Makeup

How Often Do You Wear Makeup on Places Other Than Your Face (Arms, Legs or Other Parts of Your Body)?

June 11th, 2019 by Karen 19 Comments

At the beach last weekend I saw all these people wearing swimsuits and showing off skin, and that got me thinking about wearing makeup on places other than your face.

I know celebs often wear makeup on their arms, legs, necks, backs and even feet (!) for red carpet events, but how often do us mere mortals wear body makeup?

Do you ever wear foundation on your legs or limbs to the beach or pool? Or do you wear body makeup on a daily basis, like, for covering a tattoo for work?

I’m curious to know if it’s more common then I think it is, since body makeup is a rare thing for me. I’ve only worn it once or twice for Halloween, which is what’s going on in this picture from a few years ago. I dressed up as a fall wood fairy, so I buffed a cream bronzer on my arms, neck and hands to make it seem like I’d been roaming around the dirt in the forest.

Was it successful? Dunno. I could’ve been dirtier, LOL! It was fun to experiment, though.

Sometimes, if I’m taking pics for MBB and I’m wearing an off-the-shoulder top or if my hair is up, I’ll wear foundation and/or bronzer on my neck, chest and ears to even everything out so my skin appears consistent on camera from the chest on up, but ya know… It’s not something I’d bother with if I was just chillin’ on a Tuesday.

How often do you do wear body makeup?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Meghan Markle Makeup Moments

June 4th, 2019 by Karen 24 Comments

Hiya, ya cutie patootie with a big ol’ booty!

I sure do love the scent of clean makeup brushes. They remind me of burying my nose in a gloriously fluffy cat tum… I’ve only mentioned this a million times, but I’ve been lackadaisical about brush washing lately (I literally cannot remember the last time I deep cleaned them), and I’ve only been getting by because 1) I haven’t been wearing much makeup, and 2) when I have been wearing makeup during the day-to-day, I’ve been using products that I can apply with my fingers.

On the one hand, ewww, gross brushes; on the other, I’ve discovered some neat things that only take a minute or two to use (more on my latest finds in a second).

Anywho…I finally parked myself in front of the sink and washed my brushes, and now they smell wonderful! Also, for the first time in a while, I feel inspired to try some different looks with those bristles in the near future.

I wish I could say that I was motivated to clean my brushes by an immediate and sudden need to Marie Kondo the sh*t out of my situation, but nah… The driving force was the pimple on my chin! It’s one of those pimples that feels worse than it looks (it’s throbbing just under the surface of my skin as I type this), and to discourage myself from messing with it, I’m going to cover it with makeup; otherwise, I’ll just keep futzing with it, because as much as I hate to admit this…I’m a pimple picker.

I anticipate doing some concealing in the next few days, so it was time to finally clean those damn brushes.

It just goes to show ya — sometimes what you REALLY need is a painful pimple to light a fire under your @ss!

lumene invisible illumination — Lumene makeup at Tar-ghay

I’ve been getting by with easy makeup over the past month or so, and this has lead me to some cool things, like this sheer liquid foundation, liquid blush, liquid bronzer and liquid highlighter by Lumene (all of which you can find at Target).

You know how Perricone has their line of no-makeup makeup with the liquid foundation serum, blush and highlighter? Lumene has a similar sheer coverage, fluid consistency, but it’s a little more affordable ($25 for the Lumene foundation versus $60 for Perricone).

If you’re in the midst of a major Meghan Markle moment, then you’ll appreciate how everything is almost undetectable. The only thing that’s kinda obvious is the highlighter, but I think that’s mostly because the pearl isn’t as fine as something like MAC Strobe Cream — definitely made for the minimalist who prefers a sheer, sort of “is she or isn’t she wearing makeup?” type of coverage, and loves the simplicity of putting on makeup with fingers.
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Lady Unicorn

May 31st, 2019 by Karen 21 Comments

GIRL. I haven’t worn big lashes in how long? But it’s just like riding a bike!

I’m also wearing a lot of glitter in this lady unicorn look, I know. 🦄

I was inspired by unicorns because my daughter is obsessed with them at the moment, and, let’s face it, so am I.

Oh, and body glitter. I’m wearing it too because WHY NOT? FYI, body glitter has come a loooooong way since I wore it back in the day. This one from Urban Decay comes in a tube, and you kinda just put it anywhere — on your face, in your hair, on your arms, on your neck, your legs.

And seriously, it does not come off! My goodness, I remember the old stuff lasting about 2.5 seconds in my clubbing days, so props to the sparkly scientists who finally discovered a way to get glitter to stick to yo’ body.

Eyes: Urban Decay After Dark Palette, Urban Decay 24/7 Pencils (Roxy, Electric Empire), MAC 75 Lashes, MAC Graphblack liner, MAC Princess Jasmine Palette (from the Aladdin collection), Urban Decay Glitter Liner in Disco

Face: MAC Studio Fix in NC42 mixed with Pinklite Strobe Cream, NARS Summer Lights palette (bronzer and highlighter), Urban decay Heavy Metal Glitter Gel in Saturday Stardust

Lips: MAC Honey Love Lipstick, Hourglass Prose Lip Gloss

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MAC Aladdin Collection Swatches

May 28th, 2019 by Karen 14 Comments

Even though I’ve had very little real-life experience with magic lamps, I do know this much: Your wish, no matter what it is, will always end up a little wonky.

OK, usually a lot wonky.

HELLA WONKS, if you will.

Like, if you wish for a million dollars, you’ll get a million dollars…but it’ll be in shredded $5 bills that have been stuffed into random prickly cactus plants spread out across the Mojave Desert.

Those genies, man. They’re tricky.

I may not be a genie, but if you wish to see swatches of the new MAC Alladin collection on NC42 skin, I can make that come true, no strings attached!

Below are swatches of the entire collection — the first three are overview swatch pics, and closeups with the product names come after.

FYI, the eye quad and black liner are sold out (but the black liner is just a re-promote of Technakohl in Graphblack, which you can still get in the permanent collection in the regular packaging), but everything else is still available.

Overview swatch pics

mac aladdin lipsticks — The Lipsticks ($20 each)

mac aladdin lipglass — The Lipglasses ($19 each)

mac aladdin princess jasmine — Eye Shadow X 9: Princess Jasmine ($35), Technakohl Liner in Graphblack ($20) and Pigment in Rose ($24)

mac aladdin powder blush — Powder Blushes ($35 each) and Crystal Glaze Gloss ($24)

Detailed swatches

mac aladdin friend like me princess incognito — Lipstick in Friend Like Me and Princess Incognito

mac aladdin rajah whole new world — Lipsticks in Rajah and Whole New World

mac aladdin jewels on jewels diamond in the rough — Lipglass in Jewels on Jewels and Diamond in the Rough

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Skinny Mini

May 23rd, 2019 by Karen 31 Comments

yellow flowers bouquet — For you, my dear.

A bouquet of fresh picked wildflowers for you, my friend, courtesy of the “floral artisans” at the local playground.

Translation: Connor and the other little girl she was playing with ran up and down every hill plucking every yellow flower in sight when we were at the playground the other day, and when I was handed the final bouquet, my first thought was, “Oh, this is so pretty. I wonder how many dogs have pee’d on these flowers.” 😂

Got a few things on my mind today that I wanted to chat with you about, including expanding my makeup knowledge with a couple of new books, and a snazzy styling tool that will forever change the way you see flat irons.

Also, there’s a healthy, yummy, easy chicken recipe at the end that I think everyone — even the pickiest eaters — will love. It’s so good that if Tabs were around, I’m sure he’d try to steal the food off my plate.

Y.U.M.

As I know you know, this last month I was reminded that life is blisteringly (and unfairly) short. To put it mildly, this has lit a fire 🔥 under my @ss, and now I want to learn as much as I can about anything and everything — all of my interests. One of those interests, of course, is makeup.

I mean, I do know a thing or two about it already, but there’s a whole wide world of techniques and history and beauty vocabulary that I’ve yet to discover.

Kevin James Bennett, MUA and outspoken dude

This month I’ve been reading a couple of books that were recommend by makeup artist Kevin James Bennett. He’s an Emmy award-winning MUA and a somewhat controversial presence on social media because he goes for the jugular when it comes to calling out what he sees is wrong about current beauty influencer culture.

makeup artist handbook — Reading is fundamental.

While I don’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with that aspect of his content (again, life is short), I love the technical information he provides on his Instagram and his blog.

He wrote a list of his most-used makeup reference books, and I picked up two of them from Amazon: Color: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Color by Betty Edwards, and The Makeup Artist Handbook by Gretchen Davis and Mindy Hall.

I’ve only been able to skim a few chapters in Color so far, but they were fascinating! The book dives deeply into the art and science of color mixing and explores the vocabulary and theory behind it.

I want to be able to understand the “why” behind which colors “go” best with which colors in makeup, photography and life in general.

color betty edwards — A little obsessed with this cover

The other book, The Makeup Artist Handbook, is like a succinct manual on everything you’d ever need to know and own to do makeup on a production set. It’s written for professionals and working artists in the industry and covers a wide array of things I’ll probably never need to do (like creating a beard! FROM SCRATCH!), but they’re still fun to know.

I think from a casual makeup lover’s standpoint, the chapters on beauty makeup and natural makeup for photography and film are the most useful and helpful, so I can’t wait to dive into that.

Mini flat irons are a thing

Check out this funky little piece of equipment I picked up recently at Ulta. It’s a mini flat iron!

LOOK HOW THIN THE PLATES ARE! They’re so skinny.

beadhead pixie on point — Skinnier than your skinniest pair of skinny jeans (ya know, the ones that make you feel like a sausage in a casing)

I had no idea that mini flat irons were even a thing until I recently looked for different ways to smooth the crazy rogue baby hairs around my hairline (because I know that plucking them isn’t a long-term solution).

They’re typically used to tame very short hairstyles like pixie cuts because the ultra-thinness of the plates lets you get closer to the scalp than a traditional flat iron.

I used it for the first time yesterday, and yeah — you can indeed get close to your roots.

Like, uncomfortably close.

On the one hand, awesome. On the other, I’m deathly afraid I’m going to accidentally burn myself.

It helped to smooth down my baby hairs, though, so that’s a plus. I’ll have to do it a few more times to get into a flow… (If you see me rocking a Disney Princess Band-Aid across my forehead in the next few days, you’ll know what happened.)
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