Trust us: despite everything the billion-dollar cosmetics giants like to tell us, making skincare and haircare couldn’t be easier. We aren’t exactly Nigella Lawson or Jamie Oliver. (Let alone a three-star Michelin chef – although Sarah’s a way better cook than Jo!) But there’s a simple truth: if you can make a salad dressing or brew a cup of tea – or melt chocolate in a double-boiler into a puddle of scrumptiousness – then the world of truly, totally, 100% natural cosmetics is wide open to you.
If you were to ask us one key piece of beauty advice, we would probably answer: massage your face. Once upon a time, we had a friend who was terrified to touch her face, in case she wrinkled it. Yet the opposite is more true: massaging your face – getting the lymph flowing and the circulation moving – is incredibly good for skin, delivering nutrients, boosting radiance and de-puffing, as the lymph drains away. It’s also fantastically de-stressing, especially massaging the cheek and jaw area where a lot of us unwittingly store tension.
Well, ‘Hi’. Hello, you pasty, maybe flabby limbs – which have probably been lurking under Wolford opaques since last autumn. It’s time to come out and play. To be shown off, in shorter skirts, Capris – maybe (if we’re really daring) shorts and a cossie.
If the thought of abandoning tights and trousers has you feeling low on the leg confidence-o-meter, though, we’re striding – literally – to the rescue. Because there are great cheats, on the leg front. And there are ways to shape up legs which don’t require a gym membership (or any great lifestyle changes, really).
We are the Queens of Clean – always have been – but we know many, many women who are so bored by cleansing that they skimp (and even occasionally skip) this important part of the anti-ageing ritual. You can spend hundreds of pounds on an anti-ageing cream (if you really must…) – but it’s money down the drain if you aren’t cleansing properly.
The reason is simple: unless you’ve got rid of the daily build-up of dead skin cells, your anti-ager is just going to sit there. Doing not very much at all. Quite expensively…