Oils in Skin Care

Greasy skin that leaves oil on your fingers when you touch it is hardly attractive, and it's not good for overall skin-health either, what with the increased risk of acne and pimples and all. As such, it's common to think of oil in your skin as a bad thing, especially with the prevalence of product labels that proudly declare “non-greasy” or “oil-free” on their packaging. 

To be sure, you don't want too much oil in your skincare, and you especially don't want the wrong kind of oil. Besides that, while a bit of oil in some products, like moisturizers, might be okay, you definitely want oil-free cleansers, and ideally non-greasy makeup. But with all that said, is oil always a bad thing in skincare?

The answer to that question is a resounding and emphatic “no.” Oil is essential for skin, which is why our bodies naturally produce sebum, also known as skin oil, out of our pores. Way too much and it can be unattractive, gross, and cause pimples, but in the right amounts, oil in the skin does wonders. Sadly, things like showering tend to strip our bodies of some of the natural oils they need, and people with dry skin types may not even make enough oil for the ideal balance, which is why adding oil to your skin can actually be a good thing.. As such, vine Vera would like to take a moment to discuss four powerhouse oils for skincare, and what they can be useful for.

Coconut Oil

The oil pressed out of coconuts is useful for a number of applications. It makes great sugar scrubs when melted and mixed with some white or brown sugar, a great way to exfoliate the body in a really pleasant, even sensual treatment that smells good to boot. It also makes a fantastic hair deep-conditioner. Just melt some and work it into your scalp and all over your hair, then slip on a shower-cap and go to bed. Wash it out with Shampoo in the morning for silky-soft hair.

Olive Oil

It's not just for cooking! Olive oil is great for deep-conditioning of the body skin. You can use it on the face too, but we recommend using it for a home spa treatment by rubbing it all over your body and letting it sit for awhile to soak in. Even better: have a friend or partner give you a massage with olive oil to simultaneously work it into your skin and release tension in the muscles.

Avocado Oil

While coconut, olive, and avocado oils can all be used as effective cooking oil, avocado wins out approval for the healthiest and tastiest oil for cooking on this list. You can use it on your skin for sure, but we think avocado's greatest strength is that when used as a cooking oil or as half of a vinaigrette for salads, it provides a variety of healthy fats and other compounds that will help keep your complexion bright and radiant.

Jojoba Oil

Jojoba oil is noteworthy in that its makeup is so close to natural sebum, that the body will treat it as such and take it up easily as a result. For this reason, this is our top-recommended oil to use as a facial oil to restore a natural lipid layer and prevent or correct for dryness. Just layer on a few drops over your moisturizer, spread out over all your face.

Skin Care Hacks You Need to Know

Taking care of your skin isn’t easy. There’s a lot that you can do wrong without even realizing it, and sometimes that flawless, radiant complexion you seek might seem out of reach. Of course, that’s why Vine Vera makes high-quality, luxurious skincare products that can transform the appearance and feel of your skin through regular use. Even so, it can be incredibly helpful to know a few tricks and strategies to make skincare easier, especially when you can use them to take advantage of already stellar products and get even more benefit out of them.

Vine Vera understands this struggle, and we’d like to share a few skin care tricks and hacks that you probably haven’t thought of before, but you’ll be glad that we did.

Mix Up Foundation and Moisturizer

There are two ways to apply this hack: for maximum speed or for maximum benefit. For maximum speed when you slept through your alarm and are running late, but still want to look great, mix two parts moisturizer or moisture cream with three parts of your favorite shade of foundation, and apply it like you would foundation. This combines two steps, eliminating one and getting you out the door faster while still tending to your skin and appearance.

For maximum benefit, go ahead and apply your moisturizer normally, and then when it comes time for makeup, start with the foundation-moisturizer mix. This gives you even more nourishment from your moisturizer in addition to what you already got from initial application. This trick is especially useful for restoring damaged skin quickly.

Keep a Potted Aloe for Burns and Sunburns

Burns—whether from the sun, touching the oven while it’s still hot, or whatever else—are not only painful, but they can really damage your skin, and dealing with them quickly is important to mitigate this. It’s well known that aloe vera gel is great for soothing burns and sunburns, but what you might not know is that it’s most effective when used raw, straight form the plant. For this reason, it’s a good idea to keep a potted aloe vera plant in your home or garden. They can be quite attractive-looking when well kept, and when needed, you can pull off a leaf, slice it straight down the middle, and spoon out some gel for your burn.

Use a Honey Mask for Acne

If you’ve got a persistent problem with acne and/or pimples, organic honey—interestingly enough—can help. Just spread it all over your clean face and let it sit for at least 20 minutes before wiping off with a cool, wet washcloth. Not only does the honey’s antimicrobial properties mitigate acne, but it’s quite hydrating too.

Use Face Oil for a Little Extra Boost

A good moisturizer is essential for facial skincare, and serums can be great for targeting specific issues, but if your skin is persistently dry and needs an extra moisturization kick, use some skin-safe oil, applied after your moisturizer, to help your face maintain a healthy lipid layer. Some good oils to use include coconut, olive, avocado, and jojoba.

Dealing With Common Eye Issues

Your eyes are one of the first things people see when they interact with you. Considering eye-contact is a quintessential facet of courteous interactions, it makes sense to want both the eyeballs themselves and the skin around them to look good. Besides that, it's important to take care of your eyes to ensure your vision remains intact and that you don't develop eye-related health problems.

On that note, Vine Vera would like to present to you a list of tips and tricks to deal with and prevent common eye-related issues, especially where it concerns skin care.

Eye Creams: Moisturizer for the Eyes

You might think that just spreading your regular facial moisturizer onto the under-eye area is good enough, but you'd be wrong. It's certainly better than nothing, but you're much, much better off if you can find a dedicated eye cream. See, you'll notice that the skin right under your eye, as well as your eyelid itself, is especially thin and tender. As such, it requires special care, and getting a specially formulated under-eye cream will be a huge boon to your eye-related skin care. Do make sure that you either apply your regular sunscreen under your eyes before using an eye cream, or that your eye cream contains broad-spectrum SPF 30 or higher.

Use Eye Drops for Irritation

Got a job that makes you stare at a computer screen all day? Got allergies? Sleep deprivation? Sensitive eyes? If you frequently find your eyes getting bloodshot for any reason, the solution is usually pretty simple: to keep your eyes looking and feeling great, drip in a few drops of soothing over-the-counter eye drops. If the problem persists even with eye drops, talk to your optometrist or G.P. just in case it's indicative of a more serious issue.

Dark Circles? Easier to Fix than You Think

For concealing dark circles, use a yellow-tinted grease concealer and carefully rub it under your eye before using any powder makeups. This usually does a stellar job at neutralizing the dark skin and making it match your natural skin tone.

For a solution that takes a bit more time, but will help more in the long-term, slice two rounds off of a cucumber and peel them, then simply lie down with them over your eyes (eyes closed) for at least 15 minutes.

Finally, find products that contain Vitamin C for the most effective long-term dark spot lightening. Vine Vera has both a vitamin C collection and an eye collection, so you'll find lots to help you in our store.

Puffy Eye Hacks

Another common under-eye issue is puffiness. Eye creams like the ones you'll find in the Vine Vera eye collection are great for solving this long-term, but for quick fixes, we have a couple handy tricks.

Try getting two green or black teabags (make sure they're not decaf) wet under a trickle of cool water, then lie down and press them gently into the under-eye area, with your eyes closed. Don't touch them for at least 10 minutes, and when you get up, the caffeine from the tea should have stimulated the blood vessels under the eye and caused everything to pull in a bit, fighting puffiness.

An even quicker fix is to keep six spoons in the fridge at all times. If you need to rush out the door, grab a pair of spoons and hold them up to your under-eye area until they're not cold anymore, usually less than a minute, and repeat three times. Put them back in the fridge for next time.

Exfoliation

You've probably heard of exfoliation before, but do you really know what it is or how it works? Exfoliating is a vital part of skincare, and should be a regular part of everyone's routine. It keeps your skin looking vibrant, and if you want that sought-after youthful glow, you really can't do without it. In light of this, Vine Vera decided to give you a comprehensive guild to exfoliating, what it is, why you should do it, what you should know, and how to go about it.

What is Exfoliating?

You may already know the answer, but even if you do, keep reading; you might learn something new about it! Further, it's surprisingly possible to exfoliate regularly and yet not really know exactly what exfoliation entails.

Exfoliation is the process of removing dead, damaged, and old, rough skin cells from the epidermis (the top layer of your skin) so that the younger, softer, healthy skin cells underneath can be seen and felt more readily. This has the potential to make you appear more radiant and youthful, and

How Does it Work?

Exfoliation works by applying—and often vigorously rubbing in—an exfoliant to the surface of the skin. The exfoliant then releases old skin cells from your skin, and you wash everything off. There are two types of exfoliants, physical and chemical. Physical exfoliants use coarse grains or beads to physically rub off the rough and damaged skin cells. Anything marketed as a “facial scrub” that feels grainy or contains tiny little beads is probably a physical exfoliant. Chemical exfoliants contain an ingredient like glycolic acid or lactic acid, which dissolve the binding agents between cells, causing a few layers of them to fall off and wash away with a quick rinse.

Most of Vine Vera's collections include an exfoliant of some kind, such as our various peeling gels, which will leave your face looking radiant and youthful with once-weekly applications.

How Often Should I Exfoliate?

This depends on your skin type, what exfoliant you're using, and how much exfoliation you need to look good, but a good rule of thumb is once every week. If you're unsure, start with once a week and adjust it, if necessary, to be slightly more or less frequent depending on how you react to it, according to your body's needs.

Do I Only Need to Exfoliate My Face?

Absolutely not! While the face is likely the area that can benefit most from regular exfoliation in terms of aesthetics, your whole body could use a good dose of exfoliation every now and then too. When exfoliating your body skin, you can use somewhat rougher methods than would be okay for your face, like sugar scrubs (which you can make for yourself at home by simply mixing brown or white sugar with a skin-safe oil like olive or coconut), and you also don't need to do it very often; once or twice a month should be fine. However, doing some kind of exfoliation at least once a month can help prevent body acne as well as give your whole body a softer, younger appearance.

As a side note, if you're exfoliating and shaving your legs on the same day, do the exfoliating first! It will actually make it easier to shave, and it will spare you the irritation of further agitating skin that's been made sensitive by having a razor dragged across it.

Risks and Consequences of Dehydration

It’s pretty well known that water is essential for survival. In fact, we can survive for only a few days without water, while we can survive for 2-3 weeks without food. Water makes up a massive 65% of your body mass, and it’s used in a wide array of biochemical functions in our cells.

We need it to split and metabolize carbohydrates and other molecules, among a host of other things, and without it, our cells could not function at all, nor could our body as a whole. But not only is water essential for survival and general well-being, it’s essential for good skin, too! For that matter, a lack of water doesn’t have to be so bad that it’s potentially lethal to be bad for you. People can survive for ages with mild dehydration, having enough water to stay alive, but not enough to really thrive. Because of water’s inherent importance in skincare, Vine Vera wants to make sure you’re well-informed as to the risks and consequences of dehydration, and how best to avoid them.

Risks and Consequences

Dehydration carries with it some serious effects that are not to be taken lightly. A lack of sufficient water in your body can cause dizziness, weakness, and lethargy. It can make your mouth feel extremely dry and cause your tongue to swell, and of course, make you very thirsty. In terms of your skin, it can make it feel dry, itchy, and rough, giving you a dull, ashy appearance all over. This dull, unattractive appearance can linger for some time, so if you have this problem, get hydrating now to start the recovery process!

How to Stay Hydrated?

First of all, if you have a case of severe dehydration (which is rare), you need to seek medical help immediately, preferably in the emergency room. Symptoms of severe dehydration include confusion, fever (higher than 103 degrees F), chest pain, and fainting. Once you reach the point of being severely dehydrated, just drinking some water isn’t going to be enough, because it might not solve the problem fast enough. If untreated, severe dehydration is lethal, but thankfully, you generally don’t need to worry about it. while it’s common to get mildly dehydrated, most people certainly do go get something to drink when they get so thirsty they can’t stand it, so severe dehydration isn’t a common problem.

If you have a case of mild dehydration (which is very common), it’s really easy to fix: just drink some water! When dehydrated, it’s best to consume a large quantity of water in frequent but small sips. To prevent dehydration and keep your skin looking vibrant and youthful, keep a glass or bottle of water within arm’s reach all day long, and reach for it whenever you feel thirsty. If you’re not thirsty at all, you shouldn’t drink, because you’re probably well hydrated at that point and it can upset your electrolyte imbalance, but just keep the water nearby and don’t hesitate to sip or gulp it down whenever you feel thirsty. Combine drinking water to keep your body hydrated with regular use of moisturizer; just staying hydrated will help your skin a lot, but adding moisture and oil externally will help even more.

The Difference Between A Celebrity And You

Celebrities in America sit atop a golden mountain, loved and admired (and sometimes, hated) by the public. Their actions and choices drive fashion, culture, and trends.  We find ourselves naming hairdos, clothes, even specific looks, and even body parts after the famous people they are attached to.  Celebrities and their looks seem to be something close enough to reach out and touch, but not close enough for us to ever grab hold of.  Many people wish that they could look like their favorite celeb, because the glitterati, the beautiful people, exude perfection.

But it would surprise many to find out that celebrities are not, in fact, perfect.  Though no one is, their flawless good looks and seemingly perfect everything is often not really theirs.  Celebs get the benefit of daily access to experts in the hair, makeup, and clothing fields who work tirelessly to give them that look that they need, and ply them with every product on the market that money can buy to ensure that look of perfection. The big secret is that we all have access to those same products, which do the same thing, and can provide us with the same results, helping you to look like a celebrity.

For a cosmetics company like Vine Vera, whose entire line is based on those same amazing results, this is not a difficult task.  With skincare products of every kind, the line of masks, cleansers, toners, and moisturizers available can give you the same even, beautiful look that you see in magazines and on television.  The secret is in not just covering up problems, but in actually healing and protecting the skin at the same time.  There are many brands on the market that claim to be able to do this through one form or another, but one of the best ways to really protect and treat skin is resveratrol, a naturally occurring antioxidant found in the skin of red grapes, which works wonders on the skin, and gives it a healthy, fresh look and feel.

Resveratrol treats skin by removing dead layers, and penetrating deep to make the skin under it smooth and open.  This makes your look just as good as, or even better than, the big stars of the day.  They understand that how others see you can make a huge impact on how you see yourself, and that’s why so much time, money, effort, and skill go into making celebrities look as good as possible.  That’s also why it’s not worth fretting that you don’t look as “perfect,” as they do, since it is easy to unlock the same secretes that they use to keep their skin shiny and even.

At the end of the day, there is no real difference between you and celebrities.  They are people, just like use, with flaws, just like us.  But they know that their beauty is something that can be treated and made more beautiful.  With a little work and dedication, and the right cosmetics, there is no reason that your skincare routine can’t make you just as fabulous.

Look Younger and Feel Healthier with These Skin Care Tips

Natural Skin Care Tips from Vine Vera Cosmetics

There is a significant correlation between the way you that look and the way that you feel. People who believe they look their best often feel better about themselves and live happier, more fulfilling lives. You can now look younger and feel healthier with these skin care tips from Vine Vera Cosmetics. When your skin is healthier, your overall health will also be better.

Do your daily cleansing and skin care routine at night. 

Taking care of your skin right before you go to bed is beneficial because your skin does the majority of its healing and rejuvenation while you sleep. Believe it or not, your skin cells have remarkable powers of restoration. Take advantage of this by making sure your skin is clean right before you go to bed.

Avoid UV rays at all costs.

The sun is one of the leading factors in causing skin to look older. Exposure to the sun’s harmful rays can cause wrinkles, fine lines, and age spots in addition to skin cancer. When you go outside, make sure that you are covering up. Use lots of sunscreen if you have to have exposed skin, and get a sunscreen with a broad spectrum SPF of at least thirty. This will prevent the damage caused by the sun and keep your skin healthier and looking younger.

Change up your skin care routine every once in awhile. 

After a time of doing the same thing over and over, your skin will not show as many benefits. Changing just one aspect of your routine will jump start your skin cells and dramatically improve the look of your skin. Try to switch something up every six months to get the full benefits of your products.

Exercise regularly. 

Exercising is not only beneficial for your overall health and for keeping your body itself in shape and feeling young, but it also increases circulation which helps the skin. More blood flow infuses the skin with oxygen and other much needed nutrients that help in the production of collagen. Collagen helps to give skin its shape and keeps skin from sagging or wrinkling. If you enjoyed these beauty tips then be sure to take a look at these Natural Beauty Tips & Secrets From Vine Vera Skin Care slide presentation