This Went Bad When?!

The good news is that most of the products in your beauty regimen when tell you how long their life is. The bad news is that most people probably don't realize that's what they're looking at on the bottle. So here's a minicourse so you know when to toss it and buy a new whatever-miracle-product-it-is-that-your-boyfriend-insists-doesn't-work.

If the picture looks like so:

You have 12 months from the date you opened it to use it up.

If the lid on the jar in the picture is closed, you have that long from when it was manufactured to use it. Good luck finding the manufacturing date, especially since many on packaging that is made of plastic are printed right into the packaging.

Will it hurt to use something that it past that time frame? Not necessarily, but many products will loose their effectiveness with continued exposure to oxygen. If you're worried about it, try buying things with a pump dispenser instead of products that come in a jar. It's pretty easy to tell if your moisturizer is still doing it's job, but it's not so easy to tell with sun screen until after a major burn occurs.

My best suggestion is to either use a sharpie to label each package with the date you opened it, or to possibly keep a list somewhere in your makeup bag/drawer/counter, preferably in a ziplock bag so if something spills or smudges everywhere it'll still be legible.

In general, mascaras and eyeliners should be replaced every 4-6 months to avoid eye infections; eye shadow should be switched out about every year. I know for a fact I don't follow these rules, especially with the colored makeups that I don't use all that often. Obviously if you have irritation or do end up with an infection it's definitely time to toss it, no matter how attached you are.

So now you know. You don't have to throw out everything exactly on the day it expires, especially if you have plenty left. It's just the company's way of giving you guidelines for when their products stop performing to their expectations.

T-Shirt Revamp

I haven't posted anything in a longggggg time. But I have home internet now, and no silly classes to distract me from this.
Except for my dog.
And my A.D.D.

ANYWHO, I'm going to make up for it by posting something that's not necessarily beauty related: how to revamp a tee that's too big.

All you need is a shirt, a pair of scissors, and a ruler. No sewing required, which is the only reason I was able to do this.

Two days in a row off of work have made me lazy,
so excuse the room and my face.

First, cut all the way up both sides, continuing through the bottom of the sleeves.

It should look like this guy when you're done.

Can I just point out first that it says "designer" on the back. My band teacher got a job at a different school and her student liked a poster I made so much that they turned it into the logo on their shirt, and then sent me my own. =]

On to more snipping now. I cut my slits about 2 inches apart and so that they went into the shirt about 2.5-3 inches, but if you want more of a cinching effect you can just make the slits a little longer. Then take each slit and cut it diagonally in half so it turns into a triangle.

Like so.

Make sure you do it to both left and right, front and back. Otherwise, you're going to have a hard time with the next section, which is tying knots. Stretch each triangle a little so you're got a bit more length to work with, and then tie it with it's partner on the back. Keep in mind that the tighter you pull, the tighter the shirt will end up. You also may want to make sure you've got a somewhat uniform tension going, or it might fit funny.

Tying knots. In the dark... Yup.

Just keep going until you've gone all the way up, and you're done!

Unless you're like me and decide that's not enough. I ended up cutting off the bottom hem so it could roll up etc. if it so decided. The sleeves were still pretty long too, so I just took about two inch off on either of them, and continued the knots over the top too.

And then since I had cut off all of the other hems, I took off the collar too. I only cut that in about an inch since I already have two off the shoulder tops.

Voila! A shirt that I have only gotten around to wearing when I'm really lazy has become another one in my wardrobe that can give me funny looking tan lines.

It's up to you whether or not you want to cut off the little tails from the knots. I probably won't, just because as soon as I do they'll probably come untied. Of course I could sew them, but I'm saving all that skill for my next t-shirt project.