EYEING BEAUTY

If you wear contacts, avoid using lash lengtheners. If you are farsighted and wear glasses, the lenses will magnify your eyes, so avoid harsh lines and bright colours. On the other hand, lenses for near sighted eyes tend to make eyes look smaller. That’s where an eyeliner can be especially helpful to emphasize your eyes.

If you wear soft contact lenses, apply makeup after inserting them.  But if you wear hard lenses, put on your make up before inserting them. Use sponge tipped applicators, removing excess power flakes before applying. Avoid lash lentheners, they contain tiny lash-building fibers that can flake into your eyes and lodge underneath your lenses. If you wear hard or daily-wear soft lenses, remove your lenses before removing your makeup. If you wear extended lenses, avoid using water proof mascara, which requires oily removers.

Safeguarding Your Eye Makeup

A little eye makeup goes a long way, so it’s easy to keep it around for months, even years. But age can invite spoilage or contamination. Most of the time , the makeup has added preservatives to keep bacteria at bay. But preservatives can only go so far in protecting you. It’s the way cosmetics are used or stored that that causes most problems, like eye infections. Using the same applicator day after day reintroduces bacteria from your eye to the product.

Here are some Dos and Don’ts for safe eye dressing.

• Do wash your hands before applying makeup.
• Do use disposable eye shadow applicators, cotton swabs or washable sponge applicators.
• Do label shadows, pencils and mascara with the purchase dates and replace mascara every three and shadows and pencils every six months.
• Do discard eye makeup if it has an off colour or smell.
• Do keep cosmetic containers clean and covered.
• Don’t apply make up in a moving vehicle- you could inadvertently scratch your cornea and invite bacterial infection.

Don’t moisten mascara with saliva.

To be continued…