Rosy Lips and Flushed Skin For Cheap

If you are sharp-eyed or just into beauty products, you may remember Cherry Chapstick’s brief appearance in the opening scene of The Devil Wears Prada as Ann Hathaway’s Andie absentmindedly swiped it on before heading out the door. It was cinematic shorthand to show her disinterest in elaborate grooming rituals, but actually served as a pointed reminder that quickly-applied reddish lip balm is a cheap and speedy way to get some enlivening colour on the fly.

Just to drive the point home, Andie’s Cherry Chapstick is the only item in focus.

Burt’s Bees new Gloss & Glow glossy balms (Shoppers Drug Mart, $11) in ‘Eat, Drink and Be Cherry’ (transparent red, pictured above) or ‘Wine Wednesday’ (a titch deeper) are loaded with coconut oil and mango butter and give your lips just the right amount of sheer, youthful colour. And a trio of dots stippled onto your cheeks blends easily for a natural ‘no makeup makeup’ flush.

I would be amiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to Maybelline Baby Lips balm in Cherry Me ($4.96, Walmart.ca), long a favourite of my dear friend and colleague, Janine Falcon, to use on both lips and cheeks.

And Cherry Chapstick? Well, it used to leave a hint of red, but Pfizer sold the brand to GlaxoSmithKline in 2019 and they must have reformulated because, even though the balm itself is still pinky red, it sadly no longer deposits any colour. End of an era, really.

Hey, Small Spender: The Best Hair De-frizzer Is Only $10

Typology Jojoba Oil is beautiful, versatile and cheap.

One ingredient found in most hair-smoothing lotions is jojoba oil. The oil that most closely resembles your scalp’s own sebum, it does an aces job of naturally smoothing down the outer layer of your hair to create shine. When we’re older, our oil production decreases just as our hair is getting thinner and drier and more in need of this life-giving, shine-enhancing oil. And if you have curly hair, all those bends and turns make it even harder for the natural oils to make their way down to your (oh look, now they’re frizzy) ends.

A few drops (two? three?) of jojoba oil warmed in your hands and raked through your hair (paying special attention to ends) creates an instant and surprising amount of natural shine, and handily subdues flyaways, for a more elegant, less crazy cat lady look. As someone with frizz-prone grey, I fear that my default setting is now crazy cat lady.

A 60 ml (two ounce) bottle of jojoba oil is roughly $10 at the health food store and lasts forever. But if you’re like me and ugly packaging upsets your fragile equilibrium, this three ounce, minimalist beauty from France’s Typology brand is worth the 9.90 euro price.

Jojoba oil is also a stellar cuticle protector during these unprecedented ‘gel sanitizer is ruinous to our hands’ times. A couple of drops onto your fingertips after hand washing and before hand lotion will keep your cuticles from cracking.

And as someone who hits the self-tanner bottle pretty hard in the winter, I put jojoba oil on my fingers before ‘tanning’ (that makes me sound so Jersey Shore) to prevent the tint grabbing onto any dry skin and turning my fingertips yellowish-brown, making me look like a two-pack-a day smoker. (And that alone is totally worth 10 euros.)