A beauty therapist spills: "The worst DIY disasters I've ever seen"

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We all have an embarrassing/horrific/hide-under-the-covers story of DIY beauty gone wrong.  But beauty therapists have more stories than most. We spoke to Jess Holmes, owner and operator at Passion Beauty,  about the worst DIY beauty blunders she’s ever had to correct.

The Burned Unit

“The worst case of DIY that I’ve ever seen was a girl who’d attempted to give herself a Brazilian wax. She came into the shop asking for a soothing lotion because she had given herself third degree burns using an at-home waxing kit the night before!” Moral of the story: Paying $44 for a Brazilian is cheaper than a truly mortifying trip to the emergency ward.

A case of mistaken identity

“A colleague of mine had told me about a girl who wanted to practice giving massages. She used whatever cream she could find in her house as massage oil, but didn’t look at the bottle to see what it was she was using. After the massage and a couple of hours passed, she realised that she had used hair removal cream! It didn't click until her friend’s back came out in a massive rash.”

Feeling blue

You don't need a degree in organic chemistry to master an at home eyebrow tint, except maybe you do...  “Once a girl came in to get her eyebrows tinted because she had accidentally turned them  blue! She was supposed to tint them a dark brown or black but she must have gotten the wrong packet mix.”

Coming unglued

“Another girl came in to get her false eyelashes removed. The glue can be quite sticky and if you don’t really know what you’re doing things can go wrong. Which is what happened to this girl. Her eye had gotten really infected because of the glue, so much so that she had a stye on her eye. The doctor had told her to take the lashes off right away."

Seeing spots

Now we’ve all had instances where our fake tan looked a little less just-holidayed-in-Fiji and a bit more related-to-a-carrot-ish, but fake tans spots? We’ll pass. “I’ve seen so many instances of bad fake tan jobs that people have attempted to do themselves. But we do see lots of spots and patches. And especially on people’s hands, we have to exfoliate their hands for ages.”

So there you have it…  Five reasons why some things are just best left to the professionals.

What's your DIY beauty horror story?

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