Are you applying your face cream properly?

Forgive me for asking, but I found out recently that I wasn't - after humph-knows-how-many years of slapping the stuff on. 

I have been one of those women who dots it on their forehead, cheeks, nose and throat and then blends it in - well apparently, if you do it this way, you can chronically underhydrate your skin. If you have dry skin, as I increasingly do, what you should do is apply a biggish blob to the palm of one hand, rub it between your palms and then rub your palms over your face, in an upward massaging motion. 

I've been doing this for about a week now and I must say I can see a difference. I am definitely using more product, even allowing for some excess soaking into the skin on my hands, and my skin is also definitely plumper and less dry, particularly in the morning. The cream also seems to settle in a thinner, more even layer, allowing you to apply more later if need be. 

Worth a try, anyhow, especially for those of us who are finding our skins changing and becoming dryer with age. 

Further to a piece I wrote a little while ago on eco-friendly beauty, I thought I'd share a few more budget - and natural - bathtime ideas.

The first is from my friend K in Cincinnati - sugar. I'd tried bath salts, of course, but had never thought about sugar, but she is right - it makes the most fantastic body scrub, especially if you mix it with some oil. Just pour about a teaspoon of oil into your hand, add about the same amount of sugar, mix it to a paste and bob's your uncle. No mess, no residue, clean drains. I've taken to keeping a vanilla pod in the jar too - scents the sugar wonderfully.

Another tip was one I read about many moons ago, back in the 1970s and was advice offered up by Marie Helvin - margarine. Before you gag, think about what margarine actually is - it's just oil hydrogenated into a solid form, which actually makes it a tad easier to use. Just keep a tub of it by the bath, grab a smallish handful and either drop it in the hot water or rub it over yourself like a cream as soon as you get in.

If you balk at margarine, why not just use oil? Rather than shelling out for expensive bath oil that you add to the water, I now get in the bath and quickly rub plain old grapeseed oil all over myself. (Don't add it to the water or it just forms clumps.) Grapeseed is high in natural collagen, which plumps up your skin, but it's a bit thin, so if you prefer something thicker, either mix in some olive oil or use sweet almond oil instead - particularly good for dry skin. I keep mine in an old massage oil container which is very pretty, and have added a bit of ylang-ylang and rosemary essential oils to it for a more fragrant experience. 

My latest bit of fun is a product I found at my local health store. I actually bought it to eat, but it also works well as a detoxifying bath - green clay. Just shake a bit into a bath until the water goes cloudy and you have the most gorgeous, silky-feeling water imaginable. You can also mix it to a paste and use it as a face or body mask.

I suppose everyone over a certain age already knows about oatmeal for the bath. It was all we had when we were kids. This is best used in a cloth bag or you end up with bits everywhere. Hang the bag under the hot tap while the water's running, and at the end, give it a squeeze - wonderful for dry or sore skin. This oatmeal specially made for the bath is from www.eatmoreoats.com. On a similar theme, powdered milk makes a very nice bath too and generally costs so little that you can use as much or as little as you like. 

Courtesy of Twiggy's book on style over 40 (see reviews section), I tried her idea for a honey and olive oil face mask, and very nice it is too. You have to warm them to mix them together, leave on for 10-15 minutes and simply wash away. 

Voila - a cheap, nice-smelling, totally eco bathtime.

And by the way, I found a great system for a natural deodorant - will post another time. 

Dr Debra Luftman and Dr Eva Ritvo are out and about plugging their new book: The Beauty Prescription (£13.99, McGraw-Hill). 

Luftman is a dermatologist while Ritvo is a psychologist, but as friends, comparing notes, they realised that their patients had many of the same body issues - low self-esteem, poor self-image etc. Luftman's clients were looking for external solutions to their problems, while Ritvo's were looking more inside themselves, but the two women decided they could come up with a 'beauty prescription' that would work for everybody.

"True beauty," says Luftman, "isn't about being physically perfect: it's about maximising your beauty potential. When you do this, people will subconsciously want to treat you better." 

At the core of the 'prescription' is what the women call the 'brain loop' - inner beauty, health, outer beauty, environment. 

* Inner beauty covers areas such as mental and emotional well-being, self-esteem, self-awareness and self-confidence.

* Health deals with taking care of your physical health through the right nutrition, sleep and leading a healthy lifestyle in general.

* Outer beauty covers maintaining your external looks such as make-up, hair, skincare etc.

* Environment deals with your surroundings and what feedback you get from them - home, work, relationships and friends.  

The trick, says Luftman, is to keep all areas of the loop flowing. "When someone says you look beautiful, you feel more beautiful," she says. "When you feel more beautiful, you start to look after yourself more. The better you feel and look, the more positive the response you get from your environment, the more people are attracted to you and the more confident you feel."

But although this can be a positive circle, she adds, when one area isn't working, you can also end up in the opposite - a circle of negativity.

The tips are pretty basic, but they include:

* Inner beauty: do voluntary work, value your relationships, practise self-affirmations.

* Health: exercise, eat properly, get enough sleep, have regular medical checkups.

* Outer beauty: see a (non-affiliated) make-up artist for some tips, develop a daily skincare regime, replace your makeup regularly, 'dress up'.

* Environment: spend time with people you like, avoid people you don't, do little things to cheer yourself up such as putting flowers on your desk. 

Well, basic they may be, and the doctors have come in for some criticism because of it, but I wonder how many of us actually do them?

Because I practise Buddhism (though I'm not a Buddhist) I learned a long time ago to write down five positive things at the end of every day. It sounds naff, but it does help you to focus on the good things in your life instead of the bad things, while is my tendency, being the depressive sort. I also put my health before everything these days because I have an auto-immune disease which would otherwise lay me flat (hence the downshift to the countryside instead of my former caffeine-fuelled life in London). How many of us go through our makeup drawer twice a year and chuck out everything that's past its sell-by? Most of us suffer a shot across the bows like conjunctivitis before we learn that lesson (yes, I do mean me...).

Lots of women never learn to put themselves first in anything, and then whinge like martyrs that their husbands and kids boss them about (as a non parent I see this all the time with mothers). But as they say in emergency services: put your own oxygen mask on first (ie: if you don't, you're no use to anybody else) and that's not a bad tip to carry through life.

However, it strikes me from this little list that the lesson some women never learn is to cut people out of their lives who aren't worthwhile, especially when it comes to men. How many women stay in relationships that are violent, or disrespectful? And realistically, how many men do this? How many women stay with an alcoholic husband? Nine out of ten, according to stats, while nine out of ten husbands leave an alcoholic wife - very interesting.

We're even worse when it comes to family, as if there was some reason to put up with people you wouldn't otherwise be friends with in a million years. And speaking of friends, how many of us have negative friends, who do nothing but suck the mental energy out of you and leave you feeling tired?

Probably owing to my dysfunctional family, I had a habit over the years of putting up with crappy friends myself. But I do notice, thank God, that as I get older, I'm more ruthless about cutting them off. My friend T put her finger on this exactly when she said: "I don't have time to spend time with the people I DO like. I'm sure as shit not going to spend time with people I DON'T..."

For more on The Beauty Prescription, including a longer list of tips, see this article in the Mail.  

Available at: Amazon.comAmazon.co.uk

Cult Beauty, a new beauty website and glossy magazine, is now online.

The site aims to be the online arbiter for the best cult hair, beauty and grooming products from around the world. In order to remain independent, it does not accept beauty advertising.

The website will champion cult products that each stand out as the 'hero' product in their respective fields - products will be sourced and suggested both by Cult Beauty's own experts and by users. In other words, it'll be the best place to find those one-off products that can't be sourced outside the major cities. This could be a godsend for people like me, who live 40 miles from the nearest beauty shop and have to order everything online.

"We want to do for beauty what Net-a-porter has done for fashion - bringing the once inaccessible, undiscovered and elite gems in beauty to everyone," said Jessica Moore, the firm's managing director.

To use Cult Beauty, just visit the site and register. It only takes a couple of minutes and you can then browse to your heart's content by new item, colour, type of product, etc. The icons tell you if the product is animal-friendly, and you're given directions on how to use it. You can also do an advanced search by your skin type, hair colour etc.

After logging on, within seconds I spotted a flesh-coloured kohl liner of the kind I've been searching for for years. It's the Clarifying Pencil by 3 Custom Color and I will be ordering it right away. I've used white and pale pink kohl liners for years as an eye brightener, and they work like a charm, but if you want to touch up and not have it noticeable, a flesh-toned pencil is the way to go - and you can also use it as a spot concealer.

Cult Beauty delivers throughout the UK and Europe for a flat rate (£4.95 UK, £14.95 Europe).

1 Stay out of the sun. Yeah, yeah, we all know this one, and for many women the damage was already done back in the 70s and 80s before the news got out. But there is nothing to stop you protecting your skin from now on. Winter and summer alike, every day you should wear a moisturiser with at least a factor 15 sunblock in it (30 is better) and at the slightest hint of sunshine, up this to a factor 60.

2 Drink. And drink water. When your body's thirsty it's not asking for tea, or diet Coke, or a smoothie - it wants water. Give it what it wants. If that wasn't bad enough, it's now known that thirst is a poor indicator for hydration, so you shouldn't wait till you're thirsty before you drink. You should be drinking a good two litres of water per day. If, like me, you find drinking large quantities of liquid quite difficult, try downing a pint of warm water on rising, on going to bed and a couple of times during the day, such as when you're preparing a meal - raising the temperature of the water makes it easier to glug it down. By the way, for every alcoholic drink, or tea or coffee you take during the day, you need to add another one third of a pint of water to your intake because alcohol, tea and coffee are diuretic and are therefore robbing your body of fluid.

3 Don't smoke. Besides the numerous other nasties that smoking merrily gives you, such as heart disease, cancer and death, it also ages your skin. It does this in three ways - firstly, the repeated pursing of your lips as you take a drag adds up to hundreds of thousands of lip-pursings that, in time, result in deep vertical lines around the lips which are almost impossible to get rid of. Secondly, smoking destroys collagen and elastin, which are what keep your skin plump and youthful. Thirdly, smoking causes narrowing of the blood vessels in the outermost layers of your skin, which impairs blood flow. This depletes your skin of oxygen and important nutrients, such as vitamin A.

4 Keep hydrated. That means externally, with water sprays, humidifiers, water reservoirs on your radiators etc. If the humidity level in your home drops below 50 per cent, it begins to have a detrimental effect on your skin - not to mention your health generally, particularly the mucous membranes in your nose, throat and lungs. As a clue, if your hair becomes static in winter when you brush it, your house is too dry. Even standing a shallow bowl of water on the sideboard will help - but make sure you change the water daily to prevent bacteria building up.

5 Don't use soap on your face and neck. I would have thought we'd all know this by now. It's generally better for your skin to cleanse with creams and oils, then apply creams and oils, unless your skin is very greasy. If you like the feeling of water on your face, try washing with emulsifying ointment. Available from any pharmacy counter (you'll have to ask, because it's so cheap it isn't given display space) , this comes in big tubs and is hypoallergenic, non-drying and contains no colour. Other non-soap bars include Neutrogena Dry Skin Soap (which isn't really soap at all) and aqueous cream bars, which are simply a solid version of aqueous cream BP, a kind of moisturiser.

6 Maintain good skin hygiene. In other words, don't keep touching your face all day. Wash your hands before you do your makeup. Keep your phone handset clean with a mediwipe each day. Don't rest your chin in your hands. Don't pick at your spots - dot a drop of tea-tree or geranium oil on spots, using a cotton bud and allow to air dry before applying moisturiser.

7 Don't drag at your skin. The skin on your face is much more delicate than the skin on your hands and body, and it's particularly delicate on your eyelids. When applying or removing makeup, don't be rough - use good-quality cottonwool pads and enough product so that you're not pulling and tugging at yourself. Pat on moisturisers and blend lightly with clean fingertips - don't rub until your skin changes colour.

8 Exercise. Exercise oxygenates your skin, which improves collagen production. Any exercise that raises your body temperature and reddens your skin is helpful, but the best for your face are specific facial exercises - I'll write about these tomorrow.

9 Don't have long, hot baths. If you stay in long enough to prune, that's a sign that your skin is losing moisture. 15-20 minutes is about the maximum time you should spend in the bath and if you can, shower instead.

10 Use bath oil. Preferably an organic-based oil such as sunflower, rather than an inorganic oil such as baby oil. A good squirt of this into the water and broken up with the head of the shower hose will coat your skin nicely, preventing too much water loss. It also saves time, as you don't have to moisturise afterwards. Add a little lavender or geranium essential oil to it for a pleasant scent. If you shower rather than bathe, mix your oil with equal quantities of sea salt and use it as a body scrub - make sure to use a non-slip mat, though, as it will turn your shower into an oil slick. Generally speaking, only your armpits, crotch and feet actually need soap - these are the areas where you have apocrine glands which produce pungent sweat, as opposed to the eccrine glands that produce odourless sweat all over the rest of your body. The rest of your body doesn't need to be soaped on a daily basis.