Skin Care Basics Part I

Makeup is a great way to highlight your strong facial features while blending “weaker” points into the background. It works great to hide flaws (urgh pimples, dark eye circles), but it can only hide so much while maintaining a natural look. Your face is essentially the canvas to which you apply makeup on and imagine being able to work on a blank fresh canvas every single time. That’s absolutely huge cause a great makeup look is double the awesome when it’s on beautiful smooth healthy skin!

You’ve heard it a million times over that skin care is important and everyone is saying you need to exfoliate and use products with SPF protection, but between drinking more water, getting enough sleep to choosing products and keeping up a skincare routine that works for you, it can be super confusing. So, this entry is dedicated to skin care basics. I’ve condensed this skincare guide into three steps to make it easy to go through. When we get to step 3- how to choose products and form a routine, I’ll show you have to develop a tailored-to-you routine while saving money!

Also please keep in mind that the guide will evolve as better technology allows for more innovative products to come into the market. And for those with acne problems, while you may need doctor prescribed medication to keep breakouts under control or whatever the case may be, it’s still good to remind yourself of the basics. =)

Well then, let’s get started beautifuls! Step 1 below, skip to Step 2




Step 1

Recognize what affects your skin and avoid those. I’m only going to touch on each subtopic lightly as I think most people are aware of how the following can affect your skin and complexion:

Genetics: Genes play a big role in determining our skin type, natural complexion and how our skin renews itself, ages, react to our environment.

Hormones: The most commonly reoccurring breakout when around a girl’s favorite time of the month. Not something we can *just* avoid. Hopefully it’s not too serious, but there are treatments that elevate symptoms that you can look into if it gets really bad.

Age: Skin care needs change as our skin changes and the most relevant of changes comes with aging.

Lifestyle: The current condition of your skin is reflective of how much you took or take care of your skin, because the damage from bad lifestyle habits, sunburns, and constant sun tanning can show years later! The sun spots/age spots you have now on your face could be from damage years ago...

-          Late nights
-        No daily proper UVA/UVB protection

-          Sunburns/constant beach bumming

-          Heavy partying

-          Substance abuse

-          Smoking

And of course perpetuating the above for an extended period of time means accumulative damage to your skin.

Food: 

-   Stay hydrated, drink lots of water!- which I confess I’m bad at doing so since moving back to Canada, I constantly struggle with dry skin.

-    Cut down on food that your skin reacts to. Lol duh! But I love jalapenos in my burritos and espresso in my latte, but these definitely adds to my skin problems, not the reverse. Although, I have heard that if eating spicy is part of your regular diet, you have to eat spicy food every now and then or else you’ll break out.

Environment: Keep in mind that the type of climate you live in has the most direct day-to-day affect on your skin. If you have dry skin and live somewhere that isn’t humid and they very cold winters, you probably struggle from maintaining proper moisture levels. The reverse can also be a headache for some. If you have oily skin and live in a humid place, it will seem like you produce double the oil of a normal person.

-     Pollution - Notice how when you wake up and after washing your face, your skin has a nice glow to it and then at the end of the day, it’s like that glow is dimed or just sucked away? Well, debris and dust in the air takes that glow away from your skin and overtime clog your pores.

We’ve established the six major factors that affect your skin. The next step is to identify your skin type.

Step 2


Chose one or a combination of these that best applies to you.

-          Normal/Combination skin- oily t-zone and normal or dry skin on some regions 
-          Oily skin

-          Dry skin

-          Sensitive skin

Combination skin applies to most people and generally means the t-zone, forehead, nose, and chin is oilier than the rest of the face. You may not fit perfectly into any of the above categories - for example, I have combination skin with oily t-zone and struggle with dry skin in certain areas of my face, but there are enough products out there so chances are, you will find something that works well for you.

Some people may think that if you dry skin, you don’t have to worry about pimples, black heads or breaking out - that’s not always true, because normally when your skin is dry, the body produces more oil to that area so the chance of getting pimples and breakouts actually increases. It is therefore, still important for you to clean and moisturize t properly.

Depending on how sensitive your skin is, you may be very limited to products suitable as part of your skincare routine, but recent trends in organic, natural ingredient-based skin care is becoming more popular and I will definitely touch on your options when we get there!

As for those with oily skin, sorry for the scrambled order..I’m just writing to what comes to mind! ;P Be sure to avoid oily products (makeup removers especially)! The great thing is many brands have a link that caters to people with oily skin so, rest assured with some routine work, you shouldn’t ran into big problems.

Step 3 of the guide is here!