Facial Massage and Gua Sha: Your Complete Video Tutorial Collection

Explore this collection of all my video tutorials for facial massage, facial gua sha, and more! I created these video tutorials and step-by-step guides to teach you the best techniques to de-puff, list, brighten, and enhance your skin’s health. My main goal is for everyone to have healthy skin that they feel confident in. That’s why I created all of these free and easy-to-access tutorials. Grab your skincare bestie, facial oil, and maybe a gua sha stone or facial massage tool and enjoy the tutorials!

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Katherine M StribakosComment
Face Taping Tutorial: Your Esthetician's Go-To Way for Applying Face Tape

If you read my previous blog post you now know exactly how facial tapes work and why we love them for helping our skin to be healthy, firm, lifted, radiant, and wrinkle-free. If you haven’t gotten a chance to read it (which I highly recommend before starting your facial tape application) I’ll list a few key details about face taping ⤵️

  • Facial taping helps reduce wrinkles by promoting healthy oxygen and nutrient flow to the area you apply it to

  • Facial taping is NOT about stretching or physically lifting the skin using tape

  • There is a proper sequence for applying and removing tape

  • You’ll need a specific K-tape made for the face. I bought mine from thenaturalfaces.com

  • Just like facial massage, when done consistently (a few times a week) you’ll start to see your wrinkle reduction and antiaging results

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Katherine M StribakosComment
Face Taping 101

I love nothing more than skincare treatments that reduce wrinkles, keep us looking lifted, AND benefit the overall health of our skin and body. Utilizing specialty kinesiology tape made for facial application is one of the ways that we can treat the overall health of our skin and receive anti-aging benefits. Face tape application can also be helpful for opening nasal passageways and the release of jaw/neck tension.

So what is face tape and why are we all of a sudden hearing about it more and more?

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Katherine M StribakosComment
From Nature to Science: Trending Skincare Ingredients to Watch

Last week on my social media I asked what topic you wanted to read about the most, and an overwhelming amount of you wanted to learn more about trending skincare ingredients. I love that! Things change, evolve, and progress very quickly and I know it’s my job as an esthetician to keep you up to date. I did some research and made a list of skincare ingredients that all of you are searching the internet for the most.

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Katherine M StribakosComment
Best Fall Drinks for Skin Health: Delicious & Nourishing

You know what I love to do in the fall and winter? Cozy up with a nice hot beverage while reading a book or watching TV. I’m all about customizing habits to make sure they benefit the health of my skin, and I know you are the same! Each of the hot and delicious beverages on this list contains ingredients that benefit our skin.

scrub me secret: my personal favorites on this list are the bone broth hot chocolate and the matcha with coconut milk 🍵

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10 Facial Products for Sensitive Skin

Having sensitive skin is tricky; sometimes it’s like a puzzle trying to figure out what will make it react poorly and what won’t. If you have sensitive skin (like me 😊) you know all too well that certain products or ingredients can end up causing redness, rashes, bumpy texture, and clusters of little breakouts. Having sensitive skin can make trying new skincare items discouraging and you can end up feeling limited to what skincare you can use for yourself.

This blog post is for everyone with sensitive and reactive skin who is wondering which skincare products would work best for their skin. I’ve compiled a list of items that work well for sensitive skin and deliver really nice results!

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Body Exfoliation - Why You Need It + The Best Way to Scrub Your Body

Why body care is important

Taking care of the skin on your body is about so much more than what’s on the surface. Of course, we want soft, glowing, youthful, and clear skin and for those reasons, we use certain cleansers, moisturizers, and body serums.

When we treat our bodies with scrubs and massage there are actually so many internal benefits as well as external skincare benefits we receive. Believe it or not, when you start incorporating body scrubs and massage into your at-home wellness routines it benefits your immune system, reduces inflammation, and helps you to feel more energized.

Body care benefits us both internally and externally!

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Find the Best LED Device For You: Shopping Tips From an Esthetician 🛍

LED therapy can be extremely effective for treating acne, reducing signs of aging (lines/wrinkles/sagging skin), and keeping up the health of your skin. With so many devices on the market, it can be difficult to figure out which one to invest in. I compiled a list of devices I recommend to my facial clients so they can achieve their best results.

scrub me secret: having a high-quality LED device at home is a great addition to seeing an esthetician for facials every 4-6 weeks. The pairing of professional treatments and effective light therapy will help you achieve results like clear skin, fewer wrinkles, and firm glowing skin.

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Katherine M StribakosComment
3 Easy Beauty & Wellness Things You Can Start Doing Today That Improve Your Life

Do you want to upgrade your wellness habits or add some anti-aging rituals to your everyday routine but feel overwhelmed by your already jam-packed schedule? Time constraints don’t have to be the reason why you let your self-care take a back seat! This is a list of things you can do RIGHT NOW, that won’t take any extra time out of your day, that will help you look more youthful, lessen your stress, and overall feel better.

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Katherine M StribakosComment
How to Start the Perfect Skincare Routine for Beginners: A Step-by-Step Guide

What does a great skincare routine do for your skin? It can help you maintain healthy skin by properly cleansing and protecting it. It can also improve your skin if you’re struggling with congestion, texture, dryness, aging, or breakouts.

My suggestion as an esthetician is to start with a skincare routine that contains these 4 steps - Cleanse, tone, moisturize, and SPF. Be intentional about the products you choose and make sure they are working for your skin. After you have these 4 steps down, you can start adding other items one at a time.

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Katherine M StribakosComment
How To Get Rid of My Double Chin?

“How do I get rid of my double chin?” and “What can I do about my double chin?” are questions I receive often as an esthetician.

What is a double chin? It’s a pocket of what looks like excess fat and skin right underneath our chin and mandible. This makes our face look less defined and is often associated with aging skin or gaining weight. But often that isn’t all fat under there, it’s fluid retention that is actually easier to get rid of vs. fat.

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My Favorite Facial Masks

While face massage might be my favorite way to elevate a skincare routine, masking is in a close second. Adding a therapeutic facial mask to your skincare routine once a week is a great way to make your skin even better than it already is! It’s like giving yourself a mini facial at home. Just think of your #1 skincare goal; is it to be more hydrated and have softer skin? To clear pimples? Balance oils and diminish blackheads? Brighten your skin? There’s a mask for every skincare need and I’m listing my favorites below!

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Why I Like to Combine Holistic Skincare and Advanced Clinical Skincare

As an esthetician, sometimes it feels like there is a fork in the road and you have to choose which path to go down. Do you want to be a holistic practitioner and focus on massage-based, whole-body therapies and products enriched with ingredients from the earth? Or do you want to be an esthetician who focuses on advanced, med spa type treatments like chemical peels, lasers, injectables, dermabrasion, and clinical products?

14 years into being an esthetician I can confidently say you don’t have to choose a side! You can adapt practices from both of these realms and utilize products and treatments that you feel the best about. It’s all about improving our client’s skin in the end!

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