Photo courtesy of D Sharon Pruitt
Are you feeling the love this summer? You are according to new research* that reveals that over half of us (53%) believe in love at first sight. Awwww!
But what’s this? The same report suggests more than one in five Brits will actively avoid making eye contact with a stranger we find attractive. The reason for such shyness is no doubt complex, but one simple step to giving more ooomph to your ogle is to actively care for your eyes.
David Hutchfield FBDO, a dispensing optician at Glasses Direct says, “If you believe in falling in love at first sight, one key way of giving Cupid a helping hand is to consciously look after your eye sight every day – not only to look good but to stay healthy and well.”
To keep your eyes looking good for romance, David’s suggests these top tips:
1. Eat and drink healthily
A balanced diet rich in fruit and vegetables is important for both your general health and your eye health. Stock up on broccoli and spinach. Both are packed full of lutein, thought to play a major role in preventing damage to the macula, the central point of the retina needed to see fine detail, like words on a page.
2. Oily fish
like salmon, tuna and mackerel are good, too – full of Omega-3 fatty acids said to reduce the risk of age-related macular Degeneration (AMD for short), the main cause of sight loss in the UK. Drink plenty of water too.
3. Be smart with make-up
Ditch eye make-up when as soon as it reaches its ‘use by’ date (with mascara, for example, it’s six months). And don’t share it. Or apply it when travelling – in case you scratch your eye and spread potentially harmful bacteria.
4. Stop smoking
It damages the cells in your retina and doubles the risk of developing AMD.
5. Have a regular eye test
“Visit an optometrist every two years or so. They’re eye ‘doctors’, trained not only to test your sight and prescribe glasses but to spot any problems and treat infections” says David. “You’re also welcome to contact us with any questions or concerns you have about your eyes.”
* By The College of Optometrists.
Posted on: June 15th, 2009 by Carole
Image from www.thesun.co.uk
About 16 million people in the UK suffer from hay fever – an allergy to pollen or fungal spores which causes sneezing and a runny nose and eyes. Fun, it isn’t.
Hay fever season typically lasts from May to August, but if you’re determined to make the most of this summer, read on. Here are five simple ways to pull the plug on irritating pollen…
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Wear wraparound sunglasses and a broad-brimmed hat.
“The close fit of wraparound sunglasses offers that crucial extra bit of protection for the eyes, forming an effective barrier between them and any pollen” says Glasses Direct’s Director of Product and registered Dispensing Optician, Phillip Meyer. A broad-rimmed hat makes a good back up.
Check out a range of sunglasses here at Glasses Direct.
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Avoid going out early morning and at dusk.
There’s usually more pollen floating around at these times. Check out the pollen counts near you at bbc.co.uk/weather.
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Keep windows and doors closed.
“Make a pollen-free atmosphere by closing windows and doors and sitting still for 30 minutes – pollen will fall from the air, giving some respite” says Professor Jean Emberlin of the National Pollen and Aerobiology Research Unit, University of Worcester in a recent Asthma & Allergies supplement in The Guardian.
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Take regular showers.
To get rid of any pollen caught on your body and hair and reducing the risk of reaction.
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Avoid places with high levels of air pollution.
It can make symptoms worse, say experts.
Posted on: May 26th, 2009 by Carole
Today we launched a fantastic new way of shopping using our Virtual Mirror tool. Now you can upload a photo of yourself and see which glasses look best on you whilst shopping the site. Or a little tip, try shopping as a celebrity, hours of fun. Scroll to the bottom of this post for my celeb pic.
This is a huge improvement on our previous Virtual Mirror tool. You now upload your photo once and it stays with you throughout your journey (previously the mirror was on a separate page) – much better for choosing your perfect glasses!
Top tips on using the Virtual Mirror
1. Arrive at a product page and you’ll see a box with the glasses on a person’s face:
2. By mousing over you get a list of options:
3. Click on it and you’ll see this:
4. You can pick another photo, upload a photo or even take a picture of yourself if you have a webcam. Here’s our David testing it out for you:
5. Adjust it if necessary:
6. Et voila! There you are on screen!
And if you get bored of looking at your own face whilst shopping, why not try being a celeb for a day! Today I am mostly being Angelina Jolie.
You won’t find every pair of glasses modelled just yet, it’s a pretty complex process because unlike other technology, with our Virtual Mirror you can see your head wearing glasses at different angles.
COMING SOON: We’re also launching our Video Mirror technology shortly, a great new way of seeing in real-time how you look in glasses!
Posted on: May 21st, 2009 by Carole
It’s vaguely sunny outside and rather windy, but nonetheless I’m bringing you my Sunglasses of the day number 4! These wayfarer-style bright glasses look great as prescription sunglasses and temptingly, we’re offering you £5 off this style for today only!
Shown with a full grey sunglasses tint added
Shown with a full grey sunglasses tint added
They also look pretty cool as bold funky specs, all the celebs are wearing them
Posted on: May 18th, 2009 by Carole
Our job is to bring the cost of prescription glasses down and to help you enjoy your choice of glasses more.
We’ve gone one step further with a Free Glasses For Life prize draw.
Of all the people we’d love to enter the draw, here are a few of our favourite online personalities and bloggers – what do you say guys, will you enter our draw? We’re not saying your current ones are bad, we’d just love to see you in our Glasses Direct frames!
Top 10 glasses wearers we’d love to enter our draw…
1. Mike Butcher – Always seen out and about at the latest startup and tech business events in his stylish specs, if Mike won he’d never have to ‘invest’ in another pair of glasses again!
2. Stephen Fry – The cream of the Twitterati, Stephen might like a chance of winning some glasses to help him read the thousands of 140 characters messages he gets every day.
3. Hermione Way – Techfluff.tv wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t for Hermione’s signature specs. Perhaps some Ray-Ban style specs will help her stand out when she’s looking for celebs to interview?
4. Jack Schofield – We’d like to ‘Ask Jack’ what glasses he would choose if he won a free pair of glasses for life. It’s a pity we can’t offer him a free smoking pipe for life!
5. Bill Thompson – While there haven’t been any glasses invented to see into the future (yet), no doubt Bill T will be the first person to get his hands on them when they do.
6. Biz Stone – Best known as one of the co-founders of micro-blogging service Twitter, this glasses-wearing entrepreneur also helped make Xanga, Blogger, Odeo, and Obvious. Biz is based in the USA but if he wanted a pair of glasses from us next time he’s in the UK we’d be able to help
7. Charlie Leadbeater – Author of ‘We-think’, Charles is a leading authority on innovation and creativity. Charlie’s got some really cool black glasses so maybe he’d be interested in trying some of our colourful styles.
8. Cory Doctorow – He’s a busy man: science fiction novelist, blogger, technology activist, co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing (boingboing.net) amongst others. For such a busy man, our home trials service and online ordering are a must!
9. Andy McLoughlin – we could have chosen Andy or his co-founder Alistair but we love the work that Andy and his team at Huddle are doing around web innovation. They’re based in London so will want some of our most classy designer-style frames.
10. Dan Martin – The Editor of BusinessZone.co.uk, advice for small businesses in the UK. Dan seems to prefer the titanium style glasses so he might like to try one of our black, acetate ranges to see how he likes them.
Here are the details of the draw: up to 8 people will never pay for glasses again, we’ll give them new prescription glasses every year for the rest of their life. You can enter the prize draw at www.freeglassesforlife.co.uk
Posted on: May 14th, 2009 by Carole
O’ sunshine, where art thou? The sun might have gone again, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to show you another pair of specs that look great as prescription sunglasses.
Renowned for her classic sense of style, we were so sure that Audrey Hepburn would have loved these glasses, that we named them after her. You can find clear sunglasses everywhere this season and I reckon that these Audrey specs are that little bit different. A perfect pair if you want to stand out from the crowd.
Audrey comes in four different colours, blue, pink, brown and crystal. Add a grey or brown graduated sunglasses tint and you’ll get a classic pair of sun specs for under £35.
Posted on: May 12th, 2009 by Carole
The sun is still shining out here at our Swindon office, so I’ll make no apologies for posting my second hot tip for sunglasses this season! You can never beat a good pair of aviator shades and our Cowboy specs look pretty sexy as sunglasses. These ones have a graduated brown sunglasses tint added to them and Adam from our IT team is kindly modelling them for us!
Posted on: April 28th, 2009 by Carole
It’s been a wonderful sunny week here in London and everyone’s been clamouring for some sunglasses to wear outside at lunchtime. Luckily we had a selection here that were used in our our catalogue photo shoot earlier this week. But before I show you the one’s that everyone else got to wear, I thought i’d show you my favourites.
These are my Frankie glasses with a graduated brown sunglasses tint. You can have them made up with or without a prescription, so if you don’t need glasses yet (like me) then you can get a pretty unique pair of sunglasses and if you do need prescription glasses then you can get a trendy pair of sun specs that you can see through!
They’re a bit “Paris Hilton” but big and bright are THE thing this summer so these are my hot tip for this season!
More sunglasses in the days to come…
Posted on: April 23rd, 2009 by Carole
We’ve hatched a plan to make your Easter weekend all the more eggs-ellent. If you’ve been admiring a pair of Glasses Direct glasses for a while, pop them in your basket this weekend and you get the delivery free. The offer’s open to everyone so it’s a good time to recommend our glasses to your friends too.
To go with the offer of free delivery, we’ve scoured the web on your behalf and here are our favourite facts about Easter:
Top 10 Easter facts
- The name Easter comes from Eostre, an ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess, originally of the dawn. In pagan times an annual spring festival was held in her honour.
- The custom of giving eggs at Easter time has been traced back to Egyptians, Persians, Gauls, Greeks and Romans, to whom the egg was a symbol of life.
- Decorating and colouring Hen, Duck or Goose eggs for Easter was the custom in England during the Middle Ages. The household accounts of Edward I, for the year 1290, recorded an expenditure of eighteen pennies for four hundred and fifty eggs to be gold-leafed and coloured for Easter gifts.
- The most famous decorated Easter eggs are those designed by Peter Carl Faberge. In 1885 the Russian Tsar, Alexander III, commissioned Faberge to make a special Easter gift for his wife, the Empress Marie.This first Faberge egg was an egg within an egg. It had an outside shell of gold and enamelled white which opened to reveal a smaller gold egg. The smaller egg, in turn, opened to display a golden chicken and a jewelled replica of the Imperial crown.
- The auctioneers Christie’s sold a diamond encrusted Faberge egg in November 2007 for £9m.
- The first chocolate Easter egg was produced in 1873 by Fry’s.
- The largest chocolate sculpture ever made was a 10 foot high Easter egg constructed in Melbourne, Australia
- Dietitians are warning that eating five Easter eggs (the average given to most children) plus the bars included with them, could see youngsters doubling their recommended calorie intake for a week, risking becoming hooked on chocolate, plus seeing their weight increase by several pounds within days. The recommended daily amounts are around 2,000 calories a day for an average 11-year-old boy and 1,500 for a girl, but many could be eating up to 10,000 calories over the Easter period.
- £280million was spent on Easter eggs in the 4 days leading up to Easter 2008.
- Approximately 80 million chocolate eggs are sold annually in the UK.
Posted on: April 9th, 2009 by Carole
As avid followers of glasses in all shapes and sizes, we watched with excitement as the nation donned its 3D spectacles for last week’s live, landmark 3D broadcast by Keane. Now that 3D broadcasts on TV and online are becoming more regular, we all have the opportunity to don our 3D glasses more often.
And so to help you track down where to get your hands on 3D glasses, and to see what’s coming up to watch in 3D, we thought we’d research what’s happening where.
Top 5 places to get your 3D specs
- This US mail order site gives them way for free is you send a self-addressed envelope
- 3DImages.co.uk boasts a stock of 350,000 3D specs, from card to plastic models
- Napier University is running a science project that’s giving away 3D glasses to people based in Scotland
- Keane has a cut-out template for making your own 3D glasses
- If you have a £3000 Hyundai S465D TV and Sky+HD you won’t need specs at all. That’s the future of 3D viewing in your living room.
What to watch in 3D
- The 3D Keane gig is available to watch on the Keane band website
- Aliens versus Monsters is currently playing in cinemas in 3D
- Horror fans can get ready for My Bloody Valentine 3D appearing on DVD this June
- There’s more 3D viewing on the way from Sky, who also say the Olympics in 2012 is going to be a major 3D showcase.
If you want to get the 3D look in real glasses, we’ve got a few pairs in our Cocktail collection that have the thick frames and striking looks that you’ll want.
What are your favourite 3D films or TV programmes? Let us know in the comments below…
Posted on: April 8th, 2009 by Carole
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