We've been polling some of our fave lady bloggers recently about their beauty routines. One of the best things about blogs is the variety of them, and what's interesting for us is that everyone's life and interests informs what they slap on and off their faces on a daily basis. We've checked out English Mum in Ireland's routine, Grannymar has given us the low-down, and now it's Red Mum's turn. 'The the times and perils of a single mum', her blog is 'a sharp, funny and well-observed slice-of-life blog', according to the Sunday Tribune. We thought she'd have a few wry observations to make on the business of beaut.iefication, and it turns out, we weren't wrong:
What's your regular routine? Is it the whole nine yards, or is it the fall-into-bed-after-a-light-facewiping?
I thought I might begin my tale of what I don't do beauty routine-wise by telling a little story from when I was a little girl. I was about seven years old and that summer it was just me and my Dad in the house. Looking back on it there are a couple of things that make me laugh heartily, things he called 'what the big girls do'. One of these things involved him bringing home a crate of pure orange (bar-style bottles) which I was to drink every morning. Given this was 1978 and in Belfast, breakfast juice wasn't really something that was done at that time.
The other thing I remember was he brought me home Oil of Ulay and told me I should put it on my face and feet everyday. The feet suggestion came from him having gnarly smelly feet and was probably good advice considering I am too embarrassed to bare my tootsies to a chiropodist. I reckon I caught him using it himself within hours. My dad the first metrosexual :)
Now after such an auspicious start to what should have been a life-long routine I have grown up into a bit of a fair-weather friend (my Dad would be horrified) when it comes to beauty products, I feel little loyalty to any particular brand and even in terms of regular usage I am kinda hopeless. I might follow a good routine for a couple of days and then nothing for the next couple but one thing I do at least once a day is cleanse my face well. I use Boots Botanics range for the cleanser, sometimes (I forget often) finishing with a moisturiser and any brand will do. I get a spurt of being good for a couple of days of washing, cleansing, toning and moisturising before slipping back into only cleansing mode.
What products do you religiously swear by?
I’m lucky enough not to need serious moisturisers or being sensitive-skinned and needing particular brands, my skin is fairly okay which I suppose had a lot to do with my lack of regular routine; if I had seriously dry skin I probably would be a lot more dedicated in my rituals. Am I bad when that is really all I do?
While I do not do it regularly at all, one of the best tips I can give to redheads is to have their eyelashes tinted being a sufferer of baldy eyes when I have no make-up on prompting frequent ‘are you tired’ questions from people - I hate this.
Even if I have my eyelashes dyed I will still wear mascara, I have long lashes but I like the thickness mascara gives me, of course I would also be lost without my liquid eyeliner and being a redhead black mascara and eyeliner is too stark for me so I generally use dark brown.
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Sometimes when I have had my eyelashes dyed I have scared myself looking in the mirror afterwards at crazy black line that is my lashes, but in fairness they calm down within a week or so which is grand and then the dye lasts for about six weeks. The worst time was when my lashes were dyed ginger and the beautician wondered why I was giving out. ‘Your lashes are brown’ – ‘Ehm no they are not, they are ginger, they are the same colour I came in with’. Needless to say I haven’t gone back to that place.
One regular routine for me is a manicure. My nails are flaky and prone to breaking if I don’t use nail polish, I think doing this gives my nails some strength (while probably weakening them at the same time) but it also (and probably more importantly) stops me biting at or nibbling my nails. I prefer dark colours as they seem to go better with my skin tone and I actually find dark colours easier to apply. The only downside is that my nails have been left stained as a result which is yeuck. While I do use a base coat it obviously wasn’t enough or a good enough basecoat, so for a couple of years I have rarely had bare nails. The thought of going around for a while with discoloured finger nails was not something I relished. And in fairness if I want to have long nails I need the nail polish, do you see the never-ending circle happening there?
You name it I have tried it to get rid of the yellow-awful stain, from peroxide to bleaching tablets, to lightly filing the top of my nail (yes I know you shouldn’t do this). Having tried most of the different products to whiten nails my conclusion is that they do not work. I saw the scholl nail brighten product on Beaut.ie but I found it useless as when I used it (using it as a basecoat) all it did was make the top colour layer peel off perfectly in one go, not the look I was going for at all. I tried taking it all off and found that it appears to adhere itself to your nails so despite being taken off it still managed to make my nail polish peel off in one perfect nail shape.
Currently I am braving bare nails and it seems the air is helping restore my nails to a normal colour, thankfully; course they are breaking like bejaysus but sure at least they aren't yellow.
One thing, which I probably shouldn’t admit to publicly, is that as I am getting older I need to do more hair management, ie removal. My eyebrows will wave at passers-by unless I keep them tamed and I have looked at laser removal (not for my eyebrows you understand) but unfortunately us red heads don’t get a look in with laser treatments as they work on the contrast between hair and skin, so the darker your hair the better the results will be. I do a little home waxing using Smooth Appeal (again from Boots). There is a stove-top version but I think the microwave version is even better, less painful however you need to include a cup of water in with the wax to melt it as the last time I used it I blew up the microwave, really I did.
So I've been a little more honest than I probably should given the masses of Beaut.ie readers, some are bound to give my dark secrets away so I won't admit at all to having to work hard on my feet to make them in any way acceptable to be in the presence of polite company. My feet are something I obviously inherited from my Dad and having been told I have been adored from the ankles up only confirms this for me ;)
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Tune in on Monday for more pearls of wisdom from one of our favourite bloggers. Red Mum will be revealing all you need to know about the maintenence of her firey locks and just how she keeps her beauty stash out of the grasp of her teenage daughter.
