Staying Gorgeous on a Budget

When it comes to beauty and skincare, it’s hard to justify skimping on quality products. Your face is the first thing people see, and you want it to look healthy and glowing. In order to provide a cheaper product, some make-up brands will use cheaper quality ingredients, which might cause sensitive skin to react negatively. However, using make-up every day can rack up hundreds of dollars in cosmetic purchases. 

One way to reduce costs, is to keep your existing make-up in good condition, and to make it last as long as possible. A good rule of thumb, is to remember that liquid based products (ex: liquid foundation) can breed bacteria after some time, so these products tend not to last as long as powder and petroleum based products (concealer, mineral foundation, lip balm).

Thus, an eyeliner pencil can last quite a long time with regular sharpening, but if you are wetting the tip with water or saliva, then it will significantly reduce the quality of the product. Not to mention, do you really want spit lining the waterline of your eye?

Mascara is notorious for breeding bacteria, or drying out within a couple of months. This is usually due to the fact that women pump the brush up and down to load the product onto it. This will push more air into the barrel, and dry it out faster.

Use make-up brushes, rather than fingertips to take make-up out of it’s case so that bacteria is not transmitted to the original product. Of course, it’s then important to wash your brushes with a little hand soap and warm water every week so that you can keep them clean. Don’t let them dry with the handles down, or water will seep into the wooden brush handles. Instead, hang them up by the handle so that the water will trickle off the bristles. For a step-by-step, watch Michelle Phan’s video.

Once you get to the end of the lipstick barrel, you can use a lip brush to get at the remaining product. Then, scoop it out, and mix it with an equal part of petroleum jelly in an old contact case/old lip balm pot to create your own lip balm.  You can do the same thing with remaining eyeshadows and blushes to create different colors. Alternatively, you can mix these products in with some glycerin to create new color combinations of cream eyeshadows.

 

It is possible for make-up to expire however, so you should label the date that your make-up was opened every time you buy a new product. Then use this handy chart to remember when to throw out expired make-up.

Cosmetic Product	Expiration Date
Mascara	3-6 months
Eyeliner	3-6months
Sunscreen	Up to 1 year
Skin-care products	1 year
Liquid foundation	1 year
Hair Products	1 year
Lipstick	1 year
Powder-based make-up	2 years

[Taken from fitnessmagazine.com April 2011 edition]

For more make-up tips, check out "When should I throw my old Cosmetics Out?"