Cookies and Goodies

Getting a few Christmas things done. Every year most of my relatives get a batch of holiday cookies or a homemade fruitcake in-leu of a gift because university finals always cramp my Christmas style. I’m baking a test batch of this year’s recipe. They are supposed to be Chocolate Chocolate Chip, but so far they’re more like salty caramel cookies…

Then I’m gonna get a bit of Christmas shopping proper done.

The Body Shop “Total Energy” Wellbeing Starter Kit, $32

LUSH’s “Each Peach (And Two’s A Pair)” Massage Bar, a sweet orange, lime, and grapefruit scented solid moisturizer, $8.75

The LUSH Christmas Party Gift, contains Happy Hippie Shower Gel and Ice Blue Soap for $16.95

Magazine subscriptions! They make amazing gifts. Usually less than $20 to give someone a whole year of reading material.

Available at Sephora, Pacifica’s “Tuscan Blood Orange” Travel Set contains a candle, body butter, solid perfume, and patterned matches for $14.

Too bad I’m starting so late in the game or someone would be getting a Bee Bar…

Twins: Fat Lips/Fat Wallet

Witness:

Fusion Beauty’s LipFusion, $38…

versus Sally Hansen’s LipInflation for about $9

The difference of course is that LipFusion uses “marine collagen” to plump lips while Sally uses the sometimes unpleasant Ginger, Cinnamon, and Peppermint oils. The only other difference appears to be those siver and gold caps…

Also on the drugstore tip, the northeast regional chain Harmon carries NYX!! Aside from Ulta (which we don’t have here in the northeast) I have never seen this line in person, and Cherry Culture’s swatches suck, which makes deciding what colors to buy difficult. All I’ve got to say after seeing the products in person is, if you were thinking of getting the multi-purpose Glitter Cream Palette, do it. The glitter caught my eye from across the store.

Twins: The Less List

Stumbled upon this outstanding list of drugstore dupes for all the most sought-after department store products. Coveting NARS “Orgasm”? Try Milani’s “Luminous”! Hit pan on MAC’s “Shroom”? Why not try Jordana’s “Beige” for a fraction of the price! Prestige makes it infringingly easy to find our Chanel Glossimer dupes by naming their attempts at “Glaze” and “Spark” just that! Too bad my pie-in-the-sky dreams of a drugstore dupe for MAC’s beautiful duo-chrome “Club” isn’t on the list. Oh well.

UK/OK

Snoods!

Taking one more break from beatuy…

Snoods are gonna be a hot winter accessory this season. Never heard of a snood? I hadn’t. They’re circular scarves that can be worn around the neck or pulled up to also form a hood. How do you pronounce it? I’m still not sure…s+nude…as if you were saying sn+hood? Missoni’s doing them bohemian and Burberry is doing them posh. Topshop sells them for $50. I ran out and made one out of two yards of old t-shirt lined with black flannel. I can’t help but think Stevie Nicks would be into them made out of black lace embroidered with crystals or something.

(Ugh, apparenlty in the States, snood also refers to anything from a knitted hair net to a turban to a cowel.)

 

On a beauty note, I found the NARS Striptease Lip Gloss/Deep Throat Blush Duo, which is normally $45 for $24 at TJ Maxx!!

Lady Gaga Walks All Over McQueen

Art Fag City

Bad Romance

McQueen Spring/Summer ‘10

McQueen Spring/Summer ‘10

McQueen Spring/Summer ‘10

McQueen Spring/Summer ‘10

McQueen Spring/Summer ‘10

(He also thinks you should give this as a gift.)

YSL Tuxedo Complexion Palette

I made my first purchase from beautyticket.com during the last sale. I spent too much on the YSL Collector Powder for the Complexion Palette from the 2008 Autumn Winter, “Tuxedo” collection. Jesus christ that is a long name! I figured on a coral blush, shimmering highlighter, and a face powder in a cute palette. Once I got it i realized I probably would have been better off spending half as much on the bronzer trio I’ve had my eye on at Victoria’s Secret. This palette is another dud in a recent string of disappointing beauty purchases.

Packaging: The worst thing about this palette is the cheap packaging. It is plastic, like it screams plastic. It’s light, a tacky gold that holds finger prints. The included half-moon brush is too small and the bristles are plastic. It comes in a velvet sleeve that the brush slips out of.

Product: I accidentally used this once before taking a picture and the YSL over-spray disappeared completely when I touched it. I could have BLOWN it away. The highlighter is nice, white with gold shimmer, but the blush and face powder are underwhelming. I didn’t even do swatches because no amount of layering got the colors to a level where my camera could pick them up. Underpowered pigment central! This palette sets my beauty-pet-peeve-detector off too because the strips of color are each too small to fit a brush on. Trying to get some blush? Have some SUPER shiny highlighter too! You’re welcome! I got the best results swirling a brush over all the colors and just applying that on my cheeks over blush. That’s fine, but call it something nebulous like a “beauty powder” then. I mean, this was the description at beautyticket!

Filled with radiance, these three skin illuminators enable the user to adjust the effects as desired: The beige powder enhances the face with velvet-smooth transparency and is ideal for touchups throughout the day. The apricot blush warms and enlivens the complexion.

Applied on the cheekbones, the eyebrow arch and the chin, the pearly pink shade highlights the features with subtle golden reflections. Used together, these three shades offer the complexion a soft veil of light.

The product seems like almost an afterthought, which leads me to think this is an item for the YSL nerd who just wants to show it off. but then why make the packaging so embarrassingly cheap?

To be fair, with the over-the-top smokey eyes that were running free in ‘08, this palette would be a fool-proof way to acheive the understated cheek needed to pull it off. It is literally impossible to make your cheeks too bold with this palette!

Foiled Nail Lust

I had heard about Minx, but it never caught my eye until these moments in the Jordin Sparks video “Battlefield.” I’m starting to think the glitter trend in nail polish is a pale attempt to dupe the lovely delicate, yet edgy effect she has going on.

When I was in grade school I apparently had a premonition of the nail trends to come 15 years in the future because I used to sit in class peeling the sticky silver foil off gum wrappers and covering my nails with it. It never lasted long, but if it did I wouldn’t be above trying it again today! Realistically, I’m now on the hunt for a drugstore polish that can come close to the crystalline silver effect in the above images. I haven’t had a chance to pick it up yet (if I get it over the weekend I will update this post with my face-to-face findings!), but Sally Hansen’s Xtreme Wear polish in “Celeb City” looks like a winner. It’s a high-shine silver with subtle silver glitter. A few others in the line, like “Pewter” and “Platinum Chrome”, also seem to fit the bill. China Glaze’s recently released Khrome collection also has a few respectably over the top metallic polishes.

Update central! I found my perfect Minx-like silver polish!

I went out in search of some of the contenders I’d seen online, but a dark horse stole the show. It is MatteseElite’s “Solid Silver.” Mattese (or Mattese NYC as I’ve seen it called) is a brand only available at NYC’s funky beauty chain Ricky’s, but never fear because they retail online now! Free of DHP, Toulene and Formaldeyhde, this polish was only $5.99 and delivers the gritty, textured silver shine I was looking for. Most people are going after smooth, shiny, and flawless when it comes to polish so “gritty” wouldn’t be a word they like to hear, but I was looking for the nails-covered-in-tinfoil effect.

Not my best manicure ever because I was so psyched to see it I applied in the library!

It took three coats to get color this opaque, but I’ve since experimented with a sheerer application over dark polish, which yields a variety of nifty effects. Over a baby pink this might get pretty darn close to those Jordin Sparks nails. This polish seems to take longer to dry than most (multiple coats aside) and has a tendency to smudge. Also, it only lasts about two days before starting to chip, but for a playful shade that I would probably restrict to weekends that’s not terrible.

I know I’m not the only one that’s been mad for cheap dupes of Minx-like effects. What are some solutions you’ve come up with to this nail-trend quandry?

First String Beauty

I don’t know how most people do it, but I’ve developed this elaborate and fussy system for organizing my (stupid-large) makeup collection. It revolves around a first, second, and third string drawer/bag concept. First string items are stuff I go for everyday, new things I’ve just bought, things I like to wear on the infrequent night out, and things I don’t use much but want to try to work into my routine. Second string definitely has some overlap, with back-up going out looks, quality lip products that I just need a break from, and my out of season favorites that get bumped back up to first string when it’s their time to shine. Third string is, well, basically everything else. It’s the low quality, drugstore stuff that I’ve stopped using, gifts of stuff I never liked, nail polish since I only reach for it once in a blue moon, and generally stuff I don’t use but can’t get rid of. Exempted from this system of course are the products I keep with me in my school bag and the stuff that is dedicated to a certain purse. For example, each purse has its dedicated travel size hand cream, a balm or gloss, and sometimes some small brushes and/or an eyeliner that always stays in a given purse. This way I can just grab one or two key items for my look while everything else is on hand without any thought. Further deviations include my magnetic palettes, which I use whenever I know I’m gonna be out and about for 24 hrs+, and I have one of those for day-to-day and one for special occasions.

Top to bottom and left to right: CHoward’s violet mints, Laura Mercier metallic cream eyeshadow, Urban Decay “Midnight Cowboy”, Smashbox face highlighter, Bourjois iridescence powder, NYX jumbo lip pencil, Sephora eye pencil, Almay liquid eyeliner in black, Lancome “Crushed Rose” lipstick, Lancome Juicy Rouge, Dior Holiday ‘07 lip palette, Aziza rocks lip palette (for use on eyes!), Rimmel SpecialEyes in “Biscuit Box” (best natural shadow duo ever!), Lancome eyeshadow in “Peach Chiffon” (for use on cheeks), Laura Mercier metallic cream eye shadow, Lancome Star Gloss in “Angelic”, Wet and Wild Speed Gloss (amazing!), Stilla pressed powder compact (for the mirror), Etnies mirror, Candy Kisses balms in Strawberry and Mango

How do you organize your makeup? By product type? Office versus going out?

Paddling the weirdo pool: Nivea For Men

I’m about to go off the deep end into the weirdo pool, but here goes. When it comes to facial moisturizer, I only use products marketed for men. Now, bear with me a second here. Have you ever tried to buy some just plain, regular facial moisturizer for women? It’s impossible. Everything is day cream, night cream, eye cream, radiance boosting serum, or age-defying salve. If you are in between acne and wrinkle age there are scant few products catering to you. Plus, as ill-advised as it is, I hate SPF in my face lotions because the smell is too disgusting. Now that I’m running out of my current pick, Kiehl’s Multi Purpose Facial Formula For Men, I thought I would search for a better option for daily use. While the Kiehl’s was good at providing alot of moisture to my dry skin, some of its more hectic ingredients like eucalyptus and caffeine (how does that help the skin exactly?) were a little too hard on my skin. It’s also more expensive, at $22.50 for 4.2 oz, than I like my daily products to be.

Initially, I tried to find a replacement by Aveeno, which I’m a big fan of, but I failed that and with other brands for women as well. So I looked one aisle over and picked up Nivea For Men Protective Lotion. It’s light and instantly makes skin feel smooth. The scent is overwhelmingly aftershave-ish, but it fades quickly and does a great job masking the smell of its SPF 15. After using it about a week, I’ve noticed my skin is less prone to pimples or blotchiness (although that could be due to a marked reduction in my stress level in the last week). At $6.50 for 1.7 oz I’m definetly going to look to this cream when I want a moisturizer with SPF, but I think I’m going to keep looking for the perfect day to day lotion. If you hate the smell of SPF, but aren’t willing to forgo it, this lotion is definetly worth a try. The smell fades quickly enough that no one’s going to ask you why you’re wearing cologne, and it is the best moisturizer I’ve ever seen at minimizing the sunscreen smell.

Twins: NYC M(AC)arbleyes

I wandered into a CVS today while waiting for my bus, and noticed the N.Y.C. Marbleyes (marble…eyes…marbleize. get it?) shadows. Part of the new Metro Metals collection, these shadows instantly caught my eye as attempted dupes of MAC’s Mineralize shadows. Also, the face powders called Chroma Face Glow, draw obvious parallels to MAC’s Mineralize Skinfinish. I haven’t picked them up because, well, I have a confession. Cardinal sin though it may be, I don’t like MAC, like, at all. The die-hard MAC cult seems to revolve around creating complicated eye looks that use multiple colors simutaneously. The way I’ve seen the products used just never really peaked my interest…although Style Black almost made me a convert. Also, it stresses me out having to buy from salespeople!

While I’m not a fan, I know the beauty-obsession feeling so I had to give a heads up to MAC lovers about this budget concious option. And maybe someone can clue me in to the benefits of shadows with swirled colors. Why not just have a uniformly colored shadow? What difference does it make?