Greek Beauty Secret

July is the best month to go to Greece and that’s where I am taking you today. Greek beauty secrets go back centuries B.C. and looking at the picture and statues of all their goddesses you can see that they knew a thing or two about beauty. Greeks believe that their main secret of beauty AND longevity is olive oil. They sometimes call it “elixir of life” and with good reason: olive oil offers a lot of benefits for your hair, skin and nails. And the best thing about it is that it is 100% natural!

Olive Oil for Hair
Olive oil can be used as a deep conditioning hair treatment. It's great to use on damaged, colored or over processed hair and can really improve your hairs condition. To treat your hair to this deep conditioning simply massage olive oil on your scalp and through your hair. Leave it on your hair for around half an hour after covering your hair with a shower cap, cling film or plastic bag. Shampoo and style as normal.

Olive Oil for the Face
If you've been overexposed to the elements – sun, wind or cold temperatures – or whenever your skin seems extra dry simply massage a small amount of olive oil into your face and neck, using small circular motions.

Olive Oil for the Body
A simple but effective natural scrub can be made by mixing some olive oil with sugar and salt. It will leave your skin feeling silky soft.

Olive Oil for Cuticles & Nails
As a treat for your finger nails and cuticles soak them in a small bowl of warmed olive oil. Leave for just a few minutes to keep your nails in better condition and your cuticles softened pre-manicure.

Olive Oil for Hands & Feet
Anytime your hands feel particularly dry and in need of some tender loving care massage some olive oil into them before bed, put on white cotton gloves, and sleep with them on. Do the same with your feet, wearing socks to bed.

Olive Oil for Lips
A wonderful natural remedy for soothing dry, chapped lips is to dab them with a little olive oil. This is actually my personal routine when I am out of my regular lip balm.

Olive Oil as a Makeup Remover
Olive oil makes a great make up remover and is brilliant at removing even stubborn mascara.
You can read more information about olive oil and its benefits as well as Greece here: http://www.completely-crete.com/olive-oil-beauty-tips.html

Several European cosmetic companies produce excellent products with benefits of olive oil. One of them, Korres, based in Athens, Greece (surprise-surprise) creates products with a high concentration of quality natural botanicals while keeping harsh chemicals to a minimum and thus, it received a “Natural” classification from several beauty retailers.
Korres Olive and Rye Night Cream Korres Olive and Rye Night Cream This intense night is cream rich in vegetable oils that firm and restructure mature skin. Thanks to a special formulation technique, the cream gradually releases beneficial oily components and nourishes the skin all night long, increasing its elasticity and cohesion.



Korres Juniper and Olive Tree Shampoo is performing wonders for normal and dry hair. Olive oil ingredient in particular has great moisturizing and emollient properties and regenerates dull hair.

Another company that appreciates the benefits of what an olive can give us is L’Occitane. Based in France (Mediterranean region as well as Greece) where people have been growing olive trees for ages it also offers excellent products based on this ingredient:

LOccitane Olive Harvest Olive Face Scrub Mud

This Face Scrub Mud uses the exfoliating properties of crushed Olive pits to gently remove dead cells and balance the skin. Green clay absorbs excess oil as Shea Butter soothes, softens and protects the skin.
Another thing that I like about these products is that they are relatively inexpensive but in any case no one likes to pay full price so here is how to save even more:
, where you can get all these wonderful products has several fantastic promotions going on right now:
1. Save 20% IN JULY: code JULY20
2. Save 10% EVERY DAY: code SSM18447 (NO expiration, codes 1 and 2 cannot be combined, unfortunately)
3. FREE shipment on orders $49+ (NO expiration)
4. They send you FREE product samples with every shipment
5. You can join Skinstore rewards program for FREE and earn1 point for each 1 USD spent (excluding tax and shipment). Each 300 points earn you a 30 USD Rewards Certificate!

P.S. The photo on the top is from www.completely-crete.com

Bulgarian Beauty Secret

Today I am taking you on a trip to Bulgaria. It is a wonderful little country in South East Europe nestled between Balkan Mountains and the Black Sea. June is the best month to discover and enjoy the Bulgarian beauty secret because it is ROSE. Bulgaria is famous for its Rose Valley which produces tons of precious flowers each year which are used by most cosmetics companies in the world in the form of rose oil added to everything from creams to perfumes.

But my personal favorite is Rose WATER. It is a 100% pure and natural product produced by steam-distillation of fresh rose blossoms. Pure rose water contains no additives, preservatives or synthetic ingredients. Very often a manufacturer says on a label that a product contains “rose essence”, this is not what I am talking about, it’s a fake, it doesn’t have the same beauty and therapeutic properties. Real, pure rose water contains nothing but rose water itself and it is produced locally, in Bulgaria, from the flowers that have just been picked.

Rose water is an excellent product for skin: it hydrates, tones, calms, stimulates regeneration process, maintains PH-balance and has anti-inflammatory properties. It also has an absolutely divine smell of fresh roses and can be used in aromatherapy. I use it as my daily face toner and I have never found a better product. I have been using it for years since it was a very popular product in the former USSR due its close ties with Bulgaria.

I buy my rose water from a family-owned Bulgarian company, Alteya, and I chose them because they are vertically integrated: they own rose fields in the Rose Valley, their manufacturing and packaging facility is right there, on the spot and thus, they guarantee the purest and freshest ingredients. Moreover, their rose water is USDA certified Organic.

The World wouldn’t have known about wonderful Alteya products but for the Internet (you cannot find them in stores yet) and now you can indulge yourself and enjoy the best and oldest Bulgarian beauty secret:

Israel Beauty Secret - Part II

To continue on my previous story about Dead Sea beauty secrets ( http://beautymanual.blogspot.com/2009/05/israel-beauty-secret.html) I want to share with you another great find that I have recently discovered: Cleopatra's Choice website offers a variety of authentic Dead Sea products. The best part is that if you don’t know what product you need or have any sorts of doubts you can try 10 products for FREE!!! They kindly ask you to pay $4.99 for shipping but I think it’s fair enough.

Click on the link in the upper left hand corner of their main page and it will take you to the description of items they offer for FREE:
1. Mineral Lift Serum
2. Moisturizing Day Cream
3. Intensive Anti Wrinkle Cream
4. Night Renewal Cream
5. Purifying Mud Mask
6. Mineral Eye Gel
7. Mineral Hand Cream
8. Mineral Body Lotion
9. Shea Body Butter
10. Deep Pore Mineral Cleanser

I was pleasantly surprised that all these didn’t come in tiny trial-size pouches that you can hardly open, and when you do it’s only enough for 1 use. These come in nice little jars and I used their eye gel, for instance, for nearly a week, day and night; hand and face creams last for about 3 -4 days, and the only one product that is for 1 time use is the body lotion (the body is big and the jar is small – you do the math)

My absolute favorites were Mineral Eye Gel and Mineral Hand Cream. The eye gel was soothing and refreshing and the hand cream made my hands wonderfully soft!

So when you choose the product YOU like you can order it risk-free.

Also their bath salts (authentic 100% natural Dead Sea salts) are FANTASTIC and CUSTOM-MADE: first you choose from 70 different scents (or choose un-scented), then you choose any of 13 colors available and, finally, you choose any size from 5 to 2400 LB! I’ve never seen such a huge selection of salts which come with all the beauty and therapeutic benefits that Dead Sea has to offer. These also come in samples: 2 OZ = 0.99 USD. You can try any combination of scents and colors.

How to save even more:
1. FREE shipping on orders $49+
2. Use discount coupon “beauty10” to get 10% OFF
3. They send 3 FREE samples with every purchase!

Learn to read your beauty products labels

I was reading my “Parents” magazine the other day and found a very interesting and useful insert: Burt’s Bees cosmetic company created a handy card that lists synthetic ingredients that cosmetic companies use in their products. It teaches you to read labels carefully and not to be tricked by a company which claims to have “natural” products but in fact uses synthetic ingredients. These are:

CLEANSERS:
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
Sodium Laureth Sulfate
Sodium Myreth Sulfate
PETROCHEMICALS:
Petrolatum
Mineral Oil
Paraffin
PRESERVATIVES:
Parabens
DMDM Hydantoin
CHEMICAL SUNSCREENS
Oxibenzone
Avobenzone
Octinoxate
MOISTURIZERS:
Propylene Glycol
Butylene Glycol
Polyisobutene

Background info on Burt’s Bees: Burt’s Bees produces affordable natural skin, hair and lips care products. They call themselves an "Earth Friendly, Natural Personal Care Company" and claim not to use synthetic ingredients in their products unless absolutely necessary (i.e. there is no natural substitute available). Their main ingredients are: beeswax, botanical and essential oils, herbs, flowers and minerals.

What I like about this company is that they are very open about the contents of their products: they give real percentages of natural ingredients in each products: for instance, they state that their Replenishing Lip Balm with Pomergranate Oil is 99.6% natural. Any other company would probably market itself as “100% Natural” without scruples and you wouldn’t even notice the difference (0.4% is nothing, really) but as a customer I appreciate the honesty. That’s why I like Burt’s Bees, in addition to the fact that most of their products are under $10!

How to save even more:
If you buy from
you get the following:
1. Free shipping on orders $50+
2. 20% OFF with coupon code 27164
3. You can CHOOSE 3 FREE samples with your order

What you probably didn't know about deodorant

I was reading news on CNN.com the other day when I came across a very interesting article about deodorants. CNN.com is the last place where I would be looking for beauty related articles and that’s why this piece seemed to be even more intriguing. Here are some facts I learnt from that article*:

“1. Be thankful for your foul body odor. According to anthropologist Louis Leakey, it might be responsible for early man's survival. Leakey's theory claims that most predators avoided feasting on humans because our body odor was "too repugnant."

2. Not only did the ancient Egyptians give us pyramids and flush toilets, they also pioneered the field of deodorants. Egyptians were the first to popularize the idea of applying scents to armpits, usually using cinnamon and other spices that wouldn't turn rancid in the heat.

3. The Roman poet Ovid preferred a more proactive solution. In Book III of the Art of Love, he cautions women against carrying goats under their arms.

4. Antiperspirants are classified as drugs by the FDA. Technically, they affect and/or alter your body's natural functions.

5. The first modern brand of antiperspirant, EverDry, hit drugstores in 1903. The original formula was so acidic that it regularly ate through clothing.

6. Of course, modern antiperspirants can also ruin your clothing. Aluminum chloride, the ingredient that blocks glandular openings and prevents sweating, is notorious for turning T-shirts yellow. So, blame your antiperspirant for your pit stains, not your body.

7. One thing modern antiperspirants don't do is cause degenerative diseases. Medical science has found no conclusive evidence that absorbing aluminum chloride through the skin can lead to memory loss or slurred speech.

8. Aoki, a Japanese company known for its menswear, has developed a deodorant suit that supposedly absorbs sweat and neutralizes odors all over the body.

9. But that's nothing! The greatest Japanese innovation in the fight against B.O. is Fuwarinka scented gum. The so-called "functional candy" contains aromatic compounds that cause your skin to release "Fresh Citrus" or "Fruity Rose" aromas for up to 6 hours after chewing.”

If Japanese innovations in this field are too advanced for you and regular deodorants seem to be too harsh here is a good natural aluminum-free solution :
Sold at at just $6(!) it is organic, has a great smell and portable (you can carry this small bottle in virtually any purse) I believe it’s a great alternative to conventional deodorants.

How to save even more:
1. offers FREE shipment on orders $49 and more
2. Use coupon code skmail20 to get 20% OFF

* You can read the full article at http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/05/06/mf.deodorant.fun.facts/index.html?iref=mpstoryview