My Skincare Routine and Products

I love to keep care of my skin and as I do tend to wear makeup on a daily basis I think its very important to make sure I remove it properly to keep my skin healthy and able to breathe! 

Almost all the products I use are under £10 each so it's a pretty affordable routine, as a student I can't afford fancy products but these do the job for me so I don't even feel the need to pay more. 

The only product here which is over £10 is the Benefit Triple Performing Emulsion but this is my one luxury I do use and always tends to be on my birthday or christmas wish list. 

I have very combination skin, I get quite dry patches around my mouth and nose but then have an oily forehead and eyelids. I don't have very spot prone skin, but I do get the occasional spot. This should give you an idea if any of these products may work for you.

My Daily Skincare Routine

1. I use the Simple Eye Makeup Remover to remove my eye makeup first, it works great with heavy and waterproof makeup, as well as being super affordable.
2. I then use my No7 Cleansing Balm in Dry/Very Dry, I gently massage it in my face and a little down my neck. With a large cotton pad I wipe that off to get rid of the majority of my makeup. This product is super moisturising without being oily and having to wait for it to sink into the skin. Quite often at Boots you get £5 off No7 skincare products which makes this product under £5!
3. After that I tone my skin using either the Botanics All Bright Toner or LUSH Tea Tree Water, I love both these products that's why I like to use them both! With the Botanics toner I apply this onto a cotton pad and then wipe across the skin but with the LUSH toner I spray this directly to my face and then wipe off with a cotton pad. These get rid of those last bits of makeup and dirt on your skin.
4. To finish off I apply the Benefit Triple Performing Emulsion lightly onto my skin, this is super refreshing and sinks into the skin much quicker than many moisturisers I've used in the past. 

My Occasional Skincare Products

If I haven't got time for all of that, for example coming in after a night out, I will quickly use my Simple Cleansing Wipes to get rid of as much makeup as possible. Then usually in the morning I'll refresh my skin properly.

I forgot to photograph this product but whenever I have a shower, this is usually every other day, I use the Freederm Exfoliating Daily Wash. I don't feel the need to use it everyday as I luckily haven't got very spot prone skin, that's why I only use it in the shower, but it helps keep away any blackheads and spots that I do occasionally get from stress and hormones flying around! 

My Hair Over The Years

After several years of dying my hair, I have finally got it very close to all natural and back to a healthy state!

I've done a video talking about the products I have used to help the process which is at the bottom of this post.

So on here I've got pictures of all the different stages my hair has been through.

This is my hair before I had every dyed it, completely natural (apart form it being curled).

May 2010

Here is a picture of the first time I ever dyed my hair, I used a semi-permanent dark brown and then not long after I did the same but with a berry brown coloured dye.

June 2011

After a while the red had slightly stained my hair so I got highlights professionally which really lightened my hair, I did love this and even had it for prom!  

September - December 2011

After having relatively natural hair colours for a while I had wanted to go a bit more adventurous, so I went for a permanent bright red. It was so high maintenance, I had to dye it every few weeks or it would fade to an orangey pinky colour.

December 2011

I then let it fade out before I used ColourB4 to strip the red from my hair which left me with a nasty brassy colour with patches of blonde! I then used a semi-permanent brown similar to my natural colour to hide this. 

February 2012

Not long later I booked an appointment to get my hair permanently dyed to my natural colour, but ended up going a dark brown as my hair took the dye too well!

                                            

May 2012

The dip dye trend appeared and I loved it! So what did I do? I went ahead and did it with bleach and to top it off I added turquoise to it. I wish I could have kept this forever, but school didn't approve and it damaged my hair pretty badly.

July 2012 till now

 After so long of dying my hair, I finished off all my dying with a brown similar to my natural colour all over so my roots and ends were the same colour. 

Since then I haven't dyed my hair and it is all almost natural as I've just continued to get it cut every 7ish weeks and been using plenty of hair nourishing products. There is now just the smallest amount of the dark brown left on the ends which will hopefully all cut off by the end of this summer.

If you want to know the products I used to get my hair back into a natural healthy state, and also products I used to disguise the damage until it had gone please check out my youtube video below.