My Dirty Habit

Ok... so I have more than just one dirty habit, but this is a beauty blog so we won't go down that road just yet.

Good morning everyone~

It's Sunday morning here in sunny Southern California and it's been about 3 days since I've washed my hair... cringe if you must, I know it sounds odd.

For me, the weekend is time for taking a break from my regular weekday routine - aside from not having to get up way earlier than my body wants me to, I also tend not to shower completely or put on any makeup. I think of it as letting my skin and hair take off for the weekend as well.

I wash my face and do all my rituals for breakout prevention and anti-aging, but unless I'm going somewhere other than Target or the supermarket, I rarely put anything on my face besides a little tinted moisturizer with SPF 1000. Ok so it's 30, but for some that's a lot. I look forward to the weekend for so many reasons but I think the best is simply not having to worry about what blemish I have to cover or what eyeliner I'm going to wear that day.

Like any woman, I like to take my time to get ready in the morning but in reality I have about 20 minutes, sometimes 30 to "put on my face". I know I could do it in 10 if I had to, and sometimes the snooze button forces me to, but I hate rushing to do anything - let alone my makeup. Did I mention yet that I'm a perfectionist too? So, unless it's dinner or a get-together with friends, (or of course a makeup gig)...I'm virtually makeup and beauty product free on the weekends. I love it and so does my skin. I highly recommend trying it. I mean who cares really besides yourself? If you can be ok in your own skin without it, who gives a $hit what the cashier at the grocery store or the guy at Jiffy Lube thinks? I know I don't. It took me a while not to though believe me.

I think it's important to give your skin a break every now and then. Even at night when I'm no stranger to falling asleep on the couch, it's nice to not having to spend 5 minutes taking off my eye makeup before heading to bed. I still wash my face but it takes about 30 seconds. Plus, all that cleansing and purifying from a 12+ hr day of wearing makeup tends to do more damage than good for me sometimes.

I have very oily/combination skin so I use a lot of products for acne prone skin which also tends to dry me out in areas, so the less scrubbing and rubbing I do on the weekends really makes a difference for the better. Ok, so now I hear the melody of Led Zeppelin's Ramble On in my head, so I'm going to get back to the first point I made... My dirty-ass hair.

This is not just limited to the weekend ladies... I'm a dirty girl. I must admit. I have long blonde hair that falls just above the middle of my back and to be honest, it's a pain in the ass to wash. It takes about 10 minutes in the shower just to shampoo and condition it all and then I have to practice the contortionist act of shaving my legs in a stall shower with no place to rest my feet. I think you can single handedly blame the water shortage problem on me... I'm not proud of it, but I got a lot to do when I get in there! So the way I see it - it's better for our environment (and our water bill) if I just wash my hair every other day... sometimes every two days. I know... but trust me on this one.

By now, I'm sure I've painted a pretty pachouli, smelling picture of myself, but I assure you... you would never know unless I told you. Oh wait... I just did. Ok, so how do I pull this off without looking like I just spent the night in a VW bus you ask? The answer my dear friends is Dry Shampoo. It rocks. And I only rock things that rock.

"What the hell is Dry Shampoo?" is the remark I hear the most when I divulge my secret, dirty habit... Dry Shampoo, to make it quick, is a baby power like substance like corn starch or talc in an aerosol can that you spray on your roots and then shake or brush out a few moments later. It's ingenious and amazing and I can't live without it! The concept of dry shampoo goes back to about the 1800's or early 1900's I believe, before actual wet shampoo was created. It was simply called Hair Powder and it was used in the same concept as we (I) do today - to soak up that excess oil. Well, I do love all things vintage...

The story goes as follows: I shower at night and spray in all my detanglers and volumizers and throw it up in a bun on top of my head in what I like to call, my "sleep bun". I started this process a few years back when I decided to let my hair grow and realized that I had this tendency to twirl my hair in my sleep and make horrible knots. It kept me from doing that and also gave me the great wavy, rock & roll hair that I coveted so much as a young girl. It was also a bit beachy too which I loved. And since most of the shows I went to were at The Beach (as in Jones Beach) it was all too fitting...

I loved the way my hair looked the next day even more, which then started me on the trend of only washing my hair every other day. With the added bonus of saving me time in the shower this has been my routine now for about 4 years and I'm never going back.

However, along with my oily skin, I also have a very oily scalp and although I loved the way my actual locks looked, I was a little concerned with my oily roots. I had read about Bumble and Bumble's Hair Powder in Allure I think and one day I saw it in a salon I went to so I splurged and bought a can. I used that for a while but I really didn't like how it made my hair darker as this particular one is colored to match your hair - but the "Blondish" one they made was not really matching mine at all.

It was also quite pricey at $35 for a small, 4.4 oz can. I stopped using it and just dealt with the extra oil because I didn't want to spend that kind of money and I didn't think there was anything around to compare with it at the time without making a special trip to Sephora or Ulta. The oil was better for my hair anyway, so I heard.

It wasn't until I moved here to Cali where the air was much dryer and the water was much harder that I started to have issues with my dirty girl routine. Just as with your skin, the dryer it is, the more it wants to produce oil. I was having the hardest time with this as I no longer could rock the rock & roll hair without looking like I had rocked too hard the night before. I was having to wash my hair everyday and the hard water here seemed to dry it out so much. I was worried that I would never have my beachy rock & roll hair again. Then I discovered the best product in the world that I now cannot live without...Big Sexy Hair's Volumizing Dry Shampoo.

This product is AMAZING. Not only does it soak up the extra oil, it gives my hair that extra "Oomph"! I feel like a blonde bombshell when I have this stuff in my hair. It gives me height and volume without the sticky feeling that hairspray does. I swear this product is so awesome that it's now also a must have for my pro kit as well. If a model has thin hair or has the same dirty habits as I do, this product is my savior. It allows me to work with their hair better for styling and pinning and also makes teasing easier as you don't have to do as much to get that height. The can is also small at 3.4 oz, but this will only run you about $16. You must try it. I believe they make a 10.1 oz bottle as well, but I'm not sure of the price.

My next favorite in the dry shampoo family is coincidently from TIGI's new Rockaholic line. They must have seem me coming a mile away with this one when it hit the stores. It's called Dirty Secret Dry Shampoo with the tagline that reads "Keeps Your Hair Rockin' One More Day"... Oh, how you read my mind TIGI!

This is the one I use during my work week, as it gives me a little bit more of a professional appearance for the office. Funny, I know... rock & roll hair and professional don't seem to go well... but it's the game I play. It simply just makes my hair look and smell clean. Besides, I have no reason to waste my bombshell hair for a day in the real life Office Space. The TIGI Dirty Secret has a refreshing citrusy smell and is in a little bit larger can at 6.3 oz for about $19. I swear they are both worth every penny.

So go on - don't be afraid to be a little dirty every now and then... Go makeup free just one weekend and don't wash your hair at least one day next week...I'm proud of my routine and my dirty habit. It's real and it's spectacular. Seinfeld anyone?

I hope you all will continue to read my blog and I hope I have kept you a little entertained along with giving you some helpful tips. It took me a good part of the day to get this all down so I hope you like it so far...

Stay beautiful,

XOXO

Jennifer

Here's the products I talked about today:

Bumble and Bumble Hair Powder

Big Sexy Hair Volumizing Dry Shampoo

TIGI Rockaholic Dirty Secret Dry Shampoo

So I'm Blogging Now...

Hi everyone! - who ever you may be...

Enough with the procrastination. I'm been putting things like this off for way too long now but now that I'm sitting here writing a blog, I'm at loss for words on how to start this off.

I guess I can start off with a little background info about myself with the hopes that it will entice you to read more and actually start to care about what I say. I hope you do... All I really want is to help women and girls out there who may share some of the concerns or just general interests about what makes us feel good about being women. Beauty.

I'm not a writer, although I do enjoy writing. I may tend to babble a bit, but it's only because I have so much going on in my head and so much to say. It can be overwhelming sometimes as I just don't know where to start - like right now, but I'm going to try to get going here...

For as long as I can remember, I have been beauty obsessed. Before you all get the wrong impression on me, I must say that it is because I am and always have been an artist. I love color, I love to paint and take photographs, I love any imagery that captures beauty and any image that shows beauty. I started off in my grown up life aspiring to be the next Annie Leibovitz because I loved taking portraits and rock & roll photography. I have a degree in Fine Art Photography and I haven't touched any of my cameras since about 2006. Sad. I know... But only if you saw how happy I was when I was shooting. Anyway... I must warn you all now that I'm the queen of tangents...

So, besides my love of photography, I loved, loved, LOVED makeup as a young girl as well. But not because I thought I was pretty - even though my mom and dad would tell me otherwise, I just never saw it or felt it until I was in my early 20's. I was obsessed with watching House of Style with Cindy Crawford when Kevyn Aucoin, Pat McGrath and Carol Shaw would do segments solely for the tips on how to perfect my own makeup skills so that I didn't look like I was wearing makeup. That was and still is my best accomplishment, in a makeup sense... the second best - is my ability to COVER $HIT UP! Ohhh, the home surgeries I would perform on my teenage and twenty something skin... but only I would know what lies beneath!

I was about 11 or 12 when I started wearing mascara because I hated that I didn't have brown, noticeable lashes like the rest of the girls. I would copy makeup looks out of my Seventeen and YM magazines with the hopes that just one boy would like me or I would be for once - the popular girl. But what it actually did was cause them to make fun of me. Ahhh, there's nothing more tormenting then doing something that makes you feel better about yourself and then getting ridiculed for it. Junior High and High School kids are the meanest on the planet. I know. I can relate. I can try to make it better.

I will take you down my road, along the journey that I embark on as I aspire now to be the next Bobbi Brown or Carmindy from TLC's What Not to Wear. I will let you into my head and into my heart as I kick myself and ask - "Why did it take me this long to figure out that I should be and CAN BE a makeup artist???"

Makeup has always been a part of my life. A part of my routine - like brushing your teeth or washing your hair. It was something that was so automatic for me that I never thought of it as something I could BE. It was something I DID. So now, I am being. I've paired my life's training with formal training and I'm just continuing to do what I've always done... Watch every show, read every article, surf the Sephora site almost as religiously as reading the Sunday paper... It's what I DO.

It may sound superficial or even a little self absorbed to be talking about makeup and beauty potions in a time when it's an issue of just being able to put gas in our cars or even needing to for that matter, as so many are without a job right now. But there is something to say about even when things get a little bumpy in life, about the joy of buying a new lipstick or eyeshadow. I know I'm not alone in this. I've seen the pacts of teenage girls in Sephora dipping and sniffing and testing and wowing... And I must say - I'm right beside them.

I hope I'm not too late in the game on this whole blogging thing though... I feel I've waited so long and now I'm playing catch-up and beat the clock with myself as I just celebrated my 30th birthday in May. I know... I know... Thirty is nothing - I have been coming to terms with this. It's just that I feel that I've been doing this since I was 12 and it took me almost 20 years already to figure it all out. I want tomorrow what might take 5 years to build. I think I have about 3 to go at this point. There's that tangent again...

I have always had issues with money - and who hasn't AND doesn't right now? I have always shopped in Target and drugstores for my "staples" - concealer, mascara, moisturizer whatever... and why do we have to be in a recession for women to realize that they don't have to spend $30 on a mascara in Bloomies?

I have seen a lot of articles and daily blurbs about "budget beauty" and saving and blah, blah blah... as we should! I'm sorry, but the way I go through mascara - I can't afford to keep buying my absolute favorite Clinique Lash Doubling every 3 weeks at $19.50 a pop! Free gift or not! Like I said waaaaaay before. I will help you. I have tried so many products on myself simply because I love makeup up so much. Think of me as your personal testing unit without the pink eye... sorry... I know that was pushing it.

I hope this gets read and people will check back with me on more random thoughts with purpose. I have so much to share and so much to relate to. I'm one of you. I'm one of the girls. I will help you and guide you ... and hopefully save you some money and wasted time.

Please stay tuned...

and beautiful.

XOXO

Jennifer