DIY Moisturiser For All Skin Types

Difficulty Rating:

I've wanted to make my own moisturiser for a while now as I was using Lush's Celestial moisturiser, which I loved at first, then my skin started to react to it. I am allergic to almonds, and unfortunately that moisturiser contained almonds (an ingredient that is in most of Lush's skincare unfortunately). Also, Lush's products aren't 100% natural, so I wanted to make my own moisturiser that was.

By making my own skincare I can control what goes into it, and tailor it to my skins needs. 

This was probably my favourite DIY project, and it's so easy to make - you just need 2 ingredients:

Vegetable Glycerin

Water

I chose to use Rose Water for mine as it has calming properties, and adds a nice scent to it. But you can use regular water too, and it will still be effective.

Glycerine is quite an amazing product. It is a humectant, which means it absorbs water and moisture.

If you apply it directly to the skin, it will absorb all the moisture from it - which obviously is NOT what you want.

BUT, if you add water to it then it helps seal in the moisture when applied to your skin, plus it helps by drawing in moisture from the air around you, and pulls it into your skin, which is quite amazing. (Make sure there is a little more water than glycerine, keep reading below to find measurements)

You'll find glycerine is a key ingredient in moisturisers and other skincare, and this is why.

Method

You want to aim for a mixture of 1 part Glycerine plus 2 or 3 parts Water.

I used 1 part Glycerine, 3 parts Rose Water. Though you can play around with this and see which suits your skin best.

So this is the final product! Easy peasy.

You'll see the mixture separates so the glycerine sits at the bottom, and the water stays on top. Make sure you shake the moisturiser well before each use.

Possible Modifications

If you wish, you can add tea tree oil, or any other essential oils you wish to add to suit your skin type more.

-I decided not to do this so I could see how this worked on its own first. Then if I felt more needed to be added, I could do so at a later stage.

How To Use

I would recommend you store the mixture in a spray bottle so it's easier to apply, but I used a bottle with a lid as that's all I had lying around. Here are my instructions for both:

Spray Bottle Method

1 Shake bottle well

2 Close eyes and spray lightly all over your freshly cleansed and toned skin

3 Massage into skin

Lid Bottle Method

1 Shake bottle well

2 Apply mixture to a cosmetic sponge/cotton pad, and gently apply to freshly cleansed and toned skin

My Thoughts on this Moisturiser

I absolutely love this moisturiser. It took a while to get used to as it has the consistency of water, so it feels a bit weird to apply at first. And It took me a few days to realise how amazing this was for my skin - I guess because my skin was still suffering the after effects of my previous moisturiser. But it is hands down the best moisturiser I've used!

I bought the vegetable glycerine on eBay here, and the rose water you can pick up quite easily and cheaply from the supermarket, or an ethnic food store.

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I now use only home made skincare in my beauty regime, and honestly my skin has never looked better! I very rarely suffer breakouts anymore, and the texture of my skin is so much better. My skin is still not perfect, but there is a definite difference since switching to this new regime.

You can find the rest of my DIY skincare posts on my Natural Beauty page above. I have more posts lined up soon.

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Have you used this method before? I'd love to hear of any DIY skincare you use.
Feel free to leave a link if you've posted about any. I am majorly into my DIY skincare at the moment, so any tips/advice you have are more than welcome!

Heatless Curls with Bantu Knots

I'm sure I'm not the only one with stubborn hair that wont do as it's told. I have tried numerous tools in an attempt to curl it, including heated curlers, curling irons, wands and straighteners (I'm nowhere near coordinated enough to curl my hair with straighteners :/). My hair just doesn't like to hold a curl, or the curl ends up being to limp and not as defined as I'd like.

You may have seen me tweeting about this a few nights ago, but I decided to try out Bantu Knots to see if it would reinforce a curl in my hair. I have seen a few mentions of this on youtube, and looks like it could be the answer to 'tricking' your hair into holding perfect curls.

I will start off by saying this is perfect if you also want to avoid heat, have stubborn hair like me, or are currently broke - it's FREE!

The Process

I recommend you do this in the evening. You'll need to wash/wet you hair first as your hair is easier to train/manipulate when it's wet. You'll be sleeping on your hair, and that should dry it by the morning.

Note: the thicker your hair, the earlier in the evening I'd recommend you do this. This will ensure it is dry by morning.

You Will Need:

Setting Lotion 

(I used a spray in gel, though in hindsight setting lotion is probably the way to go. I'm sure a mousse would work too)

Bobby Pins/Hair Ties

Curl Defining Spray/Product

If you're going to use mousse, apply it to damp hair as you usually would before following these steps:

1) What you want to do is comb through your hair to make sure it's smooth and knot-free. Then divide your hair into sections. The thickness of the sections determine the kind of curl you end up with:

Larger Sections = Bigger, looser waves

Smaller Sections = Tighter, more defined curls

As you can see my hair isn't that thick, so my sections ended up leaning towards the smaller side, particularly on the right hand side of the photo.

2) You'll need to twist each section, and THEN twist that into a 'knot' at the top of the head. (remember you will be sleeping on these knots, so think about where you place them).

As you twist each section I'd recommend smoothing on the Setting Lotion/Gel (ignore if you previously applied mousse).

Fix these knots in place with bobby pins or small hair ties.

3) Once you've done this all over, all that's left to do is sleep!

(Do not attempt to speed up the drying process using a hair dryer - or you will end up with a lot of frizz)

Revealing the Curls

I did my make up first and got dressed etc before I touched my hair, just to give it extra time to make sure it was completely dry.

4) Carefully remove hair ties/bobby pins, and unravel the knots. 

You'll end up with weird twisted dreads that don't really resemble any kind of curl, but don't worry it has worked!

5) This is very important - do not brush/comb your hair! Unless you want to look like a poodle.

Use your fingers to tease the strands apart. Try and shake/gently pull the twists until you get the desired look you want.

The Result

This is the finished look.

This was my first attempt, and have definitely learnt from this as I did make a few mistakes, but I can see this as having a lot of potential!

You can see how weird my hair has gone on the side where I had the smaller know, and how small the curls are on the rest of the hair - Next time I will definitely use larger sections of hair.

I will also use setting lotion instead of gel and see if that helps control the major frizz that seems to be happening!

If it does go a bit pear shaped like mine did, you can always put it up in a pony tail. I did this and I ended up with a nice huge ponytail, which made a nice change from the usual pathetic/thin one I have to put up with.

A better view of that annoying piece of hair!

Overall I would definitely recommend this as it has huge staying potential. It also adds a lot of volume to your hair, which I definitely need!

Its nice that you can tailor the kind of curl you get, depending on what size of twists you use. 

-It just takes practice to get it right. 

I will try this again, hopefully soon, and put up another post on how it went. This time I'll aim for larger curls and see if it works.

Have you tried this before? I'd love to know if you have any tips!

First Ever OOTD

Dress - Primark | Cardigan - Primark

Owl Necklace - Buckingham | Scissor Studs (not pictured, but shown here) - V&A Museum

Belt - Came with a skirt from H&M | Mac - New Look

Scarf/Snood - Warehouse | Satchel - eBay | Knee-High Boots - Next

This is my first ever Outfit Of The Day so please be gentle. I was quite self conscious in front of the camera, which you can probably tell!
This is what I wore earlier today to uni, complete with walking stick!
Now I'm having to use one for my back, I was trying to decide whether or not to feature it in my OOTD, but then decided I would at least do it for my first one as its kind of part of my outfit.
Next time I'll try and find a better location for it, but this was just a quick one before I left the house.
Its a shame I never got a good photo of the side or back, but next time I will set aside more time to make sure I get more shots.

Anyway, I hope you like it! This is definitely the first of many, and I'd love to know what you think.

Valentines NOTD

Happy Valentines Day!

As you can see I'm using my new Nikon P500 camera for this post, and you can definitely see the difference in quality between these photos and ones in previous posts. I love taking photos now as this camera just does everything I want it to, and it's inspiring me to be much more creative with layouts.

So this is my take on a valentines day NOTD, its a deep purple/red nail, and I think it's a nice mixture of bold and romantic. this is what I used to create it:

First I painted 2 thin layers of Primarks 'Glo Baby Glo' nail polish (I couldnt see a shade name on bottle)

Once dry, I added 2 coats of Deborah Lippmann's glitter nail polish in Razzle Dazzle.

Personally I'm not really one for glitter or sparkly things, but I actually love this look. It gives the base colour a lovely, deep, subtle sheen, and is not at all 'in your face'. 

I think its a nice sophisticated take on glittery nails, and perfect for valentines day! 

-Though I will definitely wont just be wearing this just for one day!

I hope you like it, and hope it inspires someones look this valentines day :)

New Camera + Update

First off I want to apologise for not finishing off the rest of my 'What to get Him for Valentines Day' series, but last Monday I was in a&e for my back, and was kept in hospital overnight. I wont bore you with everything that happened, but I was quite let down by the hospital and so have been busy trying to sort things out with doctors etc from home, plus I've had to catch up with my uni work too and time just got away from me. 

Please let me know if you still wish to see the last 2 in the series published, and I'll maybe turn them into 'Gift Ideas for Him' posts as I'm guessing the men in your lives have birthdays too ;)

Now for the Exciting News!

You may have seen me tweeting about this, but I HAVE A NEW CAMERA! I'm so happy to finally have a decent camera! The above photo was taken with my iPhone, which was what I had been using to take all of the photo's you've seen so far on my blog. And this will be the last ever photo I will take with it too! It will be the last rounded image as well, as now my images are good quality and very sharp, I want to keep that 'crispness' theme going with clean edges.

Anyway, onto the camera! It's the Nikon Coolpix P500, and I bought it here on Amazon for just £218.95. 

It's not a DSLR, but a Bridge Camera, which is in between the normal 'point and shoot' cameras and the DSLRs. I felt a DSLR would be wasted on me as I'm not a photographer, and spending all that money would be a waste as I probably wouldn't even touch half the features and settings they have!

After a lot of trawling the internet, I felt this one would be best for me, especially as its best feature is its macro setting, so this is definitely perfect if you're a blogger! Also It has a good 1080p HD video setting, so if I ever get the courage to film Youtube videos, this would be perfect for it.

I may in the future do a proper review on this camera, but for now I'm having a lot of fun playing around with it, and still learning how to use it.

Above is a photo I took with my new camera, testing out its depth of field. This is also a sneak peak of a NOTD coming up later today :D 

I'm so happy with this camera, and can't wait to start posting OOTDs with it, as well as better quality Hauls, reviews, FOTDs, NOTDs etc. 

Yay! They're Here!

Most of you will have heard of Moo.com, and their reputation of great quality and unique business cards. 

But you may or may not know that they've recently launched a new type of card for Facebook:

I received mine today, and I am in love!

All you do is log in onto the moo.com website using your Facebook details (link at end of post), and it will use your cover photo as the main background, and your profile photo as a smaller icon on the card. The more cover photo's you have, the more variety you'll have in your pack of cards.

But here's the best thing: Moo are giving you a pack of 50 Facebook cards for FREE! 

So the only thing you pay for is the postage, which is £3.25. This is only for a limited time though.

Note:You can only get these if you have the new timeline version of Facebook (if you don't, all you need to do is view the profile of someone who does, and click a link at the top of their page).

The Cards

You can edit the details on the front of the card, and I briefly wrote what my blog is about, and the address for it underneath. I created a banner and uploaded it as my cover photo on Facebook to get the image above.

One thing you should note is that you can only do this with Facebook profiles, not groups unfortunately. But luckily I have a separate profile for Not Just Skin Deep as I'm still not ready to reveal it to everyone I know, so I could create these for my blog :)

On the back of the cards you have the option to write a quote, a short bio, or whatever you want! I also added my twitter name and email address at the bottom.

It automatically adds a link to your Facebook profile too, though unfortunately you can't edit it (I wanted to change it to link to my blogs page instead, but couldn't :( ). 

Packaging & Quality

 I LOVE the amazing quality of these cards, and especially the box they come in. I really like the fact they come with dividers too, so you can safely store the business cards from other bloggers.
I can't wait to start handing these out, and using them at blogger events!

If you wish to order these Facebook cards for yourself, either for your blog like I've done, or to keep in touch with friends via your personal profile, you can order them here.

Or if these aren't for you, you can order ordinary business cards too.
With this pack I received a code to pass on, so you can get 10% off your order here.
(You should get a link too with your pack to pass on to friends and family)

Let me know what you think, and if you're likely to order these. Or if you have done, I'd love to know what you thought of them!

What to Get Him for Valentines Day - part 1

Valentines day is soon approaching, and for those in relationships you're probably wondering what to get your partner. I was thinking about what to focus on, when I figured I'd come up with Valentines Day gift ideas for HIM (assuming you're that way inclined).

So I roped my poor boyfriend in to help me with this post. I figured I'd get him to help me with his speciality: Aftershaves.

Before we begin I thought it would be a good idea to show you his collection:

In this photo alone I counted 35 aftershaves! And I pretty much doubt they're all on here too! I think obsessed is an understatement. Seriously though, he lives by the motto "I don't care what I look like as long as I smell good", so who better to recommend aftershaves to you!

As you can see I'm pretty much stuck for ideas for gifts as there's no way I can remember what he has or hasn't got, but I figured I could help others who were stuck for ideas.

I asked him to select his top 5 aftershaves for different occasions.

I'm going to post his recommendations as a trilogy, so lets start the first one off with...

Daytime Fragrances

These 5 are his recommended choice of aftershaves for everyday wear:

I've listed prices found from Fragrance Direct so you get a general idea, but I'm sure you can still find cheaper elsewhere online.

Hugo Boss 'Hugo', £18.95 for 40ml: This is one of his 'go-to' fragrances for when he's not sure what aftershave to wear. He says this can be worn any season, but would recommend it more for colder weather.

Versace 'Blue Jeans', £14.99 for 75ml: I'd seen this a lot on offer in Superdrug and Boots over the years, and have to admit I had the impression that this would be quite a tacky aftershave with a less than average smell, but now I've finally had the chance to smell it I actually really like it, and obviously so does he. The fact that it's so cheap is a bonus because it means you don't have to worry too much about wasting it, and can still smell good without breaking the bank. He recommends this during autumn/winter months, and says this is his most reached for fragrance. 

CK 'be', £24.99 for 200ml: This is a nice subtle day time fragrance, which is perfect for work, or if you're in a situation where you want to smell good, but not in an overpowering way.  This is a great year-rounder as it's perfect for all seasons.

David Bekham 'Instinct', £13.95 for 75ml: This I'm told is a great fragrance as it's sweet enough to be worn during the day, but formal enough to wear in an evening. So this is perfect if you're at a daytime event that carries on to the evening, or are unlikely to have time to get ready again before going on a night out. 

Paul Smith 'Extreme', £15.99 for 50ml: Finally, this aftershave he recommends for the warmer months. This has a nice simple lemony scent, and he loves to wear it in the spring as it always reminds him of summer. Maybe with spring coming up this one could be a good one to go for? 

So that's it for his Top 5 Daytime Aftershaves, and none of these break the bank at all. I would say this is definitely the cheaper part of the trilogy, so if you're looking for a great aftershave but don't have a lot to spend (like me), then this one is where you'll find the most choice. 

I hope you have found this helpful for gift ideas.

If you have any questions please ask me, and I'll keep pestering him for answers ;)

The next two in the trilogy will be Top 5 Evening Aftershaves and Top 5 Summer Aftershaves.