10 Beauty Tips For Healthy Skin

We all want healthy, glowing, and beautiful skin.  It's just a matter of taking time out of your day to go and care for it.  Below, I have made a list of 10 beauty tips for healthy skin.

1. Each day you should always wash your face. This helps to keeps all of the oils off of your face and doesn't let pimples pop up; allowing for a fresher feel.

2. Each time before you put on any kind of makeup, be sure to wash off your face with warm water and soap.

3. After shaving, remember to put on lotion so your skin won't react in a negative way.

4. Put on lots of face-lotion in the winter to keep from it becoming dried out and cracked.

5. In the summer, remember to put on some sunblock to protect from burns. Bad sunburns can lead to cancer and make you look aged.

6. In the winter, try and stay away from using too much hot water on your skin. Using a lot of hot water for a long period of time can dry it out.

7. Never share makeup. Sharing it with others can lead to infections.

8. Remember to change your sheets and pillow case often so you aren't putting more oils on your skin.

9. Try and avoid putting your hands on your face. Doing this puts bacteria and germs on your face, leading to unwanted pimples.

10. From Emma Watson herself, her #1 beauty rule is: Always take your makeup off before going to bed.

Hope this helped!

xo,
Daphne

Eating Healthy: What Ingredients in Food Labels to Avoid

It's important to eat as healthy as we can, while we still can.  Food is where your nutrition comes from, and your main energy source.  Making the wrong food choices has a costly consequence.  Below are some bad ingredients found in the common foods we Americans love.  I have also added a description of what it is, and what it does.

Refined Grain - Don't be outwitted by this one.  Refined grain is found in many things that we buy at the store including white rice, sugar-filled cereals, white pasta, and other foods that have been made with flour.  Many studies have shown that people who eat less of the refined grains have a lower risk of getting heart disease.  Refined grains are known to cause high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

Aspartame - This is supposedly one of the most dangerous ingredients found in almost all food and chewing gums.  Aspartame is known to cause many diseases including heart attacks, blurred vision, and nausea.  Although it is not a known fact that artificial sweeteners and cancers are related, many believe that Aspartame can be a factor of cancer.  Aspartame is an artificial sweetener that is 180 times sweeter than sugar, and we should try and avoid it as much as we can.

High-Fructose Corn Syrup - Many studies have shown that High-Fructose corn syrup has a colossal impact; causing us to overeat.  Today, we consume over 60 pounds of it every year per person.  Corn syrup is found in many frozen products and packaged foods.  It also messes up our metabolism which can cause heart disease and diabetes. 

Bleached Flour - This ingredient doesn't actually sound to bad with the word 'flour' in it, but in reality, bleached flour is milled and bleached and it looses almost all of its natural and whole-grain substance.  When eating bleached flour, you are putting yourself in harms way of getting diabetes.  Not only causing health problems, bleached flour also contains chlorine in it.  When we bake a cake, we are usually using bleached flour because it can hold a higher amount of sugar, and lower for flour.

Avoiding all of these ingredients will help you maintain a healthy life style and know what to avoid when picking out those quick and cheap packaged products.

Stay healthy!

xo,
Daphne










Sites used in this blog post:

Reader's Digest: http://www.rd.com/health/4-most-harmful-ingredients-in-packaged-foods/2/
Joy Bauer's Food Cures: http://www.joybauer.com/food-articles/refined-grains.aspx
Kashi Ingredient Decoder: http://www.kashi.com/real_food/ingredients

DIY Polymer Clay Cupcake

Materials:

• Two colors of polymer clay (I use silver for the cupcake liner and pink for the cupcake frosting)
• A small piece of red clay (for the cherry)
• A small oven to bake the polymer clay
• A tool that helps smooth things
• A tool that can make straight lines
• A flat surface 
• A headpin 
• A light that can get very hot
• Pliers

First, you will need to find a flat surface to work on.  Next, I put my polymer clay under a light that gets very hot, so it can soften up the clay.  Be careful, though, because it can actually start to 'bake' the cupcake if the clay is left underneath the light for too long!  After you have softened the clay, you will need to condition it so it will be soft enough to work with.  To do this, you will need to roll the clay with your hands to turn it into a snake shape.  Next, twist the clay so that it looks like a candy-cane, and then fold that in half and twist that up.  After it has been twisted up, roll it into a ball and start that process over again, until you feel like the clay is very easy to work with and doesn't break when you twist it.

Next, roll the color you are using for the cupcake liner into a ball.  Very lightly, press it onto the flat surface until the bottom of the clay has a flat surface.  That will be the top of the cupcake liner, where you will eventually place the cupcake frosting.  While the clay is still on the flat surface, make a plateau shape.  That means that the cupcake liner should cave in at the middle, but have a flat bottom to sit on.  Make sure the cupcake liner isn't a square shape, though, or it won't look realistic.

Next, let's move on to the actual frosting.  Now, you don't want the cupcake to be too dome-y or too rounded.  You want it to look natural, so try and make something in between.  Shape the frosting like a dome, but then smooth it out a bit with your fingers.  Then, when you like the shape that you have, peel it off the surface with your fingers, so that way the frosting has uneven sides, and it looks natural. When you like the shape of your liner and frosting, place the frosting on top of the liner.  Don't blend in the liner and frosting, or you won't get the line that divides the two.  Pinch the top of the liner and the bottom of the frosting together so they still show the division line, but still blend well.

Now for the cherry.  Shape the small red ball and make sure it has no creases in it.  Then, place it on the cupcake.  You can either place it on the side (what I do), or you can place it on top.  Keep in mind, though, that when you put the headpin through the cupcake that the headpin will go through the cherry if you place it on top.

When you are satisfied with your cupcake and cherry, you can now make the creases in the liner.  Get your tool that can make straight lines, and slowly add the lines to the cupcake liner.  This really helps things look realistic.  Go around the whole cupcake and fix the mistakes if you made any.

Next, you will need to add the headpin.  Stick the part that doesn't have the head in the bottom of the cupcake.  Slowly twist the pin until you feel it coming out of the top.  Push the whole thing through until the head is flush with the bottom of the cupcake.  Leave the headpin in while you bake your cupcake.  You'll want to bake the cupcake at 275 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes.  Let the cupcake cool down before taking it out.

Lastly, you need to twist the headpin to make a circle so you can then add a chain.  With pliers, grip the headpin about 1/8th inch above the cupcake and with your fingers, twist the wire around the pliers.  Then, switch the position of the pliers so you can twist the wire around the pliers again, until the wire is flush with the top of the cupcake.  Now add a chain and you have just made a Polymer Clay Cupcake!

Stay creative <3


xo,
Daphne