When did looking good get so expensive?
There are moisturizers you need to keep your skin the perfect texture. You need makeup to make sure your complexion is to your liking. And then there’s the products to keep your hair straight, curly, voluminous, shiny.
Oh, great – and now contouring is a thing.
Well, relax. You don’t need the money of a socialite to be a beauty junky. Here are some of the niftiest cheap beauty hacks from around the interwebs:
- Getting your lips glossy. High end lip gloss can cost some big bucks. Dior’s Addict Ultra-Gloss, for example, costs $30. There are some cheaper drugstore varieties that experts swear by. Makeup artist Amber Dreadon – whose clients include Lorde, Katy Perry and Rita Ora – told USA Today she likes to use Maybelline Baby Lips, a $5 drugstore tube. But to get your lips glossy as cheaply as possible, try Vaseline. It’s about $4 and has a bevvy of other uses, too. Try it as makeup remover!
- Get rid of shampoo buildup. Nobody likes the feeling of built up shampoo lingering in their locks. It could drive you to spend upwards of $30 on products like DevaCurl that act as “Buildup Busters.” But before you shell out that kind of money, try rinsing with apple cider vinegar. Bottles cost about $6 and can also be used to fight dandruff.
- Keep legs smooth while you shave. No – you should never go at your damp legs with a dry razor. Ouch. Itch. Gross. But women’s shave gel costs anywhere from $2 to $10 and honestly runs the gamut in quality. Before throwing money at a questionable bottle of cream, try heading to the kitchen and grabbing your tub of coconut oil. You can find a gallon of coconut oil for about $19 online. It can also be used as lipgloss, moisturizer and – of course – a cooking oil.
- Keep your eyebrows in place. At some point in your life, you’ve probably taken off your sweatshirt, peeked in a mirror and noticed that your eyebrows suddenly resembled bristly caterpillars. Products that promise to keep your eyebrows in place can cost upward of $29. That’s a lot of money just to keep your face from looking like a caterpillar reunion. Instead, try wetting a spooly and rubbing it over a bar of soap. Then, use the soap residue to smooth your stubborn eyebrow hairs in place. Dove White Beauty Bar works well, according to Self Magazine. It can be found at CVS for $2.
- Keep grease out of your hair. No judgement here – we all skip washing our hair at some point. Unfortunately, the best dry shampoos sell for upward of $29 (Bumble and Bumble’s Pret-A-Powder Invisible Dry Shampoo, for instance). Target and most drug stores sell a cheap alternative for about $6 called Batiste, which comes in several scents. But if you’re hoping to just reach into your medicine cabinet, try baby powder to keep grease out of your hair. Just sprinkle some at your roots and brush through. Consider blow drying afterward to bring a little volume back into your hair. Johnson’s Baby Powder sells for about $5 at Walmart.
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