Choosing the right tanning product

After my last post on how to tan, I could almost hear calls of "But Beth! I don't know what tan to use! Priceline is scary and there are so many!!!"
Thankfully I am psychic and have decided to help you.

This can be hard and really is about what works for you and how you like to tan. There are so many different options now and a multitude of different formulations. I'll try to tick off the pros and cons of each;

It's almost December which means...

... It's time to unleash your pale, unloved winter skin for the masses to see.

It BURNS!

However if you are like me and would rather not blind and terrify your community, there are ways to make it look like you are naturally bronzed and awesome all the time.

The Most Amazing Brush Ever - Just go buy it already!

 Is this you right before you have to brush your hair? Are childhood memories scarred by having to sit there for hours while your mother attempted to tame the birdsnest on your head that was your hair?
While my hair was not so bad, my curly haired sister got the brunt of it, the finer underside of my hair always knotted and that meant brushing it involved ripping large chunks of it out.
This has always been quite problematic for trying to grow hair, and also having to clean the drain out constantly.

However my life changed when The Oracle, Zoe Foster, wrote a piece confessing she used this magic brush for brushing wet hair. As an avid follower of Zoe, I made plans to buy one immediately.
A few weeks ago I wrote about my hair and attributed 2 things to helping it grow thick and long quickly, one was not washing it with conventional shampoo and conditioner and my new magical brush....

Textured Nail Art Part II - My attempt

So a few weeks ago I wrote about the delight of textured nail art for girls such as myself who are a bit too conservative to go all out with crazy patterns and shapes on their nails.

After combing Priceline for a matte top coat, I finally got to work!

Batiste XXL Dry Shampoo - Review

On the weekend while happily browsing Priceline for all the things I "need" I came across a new product from Batiste which came in a big can and an introductory price of under $10, I'd be crazy not to right?

I had two choices, one called 'Wild' with a leopard print can and one called 'XXL' for big hair, which I ended up choosing.

Usually when I buy a product that claims it will give you giant hair, I take it with a grain of salt and that by extra big without backcombing means it might hold when you backcomb it.

Not so with this. I would even go so far as to say this isn't a dry shampoo, but rather a very large and cost efficient can of texturising powder which does the job a little too well.

I made the mistake of putting it in my hair this morning as dry shampoo and my hair is now a large boofy mass that will probably require washing again to get it out.

For me personally, this is a bit too much for my hair as a dry shampoo, so I will be scuttling back to Klorane Dry Shampoo for my oil soaking up needs.

However this is now my new favourite stylish product. Nothing has ever made my hair this massive and Priscilla Presley-esque.

Now that's volume!

Ok my hair isn't that high, but with this stuff I think I could get there! 

Ever used a product that ended up being completely different, yet awesome to what you expected?

B x

Yeah, so I don't wash my hair...

With Shampoo! I totally got you!

As I mentioned last week in my long winded history of my hair; I credit two things to the recent improvements to my hair, my new fav brush and my eschewing of shampoo and conditioner.

A few months back I was browsing The SMH during my lunch break and I came across an article of a woman who decided not to wash her hair with shampoo anymore. She was using bicarb soda and apple cider vinegar instead. My first instinct was why the hell would you bother, shampoo isn't THAT much. It actually reminded me of my ex bf's crazily thrift mother who was all about cutting costs often to the detriment of any pleasure in life.
However what caught my eye was that she didn't have to wash her hair for a week, and only washed it as it felt strange not to.

Hmm interesting...

My hair is insanely oily, I have to wash it each morning and I can't even get away with washing it at night as the next day it'll be back to needing to be washed again. This process is not only annoying but also really bad for my hair, particularly as I'm a large fan of stylish my hair with the hairdryer and straightener..

I had truthfully tried everything, double washing, triple washing, using baby shampoo, using volumising shampoo, not using conditioner, avoiding unnecessary brushing and even dying my hair for no reason just to cut the oil. Nothing worked. Having inherited my Dad's fine, soft hair, he insisted in order to avoid a shiny scalp he recommended washing my hair with soap, I did this too. Still no such luck.

By the time I came across this article and the 'no poo' method (yes, I cringe at the name each time too) I had nothing to lose. So that day saw me stocking up on a giant box of bicarb soda and apple cider vinegar and taking them into the shower.

Basically, 'No 'Poo' means no shampoo and is a movement of mainly women who generally describe themselves as "crunchy" which apparently means being into a natural lifestyle. I personally do not care about such things, and will happily apply hairspray to my freshly washed with no chemicals hair, but whatever works for you.

Each person does it differently depending on their hair, however I keep a plastic bottle in the shower which I fill with a tablespoon or so of bicarb soda and add warm water once I'm in there. I then tip this all over my head and try to massage it in. Unlike Shampoo you can't feel where it is so it's easy to miss spots.
I usually let it soak and then rinse it out with water before 'conditioning' by tipping some vinegar on the ends of my hair and then rinsing out. I'f you've got regular vinegar that's fine too, however I'm finding that it dries my hair out a lot more than ACV.

The first time felt weird, I missed the lovely scent of shampoo and the rich lather I got from my expensive shampoo, plus the smell of vinegar in the bathroom afterwards was weird. James always comments the bathroom makes him want Fish and Chips after I've washed my hair. However, my hair felt almost exactly the same as it did after shampoo and conditioner, soft and clean. Hmmm.

Unfortunately, I was not so lucky to experience the not needing to wash my hair for a week. Instead, my hair remained as oily as ever and even went through the dreaded detox phase I had read about. This meant itchy scalp, sometimes dandruff, extra oil, the works. It sucked. Yet I persevered as I was clutching on to the idea of not having to wash my hair each morning.

Slowly, I was not needing to wash so frequently and I could wash my hair at night and maybe go a few days with the help of dry shampoo or cornflour. WIN!

The true turning point however was when I went for a hair cut and colour. I was chatting with my lovely new hairdresser and jokingly referred to my hair as brown smoke. What she said surprised me.

"You know, your hair isn't all that thin"

I'm sponsored by Root-Boost you jerk off!

No more brown smoke hair for me!!!

She was right, my hair was kind of clumpy and annoying sometimes, the kind of annoying that people with thick hair whine about. Plus it looked richer and glossier. Multiple people have commented on my hair growing so much and looking so healthy, which hasn't happened since I was a teenager!

What was even more interesting, was as I had my hair coloured, my hair was washed with shampoo. Boy, did my hair freak out. It was instant dandruff and itchiness, I ended up washing it with a bit of vinegar to calm it down again. This was a sign if any that my body was quite a fan of the natural ingredients.

Despite liking the new method, the oiliness thing hasn't improved too much, however I don't let it bother me as much. Apparently this is due to the hardness of the water here, but I'm not at the stage where I'm willing to boil the kettle and let it cool just to wash my hair. In the mean time I'm happy with cornflour. Plus my hair is actually happier and it's growing! Not to mention washing my hair is now crazily cheap, which we all know means more money for fun things!
Even though it hasn't solved my initial problem, I know that I will probably continue this indefinitely, if it ain't broke, why fix it?

Is not washing with shampoo or conditioner something you'd ever try? Ever tried an alternative beauty regime?

B x

Colour Bug Hair - The post I had no intention of doing

Sigh. I hadn't actually considered doing this post for a while, but due to unforseen circumstances, here goes.

This afternoon while enjoying my usual home alone activities (i.e. watching all the super lame movies I can't bear for James to see me watch one more time..) I found myself rifling through the giant abyss of no return that is my box full of beauty items. Within it I uncovered my beloved Kevin Murphy Colour Bug in Orange.
"Yay", I thought "I had forgotten abut this!"
I had previously dabled with coloured hair when I had blonder extensions and was very pleased with the result, as below;

I know you copied me Fashion Week!

I made a note to use it soon as it was fabulous. Sadly my clumsy hands had other ideas...

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Naturally I was devastated. My beautiful Colour Bug! However not one to let a bad thing get to me, I jumped on my hands and knees and rubbed my hair onto the floor collecting the last of the sweet pigment calmly collected the vacuum cleaner to tidy up.

The result;

Mmmm floor pigment!

And close up,

Oh sunset hair! I forgot how much I love you! I am seriously considering getting out the Fudge I bought previously and re-doing it to last a few weeks.

What do you think? Should I take the plunge and do it again? I'm actually liking it on my shorter hair.

Opinions very much welcome!

B x

Textured Nail Art

So there I was browsing beauty blogs on my lunch break when I thought I might trawl The Beauty Department. For those who are not familiar with this site, it's absolutely fantastic for how-tos and some great DIY ideas. It's a US site but really can't be faulted in their detailed instructions.

Anyway.. there I was browisng away when I saw the most beautiful idea for nail art for those who are nail conservative, like myself.

As I've mentioned previously, I'm a bit shy when it comes to nail art and just prefer block colour, but this idea is fantastic! It gives an interesting texture that isn't immediately obvious which I LOVE!

I particularly love this style, which is a fun way to be neat like my silver tips. Apparently this is from a YSL campaign a while back - extra points for being fashionable!

My favourite part about this new take on texture and nail art, is that it's black. I have been in a loving monogamous relationship with black polish since I was 14 when I found an old bottle in our bathroom cabinet from when someone in my family went to a dress up party as a punk or goth.

I haven't actually tried this yet, as I always thought a matte top coat was boring and ugly, but once I find one, I shall be posting my results for sure!

B x

Quest for the perfect eyebrows

"You have really good eyebrows"

We've all heard the story of that friend of a friend, who was walking along minding their own business when BAM! There was the one person they just knew they couldn't go another day without, this was the one they knew they wanted to look at everyday for the rest of their lives.

This actually happened to me, or rather my eyebrows. You see, why I had on occasion been told I had good eyebrows, they weren't perfect, and they were all alone and didn't have anyone to look up to. Apparently Brooke Shields had good eyebrows, but as this was early 2000s, those were way too thick and uncool. Onwards my eyebrows trudged feeling incomplete until they saw them.
They were not too thin, not too thick, they were just right! Katy Perry's beautiful brows!

 

I can't even see the Oompa Loompas on her finger nails, not when there is a work of art happening north of her eye!

In my quest for these I decided to do the unthinkable to try and grow out my eyebrows. Yep, I sure did. Thankfully my eyebrow hair is rather fair so it wasn't a complete disaster. But nothing really happened either, turns out my 12 year old self who I had been blaming for the blah brows was actually pretty sensible and nifty with a pair of tweezers so they ended up almost the same again. Damn.

But then I discovered the secret. Katy, you've been holding out on me!

The Holy Grail

People don't have perfect, thick brows they are dirty little cheaters filling their brows with pencils.
A solution at last!
Since discovering this several weeks ago, I am a certified brow pencil addict. I don't feel 'done' without doing them. They have this magical ability to make the rest of my face look polished and well groomed which is not something I'm usually great at achieving.

To demonstrate, here is a before and after.

 

Sad, bored and lonely eyebrows in desperate need of a friend

Happy, Katy inspired eyebrows

While the difference is subtle, there is more definition in the entire brow, particularly in the tail, and this is what I believe makes all the difference. An even greater difference would be not having dermatitis under my eye and a blister under the other, but that is a blog post for another time.

So how do we feel about eyebrow pencils? OTT or a necessary step in a beauty regimen?

B x

My obsession with hair, a long winded and dramatic history

I have been obsessed with my hair and making it grow long and shiny for almost my whole life. As a little girl, my mum had long hair down her back and it was somewhat her trademark. She refused to coif and perm her hair like all the other girls in the 80s and instead favoured a 60s/70s look. Naturally like all little girls, I wanted to be just like her and my hair was long and wavy too. Until there was the unfortunate incident when Mum cut my hair a bit shorter and kept cutting in crooked until it wouldn't tie up anymore. I don't know how I wasn't more traumatised, although back then my little body was healthy and growing it was easy, and I kept the long look all the way through highschool and never thought much about it other than alternating between foils or not foils.

That was until the incident. Halfway through uni, the "scene kids" hair was the in thing and my fine hair just couldn't hold up the volume, so I decided I'd go for the layered look that would allow my long hair to gain such much needed height. So after much deliberation, I printed my pic stolen from some hip teens MySpace profile and headed to another hairdresser in town as mine was on holidays.

At once I felt at ease, my dear friend Anna had joined me and the hairdresser was a senior one and told me she was so excited to cut my hair as it was her new favourite hair style and she'd done it on a few other girls. Hooray!

Not so. After quite a while I started to think she sure had been cutting and razoring for a while. I caught a glimpse of Anna sitting behind me in the mirror and she gave me a small, stiff smile. Hmm suspicious. However I tried to relax and read my trashy magazine. A minute later the lady with a short bob next to me looked at me and smiled and said "oh looking at you makes me want to cut mine all off".

AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Immediately the blood drained from my face and I realised what this demonic psycho bitch had done. My long locks were gone. I was a brunette 18 year old Florence Henderson.

FUCK HER!

She knew what she'd done, she tried to blame my fine hair for making it look so short (yeah right!) and urged me not to look at the hair on the floor. She kindly gave me a discount and I fled to the comfort of home where, like every normal girl, I cried and freaked out.

Thankfully Anna had a plan, she had dabbled with a synthetic hair piece during nights out so I demanded she take me to she she bought it.

This worked well for a while until it became so damaged my parents pointed out it looked like I had clipped a dead possum to my head. So after crying and raging at them, I sucked up every cent I had to get actual hair extensions. This was the start of my long love affair with attaching other peoples hair to my head.

Eventually My hair started to grow out again to a bit past shoulder length. Success! Or not. My very first breakup and diving head first into a new relationship lead me towards 2 inevitable pathways, losing a few kilos, and hacking my hair off into a Pob. However this wasn't enough and it ended up with me dying my hair black and dropping out of uni - win!

Of course all of these were horrible mistakes and I ran back to hair extensions the second I could. All though this time, Anna had offered the handy hint you could buy hair on eBay. So no more Giving hundreds of dollars of my retail hard earned dollars to a rude hairdresser. Now I could do them in the comfort of my own home!

I kept this up for approximately two years, until I realised my hair hadn't grown the entire time. Hmmm. So I decided to bite the bullet and just let my hair out, eek!

Unfortunately this didn't work out and it still didn't grow! The balyage I got soon after is still in my hair over a year later and is now only a few inches from where it was first applied.

Eventually I saw a naturopath and started taking a million supplements and started to get some growth. However it has been the last few months that have seen it grow and thicken up like nothing else. I credit this to 2 things, not washing my hair and my new brush that has revolutionised my hair life!

Posts to come

B x

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Oil Cleansing - DIY

As an avid consumer of Beauty blogs, I haven't missed nearly everyone recommending oil cleansing and using Shu Uemura Cleansing Oil. However for an RRP of $105 that was never, ever going to happen. Think of all the clothes I could buy with that!

So after more Googling, I discovered you can make it your own with the secret ingredient being Castor Oil. Apparently this is the stuff that really gets into the pores and cleans them out making your skin amazing.

To make it, you simply need to mix castor oil with some other moisturising oils, such as good ol' olive oil and my moisturising bestie, Jojoba. Depending on your skin, you simply change up the ratios, e.g. 

Oily/congested skin = more castor oil, less moisturising oil

Dry skin = less castor oil, more moisturising oils

After hitting up the local health food shop for some oils, I got to work!

I decided to make some for the boyfriend too as we had so much and Priceline only sells bottles in 2.

So off I set mixing like a genius at the kitchen table. James pointed out I looked like Walt - WIN!

Science, Bitch!

I was quite concerned that the oils wouldn't blend well but happily they did! Below is a sample of the bottle I made James.

He gets a moustache because he's a boy. 

So how did it go cleansing wise I hear you ask?

I'm really quite pleased with the results although I have only done it once. At first it felt so thick and oily but in saying that I could feel my makeup being pulled off my face. Once I started washing it off with the warm face washer it came off easily and my skin was left super smooth, glowing and dare I say it, looking cleaner than usual! I may post an update showing said glowy cleanness, but perhaps during a time where I don't have dermatitis under my eyes... 

This is definitely something I'll be continuing and I'm really glad I've found a new, cheap way to keep my skin  lovely that doesn't involve chemicals or harshness. Or more importantly spending hundreds of dollars, especially not while my science career is still so underground.

B x

Alternative French Manicure - my foray into nail art

Today I once again jumped at the chance to apply to be a reviewer on my favourite beauty blog Primped and as part of the application I had to talk about my favourite nail art trends.
While I generally adore nail art, I'm not so confident when it comes to doing it myself.
On the occasions I stray from my usual one tone, I just do a few coats of glitter etc on the ring fingers for added pop, but then get a bit intimidated and take it off and go back to boring.

But not today, I thought, today I will be fun! I decided to head down to my old haunt of Priceline in North Sydney and check out the Sally Hansen Nail Pens. A friend of mine had successfully given herself a lovely French manicure for a wedding while we watched TV, very foolproof!
After much deliberation I decided on a silver chrome one passing on the selection of white, black and red. When it doubt, go for the sparkly one.

When I returned to my desk to resume Internet browsing continue working hard, the allure of a new nail polish and my bare nails was too irresistible to resist waiting until I got home.
Sally Hansen have 2 versions, one with a fine tip for nail art and one with a thicker brush for doing the whole nail quickly and without the risk of spilling it all over the door trim in the car.
Guess which one I bought?
However not all was lost, after clicking the lid a million times a tiny sliver of polish came out and after a few more dozen clicks I managed to create a fairly neat line.

Once I got home I decided to try again this time with a nice pretty base colour.

I decided to use another Sally Hansen Polish, this time Insta-Dry in Petal Pusher with the pen for the tips.

I love the Insta-Dry, it has this amazing thick brush that makes even the most clumsy job turn out out pretty darn neat!

As I'd had a practise run at work, the second time doing the tips turned out ok, even amazingly on my right hand, which I suspected would turn out really dodge.

And the result;

Not bad at all! I'm not usually a fan of the French tips as its just way too girly for me, however the silver gives it just enough fun for weeks when I don't feel like a block colour or a special occasion.

Unfortunately the result isn't as shiny as I'd like as my new bottle of Seche Vite is still in the damn post. However overall, I'm really happy with the result. The silver has a nice chromed/silver leaf look. So in conclusion my first foray into nail art has been a success.

B x

P.s. please excuse the awful picture quality, maybe I should have gotten the iPad 3 after all...

New Blog! First Post! OMG!!!

Come one, come all! New blog and post! I'm Beth, aka B. Like most people with a one syllable name, my nickname has been reduced to a single letter. Plus it sounds cool and I get to pretend I'm Blair (xoxo).

As you can see from the header, having a new blog is quite exciting for me as I've never done it before..

Ok I lie, I have been a little slutty in the blog world, running around breaking hearts starting and then abandoning blogs over a 2 week period. The longest I ever maintained a blog was my handbag contents blog, which I only maintained as a pass grade required it.

BUT.. I feel like this time will be different.

For one, I'm actually blogging about something I love quite a lot. And that something would be beauty and all the glorious products within it.
You see, when I go near a Priceline, I come out some hours later looking like this.

Where the Fuck did my money go?!

Unfortunately this scenario occurs weekly as Priceline is downstairs from my office. D'oh!

Also, over the past year or two, I have become more obsessed with reading beauty blogs and doing and buying everything Zoe Foster says, so creating my own feels like the next logical step.

Also, I'm going through a bit of a change lately and I'm hoping that B 2.0 is capable of updating a blog regularly along with being super organised, thin and the coolest person ever...

So, to everyone reading this (I'm looking at you James!) enjoy!

B x