Wine, Cupcakes and Make-Up – The Perfect Girly Night!

 Thursday 17^th May was the launch of our new skincare make-up range Jane Iredale

Our event ran from 1pm till 8pm for specially invited clients currently using our bareMinerals make-up, as well as well as some mineral make-up newbies! 

Jane Iredale make-up artist Stacey carried out VIP appointments throughout the afternoon.  During these one-to-one sessions our clients were introduced to the Jane Iredale range and its benefits.   Stacey created a full make-up to suit each individual client.

Kate Tugwell, who attended a VIP consultation, had this to say:

“I wasn’t convinced I’d like Jane Iredale but thought that I’d give it a chance as I love Environ products and what they have done for my skin. Having tried many different products over the years to cover my Rosacea, I didn’t think anyone would shift me away from my Estee Lauder Double Wear Foundation - but I love the coverage and natural look the mineral base gives, and even a heated Zumba class didn’t shift it! It feels like I’m not wearing any make-up and the colours are lovely!”

In the evening we held two group sessions where Stacey created a make-up on each of our models (many thanks to Liz Cash and Nadine McKellar for agreeing to be our models). During the demonstration Stacey explained the differences between mineral make-up and conventional make-up.

Traditional make-ups contain fillers like talc, which has a chemical structure closest to asbestos! It is drying to the skin, accentuates fine lines and pores and is what leads to make-up creping.  Other make-up brands also contain synthetic dyes and fragrances which can cause sensitivity and allergies.  Jane Iredale contains 100% pure minerals and the products are oil free, don’t contain synthetic chemicals, are weightless, long lasting and have a natural SPF together with UVA medium protection.

Visit our Facebook page to see photos of Stacey at work on our gorgeous models. 

Jane Iredale offers an array of products and a great choice of colours.  As Stacey created the look for each of our models she gave some great tips and advice on application.

“Stacey was extremely professional and the information she gave was interesting and easy to understand. It was a great evening and I picked up some good tips. I’ve tried other mineral make-ups but Jane Iredale products seem really different. They’re good quality and would last a long time. The group events are a brilliant idea and I’m going to book in to one with a group of my friend,” said Joanne Moxon, who attended the event. 

The night was a great success and we’re really excited about being able to offer Jane Iredale products to our clients. It is the final step in our Feed, Fortify, Finish concept and completes our skincare programme. 

As with our Skin Analysis events, we’re planning to hold regular Jane Iredale events in the future and as there’s been huge interest in these before as well as on the night, we suggest you book early. And who knows, Zoe may even bake some more fantastic 24-carat gold dust Jane Iredale cupcakes for next time!

Check out the events page on our website for future events or Like our Facebook page to keep      up-to-date with what’s going on at Euphoric. 

Vitamin A - Skincare’s Best Kept Secret

“Every person in the world should use Vitamin A on their skin every single day” says Dr Des Fernandes, the sixth top plastic surgeon in the world, creator of the scarless facelift and creator of Environ skincare.

Here are some milestones in the world of Vitamin A:

1954 - The first time a wrinkle was removed with Vitamin A (in its storage form - the cosmetic version). It was ignored!!!

1985 - The first time a wrinkle was reduced by retinoic acid (medical version). The world press exploded with news of the breakthrough.

1959 - Solar Keratosis was treated with retinoic acid. The medical world ignored the evidence that photo ageing was treated.

1976 - The first time Dr Des Fernandes used retinoic acid for acne and scars. He noticed patients got beautiful skin.

1985/86 - The first time Des read that enzymes changed the cosmetic version of Vitamin A to the medical version (the version that works on DNA). Our skin is doing this constantly.

1988 - The first time a cosmetic product was used for photo ageing. Vitamin A had been in creams previously but not at a concentration that gives results.

Environ was born!

So let’s look at what Environ actually is.

Environ is a cosmaceutical product range. Cosmaceutical products contain the most active ingredients you can get before crossing into the world of pharmaceuticals and prescriptions.  Environ is based mainly on Vitamin A with vitamins C, E and a powerful collection of antioxidants.

What’s so special about Vitamin A and why do you hear us constantly extolling its virtues?

This important vitamin is the central driving factor in the development of normal, healthy human tissue including our skin, literally from conception to death. We are made of Vitamin A and so we can’t be allergic to it.

Environ products replace the vitamins we lose in our skin daily, predominantly Vitamin A. Known as “the skin vitamin”, it influences some 350 genes that perform an important function in skin health, including the ones that increase cell turnover, improve collagen production and normalise melanocytes (the cells that produce the pigment melanin).

Here’s the science bit:

The benefits of Vitamin A

What it does                                                                      How it does it

Creates an overall healthy skin                                     Repairs the DNA of Keratinocyte cells

Naturally exfoliates                                                       Stimulates cell turnover

Protects and smoothes                                                  Compacts the horny layer

Plumps                                                                           Thickens the spiny layer of the epidermis

Feeds the skin, bringing nutrients to the area              Stimulates blood circulation

Helps with both dry and oily skin                                  Normalises the sebaceous glands

Stimulates collagen and elastin production                  Stimulates the fibroblasts

Locks in moisture                                                           Stimulates Glycosaminoglycans

Improves skin immunity                                                Protects and gives potency to the Langerhans cell

Improves pigmentation                                                  Repairs the DNA of the melanocytes

More about our friend Vitamin A

Vitamin A also has a natural protection against UV rays, which I’ll talk about more in my sun safe blog.

When skin is deficient in Vitamin A it becomes wrinkled, dull, dry and develops pigmentation. Skin products address these deficiencies and make skin act and look younger.  

Skin cells are hard to penetrate, but they’re naturally primed to receive Vitamin A. Vitamin A gains direct access into cells via gates on the cell walls called retinoid receptors. With increased use these gates grow in number.   

Few mainstream skincare brands feature Vitamin A as their main ingredient. Most Vitamin A is only available on prescription, as highly active forms can be irritating and must be used under supervision. Vitamin A is also expensive and unstable and therefore must be carefully packaged to prevent it from degrading. Therefore this amazing skin vitamin doesn’t fit the bill for your average slap-it-on moisturiser! 

A few of the creams you might have heard of which contain Vitamin A are ROC and Boots No7 Protect and Perfect. So what are the benefits of Environ over these other product ranges?

Environ is the only product range  offering a step-up process; starting on a low dose, less active forms of Vitamin A and building up. Most products contain retinyl palmitate and retinyl acetate, fat soluble forms of vitamin A. Retinyl palmitate is the least irritating as 80% of Vitamin A in our bodies is in this form. 

Environ products can only be purchased in salons or where advice can be given with the purchase.  Products contain the maximum permissible level of Vitamin A in a cosmetic product and are produced under a red light, as white light degenerates vitamins. They’re also vacuum-packed to prevent oxidation. Remember we're made of vitamins too, degenerating under the very same conditions every single day! Check out my blog on salon treatments which could be doing you more harm than good.

And remember no cream can do everything. It must be used as part of a regular regime along with healthy eating and regular salon treatments to really see a difference. 

It’s hard to address a vitamin A deficiency purely through topical application (which means applied to the skin). Topically, work up in levels while internally introduce high levels of Vitamin A immediately. Cells absorb all types of Vitamin A when taken orally (more to come on supplementing in my blog on beauty food).

So what does all this mean? It makes sense to take an all-round approach to skin care to make the most of your skin, after all it’s your body’s largest organ:

·         Feed the skin internally to get maximum doses of Vitamin A immediately, supported by other vitamins and minerals

·         Strengthen your skin with topical application of Vitamin A along with other vitamins and antioxidants

·         Protect your skin with a mineral make-up to give natural UVA and UVB protection

Vitamin A is still the only molecule we know that is anti-ageing; nothing else does what Vitamin A does.

Protect and replenish to slow down photo-ageing.

Professional Development

At Euphoric, two words featuring highly in our company ethos are knowledge and training. Our industry is constantly changing and developing and we need to keep up with current trends and changing ideas. We also want to continue to be experts in our field so we can give you the best treatments with the best results.  

So it’s pouring with rain and I’m sat on a crowded train on my way to London and it’s not even 7:00am yet! Such is my dedication to my industry that I’ve joined the world of the commuters to make the journey to Brent Cross to repeat my Environ training. I find myself one of them, being carried along with the flow, rushing through the station, squeezing on to the Tube with my face pushed into the armpit of the stranger in front of me! I quite enjoy the whole experience of being a busy Londoner (not the armpit experience, naturally) for a few days but I couldn’t do it every day.

Most of the girls in the group are totally new to Environ but having worked with the products for so long, I feel the trainer’s eyes looking in my direction, expecting me to know all the answers!! I found that although a lot has changed since I did my initial training eight years ago, I’m surprised at how much I actually do know and remember. 

Over the last few weeks my team and I have attended a number of training courses and seminars. The introduction of the Jane Iredale mineral skin care make-up meant a two-day training course which I completed at the beginning of April. No longer is my knowledge of the products limited to “It’s liquid minerals in an anti-ageing serum”. If you ask me now what’s so special about Jane Iredale make-up, I’m able to reel off the ten USP’s along with other specialist knowledge I gained over my two-day course. And believe me, I’m really impressed with the whole range.

And then there was the amazing seminar with Des Fernandes, creator of the Environ advanced cosmeceutical skin care range, and a real inspiration for those of us who are passionate about skin.  I wished I could have taken a memory stick along and plugged it into his brain to extract all his knowledge. Such expertise takes years to accomplish so I strive to read as much as I can, attend as many courses as possible and build my knowledge through training and hands-on experience.

There’s always more to learn, but I enjoy working on it as I love developing and expanding my knowledge base. 

After all, my clients deserve the very best – don’t you?!

You Skin - A Lifetime Investment

Welcome to the first of my skin blogs.  As many of you are already aware skin is my passion! I wanted to share some of the knowledge I have gained through extensive seminars and training courses and now I have found a way. 

At Euphoric we specialise in skin care, striving to provide our clients with professional, results-driven beauty solutions so that you can look and feel your best. 

This first blog looks at why we should care for our skin and will be followed by other skin related topics such as skin and the sun, nutrition and its importance for the skin, teenage skin and specific concerns such as pigmentation and rosacea. 

I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I am going to enjoy writing them!

Zoe Clark

Director - Euphoric

Your Skin  

A Lifetime Investment

Your skin is the first thing people notice after your eyes so it is important to be aware of the right way to care for it.  Unlike most items of clothing, you wear your skin every single day and will do for the rest of your life so surely you should invest in it?

Firstly some skin facts:

• ·         Your skin is the largest organ of your body and the most complex
• ·         It is a physical barrier and acts to keep things both in and out of the body!
• ·         It protects us from toxins, heat and cold
• ·         It is waterproof
• ·         It provides us with sensory information
• ·         It removes toxins

II   The skin is made up of two main layers, the Dermis and the Epidermis.  These layers  contain a  the skins cells - Keratinocytes (the growing cells of the skin), melanocytes (produce melanin, responsible for giving your skin it's colour), Langerhans cells (responsible for skin immunity) and Fibroblasts (produce collagen and elastin).

The most common skin concern for both men and women is photo-ageing.  Stress, pollution and sun are the three main reasons for dull, damaged skin.  One way or another your skin gets battered and, before you know it, premature ageing is staring you in the face!

Photo-ageing starts as early as  the teens with 80% of photo-damage already established by the age of 18.  Look carefully at the skin of the average person in their early twenties and you will see evidence of sun damage, the beginning of fine wrinkles around the eyes, freckles and clumping of the skin pigment. 

  

Of course some people have the worst skincare routine but still have good skin.  These are the lucky few, blessed with good genes.  For most of us though, as with many things in life, this is not the case.  You must make your own luck, or follow a great skincare routine with products and technology suited to the skins needs.   

But skincare is not just about looking better.  The world we live in is no longer the friendly place it once was.  Industrial waste has polluted the atmosphere and contaminants directly affect our skin.  The thinning of the ozone layer has subjected us to more intense ultra-violet irradiation and the corrosive effects of free radicals (unstable molecules which cause ageing by attacking cells).  

A delicate but amazingly efficient organ, the skin is our only protection against this hostile environment. 

There has been a frightening increase in skin cancer over the years so becoming sun savy is important now more than ever.  More information in my blog on sun and the skin

So what can we do about it?  By implementing a good skincare routine and protecting your skin daily you can protect it skin and achieve healthy skin for life.  

Environ is a pioneer in true skin care.  The creams are not just another product introduced to fool people into believing that they will look better.  They have been formulated with the current climatic condition in mind together with the increase in skin cancers and most importantly they work!

Watch out for my next blog – Vitamin A- Skincare’s Best Kept Secret