How to burn your face...and fix is soon after.

To cut a long story short, I used my acne medication (DUAC once daily). Then I put on my La Roche Posay Effaclar Duo. Then my Body Shop Vitamin C daily moisturiser.

Yeah, don't layer products that contain AHA's, especially if they're medicated. It hurts. But I did manage to fix it as soon as I felt the burning sensation.

Raw honey mask.

I think raw honey has broken me out in the past, and so I stopped using it for a while. But I had a tiny weeny bit left, so I slapped that onto my face vaguely remembering that I had read somewhere that raw honey helps with soothing burns and inflammation. It did work, and I've recently ordered more raw honey to give it another shot. A daily face mask that soothes and heals and to some is miracle worker? I'm being drawn in again...here's hoping that my skin will one day get itself together!

Cheers,

Kitty  

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DIY ACNE MASKS - Cheap, easy, and safe! (Scroll down for easy DIY customisation!)

My acne hasn't gone. I suppose in recent months (during my time abroad especially) I have been more stressed and the different environments have taken a toll, and it has gotten slightly worse. But I'm fine, it's really not that bad.

Here are some easy acne masks that I do quite often, along with some hints and tips at the bottom so you can customise your own masks :)

TURMERIC MASK:

• 1 teaspoon of turmeric
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of natural yoghurt
• lemon juice (optional)

Mix all the ingredients together, and leave on for as long as you like. Bear in mind that it does dry, and may leave a slight yellow tinge if left on for too long. If you do let it dry, it does make a great exfoliator though. Wash off. In order to get rid of the tinge, just wait till the next day and clean with your normal skincare routine.

OATMEAL MASK:

• 1 handful oatmeal

Put your oatmeal in a microwave safe container. Add a small amount of water, just enough to cover the oatmeal. Microwave until it's of a slightly thicker consistency than normal. Wait for the oatmeal to cool and stir. When cooled enough, apply the warm oatmeal to your face, and leave on for as long as desired. It does dry rather hard, but can be easily removed with warm water.

LEMON JUICE AND ASPIRIN (Not for sensitive skin! It buuuurns!):

• 4-6 uncoated aspirin 

(aspirin that comes in a more powdery tablet form, but if you don't have these you can just wash normal aspirin until the coating is removed.)

• 1 teaspoon of lemon juice (or slightly more, if you want to use more aspirin)

Mix ingredients together to form a powdery paste. Put on a clean face, paying attention to areas with spots and marks. And then feel the BURN! Don't do this is if you have a very low pain tolerance or have sensitive skin. After the mask has dried (bits of aspirin will start falling off) then wash off and apply toner and moisturise as usual.

HINTS AND TIPS:

For anyone who wants to mix and match their own masks, here is a list of ingredients you can keep in a cupboard or fridge so you can make masks any time!

LIQUIDS

• Lemon juice 
• Plain yoghurt (Big cheap tubs of it! I've found that many branded and non branded tubs are basically the same and last for up to a month.)
• Honey (raw is best, but the best quality you can find is fine)
• Witch Hazel (only a dash or too, don't just use this one on it's own with a dry ingredient, try to add another liquid.)
• Water is great too!
• Milk
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Mayonnaise (I've yet to try this one, but Google says yay)
• Egg White

DRY INGREDIENTS:

• Nutmeg
• Turmeric (stains your face yellow, but you can use a cleanser the next day to wash off, so any masks containing it should probably be worn at night!)
• Cinnamon (be VERY careful with this one, only use a bit less than a pinch in masks, otherwise you'll burn your face! Even with a little amount you can feel the slight burn of Cinnamon.)
• Aspirin (2 should do.)
• Banana (on it's own, just mush it up and paste!)
• Papaya (Same as with other fruits, mash and paste)
• Oatmeal (Ground up if you can, if not it's fine to just use it as is)
• Ground Almonds 
• Avocado (Ditto with the other fruits)
• Clay (you can buy it on line, the most famous one is the Aztec Secret Healing clay, which recommends apple cider vinegar in particular.)

The basic idea is this:

DRY INGREDIENTS + WET INGREDIENTS = APPLY TO CLEAN FACE

(If you end up making quite a lot of a mask mixture that contains yoghurt, I recommend keeping it in the fridge so you can use it throughout the week!)

You can use as much or as little of the dry ingredients as you like, just make sure to make it like a paste with an equal or less amount of the wet ingredient. 

Here's a a few easy ones that I've done:

Turmeric + yoghurt + lemon juice + nutmeg + dash of cinnamon + ground oatmeal and almonds

aspirin + oatmeal + warm water

Turmeric + lemon juice + dash of witch hazel + cinnamon + nutmeg + yoghurt (my current fave for my acne)

And that's it folks!

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DIY brush guards! Make your own brush guards! Cheap Brush guard tutorial! (Big brushes, tiny brushes and a angled eye liner brush!)

Brush guards are great - after washing your brushes you can really get the water out of them by placing your brushes upside down while keeping the shape intact. They're also great for travel too, so your brushes don't get squished in transit. I'm too cheap to buy brush guards, particularly with the amount of brushes I have, so I DIY them. You can buy the mesh on Ebay for extremely cheap, I think I ordered 1m from China for 99p, so it took a month but hey, it arrived.

I don't think I'm the first to do this - if someone else has done it then by all means go for it. A quickie post on how I did it and that's all from me folks!

You'll need thread, a needle, scissors and the brushes you wanna make guards for. If you only want to use guards for big brushes, then you won't need anything but scissors and you can slide your brushes through straight away.

I've used the mesh on a variety of brush sizes, the DIY will cover how I made a guard for a tiny tiny eco tools eye brush, and a zoeva angled liner brush.

The angled eye liner brush, due to to it's shape, will be cut differently and won't be as tight as other brush guards, further explanation below.

1.  Cut enough mesh to cover the head of the brush.

2. Cut the mesh at an angle, so the largest part will be the part covering the brush head.

3. Get sewing! Doesn't have to be nice or neat, just poke the needles through the mesh holes and bind the mesh together firmly so the mesh doesn't come apart and can take a brush being pushed through.

 4. You end up with a thing that looks like this.

5. Slide the brush into the mesh starting from the bottom of the brush, and there you have it. The angled brush shouldn't be squished up and should be able to be placed upside down for drying without the brush falling through. If it does fall through, it means you need to sew it tighter. Better tighter than looser when sewing these - if it's too tight then you can just stretch the mesh a little.

6. Leftover mesh? 

7. Make a tiny brush guard!

8. See how thin it is in comparison to the brush? (Travel sized tiny brush by the way.)

9. But it fits perfectly cause of the stretchy - ness! With normal brushes you can just make the guards as tight as possible - the angled brush is an exception because it's flat, so you don't want to squish up the sizes and deform the brush! That's why I made the guard flatter and a little bit looser than my other guards. 

10. Ta da! Perfect for putting your brushes in to dry after washing!

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The risky business of cutting make up brushes (Royal Lip Brush)

I recently heard that having a square ended lip brush brings more precision to applying lipstick. As a lover of straight lines and a person who can't work in a room with wonky paintings, I decided getting a square ended brush would be great. Alas, being a cheap asian person, I decided to DIY my own cheap lip brush into a square ended one.

The Royal Lip Brush (the actual name, not a strange nickname I gifted it lol)

Originally a pointed lip brush that worked well, I've transformed it into this:

I did it purely by eye, around 5am. Not too bad right? I'll have to test it out later, but I'm pretty pleased. The point lip brush worked well, but I think a square ended brush will suit me better. If you do want to do this, I highly recommend wetting the brush first with water then gently fanning out the brush and cutting slowly. Nick off tiny bits at a time, and try to measure the brush against something straight.

*UPDATE*

I recently tried using this brush for lipstick - I got pretty good results!  

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DIY - How to make lace edged/trimmed cropped leggings/shorts

Hey guys, I was scouring Ebay for some lace trimmed shorts, when I realised that I could easily do it myself! I happened to have some 3/4 leggings sitting in my drawer and after a short trip to get some lace, I ended making some pretty decent leggings. Leggings nowadays can be pretty cheap, and a metre of lace isn't expensive either. Both of these together are much cheaper than the £7+ leggings on Ebay.

What you need:

• Leggings
• Pins
• Sewing machine (or you could hand sew) with appropriate thread colour matching the leggings
• Lace (1m or more, my leggings are  a size small, so it may be safer toe go with 2m)
• Ruler/measuring tape
• Pen/chalk to mark your clothing
• Scissors

Spread out the leggings so there are no folds or overlaps.

Take your pen/chalk and mark a straight line across both legs where you want your leggings to be cut. 

(Bear in mind that these will be folded up and sewn later on, so you may want to make it 3/4cm longer.) 

Taking your pins, pin across the line of each leg.

Make sure to pin through both layers of each leg.

Take your scissors and cut along the line ( don't worry if you cut a cm or two under)

Your leggings should look like this once both cut.

Remove the pins

Make sure the ends are straight, if you've cut a bit wonky you can straighten them up with scissors here.

Now turn the leggings inside out.

Take your pen again, and measure 2/3cm above the edge. Then draw a straight line of that height above the cut across the leg. Do this to both legs.

Using the lines you have drawn as a guideline, fold up each hem of each leg and pin the edges down.(Only pin through one layer, and pin all the way around each leg.)

To make sure that both legs are even, fold the leggings like this - if they match it means they are even. If they aren't even, you can adjusts the folds of each leg.

Take your leggings and sew up the hems you've just made with a sewing machine or by hand. Remove pins as you go along.

You should end up with legs that look like this.

Both hems sewn up.

 Check to make sure both legs are even.

Taking your lace (or even ribbon, whichever you prefer to attach)

 Pin the edge of the lace to the edge of the leggings. (You don't need to measure the lace, you can just sew until the lace meets where you started sewing.)

When using the sewing maching press the foot down to clamp the lace and the legging.

Do this step quite slowly, making sure the edge of the lace is sewn to the edge of the hem throughout.

 When the lace meets where you started, you can sew both lace edges together.

After sewing both legs, the hems should look similar like this.

Turn your leggings inside out, and you're done.

Many thanks for reading guys!

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DIY - How to make belt loops for trousers/pants

I recently bought some great tailored shorts from Ebay, but they were  little loose, so instead of making them smaller I added some belt loops. This saves on resewing if my size changes in the future. Here I used some spare velvet ribbon I had lying around, you can use anything you want providing it's washable and can be sewn.

Stuff you need:

• Item of clothing you want to sew
• Pen/chalk - something to mark your clothing with
• Pins
• Material you want to use for the loops
• Thread
• Needles
• Sewing machine (optional, you can hand sew instead)
• Ruler/measuring tape to measure where you want to mark your clothing

How to:

Measure out  on your clothing where you want the loops to go. I didn't have any chalk so I used a whiteboard pen to mark out where I needed the loops to go.

Here, you can see where I've marked out the line, and I did this 5 times - 2 on the front, 3 on the back. The pen is noticeable, but not too bright. You can use any colour that you like, just make sure it comes off in the wash.

 I then cut out 5 strips (one for each line) each 6cm long (you made need longer/shorter) and I folded over each end and hand sewed them. Make sure to start and finish at the back, so the knots don't show.

Here's what they should look like on the front and back.

Now pin each strip onto each line you made, and make sure to adjust when necessary, as the lines are only guidance and may not be 100% accurate. I spent a good few minutes adjusting the placement of each strip.

Use a sewing machine to sew each strip on accurately. (If you don't know how to use a sewing machine there are some great YouTube videos out there or you can just hand sew.)

Final product:

Thanks for reading guys!

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DIY - How to dye suede shoes black

I bought some  booties a while ago, but the shade of blue/dark teal was lighter than I thought so I couldn't really combine it with anything.  I decided to dye them black, because black goes with ANYTHING.

So for anyone interested, here's how to do it!


HOW TO DYE SUEDE SHOES:

Stuff you need:

 Tons of newspaper/ plastic mat/ something to cover the floor
Or you could do it outside.

The shoes
Brush out any bits with a suede brush/hard tooth brush. Make sure shoes are clean/dry.

Suede spray/dye 
I used spray "suede restorer" but it worked.

Gloves 
                                              
Masking tape

For clean up/ removing dye stains:
My shoes had plastic and metal studs on them, so this if for cleaning those areas which accidentally got stained.

Nail polish remover

tissue

cotton swabs

How to:

•  Masking tape off any areas of the shoes you don't want dyed. 

• Make sure to use many small pieces to cover up any curved areas of the shoe.This takes a lot of time, but trust me it's worth taking extra care when doing this.

•  Place the shoes on the flat surface you have heavily covered as the spray may drip/splatter.    I actually stained my carpet doing this, so be careful.

• Spray the shoes in quick strokes, spray about 15cm away from the shoe. 

• The spray I used recommended to wait one hour after each application. Once I covered both shoes, I left them to dry for about an hour and came back later to do a another layer and waited another hour e.t.c. Do as many layers as you want. 

•  Leave the shoes to dry for a couple of hours, better yet, a day. 

I ended up using the whole can on one pair of shoes - I'm sure if the shoes were a lighter colour I could have used less layers of spray. 

All the things I ended up using.

Timpson Suede & Nubuck Restorer

As you can see, I used loads small pieces of tape to layer up.

The zip is still blue, but it's dark enough so it doesn't stick out.

Final product! 

Without flash
(You can see how I cleaned the stained buttons underneath)

With flash

Weirdly, when I used flash I found that the shoes looked as if they hadn't been dyed at all! 

How to remove dye stains:

Using some nail varnish remover I managed to clean off the stains of the dye.

Cotton swab dipped in nail varnish remover. Do this step very gently! I did it too rough and  I ended up removing a layer of the plastic. It's better to surround the area as I ended up removing a layer and tiny flecks of plastic were going onto the shoe.

 Change cotton swabs whenever you need to!

They were a little bit patchy but it wasn't too noticeable until you got really close to the shoe. 

Without flash

 Slightly patchy

 With flash

Make sure the wipe the studs/buttons with a damp tissue afterwards to wipe off any excess remover!

Thanks for reading guys! 

:D

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