Skincare Credo There is a lot of mystique built up around skincare, especially in the cosmetics industry, but really it's not that difficult. Here are the basic rules:

1 - Cleanse, tone and moisturise morning and night. 2 - Always use a moisturiser with UV protection, preferably one with SPF 12 or higher. Use an eye cream or gel on the eyes instead of regular moisturiser. 3 - Exfoliate once or twice a week. 4 - Give yourself a mask treatment once or twice a month. You know, moisturise if you have dry skin, firm if you have mature skin, deep cleanse for oily/combination skin, soothe if you have sensitive skin. It's just logic. 5 - And of course, EAT Healthily, SLEEP well and EXCERCISE! These three factors make a lot more difference than most people realise. I cannot emphasise them enough. Your skin may be dull and clogged up, but going to buy an new cream or treatment to fix it can only make a minimal difference if you're still not getting enough sleep, or if your eating habits need improving. It may feel like a hassle now, but in twenty years time you'll be able to tell who did and who didn't...   MORE SPECIFIC NOTES The more POLLUTION you live amongst, the greater care your skin needs. Pollution makes your skin so dirty, if you haven't experienced it you wouldn't believe it. So cleanse, cleanse, cleanse. All those particles and chemicals can really make your skin exhausted, not to mentioned clogged. And after you've cleansed, moisturise, moisturise, moisturise! And your OCCUPATION affects your skin care regime as well. If you work or live in large buildings with air conditioning or central heating or both, they can dry your skin out a lot. What can sometimes happen is that your skin reacts by trying to produce more of its own moisture and it can trick you into thinking you have oilier skin than you really do. So, put a saucer of water on or under your central heating panels to raise the moisture level of the air. If you are dealing with air conditioning, try to moisturise during the day as well as morning and night. EXFOLIATION is great. Helping those dead skin cells to come off stops your moisturiser from having to get down through those layers to the skin that really needs it. Your skin looks smoother, feels smoother. And you don't have to spend a lot of money on a product, just try out one of the recipes on the Recipes page!   AN EYE CREAM is very helpful too. The skin around the eyes is thinner and therefore more delicate than on the rest of your face, and as we all know, it wrinkles more quickly, so we need to take good care of it. Using just your regular moisturiser on your eyes is not a cardinal sin, but using an eye cream is a thousand times better. They will often contain herbs such as elderflower or cucumber, perhaps vitamin E or B, or other 'special' ingredients. But you don't have to buy an expensive cream, because the point of eye creams is that they are lighter and less oily than normal moisturiser. That is the factor that makes the biggest difference. Using a regular moisturiser can have the following effects: 1 - The thin skin is not able to absorb the amount of oil in your facial moisturiser so it sits on top of your eyelid, preventing your makeup from staying on and giving the skin extra weight to deal with, dragging it down and encouraging the skin to stretch, which leads to, guess what? That's right, the 'W' word. 2 - The water content of your facial moisturiser is too high and so, in trying to absorb it all, your eyelids become heavier, puffy (if you slept with it on) and the skin is stretched. Obviously, stretching eye skin is NOT something we want to do. SO: use an eye cream.