Truth: sometimes I like products just because they’re cute.
And if they’re cute and on sale, like Tokidoki’s Gelato Lip Balm Stain in Skeletina ($5, regularly $9), I’m liable to like them even more. 🙂
Lips
The New $10 L’Oréal Paris Colour Caresse by Colour Riche Luminous Lipcolours Are Rich in Pigment But Light on Pocketbooks
Wearing the new L’Oréal Paris Colour Caresse by Colour Riche Luminous Lipcolour in Violet Chiffon
It’s been an exciting afternoon! First, I discovered what might be my new favorite drugstore lipstick (more on that in a minute); then, I improvised a pasta dish without following a recipe, and it didn’t turn out completely terrible. 🙂
If you’ve ever partaken of my improv cooking before, you’d know that it’s a crapshoot. Sometimes it works out, but sometimes, well, let’s just say that calling it “whack to the Nth degree” would be kind.
Luckily, I had some good ingredients on hand. I made a sauce of olive oil, minced garlic, crushed red pepper, halved cherry tomatoes and clam juice from a can, threw that in with some spaghetti, and garnished it with basil and salty Pecorino Romano cheese.
I wanted to add the clams for protein but didn’t realize they were whole clams until I opened the can.
Eww! I like diced clams, but I can’t deal with chopping them up when they’re whole. They’re just so…squishy and rubbery, and there’s that dark stuff that oozes out of ’em.
I ended up leaving out the clams, but I did add the clam juice to the sauce for flavor.
The dish was probably the best improv pasta I’ve made in a while, and I should have immortalized it with a pic! — but blast if I didn’t forget to take one before I finished devouring the meal.
Finding my new favorite drugstore lipstick this afternoon helped to soften the blow. The new $9.99 L’Oréal Paris Colour Caresse by Colour Riche Luminous Lipcolours are more than just mouthfuls. They’re also all kinds of rad.
From the left: Pink Cashmere 171, Blushing Sequin 172, Violet Chiffon 175 and Pink Vinyl 183
Loaded with pigment and moisture, these 16 creamy, modern marvels are rarities among moisturizing lippies because they don’t highlight any flakes on my perpetually parched lips. L’Oréal’s lightweight Luminous Lipcolours are pigmented enough to satisfy my almost insatiable thirst for color, even with a single swipe, and hydrating enough to keep the flakes at bay.
After trying four of the colors so far, my lips and I are happy, moisturized and utterly impressed.
The unscented, unflavored pinks, neutrals and berries in the line headline the show like silent movie matinee versions of the far more expensive Pure Colour Sensuous Rouges from Estee Lauder ($28 each) and Chanel’s Rouge Coco Shines ($32).
Swatches from the left: Pink Cashmere 171, Blushing Sequin 172, Violet Chiffon 175 and Pink Vinyl 183
Wearing Blushing Sequin
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Bellissima Bellucci! The Dolce & Gabbana Monica Collection Voluptuous Lipsticks
Wearing Dolce & Gabbana Monica Collection Lipstick in Chic Monica 100
A few shots of the new super-saturated luxury lippies from Dolce & Gabbana’s six-piece Monica Collection ($32 each), available now exclusively at Saks Fifth Avenue stores and online at saksfifthavenue.com.
The collection’s named after one of Dolce & Gabbana’s muses, the Italian actress and fashion model Monica Bellucci.
Um…I’ll have whatever she’s having, LOL!
Lipsticks from the left: Italian Monica 160, Attractive Monica 140, Magnetic Monica 120, Chic Monica 100, Only Monica 80 and Natural Monica 60
Swatches from the left: Natural Monica 60, Only Monica 80, Chic Monica 100, Magnetic Monica 120, Attractive Monica 140 and Italian Monica 160
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Lighten Your Load and Perfect Your Pout With Too Faced Perfect Lips
Wearing Too Faced Cosmetics Perfect Lips in Perfect Red
QUESTION: Besides their affinity for beauty products, what do Tabs and the makeup bag I haul around in my purse have in common?
ANSWER: They both weigh almost 20 pounds!
Yeah, something here desperately needs streamlining, and this time I’m not referring to the cat.
Okay, 20 pounds is probably an exaggeration (for the bag, not the cat). It’s probably more like 1-2 pounds on most days. Maybe 5 every so often.
However much it weighs, it’s a lot.
All of those glosses, lipsticks, compacts, palettes, lip liners, and (occasionally) cans of Fancy Feast (always in gravy) definitely take some muscle to haul around, she said, her shoulder pulled low by the weight of a dozen products.
But my overworked shoulder felt a sudden rush of relief the first time I lined my lips with one of the four new Too Faced Perfect Lips liners ($17 each and available in four twist-up shades), not to be confused with the company’s Perfect Lips Universal Lip Pencil Liner, which only comes in a single shade and lacks a twist-up tip.
Perfect Nude, Perfect Pink, Perfect Spice and Perfect Red line and prime lips to boost the wear time of lipsticks and glosses worn on top of them, and they’re designed to wear well with a wide range of colors.
Take Perfect Pink, for instance. Even when I’m toting around 10 tubes of pink gloss (which happens), it’s neutral enough to work with just about all of them.
From the left: Perfect Red, Perfect Nude, Perfect Pink and Perfect Spice
From the left: Perfect Nude, Perfect Pink, Perfect Spice and Perfect Red
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Say High Shine! These Full-Coverage Lip Creams From Too Faced Are La Crème of the Crop
Wearing Too Faced La Crème in Juicy Melons
Between the cooking, cat walking, housecleaning, crying and quiet rumination I did last weekend, I also…
1. Got a massage
After two days inside, I had to get out of the house, so I finally used the spa gift card I’d been saving since Christmas to get a deep-tissue massage.
And I learned a valuable lesson that day about massage technicians formerly employed by professional football teams — that it’s not a good idea to tell one, “Gimme all ya got! I have a high tolerance for pain.”
Unless, of course, you really, really do.
2. Posed with The Biebs
No, seriously! He was at Macy’s. There he was, standing perfectly still by a display for his new fragrance, Girlfriend, so I just walked up, whipped out my iPhone, and click!
Which reminds me: Dear Justin, while I have absolutely no desire to wear this or any scent designed by a teenage boy, your display cutouts? — awesome.
3. Hardly wore any makeup at all
Heck, I barely had the wherewithal to fill in my brows, which for me is something tantamount to breathing, or wearing underwear, or eating on a regular basis.
Tabs did not approve.
He kept sending me passive aggressive texts about my wayward workplace appearance with excerpts from his new book, Tabs the Cat on Style: Everything You Need to Know to Live a Fashionable Life, like this little nugget: “A full-coverage lip color in a classic, elegant shade will do wonders for your look.”
Crankypants!
Today is actually the first day in a week that he hasn’t given me the above “evil eye,” and I think it has something to do with these new Too Faced La Crème lip creams ($21 each), which are basically super soft lipsticks packed with pigment and shine.
Lips Get Love From Too Faced This Fall: Introducing the Too Faced Fall Collection for 2012
It’s much too early to be talking about fall, and yet here we are. Yes, the worlds of makeup and beauty abide by their own calendar, and here, to push it further ahead, is the fall collection from Too Faced for 2012.
No palette this time, but we did get some lipstick.
Lots and lots of lipstick.
Here are pics of the 26-piece release, available now online, and coming soon to Sephora stores.
La Creme Color Drenched Lip Cremas ($21 each and available in 16 shades)
The Perfect Lips Lip Liners ($17 each) and Perfect Eyes liners ($18 each)
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For Lips to Go With a Hip Victoriana Aesthetic: The MAC Ruffian Collection Lipsticks
Wearing MAC Ruffian Gold Lipstick, $14.50
Slowly but surely, one Marshall’s visit at a time, I’m moving away from my natural tendency to dress like a 13-year-old skater boy from The Valley and toward a hopefully more fashionable future as a 30-something-year-old woman with killer shoes and a quirky Cali girl sense of style…
…she wrote, sitting at her desk in an over-sized O’Neil surf tee and a pair of board shorts with cargo pockets.
LOL! Okay, it’s a process. A really, really slow process. 🙂
But one of the best parts of this slow-going effort to take my wardrobe more seriously has been figuring out what makeup to wear with different looks.
Like for my current fashion phase, beachy summer dresses, I’ve been gravitating toward neons and brights.
How long the phase will last, however, is hard to say…especially now that I’ve seen the new MAC Ruffian collection.
Looking for a lipstick to wear with a streetwise Victorian style? Something to go with that tweed jacket and that top with the bell-sleeves and ruffles, perhaps?
If so, it’s MAC Ruffian time.
The six-piece online exclusive is a collaboration between MAC and Ruffian, the NYC-based design duo of Brian Wolk and Claude Morais. Their clothes have an upscale, vintage vibe, with ready-to-wear (but hard to afford) pieces ranging from $800 for a shirt to $1,800 (!) for a jacket, and fans include edgy actresses Maggie Gyllenhaal and Kirsten Dunst.
For the MAC Ruffian collection (available online now in North America, and coming to select international MAC locations this September), Brian and Claude directed their design aesthetic into three Lipsticks ($14.50 US and $17.50 CDN) and three Ruffian Manicure sets ($25 US and $30 CDN) in classic, timeless shades of red, gold, beige and peach.
From the left: Ruffian Gold, Ruffian Red and Ruffian Naked Lipsticks
I took a break from summer brights and neons today to try the three lipsticks, and the first thing that came to mind: Chanel. And then Sir Arthur Conan Doyle… Or something he might have written, had Sherlock Holmes investigated a crime against Chanel (NO!). “It has long been an axiom of mine that Chanel should influence more things.”
True dat. 🙂
The red and gold are reminding me of 2010’s Shanghai-inspired Chanel Noir’ Et Or.
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I Kinda Feel Like Simply Vera Vera Wang Smooth Shine Lip Gloss Is Playing Tricks on Me
Wearing Simply Vera Vera Wang Smooth Shine Lip Gloss in 806
I’m all smiles now, but I wasn’t the first time I brushed Smooth Shine Lip Gloss in 806 on my lips. A pale golden pink, it’s one of six $18.50 Simply Vera Vera Wang Smooth Shine Lip Glosses.
At first swipe, I looked more like this…
I saw a sheer golden glow, a soft shine, and thought, “Cool!” But my smile quickly soured. Truth be told, this gloss turned out to be tricky.
Finding the perfect amount to apply is like divining water. A tad too much, and it looks milky, patchy and uneven.
I like it best when I apply it using a very specific method — using a tiny amount, just barely enough to cover my lips, which I then carefully blot.
Oh, and the consistency? Thick. Really thick. Almost too thick, and while it doesn’t feel sticky when I press my lips together, it’s still weirdly a magnet for fur.
Tabs was not impressed…
Vera does include some nice flourishes, like the honeysuckle scent and vanilla flavor, and the paddle-shaped applicator, which really gets into the corners of my lips and works great for shaping the point above my cupid’s bow.
It also holds up pretty well for a gloss, lasting on my lips for about three hours.
Smooth Shine Lip Gloss in 806, $18.50
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