Easy Hairstyle Update -- Bangs!

Follow the lead of these celebrity beauties and transform your haircut by cutting bangs

Bangs are the easiest way to update your hairstyle without having to cut your hair short or completely change your color. So why not kick off the new year with a gorgeous new look? You can try retro blunt a la Katy Perry or soft and sideswept like Jessica Biel. Let these celebrity photos inspire you. See bangs

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Best Liners for Your Lips

From MAC and Smashbox to Wet n Wild, the pencils that got top ratings and product reviews

Not too hard or soft, these lip liners appealed to TotalBeauty.com editors and members for a variety of really good reasons. Find out if you should upgrade the pencil you have at home or add another color to your collection. See liners

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Best Hair and Makeup from the 2009 Golden Globes

See all the glamorous looks and learn how to easily recreate them at home

The Golden Globes are a great way to kick off awards season. We love watching stars like Angelina Jolie, Kate Winslet and Jennifer Lopez get all glammed up. But who says these styles are just for the red carpet? Not us. Use our tips to recreate these hair and makeup looks for yourself. (No reason celebrities should be the only ones looking fab.) Bonus: There was only one major hairstyle disaster of the night -- can you guess who? See her photo revealed at the end. See the looks

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Mysore Sandal Rose Soap: Review

There’s a way to get the pleasant aroma of sandalwood and rose petals in your bathroom (now don’t reach out for that room freshener with a rosy perfume, it poses a health risk and is believed to cause electrical fires also.) and on your body too! Just switch to Mysore Sandal Rose Soap. With pure natural ingredients such as rose extracts and sandalwood oil together with moisturizing agents like lanolin, bathing with this soap is sheer bliss; it not only nourishes and moisturizes your skin to make it smooth and radiant but also leaves behind a mild, lingering fragrance of freshly plucked roses and sandalwood oil on your body that persists throughout the day. What is more, it’s quite inexpensive, does not contain animal fats and is good to your skin (does not cause allergies) as well.

Mysore Sandal's Rose Natural Soap

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Top 17 Hair Gels

Gel can add volume and tame curls, but it can also create crunchy, '80s hair -- eek!

Luckily these top-rated brands did no such thing. Read reviews

No. 17: L'Oreal Paris Studio Mega Gel

TotalBeauty.com average member rating: 8*

"This is the product I couldn't live without..."

No. 16: Biolage Gelee

TotalBeauty.com average member rating: 8.1*

"It's got a great non-sticky texture and doesn't feel gross..."

No. 15: Herbal Essences Totally Twisted Curl Scrunching Gel

TotalBeauty.com average member rating: 8.1*

"Curls last all day long! Straight-haired women could even..."

Want to see what's no. 1? Click here!

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Happy Sankranti!

Dear Readers:

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Uses of hair clippings-Best out of Waste

What do you do of those hair clippings after you cut your hair? Some salons collect this unwanted pile of hair and send it for making wigs. But most of the time it is just tossed in the trashcan without giving a thought to the fact that it can be put to some use. Few months ago, The Daily Mail cited that researchers from North Carolina had discovered a way of extracting keratin from human hair and turning it into a gel to repair damaged nerves. For laymen, a way of recycling this unwanted spawn of follicles/human hair clippings is to sprinkle them around your garden; this deters snails, slugs and other unwanted pests from your vegetables/flowers as these creatures don’t like anything pricking their tender undercarriages. If you have birds nesting in your garden, you can leave this hair for them to use as a building material. Same goes for pet hair. And if you stuff hair in pincushions, the natural oil will stop the metal needles from rusting.

An article from msnbc mentions that a weird and huge, weird banner using 420 pounds of human hair has been created by a Chinese artist Wenda Gu and this massive banner (80-foot-by-13-foot) has been put up at Dartmouth College's Baker-Berry Library for display. For this purpose hair was collected over several months from 42,000 haircuts of Dartmouth students, faculty, staff and local residents in Hanover. These locks were then dyed and shaped into paper-thin panels held together by a film of Elmer's glue and tied together with twine to get this amazing piece of art. The article further states that viewers at first didn't understand that it was made of hair; when they did, they were completely awestruck and simply drooled over it. Here’s another such inimitable piece of art – a dog made of dog hair clippings (see pic) which was submitted in the Waste as Art Community Art Competition & Exhibition 2007. This project undertaken by the Hunter Waste Education Group, Australia every year promotes the waste-to-resource concept by encouraging the use of waste products and materials in the creation of art.

As it came to the notice of one Mr Phil McCrory, a hair stylist from Alabama that hair, any hair, including processed hair, sponges and soaks up oil better than fur, he collected hair clippings from his salon and invented a hairmat that has other uses as well. These hairmats have been found to be extremely efficient at soaking up oil spills in harbors and the toxic drips in garage pans under leaky cars. Once wrung out, the mats can be reused 30 to 100 times, after which they're broken down organically using mushroom spores, making them environmentally superior to petroleum-based spill products such as polypropylene pads. Plus, 98 percent of the oil sopped up by the mats can be recovered, says the Planet Green website. Incidentally, the company Matter of Trust has been collaborating with thousands of salons throughout the US and abroad, to donate their hair clippings for this worthy cause.

Some studies have also found that human hair, when combined with additional compost, is an additional nutrient source for crops. Furthermore, as hair is a slow nitrogen release, hairmats are great for spreading in gardens. In fact, SmartGrow hairmats claim to achieve lush, healthy plant growth while reducing the time you spend watering, fertilizing and weeding. Available in several convenient sizes and which work equally well with all types of plants, indoors or outdoors, these mats are contain 15% nitrogen and other micronutrients natural to the hair and are 100% biodegradable and help retain moisture. However, spreading hair clippings on a lawn in summer might not be good idea and will just result in a big mess says the productivity site ehow. Since hair is lighter than grass it will blow away in even a slight breeze and your lawn will resemble a barber shop floor that has been hit with a leaf blower, it adds.

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Quiz: What's Your Perfect Foundation?

Find the formula that will finally give you flawless-looking skin

How many times has your foundation looked great at the beauty counter, then "off" the next day? Take this quiz to find out what kind of makeup your skin really needs and get expert tips on making your skin look its best. Find your match

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Beauty quotes

Here are some amazing beauty quotes for you to mull over:
Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
- George Bernard Shaw
She was a beauty in her youth a fact which she alone remembers.
- Benjamin Constant
Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.
- Unknown
Beauty Parlor: A place where women curl up and dye.
-Unknown
There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
If you're considered a beauty, it's hard to be accepted doing anything but standing around.
- Cybil Shepard
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.
- W. Somerset Maugham
By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.
- Rabindrath Tagore
Joy is the best makeup.
- Anne Lamott

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Celebrity Plastic Surgery Gone Wrong

Can you match these stars to their over-injected big lips?

Got a few minutes to kill? See if you can identify these plastic surgery offenders by their big lips alone. Match the lips

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