Blemishes are never welcome. There are plenty of treatments available to help clear blemishes more quickly and a myriad of concealers to cover them. But blemishes have a tendency to show through the concealers and their surface texture makes them more difficult to cover smoothly.

Clean & Clear® Advantage™ Invisible Acne Patch both treats the blemish and helps your makeup conceal it better at the same time.

Apply the liquid to the pimple and it forms an invisible layer to make it appear smoother and allow your makeup to go on more smoothly. Meanwhile it has an acne fighting medication that treats the pimple.

Indoor living can leave skin feeling grimy and and looking dull. At the end of the day you need something to invigorate and polish skin to give you a hydrated glow.

Ocean Salt Skin Cleanser by LUSH is full of natural ingredients that scrub and exfoliate then soften and polish. Ocean salt, grapefruit, lime, coconut and avocado butter all combine to leave your skin feeling new and alive again. The ocean salt granules make a great scrub that dissolve to rehydrate skin. Use daily if you have oily skin but limit to once a week if your skin tends to be dry.

Available at our Beauty Store

I have to admit to never having liked Chapstick or any lip balm for that matter. I wasn’t sure why, but I always felt like it made my lips more chapped and they peeled more and not less. In fact, it seemed that if I started to use lip balm, I couldn’t stop because the problem would increase ten-fold and my lips would come off in chunks.

Just for fun I decided to look around the net and I was surprised to find so many people who had the same experience as I did. In fact, there are websites devoted to lip balm addiction. There are people out there who are unable to go from one room to the next without being assured of finding a lip balm to reapply constantly.

I discovered that some medicated lip balms have ingredients that actually exfoliate, that is, peel the lips. So these do, in fact, make the problem worse. But even lip balms that don’t contain these ingredients seem to have a hold on people who use them.

I thought then about my own use of lipstick and I do apply lipstick sometimes just because my lips are dry. However, with lipstick I don’t have the urge to constantly reapply, I can go entire days without wearing any and I don’t find my lips get dependent on it.

The majority of physicians and dermatologists state that lip balms can be psychologically addicting only, but in my limited experience, and it seems the experience of many others, lip balm is a highly addictive substance that requires constant reapplication to avoid it worsening the problem you used it to alleviate.

When you think of green makeup you probably think of Frankenstein’s monster, but there are times when you might consider using green-tinted makeup on your face (and no, it’s not on Halloween).

Your regular concealer is no match for red splotchy patches, blemishes or acne. You need to apply a color corrective under your foundation to hide the angry red and give yourself a flawless and even skin tone. A concealer with a green tint will correct the redness. Apply over the blemish, then apply your foundation. You can even apply the concealer again over your foundation and blend for a more complete coverage.

If the problem is more than a few blemishes with red splotches or rosacea (see our article on rosacea) then a product specifically designed for rosacea will be more effective.

Brenda Christian’s Rosacea Eraser is a multi-toned powder of Italian pigments micro-filled with Jojoba and Vitame E. It will neutralize red tones and soothe and protect skin.

Available at our Beauty Store