Monday, July 28, 2014

Ten Routine Changes That Are Proven To Improve Your Skin, Hair And Nails (by Stylist.com)

Stylist.com has given us a great advice on skin care - from face to toes, plus it will help your hair and nails as well. So enjoy the article and start doing it now while it's summer in the air ;)

We're at a constant battle to keep our skin, hair and nails looking healthy.
But before you rub your face in moisturiser, before you endure a drastic chop at the hairdressers and before you buy that new beauty product, take a look at these simple and easy ways to maintain or improve your natural beauty.
From eating more tomatoes for sun protection to sleeping on your back, these ten changes have been scientifically proven to make skin, hair and nail conditions better. And the best thing is, they can be slipped into your current beauty routine...

Moisturize within three minutes of turning off the water


Contrary to popular belief, moisturiser does not add moisture to the skin. It traps existing water in the skin by preventing it from evaporating. To capture the most amount of moisture from your bath or shower, moisturise within three minutes of bathing according to the American Academy of Dermatology.
If you're washing your face at the sink, apply the moisturiser immediately after you've cleansed and patted dry your face, recommends Dr. Doris Day, and author of Forget the Facelift: Dr. Day Turns Back the Clock with a Revolutionary Program for Ageless Skin.
The fact is that skin is an organ, which without water does not function properly or at its best. Even if you drink plenty of water, physicians at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals say the unfortunate truth is that water will reach all the other organs before it reaches the skin. So, it's important to apply water to our skin and keep it there.

Wash your face once a day (preferably at night)


Unless you have a skin condition, such as acne, dermatologists say you only need to wash your face once a day, in the evening. Night-time cleaning removes make-up, pollutants and other first that has collected on the skin.
"Your skin has just slept on a pillow, it is clean (in the morning), it doesn't necessarily need to be washed," said Gervaise Gerstner, a Manhattan dermatologist and consultant for L'Oréal Paris.
However to feel fresh in the morning, people without a serious skin-care issue can skip the soap and just rinse their faces.

Add virgin coconut oil to your moisturizing routine


While celebrities such as Emma Stone and Gwyneth Paltrow are said to use oils to hydrate their skin, vigin coconut oil is proven to better skin condition.
A recent study in the International Journal of Dermatology showed that topical virgin coconut oil decreased water loss in the skin of people with atopic dermatitis, an inflammatory condition where the skin’s natural moisture-locking barrier isn’t working well.
No matter what condition your skin is in, "Research demonstrates how good virgin coconut oil is as a moisturizer," says study author Mara Evangelista. "It’s affordable, effective, and especially helpful for the older population, when skin dryness is a pressing problem."
Coconut oil can also be very protective against hair damage because it has a high affinity for hair proteins and, because of its low molecular weight, it is able to penetrate inside the hair shaft.
Buy virgin organic coconut oil for £3.95 at handmadenaturals.co.uk

Exercise regularly to cleanse skin from the inside


While we all know the muscle and cardiovascular benefits of exercise, its a lesser known fact that physical activity also helps keep your skin healthy and vibrant by increasing blood flow.
"Blood carries oxygen and nutrients to working cells throughout the body, including the skin," says dermatologist Ellen Marmur, author of Simple Skin Beauty: Every Woman's Guide to a Lifetime of Healthy, Gorgeous Skin. Blood flow helps carry away waste products, including free radicals, from working cells. "By increasing blood flow, a bout of exercise helps flush cellular debris out of the system," added Marmur.
A recent study by researchers at McMaster University in Ontario suggests regular physical activity can even reverse skin ageing in those who start exercising late in life. When a group of volunteers aged 65 or older started jogging or cycling at a moderately strenuous pace for 30 minutes twice a week over three months, researchers found the outer and inner layers of their skin looked very similar to those of 20- to 40-year-old. (Note, researchers studied skin samples from the volunteers' buttocks to ensure it was an area of skin not frequently exposed to the sun.)
“I don’t want to over-hype the results, but, really, it was pretty remarkable to see," said Dr. Tarnopolsky. Under a microscope, the volunteers’ skin "looked like that of a much younger person, and all that they had done differently was exercise."
However, try to avoid excising outdoors between 10am and 4pm when the sun is at its peak. "The main danger if you exercise outdoors is sun exposure," says April Armstrong, assistant professor of dermatology at the University of California. Sunburns increase skin cancer risk and rapidly age the skin.

Sleep on your back


Burying our faces into our pillows can cause dark circles and puffiness in our eyes.
"If you sleep face-down the blood vessels will become constricted and the circulatory system releases congested fluid from tiny flaps in the walls of these vessels," says Colette Haydon, a doctor of pharmacy and dermo-cosmetology at University of Lyon, France.
"The dark circles are actually tiny blood vessels ‘pooling’ under the thin, delicate skin below the eyes. The older you get, the longer they take to disappear; and you may notice more lines forming permanently on the side of the face you normally sleep on," added Haydon. "This is because as we age, our skin loses elasticity and collagen, and doesn't ‘bounce back’ into shape."
The answer is to train yourself to sleep on your back and keep your head raised well above your body in bed b using two pillows.

Sleep for at least seven hours


Most people have experienced sallow skin and puffy eyes after a few nights of missed sleep, but it appears there's concrete evidence to prove beauty sleep is a real thing.
study released last year by University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, and Estée Lauder Companies Inc. showed that people who don’t get enough sleep at night are more likely to have poorer skin health and skin that ages up to 50% more quickly.
Poor sleepers had significantly higher ratings of fine lines, uneven pigmentation and slackening elasticity. Compared with the good sleepers (women who had slept more than seven hours a night for at least a month), poor sleepers (women who had gotten fewer than five hours of sleep each night for at least a month) had significantly higher ratings of fine lines, uneven pigmentation, slackening elasticity and exhibited impaired skin-barrier function, increased moisture loss and slower recovery from sunburn.

Feast on tomato-based food in the summer


It's time to eat more pizza and pasta. A pigment called lycopene in tomatoes has been found to significantly protect skin from UV damage.
In the 2012 study led by Newcastle University, one study, 23 women who were used to burning merely at the sight of the sun ate 55g of tomato paste every day for 12 weeks. When they were exposed to UV radiation they showed 33% more skin protection. Scientists said the tomato paste acted as an equivalent to a sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of 1.3.
"Eating tomatoes will not make you invincible in the sun, but it may be a useful addition to sun protection along with sunscreens, shade and clothing," said professor Mark Birch-Machin, lead author of the study, in a statement.
Having a diet rich in tomatoes is, "likely to contribute to improved skin health, which in turn may have an anti-ageing effect," added Birch-Machin. According to the BBC, 85% of lycopene in the western diet is obtained only from tomatoes and it's best found in cooked tomato paste or sauce because that's when lycopene is digestible.

Eat vegetables for better skin tone


Recent studies have shown that a diet with more fruits and vegetables can change and improve skin tone.
"Most people think the best way to improve skin colour is to get a suntan, but our research shows that eating lots of fruit and vegetables is actually more effective," said Dr Stephen whose 2011 study at University of Nottingham found that people who eat more portions of fruit and vegetables per day had a more golden skin colour, thanks to substances called carotenoids which gives natural produce its pigmentation
In 2012, researchers at University of St. Andrews School of Psychology tracked the fruit and vegetable consumption of 35 people over a six-week period and saw an increase in red and yellow tones in participants' skin.
The researchers also credited the changes in skin colour to carotenoids, such as beta-carotene, which gives carrots their orange colour and is also found in yams, peaches, pumpkin, apricots and spinach; and lycopene which gives peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, apricots and pink grapefruits a reddish hue.
"Our study suggests that an increase in fruit and veggie consumption of around three portions, sustained over a six-week period, is sufficient to convey perceptible improvements in the apparent healthiness and attractiveness of facial skin," said lead researcher Dr. Ross Whitehead. “Conversely, those [participants] that worsened their diet became paler."

Introduce yourself to silica


You've probably never heard of an element called silica but it works wonders for our skin hair and nails and is is the second most prevalent element after oxygen. When you're young, your body has abundant levels of silica which is why children normally have beautiful silky hair, soft skin and perfect nails. We are born with large amounts of silica but we lose it with age.
A study by the University of Cincinnati’s College of Pharmacy found that fine-haired women who were given 10 mg of silica per day for nine months had thicker hair, increased elasticity and better tensile strength. Another study executed by the Department of Dermatology at the University of Bologna found that women taking silica over a 20-week period had less-brittle nails and hair and decreased skin roughness.
Since the amount of silica found in food today is very low, because it is usually found in the skin or outer layers of food and is removed during processing, we need to be aware of the foods with the highest amount of silica, such as
bananas (yellow, peeled), beer, high bran cereal, wholegrain bread, raisins, cooked green beans, peeled raw carrots, brown rice and certain mineral waters such as Fiji brand water.

Cover your hair in the sun


UV radiation from the sun is responsible for damaging the internal protein structure of hair and can eventually weaken it. As with skin, the lighter the colour of your hair, the more affected it will be, as Melanin in hair serves as a protective barrier from sun damage.
If you happen to live in or holiday at a place with strong sunshine and you intend to be outdoors for an extended period, wear a hat or scarf to protect your hair from UV damage and the associated loss in strength. Sunscreen is just as effective on skin as it is on hair too.
(Words: Sejal Kapadia, Image: Rex Features)

xo K

Saturday, July 26, 2014

18 Struggles Of Having An Outgoing Personality But Actually Being Shy And Introverted

This was originally posted by Brianna Wiest on "Thought Catalog" and I'm just going to re-blog it here, because I find it very interesting and maybe helpful to some people to understand themselves :)

xo K

1. You’re not anti-social, you’re selectively social.

2. At any given point, you have one (maybe two) best friends who are your entire life. You’re not a “group of friends” person. You can’t keep up with all that.

3. Social gatherings that are supposed to be “rites of passage” like prom and dances and other such typical nonsense is just… not for you. You don’t understand it. You want nothing to do with it.

4. When you do choose to grace a party with your presence, you are the life of it. You’re dancing on the table and doing body shots until 3 a.m.

5. … You then retreat into three days of complete solitude to recover.

6. You go out of your way to avoid people, but when you inevitably have to interact with them, you make it seem like there’s nothing in the world you’d rather be doing.

7. Dating is weird, because you’re smiling and laughing and talkative at dinner, and then you don’t want to answer their texts for four days, because like, you just want to be left alone…

8. You’re accused of being flirty with everybody, which is hilarious, because in reality, you can only tolerate like four people.

9. You retain an air of mysteriousness about you, completely unintentionally. (There’s no mystery. You just feel no need to update the social sphere on what’s going on in your life every two hours.)

10. Not to mention the fact that you either have days in which you’re tweeting and status updating every five minutes… or you delete your accounts for a month.

11. You become unintentionally awkward because you at once feel the need to be a social life jacket for other people, though you’re just as uncomfortable yourself.

12. You’ve never really understood the whole “introvert vs. extrovert” dichotomy (can we call it that?) Because you’re… both…

13. You’re always thrown into the wringer because people think you’re best suited to be the one who gives the presentation, confronts the boss, gives the speech, etc. Meanwhile, you’re practically throwing up over the thought of it.

14. You ebb and flow between wanting to be noticed for your hard work, reveling in the attention and achievement you receive, to sinking and panicking over the thought of somebody else paying more than 30 seconds of attention to you.

15. The entirety of your being is a conundrum, so needless to say, indecisiveness is your Achilles’ Heel.

16. You’re at your happiest in places like coffee shops and cafés: surrounded by people, but still closed off and keeping to yourself.

17. You prefer to travel alone, but meet up with people once you’re there.

18. It’s taken you years to figure out that you’re shy. Literal years. And when you tell people, even your closest family members, that you’re “actually just shy” they pause, and then their eyes go big, and they go: “Oh my god you so are.”

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Kylie Birthday Video 2014!

Hi Lovers,
I apologize for disappearing for such a long time - my country has been going through some very tough times over the last 5 months and it's become impossible for me to keep up with everything exciting happening in Kylie's music/TV career and around the world.

*UPDATE*
The video is here :) Happy Birthday Kylie!! (p.s. she did watch it, btw ;)


En, great job!!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUT: Kylie's B'Day is coming soon and one lovely Lover, Nicole, has decided to continue the "B'Day Project" - chain started years ago. It is going to be an "all Lovers included" video thing, so hurry up to book your spot in this thingy! ;)

Here's what you need:

First, you’ll send us your lip print and a short message for Kylie and your lip print on a white background. That will be like a confirmation, “yes, I defo do want to join in” but it’s not the end. 

This is to give you an idea how the picture is going to be devided, etc :)

Later, we will count you all and send you a piece of Kylie’s pic, you’ll draw it and send it back. We will put all those pieces back together to make Kylie complete. It’ll be a funny drawing of her by many artists. Of course, we understand that not all of you are talented when it comes to art but it absolutely doesn’t matter. It will actually be fun to have not really artistic pieces there. To make sure those completed drawings look like Kylie, we will make sure there will ALWAYS be someone who can draw in each of those “completed pics.” And to do that, we need to find people who can draw first…

Call all the lovers who can draw to email us their messages and lip prints by the 30th of April!

What the email should look like:
namecountrya message for Kylie lip printthe email address: bdayproject.km@gmail.com

What the message for Kylie should look like: It’s supposed to be a short message about how Kylie changed your life, how it influenced you in life to be her fan, what crazy things she ever caused not even knowing it or just something positive. Nothing like “I love you Kylie,” or “you are so beautiful,” but HER influence on YOUR life. A few examples: “You helped me to beat cancer”“I met my husband at one of your shows” or just something less serious, “your music makes me smile every day” (you get it, right? :)) Max. 267 characters! (as i want to make them look like longer tweets later so its like 2 tweets - NOT INCLUDING “Happy B-Day Kylie”)

What the lip print should look like:
WHITE paperany lipstick colorscan it if you can, if not then just take a pic but try to keep the quality high People who CAN’T draw should prepare their messages and lip prints as well, but DON’T SEND THEM until we tell you so. We need to make separate lists of people who CAN and who CAN’T draw. If you have any questions, tweet @Nicole_Minogue



*UPDATE* (May 2014):

LOVERS, ask Nicole which part is yours (or search for yourself on the lists she shared on twitter - if you don't have one yet, you'll get it on thursday!), use any colors and techniques you want to and don't forget to email your picture back to bdayproject.km@gmail.com by SUNDAY!  


If you got any more questions, please add it as a comment below, or e-mail at the address mentioned above, or use my Twitter (@IrynaKIM) or Nicole's to ask any question you might have :)

P.S. Kylie fan pages, web-sites, we've got a special part for you, so if you're willing to help make it a global project, please contact us for more details!

xo K

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Monday, January 27, 2014

Into The Blue - Kylie Minogue The Official VideoS!

Into The Blue is the new track and the lead single from Kylie Minogue's 12th studio album, 'Kiss Me Once', due to be released in March.



It got its first radio play on January 27th and was accompanied by the very beautiful (handwritten) lyrics video. The single is officially to be released on March 9th, 2014 and is already available for the pre-order on iTunes and on Kylie.com store (for more details, please follow the link)


Kylie shot the video for the song earlier this month, in London and it's OUT! :)



Stay tuned!

xo K

Sunday, January 26, 2014

The Voice UK 2014: Adele's Cousin, The Chicken Man And Tom Jones' Angels (Watch FULL Episode 3!)


The Voice UK continued its ratings success for BBC One last night (January 25), once again topping Saturday's prime-time ratings with an average audience of 7.89 million (35.2%) tuned in to watch this weekend's show, which saw performances from Adele's cousin Georgia, and Vicky Jones - the sister of McFly's Danny Jones.
Enjoy the highlights (The VoiceLOUDER) and FULL episode 3! :)




New lucky team members! :)
Georgia, Iesher, Myles, Celestine, Laverne and Vicky:


xo K

Friday, January 24, 2014

Kiss Me Once - Kylie Minogue's New Album Artwork, Title, Tracklist + First Listen (Sampler)

(please scroll down for pre-order details, links and updates :)
After teasing fans updating her Facebook page cover unveiling parts of the picture, Kylie Minogue has finally showed her new album artwork and title!

‘Kiss Me Once’ is the name of her 12th studio album and the first since she signed with Jay Z’s Roc Nation. The album is available for a pre-order on iTunes from January 27th. 

The tracklist (thanks to Kane at SH):

Into The Blue
Million Miles
I Was Gonna Cancel (AKA The Winners)
Sexy Love
Sexercize
Feels So Good
If Only
Les Sex
Kiss Me Once
Beautiful (with Enrique)
Fine
Mr President (Bonus Track)
Sleeping With The Enemy (Bonus Track)
Into The Blue (Video)
Into The Blue (Making the video)
Into The Blue (Trailer)
Behind the scenes of the Kiss Me Once photoshoot
Kylie on Kiss Me Once


Executive producer - Sia Furler (confirmed on Twitter) and Kylie.

You can listen to the sampler of the album here :)



KISS ME ONCE LIMITED EDITION VINYL BOX SET 
(ONLY 2,000 AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE - pRE-ORDER HERE)


Beautiful Silk Cloth Bound 12" Vinyl Box.

Includes:

- 12” Vinyl With Cd Album And Digital Download Code 

- 5 X 12” Art Prints 
- Includes An Exclusive Image And Lifesize Kylie Lip Print! 
- 12” Sticker Sheet Containing 10 Kiss Cut Sticker Designs 
- 12” ‘Faux-Window’ Featuring Raindrops And Album Title So You Can Recreate The “Kiss Me Once” Album Artwork 
- 100 Signed By Kylie




INTO THE BLUE 7" VINYL SINGLE and other available releases PRE-ORDER HERE :) 


Earlier it was announced that Kylie will perform new material at the MasterCard Priceless Gig in March. 

She said: "I can't wait to perform some of my new tracks at my MasterCard Priceless Gig. After a year of working on my album in the studio, I'm so excited to share all my hard work. It's genuinely a priceless moment for me to be given this unique opportunity."

The lead single, 'IntoThe Blue', premieres on January 27th and is out on March 9th. Kylie has already filmed the video for this one!


Meanwhile, do not forget to watch The Voice UK, every Saturday night on BBC1, 7pm! ;)
xo K