Fun with Too Faced

I dipped into THE BOX OF GOODIES again to find a lovely Too Faced palette. It's the Too Faced World Domination Tour All Access Backstage Beauty Collection box to be precise. I believe this little darling may be discontinued.

My inner 5 year old girl loves the fact that this also converts into a music box.

 

 

 But I digress. I decided to go with a purple and gold look. The gold in this set was a very mellow gold, and the purple a blue-violet that is definitely on the cooler side of the color spectrum. I also paired this with the blush included in the set.

  Ta daaa!

Tiny Little Hearts

Here is a fun makeup look I did for Saint Valentine. I had work, so I was able to be slightly festive, but couldn't go over the top.

What's on my face:
- Stila tinted mositurizer
-Maybelline liquid eyeliner
- From The Balm and the Beautiful palette: The Neighbor on lid (a mellow nude-gold), Bad Boy (a rich brown with red sparkle) on crease. This was one of the palette's from the Big Box O' Makeup that was gifted to me. Click the link to read about it.
- Aromaleigh's Eros for the red of the heart, which is a nice matte coral-red color.

Apologies for a lack of more extensive pictures of the makeup. I was heading out the door for work!

Let Me Borrow That Top

I picked up Green Is the New Black at my local used book shop a few weeks ago. While it's filled with a TeenVogue fluff sort of writing style, the guts of it have inspired me to write about ethical fashion. 

I'm a poor girl. I was raised in a paycheck to paycheck household. I now subsist off of a paycheck to paycheck sort of lifestyle. We never had designer clothes growing up. I am luckier than my parents budgetwise because I don't have children to support. (Kiddies can be cute, but they’re a black abyss of moneysuck.) So I can occasionally afford fancy beauty products here and there.  Green Is the New Black addresses fashion and beauty in that posh Sex In The City “Money- isn’t-an-issue-when-it-comes-to-a-fabulous outfit” sort of way. This is alright, but I'd like to speak up for those of us who can pull off personal style on a shoestring budget.  This often means I have to make a choice between cheap affordability vs. quality. Obviously certain cheap items are not made with cruelty-free , ethically sound manufacturing in mind. Sometimes, however, you can budget to get that tube of vegan makeup from an independent business. 

                I have been thinking of where the products I buy come from. Do starving children make them?  Are the resources used to make them going to no longer exist in 20 years? Are they built to break/fall apart in a week? Certainly consumers can’t solve all the worlds problems, but being more aware certainly helps.

Here are a few suggestions that are both budget friendly and ethically sound:

1     Thrifting. Thrift shopping is a full circle ethical activity- Find cool, vintage, lightly used items, which in turn is a mode of recycling. And a lot of places such as Goodwill or Philly Aids Thrift in Philadelphia donate part of the proceeds to the local community or cause of choice.

2       Try to avoid “throw away” clothes.  Those leggings that fade and pill after 2 washes will only create more trash to throw away in the long run. 

3    Arrange/participate in clothing swaps. These could range from events like Swap-A-Rama-Rama to small parties with friends. It’s a fun and thrifty way to recycle. I have attended a few of these with friends. Not only did I pick up some great things, but they also got me through transitional times when I was unemployed and too poor for even the thrift shops.

4.       Bring Your Own Reusable Shopping Bag. I’m happy to see an upward trend in this at the retail location I work at. When I do receive plastic shopping bags I recycle them.  They can be used to take lunch to work/school in, and work well as wastebasket liners.  The fancier bags can come in handy as gift bags. Even when having things shipped I save the more sturdy boxes and reuse them when shipping things out myself.

5.        

6.       Try to avoid overpackaging on beauty supplies. If it does have shiny, sparkly packaging aim for recycled or recyclable bottles. Overpackaged products cause a lot more excess waste. Buying them not only encourages the companies to keep making products with excess packaging, but the manufacture of the packaging releases more chemicals into the atmosphere. Basically, it’ll shrink your personal carbon footprint.

In fact, you should track your carbon footprint RIGHT NOW.

In posting this, I hope you take away that I am not being condescending or pretentious. I'm not thinking about these things because it's kitsch, but rather because it's getting harder to ignore that we humans have a shitty impact on our natural resources. I personally slip up due to factors like convenience and budget. Everyone has times where they make the wrong choices. Being mindful of what you're consuming is half the battle. 

Limecrime's Candy Eyed Eyeshadow Primer Review + A Surprise At My Doorstep

Recently a friend of mine had poor luck with Lime Crime's Candy Eyed Eyeshadow Helper. She didn't like it, but offered it to me since I just ran out of my darling Urban Decay Primer Potion  (Read my love letter to UD PP.) and for the benefit of my lovely readers.
I will be posting my personal experience with the Candy Eyed primer, as well as my friends' reasons for not enjoying it. (I am nothing if not fair and balanced!)

The Helper in action.

Now, my friend was used to the Mac primer. I have no experience with it, but I imagine it's similar to UD as I was told it has a similar foundation-like consistency. Her objections were that Lime Crime's primer was too glue-like, and it was difficult to blend. Taking her advice into consideration, I applied a very small amount to my eyelids when I tried this out. I also applied it ONLY to the area I wanted eyeshadow to adhere. I didn't seem to experience any problems using this method. I didn't try and do too much blending as I was applying only one color. The color I applied, Aromaleigh's "fragile charms" mineral eyeshadow, definitely popped in a way I hadn't seen before. The primer made the subtle purple shimmer in the shadow pop. It stayed on through an entire shift at work lifting heavy things, bending, moving, and other activities that tend to smudge eye makeup.

Primed eye

Overall, I enjoyed this product. The packaging is adorable, it lasts throughout the day, and it extends the wear of eyeshadow. If you are vigilant about overuse, and you want a product that makes eyeshadow stay PUT then I would recommend it.

Some of you may be wondering what the "surprise at my doorstep" bit was about in the title of this post. Well, I recently connected with the author of the Becoming That Woman blog. We chatted about societal beauty standards, how we like to defy them, and of course shiny pretty things that go on our faces. It turns out she was cleaning house of a few palettes that she kindly offered to me. Last night after work I came home to a HUGE FRIGGIN BOX OF MAKEUP. Palettes, brushes, the works. Thank you Gwen! I look forward to sharing my reviews of everything. This might take a while...

It's okay. I know you envy my box.

Trend That I Loathe: Fringe Boots

I want to put a disclaimer on this post to say that I don't discourage anyone's personal style. One person's cup of tea is another's sewer water.
Now that this is out of the way, I have to say that most "trends" bother me on a soul level. Newness and inventiveness is wonderful. Buying into it with triple and quadruple digit pricetags because it's a trend, however, is not. This is especially true when the trend itself is an utter eyesore. (See trucker hats, crocks, uggs.)
Polyvore alerted me today of a new trend. Something almost worse than trucker hats. That would be the fringe boot trend. WHY? Do people actually pay top dollar to make themselves look like they should be deer hunting with a bow and arrow?
If it's a part of a motifed costume I can understand it. A little. If I squint.
Exhibit A:

Maison Martin Margiela ankle booties   These boots retail at Bergdorf Goodman for $895.

The above pictured boots aren't even boots with a little fringe on the edge, they are boots made of fringe! It's a mutated gladiator sandal that's hit a new low on the ugly ladder.

How about it, dear readers? What trend absolutely makes you want to stab yourself in the eye with a spork?

Bjork, My Eccentric Style Muse

When most people think of  (or google) "style" and "Bjork" one incident comes to mind. The swan dress. In one fell swoop Bjork's choice of dress made her the darling of vapid worst dressed lists far and wide. I had always been fascinated by her choice of fashion. The swan dress did nothing but amplify my intrigue.Who the hell else would have the (figurative) balls to pull something like that off?

For this and myriad other reasons Bjork has been a personal style goddess of mine. I have never sought to copy her fashions, but rather her independent fashion sense. She is an artist, and that carries over into how she adorns herself. She doesn't follow the "rules" of Hollywood or The Runway. From making her own clothes to styling her eyebrows in imaginative ways. She made a fan of Steve Mcqueen, who she interviewed for a fashion magazine years ago. The paper doll making website Stardoll..com even features her. And yes, the swan dress is in her virtual wardrobe.

My Bjork star doll.

I've loved her since seeing her clad in a wool sweater on the cover of Debut. I was captivated by eclectic music videos where she dressed as a starlet, a goddess, a bear, a nouveau mod. She has inspired me to follow the cues of my own loud personality with loud fashion. I never sought to find a swan dress of my own, but rather express myself through clothing and makeup choice. What is the Aesop's fable here? Life IS an art project. So go ahead, put ribbons and flowers in your hair, wear different colored shoelaces, adorn your eyes with blood red eyeshadow and glued on jewels. (I may have done all of these things.)

And here I am in all my flamboyant beauty circa early 2011.

The most iconic thing about Bjork's style is the fact that she throws caution and beauty standards to the wind. When she strips from the costumes and gowns she still retains her beauty, but it isn't something that can be manufactured by a plastic surgeon or an airbrush. She's simply beautiful for the entity that she is.

High End Product Spotlight: Tarte's Cheek Stain

Hello my lovely readers. Today I'll be giving the lowdown on Tarte's cheek stain. For those of you unfamiliar with the Tarte brand, it is  a company that offers cosmetics made from natural, vegan friendly ingredients, free of many synthetics such as parabens and the like. I'm not a vegan, but I've been reading up on why the impact of having less synthetics in my life is necessary. (More on this in an upcoming post.) But enough about the company. On to the product itself. Cheek stain is essentially a gel-like form of powdered blush in ways. It does have it's own unique properties. Since it is a gel you don't have to worry about the powdery texture some traditional blushes leave behind. (Of course, it all depends on how you apply it, as with anything.)

I myself bought the cheek stain in Dollface, a bright magenta/pink with blue undertones. I hadn't even heard of cheek stain until I visited a friend of mine who swears by it. I tried a bit, and decided I needed to have some of my own. As soon as I saw the Dollface shade I was in love. What can I say?  I'm a sucker for the china doll look. So off to Tarte's website I went! The ordering process was easy, though there was a bit of a snafu with shipment- they sent me the entirely wrong product. They did, however, correct their error, and send out the product again. Double the wait time, but I ended up with a free mini mascara.

Tarte cheekstain in Dollface.

At first glance, I noticed that the packaging was chic and fun without a lot of excess. It was a simple pink tube with a screw off lid. The cheek stain fills the entire container, to which it's user simply pushes up from the bottom to dispense the product.Once I unscrewed the lid, I was greeted with a lovely fruit fragrance. Quite a change of pace from some makeup products that can be perfumed to death. I will warn you, this is sticky when applied. It's all natural, and a cheek stain. I'd wonder how it would be possible not to be sticky. That really is the closest to a complaint I or anyone I've known has with this product. It's blendable, and a little bit goes a long way. That being said, there is a massive amount per tube. Thankfully so too, because that price tag is nothing to laugh about. I've seen more expensive products out there, but I'm a lower middle class girl who scrimps and saves for the contents of her makeup bag.

"Push up" bottom of the cheek stain.

I have seen some other girls get really creative with the cheek stain and  layer powder blush over top for a very dramatic look. I haven't tried this, but I'm thinking on my next occasion to dress up I'll give that a whirl.

Overall, the cheek stain is highly recommended. I didn't even used to indulge in blush until this came around. Sadly, however, I haven't taken any decent photos of myself wearing the product. Perhaps I'll update this post a little later with more photos.