How to Use Vinegar For Hair and Skin Care

5 Surprising Ways to Use Vinegar For Beauty

Many common kitchen ingredients are just as useful in the bathroom. In fact, I turns to vinegar for many DIY hair and skin care remedies.  If you don't have the time to wait for this international beauty product to arrive (or are looking for something a little more practically priced), pick up a bottle of apple cider vinegar at your local grocery store. And to get tips — along with a few of ours — for using vinegar from head to toe, just keep reading.

• For smooth skin: "Because vinegar is acidic, it closes the pores of your skin and makes it extremely shiny,". That's why I recommend mixing vinegar with your body cream. "It also gives a nice smell without having perfume,".
• For shiny, brass-free hair: "Most of the time women don't rinse shampoos and conditioners very well, so hair is [left] heavy and not shiny enough,". To avoid this, I suggests applying five drops of vinegar (mixed with cold water in a bowl) into the hair and scalp after shampooing, conditioning, and rinsing. But instead of washing it out, leave it in to degunk and debrass your strands.
• For a healing bath: Mix a little apple cider vinegar in your bath water to let the anti-inflammatory properties soothe your itchy skin.
• For a clean scalp: Apple cider vinegar has natural antifungal properties and therefore can help eliminate a flaky scalp caused by dandruff. Create your own cleansing shampoo by mixing a solution that's half water, half apple cider vinegar into a spray bottle and apply.
• For a clear face: Vinegar balances the pH of the skin and acts as an astringent on oily complexions. Stir up a half-and-half mixture to use as a toner before your daily moisturizing routine.

The 10 Biggest Blow-Drying Mistakes

Are you blow-drying your strands with the proper technique? Most of us go about blow-drying our hair with the same excitement we reserve for teeth cleanings and tax filings.

But aching wrists and frizz frustration don't have to be your drying destiny. Chances are, you're likely just making one or more of the most common blow-drying mistakes.

Are you committing one of these most common mistakes?

1. Not Sectioning Hair First. Flipping your head over and blow-drying until you get dizzy, feel light-headed -- or both -- isn't going to help your cause. Keep a claw clip or duckbill clips near your blow dryer, so that you can easily section hair into the bare minimum of three horizontal sections as you dry.

2. Standing Up As You Blow-Dry. "One of the best pieces of blow-drying advice I can give is to have a seat. You will not believe the difference this makes," says Scrivo. When you're comfortably seated, you can fully harness that upper-body strength without getting tired. Plus, it always helps to steal those precious rejuvenative moments for yourself, wherever you can during the day.

3. Holding The Brush In The Wrong Hand. Many women lift the hairdryer with their dominant hand, while working the brush with the weaker one. You'll get better results by instead holding the brush with your stronger hand, as you'll need the improved dexterity to get the job done in less time. "Even many professional hairdressers learn this incorrectly,". Well, now you can style with even more finesse than them.

4. Overtwisting The Brush. When you brush that first stroke into a section of hair, you don't want to go it more than a quarter turn, which is just enough to give it some smoothing tension without risking snarl. After you pull the brush away from the scalp to the midpoint of strand length, then you can safely start twisting the brush to create shape and curl while under the pointed jet stream of your blow dryer. This is where the magic happens!

5. Pulling The Hair Downward At The Crown. The natural inclination is to pull your brush downward, but that will only give you flat results. That just won't do if you want a roaring mane of silky smoothness. Instead, pull your hair up towards the ceiling, imagining a horseshoe shape coming out of your crown. (Stick with us here.) Hair in the horseshoe should always be blasted in an upwards direction, while hair falling below the horseshoe can be styled downwards for smoothness.

6. Holding The Dryer Too Close. It's totally counterintuitive; holding the mouth of the blow dryer right on top of hair doesn't dry it faster, but only leaves tell-tale damage and pouf in its wake. Always dry with a plastic nozzle in place to regulate and direct heat, and keep it at least an inch away from strands. We had to try it to believe it, but it really does speed things along faster by providing a more even dry -- kinda of similar to a rotating dish in a microwave.

7. Holding The Dryer In The Wrong Position. Your goal: keep that nozzle parallel to each section of hair you hit. Otherwise, the heat will irritate and rough up the cuticle, leaving you with flyaways, damage and smoking strands. And by that, we don't mean sexy.

8. Keeping The Dryer Motionless. Some shake, rattle 'n roll is good for your hips, and apparently, your hair too. Keeping that dryer moving ensures that hair will dry at the same rate all over, and it will actually prevent your shoulder and wrist from hurting from the strain of staying in one spot. "To a stylist, this is second nature, and we do it almost subconsciously," .

9. Going Too Fast. "Women often blow-dry..as if they're in some kind of panic. This is not a race against time. Slow down the process, be more methodical and careful," . In fact, if you race through the process, you'll likely find that you need need to keep going back and re-doing sections anyway, wasting more time in the long run. If your hair dries rapidly (lucky you) before you get a chance to style the section, simply keep a spray bottle of water nearby for a refreshing spritz.

 10. Not Drying The Hair Completely. This is for the frizz afflicted out there; if the pouf starts growing almost immediately after you've finished blow-drying, it means you didn't dry it 100 percent. Sometimes hair looks done, but is cold to the touch -- which is the dead giveaway that water is still hiding out in there. "Your hair should be room temperature after blow-drying,".