Makeup Monday: Lip Edition, and Kera Breaks the Fourth Wall

Good morning makeup fans! I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Mine was so low-key as to be boring, and as a bonus featured a hangover, something which I was certain I had outgrown. Apparently not.

In my previous Makeup Monday post, I mentioned that I rarely wear lipstick. Although I adore lipstick, I am not the type that pays attention to my makeup once it's on, so lipstick lasts until I start drinking my tea. At seven-thirty. In the morning.  By the time it occurs to me that I should touch-up my lips, it's three o'clock and I figure, why bother?  I may have to change my ways after what happened this last Friday, however. I was wearing kind of a dressy black top to offset my jeans (hooray for casual Friday!) and on the spur of the moment put on a dark red lipstick. I never, NEVER wear red to work, because with red you really have to stay on top of it. It's such a dramatic look, and dominates one's appearance so much, it just seems tacky to not keep it neat and fresh-looking.  But this Friday I was feeling a little pale and tired, I'd been in a hurry and only had time to put on a light coat of mascara, and with the black top, I looked even more pale, so I redded things up.

I am not kidding, I had people asking me all day if I had special plans after work, because I looked so nice. So maybe there is something to this whole lipstick thing. Maybe making the effort to keep things pulled together isn't such a bad idea after all!

Despite my lipstick laziness, I am a sucker for buying new lipsticks, and therefore have a ton of them. I keep them in a basket near the front door, so I can decide which one to wear right before I go. It's a complicated decision-I factor in what I'm wearing, the amount of makeup I've already applied, (basically pairing more dramatic shades with lighter makeup, and more natural shades with heavier)and even the kind of lighting we have that day, choosing brighter shades in summer, and deeper ones in winter. In theory, the lipsticks are neatly arranged in the basket, with the color indicator stickers facing up, so I can see them all at a glance. In actual practice, the basket looks like this:

A jumble of lipsticks

Here are all the lipsticks I possess, having remembered this weekend to bring home the handful rolling around in my desk drawer, and having checked my purse for strays:

Included are three lipglosses that I never, ever wear. I can't stand the stickiness

Here's another view, showing off the color indicators:

For whatever reason (*cough*cheapskate*cough*) I seem to favor Revlon and Maybelline

And just for fun, here's a shot of my favorites. These are the lipsticks that get the most use:

Today I'm wearing Pink Peony, which is the lowermost and rightmost of the open tubes. It's from the Maybelline Colorsensationals line. Their ads, featuring a drizzle of honey falling over flower petals, convinced me to try them, and the quality of the color made me scurry right back to Target and buy several more. They are very creamy-feeling, and highly pigmented, so the color lasts a long time without feeling heavy or drying. I even like the way they're displayed in the store-they're sorted into color groups, Reds, Nudes, Pinks, and Plums. I like that, because I'm usually not looking for a specific color when I browse lipsticks--I'm thinking "Hm, I could use a nice bright color for wearing with summer dresses." With this display, I can ignore plums and nudes, and know that I'll find something in reds or pinks. That's how Coral Crush, up there in the top left corner, joined the family. My only real beef with this line, is that they have a somewhat strong scent, and it's very ...lipsticky. It's sort of a heavy cosmetic odor, not really good or bad, just very, very present. It reminds me of being a kid and looking through my grandmother's lipsticks.

Also appearing, two of the the Revlon Just Bitten stains. These are fairly awesome. They are not as long-lasting as they claim to be, but you can get away with only touching up once or twice a day with these. The color end is like a Sharpie, which makes application super easy, and the other end has a lip balm, which keeps the stain looking smooth and moist, rather than dry or sticky. The color goes on sort of translucent, but deepens as you build it.  

At top right, you will see that I have joined the cult of Honey. This is a stain/balm in crayon form, and if you try to take it from me, I will cut you. It's the perfect pink for me, it's longwearing, it's creamy, it even smells good.

Now, with no further ado, but with trembling hands, I present to you what I look like today:

In real life, I promise I am not quite so cheesy-meets-psychotic looking.

You can also see, in this picture, the reason my eyeshadow post will be short. I have very hooded eyelids, and have never figured out what to do with them. Also, those eyebrows? That's what they look like AFTER powder. 

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.