Makeup

What’s the Most Unlikely Thing in Your Makeup Bag?

September 17th, 2019 by Karen 1 Comment

Lemme guess… Is it a toothbrush? (They do come in handy for taming flyaways.)

Or a business card? (So convenient for stenciling out crispy cat eye flicks!)

For me, it’s a tossup between the bottle of Essie Gel Couture Top Coat and a small tin of Hollywood Fashion Tape!

I keep the top coat around because I’ve become the person who gets wherever she needs to go a half an hour early these days (to make a long story short, I feel much less anxious, but it goes totally against my nature, LOL!), so I often find myself with time to spare waiting in the car. So, while I’m there, I’ll swipe a little of the top coat at and under the tips of my nails to delay chipping.

Oh, and the Hollywood Fashion Tape is a double-sided tape you can stick on your body or your clothes, like on bra straps or loose hems, to keep things in place.

Can’t even BEGIN to tell you how many times it’s prevented a fashion faux pas!

How about you? What’s the most unlikely thing in your makeup bag?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

The New Urban Decay Loose Powder Has a Brush With Convenience, What to Eat With Your Veggies, and Distracted Waxing

September 17th, 2019 by Karen 6 Comments

urban decay ultimate brush off — A new way to get loose with Urban Decay

Do you ever skip loose powder because you don’t want to lug around an extra brush for touch-ups?

If so, I feel you… Also, Urban Decay’s new $34 Ultimate Brush Off Setting Powder might be of interest.

Bring your brush with ya

It comes with a synthetic flat-top kabuki brush attached to the lid, which makes it easy to dust a little on whenever and wherever you want.

It’s a demi-matte loose powder to set your makeup, blur pores and absorb oil and shine, and it’s available now at UD counters and online in five cruelty-free shades — Universal Translucent, Fair, Medium, Deep and Dark.

Speaking of new things… Well, new to me and my tummy!

Bolthouse Salsa Ranch Dressing is MAGIC. I picked it up at Target, and now I’m addicted.

bolthouse farm salsa ranch — A yummy, healthy snack

It’s funny to me that this is named “Salsa Ranch” because it isn’t spicy. It tastes like a blend of the best thousand island and ranch — a little tangy, a little sweet, and VERY tasty!

I like the Bolthouse dressings because they’re made from yogurt, and are consequently less calorically dense than most creamy dressings, so consequently I eat TONS of it, which I do with whatever vegetable I’m crushing on at any given moment. (It’s delish with snap peas!)

If you could use some extra motivation to eat your veggies, then you need what Connor calls “the pink ranch dressing” in your life.

OK, so I had a major upper-lip wax fail…

Please note that waxing your ‘stach while plumbers work on an underground water leak in your front yard is inadvisable. There’s a significant chance you’ll have low-grade anxiety because you don’t know if the plumbers will have to break open the concrete to access the leaky pipe, thereby causing the budget to skyrocket, and you could also end up with a sinkhole underneath your garage…
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Sip, Stay and Play at the New Beauty Heroes Flagship Store in Novato, California

September 13th, 2019 by Karen 13 Comments

beauty heroes orange wall — You beautiful hero. 🥰

New York, Paris, London…NOVATO!

OK, the little hamlet of Novato in northern Marin County isn’t renowned for being a bustling beauty hub, but with the opening of the new Beauty Heroes flagship store, beauty-loving visitors to Wine Country have a new reason to take a quick detour.

beauty heroes novato flagship store — Very charming

A passion for ingredients

Beauty Heroes, a new brick-and-mortar luxury beauty store located downtown in the small but vivacious town of Novato — which happens to be where I’ve lived for the last 10 years! — is about 45 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge. They carry a bevvy of clean hair, skin and makeup products.

When Beauty Heroes began five years ago, they started as a subscription service and an online store, selling a pared-down selection of clean makeup, skin and hair products, all of which founder Jeannie Jarnot meticulously combed through ingredient and source lists to find.

And now, with their new flagship store, you can experience Beauty Heroes in person.

They remind me of San Francisco’s Credo Beauty, but with a very focused and specific approach, which they call their Beauty Product Ingredient Standard, to vetting the ingredients in the products they sell.

From beauty-heroes.com:

We are committed to our Beauty Product Ingredient Standard and review each product ingredient list in detail to determine that each product is:

Free from ingredients banned in United States (a mere 11 individual chemicals)

Free from ingredients banned in the European Union (an admirable 1,328 chemicals)

Free from ingredients banned in Canada* (over 500 chemicals)

Free from ingredients banned in Japan

Free from ingredients that have gone through a process of ethoxylation (and has not been vacuum stripped and tested) which would put them at risk for contamination with 1,4 Dioxane, a known carcinogen. This includes phenoxyethanol and polyethylene glycols (listed as PEG’s for short on ingredient lists

Free from Parabens. Since they aren’t banned for use in cosmetics the U.S., EU, Canada or Japan, parabens are still commonly used as an inexpensive preservative system. While preservatives are important for some products, there are much safer, better researched effective preservative systems.

Free from Synthetic Fragrances. In order to avoid the fragrance loophole, we screen each product ingredient list for fragrance listed as an ingredient without disclosing the individual components.

Free from any of the 20 most common and most harmful ingredients in cosmetics listed on our Villain Ingredient List.

Free from ingredients that were tested on animals. In general, natural beauty brands don’t use ingredients you would ever consider testing on animals. But to be sure, each brand we work with ensures us that their not only have their products never tested, but the ingredients they source have never been subject to animal testing, either.

Free from ingredients that have been genetically modified. We ask each brand to ensures us that the ingredients that they source are free from GMO’s

But Beauty Heroes isn’t just about what you put on your face and body. They also take their commitment to sustainable living a step further by offering other non-beauty products, like glass straws and clothing manufactured using sustainable processes, to help you live a cleaner, zero-waste lifestyle.

Stay, sip, play

Jeannie, the founder of Beauty Heroes, says that “Our store is really designed to be a play space,” and it includes a beauty lounge area where you can experience their “beauty flights,” a group of featured products you can try (like a wine flight). As you explore, you can also sip on botanical teas and infusions!

Ahhh…

beauty heroes beauty flights — Enjoying some tea and a beauty flight.

beauty heroes flight of heroes — One of the beauty flights

Soon, the store will also be offering a treatment suite for facials, featuring the products they sell.

beauty heroes spa services — The treatment menu

beauty heroes upstairs treatment room — The upstairs treatment room. Hello, facials!

If you’re a blogger or a content creator, there’s a free “creator space” in the store, too, where you can film and shoot content!

Very cool.

Oh, and soon, a Blue Barn restaurant — otherwise known as “The Valhalla of Salad!” — will be opening next door, so, after you get your beauty fix, you can get your salad fix, too (no guarantees you’ll see Lars from Metallica, though).

I’m excited to see brands I’m familiar with, like Osmia, Axiology and Antonym, along with lines I’ve been wanting to try, like Josh Rosebrook and Ere Perez. I’m always down for an online shopping sesh, but there’s just something about being able to see, touch and smell things in person, especially with makeup, you know?

beauty heroes honua — For the local (Hawaiian) girls…

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A Laura Mercier Moment…

September 10th, 2019 by Karen 18 Comments

laura mercier september 2019 — Dearest Laura…you’re rockin’ my world at the moment.

I’m going to assume that you are, or have been, a makeup junkie, and so therefore you have probably had one (or more) moments like I did the other night at back-to-school night, when your makeup universe collides in such a way that you’re, like, “WHOA!”

I can’t be the only one. I just can’t.

I was just sitting there in Connor’s preschool classroom wearing some Laura Mercier products when my nose honed in on someone’s perfume (I have a bloodhound’s sense of smell). It was familiar, but I couldn’t place it, and the source of that scent — swear to gosh — knocked around in my head for days, like a song stuck in my head.

Then, half asleep one night in bed, it hit me! It was Laura Mercier Eau de Lune, which I wore every day for three years straight in the early aughts.

Dang, dawg, I’ve been wearing Laura Mercier makeup off and on for almost 20 years! In fact, I can recall when it was a relatively new line. I remember going to a counter for the first time (must have been about 1997) and being intrigued by the makeup primer, which was very forward-thinking at the time. And their Tinted Moisturizer, Secret Brightening Powder, Eye Basics in Wheat and Stormy Grey eyeliner have all been in my everyday makeup bag rotation at different times for years.

Like I was saying…I just happened to be wearing a few pieces of LM makeup the other night, and it reminded me why I like wearing Laura Mercier makeup so much. Her style is colorful, but not too crazy, and has elegantly subtle touches of pizzazz, like a little glitter here, a demi-matte finish there… It’s also easy to amplify or dial down.

A few quick thoughts on what I’ve been wearing lately…

Foundation Primer ($38)

There are a few different versions of this (Oil-Free, Dry SKin, etc.), and this one is the basic Foundation Primer. It’s a colorless, lightweight primer in a moisturizing gel that instantly sinks into skin (rather than sitting on top). If you like primers that add radiance with barely-there pearl finish (like MAC’s Natural Radiance), you’ll like this, too. It’s an oldie but goodie.

Translucent Loose Setting Powder ($39)

Light as air and completely undetectable, this has a soft matte finish that looks natural to the Nth degree!

laura mercier september 2019 swatches — Lovies by Laura M.!

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The Best Cleansing Oil Is 50% Off Tomorrow on Ulta.com

September 9th, 2019 by Karen 10 Comments

You, guys! Note to self: The best makeup removing cleansing oil — DHC Deep Cleansing Oil; I’ve been using it for years! — is on sale for 50% off tomorrow at Ulta.

I’M VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS.

Ulta is in the midst of their “21 Days of Beauty” sale event, and it’s the only sale I set alerts for this month in Google Calendar.

I can’t even count how many DHC bottles I’ve gone through, and it’s an all-the-way-down-to-the-last-drop thing. Very rich, and very moisturizing, DHC Deep Cleansing Oil is designed for all skin types, but it’s a TREASURE for my dry skinned peeps.

The main ingredient is olive oil…

Yup, that’s right: olive oil. And it feels like a really expensive olive oil, too.

It also smells a little like olive oil, but I like it. (Don’t worry; your face won’t smell like salad dressing.)

This stuff gently, but very effectively, melts makeup — including waterproof mascara, long-wearing liner and liquid lipstick. Basically, if something is stuck to your face in any capacity and you massage Deep Cleansing Oil on it, whatever it is will slip away.

It does this without drying out my cheeks, making my chin break out, or clouding up my eyes (my pet peeve!). I use one pump, which I apply directly to my face while it’s dry, and then massage away. Then I rinse with water and followup with a second cleanser (usually a foam or a cream), because I’m all about that double cleanse life.

A big 6.7-oz. bottle of Deep Cleansing Oil, which comes with a pump and lasts me a few months, is usually $28, but with the half-off sale tomorrow you can snag one for just $14.

Unfortunately, this is an online-only sale, so you won’t be able to stroll into Ulta to pick it up… Maybe this is a good thing, though, because that way you won’t be tempted to grab anything else? Glass half full, people.

Ask Siri to remind you, write it on a Post-it, do what you need to do, ’cause tomorrow is the day!

My homies are at HomeGoods

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