Winter Skin Care Tips !

Winter is officially here… your skin is undoubtedly letting you know! Here are our latest tips to help keep your skin looking beautiful despite the elements.

Our cream is like a coat for you skin
When the mercury falls, we change our wardrobe… wool socks, mittens and tuques anyone? Our skin also needs TLC, so be prepared to add come extra layers of protection to your regime. With the heating in our homes, cars, and work places our skin easily becomes more dehydrated. To combat this, a richer cream is key to help create a barrier and avoid our skin from losing its natural moisture.
Our Age-Defense Cream is perfect for this time of the year! When participating in winter outdoor activities, be sure to protect your face with our Crème Divine. And, for your hands and body we recommend our amazing Skin Therapy Cream: Ultra Nourishing Hand and Body Moisturizer. This dynamic duo will protect you from the cold and wind while their scent will remind you of beautiful summer days.

Did you know you can wear your mask all night ?!
Why is it important to apply your mask more often during the winter? A mask will deeply nourish the skin with its abundance of active ingredients. During the winter our skin is extra dry and crying for these extra nutrients. Our newest Cream Mask is ideal to get this job done. And, YES! you can leave the mask on all night to get an intensive treatment. During the night, the mask will amplify the skins natural repairing and nourishing processes. In the morning, your skin will feel plumped, nourished, moisturized, and even those fine lines will feel smoother… you will feel like you spent the night at the spa!
To get the maximum effect of an overnight mask , it is important to prepare your skin… start with our Cleansing Cream: Nutri-Luminous, followed with either our 100% natural Toning Mist or Eau Divine, then delicately massage your face with a drop of our Age-Defense Serum… now you are ready for the layer of Cream Mask. After 5 minutes, sponge off any excess mask with a tissue, do not rinse and leave the mask for the night.
In the morning, complete your cleanse… remove the mask using our Toning Mist or Eau Divine before applying the final layers of Age- Defense Eye Contour Cream and Age-Defense Cream.

If your skin is extremely dry…
We suggest you check-out our latest additions in our collection, Nature Divine! You will be pleasantly surprised by the quality and richness of the ingredients found in these products. This amazing new line contains more Sea Buckthorn than ever, up to 4 times more.
The Crème Divine is rich and abundant with nutrients that will keep your skin glowing even on the coldest of cold days. Eau Divine our amplified toner, will prepare your skin to absorb the multitude of active ingredients in Crème Divine.
Elixir Divine, also know as the golden oil, can be applied anywhere on your face or body. If you are heading south this winter Elixir Divine will be your best friend. Each night, after a day in the sun, blanket your body with our elixir… it will calm your sun-drenched skin, deeply hydrate and leave your sun-kissed skin glowing. Upon your return to the land of ice and snow home continue your daily applications to your skin to adjust to the drastic temperature change. Your skin will be soft, hydrated and radiate with its healthy looking glow.

These tips will help keep you hydrated outside, it is also important to drinks lots of water to keep help with overall hydration. Also, even when it is cold outside be sure to apply sunscreen. Wishing you a fun winter and splendid skin all year-round!

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Tips for Using the Facial Mask!

Do you know how to use Mont Echo’s Sea Buckthorn Facial Mask?

The mask is part of the protocol of clinical study that yielded spectacular results last year. Composed of s100% natural ingredients, the mask acts as both an effective scrub and a skin-smoothing mask. Used regularly, it naturally brightens the complexion and gently removes spots. Its vitamins nourish and provide unparalleled antioxidant protection. It soothes and softens irritated skin, and moisturizes and soothes sensitive skin.

To use as an exfoliating scrub, combine the mask in equal portions with cleansing cream and apply to the face for ten minutes. The mixture absorbs oil and begins to dry and crumble. Roll the mixture off your skin with your fingers. Dead skin cells are removed from the surface of the skin and your bright new skin is revealed! This scrub can be used 2 times a week followed by a tonic spray mist.

To use as a mask, mix the powder 1:1 with Age-Defence Cream, 1 spritz of Toning Mist and a add few drops of Age-Defence Serum for dry or mature skin. Apply to the face in a thick layer and leave for 20 minutes. Roll off and rinse with warm water. Follow with application of mist, serum and moisturizer as needed. For a a truly refreshing experience, refrigerate your Mist prior to final application

Satisfaction Guaranteed!

 

Traceability in skin care products

Canadian Sea Buckthorn

Traceability has long been an important topic in the food industry. In today’s global economy, your fruit likely originated in South America and your sausage may have been made with pork sourced from multiple countries. With such a lot of distance between the farm and your table, people are becoming increasingly concerned about what they are putting in their body… Where was it grown? What was it exposed to while growing and while being transported? How far was it transported? Who has handled it and how?

Consumers have also begun to advocate for greater traceability in the ingredients of products they put on their bodies. The skin absorbs large quantities of whatever it comes into contact with – nutrients, minerals, vitamins… and poisons. It is so important to treat the outside of your body with the same care with which you treat the inside.

How do you ensure that the products you are using are free of harmful chemicals and truly 100% natural? Trace the origin of the ingredients. If you can trace the ingredient to the source, you can be sure that it is natural or naturally derived. That way you can be certain it hasn’t absorbed harmful environmental pollutants, like heavy metals, during the growing process – and you can be certain that the ingredient IS what it claims to be. Countries in Europe have recently created new legislation to deal with traceability and to protect consumers after several frauds were uncovered. It was discovered in France, for example, that there was quite a lot more “Sea Buckthorn oil” being sold than could possibly have been produced worldwide. We found that a bit scary. What kind of oil, exactly, was being sold? What other countries may have been affected? The moral of the story: trace your ingredient to the source so you aren’t taken advantage of by companies looking to capitalize on a hot trend.

Here are five tips for choosing natural, traceable skincare products for yourself and your family:

1. Take the time to read labels and minimize your exposure to harmful chemicals. Look for locally-grown, sustainably-grown and cleanly-grown ingredients.
2. Consider both the environment of the ingredient source and the transport required to bring the ingredient to the final processor. Many organically grown teas in Asia, for example, are sprayed with pesticides on the dock before being loaded onto ships for transport to North America. Many ingredients in heavily polluted parts of the world absorb heavy metals and other toxins no matter how carefully they are grown.
3. Ask for proof. Is the company willing to share information about the source of its ingredients? There are many ingredients – particularly spices and exotic oils – that can only be sourced non-locally. And many exact ingredient locations are closely guarded secrets. But that does not mean the ingredient can’t be grown and handled according to the highest standards, and it doesn’t mean the company cannot share with you general information about the source.
4. When you have a choice, support your local growers. Local ingredients have a small environmental footprint, travel shorter distances, and are generally handled by fewer processors. Organic is great, but local is better.
5. Remember that natural does not mean hypoallergenic or non-irritating. Always patch-test new products on your skin – non-synthetic ingredients are not engineered by man to be hypoallergenic!

If you have questions about our products or how to use them, take advantage of our in-house esthetician, who will be available every Wednesday to answer all your questions. 1-888-640-2014

Committed to Canadian-grown Sea Buckthorn: Why Do We Care?

Sea Buckthorn has suddenly become the darling of natural ingredients. Town & Country magazine featured the fruit in an article entitled “Sea Buckthorn – The Groves of Eternal Youth.” Whole Living listed Sea Buckthorn as one of the Hottest Ingredients of the year. Dr. Oz touted Sea Buckthorn’s weight loss and skin care properties on his show multiple times. Marie Claire, Oxygen, Shape, and Lucky have trumpeted its virtues.

The only thing that disappoints us about all this great buzz is that folks seem to feel that they need to travel the globe to bring home great Sea Buckthorn. Of course, China and the Himalayas are exotic and lovely – but did you know that there is a whole community of local growers who are cultivating this “miracle berry” right in your backyard?

Beyond Skin Deep

We’re biased of course. Our motto is “Beyond Skin Deep,” meaning that we believe that true beauty comes from knowing that you are making the best choices for your body, your environment and your community. That means we believe strongly in supporting local farmers and in minimizing our environmental footprint by sourcing our ingredients from places that don’t require excessive shipping and processing steps. So we thought we would take a moment here to explain exactly why we were so determined to found Mont Echo Naturels as a 100% Canadian-grown Sea Buckthorn company when everyone else said it was impossible.

The Farmers

Sea Buckthorn farming is a family business for the founders of Mont Echo Naturels

We began as Sea Buckthorn growers ourselves and we were endlessly frustrated by companies – even Canadian companies! – that continually chose to bring in foreign Sea Buckthorn when there were farmers across Canada desperate to sell fruit. In many cases, farmers were forced to let their fruit die on the plant because it just wasn’t possible to compete with the bargain-basement prices of the mass growers overseas. This is an incredible waste of precious fruit! In fact, when we first started going to international Sea Buckthorn conferences, our plans to create products using Canadian-grown Sea Buckthorn were laughed out of the room as “impossible.” And yet here we are, just a few years later, purchasing massive volumes of fruit from our own farmers and producing some of the finest products on the market with it. All we had to do was start small, support the industry, and put our commitment to local farmers ahead of concern for profit.

The Environment

A plant is only as good as the environment its grown in. Our company is named after the mountain next to which our Sea Buckthorn dreams were born. Our orchards sit at the base of lovely Mont Echo in southern Quebec, on property which backs up to thousands of acres of pristine Nature Conservancy land. Our fruit doesn’t fall off the trees when gently shaken, as fruit at high altitudes does. Our fruit clings strongly to the branches – even through winter if not picked. Like the land around it, our fruit is beautiful and bountiful and robust. And as our fruit requirements grew beyond what our farms could produce, we traveled across Quebec, the Maritimes and the Prairies to seek out similar sources of fruit. Why do we care so much? Because a plant cultivated organically in the rich lands of beautiful, natural Canada breathes clean air, drinks clean water and grows in clean soil. And it turns all these pure elements into clean, pure oils. And that’s the kind of oil we want in our products.

Knowing Your Source AND your Process

One of the other reasons we love to focus on Canadian fruit is that it gives us the opportunity to be innovators. Unlike other companies, we do all of our ingredient extraction ourselves, right here in Quebec. Sea Buckthorn oils are very difficult to extract and even small changes in temperature during the processing can have a large impact on the quality of nutrients in the oil. Because we know and control the source AND the process, we have the chance to make sure every drop of oil, floral water and powder we produce is as good and as pure as it can be. And we can experiment endlessly to produce new natural ingredients that utilize every part of the plant.

Spring is approaching here in southern Quebec and we’re looking forward to it after a long, icy winter. Our family farms are gearing up for another growing season and the company is also going to grow this year – new equipment, new products and new sales outlets are in the works to compliment our newly redesigned website! Come grow with us and take advantage of all the benefit that only Canadian-grown Sea Buckthorn can offer.