Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup

YOU GUYS. The struggle is so real. The other night I opened my purse (a.k.a The Black Hole) to look for a pen so I could take notes in a meeting, but instead of finding a pen…I found five tubes of lipstick.

Five.

Believe it or not, that was actually low for me.

One time when I couldn’t find my car keys, I dumped out my Kate Spade and — I kid you not — half a MAC counter fell out. Funnily enough, all of the lippies were more or less the same nude shade. ?

Even though the rational part of my brain was like, “Dude, this is Rick-sanity. You’re two shakes away from biting off someone’s ear in hand-to-hand combat,” the non-rational part was high-fiving a million little angels.

You feel me.

(Now for a little light reading…)

• Um…can you clear out any space in your makeup drawer? If you’re a Shiseido fan, you might want to! The line is revamping their ENTIRE MAKEUP LINE THIS SEPTEMBER. Rumor has it they’re trying to draw more 20- and 30-somethings to the brand, and the revamp also means that more than 100 products will be retired, so if there’s something you can’t live without, better stock up now before it’s gone baby, gone.
• More proof that people from ye olden times loved makeup and perfume as much as we do — researchers recently found a sarcophagus of an ancient Roman woman from the 3rd century buried with a string of pearls, perfume bottles, a makeup palette and a small jar inscribed with a Latin phrase that means “good luck.”
• Rihanna: musician, makeup visionary, entrepreneur extraordinaire *and* patrol saint of lost luggage!
• Breadstick Bronzer and Spaghetti Sparkle Blush? — Olive Garden faked a makeup palette on social media, and people actually wanted it to be real!
• There are legions of beauty lovers who like to make a Sephora pit stop before hitting up clubs, brunch, power lunches, what have you, and this is what the makeup artists and staffers really think of doing your makeup in the store.
• For your botany moment of the day! — a tropical vine commonly known as the “lipstick plant,” Aeschynanthus radicans gets its name from the flower buds that peek out of dark-colored tubes that look like tubes of bright red lipstick.
• You may have heard about these collagen-building “growth factors”: They were first discovered by two scientists back in the ’50s, and the discovery earned the duo a Nobel Prize in 1986. Here’s what they are, what they do in skin care products, and where they come from.
• —–> Why one woman stopped painting her toenails.
• Hand art is the new nail art!
• —–> My favorite read of the week.
• If you were a teen or a tween in the ’90s, chances are you remember St. Ives Apricot Scrub. Now it’s a fragrance and the rollerball you never knew you needed.

• At Floris, a historic London perfumery that has been around since 1730, you can join the ranks of the royals and create your own scent. Floris created the official perfume for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding — a warm, citrus-y unisex fragrance with notes of bergamot, orange blossom, ginger and green tea.

• Speaking of fragrances, these bees make their own perfumes and carry them around with their legs (!).

  Dude, nature is so freakin’ cool.

• Natural beauty brand Captain Blankenship recently launched in Sephora and Target, and I’m intrigued. The founder, Jana Blankenship, started her line in her kitchen.

A dance from the season 2 finale of a show I’ve been watching lately called Better Things. This family does does this as a graduation surprise for one of the daughters… I would LOVE if someone ever did this for me!

Stuck in my head at the moment…

Goal for the month of August: untie the knots in my upper back. I just tried a few of these stretches, and now I feel like a whole new girl.

Ever since I got my hair chopped, I’ve been on a mission to try some new styles, like this half-up, half-down combo braid/messy bun. It looks easy and totally doable.

So, what lipsticks are you rollin’ with today? It’s Saturday, so I expect no less than three. ?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

I haven’t…at least if we’re talking about makeup (hair is a different story, but we’ll get to that in a second). The reason this is on my mind today is because I recently read an article in which the author’s ex-boyfriend’s affinity for natural-looking/nude makeup, and his dislike for certain nail polish colors, determined what she wore for years, and it was only after she broke up with him that she realized she could wear whatever she wanted.

I grind my teeth a little (OK, a lot) when I think about how I would have responded had I been in a similar situation as a young woman, because to a degree I’m a people pleaser, and I can see myself making those accommodations for someone I loved.

As for my hair…I dated a dude my senior year in college who was kind of an @sshole, but he was the type of guy parents loved because he totally sucked up to them and was really good on paper — smart, good grades, ambitious, on the track team, sights set on a political career — but deep down inside, he was not the nicest person.

Anyway, he had this weird controlling streak that was sneaky and subtle, and it would come out whenever he’d try to manipulate me into looking a certain way. Like, when I met him, my hair was super long (longer than it is now), and he kept making comments about how he liked short hair on girls. Then, he’d go into this story about how every time he’s ever mentioned it to other girls he dated, they’d always eventually cut their hair…for him.

BARF! Thank goodness I never cut my hair for that goof.

Another thing he did was subtly comment on how he disapproved of my clothes, and how my ripped jeans looked “sloppy” and my t-shirts were too casual and blah, blah, blah. (Weird, though, that he never picked on how I wore my makeup, right?.)

The relationship didn’t last long, and yay for me! — I never saw or heard from him again after graduation. I imagine he’s somewhere in the world with a woman who had long hair at one time but now wears it short and secretly regrets cutting it…

Have you ever dated someone who expected you to wear your makeup a certain way? Or your hair? Or your clothes?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen