How to maintain your summer tan

Summer is my favorite time of the year and i do love a good natural tan. I'll lay hours on the beach or in my backyard to achieve the perfect tan. When you're home from vacation or the sunny times in your backyard are over you desperately want to keep the nice tan as long as possible. It will share a few of the things i do to maintain my summer tan as long as possible.

How to do a winged eyeliner

Winged eyeliner is a challenge everybody seems to face. There is nothing more annoying than spending ages on redoing your flick or trying to match both sides. I do struggle with it everytime i try to do a winged eyeliner, but one technique helped me to downsize the amount of time i spend on doing a decent eyeliner.

You can use this technique with any type of eyeliner. Eyeshadow or gel liners are probably the best ones to use but it works with an eyeliner pen too.

So first you draw a line in your mind from the end of your eyebrow to the outer corner of your eye. Then you place your brush/pen on the line at the point you want your eyeliner flick to end and then draw the line down to the outer corner of your eye.

I like to do this on the other eye right afterwards and compare the two to make sure they are similar.

Now you can do your eyeliner line along your lashline until you reach the outer corner of your eye.

Last but not least you connect the two lines and you can make the part between the beginning of your flick and the line along your lashline as thin or as thick as you want. Depending on the look you are going for.

This technique took my eyeliner flicking (is that even a word?) from over 30 minute application and a lot of correcting and removing to a maximum of 15 minutes and a perfect result.

Do you have any tips on applying winged eyeliner?

How to clean your brushes

I watched a ton of videos and read a lot of blogposts about how you should clean your brushes and i finally established a brush cleaning routine i am nearly satisfied with. I am not an expert or anything and there are a lot of products and a lot of ways to clean your brushes, but i thought i will share my way. 

THE ACTUAL CLEANING PART

Cleaning your brushes is very important, because they will last longer and look and feel good longer, if you clean them correctly. Moreover it prevents your skin from breakouts caued by old makeup on your brushes.

Firstly i wet my dirty brushes (clean only the dirty brushes, not the ones you didn't use) with warm or cold water. You don't want to use hot water, because that can destroy the brush's hair. Another important thing is to hold your brushes with the bristels pointing down so no water gets into the binding and destroys the glue.

Next i put a bit of my shampoo on my palm or what i prefer on the pink rubber pad i have (more about this thing later) and swirl the brush until it's clean. Rinse them in water until the shampoo is gone and squeeze them gently with a towel afterwards to remove excess water.

FREQUENCY

How often you should clean your brushes depends on how often and how much you use them. If you use the brushes for your everyday makeup, doing a deep cleaning once a week should be enough. You can use brush cleaners (f. e. from MAC) to quickly clean your brushes, during makeup application to be able to use them immidiatly again. Nevertheless your brushes need a deep cleanse once in a while.

LET THEM DRY

You don't want to place your brushes with the hair upwards, because the water will affect the glue (again :D). So i like to place them on a table or something with the brush part over the edge to help maintain the shape.

PRODUCTS I USE

I would recommend using shampoo, soap for sensitive skin (f. e. baby shampoo) or special brush cleaning products, because the brush bristels are sensitive and need to be handled with care.

You can clean the brushes on your palm or use a rubbery face cleansing pad (like i do). Mine is from ebelin (Germany), but any rubbery pad with little "bristels" (for peeling purposes) should work. (I recently found a similiar pad here) I like to use this pad, because it is way quicker than cleaning the brushes on your palm.

A TRICK HOW THEY STAY SOFT

 If you want your brushes to stay soft, you can use some conditioner now and then. It does not have to be any special conditioner, because it is just for soften the brushes (the conditioner should smell good though). My brushes see the conditioner not more than once a month, but it depends on how often you use and wash your brushes. So if you have the feeling they are getting a little bit hard and scratchy, just use a bit of conditioner after cleaning them the next time (make sure to rinse them in water afterwards).