Buy wisely: mascara
There seem to be new mascaras introduced to the beauty market daily. Brands usually advertise these breakthroughs using models and celebrities wearing false eyelashes.I did a quick search on drugstore.com to see how many options one might have in choosing mascara. Brace yourselves: there are 236 choices from 35 different brands. Then I learned that there are an additional 180 choices from 47 brands on drugstore.com’s partner site, beauty.com (what I would have given to think of that domain name first – I’d be writing this from Bali). Beauty.com carries what are considered more prestige brands, so if you shop on drugstore.com, you are either poor or just have bad taste.The most expensive and terribly named mascara (By Terry “Mascara Terrybly”) is $48. The least expensive is by the brilliant cheapo brand e.l.f. at $1.49. You have 414 others choose from. And that's just from these two sites.Clearly there are way too many mascaras, and I want to steer you away from being a ninny and spending $48 (or more, because the most expensive mascara I could find was $70) on a tube of dreams.I always tell my clients that the best place to purchase mascara is at the drugstore - expensive is not better in this case. Make-up artists, as a species, are fond of L’Oreal Voluminous for its reliability, and I’ve been using it in my kit for years. But I just experimented with Maybelline Full ‘N Soft Waterproof ($7) because it’s one of the top rated mascaras on Make-up Alley, and it’s really good. As the name suggests, no crunchiness, and the brush is easy to work with. No smudging or flaking whatsoever.While I tend to think that waterproof mascara is for brides and scuba divers only, and because true waterproof mascaras require an oily remover, which is a pain, I'm still for the waterproof version of Full 'N Soft because with warm water and soap, this stuff (mostly) comes off.
Lash wisdom: curl them first (I prefer the one made by Kevyn Aucoin - worth $21 because you'll have it forever) and then apply mascara from root to tip, wiggling at the root to get all of the lashes involved in the fun. Don't get sucked into gimmicks, like mascaras with wands that wiggle for you.
Go, spend your hard earned money on a tube of empty promises. But I'd rather you spend $7.