Just For Fun

Beauty Snacks: Sites of the Day

May 23rd, 2008 by Karen 19 Comments

iCiNG – galadarling.com
Gala is a gifted Australian beauty blogger with a devilishly quirky sense of humor. Her uplifting outlook has brought many a smile to my face.
icing-galadarling

Pink Is The New Blog
Trent just cracks me up. He writes about celebrity stuff, but unlike Perez Hilton he can do it without being mean (most of the time).
pink-is-the-new-blog

fourfour
Rich blogs for VH1, and they’re damn lucky to have him. With his dry sense of humor, random cat videos and shameless love for Mariah Carey, he makes animated .gif images into works of art.

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Chipped Nails: A Faux Pas No More?

May 22nd, 2008 by Karen 23 Comments

chipped-polish-both

According to a story in The New York Times, a new trend in nails has lazy women everywhere jumping for joy! Get this: chipped nail polish.

On the fingers of some fashion-forward women, streaked, chipped and basically tow-up nails are replacing well-manicured nails.

“Over the last few years — since the era of the skull print scarf, let’s say, or the (metaphorical) rise of the Olsen twins — having streaked, chipped or just plain grotty nail polish no longer suggests drug addiction, manual labor or pure laziness. Like untied high-tops, thread-worn jeans and bedhead, it’s now part of a deliberate look.

And chipped polish is not sported solely by nail-biting school students and downtown punkers. It has been spotted uptown, in professional settings and gala parties, behind department store sales counters and even (gasp!) on beauty and fashion industry insiders.

Anyone can get caught between manicures. But now women no longer have to sit on their hands when they do.”

NYTimes.com (free registration required)

This works out great for me. Lazy women rejoice! Is it a sign of the times? Are we too busy to take care of our nails? Homemakers, businesswomen, fashionistas, students, beauty bloggers — we all lead busy lives. Where does painting your nails rank on your list of things to do?

I’m all for new trends and the evolution of style, but I think chipped nails look messy. Hell yeah, I’m certainly guilty of sporting chipped nails from time to time (BlackBerry/CrackBerry typing wreaks havoc on nail polish, girl!), but rarely on purpose.

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Afternoon Reading, Makeup-Related and Otherwise

May 18th, 2008 by Karen 33 Comments

I don’t think there’s anything better than spending a Sunday afternoon reading and drinking tea.

BellaSugar

I am totally hooked on Bella’s blog for its witty, helpful posts and her fun contests. I just took the Sex and the City quiz, which entered me into a contest to attend an exclusive pre-screening of the Sex and the City movie. To enter the contest, log on to the site and take the SATC quiz — you have until 11:59 pm tonight. Don’t worry if you’re rusty on your SATC trivia; no matter how you score on the quiz, you’re still entered to win.

The Host, by Stephanie Meyer

I’m a big fan of Stephanie Meyer, the woman behind the Twilight series of novels. So, they’re young adult books … but I love young adult books. Twilight’s a love story about a teenage girl and her vampire boyfriend. The Host, Meyer’s first book for actual grownups, deals with an alien invasion on earth. Do you suppose alien invaders care about dark circles? I guess I’ll find out!

Allure’s June 2008 issue

I’m looking forward to reading Allure’s Secret Beauty Finds story, which supposedly discusses where the hair and makeup pros shop. I’ll let you know if I find out anything good! I also really liked Jessica’s cover look with purple shadow. I’m going to attempt to recreate it this week. Oh! And did you know Allure.com has a beauty blog called the Daily Beauty Reporter?

I am always curious about what other people like to read, and I can never resist checking out the bookshelves and magazine racks in the homes of people I know, LOL.

What’s on your current reading list? Is it a steamy romance, an O-chem book (*snooze*) or an issue of US Weekly?

Do you ever get the blues on Sunday? I’m not at all ready for Monday, ya’ll. I sure could use five more days of weekend.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen
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Makeup and TV: What I’m Watching

May 15th, 2008 by Karen 28 Comments

kardashian-sisters

I gotta come clean: I am addicted to Keeping Up with the Kardashians. It’s a reality TV show on E! about Kim Kardashian and her family. Obviously, one does not watch the show for intellectual stimuli; I watch partly because it’s therapeutically mind-numbing and partly because I admire the makeup. Kim, Kourtney and Khloe (the three older Kardashian sisters) wear some of the prettiest makeup on reality TV — seriously — and they totally own the dark smokey eye and nude lip look.
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Makeup and Beauty Blog’s Virtual Beach Barbecue: Let’s Play Hooky!

May 13th, 2008 by Karen 39 Comments

Tomorrow is going to be a hot one here in Nor Cal… They’re saying 90 degrees, ugh! I wish we could all play hooky together and have a beauty barbecue at the beach.

But since we can’t (at least not this time), let’s have a virtual beach party instead!

Here’s what I’m wearing to the party…

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You Must Choose: The Makeup Dreams Edition

May 9th, 2008 by Karen 48 Comments

Hi, cuties! My migraine’s mostly gone. Last night was rough, but I feel so much better now. Maybe it was the headache, but I had a string of messed-up makeup dreams last night.

This morning, I couldn’t think of a better way to share my dreams with you than with a good ole’ fashioned YOU MUST CHOOSE!

Messed-up Makeup Dream #1

you-must-choose-pink

It’s your wedding day. You’re forced to either attend the ceremony and reception wearing 1) pirate-themed booty shorts or 2) absolutely no makeup whatsoever. YOU MUST CHOOSE!
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China Glaze Text in Colour 2BHOT: Holographic Hotness

May 6th, 2008 by Karen 27 Comments

Have you seen China Glaze’s OMG Text in Colour nail polish collection yet? OMG, these colors are GR8, QT!

The full collection first landed back in February, and I’ve been meaning to talk about it for a while. China Glaze released the collection as two sets, 2BHOT and 2BKEWL, with six colors each. 2BHOT carried the warmer shades; 2BKEWL the cooler ones. To describe the colors, China Glaze used a term I hadn’t heard used to describe makeup before: holographic. And it’s not just marketing nonsense, either. The polishes contain the tiniest little flecks of multi-colored glitter, and they do seem to change color (silver to green to red, for example) depending on the angle you look at them from.

I finally got around to swatching and photographing the six 2BHOT colors yesterday. Unfortunately, since their release the colors have become pretty hard to find, but you can still purchase all of them individually from Amazon for $4.20 (shipping extra) each.
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A Kryolan Makeover, aka Adventures in Theater Makeup

May 3rd, 2008 by Karen 125 Comments

Every girl deserves a makeover from time to time. My last one was ages ago. I’d been itching to try a new look, so yesterday I made the short trip into San Francisco hoping to find inspiration.

I hit my usual haunts — MAC, Dior and Chanel — but I was in the mood for something, well, kinda different, so I kept looking.

I was almost ready to throw in the towel when a sign on a building caught my eye: Kryolan Professional Makeup. Curious as ever and not wanting to head home defeated, I decided to check it out.

Jake, the Kryolan showroom manager, gave me a tour of the place and described their products and services.

The company offers a full line of professional and consumer beauty products but specializes in theater makeup and makeup education. I was immediately drawn to their Aquacolor wet cake makeup — pans of highly pigmented, glycerin-based face and body makeup available in 250 different shades ($6 each).

Once I spotted their beautiful brushes (high quality, and generally more affordable than department store lines), body paints and, um, fake blood, I knew I was in for a different kind of makeover. Sign my booty up!

Dominic, Kryolan’s director of education, got me ready for my makeover, sitting me down beside a counter covered in Aquacolor pans. I told him to go nuts! I didn’t know what to expect, but I got a little suspicious when he glued a prosthetic cat nose to my face.

That’s when it dawned on me: homie was probably not going to do a simple smokey eye.

After all, Kryolan is known for extreme movie and theater makeup. You’ve probably seen their makeup at work in Hollywood films, and their credits include the makeup for The Chronicles of Narnia, Collateral and Pirates of the Caribbean.

With my new prosthetic cat nose in place, Dominic started layering different colors to develop the look. “The painting process is fun,” he said. “This is the most time consuming part of the whole process.”

The entire Karen-into-cat transformation took about 45 minutes, but here’s the condensed version…

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