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Pre-Wedding Skin Care Rituals-Part 2

Part-2 of the article that was published in Atelier magazine in Sep 2011.
By:
Sheetal Rawal
2. Caring for your face and neck
Daily regimen
A basic daily skin care routine (AM and PM) means that your skin gets adequate nourishment externally to complement its natural attempts at remaining in balance. In addition daily care is essential to supplement nourishment lost due to environmental factors like weather and pollution.
*Cleanse: An ideal cleanser to use is sulfate-free (mild), and won’t disturb the natural acid mantle of your skin (PH balanced). Cleansing rids your skin of dirt, grime and excess oils and readies it for the next steps. Simply wet your skin and massage in the cleanser for 2-3 minutes. Rinse with lukewarm water.
* Tone: Spray a generous mist of your toner all over your face and neck just after you have cleansed. Toning closes the open pores of your skin, and improves the overall tone and texture of your skin. As your skin habituates itself to the toner, it should begin to look taut and youthful. A good quality toner is alcohol-free and based on a natural astringent like rosewater. In addition, it can have some targeted natural active ingredients in it that are most suitable for your skin type.

* Nourish & repair: Serums are indispensible to radiant skin. They have higher percentages of specific ingredients that travel deep within the skin to renew and repair it. A few drops or a pea-sized amount is generally just enough to do the work. Apply it when your skin is still a bit damp from toning. Be sure to cover your neck area, which tends to show signs of neglect even sooner than the facial skin.
*Moisturize: Apply a generous amount of a lightweight lotion on your face and neck area with gentle upward strokes. Massage your skin for a few minutes until the lotion seeps in. Blot the excess with a facial tissue. A lightweight lotion is taken up the skin readily, and doesn’t leave it feeling greasy and overloaded. Remember that it is the active ingredients that matter the most. A lotion due to its lightweight is capable of carrying the actives deeper within.
*Revitalize your eyes: Drinking plenty of water, getting enough sleep, and an eye care routine can go a long way to banish those stubborn under-eye circles and puffiness. The skin around your eyes is very delicate and prone to reacting to the chemicals in skin care products. Choose a natural and chemical-free eye serum to do the job. A great active ingredient in an eye serum is cucumber extract, which has been used for centuries and across the globe for optimal eye care. Use your ring fingers to minimize pressure while applying the serum all over and around your eye area.
Weekly regimen
*Take the extra time once (or twice) a week to exfoliate. A facial scrub with fine grains and natural Alpha Hydroxy Acids (eg. citrus oils) accelerates the shedding of the dead skin cells.
*Follow with a face & neck massage. You can use a generous amount of your daily serum or lotion and massage your skin with gentle, upward strokes with it (work against the gravity). After 5-7 minutes of massaging, blot the excess with a facial tissue.
*Apply a mask on your face and neck, and rest while it dries. Masks are excellent to detoxify and repair the skin. As they dry, masks help increase the blood circulation to the skin, and blood brings with it oxygen and nutrition. Remember to moisturize after the mask has been washed off.

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Pre-Wedding Skin Care Rituals-Part 1

By: Sheetal Rawal
Here is an article (in parts) published by Atelier magazine in Sep 2011. Please come back for more parts:)
Get into Your Best Skin for Your Wedding
Getting married is a big life event and quite rightfully so. It is a transition into a lifetime of togetherness and companionship. Homing is a human instinct that is made that much more meaningful by traveling the path in marriage. The bridegroom’s desire to look and feel their best on this occasion is as old as the institution of marriage itself. From a psychological perspective, it can be viewed as one’s readiness to settle into the ultimate status change.

It is rather simple to get your skin in its best health and appearance for your wedding. However, it is imperative to follow a daily skin care routine punctuated by more elaborate weekly rituals to get your skin ready to look amazing for your big event. Starting 4-6 weeks before the wedding date is a great way to work with your skin’s natural rhythm. Skin cells shed about once a month, and nourishment and care during this span can ensure that the freshly surfaced skin is at its best health and glow.

Here are the guidelines. Commit them to memory or tape them to your bathroom mirror. In other words, follow the routine to achieve the best results.
1. Cleaning the interior
A flawless complexion goes hand-in-hand with a healthy and detoxified body. Unhealthy habits like smoking and excessive drinking can leave prominent telltale signs on your skin.
*Smoking constricts the blood vessels and seriously limits the amount of oxygen received by all the body’s organs including the skin. This can seriously impact the suppleness and tone of your skin. The good news is that your body begins to attempt recovery within the first few days of quitting.
* While a glass of red wine occasionally can have some health benefits, excessive drinking causes serious dehydration, causing your skin to look dry and puffy. Alcohol also leeches out vitamins and minerals from the body, and skin shows this by appearing blotchy and discolored. So limit your drinking to none to an occasional glass of red wine, particularly during the month before your wedding date.
* In addition to plenty of water and healthy meals, include fresh fruit and a daily supplement of good quality multivitamins. This will support the body as it cleans and rejuvenates.
*Sleep well. Little sleep deprives your body of the vitality that is clearly reflected in the appearance of your skin. With the activity and pre-wedding excitement, it can be hard to make enough time to rest. Nonetheless, an important component of looking and feeling great is at least 6-8 hours of undisturbed and deep sleep.

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What is a Face Toner?

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How to Deep Clean Your Clogged Pores?

By: Sheetal Rawal
Have you ever wanted to deep clean your clogged pores in the convenience of your very home? It is a perfectly skin-friendly thing to do between facials. It ensures you keep your skin squeaky clean from the inside out. Also did you know that skin with clean pores absorbs the wonderful products like toners, lotions, serums etc. many times over giving your skin the best results? Also did you know that most of us have clogged pores? Even those of us that do not have acne or enlarged pores? Often impurities, excess oils etc clog our pores, especially in our T-Zones preventing the skin from breathing deeply. And we may not notice this at all.

So here is a very easy procedure to clean those clogged pores. It is amazingly simple and takes no more than 15 minutes of your time.
1. To 1 TSP of any clay add 1/4th tsp of baking soda. Add enough plain yogurt to form a thick paste that is the right consistency to apply on the skin. Set aside to use in a few minutes.
2. Soak a towel in hot water. Wring dry. Wait for it to come down to comfortable temperature, and then cover your face with it for 3-4 minutes. The towel should be a bit on the warm side, but be careful to not scald your skin. This procedure will open your pores.
3. Now get some pure jojoba oil (easily bought at any natural store) and massage your skin with it with firm circular strokes for 5-7 minutes. After massaging, wipe the excess, if any, with a tissue. Jojoba oil goes very deep in your skin and actually begins to dissolve the impurities inside those clogged pores.
4. Now apply a generous layer of the clay+baking soda mixture all over your skin. Clay, as it dries, pulls impurities from deep within your clogged pores, and baking soda dissolves any oils that could be causing clogged pores. Yogurt is wonderfully astringent and great as an exfoliant due to its lactic acid content.
5. After this mask has completely dried, wash off with lukewarm water. Pat dry and follow with a generous amount of your favorite natural lotion or serum, or both.

This procedure is second to none to deep clean those clogged pores. Give it a try for yourself, and yes, please comment about your results. We would love to hear from you.

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My Search for the Perfect Natural Face Toner

By:
Kaila McIntyre-Bader

Finding the right products for your skin can be confusing and frustrating. There are many things to take into account: skin type, daily routine, product ingredients, and the purpose of each skincare step. How is one to know which routine or which product is the right one?
My journey to understanding my personal skincare routine started in middle school, when I became completely and utterly self-conscious about my teenage skin and the annoying blemishes covering it. I wanted to look like all the girls in the Seventeen magazine I read, or the Hollywood movies I watched! I did some research, and all of it pointed me in the direction of over-the-counter products full of alcohol and salicylic acid to dry out my face and get rid of zits. I was willing to try anything, so I went to the drugstore and stocked up on cleansers with zit-zapping capabilities and oil-free moisturizers to keep me from getting a shiny T-zone.
Needless to say, they didn’t work. They also dried out my face to a point where it wasn’t making enough oils to keep my skin looking healthy and hydrated. Not only did I still have blemishes, but I also had irritated, flaky skin. My first mistake was using products full of chemicals and alcohol instead of natural products with calming ingredients. The alcohol and salicylic acid in both the cleanser and the moisturizer made my sensitive skin even more irritated, and I ended up with more blemishes since my skin began to overproduce oils to keep my skin moisturized, clogging my pores.
I didn’t realize any of this at the time, so I did some more research and stumbled upon astringents. Astringents are meant to tighten up pores and remove impurities, and to be used in between cleansing and moisturizing. I bought an alcohol based astringent and added it to my daily skincare routine, hoping it would be the solution to my problems. Sure enough, it dried out my skin even more! I felt so hopeless and frustrated!
It wasn’t until college that I started considering natural products. I was sure they wouldn’t work as well as the harsh chemicals that promised to get rid of my blemishes. I switched to cleansers and moisturizers with natural ingredients that calmed and moisturized my skin instead of stripped it of its natural oils. I also switched from an alcohol-based astringent to a natural face toner. The new face toner made all the difference in the world. Natural ingredients like rosewater and Eucalyptus reduced the appearance of enlarged pores, while essential oils moisturized my sensitive skin and gave it a healthy glow. For the first time in many years, my skin took on the texture and tone I’d been trying to attain for so long.
Natural face toners are a great way to make sure you spray or wipe away any impurities after you cleanse your skin and before you moisturize. It keeps your skin tight and closes your pores back up, giving your complexion a healthy, vibrant appearance. If you have both blemishes and dry skin, make sure to try out Apsara’s Rose Dew Natural Facial Toner for Combination Skin. Regular use will provide overall hydration and nourishment.

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Apsara Skin Care in News!!

By: Sheetal Rawal I wanted to share with our readers a press release about Apsara’s 100% natural face toners that was published in some of the top online news outlets including SF Chronicle, San Jose Mercury news, CBS Minnesota, CBS Money Watch, Miami Herald (to name a few).
Here is a link for you

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Two Natural (Homemade) Face Masks for Oily Skin

By Sheetal Rawal:
Today I will share with you 2 highly effective (my personal favorites) face mask recipes to get some instant relief from excess oiliness of skin. These are great for both oily/acne-prone and combination skin types.
When your T-Zone feels like the site of an oil spill, and you really want to do some instant mop up, these 2 methods will not let you down:
Fuller’s Earth and Green Tea Natural Face Mask
1. Brew a cup of good quality green tea. Let it cool down to room temperature
2. Mix enough of this green tea into a TSP of fuller’s earth
3. Add in a few drops of fresh lemon juice to this paste
4. Apply all over your face/skin
5. Let dry for 10-15 minutes
6. Wash off with lukewarm water

Fuller’s earth is so effective in absorbing excess oils, it is used industrially to mop up oil spills! Plus it is full of those awesome minerals that the skin loves. Just be sure to get cosmetic grade fuller’s earth; it is the cleanest variety. You could definitely try Apsara’s Detoxifying Mud Mask or the Sulfur Mask. Both of these are based on pure fuller’s earth.
Green tea is a great source of antioxidants and awesome for your skin. And of course lemon juice perks up your skin and further removes those excess oils due to its astringent nature.

Gram Flour and Yogurt Natural Face Mask

NOTE: Gram flour is the flour made from dried garbanzo beans. Look in your local Indian store, or the Indian aisle of your supermarket. It is sold under the name “besan”.

1. To 1 TSP of gram flour (besan) add enough plain yogurt to form a paste
2. Add a pinch of baking soda and mix well
3. If the paste seems too thick you could add a bit of water to solve that
4. Apply all over your face/skin
5. Wash off in 10-15 minutes with lukewarm water

Gram flour (besan) soaks up excess oil like a sponge. Seriously! And to add to its prestige, it is 100% natural. Baking soda reacts with the excess oil on the skin to convert it to soap. No I am not kidding! The process is called saponification in chemistry. Finally, yogurt provides your skin with that burst of lactic acid that makes it smooth and glowing
Try these masks and share your experiences with us! We would love to hear from you.

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Natural Face Masks for all Skin Types (2 Easy Recipes)

 

 

 

By:

Sheetal Rawal

Today I would like to share two recipes of 100% natural facial masks for all skin types:

Mask #1:

Orange and Honey Face Mask (for instant brightness and glow)

1. To a tablespoonful of organic raw honey add 7-10 drops of freshly squeezed orange juice.

2. Mix very well and apply this mixture with upward strokes to your face

3. This mask won’t dry. Wash off with lukewarm water after 15-20 minutes of application

4. Follow with your favorite lotion to moisturize your face/skin

 

Benefits of the Orange and Honey Mask:

 

This 100% natural facial mask for all skin types is perfect to perk up your skin.

Oranges are a natural source of citric acid ( and alpha hydroxy acid). AHAs speed up the rate at which the skin cells are shed. Therefore freshly squeezed orange juice can exfoliate that upper dull layer and bring the glowing skin underneath to surface.

Honey has been known for thousands of years as capable of attracting a ton of moisture from the atmosphere, and when on skin it can deposit all that hydration right on the skin, Thus you will experience a burst of hydration that can make your skin look smooth, supple, and youthful. Honey is also quite well known for its skin soothing properties.

When I use this mask, my skin feels calm and bright almost instantly. Do remember to moisturize your skin after washing off this delicious mask!

 

Mask #2:

Powdered Milk and Sour Cream Mask (for bright and radiant skin)

1. To one tablespoonful of powdered milk add enough sour cream to form a thick paste (consistency of custard)

2. Gently heat this mixture to make it lukewarm (CAUTION: do not overheat; it can burn/scald your skin)

3. Apply a generous amount all over your face/skin

4. This mask may take a while to dry, but you should wash it off after 15 minutes or so with lukewarm water

5. Follow with moisturizing your face with your favorite lotion

 

Benefits of the Milk Powder and Sour Cream Mask:

This 100% natural face mask for all skin types is THE recipe for instant exfoliation and a serious burst of nourishment for the skin. Milk powder is filled with nutrition and the major one is milk protein! Skin literally feeds on it. Sour cream is a potent source of lactic acid and that is great for cell exfoliation and renewal. The result is well nourished skin that glows.

I particularly use this mask in the winter months when the skin is dry and can tend become dull.

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Apsara’s Ylang Ylang Massage Oil is the Editor’s Favorite at Gloria Magazine!!

Gloria’s editor recently picked her favorite winter time skin care products, and Apsara’s Ylang Ylang massage oil was top her list! Yay! Get a bottle of this super nourishing oil today. It is 100% free of chemicals and preservatives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buy here: http://www.apsaraskincare.com/natural_massage_oils.html

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How to Use a Facial Toner

 

How t o use facial toner

How t o use facial toner

By:

Sheetal Rawal
Now that you know all about picking the right toner from the previous post, here are two tips to maximize the wonderful results from toning your skin:

1. Tone your skin each time after cleansing. Generally twice a day is ideal; once in the morning and again at night before going to bed. In addition you might spritz during the day, just to perk up your skin. Toners in spray bottles won’t make your makeup run, unless you overdo the spraying 

2. Apply your skin serum or lotion while your skin is still a bit damp from toning. This ensures maximum absorption of the serum/lotion by your skin, and thus far better results

And in case you didn’t know, toners based on rosewater or witch hazel, unlike the ones with alcohol in them, are also excellent to use after shaving. Just spray on a fine mist, and your skin will calm down almost instantly.
Happy toning everyone!

And as always, on behalf of Apsara Skin Care, I wish you the best of skin.
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