Three Good 'Beauty Tips' - and one that doesn't work

1. This lip scrub will make your lips look like you've been kissing someone for at least an hour. Leave out the cinnamon and they'll just be smooth, but don't go overboard with the salt or you'll make it too harsh. Also, olive oil tastes a whole lot better than Vaseline, but is runnier so harder to work with.

2. Base coat under dark nail varnish is a must, otherwise your nails will suffer. If you have no base coat, use one of those bland pastel shades that was a gift from someone who doesn't know you very well. All the real base coats I've tried have gone gloopy by the time I've gone through half the bottle. Granted, all the real base coats I've tried were from Rimmel, a fairly cheap brand who don't deign to put ball bearings in their bottles to help the mixture properly mix when you shake the bottle. I am currently using a bright sub-Barbie pink as my base coat, it is from Del Sol, a brand who don't put two of the bad-for-you chemicals nail varnish often contains into their product (toluene and formaldehyde), so I figured that although I hate the shade it would make good base coat. It shows through slightly sometimes which makes quite a cool effect, I think.

3. I have recently discovered that olive oil makes a great night moisturiser for my face - just a few drops and in the morning I have soft skin and no extra spots. Is there no end to the wonders of olive oil? From the OCM (oil cleansing method, get thyself to Google now) to salad dressing, it is great.

And the one that's never worked for me...

Lining the inner rim of your eyes with white eyeliner to make them look bigger/brighter. Firstly, it looks too obvious, and strange. Secondly, you can't really blend it to make it more subtle, the inner rim of your eye does not have that much space. Thirdly, it actually makes your eyes look kind of dirty by comparison. Fourthly, it's always gone weird and dribbled into my eye and aggravated my eyes so much I've had to take my contact lenses out, bathe my eye(s) and rinse the lenses. As long as I use a separate pencil for inner rim and don't use the same one I use on my eyelids (which you should do anyway), I've never had this problem with black eyeliner from the same brands. What does work is blue eyeliner on the inner rim. Again, I have to use that pencil only on the inner rim but it makes my eyes look brighter and whiter, plus it's a pretty unusual look.