Beauty

Hair Cut & Color at Mingle Salon

Hair

Mingle is a salon on East 55th street in New York city. Brian is my hairdresser and I have been going to see him for years now. He does the best highlights! The way Brain does highlights takes a long time, but the results are absolutely stunning. He takes small groups of hair and applies the highlighter cream individually throughout your head. This creates uneven texture that is a more natural look rather than applying highlighter evenly throughout your hair. I really love the results every time!

Apologies for the poor quality photos. I did most of this post from my new iPhone 5S.

How to Make Your Hair Grow Longer

Hair

1) Eat Healthy and Take Vitamins

Protein, Biotin, and Folic Acid are all very important to hair growth. Eat a healthy diet and (not or) take vitamins for an added bonus.

2) Conditioner, Conditioner, Conditioner.

Be prepared to use a lot of conditioner. I like to use Pantene or Nexxus conditioner. Even Kyle from the Real Housewives says she uses Pantene, and her hair is long and gorgeous. Also, read the directions on the conditioner. Most say to leave it in for at least 3 minutes.

However, you don’t need to wash your hair every time you take a shower! Only wash your hair 4 times a week if you want your hair to grow faster. Shampoos strip the moisture from the hair and if used too often can leave hair too dry and it will be prone to breakage.

3) Trimming Your Hair is Unnecessary

From personal experience, I have found that trimming your hair does not in fact make your hair grow longer. In general, doing anything to the ends of your hair will not affect the scalp and therefore will not affect the growth of your hair.

However, it is important to say that if you have split ends you need to address them either by trimming your hair or using split end repair creams. Also, you should be restricting your use of hot irons and curling irons to prevent further damage.

4) Try Scalp Massages and Hair Masques

Massages bring blood to the surface of the skin and help relax tension in muscles. Therefore scalp massages will bring blood to the hair follicles and will increase growth.

Masques will increase the moisture in your hair in order to prevent drying out and prevent damage.

Tutorial: Foundation

Beauty, Makeup

1) Prep and Prime

I will assume that you have taken a shower, but if you haven’t, please at least wash your face before applying makeup. Making sure that you have a clean and oil free surface to work with makes it easier for the makeup to apply to the skin. Afterwards, if you don’t automatically, apply a moisturizer to your face.

Choosing a primer can be difficult because I find some to have too much silicone in them, and it tends to be harder to create an even surface. For example, the Smashbox brand or Sephora brand specifically I find harder to work with. My favorite primer is Laura Mercier’s Foundation Primer.

2) Eyeliner & Eye shadow.

I like to do my eyeliner and eye shadow before anything else because I know that if I mess up, I won’t have to redo my entire face. If you forget, there are two great products I like to use to protect my face from falling eye shadow. My favorite tool to use is a brush from Eyes Lips Face (e.l.f.) Cosmetics called the Studio Mascara & Shadow Shield. Another product I like to use is Shadow Shields from Beauty.com.

3) BB or CC Cream (Optional)

I will sometimes just use a BB Cream and powder foundation for a lighter look during my workday. However, if you want a full face, continue on to the full tutorial.

Some of my favorite BB Cream right now is the Clinique BB Cream just because it happens to be the perfect shade for my skin. However, I’m looking forward to trying Philosophy’s new Hope in a Jar A to Z Cream.

4) Liquid or Cream Foundation

I personally have preferred the convenience of using a cream foundation and a compact sponge. However, using a liquid foundation and a brush or professional sponge has always been the way of professionals, before airbrushing of course. My two favorite foundations right now are NARS’s Radiant Cream Compact and Clinique’s Even Better Compact Makeup.

5) Contouring, Blush and Highlighting

This is when I use a bronzer and blush pallet from NARS to create definition in my face by contouring. I also use Benefit’s Watt’s Up to highlight certain areas. These will be explained in full detail in a later post.

6) Powder Foundation

I realize I’m no expert, but powder foundations seem all the same to me. I realize I haven’t tried them all, but most of the time its just about getting the color just right.

7) Finishing Spray and/or Powder (Optional)

Using a finishing spray and then a powder is my favorite way to finish off my look. I use Urban Decay All Nighter Makeup Setting Spray. This product helps save your look throughout the night. I also like to use Eyes Lips Face (E.L.F.)’s Makeup Lock & Seal. These two products together have made my makeup last throughout the night, many times.

Tutorial: How to look like you have bigger eyes

Makeup

I honestly have pretty huge eyes to begin with, but I like to enhance them whenever I do my makeup.

1) Apply Eyeliner

I like to do my eyeliner and eye shadow before anything else because I know that if I mess up, I don’t have to redo my entire face.

In order to make your eyes look bigger, you want to do your eyeliner half way around your eye. What this means is that you start at your pupil and then go to the outside edge of your eye. The demonstration picture is below. This creates an effect that your eye is bigger than it actually is.

2) Apply Eye Shadow

To make your eyes look larger, you definitely don’t want to over do the eye shadow. If you darken your eye too much your eyes will actually look smaller compared to your shadow. You want to put a gentle dark color just above your eyeliner (from the pupil on just like in the picture).

3) Apply a great mascara or fake lashes

The best way to make your eyes look bigger is to create longer thicker lashes. I suck at fake lashes and I always get glue in my eyes. Therefore, I like using Benefit’s They’re Real! Mascara.

4) Apply under eye concealer

The final step is good under eye concealer for those horrible dark circles (I have the worst!). In my previous posts you will see my two favorite products that I like to mix to create the perfect coverage. My base layer is Clinique line smoothing concealer. My final touch to my eye makeup is Benefit Biiong concealer.