Good morning, ladies. It’s Wednesday, yea! We’re at the foot of the hump, working our way up to the crest.

To help us get over the hump day hump, Korres is offering MBB readers 30% off purchases with promo code MAKEUPBEAUTY entered at checkout (valid through Sept. 15).

Why Korres?

The Face Primer and Lip Butters are awesome

If you’re new to Korres, consider trying their Silicone-Free Face Primer (here’s my review from earlier this summer) or Lip Butters.

I have two of the seven Lip Butters — Jasmine (a light pink) and Plum (a bright berry). They add just a hint of color while moisturizing the lips and don’t have any funky flavor or scent to get in the way. The 30% off discount lowers the price of each one $9 to $7.30 — that’s a good price-quality ratio.

Plum

Plum

Jasmine

Jasmine

Continue Reading…

Hola, my little isla bonitas. Ever since news broke on Twitter a few weeks ago of Sephora’s intention to carry Illamasqua cosmetics at select stores nationwide, I’ve been trying to confirm the list of *exact* stores.

Here’s the list!

Of note — a contact at Illamasqua informed me of a change to the news as it was originally reported. The line will now be carried in 25 (not 27) U.S. Sephora stores, with the rollout taking place from mid-September through mid-October.

California

• Fashion Valley, San Diego
• Hollywood and Highland, Hollywood
• Manhattan Village, Manhattan Beach
• Powell Street, San Francisco
• Santa Monica, Santa Monica
• South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa

District of Columbia

• Georgetown, Washington D.C.

Florida

• Boca Town Center, Boca Raton
• Dadeland, Miami
• Florida Mall, Orlando
• South Beach, Miami

Georgia

• Lenox Square, Atlanta

Hawaii

• Ala Moana, Honolulu

Continue Reading…

Each morning at around 11 o’clock my time (Pacific Standard), an email with my latest posts goes out to Makeup and Beauty Blog subscribers.

If you aren’t already subscribed, the daily emails can be a nice way to unwind over your lunch break. I try to keep things interesting, alternating makeup and beauty news with giveaways, product reviews, photo posts, tutorials and tips. I’ll never share your address with anyone for anything. You’ll get just one email per day, delivered fresh and hot out the kitchen (not really, but you know what I mean).

Subscribe to Makeup and Beauty Blog
Email:

Thank you for visiting, and I hope we get to chat in the comments soon.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. If you’re completely swamped with email, you can also subscribe by RSS feed or follow me on twitter or facebook.

Before I signed up last week, I thought Twitter was just another glorified chat program, another time-wasting instant messenger filled with people tweeting their bathroom breaks and eating habits.

Truth be told, there is some of that on Twitter (and I do it too)…

But there are also tweets like these (from a search for “eyeshadow tips”):

And these (from my unfiltered stream today)…

It’s easy to find and follow the conversations of people who share your hobbies and interests, just as it’s easy to unfollow people who don’t. Follow only as many people as you want to (as many as you can handle), or download a free program like Tweetdeck, which adds the ability to group conversations and filter tweets by topic.

I’m still new to Twitter and figuring out the ropes, but I think I can already tell why it grew 1,928% over the past year.

It’s fresh and relevant, attracting people of all interests and walks of life. News spreads virally on Twitter faster than anywhere else, even TV! Professionals use it to share details on their latest products and services, and businesses use it to keep consumers up to date. It’s also widely used to share discounts, coupons and to get feedback from people in a flash.

One week in, and I’m already hooked!

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Follow me on Twitter at karenmbb.:)

Imagine asking, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” and having the mirror actually answer. Someday soon it may — if the mirror contains computer chips programmed to run new software developed by Canadian university undergraduate student Joshua Chauvin.

Chauvin and fellow Canadian researches have found that a computer can be trained to rate human facial attractiveness the same way that people do.

To test their creation, the researchers asked a group of people to rate the attractiveness of other people in images, and then asked the computer to follow suit. Eighty-five percent of the time the computer’s ratings fell within one point of the human rating.

According to Chauvin…

“So what (the neural network is) doing is coming up with its own rating for those images based on some sort of understanding of what it thinks the population finds as attractive.”

source: CTV.ca

The technology isn’t ready to start replacing beauty pageant judges yet, but who knows? To his credit, Chauvin sees the potential for more practical uses for it, like one day using the software to corroborate a doctor’s diagnoses by identifying certain facial characteristics of some diseases.

Perhaps less altruistically, he also sees the software being used by marketing and advertising companies to assess how their target audience may respond to the models hired for different ad campaigns.

This young researcher’s name (Chauvin) sounded French to me, so I pulled up Yahoo! Babel Fish to check the translation.

What are the odds?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen