Summer time means travel for many, and with airline baggage fees being through the roof, plus stringent TSA regulations, your packing game needs to be on point. Here are some tips that can help.
Know The Rules
Any liquids must be in a resealable container that is 3.4 ounces or less and all containers must fit in one clear, plastic, resealable 1-quart-sized bag. You will need to take this bag out of your carry-on luggage when passing through airport security. So either be super-efficient about packing all of your toiletries into one bag, or pay the fee and check a bag.
Get Creative
Many products can do double duty. For example, our Cosmopolitan Eye Shadow Palette can also serve as a highlighter (Angelic), blush (PS Pink) and contour (Kashmir). So you’ve really got four products in one small palette.
Sample or Travel Size
Sure our sample sizes are great for trying new shades on your skin, but they also make perfect travel companions. Five shades of eye shadow would take up quite a bit of room in your makeup bag. But you can pack lots of our little samples into a very small space, and not have to limit your color options. Also, our soap samples are perfect for those overnight stays where you don’t know what (if any) amenities will be available. And they’re great to take on camping trips.
Our shipping manager Karla got a nasty sunburn last year, and the only thing that soothed it was our Facial Toner. And personally, I can’t live without our Herbal Aftershave which I use to clean cuts and scrapes and any other malady I inevitably encounter while traveling. But why make room for bulky bottles, when you can use this trick instead: fill a small snack baggie with 10 cotton balls, and then pour in enough aftershave or toner to wet the cotton. Seal up the baggie and you’ve got a little first aid kit to go.
Have a favorite travel/packing tip? Share it with us!
So you may have noticed exfoliating shampoos popping up on your Insta feed or when you’re shopping on Amazon. Are we really exfoliating our hair now too?
Washing your hair less than daily has become a trend in recent years. As such, so has the use of oil-absorbing products like dry shampoos. Add in color processing hair on a regular basis and your scalp begins to have needs that traditional shampoos just can’t touch.
Exfoliating shampoos aren’t meant to scrub the hair shaft. They work on the scalp at the “root” of the problem. Ingredients such as sea salt, sugar, charcoal, corn meal, baking soda and fruit acids can break down the buildup on your scalp. This can help trigger new skin cell growth, clear away dead skin, and clean your hair follicles. A healthy scalp needs oxygen, moisture, vitamins and other nutrients to remain healthy. An added bonus? Scalp stimulation (exfoliation and massage) can increase healthy hair growth.
Do you often have a tight, itchy scalp? Do you have flakiness on your scalp, but know you don’t have dandruff? Then you may want to jump on this trend. How often should you use an exfoliating treatment? Up to once a week if you are a heavy product user and are starting to see signs of scalp stress (flakies). Monthly if you wash your hair more regularly and don’t often use lots of hair products.
Here are some recipes to try. You can either add each blend to your shampoo, or use the treatment alone before you shampoo.
Clarifying: 1 T. cornmeal, 3 drops peppermint essential oil
Gentle Scrub: 1 T. brown sugar, 1 tsp. olive oil
Cleansing Scrub: 1 T. apple cider vinegar, 1T. fine sea salt
Rub into your scalp vigorously but gently (as if you were exfoliating your face), then fully rinse and follow with conditioner.
Running from one place to another, whether in early mornings or long commutes, can be rough. Those solid fifteen minutes to an hour sitting on a train can become vital time to get yourself looking and feeling ready for your day. Applying makeup while on public transportation is nothing to be frowned upon or embarrassed about; rather, it can be seen as use of otherwise ‘dead’ time.
Now, there is an etiquette to doing your makeup without disrupting fellow commuters and avoid eye rolls. Here are some Honeybee approved etiquette guidelines to putting on your makeup on-the-go.
Don’t take up more than one seat. We all pay the same price for our cramped commute. Be courteous and limit yourself and your possessions to one seat. The new mother who has been up since 4 a.m. will thank you.
Don’t use strong smelling products. We understand you want to smell nice, but everyone in your train car may not want to smell like you too.
No plucking, clipping, or trimming. There is a fine line between beauty and personal upkeep. Plucking your eyebrows, clipping your nails, or trimming of any sort are habits better kept in your bathroom at home.
Don’t make putting on your makeup an excuse for taking a seat. Common courtesy and giving up your seat for someone else makes your far more beautiful that any amount of makeup can.
Keep it simple. Use multipurpose makeup. You shouldn’t be hauling your entire collection of makeup with you on your commute. Select a handful of quick and easy applicable products that can be used in multiple ways.
Our Honeybee Beauty Ambassador Erin Bell shares “Bathroom toilet paper or paper towels work as a great multitasker to simply blot skin anywhere from an oily t-zone to lips.” Also, speaking of multipurpose, she adds “Lipstick can be used as a last minute blush”.
Share these quick tips with a friend and have a less stressful on-the-go fix up!
Drinking water is so important to our health and wellbeing.
Water: we know we need to drink more of it, and we know it’s the healthiest drink around. Aside from keeping us hydrated, water aids in toxin removal, as well as regulating all of your major organs. It can also help benefit the biggest organ of the body: your skin. While water alone isn’t a treatment measure for skin disorders, getting enough of it on a regular basis can help keep your skin healthy overall. Consider the five major ways water is good for your skin.
1. Hydration to Prevent Skin Problems
Dehydration occurs when your body lacks the water it needs to function properly. According to the Mayo Clinic, your body is made up of about 60 percent of water. Still, you need to drink water in order to replenish lost fluids and to keep every part of your body hydrated. In fact, dehydration can also affect the skin by causing dryness, dullness, and even discoloration.
Coffee—although it contains water—has a diuretic effect which can lead to dehydration if you don’t drink enough plain water. Once you swap other fluids for water, you will likely start to see smoother, supple skin.
2. Increased Blood Flow for a Healthy Glow
In addition to hydrating your major organs, water can also help increase blood flow by removing toxins and helping to spread nutrients: this includes your skin. When you have better blood flow, your skin is more likely to exhibit that “healthy glow” everyone wishes for. In turn, this will also help aging skin look more youthful.
3. Reduced Thinness and Wrinkles
Dehydration coupled with decreased blood flow can also lead to a thin appearance of the skin. When your skin is less supple, it may be prone to more wrinkles. Furthermore, using water-based skincare products can absorb easily into the skin and make your skin look thicker.
4. Improved Skin Cell Turnover
Your skin is naturally evolving every day by shedding old cells and generating new ones. Unfortunately, this process isn’t always perfect. Oils can clog your pores and also trap old skin cells, leaving your skin with dry-looking patches. Drinking water can help improve skin cell turnover by promoting the right oil balance.
Improved skin cell turnover also leads to a correct moisture balance—overtime, you’ll experience softer, less oily skin overall.
5. May Alleviate Skin Discoloration
In most cases, skin discoloration is the result of either a disease of the skin or sun damage. While water can’t necessarily cure skin discoloration, the other benefits can lead to better skin tone. For example, consuming more water may decrease the prevalence of undereye circles and redness of the skin.
Bottom Line: Getting the Right Amount of Water
Drinking water can certainly offer many benefits to the skin, especially when compared with dehydrating beverages like sodas and sugary juices. However, the key to getting all of the benefits for your skin and other organs is to make sure you drink enough of it. The Mayo Clinic advises drinking a total of eight glasses of total fluids per day, at roughly 8 ounces each. You might need more than this on hot days or when you exercise. While other water-containing beverages can count towards your daily intake, swapping these with plain water will be the best plan for your skin.
You should also choose skincare products that contain water over synthetic substances. Water-based products are healthier for your skin, and they also tend to stay put without greasy side effects.
On the flipside, it’s also important that you don’t drink too much water. While the overconsumption of water is largely a rare occurrence, it tends to happen most often in athletes who drink too much water on a regular basis. As long as you are staying properly hydrated, drinking more than the recommended amount won’t do your body—or your skin—any good.
Resources:
Fetters, K.A. (2015, February 26). Does drinking water really give you glowing skin? Women’s Health Magazine
Mayo Clinic Staff. (2014, September 5). Water: How much should you drink every day? Retrieved from MayoClinic.org
The benefits of drinking water for your skin. (2016). Retrieved from UW Health
Water the magic drink: Learn how it helps glow your skin. (n.d.). Retrieved from Disabled World
Kristeen Cherney is a freelance health and lifestyle writer who focuses on preventive measures for a better quality of life. Cherney holds a BA in Communication, and is currently finishing her MA in English.
Since I just returned from a trip to the dermatologist to have a weird skin thingy looked at, I thought it might be a good time to talk about sun protection.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sun worshipper. But being naturally blonde and fair-skinned, I have to be careful. Back when I was a kid in the late 70s/early 80s, nobody cared about sunscreen. I remember my mom mixing baby oil with iodine and baking in the sun (and NEVER burning – she got the nice Italian skin; I got my father’s pale Irish skin). So all those times I burned and blistered at the pool are now coming back to haunt me. I fail to believe the hype that the sun is bad for you. Sun is the giver of life on this planet; I don’t think it will CAUSE cancer. But can UVA/UVB rays combined with all the other toxins we are now exposed to form a lethal cocktail forcing our cells to mutate? Possibly. For example, researchers at the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based nonprofit, released a report confirming nearly half of the 500 most popular sunscreen products actually increase the speed at which malignant cells develop and spread skin cancer because they contain vitamin A and its derivatives, retinol and retinyl palmitate. These substances have been known to be cancer causing and toxic for years by the FDA but they simply have not taken any action in notifying the public of the dangers.
Regardless what you believe, here are some facts about sunscreens (excerpt taken from the May 21 on line issue of SELF Magazine)
SPF stands for Sun Protection Factor. This factor is a measure of how much ultraviolet (or UV) radiation it takes to burn your skin when it’s unprotected compared to how much it takes to burn it when it’s slathered in sunscreen. The higher the SPF value of your sunscreen, the more protection it offers from sunburn.
Now, here’s the tricky part. Many people think that SPF relates to how much time you can spend in the sun. In other words, if you can stay in the sun for 30 minutes before burning and you wear a sunscreen with an SPF of 10, you should be able to stay in the sun for 30 x 10 = 300 minutes or 5 hours before burning. Right? Not quite. Lower SPF products don’t block out as much of the sun’s rays as higher SPF products. Also, if you are in the sun during peak hours, you will burn more quickly. And finally, lab testing shows that people don’t apply enough sunscreen to get the full SPF effect (you need to apply liberally!). So that SPF 10 product will likely only protect you for an hour (max!) – not the 5 hours that you would think.
SPF doesn’t just relate to the duration of sun exposure; it also relates to the intensity of sun exposure. Here are the two factors to keep in mind when thinking about SPF.
• Time is one factor that contributes to the total exposure level but it’s not the ONLY factor.
• The intensity of the UV radiation also impacts the amount. For example, one hour of sunlight at 9:00 in the morning is equivalent to 15 minutes of sunlight at 1:00 in the afternoon. So if you’re only looking at how long you’re out in the sun you might drastically underestimate how much sun exposure you’re really getting.
Bottom Line: Use a broad spectrum sunscreen (protects you from both UVA and UVB rays) with a minimum SPF 30. Additionally, the FDA recommends that you reapply every two hours (even if it’s a waterproof or sweatproof sunscreen) and limit time in the sun, especially between 10am and 2pm when the sun’s rays are the strongest.
Personally, I feel that when shopping for sunscreens be sure to read the labels and avoid buying sunscreens loaded with toxic chemicals. Look out for oxybenzone and retinyl palmitate. It may be tough to find but a trip to a natural health store can often do the trick. Look for sunscreens that contain zinc and titanium minerals as opposed to toxic chemicals as listed above. Avoid other potentially toxic things in your life (processed foods, chemically-laden body care and cleaning supplies, cigarettes, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and most plastics).
To be safe, check your skin frequently, looking for any new moles/skin growths, changes in any mole, any spot that continues to itch, crust or scab, or a sore that hasn’t healed for more than three weeks. If you’re not sure, get it checked. Better to be safe than sorry. Here’s to a fun and sunburn-free summer!
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Summer time means travel for many, and with airline baggage fees being through the roof, plus stringent TSA regulations, your packing game needs to be on point. Here are some tips that can help.
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