Top Ten Beauty Hacks

So today I thought I would share with you some of the “beauty secrets” that I use on a daily and weekly basis that I feel really help keep my skin clear and soft!

1. Drink lots of water and get plenty of rest! This is my number one tip, because if these basic needs are not met for your body, your skin will suffer! Your skin really reflects what is inside of your body, so make sure you drink enough water, and sleep enough in order for your body to be at it’s best! Remember that eight is the magic number: try to drink at least eight glasses of water a day and get at least eight hours of sleep each night.

2. Use a face mask once a week. You can either buy one from the store, or make one at home with simple ingredients in your kitchen already (I’m a huge fan of milk and honey masks). I find that when I put on my face mask every Sunday after a nice hot shower, I can relax so much and my skin feels so great afterwards. It helps you wind down after a long week, and helps your skin out at the same time! I also like to use a mask that is meant for deep cleaning so my pores can “breath”.

3.  Use Vaseline to get longer lashes. Every night I put Vaseline on my eyelashes and right at the base to make them longer. I don’t quite know how it works, but it really does! As a bonus, it also helps my skin at the base of my eyelashes which sometimes gets really dry.

4. Coconut oil can be used for anything and everything. There are  so many great uses for coconut oil – hydration for your hair, mixed with sugar for an exfoliant, and you can also cook with it! It can be used for virtually anything, so it’s worth buying and having around!

5. Exfoliate a couple of times a week. I use the exfoliating face wash from Simple, and the Buffy bar from Lush on the rest of my body to exfoliate. I find that exfoliating a couple of times a week (don’t go too overboard – three times a week should be the max) really helps your skin “glow”, as it gets rid of a lot of dead skin cells. It also makes your skin feel really soft!

6. Use vitamin E oil to get rid of scars. My mom has always done this, and it works really well. We get the vitamin E capsules and poke them open with a needle and use the oil inside to put on scars. Doing this every night for a little while really helps to get rid of unwanted scars.

7. If you have eczema or extremely dry skin patches, use cortisone creme to get rid of them. I get little flare ups of eczema in the form of dry, flaky patches, so I rub some Cortisone 10 cream on it, and within one or two days, it is completely gone. It also helps get rid of stubborn dry patches that just won’t go away.

8. Take your makeup off every night before you go to sleep. I cannot stress the importance of this! It is so  bad for your skin to go to sleep with your makeup still on – it clogs your pores which leads to bad breakouts. If you like not having to do a whole lot before going to sleep, buy some make-up removing wipes to quickly remove your make-up and cleanse your skin.

9. Try and have one make-up-less day a week. I don’t know if this helps a whole lot, but I like to have one day a week at least that I don’t wear any make-up at all. I just wake up, put on some lotion, and wash it at the end of the day, followed by more lotion. I feel that it just gives my skin a nice break, and allows it to “breath” for a whole day.

10. Rub toothpaste on pimples to get them to dry up and go away quickly. I have been doing this for years, and it always works like a charm! Just dab some toothpaste onto the center of the pimple, rub it in, and when you wake up in the morning, it should be smaller and easier to conceal! Sometimes the pimple goes away in a day, but other times I have to do this for another night to get it to completely go away.