Let's Talk Mascara

I don't talk about makeup a lot and it's very rare that I deviate from what I like. Mascara is one of them.

For a long time, any drugstore brand of mascara would do. Then I discovered Too Faced Better Than Sex mascara at Sephora and I was hooked. No other mascara made my lashes look anywhere near as good. They looked fuller and longer. Mind you, I had never spent so much cash on a tube of mascara and I don't think I will ever quite get used to the almost $30 for a mascara. This is coming from someone who has spent tons of cash on Amouage perfumes.

On Sunday, I had a Mannheim Steamroller concert to attend too. I couldn't for the life of me find a tube but managed to find a mini tube of the Better Than Sex waterproof mascara. I've never tried any kind of waterproof mascara in my life and it was going to be the first time ever using it. The mascara did what I expected it to do but holy shit, the mascara didn't want to come off my lashes until today. I did notice that when I was putting on the mascara, that it had a bit of a funny smell to it. The funny smell wasn't horrible or stick around, it just was a little odd to me.

I was having a little trouble with picking out a perfume for Sunday's concert. The concert was more of a classical type of Christmas music type of deal and I wasn't going to bust out any of my heavy perfumes or go spraying some on. I was looking for something more subdued and more of what people are more used to smelling. I could have dabbed on Jicky or Shalimar or I would have went with no 5 or no 19. In the end, I went with the no 22 extrait. The more I thought about things, Shalimar extrait probably wasn't the greatest idea any more than me dabbing on Sarrasins. I didn't want to go scaring the locals and it wasn't a rock concert. When I went to the Rammstein concert, I remember wearing Sarrasins and when I went to see Santana, I wore Coromandel. It's just a constant game of what is appropriate in any given situation. There are some people that just don't give a shit and will wear a cloud of Obsession to a funeral (never experienced it but heard some stories). When I am at home or have a day off and not going out or will be out for a couple hours, I'll wear what I want.

Clearing Out the Old

I spent a little bit of time on Sunday going through and getting rid of my make up and finished the job today. You have no idea on how much I threw out. It was tons of eye shadows and lots of scary looking lip gloss. I am in a serious de-cluttering mode. I just want to either use things up or just throw them out.

When I was going through everything, I didn't quite realize how many Kat von D eye shadow palettes that I had. What in the world was I thinking? Getting those palettes full of shimmer and phenomenally strong colors. Medium or dark purple? I don't have wicked mad makeup skills to work with anything outside of neutrals that are pretty close to my skin tone. I'm pretty basic with eye shadow and the two palettes that I use are the original Urban Decay Naked palettes., especially the mini palettes.

Yes, I threw out a bunch of lip gloss too. Just like all of the eye shadow that I threw out, the lip glosses were pretty ancient as well. Like 7 years old or older and were really looking sketchy. And I realized that lip gloss isn't my thing anymore but lipstick. But what has amazed me was the amount of lipstick that I have bought in the past 6 months and I hung on to those. I am seriously going to have to start wearing lipstick again.

Since I have seemed to have doubled down on the de-cluttering, I've doubled down on trying to use up one bottle of Chanel no 5 edt and one bottle of no 5 edp.  My collection of no 5 is truly horrifying and just want to slim that down a little bit. But I seem to be talking out my butt a little bit when I am waiting for the Sephora sale to start in a little over a week. My mother asked me to add a lipstick that she wants to my back and I have a cheap brush set and another travel spray added to my cart. But I want to start using up my make up. Now if I could really quit getting so many candles, I'd be in better shape.
 

The Things We Carry

I was cleaning out my purse today and getting some stuff ready for an appointment for tomorrow. I carry a smaller purse in hopes that I wouldn't accumulate so much in my purse. But I still accumulate stuff in my purse but my purse fills up faster, making organizing a must every 2 weeks.

It was amazing what I found in my purse. A whole bunch of lip balms, lipsticks and hard candy along with hand lotion and my wallet but not one tiny decant of perfume. I couldn't help but think, how did I accumulate so many lipsticks and lip balms in my purse? Naturally, I had to think about what I really needed to carry in my purse besides my cellphone and wallet. I chose one lip balm, the tube of mascara and one lipstick.The hand lotion was a given but I didn't need a million lip balms and lipsticks in my purse. I picked out two small decants for the road tomorrow, Miss Dior Original and Amouage Beloved for women. I won't be wearing perfume to my appointment tomorrow, I need to focus on other things, not my perfume. When my appointment is finished, I can spray all I want.

I have never been a makeup fiend and don't have a ton of it. I figure that all I really need for my makeup is mascara, lip balm and a lipstick or lip gloss. I leave the eyeshadow and other make up things at home. I don't need an eyeshadow pallet nor do I need a primer or eyeliner. I just don't have the space for that in my purse. If I need to put on makeup in a hurry, the mascara and lipstick will do. I normally carry perfume in my purse about 97% of the time but this recent cleaning didn't turn up and decants in my purse. I did put a few but not many hard candies in my purse.

2018 in Review

It hasn't been a wild ride in 2018 but 2018 has passed and it's been a little strange. Last year, it was dealing with my dad's cancer and my mom getting pneumonia. In April, I had lost my beloved Labrador Retriever, Charlie, to brain cancer and gained another Lab, Sydney.

But perfume wise, it seemed to be a year of restraint. I didn't go out and buy a whole lot in the way of full bottles of perfume. For some reason, nothing either excited me a whole lot or if I did enjoy it enough for a full bottle, it was either out of my price range or it was a limited edition that was out of stock. I did manage to nab a few good deals and I am pretty happy with that. And the fact that I didn't end up with buying too much.

During the year, I had actually managed to finish 2 bottles of perfume. In years past, I had said that I would make an effort to finish bottles of perfume but never did. I was so excited when I actually did finish a bottle of vintage BaV and vintage Miss Dior. I am hoping that I can finish a bottle or two of Chanel no 5.

My year has also been marked with nail polish and eye shadow. I could never resist the e-mails that Ulta would send. Buy two, get one free OPI nail polish, Urban Decay Naked pallet for $27 or whatever was on sale. I'm hoping at the rate I am going, that I can show some restraint with the makeup and nail polish.

Happy 2019, everyone!

Beauty Sponges

A couple months ago, I had done a Sephora run (or was it Ulta?) and had thrown a beauty sponge in my shopping cart. Once in a while, I do read makeup blogs and kept seeing beauty sponges mentioned in them. So yes, I had to get one and try it out. I had chosen one that was about $5 for a reason. Reason being is that I have never used a beauty sponge before and I wasn't willing to go and spend a million dollars one one if I didn't like it or it turned out to be an epic disaster.

Yesterday, I had actually decided to give it a shot with foundation. I've never really worn a lot of foundation and with some sun damage and being 36, it's time that I should start wearing some. After watching a video, I thought that it was as easy as I had thought. I had a fairly easy time blending foundation and my foundation job looked pretty good. Which did remind me to actually go physically go into Sephora or Ulta and get matched for a foundation. It's been years since I had bought a foundation and I think that the foundation stick isn't good anymore and maybe doesn't really match my skin so much anymore.

**The brand of beauty sponge was Japonesque.

The Makeup Runs

The debate seems to rage on about who is better, Sephora or Ulta? I find that it really depends on what you want and the price point. I find Ulta to be better in terms of product and the rewards are a little bit better. Ulta seems to be better with sales and coupons and there are more stores around. So Ulta gets more of my business than Sephora.

It takes me quite a while for me to accumulate any worthwhile points with Sephora but what I like is the notification of a "birthday gift". I think that is what I like the most about Sephora. Sure, I am given only two options and they are sample sized but they can serve a purpose. But when that birthday e-mail hit my inbox, it was off to the races to fill up on a couple things.

Sometimes those makeup runs can be a fun thing. Well, in a lot of ways, makeup ends up being cheaper for me than perfume. My makeup routine is pretty basic and I love most of Urban Decay's Naked collection and tend to favor the smaller Naked pallets. I'm not big on colorful eye shadow nor am I a fan of shimmery or glitter on my eyes. But I am still pissed about Kat von D's Hellbent (color) being discontinued and I am looking at what is comparable to that shade of red. But it was fun to mostly browse Sephora to see what was available but mostly saw the same old same old and I was reminded why I keep my beauty routine fairly basic. I'd rather spend time picking out what perfume I am wearing for the day instead of spending at least a half an hour on applying purple eye shadow with questionable results.

Kat Von D Make-up Review

Yesterday, started off to be a pretty good day for me. I managed to finish off that vintage Mitsouko EDT that only had one or two small squirts left and when that faded, I finished off another small decant of Sarrasins. Then, I checked my email and discovered that waiting in my inbox was overflowing with perfume deals. So I just added more to my collection. And it looks like that I will be able to order Sarrasins through the Serge Lutens website. Right now, I am verifying this. For the past few years, I have been drooling over Sarrasins and a couple other bell jars. The price tag at Barney's had me raise an eyebrow and on the Serge Lutens website, I have to raise an eyebrow. For 75ml, it's about $300 and I am not exactly thrilled in wanting to pay that much and even 75ml of Mitsouko EDP doesn't even cost that much! I didn't decide to blog so much about that but about makeup.

After a few years of either not being able to afford makeup or having it fall of my radar, I have somewhat got back into the habit of wearing it again and forgot how long it could take to put it on. After receiving a gift card to Sephora, I had the opportunity of getting an eyeshadow palette from Kat Von D which I had been looking at. I did enjoy her lipstick in Hellbent. I actually bought two different palettes and have worn them for a little bit. Sinner and Beethoven were the two that I have been experimenting with and both palettes are very similar in colors. I did enjoy experimenting with the colors but did find them a little too glittery for my liking and the glittery part did catch me off guard even with the neutral colors. While I liked the set up mostly, I had a hard time with the fact that the eyeshadow itself was not compacted and seemed pretty loose compared to other brands of eyeshadow that I have used. What really took me by surprise is that in Sinner, there is no applicator brush to apply the eyeshadow, instead there was eyeliner instead of a brush and had to hunt one down. Thus far, after a lot of experimenting, I'm not exactly thrilled with the Kat Von D eye shadows even though I like the eye primer that I got.

Kat Von D Painted Love Lipstick

Poking around Sephora.com for a new lipstick, I came across Kat Von D's Painted Love lipstick. I ordered one of her lipsticks in Hellbent which is a blood red. I had a strong desire to explore red lipstick before because it has always scared me. Over the past two days, I have been testing it and I can honestly say that I find lip gloss easier to apply than this brand of lipstick. Kat Von D's lipstick is on the dry side compared to my other lipsticks. I do find that the Painted Love lipstick does have the tendency to stain my lips even if I do use lip balm under lipstick. I've never encountered this in a lipstick before. I do find that there is no sheen with the Hellbent but that doesn't bother me. I am undecided if I like this brand of lipstick but I think I am going to check out Kat Von D's lip gloss and see if those are any better.

Sampler scents

I was poking around Sephora.com these past couple days for no good reason and they have sampler sets of perfume. They just seem to have a lot of sampler sets of everything. I've noticed that it is not the niche area of perfume that is offering too many of these. It is mostly designers like Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, etc that are offering these. I find it cute, but leaves me wondering, what is going on with straight up free samples? It used to be that samples were given out freely. Now, the almighty dollar wins out. It seems like one must buy a certain dollar amount must be spent before you get any free samples or free shipping.

Sampler sets in perfume can be great if you are buying it for you. I don't find them to be great gifts for anyone. It makes one look lazy. How? It looks like one didn't want to put in the time, thought and effort into getting a gift.

Everywhere I look

Just about everywhere I look, I seem grown women and teenagers with layer upon layer of makeup and glitter. I don't wear a lot of makeup myself and it makes me raise an eyebrow. I normally just wear mascara and lip gloss or lip stick depending on which I grab first thing in the morning. I only wear makeup to work and really nowhere else. Putting on those things take a couple minutes at most. If I am feeling ambitious, I will smudge on a little bit of eyeshadow but that's it. I don't bother with concealer or foundation unless I have a huge pimple. I view it as I am not here to impress anyone with my looks. To me, wearing mascara and lip gloss makes the statement of that I do give a crap on how I look but I am not going to spend a half an hour or more piling on more makeup. My main statement is perfume. But perfume does not replace regular bathing as some would like to think so. But I never understood why so many decide to wear tons of makeup and for what reason? Why have eyeshadow in every conceivable color?