Charleston Naturally - Skincare Review

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Beauty and Aikido ©

I got some products sent over by Charleston Naturally and I tried them out for some month, so I am ready now to give you a review about them. All the products came in this nice little linen pouch:

Inside there were a number of nice products for me to test, peek-a-booo!

First one I tried out was the coconut butter cinnamon lip balm, it is yummilicious. It contains a few basic natural ingredients coconut oil, cocoa butter, organic beeswax, organic cardamon and cinnamon oils. I applied it for the first time in the office where I got the package and it just lit up my day. Tastes really natural, a lot more natural then the Japanese chocolate lip balm I purchased earlier from sasa.com. You can check that article here.

The next thing I tried out was the hand cream. I fist used it for the hands only. It is not too oily, very good consistency and gets absorbed in the skin really quickly. Then I checked the ingredients and realized I could sometimes use this as a night cream, like when I am travelling. It contains two basic ingredients: 

• Tamanu: restorative, healing, moisturizing
• Red Clover: soothing, nutritive, purifying

Other organic ingredients are: aloe gel, rose hip seed oil, cocoa butter, vitamin C, grapefruit, lavender and soybean oils, just to mention a few. It is also a vegan and gluten free product.

I was in the meanwhile using this eye cream too. I find it really soothing. I mainly use it in the evening, but sometime I applied it in the morning too under makeup. It absorbs quickly has a nice consistency and a really natural smell. I cannot talk about any regenerating effects as I don't really have any problems in my eye area yet.

Then as a wrap up, I would like to write a bit about the only decorative skincare item that I have received in the package. I was totally amazed by the ingredients and by the fact that these ingredients can give such a nice color (see picture on top of the post): fruit pigments of organic: blackberry, pomegranate, cranberry, raspberry, strawberry, cherry, rosehip oil. Then loads of organic butters: avocado, cocoa, flax seed and also Vitamin C. All the pigments, butters and oils are certified by Oregon Tilth Certification Organic. Here are some pictures of the blush: 

For more organic skincare products, please visit Charleston Naturally.

GIVEAWAY! Two Years of Beauty and Aikido

CELEBRATION!!!! YAAY!!

Another year of Beauty and Aikido has passed and just as last year, I want to celebrate this great event with a GIVEAWAY. I have prepared an awesome Beauty Prize and an awesome Aikido Prize.

I made it again really easy for you to join, you just have to perform the steps displayed in the Rafflecopter below. And here are some pictures of what you are getting. You can view the items in a youtube video that I have posted on my channel by clicking here.

The Beauty Prize:

• Hair Dehumidifier Spray (review coming soon about it)
• Yves Rocher Pore Cleaning Masque
• Yves Rocher Night Cream
• Several organic natural masques
• 2 necklaces
• 1 Catrice Lip Tint (tutorial coming up how to do cute doll looks with it)
• 1 Floral Perfume
• 1 Apple iPhone 4 Bunny Rabbit case

The Aikido Prize:

• This beautiful silver Aikido pendant offered by the courtesy of Aiki Trend

Aiki Trend Silver Pendant

Please make sure to perform all FOUR mandatory steps in order to qualify as a winner! THANKS! <3

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As seen on CashNet Sweepstakes

Summer Seaside Holiday Routine

When you are reading this post I am most probably here (follow the red arrow ^_^):

When I was having shower today, I remembered that I had some tips for things you can do for your skin while you shower. So here is what I use during my holiday:

It is not just shower gels and shampoo, but also scrubs and exfoliators. I have two exfoliators:

• Yves Rocher for the face
• Alverde exfoliator for the feet

Routine for the Face

It is really important to remove sunscreen at the end of the day or whenever you return home from the beach. It can clog your pores just as much as any foundation, powder, bronzer or any product you apply on your face. So the best thing to to is to remove it with a makeup remover when you get home. During the shower, in order to make sure that you remove any residual sunscreen remains, do use an exfoliator. I am using the Yves Rocher one I have been talking about in this video also.

Routine for the Feet

From walking on the sandy beach, your feet might lose their softness and elasticity and accumulate this layer of tough dead cells that is really unaesthetic. In order to prevent this form happening, during the shower, grab an exfoliator for the feet and make sure you get rid of all the dead cells. What also helps is moisturizing deeply after the shower. I use Neutrogina moisturizers mostly and then pull some socks over my feet to facilitate the absorption. If you try this, make sure to use 100% cotton socks. It is a bit warm for the summer but a couple of hours are worth it and the results will not fail to come.

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So these were the tips I could think of for you. Hope you found them useful! Let me know if you have other ones in a comment below.

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Makeup Remover Review: Garnier, Nivea, Yves Rocher

In this video I am reviewing several makeup removers. 

I usually remove my makeup in 3 steps:

1. Remove the eye make-up

2. Remove facial make-up with a makeup remover milk

3. Clean up the face with a toner

The video is a comparison of Garnier and Nivea versus Yves Rocher.

I am talking about the following products:

Garnier Essentials - Makeup remover milk for normal skin

Nivea - Facial tonic for normal and mixed skin

Yves Rocher - Onctuous Cleansing Milk with 3 detoxifying teas

Yves Rocher - Perfecting Toning Lotion with 3 detoxifying teas

I hope you found this review useful!

Check out the ongoing GIVEAWAY!!!

                              

                                                                         

Seasonal Skincare: Winter Trio

Moisturize
Most important of all in winter is to moisturize your skin. In this season your skin needs extra moisturizing. 

Protect
Keep your hands protected! In winter the cutting cold wind contributes to drying your skin. I notice this especially on my hands. So when the first cold autumn winds strike in, I pull my gloves out of the closet: Let winter strike in!

SPF

 

SPF in Winter? I don't need it. Well you might be wrong. In winter sun-rays are warm and tricky, because they can damage your skin just as much as in summer. I am not the adept of 50 PA++++ creams in winter, but I always make sure to have a minimal SPF protection. My most used cream in winter is the ultra moisturizing Neutrogena  SPF 15 because it provides both these two important things your skin needs in winter, also: ultra moisturizing effect and SPF.

Cleopatra's CHOICE Coupon Code and Goodies!

I started participating at affiliate programs. What does this mean for you? I will be searching for advertisers that fit to the profile of Beauty and Aikido. That  is basically skin care, beauty and martial arts related stuff. You can never know when a coupon code or other surprises might pop-up, so stay tuned:

follow my blog, subscribe to the feed and/or newsletter.

For this post I have picked cleopatra's CHOICE, so you can head to their website and use this coupon code to discover their natural Dead Sea and other exotic natural skin care products.

Have fun, and let me know if you found something you liked!

Cosmetic Calculator

Buying cosmetics online is always more comfortable that walking around huge shopping centers. In the mean time you need to be really careful about what you are buying and always double check. We are talking about products you are going to use on your face and that can cause irritations, redness, infections and what not.

This is one of the eye creams I bought from StrawberryNET. I like buying cosmetics online from time to time. On the one hand because they are many times cheaper, on the other because there is a much wider range to choose from. What I also like in online shopping is that one can look at many products from home, check reviews and impressions about products and then decide. Until now I ordered some cosmetics from StrawberryNET and from e-bay. In the case of cosmetics bought online, one should always be really careful. There can be cases where they have long been staying on the shelves and expired.

Where can I check whether my product has expired or not?

In order to make sure your product is still ok, you can check the date of production on sites like this:

http://checkcosmetic.net/

All you need to do is identify the batch number and enter it on the site above, or a similar one.

What is a batch?

Cosmetics, just as many other products, are produced in batches. A number is assigned to each batch and with with the help of this number you can identify among others the production date and the shelf life. This batch number should be either on the container or on the outer packaging.

In normal case, you should get the shelf life of the product and how long it is still OK to be used.


What do I do if the product expired?

Should it be the case that your product has expired just stay calm. There is always a solution! What you need to do is contact the customer service or the person you bought from on the internet. You need to place a reclamation and are entitled in this case to a refund.

~~Take care of your skin beauties!~~

Winter Skin

It was a beautiful sunny Saturday morning, when we decided to go sledging. It is great to feel the warm sun on your face in winter and it is also a rare thing. However you should never forget to protect your skin from sun damage before leaving the house. First of all it is important to use a moisturizer that has a higher SPF than your usual moisturizer if you know you will stay outside longer.

For me this VICHY Protective Sun-Cream with SPF 25 is ideal. You also need to take special care of your eye area, which is more gentle. For that I used  the VICHY stick for sensible zones with SPF 50.

It has a very convenient stick form and can be applied really easily.

With all that protection you can enjoy a carefree sledging. YUHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!