Country singer Dolly Parton once told her fans they’d be surprised to discover ” how much it costs to look this cheap.”
No kidding.
The eight-time Grammy winner can probably afford to stock her makeup bag with every high-priced lotion and potion on the market, but plenty of others can’t.
Me, for example.
Fortunately, bargain-priced alternatives to the big ticket products abound. And, as dermatologists and makeup artists frequently point out, fancy packaging and a bigger advertising budget can be the only difference between stuff that sells for double- and triple-digits and that which goes for much, much less.
How to find them?
Bargain hunters can pick up valuable hints from the “best of” lists in magazines like and from nationally-known makeup artists who share tricks of the trade on TV talk shows. It also pays to ask friends, or eavesdrop when we hear people trading recommendations for inexpensive products that have worked for them.
I mean, why shell out $265 for a 2-ounce container of moisturizing lotion when a 14-ounce tub of will give one’s face (arms, legs and feet, too) the same supple feeling for $16.79?
Books like Paula Begoun’s and the online contain tons of valuable information, too.
Still, a fabulous bargain for one may be a total bust for another. Especially when it comes to home-made alternatives.
Not too long ago, a friend told me that both and were great alternatives to the pricey pore-tightening face mask I was about to buy. I tried the pink stuff and it tightened my pores, all right — and, yes, I may have slathered on too much or let it set too long — but it also dried my skin out something fierce. Any money I might have saved — roughly $5 for the upset-tummy medicine vs. about $60 for the pore minimizer — was eaten up by the copious amounts of moisturizer needed to make my skin feel like its old self again.
Not long after that mishap, I was thinking that a red lipstick would be just the thing to add some spark to a holiday party look.
I never put red on my lips, and thus don’t own a red lipstick, gloss or stain. But I’d remembered reading that black cherry could be used as a lip stain. Mix a little of the flavored powder with a drop or two of water and voila!
There were several different flavors of red lined up in my pantry, so why make a trip to the mall and shell out $29 for popular Benetint stain when I could just whip up a batch of my own?
Did it work? Yes and no.
My lips looked good and certainly tasted nice, but I soon found out that licking one’s lips wasn’t a good idea. The color rubbed off onto my tongue — an unanticipated side effect discovered when I noticed that the people with whom I was sharing a dinner table were looking at me in an odd way.
A quick look in the mirror confirmed what had happened. I tried to wash away the color by discreetly swishing water around in my mouth, but to no avail. The concentrated mixture evidently was colorfast; traces remained until the next morning.
Bottom line: Trial and error is the only way to determine if something is going to work for you, bargain or otherwise.
Try to shop for cosmetics at a store where testers are set out, or a friendly clerk has a sample stashed, because that $2.99 foundation is no bargain if it looks like perfect match in the bottle but turns a bilious shade of puce when applied to your face. Same with 99-cent lip liner pencils that pull at your skin or $5.99 mascaras that dissolve as the day wears on, leaving you with racoon eyes.
“How much?” is a periodic $MART column about personal spending lessons. To reach this writer: 303-809-1314 or jdavidson@denverpost.com; also, blogs.denverpost.com/style and @GetItWrite on Twitter
