How to color your hair at home...

KEEP IT SIMPLE

If you want to cover your gray, or go a couple shades lighter or darker, then home hair color is for you. If you want anything more dramatic, then it's best to go to the salon. Also, if you hair is damaged or chemically treated, stick with a professional to be sure you don't overprocess and damage your hair.

SELECT A SHADE

Don't be overwhelmed by the hundreds of different hair color products on the shelves. Visit the websites of Revlon, Clairol or Loreal where you can fill out a simple questionnaire and figure out the right shade for you.

DON'T MAKE IT PERMANENT

If you are new to coloring your hair or trying a shade that's a little bit different, select a temporary orsemi-permanent hair color rather than permanent. Temporary color washes out in 6-12 shampoos, while semi-permanent hair color will normally wash out in about 20-26 shampoos. Permanent hair color can last six to eight weeks or even longer.

GET ORGANIZED

To make things easier, you can invite over a friend to help color your hair. However, even with a friend, you need to get organized. In addition to your home hair coloring kit, you will also need a few supplies.

• Plastic gloves (normally provided with kit)
• Old button-down shirt
• Vaseline
• Damp rag for wiping up spills
• Hair clip
• Wide tooth comb
• Old towel
• Big safety pin

Put on the shirt and fasten the towel around your neck with the safety pin before you begin.

TESTING. TESTING.

The instructions with your box of hair color say you should test a few strands of hair first, but many women skip this step. If you haven't used this particular hair color before, you should definitely do the test to make sure it's the shade you desire.

COLORING YOUR HAIR

Don't wash your hair the day you are going to color your hair. Most experts suggest waiting 24 to 48 hours after washing your hair before applying hair color. Freshly washed hair is lacking the oils needed to absorb the hair color.
Apply Vaseline to your skin all around your hairline to protect your skin from the dye.

Mix the hair color according to the directions on the box. Use a comb to separate your dry hair into four major sections.  Begin by taking a smaller subsection from one of the sections and applying hair color from the bottle. Don't use too big of a section - you want to make sure the color is thoroughly worked through your hair.

Start with the roots and work your way down and outward, piling your hair on the top of your head as you go. You can use a hair clip or multiple clips to pin your hair up.

Following the instructions included in the box, wait 25-45 minutes for the color to work. If you have a lot of gray hair, it's best to wait the maximum time limit. After your color has processed, rinse your hair with cool water.

WAIT TO WASH

After rinsing out your color, apply the conditioner supplied with your kit but don't wash your hair. Wait at least a full day, preferably 48 hours, after coloring your hair before you wash it. This will also allow the hair color to completely penetrate your hair shaft.

TOUCH-UP YOUR ROOTS

About four to six weeks after coloring your hair, you may need to touch-up your roots. When touching up the roots, don't over-color the ends. Apply conditioner to your ends and then just color the roots and top. Five minutes before it's time to rinse out the color, use a wide tooth comb to distribute the color down the hair shaft to the ends. Then rinse as usual.

HIGHLIGHTS AT HOME

For natural looking highlights, buy a second box of hair color a shade or two lighter to create highlights around your face. You can use a paint brush to paint on the highlights as thin or as thick as you'd like them.

8 Essential Foods for Beautiful Skin

1. Avocados are not just for eating! A good source of biotin, avocados help to prevent dry skin and brittle hair and nails. When applied topically, they can hydrate parched skin.

 Create a moisturizing mask. Pit the fruit, puree the pulp, and pat it on your face. The oil acts as an emollient. It also contains beneficial vitamin E.

2. Sip your way to healthy skin. Green tea's high on the list of skin-friendly beverages thanks to its impressive storehouse of polyphenols. Aim for four cups throughout your day.

3. Reach for tomatoes. A German study found that lycopene-rich tomato paste helped participants prevent sunburn when they combined it with olive oil, daily for ten weeks. Besides being a great source of the antioxidant lycopene, tomatoes are considered a high-carotenoid fruit. These nutrients may help slow down cellular damage from free radicals.

4. Slow down aging with salmon. Salmon contains astaxanthin, a carotenoid that improves skin elasticity, so you'll have fewer fine lines.

5. Crack open some eggs. Protein helps repair cells that have suffered free radical damage. Eggs, a complete source of protein, also contain biotin, an essential vitamin that protects against dry skin
6. Put pomegranate on your list. When applied topically, this antioxidant-rich fruit may help skin create more collagen, while speeding healing.

7.Try walnuts. Looking to add Omega-3 fatty acids to your diet but not a fan of fish? Walnuts are a rich source of Omega-3s, which help put shine in your hair and aid in making skin smoother and younger looking. 

8. Build better skin with beans. Another protein source, legumes help repair cells that have suffered free radical damage. During digestion, protein breaks down into amino acids, the building blocks of cells. Amino acids help to speed the repair and regeneration of skin cells and collagen.

9.

How to Apply Eye Makeup in 8 Steps

When evening calls for a glamorous look, you want to focus on making your eyes amazing. Here's how to apply eye makeup in only 8 steps.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 10 minutes
Here's How:
Prep your eyes with concealer Concealer can be used to cover up under-eye circles or just the bluish discoloration just under your inner eye. To cover dark undereye circles, apply three dots of concealer under each eye. Start at the inner corner where skin tends to be darkest, then under the pupil and the third on the outer edge. Pat, never rub with your ring finger (this finger tends to have the softest pad) until it disappears.
Apply eye base to your lid Eye base is the secret to keeping your shadow in place for hours. Without properly priming your lid first, your eyeshadow will likely end up a greasy line in your crease.
Follow with eyeliner Dark eyeshadows work great as eyeliners. Wet a slanted brush, then dip in a dark eyeshadow. Line eyes as close to the upper lashes as possible from the inner corner to the outer corner. Follow with liner on bottom eyes, but only line from the middle of the eye out. Smudge the bottom line with a Q-tip or your finger. You don't want a prominent line. For a smokey eye, use a brush to pat in a dark eyeshadow along the upper lid and below the lid. You don't want a stark line, instead you want to blend it so it's "smudge-y."
Apply eyeshadow. It's great to use a three-toned shadow and build from lids to brow (seeHow to apply eyeshadow). Allowing them to blend into each other like a rainbow is gorgeous, according to celebrity makeup artist Mally Roncal. Start with a light color that almost matches your lid. Sweep the color across the lid and up to your browbone. Follow with a medium color across your lid only. Build on this with a darker color in the crease. Blend the colors well.
Brighten your eyes with a highlighter This step involves only the inside part of the eye. Putting a bit of your lightest eyeshadow in the inner corner of your eye will brighten it significantly (this is the makeup artist's secret and I use this trick all the time). I usually dab a finger into my lightest eyeshadow and then I press it into the inner corner of my eye where the upper lid meets the bottom lid. This totally makes eyes "pop."
Highlight your brow Take the same light eyeshadow and dab it on your browbone, concentrating on your mid-brow outward. Blend with your finger. I like to use Yves Saint Laurent's Touche Eclat just below my brow and just above it, but a super light shadow will do you.
Curl lashes An eyelash curler will make even long lashes look more gorgeous. For added effect, you can heat the curler under a blowdryer for a couple seconds. Test curler before applying to lashes because you could burn yourself.
Apply mascara Place the wand of your mascara brush at the bottom of lashes and wiggle back and forth. Follow with another few sweeps of the wand. Apply to bottom lashes as well. See How to apply mascara for step-by-step instruction and extra tips.
What You Need
Concealer
Eyeshadow
Eyeliner
Mascara

The Trick to Making Your Eyes Look Bigger

Ever look at those pictures of celebrities before makeup and after? My favorite celebrity is Gwyneth Paltrow and I was thrilled one day to see her without makeup. Her eyes just disappeared. Yet in photos, she has luminous eyes. So what's the secret?

There are actually several. To get huge eyes try these tricks:


Curl EyelashesIf you don't have naturally long, perfect eyelashes, curling them before applying This is a link mascara will really open up your eyes. You can actually curl lashes AFTER mascara is applied, as long as your mascara is dried (a good tip to know if you want to curl your lashes later in the day without removing your mascara). I usually blast the eyelash curler for 3 seconds with a hair dryer for extra staying power. Just test the metal to ensure it's not too hot before you clamp down on your upper lash.
What to Do With the Bottom Lashes?Many makeup experts avoid mascara on the lower lashes because they believe it actually closes up the eyes. This is true for some women, but for others, mascara and eyeliner on the lower lashes can make a dramatic difference. Try it out for yourself and see if you like it.

To apply mascara on lower lashes, hold the brush vertically, then sweep it back and forth. If you wear eyeliner on the lower lashes, try a pencil eyeliner, which tends to be softer. Then smudge the line with your finger so it looks more natural than a straight line.

See my lists of the best mascaras and eyeliners.
Don't Be Afraid of False EyelashesIndividual false lashes are exotic, gorgeous and can look natural if applied correctly. Large cities offer "lash bars" in the hottest department stores. (Henri Bendel, Bergdorfs and more, for example) but I expect the counters at most department stores will have experts in false lashes. Ask at yours.

Don't want to go to department store? Drugstores carry false eyelashes. If they're too long, you can trim them with scissors.

See How to apply false eyelashes.
Why White Shadow is the Makeup Artist's SecretWhen I go out for the evening, I always put a bit of light eyeshadow right at the inside ridge of my eye, where the upper lid meets the bottom lid, near the tear duct. It's amazing how that bit of white brightens my eyes and makes them look whiter. This is a old beauty secret of makeup artists and if you look closely at photos of celebrities on red carpets you can see that tell-tale white in the inside corner of their eyes.

For a doe-eyed, seductive look, makeup artist Paul Starr suggests in Harper's Bazaar that you try lining your lower lids with a creamy white eye pencil.
Yves Saint Laurent's Touche Eclat: Another Makeup Artist SecretA few years ago when everyone was going ga-ga for Yves Saint Laurent's Touche Eclat calling it the "best concealer ever," I bought it thinking I'd use it to conceal any spots on my face.

I hated it. It hardly concealed anything and I couldn't see what the big deal was. I went back to the store to return it when the women at the counter told me it's actually supposed to be used as ahighlighter, not a concealer. She did me up and I was blown away by how awake I looked. It's now a beauty staple in my arsenal and I use it every time I go out.

To use: Dot along the browbone just below the brow and blend in. You can also dot along the bottom of eye and even above the browbone. One trick with Touche Eclat is to fill in the shadows that naturally occur when you tuck your chin and look into the mirror. Tuck your chin, look into the mirror and swipe a line of Touch Eclat where the shadows lie. Blend the lines with a tip of the finger.
Keep Your Brows ManicuredYou'd be amazed at how manicured brows can transform your face. I've seen it happen with so many women. They think their brows are fine even though they never get them tweezed or waxed. Perhaps they're afraid of over-tweezing or they are unsure of what shape is right for their eyes. They don't realize how much better they could look until I convince them to get their brows done. Wow. It's perhaps my single most important advice to you: Get thee to a professional for waxing, tweezing or threading and then keep it up with touch-ups with your own tweezers by following the "map" they create.

Hair care

I have two favorite puffy eye remedies I like to use. The first is super simple. Just grab a cucumber out of the fridge, slice 2 slices off, lay back and put them on your eyes. Relax with them there for about twenty minutes. This only works if your cukes are cold, because the cold reduces swelling. It's just a kinder application than an actual ice cube to the eye. The other trick I use gives the eyes a nice pick me up. Make a cup of peppermint tea using two tea bags. Set your tea bags to the side and drink your tea. As soon as you are done with your cup of tea place the bags on your eyes and lay back and relax. The tea will smooth out your under eye skin while the peppermint wakes you up, making you truly bright eyed.
Use lemon juice to fade age spots. It works, I've even used it on some of my more prominent freckles. Use fresh lemon juice twice a day on your age spots and within a couple months you will notice a huge different. Lemon helps bleach out this skin, in a way, and it's also a natural astringent so it will help keep your skin clean and tight.
You wear your skin everyday and you can't hide it all, so why not protect it. Make your face something worth looking at for years to come by using the tips I've shared here.

Fresh face

Let's start with the great trick that helps get rid of your pimple. Dab some toothpaste on your pimple to help dry it out. Don't pop your pimples. This just spreads them around the area and will make you break out even more. Use the toothpaste trick over night. Dab some on, let it dry, go to sleep, clean it off in the morning. It won't miraculously make your pimple go away but it will help it dry out and heal faster. If you are regularly prone to acne you can mix some Tea Tree oil in with your cleanser when you wash your face to help battle future breakouts.

If you suffer from dry lips, that often get painful cracks, and you find that your usual brand of lip balm isn't working there is relief. Try castor oil. This old school oil will give your lips instant and lasting relief. You can apply it right out of the bottle to your lips simple using a q-tip. I love this during the winter, it keeps my lips shiny and moistened and it keeps me from licking my lips (which only makes them dryer).

If the rest of your face is dry then look in your refrigerator for an avocado. This fruit is perfection and is the best natural moisturizer out there. Cut the avocado in half and remove the pit. Scoop the meat of the fruit into a bowl and mash it to a paste. Smear the paste on your face and let it sit for five to seven minuted, then rinse. You can also make it penetrate deeper by massaging the avocado paste in with the avocado pit itself.

I have two favorite puffy eye remedies I like to use. The first is super simple. Just grab a cucumber out of the fridge, slice 2 slices off, lay back and put them on your eyes. Relax with them there for about twenty minutes. This only works if your cukes are cold, because the cold reduces swelling. It's just a kinder application than an actual ice cube to the eye. The other trick I use gives the eyes a nice pick me up. Make a cup of peppermint tea using two tea bags. Set your tea bags to the side and drink your tea. As soon as you are done with your cup of tea place the bags on your eyes and lay back and relax. The tea will smooth out your under eye skin while the peppermint wakes you up, making you truly bright eye

Use lemon juice to fade age spots. It works, I've even used it on some of my more prominent freckles. Use fresh lemon juice twice a day on your age spots and within a couple months you will notice a huge different. Lemon helps bleach out this skin, in a way, and it's also a natural astringent so it will help keep your skin clean and tight.

You wear your skin everyday and you can't hide it all, so why not protect it. Make your face something worth looking at for years to come by using the tips I've shared here.

Asian Bridal Makeup

Asian skin tone is markedly different from its European counterpart. Look graceful and elegant on your wedding day by following the Asian bridal make up tips given below. Enhance the beauty of your facial features and be admired for that perfect, immaculate look on your wedding day.

Tips on Asian Bridal Makeup
Use corrective make up on your face to hide all flaws and imperfections.
Shape or pluck your eyebrows at least a week in advance of your wedding.
Treat yourself to home facials a month in advance of your wedding to prevent those acne break outs.
Cleanse, moisturize and tone your skin before applying the make up.
Choose a foundation that is compatible with your skin tone. You can also mix and math different shades of foundation for getting the desired shade.
You can use a matching concealer to conceal dark circles and eye bags.
Dab your skin with an ice soaked sponge for that perfect look.
Eye shadows in gold, red or turquoise blue are preferred. Blend it into your skin.
You can use different shades of eye shadow for the eyelids and eye brows.
Waterproof mascara is best for the wedding day.
Use dark lipsticks for full lips. Lighter shades look good on thin lips.
Press your lips with a tissue paper to remove excess lipstick.
Remember to line your lips with a matching lip liner to prevent the lip color from smudging.
You can use a good eyelash curler on your eye lashes for that enchanted look.

Follow the above mentioned Asian bridal make up tips for that chic, glamorous look that will draw admiring glances.