Thursday, December 18, 2008

Spray Tans: A Backgrounder

By Kelly Sampson

The most popular method to have a 365 day a year tan is by using a spray tanning booth on a regular basis. The reason for this is that sunbathing regularly damages your skin and health and gives you more risk of skin cancer. People are now looking for new ways to achieve a tanning effect safely.

The fastest growing artificial method is spray tanning which is generally carried out at a beauty salon. Although bronzing agents have been around for many years, they tend to leave streak marks unless professionally applied.

Although the popularity is still to be proved, systems using the new spray tanning technology have been designed for home use. Regardless of the method you choose there are a few basic steps to follow to ensure that you get the best results possible.

Ensure a good clean body surface to work with, you will need to remove any dead skin by exfoliation. Fake tan applications that have been done without this vital step are easy to spot as the recipient has light patches in the tan where the dead skin has fallen of.

To complete the preparation, the skin needs to be moist and ready to accept the tan so a good skin moisturizer will need to be applied all over. Always, always, always wear disposable surgical gloves when applying a self tanning cream etc. To avoid any other application mistakes that could give away the fact that the tan is not real, make sure those fingers, feet, elbows and knees are only given the lightest of coats as they have a habit of coming out darker.

Even spray tanning can cause the odd problem if there is an excess and it starts to run so take a towel you no longer want with you to wipe it off.

Try to stay as still as possible while any self tanning agent dries as it might smear and cause uneven patches. These agents are notoriously good at marking clothing once they have been applied so you are advised to be careful how soon you get ready afterwards and what you intend to wear.

Now that you have this information it should be much easier having a fake tan without anyone knowing. - 16083

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