Beauty double agents ~ Babe on Budget

You ladies all know that I am all about experiments, saving up and curiosity when it comes to style and beauty. So today's post is just some tricks on double uses of beauty products or just things that you can find around your house. When having one product that can do two things, it definitely saves up time and money for you and it means less stuff to carry around when you're traveling. These are 6 tricks that covers a variety of stuff from Natural pink lips to Kim Kardashian highlighted face look. I named them double agents, as every product I have mentioned in this post has 2 uses that every lady can use, so you get 12 thing out of 6 products.

Clear Mascara doubles as brow gel

The first double agent is clear mascara. For you all who don't know what clear mascara is, it's basically the transparent mascara. I love clear mascara because even the affordable ones don't smudge. Clear mascara are amazing because it's a natural look that you can pull off whenever you need to look like you have no makeup on but still have defined lashes. One good thing about clear mascara is also that you can wear when you're going to the beach, when you're in a funeral or when you're in a tear jerking movie; because clear mascara isn't going to create black tears. Clear mascara can double as brow gel. Why use brow gel? well... you know when you look at the mirror at the middle of the day and you find your little brow hairs out of their brow; down on your brow bone then you start to think about every person you have talked to all day. Brow gel holds your brow little hairs together in their place. Brow gel gives you more defined and thicker looking brows. With clear mascara it won't look like you have any color on your brow as well, very natural and sleek look.

Blush or Bronzer doubles as lip-stain

I rarely use lipstick, because eventually lipstick over-use will change my lip color and I am not looking forward to that at all, cause I love my lips. I use bronzer or blusher instead. Ladies we have been through the whole blusher and bronzer thing in Beginners makeup routine article. Using blusher or bronzer will give a longer effect and it will also look more natural. There are two ways to use blusher or bronzer as lip stain. You will need your chap stick to seal the color on your lips. The first way is dipping your chap stick in your blusher or bronzer palette, then apply the mixture on your lips evenly. The second way is simply accumulating blusher or bronzer on the tip of your finger or your little eye-shadow brush and applying it on your lips evenly, and finally seal the color on your lips with your chap stick. You've got your natural pink or sleek nude looking lips.

Socks doubles as Donut bun savers

The trick with the sock will actually make it not much of a double agent, because it will actually need some nipping which will end the little sockie life as the sock, however it is after all a very new use for a sock. Now that requires an old cotton sock of yours. You can use a new sock, anyway it needs to be a clean sock because I wouldn't recommend using something right from your feet to your hair because hello ... bacteria and smells. Start with rolling your sock into a donut until it forms a round circle, then you create a hole with a pair of scissors right in the middle of the circle. I would recommend coating it with glue from the inside so it would be more secure and you can get more of it. If you have done it right, you will be left with something looking like this in the picture on the right. Now you need to make a high, med or low pony tail depending on your preferred style. Pull your ponytail and stretch it till it's end. You need to put your sock donut at the end of the pony tail hair. Build a little fountain of hair, even it out around the sock and roll it like the picture on the left, keep rolling till you reach your scalp and then tuck it in, then stable it with some bobby pin and VOILA.

Shimmery sheer eye-shadow doubles as highlighter

See that amazing look, Kim Kardashian manages to pull off at all her photoshoots, well that's mostly amazing lighting, a famous professional photographer, one heck of a Photoshop artist and a good face highlighting technique. We're not all familiar with the concept of highlighter and the good news is that it can be replaced with the shimmery sheer eye-shadow. Now we need to be really clear on this, we don't want to end up looking like a clown. The eye-shadow that you need to use needs to be either sheer, nude or beige depending on your skin color. Don't use pink or white eye-shadow, god forbid use any colored eye-show. The shimmery effect needs to be at it's lightest nothing close to glittery effect or heavy shimmer. I am going to talk about the whole contouring and highlighting concept and techniques soon in an independent post, however we need to work with what we have right now. Go with your highlighting brush or blush brush on the front bone of your nose, right above & under your lips, under your eyes and your forehead. The trick is connecting the highlighted areas; your nose bone and forehead with the upper lip and under your eyes.

Tooth brush doubles as lip smoother

This one is actually very good if you want to make your lips look more pink naturally, or you want to exfoliate your lip when they are dry, or if you want to make your lips look a little bit more plump and full. You can do this every day actually it's very easy and good for your lips. After you brush your teeth every in the morning or before you sleep, clean it well so there is no bacteria leftover on it. Apply some Vaseline or any lip butter on your lips to protect them, then wet your tooth brush with warm water, and start moving your tooth brush on your lips in small circles gently; it very important to do it gently so you would avoid hurting your lips. This way you will get the blood flowing in your lips and exfolitae any dead skin off of it; that way your lips are going to look more naturally pink and healthy.

Baking Soda doubles as a dry shampoo

This one is to keep a good second or third day hair, your baking soda that you usually use in baking your yummy cookies or delicious cakes can double as dry shampoo. It's very easy to find it around the kitchen even if you don't bake, if you live with your mom. It's very cheap to get from the grocery store. I know that when you have oily hair, or you straighten your hair, you wake up the second or third day and you have greasy oily hair; you either don't want to wash your hair and go back to curls so soon or you have no time in the morning going to work and don't wanna look bad at work. Since not all of us can afford dry shampoo, it's not cheap and it's not easy to find, also why pay like 60-80 EGP in a product when there is an easy quick replacement that you can find around the house. It's easy get like a small dash of baking soda and a tear drop of water, apply it on your scalp and rub it evenly gently, VOILA you've got clean scalp.

That's all ladies, if you have any ideas for other double agents please comment and share it with me.