Why you shouldn't make your own sunscreen (from Lab Muffin)

I ranted about this once before, but here is a really thorough explanation of why trying to DIY sunscreen is a terrible idea.

The easiest DIY reusable cotton makeup pads ever

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I'm not a huge DIY person in that I don't DIY (DIM?) just for the hell of it. For the most part, I'm only going to make my own shit if it is cheaper (or, potentially, better) than something I can buy and if it's not going to be a huge, complicated chore. I respect people who make stuff all the time for the fun of it or to be less wasteful, but I need things to be cheap and easy at this stage in my life. Fortunately, this project hits all the buttons (is that a real expression? more whiskey): it's very cheap; it takes less than half an hour to complete; there is next to no skill required; and it's eco-friendly.

I also made this beautiful jar that I use to store these beautiful creations.

In a weird but not particularly exciting coincidence, about half an hour after realizing that I was out of cotton balls, I came across this Into the Gloss post about reusable makeup pads. Obviously a good idea, but that shit costs $22 for a pack of 8 ($2.75 a piece). A number of sellers on Etsy offer them for a more reasonable price, or you can make your own with a couple of bucks and a few minutes of your time.

This is not a detailed tutorial. The steps are essentially: (1) find cloth; and (2) cut cloth. You'll need to use a nice, soft, absorbent fabric, probably cotton. If you have an old flannel shirt or sheet that you're not going to use again, that'll work. If not, I recommend getting some flannel that is meant for babies, because it'll be extra soft. I suggest checking out the remnants section of the fabric store, because you only need a small piece, and you can get it very cheap that way. I paid less than $2 for the piece of flannel that I used, which was probably about 2.5' x 1.5' originally. I actual bought it around a year and a half ago to make a gift for a friend's baby. It's printed all over with the word baby in white, but, as you can probably see in the photo above, once I washed it the design pretty much disappeared, so I abandoned that project. It's perfect for this purpose, as it turns out.

My DIY makeup storage desk (cheap, good for small spaces, and not at all Pinterest pretty)

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

I have no problem at all with color-coordinated storage solutions or beautifully arranged and decorated vanities. I enjoy being in an aesthetically pleasing space, and I would do that all the time if I could, because it does something positive for my state of mind. I just don't happen to have those things right now. Instead, I have a practical hodgepodge of things that I use to store my makeup - and I love it. I think that this makeup desk, though simple, is one of the best ideas I've ever come up with. (Let's not explore what that says about the calibre of my ideas in general.) It's super functional and cost me almost nothing. Someday I'll probably get something prettier, but this works really fucking well for now.

So obviously this is not meant to be Pinterest-style decorating inspiration (though I will probably pin it). Instead, I thought I'd show you what I came up with to work in the tiny space I'm living in, using mostly materials I already had. It might help you come up with some ideas yourself - or, if not, you can be all, "Ugh, why would you post photos of that crap online? No one wants to look at that." That's fun too. You can even click on the photos to enlarge them if you want to judge more thoroughly.

Pinterest lies: Review of e.l.f. Studio Lip Exfoliator

Disclosure: This post contains no affiliate links.
So I'll start by pointing out that this is a perfectly fine, serviceable product. It's supposed to exfoliate your lips, and it more or less does. It's basically just chunky brown sugar suspended in a emollient/waxy base. Like gritty lip balm.

But I see this pin all the time and for some reason it drives me crazy.

It's the caption that gets me, and it's always the same. I need to straighten things out here: don't buy this to use overnight. What are you going to do with it overnight? It makes no sense. When you rub this stuff on your lips, it leaves behind a bunch of grains of sugar and some moisturizing stuff. You can massage it around some more to exfoliate better, but then you still have chunks on your face that you have to wipe off. I guess you could then leave the remaining balm behind overnight and that might do something, but that's the case with any lip balm. Personally, I like to add some extra moisturizer to my lips, because the sugary taste of this stuff makes me want to lick my lips, and that's not good for them.

I know, I'm being too picky. Anyway, it works okay. I still usually have some big flaky bits on my lips after I use it, but then I always do, no matter what I try to do about that. I find that a little olive oil or honey with brown sugar mixed into it works better as a lip exfoliator, because the pieces of sugar in the e.l.f. stick are pretty big and sparse so they're not as efficient for scrubbing. They're pretty rough, too. The advantage of this stick is that it's more portable and (slightly) less messy than a homemade concoction.

So it's fine. It's convenient and there's nothing wrong with it. I wouldn't buy it again, but for $3 it's pretty cheap and certainly a better option than some ridiculous fucking $25 lip scrub. But $3 worth of oil and sugar would go a lot further and work a bit better.

Quick Review: L'Oreal Age Perfect Glow Renewal Facial Oil (with a more affordable DIY alternative)

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon affiliate links.
I got a sample of this from somewhere, and before I'd even opened it, I knew that I was definitely not going to put this shit on my face. The card it came with says:

FORMULATED WITH A UNIQUE BLEND OF 8 ESSENTIAL OILS

English Lavender
Rosemary Leaf
Geranium
Orange Peel
Chamomile
Rose Flower
Lavandin
Marjoram Leaf

Every one of those ingredients, which the single exception of chamomile, is a skin irritant/sensitizer (look them up here if you doubt me). Some, like lavender oil, might even be photosensitizers (i.e. does bad things in the sun). Lavender oil is also actually a pro-oxidant, rather than an anti-oxidant, which is what we usually look for in skin care products. Oh golly, please, let me rub that on my face. Most of these fragrant oils have no actual benefit for skin, either.

Mind you, when you look at full ingredient list, the fragrant oils are preceded by a bunch of oils that are actually mostly decent for the skin. Funny that they don't highlight those good ingredients instead on the package. Here's the list:

INGREDIENTS: CAPRYLIC/CAPRIC TRIGLYCERIDE • OLEA EUROPAEA OIL/OLIVE FRUIT OIL • SIMMONDSIA CHINENSIS OIL/ JOJOBA SEED OIL • CAMELINA SATIVA OIL/ CAMELINA SATIVA SEED OIL • HELIANTHUS ANNUUS SEED K8OIL/SUNFLOWER SEED OIL • ROSA CANINA FRUIT OIL • PARFUM/ FRAGRANCE • ZEA MAYS OIL/CORN OIL • PRUNUS ARMENIACA KERNEL OIL/APRICOT KERNEL OIL • PASSIFLORA EDULIS OIL/ PASSIFLORA EDULIS SEED OIL • ORYZA SATIVA BRAN OIL/RICE BRAN OIL • TOCOPHEROL • LIMONENE • PELARGONIUM GRAVEOLENS FLOWER OIL • CITRUS AURANTIUM DULCIS PEEL OIL/ORANGE PEEL OIL • CITRONELLOL • LINALOOL • ROSMARINUS OFFICINALIS LEAF OIL/ROSEMARY LEAF OIL • GERANIOL • ORIGANUM MAJORANA LEAF OIL • LAVANDULA ANGUSTIFOLIA OIL/LAVENDER OIL • ANTHEMIS NOBILIS FLOWER OIL • LAVANDULA HYBRIDA OIL • CUCUMIS SATIVUS FRUIT EXTRACT/CUCUMBER FRUIT EXTRACT • BENZYL ALCOHOL • CITRAL • CURCUMA LONGA EXTRACT/TURMERIC ROOT EXTRACT • EUGENOL • COUMARIN • SCLAREOLIDE • ROSA SPP/ROSE FLOWER OIL • JASMINUM OFFICINALE EXTRACT/JASMINE EXTRACT • ALPHA-ISOMETHYL IONONE

Olive oil, jojoba oil, apricot seed oil, etc. . . . these are good things. But there's just so much fragrance and crap in there that it's not worth it.

It does smell really fucking good, though. I thought maybe it would be nice as a perfumed oil, but unfortunately the scent fades very quickly. It absorbs well, so I've been rubbing the sample I have on various dry body parts and enjoying the temporary scent. It will have the same irritating properties no matter what part of your body you use it on (and you don't have to physically feel the irritation for it to damage your skin), but I'm okay with a little bit of that in places that don't get as much sun damage as my face, and that I don't care about protecting as much in general. I do wear perfume, after all.

Even though it smells great and feels nice on the skin, I still wouldn't recommend buying it for any purpose.  L'Oreal Age Perfect Glow Renewal Facial Oil retails regularly for $25 (though it's $19 on Amazon) for just 1 oz. (30 ml). If you want a pretty-smelling body oil, just pick up some jojoba oil (like this one) (or one or more of the other oils from the beginning of the ingredients list above) and add a few drops of scented essential oils like lavender (here), orange peel (here), rosemary (here), and geranium (here). (Rose and chamomile are more expensive.) Obviously your initial cost is going to be greater (using the oils I linked to, which equal about $33.50 total), but the oils are multi-purpose. You'll spend something closer to $6 per oz., rather than $25 per oz. for the L'Oreal stuff. Even if you went for the more expensive rose and chamomile oils, you'd do better than the L'Oreal cost. You'll get a nice, moisturizing oil with beneficial properties (jojoba), along with a bunch of stuff that smells pretty and doesn't do much else.

White rice powder as a cheap dry shampoo (from The Beauty Department)

Has anyone tried this? The advantage over other dry shampoos is supposed to be that rice flour turns transparent when it absorbs oil from your scalp.

How to make every nail polish you own double as a holographic polish for $6-15

I've posted about this before, but there's no real need to buy holographic nail polish in every shade when you can just buy a holo topcoat and use it to transform any polish you have into a linear holo. It really works. Here's are some examples:

One coat of holo topcoat (shade)

One coat of holo topcoat (direct sunlight)

See? Just buy one bottle of topcoat instead of ALL THE HOLOS. The easiest at-home dupes.

DIY cheap dupes for speckled nail polish (like Illamasqua, Deborah Lippmann, Hard Candy, etc.)

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

You can easily make your own versions of the Illamasqua Speckled polishes ($17), the Deborah Lippmann Staccato polishes ($19), the Hard Candy Candied Color polishes ($4), or the Maybelline Polka Dots polishes ($4).

The last two aren't especially expensive, but this way you can have almost as many speckled polish options as you already have bottles of nail polish for about $4. I know this isn't that mind-blowing an idea (and I'm not the only person to think of it), but maybe it hadn't occurred to you. All you have to do is buy one bottle of black glitter nail polish, and you can have ALL THE SPECKLED NAILS. I mean, this is a trend that we are all probably going to be bored with a year from now, so you might as well get the most out of it for the lowest possible investment right now. Also, this is a great use for those polishes you have which are really fucking sheer and annoying to use without globbing on 6 coats. They're perfect for this technique.

One good DIY and one bad DIY (from The Beauty Department)

Good: Make your own beach wave texture spray.

Bad: Make your own lash/brow serum. Maybe not so much bad as misleading. Castor oil does not stimulate hair growth. It can condition and, as a result, strengthen your hair so that it doesn't break as easily. If fewer lashes fall off, then they will be (or appear) thicker. But it won't make new ones grow where there weren't any before.

DIY Anthropologie Hacks (from Buzzfeed)

Some of these are just silly, and others seem like way too much work, but some are fun and pretty fucking nice. Check it out.

DIY matte top coat for your nails (from The Daily Varnish)

Is there anything cornstarch can't do? Check out the instructions here.

Don't you know that not buying a latte every day is the key to saving money? (from The Hairpin)

Disclosure: This post contains an affiliate link.
No, but really, if you don't already make your own iced coffee or iced tea, here's a tutorial, and you don't even need to buy a French press r any other fancy equipment. I recommend Tea Forte Cucumber Mint tea. It's not the cheapest tea ever (about $6.50 for 16 bags), and it won't improve your skin or whatever nonsense it claims to do, but it's fucking delicious, hot or cold.

I still have a shitload of those Nescafe instant things left, so I should probably see how they are over ice.

DIY skin and haircare recipes (from Lifehacker)

Okay, some of these might actually be useful. The sugar scrubs and coconut oil for sure.

Fix Your Face: How to use lipstick as blush

Here's a helpful link from Project Swatch if you want to expand your range of cream blushes without buying anything new.

Note: THIS is the silicone-based primer you should use!