Hair

Power Polish

May 24th, 2019 by Karen 20 Comments

orbeez spa — This is totally a thing. (Ooh! — the colorful little beads look like boba.)

Need some faux flowers for a crafts project? How about an oversized LED flamingo? If you need something craftsy or DIY, check out Michaels, the combination craft supply store/inter-dimensional portal to an alternate reality where times as we know it does not exist.

Be warned, though: 5 minutes in a Michaels is like 8 hours in the outside world. In fact, after 15 minutes in a Michaels store…you may never actually leave; however, this danger is offset by all the weird treasures, including this children’s foot spa…

What, exactly, is so taxing to the feet of little children that they need a Calgon moment? 😂

Heck, though, if I were 8, I’d probably want one too…

GO SCIENCE

After a little googling, it turns out that the “Orbeez” in the name, “Orbeez Foot Spa,” refers to the colorful beads, and they’re a thing kids play with these days (who knew?).

The actual chemistry behind them is pretty cool. The beads are made from a super absorbent polymer, and when you add water, they grow from 100-300 times their original size.

I bet they do help tired arches, but there’s absolutely no freakin’ way I’m allowing one of these things in my home, because any time tiny, round things get set free in this #toddlerlife, it’s like Pandora’s Box. There’s just no way to ever corral them back into one place again. My three-year-old will go on to finish high school, college, then astronaut training, and I will still be vacuuming Orbeez out of dusty corners. They will most certainly haunt me for my next five lifetimes, and when I come back as a silky, long-haired ragdoll kitty, I’ll be swatting the same damn beads off the couch!

Nail polish as a source of strength?

So, when Connor inevitably asks for a spa pedicure, I’m going to put her feet in a bucket of warm water, stick some flower petals and lemon wedges in it and call it day. And then I’m going to offer up my collection of nail polishes to choose from, which also now includes this gorgeous purple from Chanel.

chanel purple ray swatch day 1 — Two coats of Chanel Purple Ray just after I painted my nails. I’m also wearing Sally Hansen No More Stains Spray-On Base Coat and Essie Platinum Grade Finish Top Coat.

chanel purple ray swatch day 6 — And here it is after six days… Good wear time!

Purple Ray ($28) is equal parts tough, elegant and optimistic (which is basically what I strive for every day of my life, ha!). I mean, that’s not the official PR description, but I think it’s accurate.

For me, nail polish isn’t just nail polish. It’s the beauty equivalent of power posing (power polishing?). Listen, when my nails are done, I feel good, and everyone and everything in my path better watch out!

It’s all about the power pose…

Sure, nail polish is just frosting (what’s inside is the most important stuff), but if looking at pretty polish on your nails reminds you that you’re a bad-@ss, then do it! Say it all day, every day long.

Say it: “I am a bad-@ss.”

And yes, I really do get this worked up from two coats of Purple Ray nail polish!

Waxing philosophic

I’m going to do a fresh mani in just a few, but I gotta sort my hair situation out first. I’m down to the last few spritzes of my beloved Oribe spray wax, so please pause for a second while I shed a perfectly placed glittery tear.

*pause* 😪

oribe flash form finishing spray wax — Lurve this spray by Oribe

Have you jumped on the spray wax train yet? GIRL. Get yourself a ticket. Grab the next ride out! ’cause spray waxes are awesome. I’ve only used the Oribe one, but it’s sooooo good. It’s a flexible finishing product that you spray on your finished style to break up the uniformity of your hair and leave you with softly defined pieces. It also adds shine, smoothness, bounce and lift.
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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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Grays Gone Wild

May 21st, 2019 by Karen 14 Comments

r co bel air smoothing shampoo — Smoooove moves

It’s always funny to me to hear myself say this out loud: “Growing out your grays is hard.” Because it’s not like you’re running a marathon or anything. You’re literally just existing! But it really is difficult, and of the many challenges one endures when growing out their grays (and there are indeed many!), I think one of the hardest is adjusting to the new texture.

My grays have a completely different texture than the rest of my hair. They’re coarser, rougher, bumpier… LOL. I wish you could see this weird little hand wave move I just did with my left hand when I said “bumpier.”

Oh, Karen, you’re such a weirdo. 😂

As I was saying, I call my grays my “ramen noodle hairs” because the wiriest of the bunch look like a block of dry, crispy dehydrated noodles.

So…what’s up with that? According to Jay Kushner, Senior Stylist and Director of Stylist Education at Joseph Cozza Salon in San Francisco, “The texture change when trying to embrace your natural gray hair can be a bit of a challenge for most people…it manages differently. As we age, a reduction of melanin (the pigment which puts color in hair) and sebum (the moisturizing oil secreted from the scalp) can contribute to the hair becoming more dry, coarse and wiry.”

To help you tame your hair’s texture, Jay recommends using an oil-based shampoo, conditioner and mask, as they usually work well because they’re moisturizing, softening and smoothing, and he likes Iles Formula Shampoo ($35), Conditioner ($41) and Mask ($67).

And for styling, he suggests sticking to cremes and oils, “which will soften and calm the texture even more,” and recommends steering clear of mousses, gels and beach salt sprays because they tend to make dry texture even drier.

Of course, what you should use ultimately depends on your individual hair and hair texture. About gray hair, Maya Lowe Batki, the stylist who did my big chop the other week, says that “It can get curlier. It can get straighter. It can get finer. Everybody’s gray is different, but texture change is a common thing.”

Maya recommends experimenting with different moisturizing products, and generally, when you’re applying them to your hair, try not get too close to your scalp, because that can lead to your hair looking and feeling heavy and weighed down.

So, over the past couple of weeks, I’ve upped the moisture considerably by alternating between using a moisturizing hair oil with an uber-hydrating leave-in conditioner (this silicone-free one by Kerastase has been my jam lately because it’s hydrating but isn’t heavy or greasy), which I use on damp hair after I get out of the shower.
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The Big Chop

May 21st, 2019 by Karen 56 Comments

new haircut may 2019 — Choppity-chop-chop

You know how when you get a new haircut, it takes a while for it to “settle in”? (I make it sound like moving into a new neighborhood or starting a new job, hahaha.)

But you know how there’s usually that period right after a new cut when you and the new hair are getting to know each other better on your way to eventually figuring each other out?

Well, mine’s finally settled in, and I love it.

It feels so great having hair graze my shoulders again and not feel like it’s just in the way. It’s also really nice to have an actual style again, too. I finally feel like my hair isn’t in transition to something or somewhere in the between stages. It’s like, finally! — I’ve made it to point B.

The style is called a long bob, or a “lob” for short. There’s a little bit of layering, but not a whole lot, and that’s on purpose. I have a slight wave on the top layers, and I know from having many, many terrible haircuts that if there are too many layers when my hair is shoulder length or shorter, I end up with an unintentional mullet.

Side note: If you’re gonna rock a mullet, best be damn sure it’s intentional; otherwise, you’re in for a world of hurt. I’M JUST SAYING.

If you have wavy, textured or curly hair and you’re thinking about chopping off a significant amount, I think it helps to consider these few things…

1. Squirrel away 4-6 inspirational photos (not just one!)

First, before you do the deed, it helps to collect a few style inspo pics on your phone or torn from magazines.

I repeat: not just one. I think the sweet spot is between 4-6 pics, all on different people, and all with a similar vibe.

Why so specific, K-Dawg?

Because this way both you and the stylist can more easily identify what it is exactly about the style that you like.

I think it’s also key to remember that if you’re giving a stylist examples of someone else’s work, they’re going to interpret the haircut in their own way. Hair stylists are artists, after all, and each person will put their own stamp and special sauce on the cut.

These are the pics I brought to my appointment. They’re all by Sal Salcedo, a stylist in Southern California I found on Instagram.

2. Jot down everything you know (and want your stylist to know) about your hair

Unfortunately, this is a lesson I learned the hard way over the course of many terrible haircuts!

So…your stylist can’t read your mind.

SURPRISE!

And just because you give them a few pics doesn’t mean that’s what you’ll end up with. In my experience, the more information I give a stylist about my hair and how it behaves, the better off I’ll be in the end.

You can bring a Post-It, or type everything into the Notes app on your phone.

Here’s the list I took to my appointment…
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When Was the Last Time You Made a Spur-of-the-Moment Beauty Decision?

May 15th, 2019 by Karen 33 Comments

The time: last week.

The place: a local salon (but not my usual one).

I made a last-minute appointment, walked in, plopped down into the chair and asked the stylist to go to town. It was the most hair I’ve had cut in five years.

I’d actually been ruminating on doing something like this for a while, and I think that Tabs passing pushed me over the edge. (The whole “saying goodbye and moving into a different stage of life” thing.)

Also, I’d gotten to the point where I reached “mean piano teacher status,” and when you hit that level, it’s time to choppity-chop that hair.

I’ve basically been ignoring my hair for six or seven months. Honestly, I can’t even remember the last time I got a trim. I really couldn’t wear it down anymore because of how unruly it had become, and whenever I did try to “style it,” I’d just slick down the front and pull the rest into a tight ponytail or bun.

In my head, I was going for Vogue chic, but I think it made me look more severe and serious than I think I am…or at least want to be.

I’ll post a pic soon… I want to show you the hair, but I’m not quite there yet in terms of seeing myself in pics. For some reason, it’s my eyes. I still see a sad person staring back at me when I look at pics of myself.

Hard to explain.

I’ll try soon.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen