When it comes to beauty, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a little bit of cheating, if it gets you a look that you are proud to own! With so many fantastic professional quality products around these days, it is easy to achieve things that used to take a lot of time or hard work like waist length hair, long, perfect nails, or a gorgeous tan, whenever we want them. It is so easy to change between different looks without having to consider, for instance, a shorter haircut or a long-term commitment.
Thanks to extensions and other 'false' things, we can cut down on beauty maintenance and have a huge amount of flexibility in how we want to look from one day to the next!
Here, we are going to look at three of the main beauty areas where extensions can make a huge difference, and what you need to know to get started if you are new to them.
Lashes
Lashes can be enhanced with mascara, sure, and with modern 'false lash effect' type mascaras that use fibers, you can achieve a pretty good result. Mascara is useful if you don't want the hassle of wearing temporary false eyelashes and worrying about them fluttering off and ending up halfway down your cheek in the middle of a night out. However, even the best mascaras won't give you a truly dramatic result, and fiber mascaras can be irritating to your eyes, as well as being a bit of a pain to remove at the end of the day with normal eye make-up remover.
The solution, then, if you want comfortable, beautiful lashes with little to no effort, is to have some lash extensions applied in a salon. Professional eyelash extensions will last for days - if you are really careful you can even get towards two weeks with them, and they are vastly more comfortable than false eyelashes. Eyelash extensions are carefully glued a few lashes at a time to your natural lash line. There are special glues for people with especially sensitive eyes, too, so there is no discomfort involved in the process. Once the glue dries, your lashes feel almost natural - aside from of course being longer and thicker and having the shape and curl you want.
Some people find that with lash extensions they don't need to use mascara at all to get a good eye makeup effect, and so some people with pale lashes choose extensions as an alternative to eyelash tinting as a way to avoid having to wear mascara all the time or having barely visible lashes. For some looks, you can get away with wearing little to no eye makeup at all and still achieve a glamorous, made up the look with lash extensions alone.
Lash extensions come in a huge range of lengths, thicknesses, colors, and amounts of curl, so whether you want something that looks natural or something extremely dramatic, your results can be tailored to what you prefer. Lashes are applied in small pieces, so you can choose to have longer lashes at the outer corners for a cat-eye effect or manage the curl around the eye to give a retro, wide-eyed look. Talk to your lash technician to find out what they recommend to help you get a look you will love!
Lash extensions begin to fall off as they reach the end of their life, but this will happen in the same way they were put on, a piece at a time, so you won't end up with one eye suddenly bare of extensions and the other still fully made up as you do when one of your false eyelashes falls off! You can also remove them using remover products, allowing you to choose dramatic extensions for a special occasion without having to keep them on for normal daytime wear after!
Nails
As with lashes, nail extensions are much more resilient and convenient than false nails. False nails tend to pop off after very little wear, and really only give the look you want for one night (at best, if you choose a good product). Going for popular types of nail extensions applied by a professional, for example, acrylics means you will have pretty much permanently nice nails - subject to maintenance appointments as your natural nails grow.
With acrylic nails, a tip is applied to your natural nail and then an acrylic solution is painted over both your nail and the tip to bond everything together into one durable, smooth nail. You can then have these filed to the shape you want, and painted, or have nail art added to them. Alternatively, it is possible for the acrylic nail to be created in such a way that even when unpainted, it looks like a perfect French manicure.
Nail polish clings far better to nail extensions than it does to your real nails, so you will find one professional polish can last until your next maintenance appointment. This makes it a great choice for busy people who want their nails to look good but don't have time to be regularly painting them or even patching up chips!
Hair
Hair extensions have been a definite game changer in terms of hair looks you can create at home in the past decade or so. Sure, there have always been wigs, but clip in extensions have so much more potential to create different styles and are much more comfortable and natural looking.
You can buy all sorts of hair extensions, from sets of clip-ins designed to make your whole head of hair longer and thicker, to pre-styled clip-on ponytails and other styles. You can also get colored clip-in extensions if you like the idea of a splash of unnatural color but you don't want the commitment of bleaching or dying your hair to get it - or you want a color you simply can't achieve with your natural hair (such as pastel colors on some black hair).
Some hair extensions are made from real human hair, others from synthetic hair. Synthetic ones can look convincing and can be much cheaper, however they don't offer any real flexibility when it comes to styling (they won't survive having heated styling tools used on them), and are even quite hard to brush, so it is best to only use these for pre-styled extensions and to use real hair if you want it to lose and natural looking.
With real hair extensions, you can do anything you would do to normal hair to them, so you can curl or straighten them, or even dye them if you change your own hair color so they will still match!
As you can see, it can be super easy to get longer lashes, nails or hair without piling on products or simply waiting for them to grow. Lashes or nails can be achieved in a brief salon appointment, and for hair, you can put extensions in yourself in a matter of minutes with a little practice! Experimenting with different types of extensions can make it so much easier to change your look or look your best whenever you like!
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