Friday's FOTD and a Rare Moment Where I Covet Designer

Well, here was Friday's FOTD (face of the day for those who aren't acronym savvy.)

Products used: Mac's Diva lipstick, Mac's kitchmas on the lids, Lime Crime's vixen on the crease of the eyes.

I recently saw a Chictopia post with a designer dress I fell in love with. High end designer is not my flavor. Most of it is emblazoned with names and insignia's that make you pay a huge price tag for advertising a brand. LAME. The dress I saw on Chictopia pulled at my inner baroque heartstrings. Black dress. Floral and cherub print. Need I say more? The heartbreak: It's $1500 price tag.

The dress in question.

*Dolce and Gabbana image was taken from this site.

High End Makeup Review: Urban Decay Lipsticks

Urban Decay recently had another one of their fantastic sales. This is about the only time I can afford to get my hands on Urban Decay products. I've always wanted to try their lipsticks to compare it to other brands, and I was finally able to afford to do that with this sale. (The markdown ended up being almost 1/3 of the price!) Anyway, I scored 2 tubes in Gash and Apocalypse. I know they've been out there for a while seasoned makeup junkies, but hey, they're new to me.
The first thing you have to notice is the badass packaging! As many people know, the lipstick tubes feature daggers on the end. Bitchin guitar solo ensues. Some reviewers find them to be cumbersome, but the inner gothling in me loves it.

Dolly's daggers.

Wearing Gash.

Wearing Apocalypse.

Right off I noticed that the colors are more sheer when applied compared to the richly pigmented Mac and even the lower end drugstore brands like Wet N Wild's Megalasts . For those who are a little worried about how wearable the lipsticks are, this is definitely a positive. For people like me, who go for a more bold color it simply means you'll have to layer it on for the pigmentation you desire. I did this, and I will say that it doesn't clump up or appear caked on. Going on it does have a moisturized feel to it that Mac does not. It has more staying power than a lot of lipsticks that go on this easily, but it is by no means long lasting. I chalk this up to the fact that it doesn't leave my lips feeling like I sucked on a lemon. I'm fine with reapplication, but it is something to note with this product. The immidiate smell is a sweet aroma that Urban Decay refers to as "creme caramel." I did note what past reviewers have said about an unbearable taste. I noticed a slight aftertaste with Gash, but nothing ungodly. Apocalypse I didn't have that problem with at all.

Gash went on as a warm red with a cool berry undertone. I wear a lot of brick and vibrant red tones, and this is something that gives a red lip with a little different hue than the norm. Apocalypse is a more brown-red. It has a little dimension to it. In fact, I've noticed that with most Urban Decay products. The shades are vibrant and edgy, but they have a wearability that caters not only to teens and twenty-something's, but also to the older makeup user who bold stock makeup may not flatter.

Gash and Apocalypse.

Overall I give the lipsticks a good review. I'm loving them, but I'm not over the moon. They're great colors with fun packaging. I've noticed a trend in reviewers to want a lipstick to be a magical tube of wonder that meets every need. People seem to want them to have fantastic color payoff, stay in place, last all day, not dry, flatter, and moisturize all at once. I have never worn a lipstick that can meet all those requirements. The can't check off all the boxes, but they do a lot within the bounds of lipstick.

Drugstore Makeup Review: Wet N Wild’s Megalast Lipstick in Dollhouse Pink

Hello Lovely Readers,
I’ve written about Wet N Wild’s Megalast lipsticks in the past. It’s a great cheapie version of a lot of the high end ultra pigmented brands. ($1.99 versus $18+ for higher end Macs, etc) Well, I was perusing my local drugstore when I happily discovered a new shockingly pink shade: Dollhouse Pink. It’s a matte violet-pink with blue undertones. Worn it looks almost neon. There have been quite a few shockingly pink shades- think of Viva Glam’s Cyndi Lauper and Lady Gaga inspired shades, the Hello Kitty inspired shades.

Wearing Dollhouse Pink

It doesn’t seem to be quite as drying as the red shades. But I also noticed that it doesn’t have the staying power of the other Megalast’s I’ve tried. It still has a little bit of staying power, but you don’t have to steal wool it off your lips at night. Overall, I’m in friggin love with this color.

Face Of The Day: Toofaced Tricolor Eyeshadow

Products used: Yellow gold, purple, emerald green from Toofaced's World Domination Tour box.

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.