A beauty blog blooming with fresh makeup reviews, swatches and beauty tips from your friendly neighborhood beauty addict
Aaaaand Becca just keeps churning out the highlighting hits! The new peachy bronze Shimmering Skin Perfector Pressed in Opal looks freaking fabulous on warm skin tones. If you’re rockin’ a tan right now, this is the color you’ll want to try next.
It’s available now You can find it now exclusively at Sephora stores and sephora.com for $38.
Name: Laurie Leopold
Location: Chicago, IL
Day job/current gig: I work in public relations as an account supervisor for an agency in Chicago.
Hangouts online: 312beauty.com,Twitter, Facebook, Instagram (guaranteed at least one Boston Terrier picture each week!) and Pinterest
Current favorite product: RMS Beauty Lip Shine in Sacred — the perfect daytime red!
Beauty inspirations: The current J. Crew catalog, Lana Del Ray in Fashion Canada’s summer issue, Jessica Chastain always.
One word that best describes your outlook on beauty: Natural
My go-to complexion staples are RMS Beauty “Un” Cover-Up and Living Luminizer. I love Urban Decay neutral eye shadows, especially the new soft gold Easy Baked and NARS Eyeliner Stylo in Capartes. For lips, the ILIA Tinted Lip Conditioners take the cake! And In My Room is the perfect, wear-with-everything neutral.
I started young with an impressive Bonne Bell collection and regularly rode my bike to Walgreens to buy eye shadow starting when I was 13. But it wasn’t until after college that my makeup bag really started overflowing.
Two products: bronzer and highlighter. A few strategic dabs and sweeps of each, and I can pretty much forgo all other makeup.
The Sultra Bombshell has changed my hair game. Before I discovered it, my super-straight hair could never successfully hold a curl. It is unbelievably easy to use — so long as you use the provided glove! Trust me, you only need to make that mistake once.
Don’t tug or rub your eyes, ever. My sister-in-law shared this with me at 15, and it stuck with me. I credit this nugget for keeping the wrinkles at bay. 

In a word, extensive. I love my facial oils! I always remove my makeup with an oil-based cleanser. Lately I’ve been using a new cleansing oil from Elizabeth Dehn for One Love Organics that smells like papayas. I layer on my serums and moisturizers in the a.m. and p.m. and use Kahina Giving Beauty Brightening Serum every morning, followed by RMS Beauty Oil or Weleda Wild Rose Facial Lotion and a healthy amount of SPF. When I need more intense moisture, I reach for my La Bella Figura Rainforest Hydration Treatment. It’s a thicker balm, but when you massage it with your fingers it turns into an oil.
It’s heavenly. I save the masking and relaxing for Sundays — lately with Osmia Organics Detox Mask, which also doubles as an exfoliator.
Lip tattoos! Temporary, of course, because I am relatively conservative with anything of a permanent nature (see hair dye sins below). While I totally appreciate these, I don’t think it’s something that looks good on me.
Most days, I wear a neutral eye. Neutral cream color all over, soft brown in the crease and black liquid liner with lots of lash. It’s my go-to easy natural look.
I’ve made several poor decisions with hair dye. In my teenage years, I bleached my hair to a horrid shade of orange. Not on purpose, of course.
It was bad. And then there was my early 20s where I dyed my hair black. I thought I was so fly at the time, but I just look pale and washed out in all the pictures.
Nordstrom, Anthropologie and LOFT are my big three. BaubleBar for jewels — to the point where I’ve made multiple orders in a single week — and Spirit Beauty Lounge, Birchbox and Sephora for beauty.
Yes! One of my newest discoveries has me really jazzed. For years, I’ve been searching for a natural mascara that actually works. After many tubes of smeary, smudgy, flaky and disappointing formulas, I finally found one that rivals nearly all others — natural or otherwise. Kjaer Weis Mascara is not only 99.8% organic, it plumps up my lashes and lasts all day without flaking. Bonus: it smells like roses.
I don’t follow any hard-and-fast rules about wearing colorful eyeshadow during the day, but if I do have many errands to run or expect to interact with lots of different people like I did today — the teller at the bank, the chatty checker at Tar-ghay, other personal assistants at Petco — then I like to keep whatever colors I’m feeling fairly close to my lash lines. That way I can get my color fix on without feeling like I’m wearing a ton of disco makeup on my eyes. Plus, it’s easy (and you know I like that).
Today I was in the mood for green and grabbed the pricey new $88 (!) Giorgio Armani Face & Eye Palette in Scarabeo, one of two new Giorgio Armani palettes released for fall.
I know. That price is insane! You kind of have to be a big Armani fan to even consider it.
With really expensive palettes like this two-tier one from Armani (the shadows are on a level beneath the blush), I usually prefer neutrals, because at least that way you can wear them daily to try to get your money’s worth.
Ha! This body oil mist sounds like it was inspired by Tabs. 🙂
The name could be his official slogan, ba-dum dum!
Thank you, thank you! I’ll be performing again at 11.
Soft to Touch…Hard to Get is one of those lovely, girly bottles that looks right at home on a vanity. With sweet almond, olive and avocado oils, the lightweight formula lightly moisturizes while leaving skin with a slight sheen and a jasmine flower scent.
The bottle has some heft to it (feels like it’s made out of glass…or really heavy plastic), so when you spray it on damp skin after your shower or on your significant other/booty call as a massage oil, you’ll feel super fancy… Just don’t drop it on your foot.
Yes, I speak from experience.
I’m so glad I picked up this bottle of Method Gel Hand Wash in Tomato Vine at Target a few weeks ago. The cute green bottle was just sitting there with a sale sticker next to it at the end of the toothpaste aisle.
I needed some hand wash, soooooo of course I unscrewed the cap and gave it a big sniff right there in the store. (Don’t front! I can’t be the only one who’s done that before.)
DUDE! It really does smell like tomato vines. I’ve got some on my deck right now.
The scent is a little weird at first…but I’m addicted to it now. It reminds me of when Demeter was doing cool, unusual scents like Thunderstorm (before they went completely off their rocker and started doing perfumes like Play-Doh and Crayon).
Anyway, I have to run back to Target today, and I’m hoping they’ll still have a few more of these limited edition scents by Orla Kiely (an Irish fashion designer) left, not only because I think this one smells great, but because it also gets my hands squeaky clean without sucking out every ounce of moisture.
If you don’t live near a Target, you can also find it online at methodhome.com.
Speaking of fancy, if a mysterious benefactor were to offer to fund a leisurely life of lunches and makeup, for the record, I would not say no.
If that were to happen, you’d find me at the Neiman Marcus Rotunda in San Francisco from Mondays through Fridays for tea around lunch, and then at the Clé de Peau Beauté counter downstairs playing with the smooth, silky and indulgent Extra Rich Lipstick Silks ($40) and Extra Rich Lipstick Holders ($25).
Scanning the break for beachy waves? If your mane/mop naturally has a lot of volume to it (read: when left to its own devices, it’s big and voluminous enough to exert its own gravitational pull), then Ouidad’s Wave Create Texture Taffy ($23) can tame that untapped volume and turn it into well-behaved waves.
A new flexible styling cream, it coaxes beachy waves out of straight or wavy hair. I’ve been using it for the past few days to tame my tresses and create full-on beachy waves.
The last time I was surrounded by this much nudity was last year’s Bay to Breakers in San Francisco, ba-dum bum!
Ha, I jest. 🙂
Well…not really. And that was a little more jarring than the nudity I’m talking about today.
Really, though, when a dude jogs past you in nothing but tennies and a fanny pack at the crack (no pun intended) of dawn, it’s a lot to take in before your first cup of coffee.
But I digress…
These new Femme Nude Lip Stylos by Hourglass ($30 each) are a joy to play with, partly because there are so many different ways a nude lip can go wrong, and this new collection of twist-up, retractable lip pencils gets it right.
Hourglass envisioned all six Stylos working together as part of a wardrobe of nudes — nudes for minimal makeup days, nudes for when you’re feeling artsy-fartsy, and nudes for when you have a hankering for something nude and slightly dramatic.
A satin finish gives lips a sheen while ingredients like vitamin E nourish and protect yo’ pout from the elements.
As a lifetime member of The S.O.S.E. (The Society of Smokey Eyes), I pledge…
I’ve been stuck on this duo big time, babe, and the main reason is that black eyeshadow on the right…
It’s SO KILLER.
Imagine the darkest, deepest, truest black shadow that haunts your makeup dreams. Then make it smoother than Jeremy Renner singing in a smokey jazz bar, add powder grains that refuse fallout, and give it the cutest flecks of silvery blue glitter.
And not just a lame sprinkling of glitter, but a perfect amount — just enough to wink at you without venturing into tween makeup territory.
Swatching it on the back of your hand is like looking into a night sky filled with twinkling stars…
I fall asleep thinking about this eyeshadow, no joke. 🙂
Oh, but it gets better. The other half of this duo rocks just as hard.
It’s a shimmery slate, like a combination of periwinkle Crayola crayons and thunderstorm clouds, that buffs and blends into beautiful, smooth gradients.
Neither color leans too cool nor warm, so this is truly one of those smokey eye duos that almost everyone can wear.
The nude wedges are by Franco Sarto and the purse is by Kate Spade (it’s a few years old).
On my toes I’m wearing Chanel Taboo.
I’ve worn the Franco Sarto wedges to death since I picked them up in April (has it already been that long?!) and they’ve held up really well. Highly recommended!
What purse/shoes are you wearing today? 🙂
