Recycled wrappings and led lights keep girlawhirl’s holiday prep green and clean.

SeenON! shows you great gifts for $50 and under at the SeenON! Boutique!

Check out trendy boots in SheZoom’s foot fashion feature.

Smarter Fashion shows us some great options for holiday dresses.

Just in time to save money for the holidays,The Beauty Brains explain why you may be spending too much money on expensive skin care products.

The Kohls department store is having a holiday sale and wanted to generate some good will (and publicity) among beauty bloggers.  This means that they sent us a $25 gift card to do whatever we would like with.

We have decided to give it away to one of our active forum members.

What do you have to do to be eligible?

To be eligible, all you have to do is become a Beauty Brains Forum member

(click here if you are not already a member)

Then leave a comment on this thread

That’s it!

Of course, we also encourage you to peruse the forum and participate in the discussions.

Who will win?

On 11/11 (I like palindromes) we will pick a winner from the people who left comments and send you the gift card that you can use at any Kohl’s department store.

Penelope’s pain…I just had my second go round of fake eyelashes applied at a salon. My eyelids swelled up and got really red in the crease of the upper lids. It was painful!

The Right Brain responds:

Our blog post on “How To Remove False Eyelashes” has received tons of comments. But some women, like Penelope, have a problem even BEFORE they try to remove their ersatz eye hair. That’s because some of the glues used to attach fake lashes are preserved with formaldehyde, which can be highly irritating. The good news is that the solution to this problem could lie under the sea. (Cue music from the Little Mermaid…)

Magic from mollusks?

CosmeticsDesign reports that Kollodis BioSciences and Korean-based cosmetics company Lifeace are creating cosmetic glues based on mussel adhesive protein. Mussels, as we all remember from high school biology, are shell fish like oysters. They secrete a natural adhesive that bonds their gooey bodies to rocky undersea objects. This bit of savvy shellfish science could be used to formulate a non-toxic, irritant-free alternative to current eyelash glue products.

The Beauty Brains bottom line

Hang in there, Penelope! We’ll keep you posted when this new technology becomes commercially available.

What do YOU think? Do you have a problem with fake eyelash glue? Leave a comment for the rest of the Beauty Brains community.

The Left Brain updates:

I created quite a stir in the world of silk pillow cases last year when I tried to answer the question “Are Silk Pillow Cases Good For Your Skin? (Follow the link for the original post and all the entertaining comments.)

Silk from a sow’s ear?

According to the ASA (the UK organization that enforces British advertising laws) it looks like I was right.  Cosmeticsdesign reports that they have ruled that Direct Beauty Products have not adequately supported their advertising claims that their silk pillow cases have anti-aging properties.  A key issue was the lack of support for minimizing wrinkles. In this particular ad, the company even went so far as to imply that cotton and polyester pillow cases are a major cause of aging, second only to sun damage!

Despite the fact that the company presented a study from the American Academy of Dermatology suggesting that silk pillowcases might reduce sleep lines and wrinkles, the ASA upheld the complaint and said the advertisement must be removed from circulation.  It’s nice to see a governmental body looking out for truth, honesty, and the scientific way! Now if the ASA could just go after Kinoki Detox Foot Pads.

I thought this was cute and a good reminder that Natural doesn’t always equal Safer. It’s a promotional video for Amy Stewart’s upcoming book ‘Wicked Plants‘.

Amy I know this book is going on my Amazon Wish List!