Beginner’s Beauty
8 years ago by
I know I’ve mentioned before that when it comes to beauty, I’m pretty much an amateur. Which is funny considering I grew up with three sisters (thanks, guys). So while I’m constantly inspired to try new beauty looks, I often remember moments in my life when I first experienced the pleasure (and pain) of certain beginner beauty experiments. For instance…
1) That time my older sisters were driving me to school. I was in 7th grade and needed chapstick, which they didn’t have, but offered me a lip gloss instead. I applied it without questioning my sister’s giggling. That is, until my lips started to tingle and burn. With wide eyes I begged my sister, “what is this??” Turns out, it was lip plumping gloss. I haven’t revisited that product since.
2) I first waxed my eyebrows the day of my 6th grade graduation, which seems young (though maybe not to the youth of 2016!) but with a natural born unibrow, it was time to also graduate to two brows. All was well, until a few weeks later when my friend (if I can even CONSIDER her that now) suggested I maintain my newly shaped brows with a razor. Yeah… I accidentally shaved off half of my left eyebrow. I still don’t think it (or I) have fully recovered.
3) I was also in middle school (this was clearly a period of experimenting for me) when I decided I wanted bangs. Too impatient to wait for an appointment at the salon, I begged my mom to cut them for me. She succumbed, only to completely botch the job, giving me a full blown mullet. I wore a headband secured tightly with bobby pins for 6 months. I still haven’t let her live that down.
It’s safe to say I’ve learned my lessons…but is it wrong of me to hope you’ve experienced some crazy beauty mistakes too?? Do tell!
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Dying my own hair. Not once but three separate occasions that I am willing to omit.
The first seemed simple enough it was close to the color of my own hair but it didn’t set right and the top half was one color and the bottom another.
Then trying to go lighter, well I picked a few too many shades lighter and my dark drown hair went more red orange, not clownish but still not even close to the dirty blonde I was going.
Oh wait there’s another, I tried red…not so good.
But the final disaster was doing my own highlights. The process was no big deal but came out so terrible my mom got me into the salon that evening. It took hours to fix and with that my stylist informed me that if I ever trying to dye my own hair again she would refuse to fix.
That sunk in and I listened and happily have a wonderful professional handle my colour.
my first make up idol was robert smith from the cure: i tried to puff up my hair and i used a brown lipstick and then i darkened everything with black eyeliner! fortunately, there’s no photo proof of that! :)
http://littleaesthete.com/
Laughed out loud at your eyebrow stories! I wore foundation a good six shades too dark, baby pink blush and green eyeshadow… Never again!
http://my–socalledlife.blogspot.com.au/
I will omit the instances when my mother cut me to a shape of a bowl as a child, because all children get that treatment at least once in their life. Or at least did in the 90s.
The first big flop was at the end of elementary school when I switched from glasses (terribly ugly ones) to contact lenses. I had really strong bushy unruly eyebrows, but the glasses at least hid that partially. So on the evening before I would go to school without glasses, I plucked my eyebrows into thin lines. The difference was painfully obvious (AND painful!). My under-brow area was also still bloody red the next morning, and everyone commented on it.
Then it was a bunch of haircoloring mishaps. I was blonde, blonder, orange, red, pink, yellow, purple, grey, dark-something (I believe that sewage water is of that color).
One time I did a bleaching job so terrible that the top part of my hair was orange and the ends were basically fried. And inbetween it was a mix of colors, looking like vomit. It was so bad that my mother allowed me not to go to school that day, and went to buy me a brown dye instead (this might sound terrible, but don’t worry, both my mother and I are educated ;) – and I don’t color my hair anymore 10 years later).
There’s more hair-related stories because I’ve always done it myself, but none as traumatic. I think my hair was pretty cool in its pink stage for 2 years of high school when I was going to raves and did my own costumes and all. Those were the good times :)
Nice post dear!
I feel you! Thankfully, I didn’t have any older sisters to mess with me!
I think I was lucky when it came to beauty mistakes – most of them were pretty easily reversible (like dying my hair back to brown after my own at-home highlight disaster), except maybe the overplucking my eyebrows in the 90s. They haven’t been the same since then!
Shaving my legs at the age of 16 with an original Bic razor. No safety guards…just a long red stripe of blood down my shin. A 20cm long skinny stripe of missing skin leaving a scar which you can still faintly see 30 years later.
Made sure my daughter had the right equipment when she started to shave. Please ladies..always help your teens with their beauty regimes.
1. I once accidentally used nail polish remover instead of eye makeup remover… Oh my god! No fun. Fortunately I didn’t go blind…
2. I tried to colour my hair red once. With natural products. Turned out green… :)
3. I washed my hair with bottled cheap hand soap. My hair felt like straw for a week and nothing helped.
4. I used self tan and went to get my legs waxed the next day…. Patches of brown came off and my skin looked like I had some awful disease. The beautician looked terrified until I told her that it must be the self tan coming off…
5. A beautician ran out of wax in the middle of the procedure. So I went home with one hairy and one smooth leg… I never visited that place again.
6. My friend gave me a Hugo Boss body lotion. It was sparkling but left my skin really sticky…. Until I read the label. It was in fact a shower gel! The sparkles must have mislead me…
https://sofaundermapletree.wordpress.com
Cringe. One summer in the 80s when I decided I could totally fake a tan wiht dark brown makeup (I’m VERY blue white), bronze blush and, finishing touch, yellow and bright blue eye makeup. #summerofstreakyfacedhorror
I decided to bleach my own shoulder length dark brown hair. I was a poor nanny and knew I couldn’t afford to have a pro do it. I went to the beauty supply store and bought bleach and developer. I knew that much, but I didn’t know what to do, so I mixed them together (before the internet) and plastered it on my head, put a bag over it and put a hot dryer on it, and waited until I saw yellow. I took it off and it was mostly blonde but still had quite an orange cast on the length, so I went to the store and bought a highlighting kit and shmeared that all over my head and let that sit until it was all blonde. I was pretty proud of myself doing that all in one day. I went to sleep that night and woke up to find someone sleeping next to me on my pillow. It wasn’t actually someone. It was some thing. It was my hair. It was no longer attached to my head. There was a pile of hair resembling ramen noodles puffed up in a pile on my pillow. The hair left on my head was like old rubber bands that get gummy and break. That morning I drove to the salon and had my shoulder length dark brown hair from 2 days before, chopped into a peroxide pixie. I went from beautiful to Billy Idol in one days time. The worst part was the kids I took care of didn’t recognize me and cried all morning while I was trying to prove it was me
I thought that eyelashes would behave the same way as hair on ones legs when cut. I must have heard someone say (when I was about 10 or 11 years old) that hair grows more quickly when cut, and thicker. So guess what, I cut all my eyelashes off!! I looked weird, really odd and had SO much explaining to do to my mum and dad and friends and just about everyone who knew me. It was so obvious that someone was missing. Big Time!
They did eventually grow back (after about 6 months!!) but sadly for me not any thicker than before…
I’ve never been too adventurous when it comes to beauty experimentation, however – when I was a sophomore in high school and in the HS band, I was asked to the Junior Senior Prom by a cute, shy french horn player who was, of course, a senior. The DAY OF the prom, which also happened to be my birthday, my mother, in her desire to make me as pretty as possible for the night’s event, gave me a HOME PERM. My baby fine, straight hair was frizzed out for weeks to come. And sadly, there is a picture that commemorates the occasion … (sigh) …
Natalie! I had the same beauty mishap with an electric depilatory machine, and have a solution for your left eyebrow! For those of us who have experienced risky alternatives to careful tweezing gone wrong, Latisse works! Works on brows! It’s a pricey fix—I paid about $120 for a 2-month supply, but it did grow my inner right brow back long after I had given up on having any semblance of symmetry. Just don’t use the big applicator brushes the product comes with. You’ll use much less of the serum, and get it precisely where you need it, if you use a thin liner brush.
Thank you for sharing your experiences, I’m sure we all can relate!