forever young naturally beauty

Keeping your eyes closed and relaxed, lashes resting on cheeks, raise your eyebrows. If you find this difficult, rest your index finger lightly over the lashes. Hold for five, then lower the eyebrows slowly. Repeat 3 times. Lightly rest your index fingers horizontally across the under-eye area, above the cheeks. Try to lift the weight of the fingers by lifting the under-eye muscles without engaging other parts of the eye. Repeat three sets of five lifts.

Place the tips of your ring fingers between your eyebrows. Circle down the nose and out over the cheekbones. Sweep up to the temples and to the center of the forehead. Repeat, circling for 30 seconds. Take the eyebrows between thumbs and index fingers, starting in the center. Pinch and roll, moving toward the outer eye. Circle the temples with your ring fingers. Exerting a little pressure, open and close the eyes rapidly.

An expert brow beautician can take years off your look, adding lift and lightness to the eye area by judicious plucking and shaping. Book a sixmonthly appointment and ask for advice on keeping brows in check between times.

One of the most obvious tell-tale signs of aging is a “bleeding” of lip color into fine wrinkles around the mouth. Exercises and makeup know-how can help prevent or minimize this age-old giveaway.

Look for edible salves made from honey and nourishing food-quality organic oils and waxes and lipsticks colored with pigment from earth minerals rather than coal tar dyes. Try Dr. Hauschka, Aveda and Lavera, Jurlique, or Living Nature. Green People has created the first certified organic lipstick.

To prevent makeup from collecting in fine lines around the mouth, open your mouth and pull your lips over your teeth. Drop the bottom jaw, then lift several times. Release the lips, then puff out the skin around the cheeks and mouth before applying foundation or face powder.

Before applying lipstick apply foundation and a light dusting of face powder. Outline lips on your natural lip line (never outside) with a lip pencil that matches your lip color. Fill in with lipstick or gloss, blotting to remove excess color that might be prone to bleeding.

With lips and mouth closed, smile widely, hold, then pucker the lips. Holding the kiss shape, raise the top lip toward your nose. Hold. Keeping the same mouth shape, draw your lips in tightly around your teeth and hold. Repeat five times.

Dot a little lip gloss or a slightly darker shade of lip color in the center of your lower lip and blend outward for plumper-looking lips.

When skin on the lips becomes cracked, build more B vitamins into your diet in the form of green leafy vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and yeast extract.