Please note that there is no top image for this post. That's because the lipstick I was going to toss in to this challenge, MAC Please Me, was recently stolen from me. What had happened was...I took a bag containing several personal items, including some makeup, into the bathroom at work on Wednesday. I wasn't feeling well and I was a bit out of it, so I forgot the bag in the bathroom. Right before my class, I realized the bag was missing; I looked everywhere and couldn't find it. Nobody has returned the bag or contacted me (my information was inside). So they made off with a lot of personal items, including my MAC Blot Powder, my NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer (an HG product)...and, I realized today when I reached for them and came up empty, my MAC Please Me lipstick and my Bobbi Brown Tutu gloss.
I was so upset, I almost cried on the spot. I don't say this because I want you to pity me and send me free things--my life is not that hard, and I always tell people to donate their money to worthwhile charities instead--but rather because it was a moment when I felt incredible pain. I don't make a lot of money, and these were items I'd worked hard for. And because most people aren't as pale as I am, I sincerely doubt that the thief will even be able to use what they stole. They stole that bag probably thinking there was money in it, and when they checked and realized it was just personal items, they probably...well, they might've used some of the stuff, but it's more likely that they just chucked my hard work in to a dumpster.
But I decided, "I am NOT going to let this person defeat me." I put on UD Native instead. And I realized that I truly, truly love this lipstick, even more than the Please Me/Tutu combination. I am not a vengeful person, but I am honest. Here's the truth: selfish, greedy people always get their comeuppance. And I will look flawless, no matter how much of my stuff you steal.
BASE: MAC Face & Body in N1 + White, Kevyn Aucoin Sensual Skin Enhancer in Sx02, Dolce & Gabbana powder foundation in 50 Ivory
EYES: Too Faced Shadow Insurance, Makeup Forever Aqua Cream in #02, Wet n' Wild Comfort Zone palette, Wet n'
Wild eyeshadow in Brulee, Shu
Uemura brow pencil in Seal Brown, CoverGirl Clump Crusher mascara, Anastasia clear brow gel
CHEEKS: Scott Barnes Chic Palette in Posh [D/C]
LIPS: Urban Decay Revolution lipstick in Native
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In other news, my skin has changed a good deal over the past 6 months or so. I think it's a mixture of aging, hormones, and stress. I'm experiencing lots of tiny bumps on my forehead (I think they're clogged pores), more sensitivity and acne, and a much oilier t-zone than I previously did. So I've been slowly switching out my products to figure out what might be causing the change in texture; namely, I've replaced konjac sponges with baby washcloths (because the latter are washable), and I've started using my mother's CeraVe PM cream. I'll try to keep you guys posted!
I have really, really insane hair. It's of a decent thickness, but the individual strands are baby-fine and corkscrew curly. It always feels nice to the touch, but wow, is it a pain to work with. So I've depended on adding layers when I can afford it, and sticking to ponytails and topknots when a $35 haircut is not a financially sound option. You can put some "fresh twists" on those two styles--wrapping ribbons or more elastic bands down the length of a ponytail, for example--but even that gets old.
I go back to those styles, though, because they're kind of necessary when you wake up with hair like this:
Ahhhhhh, I'm not walking out of the house like that unless I'm starring in a 1980s hairspray commercial. Sorry.
Then I noticed this cute look in a couple of magazines. It combines two of my bad hair day go-tos: topknots and scarves. You just put your hair in a high ponytail, tie a scarf around the base, and braid the two ends of the scarf and your hair together. Then you wrap it all in a circle and secure it with some bobby pins. Surprisingly cute and fresh. I think I'll wear this scarfknot a lot this fall, though not for work, as the final look is kinda quirky and casual.
In other news, I've fallen back in love with the Queen Helene Mint Julep Masque. It's nothing fancy, but it definitely softens up my skin and squeezes any excess oil out of my pores. I can also get a little exfoliation out of the mask when I gently remove it with warm water and a soft towel. Huzzah! I just wish it didn't contain pigments and perfume to create that fake mintiness.
Also, I recently realized that I haven't talked about food recently. So here's a shot of one of my current favorite snacks: homemade trail mix!
Yeah, it's the same old, super-basic trail mix recipe: raw almonds and walnuts with M&Ms candies and raisins. But it's a classic for a reason! If you want to get fancy, you can add more goodies like dried fruit or ginger, mini-marshmallows, cashews...whatever floats your boat. I suggest keeping the almonds and walnuts no matter what because they're great for your skin.
And my other favorite snack of the moment...
...is thin crust ham and pineapple pizza with a glass of wine. It's like I'm back in graduate school!
As for brunch, my old standby...um, stands. It's some of the best skin food out there: Fage 0% Greek yogurt provides protein and live cultures, blueberries are full of antioxidants, and strawberries are a major source of vitamin C. It's also a very filling, low calorie meal that doesn't kick up my IBS. (I can't say the same for the pizza and wine, unfortunately.)
Oh, and a quick favorite from Simmis: catnip mats! You can purchase these from local craft and pet stores, or at your next festival. It's just a cute little mat full of catnip. Simmis loves to play with her mat, then doze on it for a quick cat-nap.
True story: orange used to be my favorite color. When I was a little girl, I noticed that all of the other kids liked blue, green, red, sometimes purple...pretty much every color in the 10-shade Crayola box got some love. Except for orange. Nobody liked orange! The fact of the matter is that I felt bad for orange. So I declared it my favorite color,
Now, don't misunderstand me; I really do like orange, and the warmer shades on the color wheel in general. But by the time I'd finished college, I'd admitted to myself that I wore mostly black and was drawn to red things. Alright, okay, red and black are my true blue favorite colors. I'm a walking, talking stereotype, and I've come to terms with that.
My coloring suggests that I should give orange makeup more of my time. Too many cool-toned pinks can make fair-skinned me look like a doll, and because orange is opposite to blue on the color wheel, the contrast can make my eyes pop. However, I'm just not drawn to it the way I'm drawn to red and fuchsia. I always feel quite chic and bold when I wear it, but slapping on some orange lipstick is not my first impulse.
Enter this photo from a Rae Morris makeup book. My God, that is fierce! I have to wear orange today!
...but still, I don't wear orange often. I don't know if I ever will--it's definitely not going to fly at work, and my mother absolutely hates it. I have 3 orange lipsticks, and I rarely wear them. It shouldn't be hard tofocus on those puppies and narrow this list down.
This is the second time I've worn Hourglass Opaque Rouge Liquid Lipstick in Riviera, and my sweet baby Jee, do I love this formulation! Pigmented, long-lasting, totally matte...what's not to love? It's also strangely...flattering? Riviera seems to have a great balance of red and yellow tones, so I don't look overly sallow, and my teeth look surprisingly white against my lips. This is a definite KEEP. Somebody remind me to wear this lipstick more often, and get me more of these HG liquid lipsticks, STAT!
Because I'm keeping Riviera, I've decided to PURGE my two MAC oranges: the limited edition Sounds Like Noise, a yellow-based orange with a satin finish, and Neon Orange, an amplified cream that's quite close to Riviera, but slightly more red. Sounds Like Noise is actually more difficult for me to purge than Neon Orange: while it's not as flattering, it's incredibly unique. But it's not going to get worn, so it deserves a better home.
Also examined this go-round: L'oreal Voluminous mascara in Carbon Black and the Dior DiorShow Maximizer. I used to love Voluminous, but it doesn't seem to do much for me now. It's difficult to remove, it clumps like crazy, and it flakes throughout the day. The Dior lash primer makes it bearable, however, by amping up the volume and seemingly preventing some of the flakes. I won't repurchase the L'oreal mascara, but that Maximizer? Cripes, it's hard to resist.
CURRENTLY IN THE KEEP PILE:
1. Hourglass ORLL in Muse
2. Hourglass ORLL in Riviera
3. Hourglass ORLL in Icon (mini size)
4. Chanel RAL in Dragon (DC)
CURRENTLY IN THE PURGE PILE:
1. MAC ACL in Neon Orange
2. MAC SL in Sounds Like Noise (LE)
CURRENTLY IN THE MAYBE PILE:
1. MAC ACL in Impassioned
KEEP SLOTS LEFT: 21
Also, just something funny: I hate the feeling of wet hair on my neck, so I tend to pull it up with a spin pin or a clip after I wash it. The other night, I felt pieces of hair falling out of my spin pin bun, but I was distracted by a video game, so I ignored it for about 2 hours. By the time I was ready to crawl in to bed, my head looked like this:
So technically I took these photos because I'm trying out a new foundation, and I wanted to show what it looked like after it'd been sitting on my skin for about 30 minutes (hint: much better). But I was just so distracted by my new-ish Hourglass Opaque Rouge Liquid Lipstick in Muse. I already loved Icon, but Muse? Such a perfect, matte, unique coral shade! I feel like it completely transforms my face.
Although, you know, this is why I've started doing my Pinterest Inspiration challenge: I am so, so lazy when it comes to my everyday face. "Foundation, brows, mascara...okay, that's fine...NOW LIPSTICK!!! ...aaaaand I think I'm pretty much done." Granted, the name of this blog kinda gives away my main preoccupations, but still. You can wear a great lipstick without doing the same damn FOTD all of the time!
BASE: Chantecaille Future Skin in Porcelain, NARS Radiant
Creamy Concealer in Chantilly
EYES: Wet n' Wild Fergie eye primer, Wet n' Wild Brulee eyeshadow, Bare Minerals Lash Demolition mascara, Shu Uemura Hard Formula brow pencil in Seal Brown
CHEEKS: Becca Beach Tint in Dragonfruit, RMS Beauty Living Luminizer
I know what you're thinking: "Renee, you're going to give people hair tips? Have you SEEN your hair? There's a reason why you refer to it as a 'lion's mane.' That shit is out of control and you hardly do anything with it."
Go ahead, scoff. I scoff at myself on a regular basis. (Attractive, yes?)
But I did get a question from a friend, so I figured I should answer: "How do you get your hair so huge if it's baby fine?"
It's actually really easy: I skip washing my hair, put my hair in to a bun on top of my head (ie, a topknot), I spray on some hairspray, then I go to sleep. When I undo the bun in the morning and brush through my hair, I get some waves and tons of volume. If it looks bad for any reason (which has only happened once, to the best of my memory), I just pull it back in to a ponytail.
That's it. Super-easy. I will say that I use AquaNet hairspray, which has lots of hold, but is still brushable. I think that sticky formula helps out. Also, my hair is super-fine, but also naturally corkscrew curly; this might contribute to the texture/size after I brush it out. Still, give it a shot on a weekend!
Pretty much everybody has been frustrated by a hair stylist at one point or another. I didn't have to deal with that sort of frustration for about 10 years because I had very long, one-length hair, so if somebody made a mistake at my yearly trim, it was easily overlooked. They cut too much off? Eh, it's still really long, and it'll grow back. They cut it slightly uneven? Eh, I'll go to someone else and write the extra inch off as a necessary loss.
Then I went crazy and decided to get a "real" haircut. Those of you who've been with me since my YouTube heyday may remember this; I was pretty darn excited, and the results were exactly what I wanted. None of they layers were shorter than my chin, I could still pull my hair back easily, and it looked soft and full.
Unfortunately, I got this haircut when I still lived in North Dakota, and because I was so busy preparing to defend my portfolio and move back to Pennsylvania, I didn't have time to go back. Instead, my sister clipped out a buy-one-get-one haircut coupon for a salon I've never heard of, and I got a truly icky hackjob: the lady cut all of the layers out of my hair and made it quite short. I figured I'd let it grow out, especially since I'm nigh on flat broke, but my mom offered to buy me a quick little cut from her regular stylist, and I decided to try and get my layers back.
Alas, this woman just didn't listen to me. Don't get me wrong, she's a doll of a lady, and I didn't mind her so much when she trimmed my uber-long hair...but even then she didn't listen to me. I'd tell her to take off 2 or 3 inches, she'd take off upwards of 6. I told her not to use hairspray or to tease my hair in to a bouffant, she gave me a big stupid 80s beehive as a "parting gift." In a sense, she's just dense: you can repeat yourself a half dozen times (and believe me, I did), but it just bounces off of her like a she is rubber and I am glue, whatever I say bounces off of her and STICKS IN MY DAMN HAIR.
As you can hopefully see in these pictures, she not only cut my layers uneven, but she also cut them too short. Yes, there are layers that stop at my chin...but there are also layers that barely graze my eyeballs. She practically gave me bangs, and if there's one thing I don't have patience for, it's bangs. When I try to pull my hair back, I get tons of pieces that just dangle out, even if I do an obnoxiously high Gidget poinytail. And the bottom-most layer is so barely-there that, when I manage to get a braid in my hair, it looks like I have a raggedy rat tail.
And of course, she globbed a bunch of garbage in to my hair before I left the salon. My hair is prone to frizzing, and she knows this, so she asked if I wanted her to put any anti-frizzing product on before she used her blowdryer. Polite, yes, and politely declined, because I knew I'd be washing it the next day, and then I could use my own favorite product. So what does she do? She globs product on my hair! To make matters worse, it's an extremely heavy, sticky, shiny, stiff product; as she's rubbing it all over my scalp, she says, "Now, this is the EXTREME hold version, and I think it's just too much and too sticky, so if you wanted to use it, I'd say just get the regular one." ...WHY ARE YOU PUTTING IT IN MY HAIR, THEN?! This garbage just made my hair look like a disgusting 1980s mullet, and it pulled it down so much that it revealed big bald spots all over the top of my head.
When I finally got my glasses back on and looked at the result, I was kind of horrified, but I tried not to show it in front of my mother. "You really cut these layers too short," I said as gently as possible. She just stared at me blankly, so I pulled a tendril straight (it barely touched my nose) and showed it to her. "I actually showed you where I wanted these to hit."
Her excuse? My hair is fine and curly. Apparently, that makes me a unicorn whose opinions and preferences don't matter. And I must be the last unicorn, too, because I find it hard to believe she's never had another customer with fine, curly hair over the past 20-some years.
I was slightly less horrified after I washed my hair and got the gunk out, but it's still not what I wanted. People keep telling me it "looks really nice" and "isn't horrible, Renee, you're overreacting," but that really isn't the point. The point is that, once again, a hair dresser didn't listen to me and what I wanted. If she had some concerns about cutting my hair that way, ie, "I think that will make you look bad," then she should've said something. She didn't. She just didn't listen. And I'm just so tired of dealing with hair dressers and this sort of nonsense.
I have, fortunately, figured out how to braid it at night. The shorter layers are so short that I can't braid them with the rest of my hair, and they're also too short for me to do the criss-cross braids I like. But I CAN, if I'm careful, braid the longer layers, then gather the shorter ones at the top of my head and do another braid. It feels kind of weird and it's a pain in the arse to do, but at least it keeps my hair from getting tangled at night.
BASE: Missha Perfect Cover BB cream in #13 + MAC Face & Body foundation in N1, Clinique Airbrush Concealer in 01 Fair, Skindinavia setting spray
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EYES: Too Faced Shadow Insurance, La Femme brow pencil in Taupe, Maybelline The Falsies mascara in Very Black, Milani Liquif-Eye eyeliner in Brown, Wet n' Wild eyeshadow in Brulee, MAC eyeshadow in Wedge, ELF Essential liquid eyeliner in Coffee
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CHEEKS: Milani mineralized blush in Luminoso
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LIPS: Vincent Longo Gel-X lipstick in Neu (blotted down), Jack Black lip balm
