Beauty Oils December 28, 2008

I’ve been discovering a lot of uses for the different oils I have for beauty purposes

image source: southcoastshopping.com

- Coconut oil or Jojoba for eye makeup remover [don't get the coconut oil on the rest of your face though, it's comedogenic!]
- Add drops of Jojoba to your regular moisturizer to make it even more moisturizing
- CO or JO , maybe olive oil, to tame flyaway hair [just a bit]
- CO mixed with JO [yeah I use these a lot cuz its what I have! haha...and they're awesome] as a pre-conditioning treatment for the hair
- Can always be used on cuticles, elbows, knees, feet and then cover with socks..dry spots
- Jojoba, olive oil, and castor oil for the oil cleansing method
- Olive oil [the other oils would probably work also] to clean lip brushes or brushes with creamy makeup on it. Put a drop on a paper towel and then brush the bristles the drop and then brush it on a dry area of the paper towel to wipe off the oil, then cleanse the brush as you normally would
- After-shower moisturizer, works well when your skin is still damp
- Mix olive oil and white sugar to make a rich body scrub
- Some use oils, like Jojoba directly on their face for a moisturizer, but that never really worked out for me

I got my Jojoba oil at Trader Joes and my coconut oil from an Indian grocery store, but you can get it Whole Foods kinda stores, or GNC, I saw it at Walmart too in the section for dietary supplements

Coconut Oil Review September 12, 2008

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…
- hair is softer
- less brittle
- shinier

This is how I use the coconut oil: Since mine is in a bottle it’s awkward to get out and my particular brand of CO is liquid sometimes and solid sometimes. Like, it doesn’t even have to be that hot out and it would be in liquid form. I guess that’s why they sell it in a bottle. But right now it’s cold in the city and it’s solid so I had to microwave it to get it out. Apply about two spoon fulls worth to your hair from the ears down, you could condition the top of your head too if you have thick hair and it doesn’t tend to get weighed down. You can put a shower cap over it or not and let it soak for at least an hour. Then shower, I shampoo twice to make sure all the excess is shampooed out. Then condition as normal. Repeat weekly.

I’m testing it out right now to see if CO would make a good facial moisturizer. I only used it on my face for a few days so it’s too early to judge. I’m crossing my fingers that this doesn’t do nasty things to my face!

One more thing…the brand I have, Parachute, it’s a bit odd in that it literally has bits of coconut suspended in the oil! I don’t know if other CO brands do that as well. If there ever was an EXTRA EXTRA virgin coconut oil, Parachute would be it!

Homemade Lipbalm September 7, 2008

You know that tub of “coconut oil” that I got at Walmart [the Blue Magic one]? I looked at the ingredients and noticed that the first ingredient is Petrolatum which is a fancy way of saying Vaseline. Yeh, I highly doubt vaseline with a splash of coconut oil is going to moisturize my hair, so I needed to find another use for that big old tub. I looked up what people use Vaseline [or petroleum jelly] for and a lot of them said as a lip balm. I decided to get crafty and make my own tinted lip balm

Start with blue coconut oil petroleum jelly.

Add pigment. I used Everyday Minerals B&B blush because I found it was a bit dark to use as a blush. Although it’s a nice shade, it always went on heavy. The stuff underneath was the first batch of lip balm I made [late at night, bored]. Now I’m adding more balm and pigment to fill up the jar. The jar came from an old lip gloss that I didn’t like so i dumped the old stuff for my experiment.

Add jelly and then mix it up a bit.

Heat in microwave for 30 second intervals, mixing in between. I ended up heating mine for a minute and a half total. You could heat it up one more time to get it to really melt and be smooth.

Finished product! There are only 3 ingredients in the coconut oil I have so I don’t think it would be unsafe to put on your lips. I just know that petroleum jelly and coconut oil are common ingredients in lip balms or glosses and the last ingredient is “fragrance”.

I Got My Coconut Oil! September 1, 2008

I went to an Indian grocery store near my parents’ house and got a jug of Parachute brand 100% pure coconut oil! It was $7.50 for 33.8 oz or 1000mL, which is pretty awesome considering the price of coconut oil elsewhere. Most places would sell coconut oil at the same price, but you get half the amount of the bottle that I have.

I find it odd that my CO comes in a bottle packaging when other CO brands come in a jar, because it is solid at room temperature. I was thinking that if the CO is solid in that bottle, I would be forced to heat it up to get the oil out. When I opened it though I found out that it is in fact in liquid form. And I thought HMM that’s weird! And then I got suspicious like maybe I didn’t get real coconut oil. So I decided to stick it in the fridge to see if it would solidify and it does! But when I let the solid coconut oil sit out for a while it doesn’t completely revert back to liquid, but it gets slushy…that’s the only way I know how to describe it. Like a liquidy solid. I put some of the CO in a jar so I can give some to my brother [I wanted to share the wealth haha!] and I took a pic of it when it was solid.

It smells like toasted coconut so if you don’t like the smell of coconut, opt for a refined coconut oil, which is odorless. Another thing, they seal this up really good when you first buy it. It has this plastic stopper that you have to punch through to get it open and there’s a good reason for the extra precautions! I found this out later when my liquidy oil started to leak out of the bottle…even with the cap on! That wouldn’t be a huge issue though unless I wanted to travel and bring that big bottle with me.

I haven’t tested it out yet because I just dyed my hair [again] last night and I don’t really wanna mess with my hair just yet since the hair color is still fresh. I’ll probably test it out sometime this week and I’ll update on the results! Oh yeah and my hair is a bit darker now, I’ll have to show you pics of that too…next post..

I Want Coconut Oil! August 14, 2008

From what I read online, these are some of the benefits of coconut oil:

- the only oil able to penetrate the hair shaft
- can be used as a makeup remover
- can be used as an after shower oil for skin or use a small amount as a “shine serum” for hair
- helps hair grow thicker and stronger
- attracts men like flies

Ok..now I’m just making it up, but you get the point! And read the rave reviews on Makeupalley! People LOVE this stuff!

Tao mentioned she uses this as a pre-shampoo conditioning treatment on her hair and being easily influenced like I am, I immediately wanted to try it! I impulsively bought a jar of cheap coconut oil at Walmart, buuuut the main ingredient isn’t actually coconut oil, it’s petrolatum, a filler. I used the cheapo coconut oil once and it was OK, but not amazing. And I want amazing! I’ll continue to use it until I find something better.

Not so magical…

So now I’m looking for a pure coconut oil and I’m willing to spend a little money on it but not too much money. I looked at GNC, theirs is $12.99. I found this Filipino brand [I decided to look there cuz I now in the Philippines they use this as a cure-all for everything! Arthritis? Use coconut oil! lol] for 16.99! Some of them were flavored too like banana flavor haha. My Trader Joe’s didn’t have any.

So if anyone knows where I can get some coconut oil for cheap [but not TOO cheap], please let me know!