By Charlotte Goodwin, Money Maven
Buying make-up beauty products and beautician services can be a very expensive business. A trip to the beauty salon for your nails, hair and make-up can see you an entire week’s pay slip in one short visit! So how can you still indulge in fabulous beauty treatments and save money at the same time? The Money Maven shares with you easy, cheap and fun DIY beauty secrets to help you find ways of saving money and still look salon perfect!
For fun and effective at-home skin-care, give these easy and budget-friendly DIY beauty tips and tricks a go!
o You can save yourself a pretty penny by making your own cleanser, toner and moisturizer products at home. These savings will allows you to splurge on occasional salon facials, as you will be saving money on your daily skin care routine! A blend of water, baking soda, honey and extra-virgin olive oil make for an invigorating cleanser, a mixture of apple cider vinegar, green tea and spring water make for a refreshing toner and sour cream & honey work together to make a facial moisturizer for silky smooth skin.
o For a DIY eye cream or dark circles treatment, every night run cotton (ear) buds under water and place in the freezer. In the morning, these frozen cotton buds can be used to swab under the eye to relieve swelling and freshen your face.
o If you have problem skin, try adding oatmeal to your bath. This age-old remedy is dirt-cheap and will help to remove irritation & redness from the skin.
o To make an effective anti-ageing skin treatment without leaving your house, a concoction of cucumber, almond oil and fresh mint, applied to the face will reinvigorate the skin and help to fill out those pesky fine lines.
Try these homemade hair remedies ways to pamper your luscious locks for less!
o Home hair colour is a great inexpensive alternative to visiting the salon. If it’s your first time applying hair colour by yourself, check out some online tutorials, which will show you how to apply the tint correctly and maintain the colour. Celebrity Hairdresser, Belinda Jeffrey recommends Nice’n Easy Colour Blend Foam (RRP: $17.99) for it’s easy, mess-free application and perfect grey coverage.
o A mixture of banana, egg, beer and honey can be used as a scalp mask, which will act in the same way as a volumizing spray. The mask will give your hair a healthy shine and make it bounce from the roots.
o If the ends of your hair are feeling dry and damaged, whip up your own homemade protein treatment! Combine egg, avocado and yoghurt and massage into the lengths of your hair, to organically moisturise your locks only using ingredients from your kitchen.
Swapping your fortnightly mani-pedi for doing your own nails at home, will help to save you well over $100 for every trip you skip!
o If you are a simple coat of polish kind of girl, shop for a cute new shade of polish and some sweet home manicure equipment. Investing in your very own Nailery Manicure Bowl ($4.50), Sally Hansen Cuticle Tamer ($16.95) and Elite Sapphire Nail File (RRP: $4.95) will only cost you far less than a single trip to the beautician and will last you for many years to come!
o If you are a nail art fashionista, why not try Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips (RRP: $14.95) or Nail Art Pen (RRP: $12.95).
o Having a full-set of acrylic nails applied and then getting infills every two weeks, can cost you $800 a year, but for the price of one infill you can buy an at-home kit that will last you months on end and set you on the road to becoming your very own budget savvy nail technician! Try Manicare’s at-home Glam Nails Sculptured Acrylic Nails Kit ($30.95) or Glam Nails Gel Nails System Kit (RRP: $29.65).
Rescu. Money Maven Road Test: Manicare’s Glam Nails Sculptured Acrylic Nails Kit takes a bit of getting used to and practice makes perfect but it works like magic. The at-home kit provides you with everything you need to do your own full-set and infills all in the comfort of your own home, without the worries of nail infections from dirty nail salon equipment because you are in charge of cleaning your own kit!
