It’s no secret that today’s busy moms have little time to spend on their beauty routines. We know your time is valuable and styling efficiency is important. For this, we look to two beauty experts who offer us simple and easy styling insight: Twin Cities Live host Elizabeth Ries, who is also a new mom, and hairstylist Amy Franklin of New Reflections Salon. From both sides of the styling brush, learn a few beauty tips and tricks that save you time and enable you to look and feel great throughout your busy day.
Elizabeth Ries is a familiar face around town. You can catch her hosting Twin Cities Live everyday on KSTP-TV at 3 p.m. You can also hear her deliver the celebrity pop culture feature, the Dirt Alert, on myTalk 107.1. Not only is Ries a familiar face to the Twin Cities, but also to Plymouth’s styling hot spot, New Reflections Salon, where she connects with Amy Franklin for haircuts and color. “Plymouth is my beauty headquarters. I am there quite often,” Ries says.
Ries is also a new mother to a 1-year-old girl named Bernadette, Bernie for short. As a new mom, Ries is familiar with limited beauty prep time in the mornings. “It changed everything,” Ries says of how her little one affected her routine. “She became my top priority.” Ries’s routine—including her beauty routine—needs to be efficient. One powerful word rules her busy world: streamline. “Streamline was what came to mind with my clothes, with my home, with my makeup, with everything,” Ries says. “That’s definitely my mentality when it comes to beauty this year.”
Amy Franklin is Ries’s go-to for hair and also New Reflection’s most senior stylist and colorist. With 30 years of experience at the salon, Franklin offers a multitude of hair styling services ranging from coloring to cutting to styling updos and more. Franklin also regularly takes part in the Twin Cities Live show, offering her styling expertise on one or two segments of the show per month. As a stylist, Franklin enjoys the work. “It can be a small tweak that can make people feel happy and fun with not a lot of commitment, but at the same time they can feel renewed,” Franklin says. She sums up her philosophy this way: “Your hair is your accessory you wear every day, all day long. It’s the No. 1 accessory for you and your wardrobe.”
Beauty Tips and Tricks from Elizabeth Ries:
Switch up your product routine. After finding a few products that work well for her hair, Ries will change them up every few days. Ries finds that if she doesn’t mix it up, her hair tends to get used to the products.
Avoid shampooing every day. Ries does not shampoo every day. One trick to buy you more time before sudsing up? Dry shampoo. Ries uses Aveda’s new dry shampoo. “I put that in my hair and that helps give me an extra day,” Ries says.
Volumize with velcro rollers. “I’m a total believer in velcro rollers,” Ries says. Specifically, the ones with the metal inside. It’s easy to achieve full-hair volume using velcro rollers. Apply hairspray after putting in the rollers and complete the process by hitting each roller with a blast of warm air from the blow dryer.
Hold hair in place with hairspray, and eliminate flyaways with composition oil. “Hairspray is the key to my success in life,” Ries says, who jokes about how much hairspray she and the other news anchors inhale in the makeup room at work. “The other thing I have to deal with is trying not to have flyaways,” Ries says. A trick she uses to combat that? Another Aveda product favorite: beautifying composition oil. Ries applies the oil to the ends of her hair and bangs before bed, lets the product sink in overnight and washes it out in the morning. With this treatment, her hair stays smooth all day long.
Take a lesson from a professional. Ries recommends taking a makeup lesson from a professional to learn new techniques and to keep things fresh. “It’s so easy for us to get in a rut,” Ries says. She learned this from her mom, who gave Ries a makeup lesson for her 13th birthday. Ries remembers this birthday fondly and has continued to take lessons throughout her career.
Makeup must-haves. One of Ries’s go-tos is an eyeshadow base by MAC, and the shade is Painterly. “It’s been the greatest thing for keeping my eyeshadow from creasing,” Ries says. Another item that is highly coveted in her toolkit? The Brow Power universal brow pencil by It Cosmetics. Ries will never leave the house without using this first. For the lips? She chooses Aveda’s wax lip pencil to keep her lips looking fresh. The colorless pencil holds her lipstick and gloss throughout the entirety of the Twin Cities Live show.
Makeup techniques to try: Blending eyeshadow and applying contour. To blend, use a big fluffy brush and blend your eyeshadow longer than you think you need to. This technique creates a beautiful look that is softer and modern. The other technique, contouring, will make your cheekbones pop. To contour, apply and blend a darker foundation shade into the hollows of your cheeks.
Beauty Tips and Tricks from Amy Franklin:
Opt for a good technical haircut. A high quality cut will leave you looking and feeling great, and it will also buy you time in between styling sessions. A good haircut should maintain its shape and save you prep time in the morning, eliminating the need for a plethora of products to keep it looking styled.
Invest in a quality colorist. Choose an experienced colorist who will understand how to apply the colors in ways where the line of demarcation will not show as quickly, extending your time in between sessions. For time’s sake, Franklin also recommends thinking about color in terms of simple enhancements. Staying closer to your base color allows you to decide when to make that next hair appointment rather than your hair dictating it.
Utilize time-saving tools to achieve great style. Franklin recommends hot rollers as one idea and velcro rollers as another. Hot rollers create modern style curls quickly and velcro rollers are an easy way to create soft fullness. When working with rollers, make sure to roll them in an upward direction versus downward to avoid creating a poof around your scalp. If your curls come out too tight, a warm dryer can help relax them.
Make your hairstyle versatile. Think about a haircut that has possibility and options. Mix it up. Wear it straight one day and wear it curly the next. Maybe you don’t wash your hair every day. Try a dry shampoo and play with second-day hairstyles.
For moms-to-be, time your appointments before baby arrives. If you can, Franklin recommends squeezing that hair appointment in prior to baby’s homecoming. The stylist says that when baby is new, it is best to be at the easiest point of the haircut. The same tip goes with hair color.
Revamp. Use a flatiron to straighten, to curl or to lock volume into your hair. Want the extra volume to stay all day long? Franklin has a little trick: Begin by backcombing one inch from your scalp. Next, press the flatiron over that section, which sets in the lift. That extra volume will hold in your hair until you shampoo again.
