Fall Beauty Cravings

Reading Temptalia's blog is extremely dangerous for my pocket. I discover new makeup stuff that I absolutely must purchase asap or my life will never be the same. My latest obsession is eyeshadow. I've been having an eyeshadow year, or perhaps an eyeliner year... Mascara... An all-things eye-related year.

Check out this palette from Urban Decay and tell me if you, like myself, are not tempted to go to Sephora's website right this freaking second, ignore the price tag and just go ahead and hit the purchase button. Add to the temptation factor the little footer note on the product that says it's extremely high demand, selling out fast, limited edition yadda yadda. Oh Sephora, why do you do this to me?

Source

Now, I've never been a MAC girl. It's a great brand, don't get me wrong, but I like to use my Beauty Insider points at Sephora and they don't have MAC at Sephora, so in order for me to get something at MAC it must be somewhat irreplaceable, like their waterproof mascara. But oh holy crap, check this thing out! Tartan: awesome. Eyeshadows: awesome. Professional makeup brushes: awesome. All combined: you cruel bastards! It won't be released until the holiday season, so Santa, if you're reading this, insert this item on my wishlist. I have been kinda nice.

Yay! My local Sephora finally has the travel-size Oscar Blandi Pronto Volumizing Shampoo Spray available. It's only $11 and although I'm not a fan of their regular dry shampoo spray (as discussed in my review), I've heard great things about this version, saying it's totally innovative and effective. So guess where I'm heading tomorrow? :)

And Fall is here, for us Northern Hemisphere folks! My favorite season! It's still hot as balls here in South Florida but who cares, I'm gonna start rocking my wellies even if I look delirious doing so and wearing gray nail polish like nobody's business. Gray has been a hot color for nails in Europe and in Brazil (not random, that's where I'm from) for a minute but for some odd reason never made a hit here in the States. Not until now! Chanel (Les Khakis, Paradoxal), Essie and even L'Oreal are coming out with some great shades for Fall. At last!

...And I still wonder where my paycheck disappears to every month...

Products That Changed My Life: Dry Shampoo

When I was a little girl, my mom taught me the precious trick of dusting baby powder to the roots of your hair when you didn't have time to wash it. The powder absorbs the oil, you can pull the hair into a nice ponytail and you're set for the day. Sounds great in theory but whenever I put baby powder in my hair, I always felt like I looked like this:

Baby powder never disappears completely into the hair, or at least, not mine.

Fast forward to the 2000's and we're granted with the gift of dry shampoos. These days there are several brands to choose from - Oscar Blandi Pronto Dry Shampoo being the most popular - but basically they come in two varieties: powder and spray.

I've tried both and I didn't have a great experience with the spray form. It still dries as a powder on your hair, but you have to wait a few seconds after application. Biggest issue with the aerosol can is that the nozzle gets clogged up with the powder very often. They recommend you clean the nozzle with a cotton swab or run it under warm water, but if you don't have time to wash your hair in the first place, you probably don't have time to waste cleaning the stupid nozzle. Purpose defeated.

The powder form, on the other hand, is very easy to use. Unlike the classic baby powder, it disappears into your hair with little effort. I stick to the Oscar Blandi version - I buy the 1 oz (28g) travel size bottle and it lasts me at least 6 months. The same size spray bottle only lasted me a couple of weeks. I don't wash my hair every day anymore, not even in the summer. I noticed that with age (which doesn't mean I'm old, just older), my scalp is less oily than in my teens; add to that all the damage I do with blow drying, flat ironing, hair dyes, styling products... I don't have to nor should I wash it daily.

Dry shampooing helps me skip at least one day - two or more in the winter - of regular shampooing (without looking like this) and saves me a lot of time in the morning.

Application:

I usually dust the powder on my hand first (although Oscar Blandi powder comes with a nice precision application tip), then apply it with my fingertips to my roots, behind my ears, along the hairline on my face, where oil concentrates the most. I massage a little bit into my scalp, letting the excess powder blend along the strands of my hair. I finish with the blow dryer for just a few seconds to discipate any remaining residue of powder. Pronto.

Alternatives to Dry Shampoo:

If you don't have any dry shampoo available, you can always do the baby powder trick but hairspray also helps an awful lot. Hairspray dries out some of the oil in the scalp and can help lift roots up combined with a blow dryer and a large round brush. But make sure you use an aerosol spray, not a spray-gel or mist, since it's the alcohol (I know, oh well) in the aerosol that dries the oil out of your scalp.

Spray first and then blow dry and comb through so your hair is not sticky. I like to focus on the front sections of my hair (or bangs if you have them) and sometimes the roots in the crown of my head for extra lift.

Craveables:

Oscar Blandi now has a new product called Pronto Invisible Volumizing Shampoo Spray which I'm dying to try. They say this one is the best so far because it acts as a volumizer AND a dry shampoo without any powder residue, nozzle doesn't get clogged... Sounds perfect. I'm being cheap and I refuse to spend $23 on something like that, so I've been doing the poor man's version of it: I combine my Oscar Blandi original powder and a Pantene Pro-V hairspray for fine hair, but any volumizing spray will do. So far it works alright, but the amazing reviews on Oscar Blandi's product are seriously tempting me to just click the "add to basket" button on the website.

Also want to give Beyond The Zone Rock On Dry Shampoo a go and see if it's any good. It's only 7 bucks. You can get this at Sally Beauty, which is a kind of like Office Depot for salon professionals (not my case, but I don't work in an office either yet I love me some stationery!).

At Hot Beauty Health you can find a little break down of the "Top 6 best dry shampoos".