Di­anne John

In re­sponse to your emails sent in to me I have de­cid­ed to an­swer a few of your most burn­ing ques­tions. I do hope the an­swers would be able to help you out of your make-up dilem­mas. Let me know if these tips were valu­able to you in any way.

What should I use to­cov­er my birth­mark?Noth­ing seems to work.

An­swer: You will need a spe­cif­ic type of foun­da­tion cov­er that would give you opaque cov­er­age. Look for cam­ou­flage for­mu­la­tions that are specif­i­cal­ly cre­at­ed to cov­er skin im­per­fec­tions such as scars, port wine stains as well as birth­marks. These are avail­able from spe­cialiSed make­up stores and some der­ma­tol­o­gists.

My eye­lin­er al­ways bleeds on­to my face and makes me look like I have a black eye orI am in need of sleep. Help!

An­swer: Eye­lin­ers come in dif­fer­ent for­mu­la­tions; usu­al­ly it is the kohl eye­pen­cils that are the cul­prit due to their creamy, soft com­po­si­tion. A cool trick would be to go over the eye pen­cil with a bit of match­ing eye­shad­ow to set the kohl or to pur­chase a pen­cil that has long wear­ing prop­er­ties.

My lips are al­ways dry, chapped and flaky! What can I do about it?

An­swer: Try get­ting your eight glass­es of wa­ter in dai­ly to hy­drate your skin and your body. Al­so, coat your lips with good old pe­tro­le­um jel­ly, leave on for ten min­utes and then soft­ly mas­sage your lips with a damp cloth. This will re­move the prod­uct and the flakes of dead skin at the same time.

I have spi­der veins on my face. Can this prob­lem be solved?

An­swer: Try us­ing a thick for­mu­la con­ceal­er or even a cam­ou­flage type cream to cov­er those bluish veins. If you are tired of cov­er­ing them up then a vis­it to a der­ma­tol­o­gist should be of in­valu­able help to you. The usu­al treat­ment con­sists of in­sert­ing a fine heat­ed nee­dle in­to the vein. The heat from the nee­dle will co­ag­u­late the blood in­side the vein, ren­der­ing it in­ac­tive.

My mas­cara al­ways seems to get on my face and leaves me with owl look­ing eyes. What can I do?

An­swer: Good qual­i­ty wa­ter­proof mas­cara should do the trick but they tend to make eye­lash­es stiff and un­yield­ing and are par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to re­move. If that is not an op­tion for you then you can use your reg­u­lar mas­cara but seal the colour in by sweep­ing a coat of clear mas­cara over it. You should al­so try hold­ing a piece of tis­sue just un­der­neath your low­er lash­es while you are ap­ply­ing your mas­cara to pre­vent it from get­ting on your skin in the first place.