8 Steps to Flawless Skin - Fashion Week 2010

I love fash­ion and all the the­atrics that come with it dur­ing Fash­ion Week, and I was inspired to write this post after see­ing the flaw­less, air­brushed look of the mod­els on the run­way. I believe this is the first time I’m men­tion­ing makeup, but I get a lot of requests for nat­ural makeup and con­ceal­ing imper­fec­tions, so I fig­ured this would be a help­ful post for get­ting flaw­less skin.

Here are my 8 steps to get you look­ing gor­geous in the morn­ing (if you’re a guy, feel free to skip the makeup part, even though it’s not weird if you want to use concealer).

1. Streeeeetch. Stretch­ing, yoga, and short car­dio cir­cuit train­ing are an excel­lent way to keep your skin glow­ing. The rea­son why is because cir­cu­la­tion is super impor­tant to keep­ing our skin nour­ished, healthy, and vibrant. Do a few min­utes stretch­ing or yoga right after wak­ing up to get the blood mov­ing in your whole body. It feels great, it’s good for your skin, and it ener­gizes you for the day.

2. Eat well and hydrate. Diet plays a huge role in how healthy your body and skin will be. Choose organic pro­duce over con­ven­tional pro­duce as much as pos­si­ble to avoid ingest­ing pes­ti­cides that will bur­den your liver and poten­tially cause hor­mone imbal­ances. Choose organic and/or grass-fed meats, and organic dairy (or cut out cow dairy alto­gether). It’s a huge topic, and I sug­gest read­ing my other arti­cles or my guide book for exact details on good food options and what foods to eat/avoid for flaw­less skin.

In the morn­ing, drink a glass or two of fil­tered water (I always talk about the impor­tance of fil­tered water). Fol­low that up with a juicy fruit like a peach, pear, apple, or berries (avoid cit­rus for now if you are prone to break­outs). If you have a blender or juicer, maybe try mak­ing a green juice or a green smoothie. You will notice a huge dif­fer­ence in your skin after drink­ing green juices and green smooth­ies — it is the “secret weapon” to flaw­less, glow­ing skin.

Pressed for time? If you want to have a green juice, make it the night before and put a lit­tle fresh squeezed lemon juice in there to pre­vent it from oxi­diz­ing. Green smooth­ies take less than 5 min­utes to make, so you can make that in the morn­ing. You can also try a few other break­fast options like a juicy fruit with oat­meal (not the instant oats) and a bit of cin­na­mon and raw honey.

3. Begin with clean skin. Rinse your face and neck with luke­warm water, or wash with a nat­ural, gen­tle cleanser. My all-time favorite is 100% Pure Organic Laven­der Honey Facial Cleans­ing Foam. If you’re going to be apply­ing makeup, or if you feel like your skin needs a lit­tle pick-me-up, use a gen­tle scrub like Skin Apothke Ubtan Scrub (my holy grail). Remem­ber that when wash­ing your face and neck, use luke­warm (not hot) water, and fin­ish with a few splashes of cool water. This brings fresh blood to your face, enhanc­ing cir­cu­la­tion and giv­ing you a glow.

4. Mois­tur­ize. Use a qual­ity nat­ural mois­tur­izer or light serum oil to hydrate your skin from the out­side and pro­tect it from the ele­ments. If you do not have any active break­outs, do a quick, light Tanaka-style mas­sage with your mois­tur­izer to enhance absorp­tion. I like to do a few sweeps down the sides of my face/neck and a light up-and-down mas­sage on my fore­head to encour­age lymph drainage and cir­cu­la­tion. Do not do a mas­sage if you have active acne break­outs, since this can make it worse and aggra­vate the blemishes.

If you want to go with a bare, dewy look, sim­ply stop here. Whether you are a guy or a girl and if you have a few spots you want to cover, keep reading.

5. Cover up wisely. You can always tell when some­one has a face full of foun­da­tion, can’t you? Slather­ing on foun­da­tion and pow­der won’t make you look flaw­less, it will only look fake and cakey. Instead, choose a cream, mousse, or liq­uid tinted mois­tur­izer or light foun­da­tion from a com­pany like Liv­ing Nature, 100% Pure, All Nat­ural Face, or another nat­ural brand. Apply the for­mula to the cen­ter of your face in areas that tend to get pink or blotchy, like around your mouth, chin, nose, and sides of the nose. Blend it in well. This method will keep the nat­ural hues and dewy appear­ance of your skin, with­out look­ing fake at all.

Do you need a primer? Not really. With this tech­nique, a primer is not nec­es­sary unless you feel like you have very uneven skin tex­ture (which exfo­li­at­ing will help with, see #3) or large pores. In this case, try a nat­ural primer from 100% Pure or do a search on Esty for nat­ural primer. You can also use pure aloe vera gel. Sim­ply squeeze a lit­tle gel from the plant and apply to the areas you plan on putting tinted moisturizer/foundation on. Let the gel dry and apply your makeup.

6. Spot treat. Use an opaque con­cealer from Liv­ing Nature, Dr. Hauschka, Jane Iredale, or another nat­ural brand, to cover up small spots like left­over acne marks or dark cir­cles. A good tech­nique for cov­er­ing dark under eye cir­cles is to use a con­cealer brush (I use one from Sigma) and blend in upward strokes. (P.S. To dimin­ish or even elim­i­nate your dark cir­cles with­out makeup, read my arti­cle on how to get rid of dark under eye cir­cles.)

7. Keep the glow going. While the first 4 steps will keep your skin healthy and glow­ing long-term, adding a lit­tle high­lighter for extra oomph will help to bring out what is already there. I like to use a lit­tle olive oil (lit­er­ally only 1 or 2 drops) and gen­tly rub it into my cheek­bones and brow bones for a lit­tle extra glow if I’m going out. For those who want more “bang,” use a high­lighter. For fair/pale skin, use a white or pink toned high­lighter. For medium/dark skin, use an off-white or gold toned high­lighter. For oily skin, try a pow­der high­lighter, and for dry skin, use a liq­uid or cream high­lighter. Com­pa­nies like Jane Iredale, Organic Glam, RMS Beauty, and All Nat­ural Face make pow­der and cream high­lighters. Apply it to your cheek­bones, brow bones, inner cor­ners of your eyes, the bridge of your nose, cupid’s bow, and mid­dle of the chin (the crease of your chin, not in the cleft). Make sure you don’t high­light the tip of your nose or the cen­ter of your fore­head, or you could end up look­ing greasy. If you are wear­ing a low cut top or a reveal­ing out­fit, put high­lighter on your col­lar­bone, tops of your shoul­ders, and down the cen­ter of your legs.

8. Fin­ish­ing touches! If you have oily skin, you may want to pow­der your T-zone with a light, nat­ural fin­ish­ing pow­der from a brand like Alima Pure, All Nat­ural Face, Orglamix, Jane Iredale, or Liv­ing Nature. Only keep the pow­der to your T-zone and under your eyes though, because if you pow­der your whole face it won’t look nat­ural or dewy. For dry skin, skip the pow­der entirely, and if you find that you feel dry later in the day, bring a flower water/hydrosol with you and spray it on your face to help re-moisturize your skin.

I hope you enjoyed! This was def­i­nitely a new type of post for me, and I hope it was help­ful for those of you who are inter­ested in nat­ural makeup.
~Steph  x

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