Super Face: The Secret Power of Natural Pressed Powder

First, a disclaimer: I’ve spent years discouraging women from using powder on their faces, and I’ve taken a good bit of flack about it from those women who feel incomplete without it.

My point? It is no longer the 18th century, Ladies. We don’t need to be surrounded by a dust cloud of powder to absorb our bodily and facial oils– we bathe! (The aristocrats who inspired over-powdering were the same folks who covered themselves in stick-on moles to cover up pock marks acquired from sexually transmitted diseases…and I seriously doubt stick on moles are coming back any time soon)

Furthermore, while a powdered face may indeed add a polished finish when you’re wearing a ballgown, it does NOT belong on your face when you’re wearing yoga pants, a jogging suit, or jeans and sneakers. It is unacceptable to powder our three dimensional faces into a two dimensional plane. It looks dry, fake, and completely cartoonish. While you’re at it, why don’t you shave off your eyebrows and paint them back on?

Let your skin breathe. Let your face glow.

–That said, I am going to recommend three brands of natural and healthy pressed powder. Why? Because there are some worthy new and natural brands out there, and because a good powder can make you look ethereal, softening your features by refracting a hazy angelic light.  And there’s nothin’ wrong with looking angelic.

One of the main reasons I’ve steered my clients from powder is because so many popular formulas are chock full of gross stuff that ends up settling in fine lines and wrinkles, not to mention clogging pores with extended use. If you’re going to wear powder, it should actually improve your skin.

My meters for great face powder include: Flexibility, Finish, and Fine Line-Proofness.

1. For Flexibility, you want a pressed powder. Lots of mineral makeup lines have clean loose powders: Loose powder is a one time sort of thing, used to “set” your makeup. Women who use powder throughout the day (because they’re frequently oily, or because they’re intent on maintaining a polished look) need to be able to carry in their purses.

2. For Finish, you want powder that rests lightly upon the skin. You don’t want the powder to be so fine that it enters the skin. Look for non “nano-particle” lines. Nano particles are often present in makeup lines that require you to buff powder into your skin, rather than letting it rest above the skin, using dimethicone (a natural silicone). Steer clear of bismuth oxychloride, while you’re at it. This popular mineral makeup ingredient is an irritant for many women’s skin, causing itchiness and, in some cases, cystic acne.

3. For Fine-Line Proofness, you want a silky powder. You don’t want your face to look ashy, sparkly, chalky, or dry. When you find a great pressed powder, you should be able to roll the puff lightly across your t-zone to take off shine, or sweep it across your entire face for a smooth finish. Look at your skin 30 minutes after you apply powder. Are your wrinkles more or less noticeable? Does your skin appear softer or does it look dry, caked, or flaky? Touch your face. Does it feel smooth and silky?

Here’s my new favorite pressed powder, by the company that makes my favorite clean liquid eyeliner.
ZUZU LUXE Dual Pressed Powder & Foundation (talk about flexible!) comes in 9 shades, for every skin tone!

Use as a pressed powder for touch-ups, or as a foundation with a matte finish. Available in 9 shades for any complexion (see color chart, and and refer to brief descriptions below). 10g compact is $21.95 each.

Ingredients: Mica, Zinc Stearate, Octyl Palmitate, Squalane (vegetable derived), Lecithin, Dimethicone, Silica, Titanium Dioxide, Iron Oxides, Grapeseed Extract

Here are two other great powder choices:

100 Percent Pure Peach Pigmented Healthy Glow Pressed Powder:

100% natural pressed powder made with rice powder, fruit pigments and light reflective pearl powder to make skin appear luminous. SPF 20 protects your skin from UVA and UVB rays while antioxidants protect against environmental damage. Does not contain preservatives, artificial fragrances, synthetic chemicals or any other toxins. Truly, 100% Pure.

color: White Peach- fair skin tones
Peach Bisque – medium skin tones
Golden Peach – golden, deeper skin tones

Ingredients: Rice Powder, All of the following fruit pigments : White Peach, Golden Peach, Apricot and Papaya, Vitamin E (a-tocopherol), Lavender Flower Powder, Eucalyptus Leaf Powder, Silk Powder, Fresh Oyster Pearl Powder, Vitamin A (a-palmitate), Vitamin C(ascorbic acid), Pomegranate Seed Oil, Avocado Butter, Rose Powder, White Tea Powder, Grape Seed Powder, Silica (Natural Mineral)
SUNSCREEN ACTIVE INGREDIENTS: 12% Titanium Dioxide and 6% Zinc Oxide

Larenim Mineral Airbrush Pressed Powder:

Comes in many shades. The great thing about Larenim’s product, as well as Zuzu’s is that they can be used as foundations as well as powders! This company uses no bismuth oxychloride, nanoparticles, or any chemical fillers or preservatives.

Say Cheese: Whitening without frightening

White teeth do a lot of talking. They talk about their owner; they say ‘Hey, she’s healthy, she’s neither a smoker nor a heroin addict, and she practices good hygiene.’ Furthermore they say…..‘She’s happy.’

It may seem as though I’m obsessed with the ability of cosmetic products to make us look happier. Maybe you’d rather look younger. Fine, white teeth will also make you look younger. Our teeth naturally yellow with age, thus whiter teeth take us back to our prime. One of the easiest ways, in fact, to take a couple years off the face is simply to whiten your teeth. Doesn’t matter if your teeth are crooked, if you have a hideous underbite, or are missing a few teeth altogether. Whiten them up, and reap the compliments.

A few of you out there have greyish teeth, rather than yellow stained teeth. This is often due to tetracycline poisoning (from an antibiotic you took as a child or your mother took when she was pregnant with you). Don’t waste your money on tooth whiteners; the staining is from within, and if you’d like a great white smile (a dear friend of mine is very shy about her greyish smile) then chat with a dentist about veneers. It could change your life.

If, however, like many of us, your dingy smile is due to the accumulative effects of coffee, red wine and blueberry pie, then whitening your teeth is easy as…eating blueberry pie. I get compliments on my teeth quite often, by women. (Men will say, ‘Nice smile’…but women are more specific. They say, ‘You have really white teeth’) They ask what I do. Do I get them professionally whitened?

That’s not my secret. While I think a professional whitening job can immediately improve a woman’s self esteem, it’s expensive (up to $500) and the ingredients are a little iffy for my taste. Speaking of taste–ewwww…. would I ever want to swallow that stuff? I don’t even use toothpaste with flouride! And skip the drugstore whitening kits, they’re full of gross chemicals, too…unless you just have to have results this weekend.

The best thing you could do for your smile and your health is to make a decision to whiten your teeth every single time you brush, using a non toxic method.

Here are a couple of my favorite teeth whitening tricks:

1. Use food grade peroxide to swish and spit with. (It won’t stick to your teeth to whiten them, but if you brush your teeth while it’s in your mouth, you’ll get an oxygenated tingling and foaming action that gently lifts stains).

2. Use baking soda as toothpaste. It’s cheap, it works, it whitens. (It absorbs stains and scrubs them away) Put a drop or two of food grade peppermint or spearmint essential oil in a cute one cup container of baking soda. Tasty! It’s a natural abrasive, and the feeling of clean after you brush (dip a wet toothbrush into the powder) is the cleanest you will ever feel. Very similar to getting a professional cleaning. Do it for two weeks and you’ll notice a whiter smile. Then do it for the rest of your life because it works and it’s natural.

3. If you hate home made stuff, try my favorite powdered packaged toothpaste, Eco Dent Extra Brite (I like powders. Gels and pastes disappear too quickly, and whitening is about getting rid of stains. Peroxide bleaches, but powders SCRUB. This company makes a couple formulas; I like the whitening one, because they added peroxide! You just flip the cap, and sprinkle a modest amount on your wet toothbrush, and brush (If you wet the toothbrush after, you wash away powder). While I’m not a fan of the foaming agent sodium lauryl sulfate (the oceans need less foam, not more), this toothpaste is fluoride free, it whitens, and it’s natural.

ExtraBrite Tooth Whitener, Fluoride Free helps brighten teeth naturally while providing low abrasive action, natural effervescence and natural cleaners. Premium Oral Care Products. Mint without Fluoride. polishes with Less Abrasion. Baking Soda Toothpowder. Naturally Effervescent. Better than Pastes! Natural Effervescence and Peroxide make it better! Less Abrasive. Helps Prevent Plaque. For a great smile, brush with Extra-Brite twice daily for 2-3 weeks. Then maintain your new smile with Eco-Dent Daily Care. 100% Natural Ingredients.

Suggested Use: Apply small amount to moistened toothbrush. Brush as usual. Not recommended for children under 12.

Ingredients: Sodium Bicarbonate (Baking Soda), Tartanic Acid, Calcium Carbonate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Magnesium Carbonate, Calcium Peroxide, Sea Salt, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (Coconut Derived), Hydrated Silica, Natural Flavoring Oils, Guar Gum, and Myrrh Extract.

I Scream, You Scream: Fabulous Eye Cream

Some mornings I wake up looking like I’ve been abducted by aliens.  My face is puffy, my lips are dry, and my skin is coarse.  Worst of all: Thousands upon thousands of fine lines emanate from the corners of my eyes, and the skin beneath my eyes is a crepey mess.   These are the ugly physical  manifestations of a dehydrated body. Yes, we should all drink more water.  But don’t talk to me about that when I’m staring at the Mohave Desert in the mirror.  Give me solace.

Give me eye cream, immediately.

A good eye cream can make you feel better instantly. It IMMEDIATELY quenches your skin.  I find if I can just lay my hands on good eye cream on a bad morning, that the day begins to look up within five minutes. The crepey-ness is gone, the thousands of new crow’s feet retreat, leaving me with the one set of laugh lines I’ve earned.

My eye skin plumps up, the sagging skin firms, and the whole shebang is taken care of with just a little cream! My current favorite eye cream is 100% Pure’s Acai Eye Cream. It’s clean, it’s green. It works.  100PercentPure.com makes two great eye creams: One formula relies primarily on coffee, to rev up the eye, and the other uses the antioxidant (and anti aging) power of concentrated acai (a groovy south american fruit) to restore youth.

My advice?  Don’t wait for an alien abduction.  I’m a HUGE fan of eye cream; use it DAY AND NIGHT (it’s rich and thick and essential and also preps your skin for that concealer I know you’re wearing!) and I try as many different ones as I can.  You’ll know a good eye cream by its power to make you feel better as soon as you massage it in. Take that, aliens!

High Brow: Keeping Strays at Bay

Today I’m going to get a little preachy. Your eyebrows are a big, important, nearly religious topic.

I see beautiful women all the time. (Better than seeing dead people, I assure you). And some beautiful women really have a handle on makeup–they’ve got a light touch, and a keen sense of good taste. HOWEVER. Even beautiful women can have gruesome eyebrows, and not realize it.

And, no, what Nature gave you is NOT what Nature intended. We shave our legs, we color our grey, and we’d BETTER BE PLUCKING OUR BROWS! This is not an area on which to skimp.

Now, you mustn’t just “have at it”, and begin plucking willy nilly. The secret to fabulous brows is this: Pluck one hair at a time. Even if you have an entire forest of hair you intend to clear, you must do it one hair at a time. Why? Because some hairs are longer and thicker than others, and by removing key brow hairs, you can more easily and strategically achieve your masterpiece.

A good brow will lift your eyes, make you look more awake, and….you know what’s coming…. A good brow will make you look happier. What makes a brow good? A good brow looks as though it belongs on your face. It is not bushy. It is not thin. It has a gentle arch, peaking at the area above the outer side of each eye’s iris. It is clean looking, with no “stragglers”.

Shape: If you need help determining your best brow shape, see a professional at least once. It’ll cost about $30, but the effect and the lesson is so worth it. If you like what you see, take a picture. Once a week attend to any regrowing hairs.

Tools: Some folks wax, some folks thread. I pluck. Plucking is reliable, and you can do it anywhere. It doesn’t hurt (except in a totally pleasurable way), but if you’re sensitive to pain, pluck after you’ve had a hot shower, and your pores are open. The hair will slide more easily from a soft pore. If you ice the skin to numb it, you’re going to tighten the pore, making the whole exercise a bit more violent. Most importantly– you’ll need excellent tweezers. If you wouldn’t trust your current set of tweezers to perform minor surgery, then they belong nowhere near your brows. Tweezerman brand makes a good product (you can find them just about anywhere), as does Rubis (you can buy Rubis tweezers at Bobbi Brown). Spend $20 on tweezers, and forget about it. They’ll last a good long while, and your brows will thank you.

Color: I hate when I see a gorgeous redhead given away by her brunette brows. Don’t let this happen to you. If you get your hair colored, whether you lighten it or darken it, whether you’re red or blonde or brunette or blue– get your eyebrows colored as well. It is SO not a big deal. Yes, you might go blind if the color gets in your eyes. But it shouldn’t. Most color formulas are gel-like, and pretty much stay where you put them. If you do your own color, squeeze just a bit from the bottle onto an old toothbrush, and lightly brush it through your brows. Because brow hair is denser than other hair, I usually do my eyebrows first, then the rest of my head. If you’re a brunette, though, and just putting honey highlights into your hair, consider doing your brows last. Your brows should be the color of the darkest shadow in your hair. When rinsing hair color, remove the brow color first, so the it doesn’t run down your face when you shower. I usually wipe the majority off with my wet hand, then use a little shampoo in the shower to remove the rest. Simple, effective, important.

Thus ends the brow sermon. Oh, one more thing. DON’T use a pencil to draw on your brows unless you’ve shaved them off (and I don’t want to know why you did that). If portions of your brows are sketchy or missing (like you have a scar), use a LIGHT NEUTRAL eyeshadow, and a soft angled brush to fill in the whole brow. More on fill in techniques in another sermon. For today, eliminate the strays.

Let this thought guide you: You should treat each eyebrow like a piece of marble. Sculpt your brows the way Michelangelo would. Chip slowly away at the raw material to reveal the beautiful shape beneath. And don’t worry if they don’t match. They’re really not supposed to. Your eyes don’t match, either, you know!

Photos courtesy of Flickr’s: Aprille, Furlined