We’ve all been there: the night before a party or a date, a bad blemish pops out of nowhere. You’ve over indulged or are sleep deprived and wake up with eyes the size of golf balls. There’s a big meeting coming up with plenty of handshakes required, and you don’t have time to fit in a manicure.
Beauty based emergencies, or “glamergencies,” happen to everyone. Here are my tricks for handling a few of the most common glamergencies:
Glamergency #1: A blemish crops up just before an important event.
Solution: Calamine lotion.
Most commonly used to relieve the itch of mosquito bites and rashes, calamine lotion is actually kind of a wonder product for blemishes. It helps to reduce the redness of a blemish, while drying the blemish out. Apply the calamine lotion to the blemish (or blemishes) with a Q-tip, and leave it on for a couple of hours before wiping the dried lotion away with a warm, damp wash cloth. If you have the time, you can also apply it to clean, moisturized skin before you go to bed and wash it off in the morning.
Be Aware: The astringent properties can be too much for dry skin. If your skin is very dry, applying a little tea tree oil to your blemishes might be a better option than calamine lotion.
Glamergency #2: You wake up with red, puffy eyes, and hiding them behind sunglasses just isn’t an option.
Solution: Chilled spoons.
Most people know that applying cucumber slices to red, puffy eye will reduce banish redness and take away the swelling, but sometimes, you just don’t have the veggie on hand. Take two spoons from the silverware drawer — the choice between teaspoons and tablespoons depends on the size of your eye orbits — and put them in the refrigerator for ten to fifteen minutes. Once they’re chilled, lie down and place the bowl of a spoon over each eye. Relax for about ten minutes, and then remove the spoons.
Be Aware: The first time you try this, leave your spoons in the fridge for less time rather than more and only leave them on for about five minutes. As a bonus, this trick also works to help ease a headache!
Glamergency #3: Your hands are ravaged from dry weather or constantly touching paper in your 9-to-5, and you don’t have time for a manicure.
Solution: Rubber gloves, hand lotion, and a sink full of dishes.
Doing dishes doesn’t really seem like a beauty fix, but trust me when I say that it is. There are few better strategies for hydrating dry hands than hand-washing a full sink of dishes. Slather your hands in your favorite lotion, pull a pair of rubber gloves on top, and immerse your gloved hands in hot water as you wash up a few dishes. Once your dishes are rinsed and drying, peel the gloves off and turn them inside out, rinse the insides of the gloves and leave them over the tap to dry, and either wipe off or massage in any lotion that hasn’t been absorbed during your housework-and-beauty treatment one-two combo.
Be Aware: Do not use scalding hot dishwater for this. You’ll spend more time with your hands out of the water, waiting for it to cool down, than you will helping the moisturizer sink in.
What about you, Lemonettes and Lemon Lads? Have you got any sure-fire tips and tricks for dealing with glamergencies? Share your #Glamergency411!
By
Alexandra
Love this post! Great recommendation on the gloves. A good idea for cracked feet: sleep with socks on while wearing something thick like cocoa butter