Monday, May 6, 2013

Makeup Monday! Kinda.


I LOVE MariaMelee's idea of doing weekly makeup posts. I don't love the fact that these will by necessity be photo-heavy posts, and I am currently having camera issues. Well, camera user issues, mostly. I have a camera on my phone, which takes pictures that can only be called okay-ish, but I fail at getting cameras from the phone to the computer. I will eventually figure it out, but until then, I will make do with pictures from the internet. So you are not seeing my own personal products in this first post, and instead of showing all my makeup, I am going to focus on my daily routine.

First up, skincare:

For cleansing, I use the Olay Total Effects line. It's creamy and nice-feeling, rinses clean, and makes people gawp at me when I tell them I have an eighteen-year-old:

Photo: Walmart.com


I follow up with Olay Anti-Wrinkle Daily Moisturizer. It's lightweight and sinks in quickly, so I don't have to wait to apply makeup. Generally, I apply the moisturizer, then run to the kitchen and get a cup of coffee. By the time I'm done adding cream and Splenda, my face is ready for makeup.
Photo: Amazon.com


I haven't figured out what to do with my skin. It's oily and dry at the same time, and I have really large pores.  When I use powders, I feel like they emphasize flakiness and the lines around my eyes. Liquids and creams feel like they are sliding off and shining. Plus, I grew up in that 90's era of super matte makeup, so I have a hard time judging if something is dewy or just oily. I very rarely wear foundation. As a rule, I use foundation if I have really dark circles that day, or if I'm feeling poorly and looking pale and tired. On those days I need blush, and I feel like blush doesn't stay put if I'm not wearing foundation. I also worry that I look like I'm wearing a mask-I find foundation difficulty to apply so that it looks natural. So, I have foundation issues. Recently, I've found a product that makes me feel like I look natural and pulled together at the same time:
Photo:Target.com




I LOVE this stuff. It goes on almost invisibly, evens out skintone, hides pores, and reduces shine. It doesn't look masky, and requires almost no blending at all. It is foolproof, and I wish I had this product years ago. Would have saved me a lot of makeup based anxiety.

As I mentioned before, I almost never wear blush, so once I get my skin sorted out, it's eye makeup and done. I recently learned how to tightline my eyes, and I can't recommend it enough. You get all the benefits of wearing eyeliner, without looking like you are wearing a ton of makeup. It takes practice, it takes a steady hand, and it takes some experimentation to find the right type of eyeliner for you. I found all of my pencils to be too creamy to stay put that close to the waterline. I bought a gel eyeliner in a little pot, but couldn't seem to load the product onto the brush correctly, so it wouldn't go on smoothly. Then I stumbled onto this:
Photo: Maybelline.com
See that tip? It's like a felt-tip marker. Like a Sharpie for eyes. It's just like drawing a line on a sheet of paper. I just run the super-fine tip along the underside of my lashes, and then run it along the upper side of my lashes, and suddenly, I could skip mascara if I were so inclined. I don't, however, because despite being blessed with crazy long lashes, I was cursed with very fine, very blonde lashes. They are no-shit invisible without mascara. I use this one, in brownish-black:
Photo: Ulta.com

Notice the traditional spoolie brush. I cannot for the life of me learn to use the new plastic brushes that a lot of mascaras come with. A huge part of why I have used Full n' Soft for ten years is that the brush has not changed a bit. I also love the formula, which has a smooth, gel-like consistency that sweeps on very cleanly, and remains soft to the touch, with almost no flaking. In the non-waterproof version, anyway. The waterproof is bit more stiff, and won't allow you to build on more coats once the first coat has dried. I use the regular, non-waterproof formula, and it has great staying power. And I'm a crier, y'all.

Much like my eyelashes, my blonde eyebrows are also near invisible. I keep them plucked (sometimes waxed) into a basic thick-on-one-end, thin-on-the-other, slightly-arched shape. I use the Anastasia Brow Duo from Sephora and an angled brush to define them:
Photo: InStyle.com
I use the Ash Blonde/Taupe duo. I brush a light coat of the Ash Blonde over my entire brow, turning the brush to narrow the line, and then follow with stipples of the Taupe wherever I need extra definition or fill-in.

The whole process takes about ten minutes, start to finish, a bit more on days when I try to hurry and end up with mascara smeared beneath my lower lashes. I rarely wear lipstick, because I forget to reapply it, so it's gone the first time I eat anything. However, I am a sucker for buying new lipsticks, so there will probably be a Makeup Monday post covering lipsticks in the nearish future.











3 comments:

  1. Ohhhh I like the look of that liquid liner. I bet it's cheaper than the Stila one I bought too!

    Thanks for playing, dude.

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  2. Ooh, that foundation looks like somethign I need to try- thanks!

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    Replies
    1. Available at Target. It's somewhere around nine bucks, I think. In fact, with the exception of the eyebrow powder, all of the makeup in this post comes from Target--I'm a cheapskate. The brow stuff is from Sephora, and cost and eye-watering TWENTY-TWO dollars. On the bright side, I've had it nearly a year, and am nowhere near being done with it.

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