Went to CVS while waiting for my husband to get out of outpatient surgery, and found many lovely new things! Here is my video, and a few lovely photos.
Wildlash feather peacock lashes
When I bought these, the check-out woman was all, "I just put these out!" So go get 'em. I have a feeling they won't last long in the stores. I can't wait to try that Pat McGrath butterfly eye look with these on Halloween!
From September's Elle Magazine.
The Pat McGrath look is at the top of this page above, from Elle Magazine's September issue.
Don't you love when magazines do pieces like this showing all the products and where each shade goes on your eyes? Thank you, Elle!!! And thank you, iPad, for having a way for me to take a perfectly clean shot of any magazine page when I open my magazines digitally. Yay!
Mr. Pussycat loves the limelight
Here are the products from top left, clockwise:
Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Berry Smoothie
Essie in Jamaica Me Crazy!
Wet n' Wild in Poison Ivy
Spoiled by Wet n' Wild in Show Me the Money!
Revlon Gucci Westman Cream Eye Shadow Palette in Midnight Express (Did anyone see this movie in the 70s? If you did, you'd never ever name anything remotely related to beauty after it. Maybe this dates me just as much, but you would also never name anything beauty-related after Deliverance, no matter how much you love Burt Reynolds, and John Voight, who does still have a pretty mouth. Nuff said.)
Ardell Wildlash false eye lashes.
Gucci Westman Midnight Express Revlon palette
Since I bought this, I tried the burgundy shade bottom right as a base, and over Urban Decay primer potion. It has some subtle golden glitter in there, and the burgundy shade is gorgeous with my green eyes. Believe it or not, it did crease, even with the UDPP, just a tiny bit. I still like this thing and want to test out the rest of the shades. Creasing is bad, tho, especially on my hooded lids!
Gucci Westman Revlon cream eye shadow palette in Midnight Express
Spoiled by Wet n' Wild in Show Me the Money
Leprechaun Pot O Goldy! So shimmery and wondrous!
Wet n' Wild in Poison Ivy
I love dark green nails. So much more modern than the tried and true OPI Russian Navy. More interesting than black.
Essie in Jamaica Me Crazy
This is such a fun disco-ish Bob Mackie shade. Super glam and girlie.
OMG—these are fantabulash!
Look at those brilliant cobalt spots!
Crest 3D White Tooth Paste
I think this is making my teeth look whiter. Cool!
Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Berry Smoothie
Here's what I love about the Revlon lip butters:
They are soft like a balm, but they seem to last a lot longer on my lips: 2-3 hours, which is a long time for me!
Their colors have dimension, with some interesting shimmer with subtle yet unusual colors (green? gray? blue? look closely at some of these and see if I'm not crazy) That shine and borderline duochrome helps round out the shape of your lips, just as a duochrome shade on your eyes will make your lids look nice and rounded. I have thin lips, so I need this!
The packaging is yummy looking.
They are way cheaper than the Clinique lippies for which they are clearly a dupe.
Even though they come in a wide variety of shades, from brights to neutrals, each one is a bit sheer, so they all work quite well for day and office.
This one is very much a YLBB, aka, a "Your Lips But Better" shade
I love to wear bright lips, but on most days, a nice neutral pink that gives your lips just a bit of pop is a wiser way to go. This shade is perfect for that!
You can see the soft, satiny sheen here, and the subtlety of the shade.
Well, that's my CVS September beauty haul! Hope you liked! Please leave your comments in the bar below, and I'd love it if you'd subscribe to this blog on Bloglovin, and to my YouTube channel. That way you won't miss a thing!
Random stuff:
I just tried stand up paddle boarding through a Groupon I got for http://www.gosurfla.com/. So much fun! Our teacher Ethan was supercool, and gave us all we needed to know to get up, including a nice firm push through the surf to get out beyond the break. Feels like walking on water, not to blaspheme or anything. If you've always wanted to try it, do! Us women have a nice low center of gravity, which gives us an advantage in most board sports. Try it and see if I'm wrong.
I got Rosetta Stone French, all 5 levels, for my birthday, and I love this program! If you want to learn another language, this is the way to go. Pleasantly addictive and motivating with lots of helpful lessons and live online real time classes! What an amazing deal! Je l'aime!
If you're like me and you watch tons of beauty YouTube gurus, you know the expression "I absolutely love it!" is one everybody says a lot. I have caught myself using it quite a bit, too. Maybe us beauty fans should come up with a YouTube Beauty drinking game? That phrase would definitely be a cue to drink!
I'm keeping true to my resolution to share my sample box openings with you for each and every subscription I have!
Here is my September Birchbox opening video. Please let me know what you think!
Here are the products I received in this shipment:
Benefit Cosmetics - foamingly clean facial wash + refined finish facial polish - nice brand, pretty packaging, but for me, scrubs and cleansers are less than exciting.
Color Club - Birchbox Custom Polish in Uptade (Could be a typo, I'm a-thinkin'. "Update" is supposed to be the name, maybe?) I really love this charcoal gray shade. I prefer getting these little nail polish samples. I am a Julep Maven subscriber, too, so my nail polish wardrobe is quickly becoming like Imelda Marcos's show wardrobe--yikes!
Dr. Jart+ - Water Fuse Beauty Balm SPF 25+ - yay, BB cream! I love it! I've tried this one, and it is very good if you have dry skin. I have combo skin, though, and I needed to powder this to set it. My skin79 Hot Pink Triple Function Beblesh Balm is still my favorite.
This vid is about a different kind of beauty—the crumbly, romantic layer cake of history that is the Eternal City—my favorite place on Earth, Rome!
If you haven't been, starting making your travel plans now. You can rent an apartment in the historic center for way less than you'd pay for a hotel.
Delicious caprese salad served with love by our friend Itala
Go to Sleep In Italy and click the link for Rome to start browsing. I recommend apartments in the Campo de' Fiori area, which is quiet, and off the beaten track. This time we stayed on via Falegnami in the the Jewish Ghetto, which has a rich and sometimes tragic history, great food, and remains the most medieval part of the city.
This August was my fifth trip to Rome. I first visited in 2003, and many of the great things I found stay the same there. I'm working on a PDF guide, which I'll post to this site for you to download when it's ready. This time around I found some amazing little trattorias (casual dining spots) in lots of parts of the city. I love to explore and find new places to eat, and places with views to sip cocktails.
This little video is my vlog of my Rome trip. It doesn't include everything we did, or everything that's great about the city. But how could it? The popular saying about Rome is true, "A lifetime is not enough."
Enjoy!
And, as always, please let me know what you think!
The day before yesterday was Swatch Saturday for me. I decided to get back to cataloging the massive and daunting Crown Brush Palette. But Yesterday was the Nautica Malibu Triathlon, so that's why you are getting this post today!
The Tri was really a fun race, the ocean was smooth and the current was with us, the water temperature was a balmy 71 degrees! And on the run, just when it should have been starting to get too hot, a blessedly soft white marine layer of cloud and fog rolled in at either end of Zuma Beach. Such a great day!
So here's what I did starting with Panel Two, and I know once I get through this monster of a palette, I'll want to go back and do it with Panel One, as well: I named all the shades. Yes, it's hard to do that, but it's also a great copy writing exercise, so maybe I should thank Crown, and Inglot, and Wet n' Wild, and others, for not naming their palette shades, instead of whining about the fact that they have no names. I suppose I'd rather whine a bit. I know if I had a cosmetics company, I'd be naming all of my shades to make them memorable. And that's the end of my mini-rant.
So as I go, I'm naming all the shades. It makes it a heck of a lot easier to talk about them. Et voila! Here is the panel with my names!
And here's what they look like swatched on my hand!
Crown Brush Palette 180 Kaleidescope, Panel 3
This palette does really give you a whole lot of options! If you've been reading my blog, you know I love blue and green eye shadow probably a lot more than I should. There are some days when I do risk verging into Frank N Furter territory with my makeup. I think one of the keys to avoiding this is to keep a lot of neutrals going on the other parts of ones face, and in the crease.
Here are my favorites:
Ariel and Siren are so intense and shiny. It's always easier to find highly pigmented shimmery shades, I've noticed, although I don't know the science behind this fact. I'd love to know why matte shades so often take a lot of work to build up intensity. This fact definitely holds true in this palette.
Loden, Tiber and Thames. See there what I did with the names? I was just in London and Rome, and since these were murkier muted shades, I named two of them after the rivers in those cities. Ain't I clever? (I expect you to throw a pie at me at any moment, and it would be deserved.) Anyways, these 3 shades are the most neutral and wearable for fall. Thames and Tiber have some nice antiquey gold shimmer to them.
Antifreeze. It would be wrong to wear this crazy bright green with a touch of teal on my eyelids. Really, this is the color of tennis nets, mosquito netting from the seventies, and other tackle you might find on a boat. It's wrong, and that's why I love it. Challenge. Can you rock this shade or something similar without going full-on Little Mermaid or Frank N Furter? Can you? Do it, and link me to the images/video on the comments below!
Siren, Reef and Cruise - These are so marine blue. They are all shades you find in the Mediterranean, and so they make me happy. Oh, I love me some ocean! This weekend the Pacific at Malibu was 71 degrees, people! For me, that's no wet suit water! Yay! There were dolphins! The curling waves were beautiful but not so large as to be dangerous. No one's there now because it's after Labor Day, so it's easy to park. Go there! It's a heat wave! Swim in the water, it's so nice!
Bayou, Tardis and Gloaming. Yes, I'm a Dr. Who fan, a Whovian, if you will. If you have Netflix, start watching the modern seasons, starting with the Christopher Eccleston ones. You'll thank me. Yes, it's silly, yes, it's a kid's show, but it also gets you weepy, and it can really scare the pith out of you. Watch, and tell me I'm wrong. I love this show! So that's why one of these colors just had to be Tardis blue to me. I love the delicate violet tones of these blues. I think they would probably look super-pretty on brown eyes. And they will maybe look cray-cray with my light hair and green eyes, but I want to try them anyway.
And below I have loads more pictures of the swatches on my hand, because lighting makes for different colors, so please to enjoy!
I hope this post was fun for all of you. Let me know what you think!
How much do you change up your makeup routine from day to day? It's risky to try new stuff. You might not get it right. You might be having an extreme moment in the morning and end up at work looking like Vampirella nowhere near Halloween.
I know folks who do the same makeup everyday, though. It's tried, tested and true, so they are really putting on their face when they are putting on their face. But if you do the same thing every day, how do you stay current? How do you stay fresh? How do you feel creative? I mean, sure, there are plenty of ways to be creative. I just happen to like doing that with makeup, among other things.
So here's a week in faces in my life. Hope you enjoy!
MONDAY: BURGUNDY EVERYWHERE!
I used the gorgeous Maybelline Color Tattoo in Fuchsia for the eye shadow base, and layered some amazing Inglot rosy and mauve shades over it. I blended the crease with a taupey gray, all from my Inglot Freedom Palette
Oh, putting burgundies and pinks on my eyelids just never gets old to me!
TUESDAY: GRAPE LIPS, PALE GRAY EYES
I was inspired to go gray on my lids by the Chanel runway show for spring. I usually go warmer with my neutral eye looks because I'm afraid cool shades bring out the deep pools of violet on either side of the bridge of my nose. The crease shade was a warm brown, to be fair. I do like this one. The shades are all from the NYX "butt" naked palette.
The deep grapey shade on the lips was a real risk. So dark. So blue. This was the darkest of the Kate Moss Rimmel lipsticks, #4. This was my fall dark lip. Oh, yeah. I'll do that again. I think the key is balancing it out with some warm toned blush. This is the tried and true terra cotta shade from good ole NYX "butt" naked.
WEDNESDAY: NAVY EYE LINER, FUCHSIA LIPS
This is a page out of my usual playbook. The navy eye liner and fuchsia lip is pretty usual, and it work.
On the lids and in the crease, I used my new Kiko Origami palette in the greens, and I'm afraid my use of them made my eyes look a bit bruised, which wasn't so great. Gotta try that one again, and keep the greens near my lash line. Browns in the crease. When in doubt, browns in the crease, I'm-a-thinkin.'
THURSDAY: INTENSE GRAY EYES, PINK LIPS
Loved the way the soft gray lining my lashes made my eyes look
Needed to take more time to blend the shadow, because, "Damn!"
Pink lips. Me. Typical. It works.
FRIDAY: BRIGHT RUBY LIPS: SMUDGED BLACK EYE LINER
I used the Cinema Secrets pencil in Ruby over Two Faced Lip Insurance. The pencil costs $2, people! Get you one of these! So pigmented. Such a pretty cherry red. I put Revlon Balmstain in Adore over the top. OMG, I love bright red lips. Love.
So, Urban Decay 24/7 Pencil in Perversion is every bit as powerful as I hoped it would be. Like the makeup equivalent of the Samurai sword. It doesn't move. It feels creamy and smudges like a dream. It's so intensely black.
Here in L.A. it's blazing hot and unusually humid, but all the fall magazine ads and beauty blogs have done their work on my brain, and I'm dreaming of russets, burgundies, ochers, olives, and plums. Fall colors. Muted tones.
Below are photos of a recent FOTD done using these shades. I used the Kiko burgundy mascara from Rome for this look, and I just love it! It does make the color of my eyes look more intense, as I'd hoped!
Below I've dropped in 3 YouTube Guru tutorials you might want to try using the warm comforting gentle shades of fall. Hope you like!
Beauty Broadcast's Smoky Looks Two Ways
I am such a fan of Emily Noel! Her eye looks are so sexy and demure all at once! See what she does with these intense deep Urban Decay shades. Nobody rocks a pretty winged out eye look like her!
Soft Charcoal Gray Eyes and Wine-Red Lips with Pixi2woo
Tanya is adorable, has such lovely skin, and her technique is bangin.' I've been seeing a lot of soft gray eye looks on runway models, and been hoping to see one of my favorite YouTubers take on the trend. I love the way the smudged black liner is shaped. Subtle and cool. This is one I'll be watching several times to pick up the nuances.
I'll admit it—I'm obsessed with Nikkie's tutorials. The girl can define a crease! OMG, I love watching her. She is very pale and fair but does amazingly bold looks with so many delicious details. Look at the shine she gets in the center of the deep ultra purple lids here. Look at the gorgeous cherry burgundy pink of the lips. Yummy! Go, Nikkie, go! Also check out her Demi Lovato look here, if you want to see a truly amazing fall dark lip look.
There are so many fall looks to try, so much more to enjoy before the winter holiday season starts. Which shades do you want to try?
Here are the trends that have me going right now:
Dark plum lips
Dark burgundy lips
Gray eyeshadow
Metallic eyes
Burnt orange lips and nails
How about you? Let's start chatting about fall looks. Maybe it will help me feel cooler.
And if those thunderheads over the Valley don't turn into rain soon, and clear the sky of all that moisture, I may have to start think about moving to Alaska. Seriously.
Seems you really liked my Birchbox opening from July, so I thought I'd show you more of my subscriptions and what comes in them.
Here's the August Glossybox, and for my money, it's a winner! Here are the brands included:
Ole Henrikson
Matrix
Illamasqua
Popnique
Ellis Faas
Okay, so I tried to apply the Ellis Faas Milky Lips gloss I received, on camera, without a mirror, and the result may burn your eyeballs just a touch. Nothing permanent, though, I hope.
Please to enjoy my video, and if you are interested in Glossybox, please check out Glossybox.com. They didn't ask me to plug them, and I got nothing free from them. I just think this is a good deal.
When my friend and I signed up for the Awesome 80s 10k run, I knew we had to take a crack at the Robert Palmer Girl look. With a little research, I was able to find a video showing the original makeup artist using more modern products to recreate it.
Score!
Before the Race
Before the Race
Before the Race
Here is the video just below. And it's a surprisingly simple look to do. Basically you are taking a wet product and applying it in a winged shape on the eye, and then both sealing it and blending it like crazy with a powder version of the same color, in this case, black.
The key to making it sweatproof for a 10k run, which is over 6 miles, was a special sealing spray. I went over to Cinema Secrets in Burbank to chat with the makeup artists there. They really know what they're doing, and the free consultation is a special feature I'm pretty sure folks don't know about. Otherwise this place would be packed. Cinema secrets has a Super Sealer that worked very well.
Cinema Secrets Super Sealer
Tools and Products:
Face:
Cinema Secrets Base in a neutral shade a touch lighter than my skin
Cinema Secrets White liner to pale it out even more
Cinema Secrets Peach corrector in lighter shade under eyes
Finisher Medal, Tools & Products for Robert Palmer Girl Look
Eyes:
Urban Decay Primer Potion
HIP Gel Liner in Black - in Wing Shape
Wet n' Wild Blue Had Me at Hello, Black Definer color on Left Side
Smashbox Full Exposure Mascara in Black
Anastasia Lash Genius
Brows: L'Oreal HIP Gel Eyeliner, and Brown Shade from NYX "butt" naked eye palette
Cheeks:
La Femme Blush in Coral Spice and Coral
Contoured with contour shade in NYX "butt" naked palette
Important to do the blush and contour in vertical slashing stripes, and just a bit on the temples
Lips:
Smashbox Limitless Lip Stain & Balm (too long of a title, People!) in Sangria
Revlon Lipstick in Fire & Ice over the top
Style it up to make the shape of the closed mouth as round as possible—pretty challenging on my thin lips!
Tools:
Real Techniques Eye Kit and Face Kit brushes
Sigma Mrs. Bunny Travel Kit brushes
Let it all set for a few minutes and spray Cinema Secrets Super Sealer over the top.
After the Race
After the Race
Robert Palmer Girl Look After the Race
Results:
I won't make any bones about it—I sweat a lot when I run. Especially in Pasadena in summer.
With the super-sealer, the face lasted. And the lips wore off but left a nice stain.
No, I didn't end up looking like Jack Nicholson as the Joker. Thanks, Cinema Secrets!
They started the longer race AFTER the shorter race started to come in.
They had one water station and they ran out of water. As a result, I got that totally not awesome dehydration foot cramp at the end.
It's Pasadena on the first of September, so, um, duh, it's pretty freakin hot, and the run doesn't start until almost 10am. Should have started no later than 8. 7 would be even better.
I saw no visible medical presence.
They are lucky lucky lucky no one fell out and/or sued them. Or maybe they did. There's still time.
Anyways, hopefully they'll learn how to do it from all the complaints on their Facebook page. Because the outfits and neon, the riot of color, and the music were lots of fun. People love the 80s, and I'm no exception.
The finisher medal itself is the best I've ever gotten. The design was great.
Have you ever tried this look or something similar? Comment and tell the story below!
Hope this was fun for you guys! Aside from the dehydration, I had an awesome time!
