photo credit: Lil Larkie

Since I just got back from Florida, a land of sun and surf I thought I would give all you gorgeous girls the rundown on mascara. And what does mascara have to do with the sunshine state? Well ladies…first lemme explain with a great rule of thumb:

Remember W is for Wise…not just Waterproof:
So choose your mascara wisely and apply your daily coat accordingly. Why? Here’s the lowdown: the ingredients in waterproof formulations make it particularly tricky to remove at the end of a glam day. This means you’ll mostly likely be tugging, pulling, and vigorously rubbing at your eyeballs just to get this stuff off of them. Later on this can mean you lose way more of that lovely fringe than you’d like to. Instead go for non waterproof formulas. Trust me unless you’re a big cry baby there really isn’t much running and smearing going on each day.
If you must go the waterproof route use it VERY infrequently. Actually I decided to break the no-waterproof rule during this recent trip to FL. My reason being I planned on jumping into the ocean with a cute guy and would rather not have any runny peepers. Afterword, to get this clingy type of goo of my delicate little lashes I baby *oiled the crap out of them making sure to be as gentle as possible in the process (NOTE: *mineral oil is fabulous for removing stubborn makeup). Then I went back to my usual non swimming pretty routine with daily non-waterproof mascara to keep my lashes intact.

Drugstore vs. Department Store
Where to shop for the best brands is the next small challenge. I gotta confess I’m biased towards drugstores, mostly because I know it makes sense. You can stay beautifully on budget by forgoing the the cosmetics counter in purchasing this particular beauty product. Mascara is something drugstores have an awesome selection of. You should save your hard earned dollface dollars for foundation, brushes, and color at MAC, Bobbie Brown, or otherwise. Cheap is beautiful okay? Just because it’s $20 and vibrates doesn’t mean it’ll coat those lashes any more amazingly than just grabbing that $6 tube while you get groceries. My choice for last weeks vacation? Maybelline The Colossal Volum’ Express in a happy bright yellow tube.

Spidery or sweet? You choose!
To coat both top and bottom lashes or not? That is the question! I love big fluffy spidery eyes myself so I coat both. If you do too you might want to change it up by coating just the top lashes sometimes – you might find doing so can give your eyes a girlish and classically retro sort of look to your overall makeup design. This might also be a better strategy to minimize losing any lashes should you choose to be a beauty badass and go for waterproofing them for those watery events like funerals and swim dates.

Speaking of application what’s your mascara application strategy? Go ahead and answer this week’s pretty little question: Do you apply mascara to both your upper and lower lashes or just the top? Why? Leave your comment below, I’d love to hear about it.

Until next time and Happy Pretty Making!