DIY Haircolor w/ Professional Colors

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Sorry to have been behind on my posting–believe it or not, tax work has kept me busy in August!  But I am back, with my newest find…

At the end of July, I had to go to my hair stylist to fix my hair color.  Why?  Because I tried to short-cut the hair coloring rules and paid the price.  What happened was that because of the sun, pool water, etc., my hair was really fading out and I decided that I wanted to return to my natural color (minus the grey!).  So I tried to put a darker permanent color on my roots AS WELL AS the rest of my hair so I wouldn’t get stuck doing permanent on the roots and semi-permanent on the rest to get everything to match.  BIG MISTAKE.  Even after doing test strands, I ended up red.  Rather red indeed.  After trying to fix it and testing swatches of hair with semi-permanent color and not getting very far, I gave up and called my stylist.

Tiffany @ Cosmopolitan in Brewster, NY is excellent and I highly recommend her.  She is a great stylist and manages to cut my stick-straight boring hair in such a way to give it some body.  And she also fixed my hair mishap with a Redken semi-permanent color.  She was also kind enough to write down exactly the color combination she used, because we often chat about my home-haircoloring adventures. 

So I went online and purchased the Redken hair coloring products myself and voila–this time it worked!  So don’t be shy about asking your stylist to give you your color formula–good stylists understand that the economy is tough right now and that they would rather keep you as a haircut client and have you rave about them to your friends than try to keep your color a secret. 

Have a great week!

Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.

Tags: asking for a discount, beauty, haircolor, hairstyling, make-up, makeup, saving money
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Good Makeup in a Lousy Economy

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Awhile ago I blogged about Paula Begoun and her incredibly useful site, www.beautypedia.com.  If you want honest reviews of makeup and hair care products, this is the place to go.  There is much free content and if you choose to go for the paid content, $24.95/year is a reasonable cost for all of the thousands of reviews that can help you make informed choices about your beauty products!

Here’s a great free 2008 report Paula published called “Recession Proof Beauty” or how to get great products without paying department store prices: http://www.cosmeticscop.com/bulletin/110608-full.htm

Here are two items that have definitely worked for me:

N.Y.C. Curling Mascara: I am one of those people for whom mascara has always been an issue…it usually ends up in rings under my eyes no matter what I buy, how little moisturizer or how much powder I use.   However, this $2.99 mascara is the first time I’ve had mascara actually last all day!

Wet n Wild Silk Finish Highlight & Contour Blush: This 3-part blush is excellent, particularly if you are like me and have light skin and blush application issues.  I have a hard time finding colors that don’t make me look like Happy the Clown.  This was a winner–and for $4.50 a great deal!

N.Y.C. Smooth Skin Pressed Face Powder: It doesn’t sit heavy on the face and looks great. For $3.99, again, another awesome bargain!

3 great products that can help us look great on a shoestring budget…no matter what the economy!  Enjoy!

Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.

Tags: great products, make-up, makeup
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Makeup tips for real women

Monday, April 21st, 2008

Do you ever get that feeling that you have “outgrown” your make-up?  It’s sort of like outgrowing your pants.  You realize the look that worked in your 20s all of a sudden seems to not work anymore when you hit your 30s.  Or when you become a mom and stop getting any sleep.

 I look at photos from when my son was born back in September to what I look like now…and it seems like the 7 months of lousy sleep has put 5 years on my face.  The bags under my eyes have bags large enough to be charged an extra $25 if they were going to fly US Air anytime soon.  And the cover-up that used to hide the circles isn’t enough anymore. 

 But what’s a mom to do without a lot of time or cash in the budget for beauty products?  When it seems like all of the info on beauty products out there promises to get rid of wrinkles and “aging signs” that don’t go away…and all of the women advertising this stuff are either 25, 25 and airbrushed, or 35, botoxed and airbrushed.  Or had really great lighting.  (Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could walk around with people carrying studio lighting for us all day so we could all look dewy and stunning?)

 For a long time, I have been following the work of Paula Begoun. She is a former make-up artist turned consumer advocate and publisher of Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me (currently in its 8th edition), a book that puts in real people-speak exactly what the cosmetics companies are selling and if it works or not.  However, the book is huge, so going to the website and accessing all of her reviews there (www.beautypedia.com) is worth the $25/year subscription.  You can search just about any cosmetics and skincare line available in the US as a whole or product-by-product!  And to save you time and money, she has her list of Paula’s Picks, so you don’t have to try to figure out what is good and what isn’t.  She even has a free cosmetics dictionary for nerds like me who like to look up exactly what is in my face cream.

 And guess what–you’ll find that there are plenty of products at the drugstore that are good to even better than what the department stores carry.  For a lot less.  (What a relief for those of us who like paying 99 cents for a lipstick!)  So it was back to consult Paula again, to find out what to do with this ol’ face of mine.  More on that next week.

But in the meantime…have you found any drug store products that have worked better than the department stores? 

Copyright 2008-2009 Kristin Delfau, author of Turbo-Mom's Guide to Saving Money Without Wasting Time a womens' personal finance book, and Aji Publishing.

Tags: advertising, beauty, make-up, skin care
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