Category: Other

How I take care of my hands and cuticles – Part 2

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Here’s part two of my three part post for how I try and keep my hands soft and smooth for these cold winter months. You can read the Part 1 here.

Last time I talked about hand soaps and scrubs. So now that the hands are washed and exfoliated it’s time to talk about cuticle care. Main thing for me is to always keep my cuticles well moisturized and pushing them back regularly. If I don’t push my cuticles back they tend to get stuck on the nail bed and tear. That’s painful and horrible looking on swatch photos. I usually just use my nails to gently push the cuticles back while in the shower or after using the scrub when the skin is soaked a little. I never push back dry cuticles cos that is just painful. If I’ve been lazy taking care of my cuticles I sometimes use products like OPI Avoplex Exfoliating Cuticle Treatment or CND Cuticle Eraser before I push them back.

I have a thin UV-gel layover protecting my own nails and help them grow to the length I like to keep them at. So I need to fix that layover regularly. When I do that I pay more attention to pushing my cuticles back and for that I use a metallic cuticle pusher. If you use this you have to be GENTLE or you’ll do more damage than good. In my opinion this is an unnecessary tool if you’re not going to apply gel or acrylic on your nails.

 

 

For moisturizing my cuticles I mostly use Lush Lemony Flutter nowadays. I also like Burt’s Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle cream a lot. Both work wonders for my cuticles. Sometimes I also use cuticle oils like CND Solar Oil. I also apply the oils under my nails to moisturize the nail tips under the gel layover.

Like my hands, my cuticles also dry very easily. These are the products I use to keep them in a good condition. On the winter months I need to use more of these products and the daily use is very very important. On the third and final part of my skincare posts I will be talking about lotions and more about my skincare routines.

 

 

 

***All products mentioned on this blog post were purchased by me.

My new hair color

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Just a quick post to show you my new hair color. I decided that I’m not too old for purple hair and made my own mix of Crestol Fantasy Color Gloss colors and this is how it turned out!

I’ll be back this weekend with some new Color Club, Lynnderella and new Sugar Crush fall color from IsaDora so be sure to check back for those :)

 

 

Author RiaG
Categories Hair

How I take care of my hands and cuticles – Part 1

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Winter is coming, weather outside is getting colder and air inside is getting drier. So I thought this would be the perfect time to tell you how take care of my hands and the products I use. This is going to be a three part post and I’ll start it off with hand wash and exfoliation.

My skin is quite sensitive and dries up very easily. During summer I can slack off and not moisturize my hands daily. When winter arrives it’s a whole another story. I have to be almost religious about moisturizing. If I’m not the skin on my hands will have bleeding cracks on knuckles and cuticles. Very painful and looks horrible too. I have two little kids, two dogs and I spend a lot of time at horse stables. I wash my hands a lot and they have to go through plenty of things during an average day. So on this three part post I show you some of my old favorites and some new to me products too to help me keep my hands soft and smooth. Some of these products might not be available internationally but I bet you can find similar products all over the world

 

I will start with hand soaps. I’ve noticed that regular soaps make my hands very dry and make my cuticles crack. So I’ve turned to more natural soaps. One of my favorites for every day use is Urtekram Brown Sugar hand soap. It dries my hands a lot less and my cuticles don’t crack using this soap. It washes my hands clean and the scent is very mild. This is the one soap I keep buying all the time.

 

Photo from urtekram.com

 

As a new to me product I got to test LUSH Sultana of Soap bar soap that was recommended to me by the lovely ladies at LUSH Finland. This one is perfect for my dry hands. The lather feels so creamy and this leaves your hands feeling very nice after the wash. The dry, tight feeling I usually have on my skin after a wash is gone and the scent is absolutely lovely. The scent is quite strong and stays on your skin for some time. I’m very sensitive to some soap scents but this didn’t seem to be one of them. I tested this a couple of times at nights too so that I washed my hands with this right before going to bed. I sleep with my hands close to my face and I got no reaction at all even if I could smell the scent pretty well. You can use this soap on your whole body as well as your hands and as a big bonus it makes your bathroom smell oh so lovely!

 

 

I also like to exfoliate my hands regularly to remove the dead dry skin and help moisturizers work. One of my favorites is an organic sugar scrub. I think this is only available in Finland but I bet there’s a lot of similar products available in your area.

 

Photo from here

 

I also got to test LUSH Ocean Salt scrub. This one has quite a soft and smooth, almost creamy texture but it still exfoliates efficiently. Ocean Salt scrub leaves my skin feeling very soft and smooth. I even tested this without using lotion right after scrubbing and there was no tightness or dryness of the skin. This has a very freshening citrus scent that stays on your skin for a bit but doesn’t really smell through after applying the lotions. This is actually a facial scrub and there will be a post of how this works on my face coming up in a near future.

 

 

Here was part one of “How I take care of my hands and cuticles” and I do that by paying attention on the hand soaps I use and choosing the more gentle ones. Also, I don’t forget to get rid of that dead skin and I regularly use scrubs to exfoliate. On part two I will be talking about cuticle care and products I use for that.

 

***LUSH Sultana of Soap and Ocean Salt scrub were sent for review. Other products mentioned on this blog post were purchased by me. I don’t benefit from clicking any of the links on this post.

Desert Essence Coconut shampoo and conditioner

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Hello my lovelies! I’ve been thinking about starting to also blog about other things than just nails. Nails are what started this blog and will always be the main topic here but I have a great passion for beauty and cosmetics and sometimes I have other, none nail related things I feel like talking about. I hope this doesn’t drive anyone away :) My makeup posts will mostly be swatches and easy every day looks. I’m a certified makeup artist and I own a lot of makeup products I’d love to share with you. My makeup stash as well as nail stash is ever growing :P

So here goes a hair product post. I recently bleached my hair back to platinum blonde and it was quite a rough ride. Now I need good products to keep my hair shiny and healthy. Today I have my favorite everyday shampoo and conditioner combo for you. Of course I use a lot of other products along with these but I’ll get to those on some other post. My problem is that my scalp can’t handle silicone at all so that is the first thing I look for when I find new products that touch my scalp. I get itchy bumps and my hair starts to fall off easily of I use products with a lot of silicone for a long time. So I’d decided it’s better to just buy shampoo and rinse off conditioners that don’t have silicone at all. I do use leave in conditioners with silicone though (did I use the word silicone enough?) ;).

 

 

I have found Desert Essence Coconut shampoo and conditioner to be perfect for my bleached hair. I buy these from iHerb. The price is very reasonable and they ship internationally.

The shampoo lathers really well which isn’t always the case with natural shampoos. It also washes my hair squeaky clean. After the shampoo my hair feels like one big dry mess that will never be untangled but when I add the conditioner I can run my fingers right through it without any problems. Formula on the shampoo is very gel like and it isn’t runny at all, the conditioner is thick and creamy. I also LOVE coconut scent in almost any cosmetics product so the strong coconut scent is just one big plus for me. These do smell pretty sweet so if you don’t enjoy coconut these might not be for you. I haven’t noticed the scent staying on my hair too long though.

Here’s the back of the bottles with the INCI.

 

These really work great for my hair and I use them most of the time at the moment. Along with these I also use moisturizing conditioner along with a keratin conditioner. After the wash I use leave in conditioners. My favorite at the moment is Moroccanoil.

What are your go-to hair products and you have any good tips for me?

Urtekram hand soaps

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Last year January-February the skin on my hands started to be in a horrible condition. There were deep cracks on my fingertips and cuticles and the skin on my knuckles was so dry that sometimes there was a bit of bleeding. This was partly caused by freezing weather but the biggest reason was taking care of a tiny baby and constantly having to wash my hands. At this point I decided to change my regular hand soap into a more natural product. I ended up buying Urtekram Brown Sugar and Nordic Birch organic hand soaps and I’ve never looked back.

After starting to use those hand soaps my skin quickly started to get better and the fingertips and cuticles haven’t cracked since. There are a lot of natural cosmetics and organic products out there to choose from. I just like these two so much I haven’t felt a need to look for options right now. The scent is mild and they are sold in a store near where I live so I don’t even have to wait for an online order to come in.

Have you tried any organic or natural ingredients hand soaps?

 

 

Photos: urtekram.fi

FOTD UD Naked again and the new hair

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Today’s FOTD using Urban Decay Naked again.

 

FOTD products used:

Lily Lolo Blush Away
Lily Lolo Mineral Foundation – Warm Peach
Lily Lolo Flawless Silk Finishing Powder

Dior Eyebrow Pencil – Sand
Urban Decay Brow Box – Honey Pot

Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion
Urban Decay Naked – Darkhorse, Sidecar, Hustle
Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil – Whiskey
Maybelline Volum’ Express Colossal – Black

NARS Albatross
NARS Orgasm and a hint of NARS Torrid
Ariane Inden Pressed Powder – Tawny

Dior Addict High Shine – 352 Champagne Blush
Guerlain Divinora Lip Pencil – Cupidon

 

 

Yesterday I also had my hair cut really short again and had it bleached too. My hair is really thin and doesn’t look good grown longer. I really like this platinum shade and style :)