Epilating Tips and Tricks

I guess all women will agree with me that hair removal is a procedure that we all wish we wouldn't have to do. Shaving is one of the easiest and less painful methods of hair removal, in fact it's not painful at all unless you are careless and you accidentally cut yourself. The big downside of it though is that you have to do it pretty much daily is you want silky soft results. Unfortunately I'm not one of those lucky ladies who barely have few hairs on the legs, like my mom - ugh stupid genes-, and because of that I had to shave daily and the whole routine became really annoying because I wasn't 100% happy with the result. So one day I decided to buy an epilator hoping I would manage to get used to it. To be honest I feel that I kinda skipped one step/stage in hair removal, the waxing but here I'm talking to you about my experience with epilating. 

- If  you are like me and you have never used an epilator before I have a couple tips that might help you. First is important to find a good epilator. I was lucky enough and the one that I first bought worked and still works wonderfully. Mine is the one in the picture below, it's the Braun Silk epil 7 xpressive. It's a wet and dry epilator, meaning you can use it under water, and it comes with 3 different heads, one for trimming/shaving, one for epilating small areas ( it's the one you see in the picture) and one  for epilating large areas which I use to epilate my legs. You definitely don't need an epilator like mine but to be honest I use all of the 3 heads and I barely even reach for my razor now. I also wouldn't opt for one of the cheap ones,it's not that they are not that good but that's just my personal opinion.

- Like I mentioned before I went straight from shaving to epilating but to make the transition easier I did a small trick. I first waxed my legs and then as the hair started coming back I started using epilator. You see, the hair has different growth cycle and not all come back at the same time. So when you will epilate, having less hair will result in less pain and that way you can build your pain tolerance and it won't hurt as much.

I've been using the epilator for nearly a year now and if you ask me if it will ever be a painless procedure I will say no, but the pain will become more bearable over time. Now while it still hurts when I'm epilating, the pain doesn't bother me that much anymore. Though a great factor when it comes to pain is your pain tolerance, obviously the greater your tolerance is the less painful it will be. 

- I can't stress enough how important is to exfoliate especially if you get ingrown hair even with shaving. Personally I don't think that you need to exfoliate only before you actually epilate; what I do and what I would suggest is to use loofah when you shower and maybe 2 or 3 times a week use a good body scrub. 

- While when you are waxing you want the hair to kinda long when epilating you want exactly the opposite. Not only it will be less painful but you also minimize the chance of having to go over the same area multiple times because the epilator couldn't remove the hair and instead cut it. 

- When you will start epilating I would suggest you doing it at least the night before you want to flaunt your legs or whichever area you epilate. Epilating will most likely cause some redness, specially the first few times, so by doing it a night before your skin will have time to calm down. As for me, now I can epilate whenever I want, even right before I go out because the redness is pretty much minimal and barely noticeable. Actually I find that waxing causes more redness that epilating, which I guess makes sense since you are pulling skin too not only hair. 

- Two last tips. I find it important to hold my skin taunt when epilating because not only it hurts less but also I think that doing this kinda lifts the hair so it's easier for the epilator to catch them. Lastly, don't forget to moisturize after you are done with epilating. If you have sensitive skin I would opt for a fragrance free moisturize to avoid any further irritation.  

So those are the tips I could think of and believe that are useful for someone who is looking into starting epilating. I believe that epilating is more effective because you don't need to wait that long before you can epilate again and also cheaper because you will pay once and it will last you for at least a year. Let me know in the comments below if you epilate and which epilator you use. Till next time, love Anna.

How to Get the Perfect Eyebrows

Hello everyone. Many times in real life and online people ask me about my eyebrows,whether I had the done professionally or not,etc... So I thought I would make this post where I will talk a bit about eyebrows and will show you my eyebrow routine and how you can get the perfect eyebrows :).
For me, and probably many other people, eyebrows are very important. You whole face can changes when you have well-shaped eyebrows.

Let me first say that I had never ever done them professionally. To be honest the reason is because I don't trust them, I prefer to do everything myself and if I won't like the final result I will blame myself and not someone else plus I don't want to pay for something I might not like eventually. I know many will say professionals know more than me etc etc, but hey that's just the way I think, I'm not saying you should do the same nor I'm saying that my way is the best or the right :)...

So if you still young or if you haven't plucked your eyebrows, let me tell you what I did when I first started plucking them. First, I looked closely into a mirror and tried to find my natural shape. My eyebrows were a bit bushy at first so looking close to a mirror helped to kinda find the shape. Don't try to go from straight eyebrow to a high-arch eyebrow because you most likely won't end up with a good result, your natural shape is the one that fits your face the most.Next, with a white pencil I colored the hair I would pluck, this will help you see the final shape more easily. Imagine the white pencil like an eraser, whatever you color white is being erased. After that with tweezers I plucked all the white hair. To avoid mistakes plucked few hairs at time and check back how is your shape.

You probably know that there are 3 "rules" on how you should shape your eyebrows. Well when I shaped my eyebrows I didn't really know about those rules but at the end it was like I followed 2 out of 3. I won't include them here mostly because many already may know them,but you can search on Google if you want. One rule I won't follow is where the eyebrow should start. Normally you should line the outermost of your nose and the inside of your eye and that's where your eyebrow should start. I don't follow it simply because that way my nose will look wider. I'm not saying become unibrow ,hehe, but if you followed that "rule" try to bring your eyebrows about half of inch in and see the difference ( gossmakeupartist on YouTube also mentioned that).

Ok that's all I wanted to mention about eyebrows shaping. Now onto the tutorial and my eyebrow routine. I'm very lucky with my eyebrows, they are quite full so I don't need to do a lot. To be honest on daily bases I rarely fill them in, I just use a clear mascara to set my eyebrow in place and prevent the hair from sticking in different directions.
Many makeup artist also says that you should brush up the hair and trim the part that kinda stick out of shape. Well I do that only for the front part as those hairs grow upwards whereas the rest kinda sideways so I don't trim them and that way I have a fuller eyebrows.

1: With tweezers pluck any hair that have grown back. I don't use any fancy tweezers, I have the same 3 euro pair for years now. I know, it's not easy to find cheap tweezers that work good.
2: With an old clear mascara wand I brush up the front hairs.
3: With scissors I trim the hair that stick out of the shape.
4: For filling I actually use an eyeshadow and a push brush like MAC 212. The eyeshadow is the Shade 5 from MUA Undressed palette.
I really like the gradient effect for eyebrows. To achieve it I first start filling the middle part,then the end and finally I bring it inwards. For the front part I fill it with whatever eyeshadow left on the brush and that way I achieve the kinda gradient effect. Something I want to mention is even if you have black eyebrows like me don't ever ever use black eyeshadow, pencil or brow powder to fill in your eyebrows, it will be too harsh. I usually choose one that is couple shades lighter than my hair.
5: Finally I use a clear mascara from e.l.f. to set everything in place and prevent the hair from sticking all different directions.
If you want for your eyebrow to stand out even more use a white pencil to outline the eyebrow on top and bottom and then blend it.

As for highlighting under the brow, I usually use matte eyeshadow (1) and I add a shimmery eyeshadow at the highest point (2).

So that was my tutorial and tips,hope you enjoyed the post. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Nail Polish not opaque? No problem

How many times you have bought a nail polish and it wasn't opaque enough as result your natural nail to pick through? Doesn't that pisses you of? Especially if the polish was expensive...Well I'm about to tell you a trick, actually 2 , that would help you solve this problem . Maybe few of you already know maybe not but I think it's definitely worth mentioning :)... The first way is before applying the desired polish apply a coat of white polish.This won't only help you to make the polish more opaque but also the white will make the color pop , it works similar way as when you would use a white base before applying an eyeshadow.You could also try black as base though  black will work better with dark colors .
The second trick is something I learned as I was getting into nails . Many girls when they are applying the nail polish they apply two or more coats almost the one after the other. From my experience, that doesn't help to make the polish color more opaque. Best you can do is to allow the first coat to dry almost completely . This method won't help as much as the first method but you can definitely make a color that is almost opaque completely opaque.
Have you tried any of these methods ? Do you know any other tricks? Let me know in the comments below