Random music quote of the day: Mariah Carey

“Baby I’m so into you. Darling, if you only knew all the things that flow through my mind…”

- Fantasy, Mariah Carey

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Happy Saturday y’alls!

Supernova

Holiday Glam: Nail Bling

Healthy, well manicured, buffed, natural nails are always in. Just tend to your cuticles with cuticle oil, vitamin E, almond oil or any such oil nightly and you are always set.

However if you choose to wear nail polish here are some looks to rock this holiday season:

1. French manicure. 
Year-round sophisticated chic

2.  Shimmer
This is grown up glimmer, not your 5-yo glitter-glue nail polish. Coat with a top coat to maintain frost/ shine.
If you choose to wear the more trendy glittery polish, keep your clothing simple and streamlined. 

3. Embellishments
Gems and nail art. Just keep it simple.
No need to have New Year’s fireworks on every nail, choose to highlight one nail on each hand, index or ring finger perhaps. Understated glam is sexy.

DO

- Keep nails a reasonable length.
Regardless of what you see on TV,  people in general, including men, don’t find claw-like nails attractive. 
Plus it screams ‘high-maintenance’.  

Keep nails short to medium length and  squoval (love child of an oval and and square) work best and put less pressure on nails as they require minimum filing when compared to pointy nails.
Shorter nails work well for dark colours. 

- Rock the season’s nail colours. They include: 

- Deep, richer hues of Red
- Black and look-like-black colours
- Metals – Gold, Silver, Champagne, grey
- Purples and Plums and 
- Rich ‘nudes’
- White on darker skin tones.

Candy coloured nails are so summer vacay.

- Maintain nails
If nail colour is chipped remove it and replace with a clear base coat, or rock natural until you can get to polishing them later.

- Maintain cuticles
As with natural nails, maintain cuticles by applying cuticle oil. Almond oil, vitamin E and olive oil all work equally well.
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If you bite your nails, just stop.

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Nail it!

POSSIBLY RELATED GC POSTS

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Holiday Glam: Hair Bling  

Premature aging

An atom contains electrons, and electrons need to be paired up for the atom to be considered stable.

A free radical is an unstable oxygen atom, one that contains an unpaired electron that is looking for another suitable electron with which it can form a pair. As such the unstable oxygen atom attacks healthy cells, causing damage to the skin, that results in premature aging.

I understand what you are thinking “Okay… THIS is getting technical”

 

So lets put it in terms that we can ALL understand shall we? One word – Relationships.
A celebrity couple comes to mind here, but I’ll keep it generic. 

You know when there is a cute, affectionate, have-it-all couple thats just going about enjoying life and each other in HappyCouple Land – we will refer to this couple as ‘stable couple‘. Then comes along a single wild child looking for something, someone, anything really to complete them. We will refer to this being as ‘unstable being‘.

‘Unstable being‘ buzzes around and eventually attaches him/herself to one half of ‘stable couple‘ and three doesn’t make pleasant company. So what happens?

At some point ‘stable couple‘ becomes ‘not-so-stable’ couple, and ‘unstable being‘ now becomes stable when it pairs itself with half of ‘stable couple‘, leaving the next half of ‘stable couple‘, unstable in HappyCouple Land. Now everyone’s lives in HappyCouple Land is now put under strain because noone knows what the hell to do with this new unstable being in HappyCouple Land.

Well free radicals act in the same way where
Free Radical  (unstable oxygen atom) = Unstable being
Stable Atom = Stable couple
Healthy Skin = Happy Couple Land 

Still confused? Okay.

It’s like a when a someone takes your partner and you didn’t see it coming. The same partner that you invested the past few years with and then comes along someone with squat to offer and *snap* s/he’s outta there.  You are left in total bewilderment, and then you start thinking irrationally. The ‘someone’ who took your partner is considered to be the free radical.

So back to the first sentence, a free radical is an unstable oxygen atom, one that contains an unpaired electron that is looking for another suitable electron with which it can form a pair. As such the unstable oxygen atom attacks healthy cells, causing damage to the skin, that results in premature aging. Clearer?  

Thought so

The following are considered free radical agents, things that prematurely age skin.

Environmental Pollution
Air pollution can not only rob the skin of important vitamins (like not allowing skin to create enough Vitamin D) but it can also disallow skin to breathe and function properly

Smoking
- Increase wrinkles by 82%
One pull on the cigarette produces 1 billion free radicals. *side eye*

Stress
One of the chief contributors to an increased population of free radicals, it triggers and/or aggravates skin conditions. 

Ultraviolet Rays
UVRS cause a splurge of free radicals on skin. This breaks down elastin, a protein in the skin that gives it elasticity, turning it into something similar to a dried out rubber band. This effect of free-radicals can make you appear much older than your actual age.

Hormones
From young adult hood, to pregnancy to menopause… hormones are everywhere 

Diet
Alcohol, caffeine and high fat foods are key offenders 

Medication
Can cause photosensitivity, making skin more susceptible to sun burn, as well as triggering other skin conditions like acne.

Extreme climate conditions
Cold, Wind, Snow, Heat. 

 

Huh.

Supernova 

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