Beauty Fails

Awhile back I did a post on all of my makeup fails. But that wasn't nearly all of them. This time, I'm talking about a few of my best (or worst!) beauty fails! Thinking about these again made me cringe. Warning: they're not very glamorous.

1.  DIY waxing. Ok, now I don't exactly have a beard or anything. But, I do get concerned about the little tiny bit of hair above my upper lip. So why not wax it? It seemed like a good idea. How hard can it be? Turns out it isn't hard, but it is easy to wax off a chunk of skin from your lip. Oops. It essentially looked like a giant red peeling cold sore. For a week. Moral of the story, absolutely do not accidentally get the wax strip on your actual lip (or any sensitive area for that matter!).

2. DIY hair dying. The title of this one probably says it all already. I had dark blonde hair and wanted to go platinum. I had two choices. Pay about $10 for a box of dye from the supermarket, or about $100 to go to a hairdresser. I was in high school, so you can guess what I went for. My first mistake was thinking that one box would be enough for my thick waist length hair. My mum proceeded to dye my hair over the kitchen sink. After waiting 40 minutes for it to develop, I washed it off with high hopes. Not only did it come out super patchy, it came out orange. ORANGE.

3. The blunt razor. As a young teen, I thought that applying more pressure when shaving my legs would give me a better, closer shave. It certainty did give me a closer shave when I took off a massive chunk of skin above my ankle. I have a phobia of blood. It was a traumatic experience.

4. Fake tanning. My favourite way to fake tan in high school was using the Dove gradual tanning lotion (actually, I should start using this again - it is a great product!). I thought I was doing a great job at applying it. No awkward lines or patchy areas. One day my friends were asking me about it and what I used and telling me it looked nice and natural. I was feeling really happy, until someone came up from behind me and said the back wasn't good though. Everyone suddenly says "shhhhh! don't say that!". I twisted around to see what she meant and saw the backs of my calfs were so badly done it looked like I had dirty water drips going down them.

5. Pedicure nightmare. Not going to name any names here, but there was a certain nail salon that I used to go to all the time. I was always a little bit cautious of them, because I didn't think their hygiene standards were as good as they should be, but a family member and a few friends used to always go there and loved it, so I kept going too. Until one day. A few days after getting a pedicure, I noticed something weird on the bottom of my toe. At first, I thought it was just dry skin and ignored it. A few days later I discovered it was something MUCH worse. I had gotten warts. Three horrible, nasty little things taking over my toe. It took (no kidding) about 4-5 frequent trips to the doctor to have them dry iced before they went. I haven't gone to that nail salon, or any other one since #scaredforlife.

At least all of these things have taught me to be much more careful and to go to a professional if its something I don't know how to do myself and could turn out badly! But if you do go to a professional for something, make sure you do your research - no one wants the "situation" in #5!

If you have any beauty fails, go ahead and share them in the comments, I'd love to hear about them!

*Originally written for and published on Beauty Review NZ