Reader Question: Retinol in a Skincare Routine

Sometimes, I get interesting reader questions that are featured on my blog, because I think that the question might be relevant to my blog readers. While some of my older reader questions come from my Formspring page (which is still in use, although Formspring itself seems to be no longer as popular as it was), this one came to me via email.

I thought this question was worth featuring, because it is a good example of how a seemingly easy question asking for product recommendations actually begets a much longer answer - indeed, sometimes skincare is never that simple! The reader was asking for product recommendations for retinol products. However, when including retinol in a skincare routine, I'd advise some care as retinol can interact with your other skincare products. So while people tend to focus on product recommendations, I'd also advise ensuring that the products you pair your retinol with don't inadvertently counteract each other.

Retinol and some of its variants. (Source)

Question:
I was actually mailing to ask you for a product recommendation - since you're so good with ingredients. I'm looking to add retinol to my skincare routine and was wondering if you could suggest something that's not too strong. I haven't used any before.
At the moment I have a vitamin c serum and my usual Kiehl's moisturiser. Oh and there's some salicylic acid from Hope in a Jar Night. Thanks so much!"

Reader Question (and my Biggest Makeup Secret): Makeup for Hot Climates and Air-Conditioned Indoors

Now normally I don't import questions from my Formspring page onto my blog, but I thought this was a good question faced by a lot of readers, so I thought it deserved some cross-posting love! Also, I realized after I responded on Formspring that I still had a few things to add to the question, so I thought I'd add them here.

Question:
Just wanted to ask, what make up products do your normally use on a working day? (or which products do you rotate around with) I'm in a perpetual dilemma between the moisture sucking air-con and humid sunny Singapore weather:(

Answer:
Hi there, first off, I totally sympathize, as you're in the exact situation as me! Often we Singaporeans spend our days in air-conditioned offices, but still have to travel quite a bit in humid, sunny weather! It does make it trickier to find skincare and makeup products!

First off, I'll tackle the bit about humid sunny weather. Oil control is important over here, especially if you have oily skin. My favourite product for this is plain ol' silica powder spheres. It's just generic cosmetic grade silica powder, and it helps in oil control very well. The best thing about this is that it’s cheap and easily available – I got mine from Coastal Scents (you can probably get it from other cosmetics etailers and wholesalers as well), and a big bag cost me a few USD. If not, you can also get MUFE Microfinish HD Powder, since its just silica spheres as well, except that you'd be paying a lot more for a tinier amount (essentially you're paying retail price for a wholesale product). There are a few ways to wear this - some like to wear it as a finishing powder over makeup, and some (like me) mix it with a transparent powder for setting your makeup. I personally find it easier to use if I mix it with another powder, and buff in well. You'll have to play around a little to find out what works for you, application-wise, if you try this out.

I can't post pictures on my Formspring page, so I thought it would be cute if I interjected my Formspring response with a photo to show you just how much silica powder you can get in a bag. The last time I ordered silica powder spheres from Coastal Scents, I got 1 oz of powder, and it came in a huge bag! I had no idea that 1 oz of powder was THAT much! (The photo below is mine, but it came from my pre-blogging days so it isn't watermarked.) Best part was, I had to travel on an international flight soon, and I was worried that a customs official might open the bag and think I was trading crack or something, LOL. Fortunately all turned out well, and I brought my bag of powder back safely across continents.



So how long will that huge bag of powder last you? Well, it's been 3 years since I bought that bag of powder, and with daily use (and I do mean every single day - it's now a staple I can't do without), I've only used half of that bag. So there you go. That's my biggest makeup secret, and honestly the one thing that I think really helped my makeup stay on all day instead of melting off. It's not really a "secret" since silica powder has been around for awhile, but for me, it's really been a lifesaver. Before the advent of silica powder I had to touch up my makeup after lunch everyday, and at the end of the day. Now, I just put on my makeup once in the morning, and it lasts pretty much the way I did it until at night. It may not be for everyone, but for me it has worked wonders. But anyway. The fact I got that huge bag for like US$5 should make you enraged that MUFE is charging us so much more for so little powder...

Okay. But enough digressing. Back to the Formspring question.

Secondly, I still wear moisturizer. I know it sounds odd in Singapore, but just because your skin is sweating doesn't mean it's not dry, especially if you spend long hours indoors with air-con. So I still wear moisturizer everyday

My daily working routine consists of:
1. Pimple cream (cause you know, I still have spots although I'm working!)
2. Moisturizer (I use something light, The Body Shop’s Aloe Soothing Day Cream and Biotherm’s Aquasource Moisturizer for Oily Skin)
3. Sunscreen (I use Avene Very High Protection Spray with SPF 50+) (you guys will probably have read my Sunscreen Tips post)
4. Concealer ONLY where I need it (not too picky if it's just under eye, I use Laura Mercier, MAC or Kevyn Aucoin, but if I have spots I usually use Prescriptives or a brand that won't aggravate my skin further)
5. My finishing powder (silica powder + random loose face powder that is transluscent).

That's my "base" - after that I go on to apply blusher, lipgloss, eyeshadow etc if I feel like it. I don't know if this routine will work for you, but for me it works, because although the moisturizer and sunscreen can feel like a lot, once I add my finishing/silica powder it mattifies the skin while still feeling natural. Maybe you'll need to play around with a few products to see what works for you. I wish you good luck!

Reader Question: Tips for Cleaning Makeup Brushes

Brush cleaning is something every makeup fanatic (or makeup user, for that matter), has to know how to do. So since I got a question about how I clean my brushes on my Formspring page, I figure I might as well cross-post it to my blog, because, well, we all need to wash our brushes, don't we? :) I need to do some sort of actual brush-cleaning post with pictures one day, but for now, here's just the words with no pictures.

Q: How do you wash your makeup brushes? Thanks =D

In order to clean the brushes, you'll need a supply of water (I do this in my bathroom), some brush cleaner, and a bunch of paper towels (or a cloth towel), as well as a place to let your brushes air dry.

First, I wet the bristles of my brushes a bit, and then I apply a bit of brush cleaner to the bristles and sort of gently swirl the bristles around in the cleaner. If the brush is very dirty I also gently rub some cleaner into the bristles using my fingers. After that, I rinse the brush bristles to remove the cleaner and gunk, and then I very gently squeeze any excess water out of the bristles with my fingertips. Afterwards, I try to get my brush as dry as possible using the towel or paper towels. I usually do this by gently pressing the bristles against the towels, or by running the brush back and forth against the towels. It's important to try to get as much water out of the brushes before you leave them to air dry, so that the drying time is shorter. After I think I've gotten as much water out as I can, I leave them lying flat on a small towel in a well-ventilated place, and let them air dry. It usually takes about 2 days for the brushes to fully dry, although thick, synthetic brushes (e.g. like a synthetic kabuki) can take longer.

The entire process can be pretty laborious because you have to do it by hand, one brush at a time. Three very important tips I can give you for cleaning brushes are:

1. Use the right cleaner, not just any soap or detergent. You can get brush cleaner from most stores (I know MAC has one that's pretty good, and can be diluted with water when used to make it last longer), but if you don't use brush cleaner, it's OK too. The main thing is to make sure that whatever you're using isn't too harsh or drying on the bristles, especially if they are made of natural hair. If your bristles feel dry or scratchy after they have dried, you know the cleaner you've used is too harsh. I personally like to use my Biore makeup remover gel for washing my brushes, because it gets out all the gunk but doesn't dry the bristles out. Other alternatives to brush cleaner that are popular are baby shampoo, as well as Dr Bronner's Castille Soap. Some people also use handsoap, though once again I'd be careful to make sure that the handsoap you're using isn't too harsh on the bristles.

2. Be gentle. Be very, very gentle. Some brushes shed hair, or bleed dye when washed. That is normal, especially if it is the first couple of times you're washing the brush. Subsequently, hair should shed less, and dye bleeding should lessen also. However, you also want to be very gentle with your brushes when you wash and dry them, so you don't excerbate the shedding or bleeding.

3. When you wash your brushes, be very careful to only wet the bristles, and not the ferrule. The ferrule is the part which joins the bristles to the handle of the brush. Most brands just fix the ferrule with glue, which means that repeated wetting of the ferrule will eventually weaken the glue and cause your bristles to come loose. That's a scary thought, isn't it? So it's important to make sure that the ferrule doesn't get wet unnecessarily, and is thoroughly dried. I just make sure I wet the brush and stop before the ferrule, instead of drowning the entire head of the brush in water. And it's also important to get the brush as dry as possible before letting it air dry (hence the activity with the towels), and also, it's equally important that the brushes are left flat (as opposed to upright) to dry.

Well, those are my tips for brush cleaning, and I hope they help you!

Reader Question: Eyeliner for Asian/Partially Folded Eyes

When I put eyeliner on, when I hope my eyes the eyeliner disappears due to my weird eyelid/fold. Are there some other techniques or ways to make my eyes stand out?

(Now, I don't normally copy questions from my Formspring page over to my blog, but I thought this would be useful, as a lot of Asian eyes I come across seem to have this problem. Hope it helps someone!)

Welcome to the club! I know exactly what you mean, because that's what my eyes are like, too. Liner is fine on the lower lid, but not on the upper lid, because the upper lid is obscured by the flesh of the eyelid. It's actually quite common among Asians.

There are various ways you can make your eyes stand out, and generally, different people prefer different methods. If you still wish to use eyeliner, then the most common method to counter the "sleepy-looking" fold that obscures your lashline is to simply draw a thicker line. This ensures that even when your eyes are open, the liner doesn't disappear. A lot of girls I know do this, although I myself am not personally too keen on this for one reason: that if the lid is very heavy, then the line that you end up drawing can be really thick in order for the liner to show up even when your eyes are open. Another tip for eyeliner is to make the line thicker at the outer corner of your eye, and thinner towards the inner corners. This helps to leave some liner visible on the eye even when the lid is opened, without giving that "one fat line of eyelier" look. I guess whether thickening the eyeliner works for you or not would depend on how obscured your lashline is - if you don't have to draw a very thick line for it to be visible, this method would work for you. But if you're like me and the line needs to be a quarter of an inch thick before it's visible, then usually I would just skip lining the upper eye altogether.

If you skip lining the upper eye altogehter (as I often do), there are still other ways to bring out your eyes. For me, I find that lining the lower lashline really helps a lot, even if I don't line the upper lashline. And also mascara - this is a much overlooked tip, but curled lashes with a good mascara on really helps to make the eyes look bigger. Lastly, there is also eyeshadow to play around with to emphasize the eyes. Contouring your eyes with eyeshadow can subtly make them appear to have more dimension. I've actually done a series of posts on eyeshadow for various types of Asian eyes, although it's incomplete. I believe the first post is located here: http://musicalhouses.blogspot.com/2010/03/eyeshadow-tutorial-for-asian-eye-shapes.html

It can be pretty frustrating if liner doesn't seem to always work for you, but there's always other tools you can use. If you need examples of eye looks where the eye is brought out without the use of liner on the upper lid, feel free to look through my EOTDs on my blog - I don't think I've ever lined the upper eye in anyone of them, because lining the upper lid is so useless on my small puny obscured eye, LOL. But rest assured you're not the only one, and there are definitely still ways to make your eyes look good even if liner doesn't look good on your lids.

Ask me anything

Reader Question: do you know if storing nail polish in the fridge keeps it in better conditon?

(Normally I don't put my formspring answers up on my blog - instead they're usually up on my Twitter, Facebook, and of course my Formspring page, and I don't want to duplicate content too much. But I thought this question was interesting, so I just put it on my blog too, in case anyone else was wondering.)

I don't think it helps anything, because nail polish isn't like other cosmetics. Other cosmetics, especially creams or liquids, tend to go bad or go "off" after awhile because bacteria get into them and start multiplying there over time. This is why some people suggest putting some of your makeup in the fridge, because the cooler temperatures slow down bacterial activity (although it doesn't stop it complete, and it doesn't kill the bacteria inside). However, nail polish is different. The chemical composition of nail polish is such that it's a very unfriendly place for bacteria to live - in general, they just don't survive in the sea of chemicals found in our polish. So nail polish has very little bacteria compared to other cosmetics. So since there isn't much bacteria surviving in your nail polish, there really isn't any point putting it in the fridge, because nail polish doesn't go bad the way other cosmetics do. However, over long periods of time, the solvents in the polish will evaporate naturally, and the polish will thicken or dry up. This can be fixed by adding thinner to the polish. (A side note - it's thinner you want to add, NOT nail polish remover, which will mess up your polish!) I hope this helps you!

Ask me anything