Posts Tagged ‘makeup monday’

Makeup Monday: M is for Mascara

Monday, May 17th, 2010

I Killed Bill
Creative Commons License 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!

Makeup Monday + A Few Changes

Monday, May 10th, 2010

365outfitpinkhoodiegirl

Ok kids! First I want to apologize for my lack of posting the last week or so. Things are busy here in the really real world and I’m making some changes. Rest assured there is still awesomeness to be had here (& elsewhere with the 365daygirl project) and I LOVE for you to be a part of it.

So today, with this #makeupmonday I want to ask you a couple things :) If you will indulge me. That means it’s quiz time…er poll taking time! Woot! So please take a minute (or less actually) and check off your answers below.


Thank you so much for answering and commenting – it really helps me make this blog & the 365daygirl project good for you and an enjoyable experience :) Keep your eye out for the changes and more great content to come :)

Keep it Really Real!

Makeup Monday: Paula’s Choice = Awesome Beauty Products

Monday, May 3rd, 2010
Skin Balancing Cleanser - Paula's Choice

There’s a BIG reason I tell every one of my girlfriends about Paula’s Choice. This beauty company is just awesome. What makes up the awesome? Here let me give you the list:

Skin Beautifying Ingredients
Let me be blunt: PC’s makeup and skin care products contain ZERO bullshit. No fragrance, no irritations, no hyped up compounds, etc. What they do contain is simple and super effective ingredients that cleanse, treat, and beautify your skin every time you use them. The formulations are sound, there’s no extra fluff to make it sound magical and exotic. Just stuff that gets the job done.

This is huge in the beauty industry where practically every company goes on and on about miracle essence of armadillo this or product x moisturizes your face into the next century that. When 9 times out of 10 the amazing ingredients they are trying to bamboozle you with are the least concentrated and everything else is just filler.

Paula’s Choice has stuff that works, plain and simple.

Beautifully Affordable
Because Paula is smart and caring and loves us she’s made her line wonderfully cheap. Okay maybe it’s not all about her loving us since these effective ingredients just happen to be cheap too but all the better! And because she’s not sending people out to milk exotic critters to get those hyped up ingredients that really don’t do all that much anyway she’s not wasting your money. You get to spend your hard earned glamor dollars on a very sound beauty line. Sure she doesn’t have celebrity endorsements or a slick ad campaign. She does really care about the every day real woman and the ability to maintain her own beauty with ease. That brings me to one of my favorite reasons for awesomeness:

Huge Sizes!
I have a bottle of cleanser that has lasted me a whole year and a half! That alone is fantastic even though I love shopping for beauty products. Actually I’d much rather make my skin care purchases a couple times a year and makeup purchases whenever I want – more fun that way isn’t it?
With most of PC’s products the term “a little goes a long way” applies, though there are some specialty products that get used up fairly quick. But because they are so cheap…ahem…affordable it makes restocking easy and painless. What matters is the stuff you use every day – cleansers, body wash, toners, even moisturizers – last a good long time. NO other beauty line seems to give the option to in effect buy in “bulk” like PC does.

Beautifully Informative
In addition to having a great line of products Paula’s also made sure her customers know all about using them. She’s open about the formulation and lists not only what each product contains but also what it’s purpose is. She’s got a series of tutorials about using her products too which are very helpful.
Also her website and companion member site Beautypedia contain thousands of articles and information on ingredients, products from other lines, reviews, and developing research. Just peruse through it and you’ll be a cute beauty nerd in no time!

So with all that awesome stuff what isn’t to like about Paula’s Choice? Well her makeup line is pretty conservative and kind of small. And don’t go looking to her for innovative ways of getting that makeup on your face (she feels lining your inner eyelid is bad…which a bajillion glamazons do anyway without much hazard). But do get her skin care and do use it regularly – your face will thank you :) mine has!(via Paula’s Choice)

Makeup Monday: Instant Beauty Posting w/ Thisnext.com

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Wow, social media is a godsend. I was feeling pretty blue today and wondering how to get a good #makeupmonday post up for you gorgeous readers. Since I’ve got content all over the web is super easy to just repurpose, retweet, and redirect! So, for you glamazons out there this #makeupmonday blog post is borrowed from a review I did on AMAZING shopping site thisnext.com: Kiss-Custom Fit Acrylic Nails.

I’d seen this little beauties a billion times at the drug store but It took reading a rave review of a beauty expert from in O magazine to finally make the purchase. Don’t you worry, these things are fabulous! They are not the tacky “press on nails” of years past. And they’re beautifully cheap.

Putting these on is a total snap too. I <3 the ability to glamorize myself instantly. This is especially cool these days since I got a lot of shit to do in day. I'm sure you lovely girls can appreciate the glam-in-a-minute option as well! So get yourself over to Target or Walgreens, or any local drugstore and check them out. Even just for fun ;)

To read my fun full review on www.thisnext.com just click on the photo.

Be beautiful!