Makeup Tips/How To

After driving into the city last night to pick up my race bib for the Nike Women’s Half Marathon (only nine more days!), El Hub and I stopped in Sausalito for dinner on the way back.

We went to this little sushi place on Caledonia Street called Sweet Ginger, and I was munching on my mango, avocado and sweet potato tempura veggie roll and staring at my race bib number: 22822.

I am by no means a hard-core runner, but I’ve run a handful of short races before, and I can’t say that I’ve ever had a memorable bib number.

They’re usually a nondescript string of random numerals, like from a UPC barcode on a bottle of laundry detergent or reduced fat peanut butter, but this one — 22822 — feels like a sign. The only thing better would’ve been a bunch of nines, since nine is my lucky number.

Anyway, I love this number. A lot. 🙂

I love how symmetrical it is and how the eight looks in the middle, and how if you turn the bib sideways, the eight makes an infinity sign (ooh!).

The number is also a palindrome.

Symmetry. Balance. Elusive concepts in makeup and life, but at least my half marathon bib rocks ’em!

Dude, I think you feel my pain. Symmetrical makeup is hard, especially when it comes to thick, bold liner, or darker colors in the crease.

At least it’s hard for me. I really have to work at it, but my eyes are slightly different shapes (it’s true). If you have perfectly symmetrical features, consider yourself #blessed. My eyes aren’t symmetrical at all (my left eye is slightly smaller than the right, and it sits a smidgen lower).

I think about symmetry a lot this time of year, when the fall and holiday colors show up, because I start wearing bolder eye looks on the regular, and as someone whose features aren’t perfectly symmetrical, here are a few tips that help me create more symmetrical eye makeup.

1. Keep both eyes open, head straight, and look directly into the mirror

I’m a fiend for false lashes, but I am by no means one of those lucky people who are always able to just pop them on and be like, “Doop-da-doo, la-lah-la! That was easy. Now let’s go find some unicorns and rainbows.”

Sometimes it is pretty easy. Maybe half the time. But the rest of the time it’s not, and I’ll end up with eyelash glue all over my lids.

That actually happened earlier this week when I was applying a pair of big, bushy, dramatic MAC 34 lashes, which are majorly long at the outer corners (great for cat eye looks), but for the life me, I couldn’t set the lash band where it needed to go.

So bam! — glue all over my lids.

Of course, this happened after I’d spent the time blending and buffing a bunch of eyeshadows on my lids (OF COURSE).

Even though the glue I was using dried clear and invisible, I could still see the texture of the glue on my lids, looking all bumpy and heavy.

I sat there with gobs o’ glue all over my lids and thought, “Gee, this sucks. How am I going to remove this without messing up my eyeshadow?”

I was pretty sure that a makeup wipe or cleansing oil, which are what I’d normally use to remove false lashes, would ruin my shadow handiwork.

That’s when a metaphorical makeup light bulb went off. [DING!]

First, I grabbed a stiff brow comb (I wanted one with crispy, for lack of a better word, bristles). I just used the comb on the end of a Guerlain Eyebrow Pencil.

Why are dainty, diminutive clutches so darned popular at fancy parties and events?

I mean, they’re kind of inconvenient. Because they’re so tiny, they don’t steal any thunder from the dresses (always a good thing), so I guess that’s probably the reason, but dang if they aren’t totally impractical.

In my hotel room on Monday, as I rushed to get ready and struggled to squeeze everything I wanted/needed to bring with me to the show into the spritely Whiting & Davis Gold Mesh Clutch, I started to panic a little.

The clutch was just too small.

I’d planned to do a heavier full-coverage look for my foundation and powder and touch it up at night with a powder compact, rather than just with blotting papers (I felt like the powder would do a better job keeping everything intact).

But between my phone, keys, one lipstick, a lip liner, gloss and, um…a cardboard cutout of my cat, there was no room left in the clutch! — which was incidentally smaller than my size 7 shoes.

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Wow, babe. MIND BLOWN.

I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out, but better late than never.

First, a little backstory. Last Saturday I was testing out a possible Emmys makeup look — yes, I’m kind of nerdy that way, but it never hurts to be prepared. I got it into my head that I wanted to wear a big, dramatic pair of false lashes to the show.

The thing is, some big lashes can be super uncomfortable off the shelf. I’ll usually trim them down to size, but even so — the big ones can still be uncomfortable.

I guess I have an oddly shaped lash line or something because the inner lash band always pokes me right in a sensitive spot, and it’s astronomically annoying.

So, I was thinking about this, trying to figure out what to do. What could I do, I wondered, to make a pair of dramatic false lashes more comfortable?

I know! — I’ll cut each one in half and apply the halves separately. 🙂

I grabbed a pair of haggard 120 Demis by Ardell (I’d already used them a few times before), and cut them in half right down the middle with a pair of scissors. Then I applied the outer half first and the inner half second.

Boom. This is when my mind was blown.