Fashion

6 Weird '90s DIY Beauty Trends You Forgot About

by Kat George
lemon, squeeze
courtneyk/E+/Getty Images

There's a lot about the '90s you've probably mentally blocked out. We all have. I certainly have blocked out hipster flare jeans and glitter eyeshadow. We did not look good, friends, no we did not. Kids and teens these days have great fashion and beauty inspiration all around them. We had bizarre lipstick shades and nearly totally plucked off eyebrows. The '90s were home to a lot of questionable beauty trends, and there are definitely probably a lot of '90s DIY beauty trends from the era that you've totally forgotten about. Right about now you might be smearing avocado across your face because you saw a homemade face mask on Pinterest, but back in the '90s, things were even weirder.

Back then we didn't have countless listicles and blogs telling us how to DIY our beauty routines, so in the '90s a lot of information was passed around by word of mouth. Which is probably why some of the DIY beauty things we did were a little bit odd. Something must have got lost in translation at some point. What I'm trying to say is, thank God we don't do this stuff to ourselves any more. Here are some weird DIY beauty trends from the '90s you probably forgot about.

1. Lemon In Your Hair

Everyone wanted "blonde tips" in the '90s, and for those of us who were young and unable to afford/not allowed to go to the hair dresser, it took a little more ingenuity to get those blonde tips. You could, of course, buy "Sun In" to spray in your hair before going out into the sun in order to lighten it — or you could run lemon all over your locks and then sunbathe in order to attempt to lighten your hair. If it sounds crazy, that's because it was.

2. Shiny Eyeshadow

Eyeshadow was bold and blue and went all the way to your eyebrows. And you could give it extra edge by making it shiny yourself! In the '90s, you'd take your powder eyeshadow, mix it with some Vaseline or Lip Smackers, and smear it all over your eyelids for a "chic" shiny look that was very much all the rage back then. It was very sticky and unpleasant, and I'm not going to lie, I used to do this with hot pink eye shadow more regularly than I'd care to admit.

3. Braided Crimped Hair

Who needed an actual crimping device in the '90s when you could just DIY? So very enthusiastically, we'd shower before bed, and plait our damp hair into dozens of tiny braids all of our heads. That's how we'd sleep, hoping that when we undid the braids, we'd have perfectly tizzy, crimped hair.

4. Stained Lips And Cheeks

In the '90s, we didn't need "blush" and "lipstick". No, we had "flower petals" and "beets". I don't know which teen magazine I got this from in the '90s or how every other teenage girl heard about it, but we were crushing up rose petals and smearing them into our cheeks like it was nobody's business.

5. Full Body Glitter

There were plenty of glitter products available in the '90s. Glitter eyeshadow was a big one. But what if you wanted your whole body to sparkle? (Yes, we were on that Twilight kick long before Twilight was even a thing.) The DIY body glitter was to get actual glitter, mash it up in the palm of your hand with some moisturizer (probably a Tommy Girl moisturizer if we're being honest here), and lather it all over your bod.

6. Diamante Tattoos

If you never took a pair of tweezers, some eyelash glue, and a little container filled with diamantes and tried to glue them into the shape of a love heart on your bicep or a butterfly on your midriff, you weren't doing the '90s right.

Images: courtneyk/E+/Getty Images; Giphy (6)