Getting Married? Skin Care Prep Tips for the Bride

My wedding day in 2011 was fabulous! Here is my six month plan to ensure the glow on your wedding day.

6 MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING:

Find a reputable skin care professional. Six months is the perfect amount of time to ensure that your skin is clear, smooth and glowing for the big day. It’s important to find a trained skin care professional that is able to give your skin everything it needs.  Let RENU U Aesthetics make a plan to get your skin glowing for your wedding day.

Schedule a consultation. What may work for your friend may not be right for you, everyone's skin has different needs and reacts to stress differently. Be sure to ask a lot of questions; particularly the cost of treatments, side-effects and the results they can guarantee.

Fit it in the budget. Generally, a good skin care plan (both professional and home-care products) can range from $500-$2000. Tip: If the budget is tight, let your maid of honor know that getting your skin in good condition for your wedding day is a priority and she may plan a shower where everyone pitches in to give your skin care services as a gift…

Patch test your skin. When starting a new skin care program, be sure to do a patch test if you’re trying out new skin care products as allergic reactions can take up to four weeks to heal. Rub a small amount of product on the side of your neck and wait 24 hours. If redness or irritation occurs, avoid using the product.

Follow the plan set forth by your skin care professional. A variety of skin care procedures such as facials, microdermabrasion, photo facials, and chemical peels will all be beneficial in getting your bridal glow.

IF YOU HAVE BREAKOUTS:

-Exfoliate well. This will keep off dry skin cells to lessen clogged pores and blemishes, and help fade post-breakout scars. Look for products with exfoliating acids and enzymes.  For an at-home exfoliant to smoothe and clear your skin, try Thalgo's exfoliant best suited for your skin from RENU U Aesthetics.

-Keep the skin clear of bacteria. Products using ingredients such as Salicylic Acid and Tea Tree help to eliminate bacteria and prevent the spread of breakouts. Regular High Frequency treatments at RENU U Aesthetics can also help minimize bacteria presence on the skin.

-Be sure to keep the skin hydrated. If you’re prone to blemishes, your skin needs water-based moisture to keep cells healthy to discourage dead skin cell buildup. Make sure to use an oil-free lotion such as Thalgo's 24H Source Marine Gel Cream.

IF YOU HAVE DISCOLORATION AND BROWN SPOTS:

-Use a skin lightener. By combining exfoliation, skin lighteners and daily use of sunscreen, the pigmented cells will slowly start break down and fade their color. Exfoliation is beneficial for breaking up the pigmented cells while a skin-lightening agent like Vitamin C or Kojic Acid will suppress the melanin cells and accelerate the fading process. 

IF YOU HAVE REDNESS AND ROSACEA:

–Avoid washing your skin with hot water. Cooler temperatures will keep reduce redness and keep the skin calm.  

–Use soothing ingredients in your products. Chamomile, Azulene and Sea Whip all help to comfort the skin and reduce redness.

-Make sure you get facials that cater to sensitive skin. Although facials can be extremely calming for red skins, you must make sure that your esthetician has experience in caring for this very delicate type of skin. Avoid strong chemical peels as they will only exacerbate redness. Also, avoid use of hot steam during a facial and use a Lucas Pulverizer.

3 MONTHS BEFORE THE WEDDING

Make a commitment to not pick at your skin. Acne breakouts usually last just 3-5 days, but when you pick at a blemish, the red mark that lingers can be there for three months! We know it’s tempting, but you can make problem skin much worse by forcing bacteria deeper into the skin, resulting in scarring and further break outs. A better solution for problem skin is a regular facial schedule, where your pores can be cleaned professionally. 

Cut back on the invasive skin treatments. If you have been having IPL treatments or a series of skin peels, now is the time to start cutting back on those. You need to start going into maintenance mode. Hopefully, those aggressive procedures helped to clear up break outs, post-breakout acne scars and discoloration and now the focus is on maintaining the results. Get a professional facial every 3-4 weeks for the remaining three months.

1 MONTH BEFORE THE WEDDING

Go easy. Now that you’re on the home stretch, it’s not the time to be experimenting with new products or services. Keep everything gentle by backing off aggressive professional treatments.

Avoid dairy products if you’re prone to acne cysts. Many people have heard that greasy foods and chocolate cause breakouts. Breakouts, especially those that are cyst-like in the chin and jaw line area, most often are related to too much ice cream, yogurt, milk and cheese. Try cutting back and watch your skin clear up!  

Get at least 8 hours of sleep a night. Sleep is not only important to keep dark circles at bay, but it is also the time when your body is most metabolically active, ridding itself of toxins which would otherwise wreak havoc with your skin. Sleep also reduces stress, the #1 aggravator of acne!

Keep your skin care products cold. When nerves are at their highest, it can cause increased blood flow to the skin. Try keeping your skin care products in the refrigerator. Cleansing, toning and moisturizing with cool temperature products keep the skin calm and soothed.

2-3 DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING

Get your final facial. The facial should focus on skin smoothing via exfoliation and hydration. Keep extractions to a minimum to avoid unnecessary redness.

Don’t experiment with any new products. You don’t want to risk having an adverse reaction to anything—stick with tried and true.

Avoid shell fish. Especially for those who have traveled to a tropical island for their wedding, you’ll be tempted with all the wonderful seafood that is there. Many people are allergic to iodine commonly found in shell fish which can result in very serious skin and body reactions, so now is not the time to be eating foods you have not tried before.

Limit your intake of alcohol. Alcohol leads to skin and under eye puffiness, so for every alcoholic drink, follow it with a 4-8 oz glass of water. This will help prevent unnecessary morning puffiness.

Avoid crying (if possible). With all of the celebratory speeches that are given, it’s only normal that a few tears may be shed. If at all possible, try to avoid crying since it causes the eyes to swell resulting in excessive morning under eye puffiness. (Do cucumber slices on the eyes help reduce puffiness?)

WEDDING DAY

Apply a hydrating mask. Thalgo's Marine Source Masks are water-based so they won’t add any oil to the skin and interfere with wedding day makeup. They calm the skin from wedding day nerves, and gives your skin a smooth, healthy glow.

Drink a lot of water. To prevent skin from puffiness due to shedding tears or alcohol intake the night before, drink cold ice water throughout the day. This will also help prevent your mouth from getting dry due to nerves.

Practice deep breathing. There is nothing better to calm the nerves than frequent deep breathing. Relax. Enjoy. Your day is here.

Day Time Makeup

Easy Makeup Routine

A lot of people struggle with a natural looking day time makeup, it seems like it would take to long or is too difficult to do every day. But the truth is it's really not as difficult as it seems, there are a few things that you need to know to make this process simpler.

How to colour match

Look at the inside of your arm are the veins green? or blue? Are some of them green and them some of them blue?

Once you have this question answered you'll know whether or not your skin is warm, cool or neutral.

• Warm toned skin = Green veins

• Cool toned skin = Blue veins

• Neutral toned skin = some veins green, some blue

                                 

Most makeups will tell you whether or not they are warm, neutral or cool. So you choose the one based on the observations you make of your skin.

Then when you are trying to pick the shade of foundation don't match it to your cheek, match it to your neck! The colour should look as though it's disappeared on your skin.

Looking at this picture you can see that the second one to the left is the nearest match to the model's face. And it's best to compare multiple colours to compare and make sure that you have chosen the right colour for your face. You don't want to look orange or yellow or too pink because it will make you look like you are wearing a mask.

Contouring/Highlighting/Blush

It's very important to put some colour back in your face after you have made it all one smooth consistent colour. You can do this by adding contouring, blush and highlighting this adds dimension to your face.

Contour

Use a brown shade that is a couple shades darker than your natural skin tone. For a fairer skin tone choose the lighter coffee colour, for darker skin tones choose the darkest of the browns and medium skin tones the medium brown. Take a smaller blush brush apply a little colour to it, and then tap it off onto a paper towel. This ensures that you won't have too much colour on your brush, swipe this underneath your cheek bone from the ear lightly out towards the center of the face on both side. Pat the left over amount on the outer corners of the forehead. Dust off the brush and then use the now clean brush to brush the contouring out so there are no lines or super dark spots. Remember! A little goes a long way. 

Blush

With your blush you can go a little bit heavier. Smile wide and take pink blush for cool skin tones and a more orangie blush for olive skin tones. Tap off the excess and apply to the apples to your cheeks. Wipe off your brush and blend it out towards the hair line.

Highlight

For Highlighting take a fluffy brush and use the lightest shade to highlight, or if you are very dark of complexion take the lightest brown (coffee/caramel coloured) and apply to brush, tap excess and apply above your blush. You can also apply to your forehead, bridge of the nose, brow bone under your eyebrows. 

Eye Makeup

For day time makeup that looks natural it's best to choose browns, and pinks/purples.

You could use your contouring pallet if you like and make your make up look even more natural by taking your lightest shade and highlighting the brow bone right beneath the eyebrow. Then blending in the colour closest to your skin tone or a LITTLE darker over the lid, and along the bottom lash line. Then you take a darker colour and lightly press it into the crease of your eyelid. change brushes and blend the darkest colour out with a clean brush, this will help to keep you from adding too much product.

You can do the same thing with the store bought tri-packs, which are usually intended for those purposes.

Line your eye and apply mascara. Usually you would do a thin line of liner only on the top lid for day time looks. You can add the darkest of the eye shadow shades in a light dusting on the bottom lash line.

Something like this:

Lips

For the lip colour a nice natural shade for day time makeup or a coat of lip gloss is all you need for a natural look during the day.

You should look something like this when you're all done.

We hope that this helps everyone struggling to do their makeup every morning. Choosing colours really is about picking the ones you like best on you and finding a makeup routine that fits you. However once you've been doing your makeup for a while you will find that this morning routine becomes second nature. You'll know what colours match and what you like to see in the mirror. You'll be shocked when people don't believe that you have makeup on in the first place.

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

The Sun: A Double Edged Sword

Enjoy the Sun Safely

When it comes to the  sun we all seem to have a love hate relationship, I know all of us at the spa feel want to sit out under those beautiful warm rays and feel the vitamin D being activated. However as aestheticians we know just what we are in for if we do that... Wrinkles, age spots and worst of all Cancer!

Here are a few things you need to know about sun protection:

• What do UVA and UVB stand for?
• Ultra Violet Aging and Ultra Violet Burning, so broad spectrum sunscreen is meant to protect you from both sun burns and early aging. Isn't that great!?
• What options do I have for sunscreen?
• Cream, Spray or Powders
• Is the sun REALLY that dangerous for people?
• Yes! If you expose yourself to the sun unprotected in your youth you raise your risk of melanoma by 70%. Melanoma is a cancer that can sneak up on you, you won't even know you have it till you have reached the final and most threatening stages. This is why so many people understand that sun protection is VERY important.

When picking a sunscreen we recommend that you always choose the broad spectrum variety. Those of us who wear make-up every day should include both a cream sunscreen under their foundations, as well as an SPF face powder. Just to make sure that you are protecting your face as well as you possibly can. Our faces are very sensitive and are continually exposed to the sun, which causes skin damage and wrinkling. UVA rays are one of the major causes of deep wrinkling.

A couple makeup brands such have SPF such as:

Bare Minerals Foundation Powder : SPF 15
Jane Iredale Foundation Powders: SPF 20 with UVA and UVB protection

Some moisturizers with SPF:

• Thalgo Oxygen Defence Fluid: SPF 15
• Isagenix Sunguard: SPF 30

When looking for a body sunscreen it is wise to wear a broad spectrum type with SPF is you are fair or burn easily, however if you are darker you could go for an SPF 20. It's important to remember to reapply cream sunscreens as often as it directs, we sweat in the heat and it's important to stay protected.

If you are someone who worries a lot about what you are putting on your skin here are some all natural oils and their level of SPF:

• Red Raspberry Seed- SPF 30
• Carrot Seed Oil- SPF 40
• Wheatgerm Oil- SPF 20
• Non-GMO Soybean Oil – SPF 10
• Coconut Oil – SPF 4

Just be very careful when using oils as a sunscreen, and reapply often staying out of the sun as much as possible.

Other options for things like large moles or birthmarks are zinc creams, which completely blocks the rays of the sun and are fairly waterproof due to their heaviness, but good for small children and even noses!

Even with all this protection it's still important to cover up. You can buy beautiful sun hats to protect your scalp and face from sun burns, which can get VERY severe. No to mention SPF sunglasses to protect your eye sight. If you are particularly sensitive there are even nylon arm protectors in varying colours that protect your arms from sun exposure.

We hope all this information keeps you and your skin happy, healthy and youthful looking for this summer and all the summers to come.

Live Well and Feel Great!

RENU U Aesthetics