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pinterest beauty fail

5/9/2014

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When I spend a lot of time on Pinterest (or watch copious amounts of HGTV) I get a bit overconfident and think that I can easily recreate anything I see. Normally I am somewhat limited in what I can do because I live in a studio apartment with less than 300 square feet, but beauty tips and tricks don't require a lot of space or tools. As you may remember, I did a very successful DIY project that involved making lip balm from coconut oil and crayons, so I started looking up things to do with the remaining coconut oil. 

According to Pinterest, coconut oil can be used for everything, so I followed someone's instructions for using it as a deep hair conditioner. Basically you warm it up, rub it into your hair, let it sit for a few hours, and then wash it out with shampoo and water. Easy peasy, right? Well, I have fairly thick hair so it took quite a bit of coconut oil to coat my hair, but I wasn't worried because the instructions said that any extra coconut oil would just wash out. Yeah, that did not happen. At all. 

I applied the coconut oil in the evening and washed my hair right before I went to bed. When I woke up the next morning my hair was greasy and stringy and a little bit crunchy. I washed it again immediately, thinking maybe I hadn't shampooed vigorously enough the night before to get the oil off. No luck. I waited until it dried completely to reassess and though it was no longer crunchy and stringy, it was still quite greasy. I washed my hair a third(!!!) time, this time leaving the sudsy shampoo in my hair for ten minutes before rinsing it out and that finally did the trick. 

Unfortunately three washings in a twelve hour period was a little rough on my hair so after all that work I was left with hair in desperate need of conditioner! What beauty tricks have you tried that turned out to be more trouble than they were worth?
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d.i.y. tinted lip balm

1/23/2014

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The cold weather here in Chicago has been keeping me indoors, so I have been staying busy with crafts! When I saw a post about DIY tinted lip balm from Never Say Die Beauty, I knew I had to try it! So I gathered the supplies, called up a couple friends, and turned my kitchen into a makeup lab. This project was more successful than any of us expected it to be and on top of that, it was easy and loads of fun! For the full instructions, check out the original post from Never Say Die Beauty. She covers the whole process from start to finish and will not steer you wrong.
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The only things that we did differently had to do with the quantity we were making. Since there were three of us and we all wanted samples of the same colors, we decided to make large batches of each color. To get three (mostly) full jars of each color, we combined two whole crayons with apx. 2 tsps of coconut oil. Also, since my only Pyrex measuring cup holds 4 cups, we decided that we needed a smaller container to melt and mix in. We used a shot glass and a mini glass gravy boat, both of which worked well.
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My advice after trying out this project:
  • If you are doing this project with a group of friends, I highly recommend getting a large box of crayons. By the time we made 9 batches of lip balm, we had pretty much exhausted the reds, oranges, and purples in the Crayola 64 Box. 
  • Since there was a warning in the original post that the tinted lip balm could be a little messy to apply with a finger, I picked up some $1 e.l.f. makeup brushes. Great decision! That allowed us to try out the lip balms right away!
  • Do it! Now I have 9 lip colors to try out and most of them are bold colors I would not have bought individually. Below are photos of three of the colors we made to prove that they look as great on the lips as they do in the jars. (And if you're wondering, the lip balm does NOT taste like crayon or even really like coconut. It actually has less of a taste than most drugstore brands of lip balm!)
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d.i.y. jewelry organizer

1/20/2014

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If you've ever ventured onto Pinterest or Etsy, then you have most likely seen a photo of a picture frame jewelry organizer. I have always loved the idea because I have tons of jewelry and am not terribly organized, but most of the options had a huge mesh section for earrings with only a couple knobs for necklaces and bracelets. Although I do have quite a few earrings, only styles with "fish hook" backs work well with a mesh screen. So to make sure that my jewelry collection could be properly displayed, I decided to make a completely customized version.

The reason that most jewelry organizers have a huge area for earrings is that they use a wood picture frame as a base. Most of the organizers that I saw used an 8x10 frame which made the earring section the main focus. My organizer is 18 inches wide by 14 inches high with the mesh earring section measuring 13 inches by 6 inches. This gives nearly the same area for earrings as 8x10 frame (albeit in a different shape), but can fit many more knobs on the bottom section.

Even with the extra room for necklaces and bracelets, I still had 3-5 pieces of jewelry on each knob. There is more than enough room in the mesh area for my earrings as well as a brooch and my sorority pin.
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Since I had specific dimensions in mind for the organizer, I had to build the frame from scratch. Before putting the frame together, I decided where I wanted the knobs to go and drilled the holes so I wouldn't chip the paint later on. To create the frame, I used wood glue at the seams, drilled in braces on the back, and then left it clamped overnight while the wood glue dried. Since the organizer does not need to hold much weight, the construction of the frame is pretty basic.
After the wood glue dried, I got to move onto the fun parts: painting the frame a bold red (this color is Deep Garnet by Glidden) and adding on all of the knobs. I wanted a variety of fixtures so I mixed metal knobs with wooden knobs that I painted. Finally, I attached the mesh screen with a staple gun and added hooks so that the organizer could be hung on the wall.
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I hung my bracelets from the knobs at the tops of the organizer and my necklaces from the bottom knobs because most of my necklaces are fairly long. I forgot how much jewelry I actually have, so if I were to do this again, I would probably add even more knobs. However, I just layered multiple pieces on each knob and it works quite well. The one downside to this style of organizer is that you can't easily put post earrings on it so I do have to keep a small jewelry box for that purpose.

I am lucky enough to have a large, walk-in closet so I hung my jewelry organizer on a closet wall to make it easy to add a great accessory to my outfit. It is much easier to see what I have when it is hanging up, rather than stuffed in jewelry boxes and in drawers around my apartment. (I am pretty sure that this is not my entire jewelry collection, but I am having trouble trying to remember where I had stashed everything.) Hopefully this organizer will also help me achieve my goal of wearing more jewelry. 

How do you organize your jewelry so that it is easy to grab and does not get damaged? Let me know your tips and tricks in the comments and if anyone tries this project, please send me a picture of your final result!
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