Welcome to the seventh edition of the Beauty Smarts Blog Carnival! In preparation for back to school (yes, I said back to school) let’s take a look at some beauty routines you can perfect throughout the month of August so that you are always looking your best no matter what. These fabulous bloggers have broken down everything from home remedies to tips and tricks in order to help readers figure out what works best for them. So break out those eye pencils and beauty books — but make sure not to give yourself a dirty look!

Who knew olive oil could be so versatile? Aparna says, “Besides lemon, milk, sugar, aloe, turmeric, sandalwood and honey, olive oil is another household item that has multifarious uses as a beauty aid.” See what they are in 11 things you can do with olive oil posted at Beauty and Personality Grooming.

“Nature is the newest trend in skin and hair care,” says GreatManagement. “For years, we’ve been putting toxic chemicals into our bodies that build up and make us feel tired and sick, regardless of whether we eat them or if they seep though our pores. And people are finally catching on that natural is better.” Check out more in Natural homemade beauty recipes posted at Free Organic News.

Amir Marzouq presents some eco-friendly tools for your makeup bag. Check out Voice your Vote: Natural Beauty Products | Guffly posted at Guffly for the latest.

Don’t want to spend a fortune on facials or masks? No problem! VANYA presents 4 Easy Homemade Facial Recipes | VANYA posted at Facial masks for facial skin |VANYA: “Here are four simple, yet effective and great homemade facial mask recipes you can use in the comfort of your own home.” Banana and avocado anyone?

Do you have sensitive skin? How can you tell if this is something aggravating you daily? Spa Boutique presents Sensitive Skin: What Are Your Options? posted at Spa Girl Beauty Tips and gives us an inside look at what signs to expect for sensitivity to different beauty products.

Lately, I feel like my skin has been breaking out all over the place! But what is actually going on? Maybe I can find out what my actual problem is in eternal voyageur’s Is it a breakout or is your skin purging impurities ? | eternalvoyageur’s Xanga Site – Weblog posted at Venusian*Glow.

Do you wear makeup every single day or can you go out in public without it? What is it that makes some people feel they can’t live without makeup. Check out To Makeup or Not To Makeup, posted at our very own A Minute With SpaBeautySchools.

You can always trust your mother, right? Many of us follow the routines that have worked for our parents, but maybe we should be following a different kind of beauty regimen, due to product ingredients or just different skin types. Robin Adler presents A Misguided Trust posted at Organic beauty for hair, skin, nails.

Women aren’t the only ones who take beauty and grooming seriously. Gin G. presents Beholding Beauty posted at Sense Scribe, giving us a lesson in beauty and grooming for men.

What are you afraid of when it comes to beauty products? Find out about The Most Feared Beauty Tool and see what some Twitterers think of it. A of Makeup Lovers Anonymous breaks it all down for you.

If you’re an aspiring hair stylist, you’ll certainly want to learn from the pros. Take notes from an expert hairdresser at Lauren Conrad’s Hair Colorist Kaz Amor Shares LC’s Color Tips presented by HairBoutique.

It’s easy to forget that your teeth are actually part of the world of beauty. Wayne Hairston presents Best Teeth Whiteners – What You Should Look For in Tooth Whiteners posted at The Best Teeth Whitening System because we all should be able to flash our smile proudly!

And that’ll do it for our seventh edition of the Beauty Smarts Blog Carnival!! Thank you so much for your continued participation and remember to prepare and look your best for the back to school season (or even your Labor Day bashes!) — it’s creeping up faster than you think.

-Amanda Fornecker

• Are you a blogger? We invite you to contribute to the next Beauty Smarts carnival: Submit here.
• Readers: Let us know your favorite post here, and what you’d like to read more about in the future. Comment below!

I just wanted to point out the latest edition of the Beauty Smarts Blog Carnival!! This month, Sheena from SpaBoutique hosted a fabulous collection of beauty blog posts on her blog, Spa Girl Beauty Tips. From skin bleaching to staying young to a summer challenge, the blog topics are definitely diverse. Be sure to visit the post and see all the lovely bloggers Sheena included.

And don’t forget to contribute to the next Beauty Smarts carnival: Submit here.

Happy Friday!!

-Amanda Fornecker

Happy June to all of my spa beauties and welcome to the fifth edition of the Beauty Smarts Blog Carnival! Summer may not be official on the calendar, but I’m already in that summer mood. Let’s be honest — there are lots of reasons to focus on beauty during the summer. Your skin is more likely to be exposed to the sun’s rays so properly caring for your skin is essential. You may also take a dip in the pool, which can certainly do a number on your hair. Finally, the warm weather screams sandal weather to me and if you’re going to break out your finest flip flops then you may want to make sure your feet are in tip-top shape! See some of these blog posts and get into summer gear!

Your Face

Your skin is so important. That is why I always say that you need to take care of it with the proper products. This will help prevent aging, wrinkles, and any other skin problems. For the summer you especially want to have a product with SPF on your face. There are so many products that already contain SPF — including moisturizers and foundations — so finding them for daily use is fairly simple.

In Summer Challenge: No Breakouts! Risi-Leanne Baranja presents us with some tips and tricks on getting the most out of our summer beauty routine at Palacinka Beauty. Preferred products are listed for various uses.

Do different types of food really affect your face or is it all a myth? Victor answers some of these common questions in Skin Care – Eat Right And Your Skin Will Reward You posted at http://www.acnesolutionsinfo.com.

There are lots of options when it comes to face wash and face masks. So what can you look for? “Here are some of the best and worst ingredients you can find in facial masks and cleansing products,” according to VANYA in Best and Worst Ingredients for Facial Masks & Cleansing Products | Facial masks for facial skin |VANYA posted at Facial masks for facial skin |VANYA.

Speaking of facials, “A” of Makeup Lovers Anonymous explains a little bit about facials and what to do in between when you need a fresh face in A Face for Facials.

Despite getting out of your teen years, you still may fight off some nasty remnants of acne and teenage skin. Vicky Allison gives us some tips on fighting this off without breaking the bank. Check out Twentysomethings with Teenage Skin: Skin Care posted at AntiCelebrity.net.

No one wants to age. So what can we do to prevent the signs of again? IAWT presents Aging Gracefully posted at It’s a WOMAN Thing! to give us some tips on how to treat our skin in each decade of our lives.

Your Hair

I always want my hair as shiny and healthy as possible. The summer can tend to take a toll on my locks if I go to the beach or hang out in the backyard, poolside. There are definitely ways to counter this problem before it even begins. Check out some ways that these beauty bloggers deal with hair.

Hair removal is often a necessary evil, especially in the summer. Julie presents Hair Removal Treatments – Getting Ready for Summer posted at Healthtrition Beauty and Health to advise you on the best ways to prep for the warm months.

“Most Acupressure Therapists swear by this,” says Aparna in Rubbing Nails Cures Hair Loss?. “They say that rubbing the nails of both the hands can reduce hair fall and give you dense, thick and strong hair. Moreover, it can also prevent graying of hair.” Check this phenomenon out on Beauty and Personal Grooming.

Courtney presents Healthy Hair Means A Healthy Internal Body posted at Female and Proud, saying, “Eating foods that are high in B vitamins are crucial to the development of healthy hair.” See why.

There are so many shampoos and conditioners out there that it’s sometimes tough to pick one that will work best for you. Woman Tribune gives us a look at the latest shampoo to hit the drugstore shelves in Aveeno’s Nourish+ Hair Care Line. Also posted at Woman Tribune is All Natural Beauty Care You Can Make at Home, giving us some simple recipes to make natural beauty products.

Your Nails

I don’t know about all you spa beauties but I love getting pampered. And I also like to have my nails perfectly manicured, especially if I’ll be showing off my tootsies. Here are some things to check out and keep in mind when working on your feet in the summertime.

It’s typical of the summer months to wear flip flops. This can surely do a number on your feet. In Three Steps to Getting Rid of Dry and Cracked Heels, Sheena of SpaBoutique.com explains a few things you can do to help your feet feel soft and smooth. She makes a great point about being consistent: “The products don’t work if you don’t use them and give them time to work.”

In our very own A Minute With SpaBeautySchools we present you with 10 I’ve Learned From Doing Manicures and Pedicures Professionally from Sheena at SpaBoutique!

That does it for this fifth edition of the Beauty Smarts Blog Carnival! Thanks for reading and be sure to get your beauty on for Summer 09!

-Amanda Fornecker

• Are you a blogger? We invite you to contribute to the next Beauty Smarts carnival: Submit here.
• Readers: Let us know your favorite post here, and what you’d like to read more about in the future. Comment below!

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Beauty Smarts Blog Carnival! There’s lots of news in the beauty world these days and I’m here to break it down for you and guide you in the right direction throughout the blogosphere. This month, you’ll be getting a beauty grab bag, full of a little bit of everything in the way of tips and tricks.

Earth-Friendly
It’s Earth Week so naturally we need to tell you about some organic products and beauty methods you might be interested in introducing to your daily beauty regimen. Whether you’re already into organic products or just beginning to fulfill your curiosity, there are many who have already become experts in the organic beauty realm.

Free Organic News has a lot of advice to offer us in organic news. “There is really no excuse for you to neglect any part of your body,” says the website. “Cosmetics companies offer a potion or lotion for every nook and cranny. But how much thought do we put into buying them?” See more in Nourish And Protect Your Skin And Body.

Don’t forget that “the things that you put on your skin enter your bloodstream,” says Free Organic News. In Organic Skin Care – The Nice And Simple Way, we learn about different organic products for aging skin, vegetarians, men, teens, and more!

Finally, Free Organic News presents Nourish Your Skin Organically saying, “The simpler your skincare regimen, the better. Conventional skin creams and lotions can contain mixtures of 20 or more synthetic ingredients, many of which are of no direct benefit to your skin. Instead, they are necessary to hold mixtures of incompatible ingredients, such as oil and water, together and to extend the product.”

For those of us who work on our own organic skin care lines, Julena has some advice in Packaging Organic Cosmetics posted at Organic Makeup and Skin Care. “Pay attention to your beauty product packaging,” she says. “It’s trickier than it seems, especially for natural products.”

Tried and True
It’s always nice to have a concrete product review before you go out there and spend the money on something you’ve never tried before. Here, you’ll find a few beauty bloggers who tried out a product and then shared their thoughts with their readers.

To continue the organic and Earth-friendly theme of this carnival, Jen Mathews presents Product Review – Wild Rose Facial Oil by Mountain Rose posted at MyBeautyBunny.com. This product not only contains rosehip seed oil, but it also has a few organic elements that may make it more attractive to some. See what Jen thought about it.

Heather’s curiosity of Frownies got her to try out and review the product on Star Fashion Addict in Hollywood’s Wrinkle Treatment?. She says, “Celebrity wrinkle treatment? Or complete waste of money? We tested it out…”

Anti-Aging and Skin Care
Your skin is the largest organ in your body and I really believe it’s so important to treat it properly. What you put on your skin can highly affect what it looks like down the line. Here, we cannot use the quick fix, but rather we should look to find products that have long-lasting and healthy results. Below, you’ll find some skin care tricks of the beauty trade.

Frownies may not be the way to go, but Kyle Richey presents How to Help Your Anti Aging Wrinkle Cream Do Its Job posted at NoYu. “If you use your anti aging wrinkle cream only every other day or just a few times a week, it’s just like brushing your teeth that frequently — you won’t do as much good as you will with proper application. Any product will only work when you use it the right way. This applies to anti aging wrinkle cream as much as to toothpaste. Help your product do its job – use it right.”

There are lots of skin types out there. Julie breaks it down for all you dry skin types in Dry Skin Care Tips posted at Healthtrition Beauty and Health. From moisturizers to lip balms to humidifiers, you can certainly learn a few things from this blog.

No one likes acne, but it may pop up at any age — even when you’ve far surpassed those teenage years. Arnel presents The Importance of Getting Acne treatment posted at Your Skin Care Blog, saying, “Acne treatment for this skin condition may be varied depending on the intensity of the case. Acne is manifested when the sebaceous glands overproduce sebum thus resulting to greasy skin which will then catch more dirt and shed skin. The dirt and shed skin, which accumulates in the pores, will block these and result to inflamed pores.”

Holly presents NEW Mineral Makeup Beauty Secrets !! posted at Funny Chix, saying, “Mineral Makeup Beauty Secrets Mineral makeup products are an interesting development in the world of beauty. Makeup is always an individual choice. Sometimes we are looking for anti-aging makeup for more youthful skin in both texture and appearance. The best makeup makes us feel great about the way we look. Mineral makeup is often a 100% pure, natural makeup. Many women prefer its airy, light-weight feel and the look of mineral makeup.”

In this economic downturn, you may feel that it’s tough to splurge on such luxuries as beauty for yourself. Well no worries, because Camille Kruse gives us Free Things You Can Do For Your Skin! at Skincarelogic’s Blog. You’d be surprised what you could do for your beauty regimen with products you already have in your home!

Miscellaneous Beauty
Beauty does come in all shapes and sizes. There are so many different things to keep in mind when you look to improve your appearance or change your beauty regimen. Here are some miscellaneous tips that are certainly important to keep in mind, especially in this time of recession.

Speaking of the recession, “A” of Makeup Lovers Anonymous gives us insight on some products she thinks are perfect to buy from the drugstore. But does a recession mean she should forego her fabulous finds from Sephora? Find out in CVS or Sephora in a Recession?

Are you looking for a career change? If so, you may want to consider the life of a makeup artist. In our very own A Minute With SpaBeautySchools I talk about a variety of events that call for a makeup artist. Check them out in The MUA.

Lately I’ve had such a problem with flat hair. Maybe HairBoutique can help me give a little more life to my locks. In Flat Irons Can Leave Hair Limp, Karen Marie Shelton gives us some great tips and tricks of the trade. She says, “Flat irons, when used properly can help to instantly smooth unruly hair, leaving it bone straight, sleek and super shiny. When used improperly a flat iron can flatten newly styled strands leaving them limp.” Read more on HairBoutique.

Did you know that you have the ability to make beauty products at home with some products you have right in your very own kitchen? Aparna presents 12 beauty uses of baking soda posted at Beauty and Personality Grooming. “Though it’s a known fact that baking soda is widely used in baking, deodorizing refrigerators, microwaves and in household cleaning, let’s look into some common as well as uncommon health and beauty uses of this household ingredient.”

This concludes our fourth edition of the Beauty Smarts Blog Carnival. Thanks for reading! Happy Earth Week!

-Amanda Fornecker

• Are you a blogger? We invite you to contribute to the next Beauty Smarts carnival: Submit here.
• Readers: Let us know your favorite post here, and what you’d like to read more about in the future. Comment below!