinued, which is a shame, because I actually like it. It’s in a small bottle of almost 2 oz, but you really don’t need much of it to see a nice sheen.
You do have to be careful not to overuse this product. It is both heavily scented – albeit with a pleasant coconut-type of smell, but it is also very overly greasy if you over apply it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a heavy product, as long as you apply it sparingly. It is advertised as a polymer product that treats the hair, adds shine, and can be left in to leave the hair soft, silky and shiny. The only problem is that it may add to the dust and dirt buildup, making your hair appear duller if you use it too often or too much of it.
I can see how this is a treatment too though, because after I’ve used it, when I do go to shampoo my hair, it feels very soft, almost satin-y or velvety as the product suggests. Any product that advertises it’s a polymer product is usually useful for helping to mend split ends or at least reduce their appearance, and also probably works well as a hair protectant. Overall, I liked Sateen by Sebastian, and would probably use it again – if it weren’t discontinued.
