March 24th, 2013 • Posted by Sofia Facials and Waxing • Permalink
Last year, tangerine was the hottest color and was spotted
all over the runway and red carpet, and this year emerald is taking over. Rich,
vivid and full of life, emerald sets the stage for spring perfectly and can be
worn all year long. Add emerald to your style for a touch of elegant
sophistication. If this color seems a little too bold to welcome into your
wardrobe and you're afraid it has you looking like you just stepped out of the
Emerald City, try subtly adding it as an accent. Look for emerald in nail
polishes and jewelry. You can even try adding it to your eye shadow. Just follow these steps to get the emerald
smoky eye look:
- Use a light, neutral eye shadow, like bone, over
the entire lid.
- Use a light shimmery shade of green on the lid
and blend up toward the crease.
- Blend a deep shade of emerald from the outside
corner into the crease about two-thirds of the way in to build intensity.
- Use the neutral eye shadow again to highlight
and blend at the inner corners and brow bones.
- Apply black eye liner to the upper lash line and
smudge along the lower lash line.
- Apply black eye liner to the inner rims of your
eyes, along the waterlines.
- Finish the look with a couple coats of black mascara.
Emerald makes for such a gorgeous eye shadow and works with
all eye colors. With this bold eye look, it's best to keep the rest of your
makeup neutral and wear a nude or peach lip gloss. A cobalt blue or purple
blouse will also compliment your emerald eyes beautifully, making them pop even
more.
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March 8th, 2013 • Posted by Sofia Facials and Waxing • Permalink
While you may not feel like you have much in common with
early man, cave paintings show that our ancient ancestors used seashells that
looked a lot like modern tweezers to pluck unwanted hair from their bodies.
When he wasn't filing down his teeth, Neanderthal Man was likely pulling hair
from his body. Even then, the less hair one had, the easier life was. Little
hair meant less hiding places for critters like lice to hide out. A less-hairy
body also meant a cooler body, and quite likely, a less stinky body.
The next time you're shaving your legs or underarms, consider this fun fact:
Men, woman and children of ancient Egypt shaved their heads bald, preferring to
wear specially designed wigs. They also plucked, used early versions of
depilatory creams and rubbed unwanted hair off with a pumice stone to get rid
of unwanted hair.
Egyptian priests considered hair "shameful," while the average Egyptian citizen
associated an un-plucked body with the low-class. After all, in their minds
only animals were meant to be hairy. Anyone who had an ounce of class addressed
the issue by removing hair.
In the 5th century BC, the Greeks considered a young, athletic, hairless man to
be the epitome of attractiveness while hairy bodies were associated with
barbarians, satyrs, and the cult of Dionysus.
Flint blades date back to 30,000 BC. An added benefit of shaving with flint was
that early man could use it to cut designs into his skin. Once he added dye to
those cuts he had an instant tattoo.
We may think of depilatories as a modern convenience, but women were making
their own depilatory creams using a combination of arsenic, quicklime and
starch as early as 4,000-3,000 BC.
By 50 BC Roman men were imitating Julius Ceasar by plucking their facial hairs
out one at a time. The ritual was repeated each and every day.
We don't know for sure when threading became a mode of hair removal, but we do
know that it is such a common method in the Middle East and India that young
girls learn to do it with ease.
The process we know as waxing was born in ancient Egypt. Called "sugaring," a
mixture of sugar, lemon juice and water were heated, forming a syrup that was
rolled into a ball, pushed against the skin, and stripped away, removing
unwanted hair.
No matter which method of hair removal you choose, you can be grateful that
you're not an ancient Greek woman. It was not uncommon for certain Greek women
to remove hair from their legs by singeing it with fire.
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February 26th, 2013 • Posted by Sofia Facials and Waxing • Permalink
You notice lines on your face that weren't there
yesterday. Or someone asks you if you're feeling OK because you've been looking
tired lately. You check yourself out in the mirror and you hardly recognize
yourself. Who IS that old person peering back at you?
While it's inevitable that we all get older, maybe you're not ready to LOOK
older. However, you're also not ready for plastic surgery. Spas and wellness
centers have a variety of treatments at our disposal that can address wrinkles,
uneven skin tone or whatever is making you look older than you should. You can
recapture the fresh look you had when you were younger - without going under
the knife.
Facials
If your complexion looks dull and lifeless, dead skin cells or sluggish
circulation may be to blame. Even if you wash your face regularly, debris and
slow skin turnover rates can result in a fatigued appearance. Clear your pores
of blemish-triggering debris with a facial geared to your particular skin type
- dry, oily, normal, combination or sensitive - combined with a massage
designed to perk up facial blood flow. The effect is immediate and there is
absolutely no down time involved. Combined with a few extra hours' sleep for a
few nights, a facial may be all you need to revive a youthful appearance.
Microdermabrasion
For breakouts, uneven skin tone and large pores, microdermabrasion treatment
can be just the ticket. Trained estheticians use a special tool to apply a fine
layer of aluminum oxide, sodium chloride or sodium bicarbonate crystals to your
skin, and then gently buff the crystals away, sweeping away debris and dead
skin in the process. Afterward, you're left with smooth, more evenly toned skin
with little or no down time.
It's true that many department stores or even drug store and grocery stores
sell microdermabrasion treatments to use at home. However, the chemicals
included in home microdermabrasion treatments are less concentrated than the
formulations available to professionals. As a result, a spa treatment can often
produce more satisfactory results with microdermabrasion than you can on your
own.
Chemical Peels
Chemical peels are designed to remove the top layer of skin, which often reveals
clearer skin with fewer or no wrinkles. Estheticians use their training and
experience to choose a light peel of glycolic or salicylic acid, a medium peel
of trichloroacetic acid or a deep peel of Retin A followed by phenol -
depending on the condition of your skin. Depending on whether you receive a
light, medium or deep peel, you may require anywhere from a few hours to
several days of down time after receiving a chemical peel.
Creams and lotions containing alpha hydroxy acids and similar compounds
designed for home use often promise to activate skin renewal by sloughing off
dead skin. These products use a similar process as that of a chemical peel.
However, the concentration of active ingredients in products designed for home
use is lower and often less effective than chemical peels that are available to
professionals.
You, Only Better
None of the treatments described here is designed to replace a facelift. If you
have serious skin sagging or deep wrinkles, a facelift may be your only option
if you're determined to regain the looks you had 15 or 20 years ago. However,
if you've just begun to show the signs of aging, any one of these procedures
could allow us to help you to turn back the clock five or even 10 years.
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