Rotten Face Products?!

How to identify when your personal care products are spoiling

A lot of us keep things WAY past their best before date. Some of us don't even know that our makeup products and skin care products even have a best before date!

It's TRUE your makeup goes bad!

Mineral make-ups are an exception, but they have to be good quality makeup and you should still always make sure that they don't have a spoil date. And always use clean tools when applying it.

So how can you tell when your products are going to go bad?

Firstly, most products have seals to protect them from oxidation and bacteria growth. They are usually filled with machines and sealed air tight. So your makeup products shouldn't start spoiling till you open them, which means you are safe to use them as long as they have never been opened.

Once you have opened your product you have only so much time to use your products. On every personal care product there is usually a little logo that looks like a cream pot with the lid open. In the little pot there will be a words "6M", "9M" and "12M" etc... So once you open it, it will last approximately how long that little logo says.

You'll find this little logo on everything from hand cream, mascara, eyeliner and face powders. Even your body wash will have it.

If you find a product that doesn't have it, it will either have a stamp saying how long it will last or it could be a mineral based product.

Sometimes the products don't last as long as they say they will, for example most mascaras say they will last six months, but if you use it every day it is best to renew your mascara supply every three months.

Some professionals say to follow these guidelines with makeup:

Toss It Out

• Mascara — 3 months. (Some say 6 months, but many cosmetics experts, including DaltonJames, recommend 3 months.)
• Liquid Foundation and Concealer — 6 to 12 months.
• Cream Blush and Eyeshadow — 6 to 12 months.
• Powder Blush and Eyeshadow — 1 year.
• Eyeliner and Lipliner Pencils — Up to 2 years.
• Liquid Eyeliner — 6 months or less.
• Lipstick — 1 year.
• Moisturizers and Skin Care — 1 to 2 years.

IMPORTANT

If you have an infection and have used any of the products you have, for example and eye infection and you've used your mascara throw it out right away. The bacteria will multiply and cause future infections. 

We hope that this information will help you to rotate out your old and growing products, so that your skin can stay happy and germ free.

Live well and be healthy,

Renu U Aesthetics

The Secret Ritual for a Beautiful Face

Facials: Your Beauty Secret

A lot of use take pride in the way that our face looks when we leave the house for the day, whether it's to cover redness, under eye circles, wrinkles or even for self expression however only a few of us take into consideration what we are doing to our faces. We don't go for regular facials, and often some of us only wash our faces with soap and water! On the other hand we have many people that own every product under the sun for a certain skin condition they feel that they have and may or may not be correct about.

Regular facials can keep you up to date on your skin type as it changes and the seasons go by, helping you to keep your home care routine up to date and working for you as best as it possibly can. The best skin care plans are the ones that are well thought out and consider your specific needs. Educated aestheticians will look at your skin very carefully and make recommendations for home care products at the end of a service, or ask you how you current face care plan is working for you.

Each skin type has specific needs that can be addressed at your regular facials, and just like a visit to the dentist (we know no one really likes those) your aesthetician will make sure that your skin is responding well to your products, and that every thing is working out for you.

When it comes to skin types these are the ways your facials will be addressing your skin, and how regular facials are going to help improve the texture and over all look of your skin.

Oily Skin:

An oily skin facial will consist of a balancing cleanser, pH balancing toner, manual exfoliation, around 10min steaming, extractions, massage, balancing serums and balancing masks, with matte moisturizers and eye creams.

Machines:

Microdermabrasion can be used to deeply exfoliate the skin, which helps to free the blockages from the skin during the extraction phase and helps to penetrate the oil balancing products.

Violet high frequency for disinfecting purposes. It helps to heal acne and fight the bacteria that causes it through sanitizing the skin.

Dry Skin:

A facial for a dryer skin type facial will consist of gentle cleansing, gentle balancing toner (often with aloe or hydrating algae), light steaming, exfoliation, extractions (IF needed), massage, hydrating serums, moisturizing masks, hydrating moisturizers and eye creams.

Machines:

Orange High frequency for stimulation, cell turn over and blood flow.

Microdermabrasion for the exfoliation and also stimulation of oils and cell turn over can be used on clients with dryer skin.

Aging Skin:

We all want to stay young and beautiful for as long as we possibly can, so anti aging facials are very important as we age and lose oil and elasticity.
It starts with gentle cleanser, none "medicated" toner simply for re-balancing your pH, gentle manual exfoliation and a little steaming.  Too much steaming can cause your skin to feel tight and lose moisture, an aging skin needs all the moisture it can get. As you won't have much oil you won't need a lot of extractions unless there is a lot of old build up that hasn't been very cleared out. This would all follow with massage, anti aging serums, anti aging moisturizers and collagen eye creams (sometime with caffeine for a lifting effect)

Machines:

Microdermabrasion on aging clients helps to increase blood flow, cell turn over and collagen and elastin boosting through intense exfoliation. It can also reduce the look of scaring and age spots and freckles

Orange light High Frequency is excellent for the stimulating cell turn over and blood flow to the face. This means more new skin! 

Sensitive Skin:

Facials of this variety are almost always tricky because the skin is VERY reactive, so it's hard to treat any acne a sensitive client might have, so we'd start with a gentle routine till the skin begins to come around. Gentle cleansers and gentle toners would be used, very limited steaming (warm/hot towels would probably be used instead) and minimal exfoliation, and if any extractions are needed they may be taken care of. All this would be followed by massage and then calming serums and/or masks.

Machines:

Orange high frequency would be use to increase circulation and create stimulation. If any blemishes are present Violet high frequency would be used to kill the bacteria inside.

Microdermabrasion would generally be left alone and if it was going to be done it would probably only be one pass.

Home care Routines:

Home care routines generally consist of the appropriate cleanser, toner and moisturizer for your skin type and perhaps even a manual exfoliator that would be used between 1 and 3 times a week at maximum. This keeps your skin gently cared for in-between deeper treatments at the spa, so that you will get to enjoy more of the massage and relaxation aspect of the facials. :)

We hope this helps you with your choice to have facials.

Live well and be healthy,

Renu U Aesthetics.

Germs Yuck! Home sanitation and your beauty routine

It's wednesday again and we are going to talk about bacteria and germs in your personal care products.

Germs in my personal care products you say? Well yeah! The thing is, we all use our hands to dispense our care products and facial creams because it's the most convenient thing we have at our disposal. What if that's giving us pimples?! 

Sometimes we forget to wash our hands before using our personal care products, maybe we are in a hurry or we're just really tired. Never the less they aren't always the cleanest no matter how hard we try to keep them clean it's just a fact. Now we aren't saying that a little bit of bacteria is going to be the end of the world but using the appropriate tools to dispense our care products can sometimes be the difference between an acne break out and clear skin.

What am I supposed to use you ask? Well a lot of the time you probably don't need to use anything because the product has a pump or is a squeeze dispenser. However it's very important to clean your hands with warm water and regular soap before you touch your skin. For things like creams or anything with a cream like consistency that you need to scoop out, we suggest purchasing a makeup spatula. These are easily cleaned with soap and water, and sprayed with alcohol after every use. It's very important to keep all you tools in a clean safe place to avoid cross contamination.

For those of us that wear a lot of makeup we tend not to clean our makeup brushes often enough, which should be after every use. It seems like such a tedious thing to do just think about it! You use your makeup brushes on your face and whatever bacteria that transfers on to the brushes builds up. Those evil little germies start to multiply and if you don't wash your brushes you just add to it with every application, not to mention the BRUSH puts all those germs back on your nice clean face! It's like asking for pimples!

Now I'm sure you are wondering where to find a nice brush cleaner for your tools. There are several that you can purchase. Sephora sells some spray brush cleaners that can be used everyday to freshen up your brushes after every use. Just spray them a little and swirl it gently around on a paper towel to remove the makeup and they are ready to go! If you want to do a particularly good clean you can buy some brush cleaners that are more like shampoo. You need to wet and lather the brushes up with the soap and rinse them. Then you have to leave them bristles down to dry, and depending on how dense the brush it could take up to 24hrs to dry.

Once they are dry you are good to go! Your face will be clean and all the product and tools that you've used on your face will be squeaky clean.

We hope you Live well and be healthy.

Renu U Aesthetics