How to Find Good Makeup Sales and Clearances

I was contacted to feature a guest post. The following article came from my request for one on finding good makeup buys. Enjoy. LPV

Guest Post: This article was written by James Lander of couponing site, Couponing. The website is dedicated to sharing couponing tips, techniques and deals.

Humans have been painting their faces for as long as they’ve walked the earth. We’ve always been fascinated with temporarily altering our appearance – whether for spiritual, cultural or sexual reasons. As our society developed and modernized, women became the primary wearers of cosmetics and as a result, an extraordinarily lucrative industry has developed.

The Price of Powder and Potions

Taking into account that most girls start to wear makeup in their early pre-teens, the average woman will spend over 13,000 dollars on makeup in her lifetime. Cars can be bought for less. If you are attempting to live on a budget, you may be doubly shocked by the amount. You may have already let luxuries like department store or designer cosmetic brands fall to the wayside, but there’s no need to go barefaced in the meantime. You can still afford to wear your YSL lip-gloss; you just have to be a bit wily when it comes to acquiring it.

Be a Beauty Opportunist

Cosmetic companies and department stores make errors like the rest of us. After all, those in charge of buying and selling are human too. Their errors however, can be a budget-conscious beauty’s gain. Often times a company will either over-produce or over-order a product and be unable to move it in the stores. What results is a large amount of overstock that discount retailers descend upon and buy at very steep discounts. These outlets, such as TJ Maxx and The Cosmetic Company in America and Winners in Canada, sell these products at lower prices but nothing near the pittance they acquired them for. Of course, they are still making a considerable profit. Most women, however can disregard this discrepancy and enjoy the ability to use their favorite status moisturizer rather than stooping to drug store products.

Surf the Web Style-wise

The Internet is an excellent hunting ground for the hopelessly addicted. The small retailers and third party sellers working out of EBay and Amazon generally offer products with a discount of 30% or more. Whether this is because the designer lip-gloss was nicked off the back of a truck or snuck under someone’s raincoat, it really isn’t any of the consumer’s concern. Paying twenty dollars for a product that would have cost you fifty can go a long way in relieving any kind of third-degree guilt.

If buying from shady sellers doesn’t interest you, you might consider more reputable beauty discount sites such as Hautelook.com. This site is an absolute boon to the skint fashionista. Every day at 8am PST, the site posts luxury items for sale at 50% or more off the original price. In fact, the average discount a shopper can expect to enjoy is a whopping 75%. If you take the time to bookmark and check this site daily, you can easily acquire the kind of high-end cosmetics you lust after but might not be able to afford.

Time to Rely on the Kindness of Strangers

When it comes to shopping, there really is no better price than free. Being able to line your vanity table with top-notch brands without paying a dime might seem like a pipedream, but it’s not. Makeupalley.com is an extremely popular site where the beauty obsessed meet to share reviews of products, post in the forums and perhaps best of all, trade products. If you have a few incredibly pricey but ugly blushes in your makeup kit that you haven’t touched for years, you can post them in the swap forum and see who bites. Other women may be willing to trade a product that you are dying for but they themselves hate. All you need to pay for is postage. For less than a dollar you can trade all your cosmetic dust collectors for products that you honestly need.

You could analyze women’s obsessions with cosmetics to death and in the end you’ll probably come to the conclusion that it’s just something that girls like. Socio-cultural influences aside, the love of gorgeous things and feeling pretty may be just inherent for some women. There is no reason to abandon that joy simply because you are being more conscious with your spending. By sourcing out the cosmetic discounts in your area and online, you can enjoy being frugal, fabulous and perhaps best of all, clever.

Guest Blogger Aleya Bamdad: Nutrition For Your Nails

I have, for you today, a guest blogger and writer, Aleya Bamdad. She asked if she could share a piece on health for our nails. I told her it was right up my alley and I thought you, my faithful readers, would enjoy.

Vitamins That Help You Grow Healthy Nails

Giving yourself a weekly manicure, wearing gloves while doing dishes and applying moisturizer are all good ways to take care of your nails. However more important than any of these is the nutrients that you put into your body that make you strong and beautiful from the inside out. Here is a list of vitamins that you should incorporate into your diet to see results.

Vitamin B Complex- When we refer to vitamin B complex we are referring to the entire range of vitamin Bs there are available on the market. This vitamin is very effective in helping you grow healthier, stronger and longer nails so that you will spend more time enjoy them and less time filing away at chipped areas. Taking a dose of B complex helps your body to fight infections so that you have a lesser chance of getting infected by a fungus and an easier time healing form one should you get it.

You can get a good dose of vitamin B by eating lean meats, fish, peppers, spinach and kidney beans.

Biotin- A form of vitamin B which is taken by a lot of people to prevent hair loss, Biotin is also a good friend to your nails. When taken regularly it makes your nails thicker so that they are less brittle and less likely to break.

Biotin is found in foods such as nuts, carrots, eggs and berries.

 

Calcium- One of the most important supplements that every woman should incorporate into her body after the age of twenty five. Calcium helps not only to strengthen your nails but to help maintain healthy bones as well. If you’re a coffee drinker, try to keep it down to two cups a day because coffee is known to eat away at the calcium in your body.

Calcium is found in cheese, milk and yogurt.

 Vitamin C- Commonly known as a supplement that fights colds, vitamin C isn’t given enough credit for its other attributes. Packed full of antioxidants, vitamin C builds collagen which you need to grow strong, healthy nails.

You can find loads of vitamin C in oranges, strawberries, papayas, dark leafy greens and broccoli.

Vitamin D- Not only is vitamin D good for your skin it’s also good for your nails because it helps you to absorb calcium. While you will get a little bit of it from the sun you should make sure to take vitamins as well because it’s not safe to get too much sun.

Foods rich in vitamin D include fish, milk, orange juice and bran.

Vitamin E – Just as popular as vitamin C, vitamin E is known to have many wonderful qualities that work to improve our beauty regiment. As far as nails go, it helps to make them stronger and grow longer faster.

You can get a healthy dose of vitamin E by eating foods such as nuts, spinach, tomatoes and sweet potatoes.

No matter how healthy of a diet you maintain you will never get enough of the vitamins that your body needs to stay healthy. To look and feel your best and have gorgeous nails it’s always important to remember to take your vitamins every day. Good luck and stay beautiful.

This post was written by Aleya who writes the beauty blog for Hair Design Institute which is a Florida beauty college and Long Island Beauty School which has a series of beauty schools in New York