Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup
A beauty blog blooming with fresh makeup reviews, swatches and beauty tips from your friendly neighborhood beauty addict
Are you superstitious?
I am…especially when a new fall Chanel Superstition collection comes around.
These are just a few pieces of prettiness from the collection, which is available now at Chanel counters and online.
I know it’s a little weird to be talking about fall in July, but I’m seriously feeling the urge to wear a smokey eye…
You know what they say. “If a pan of Chanel crosses your path, it’s seven years good luck!”
Wait — is that how it goes? 🙂
Maybe I’m an everyday voyeur, because I sure do enjoy seeing pics of people go about their business on Instagram (here’s me).
It’s interesting! Even the boring stuff, because it’s happening all over the world. Breakfast in Hong Kong, lunch in Toronto, drinks in New York. Every day I get to visit with people’s pets, accompany them on vacation, and indulge in cheat meals (without the calories, whee!). 🙂
I also get a kick out of seeing so many self-portraits, or selfies. Makes me feel like I’m right then and there.
As someone who’s taken her share of blurry selfies, I can tell you that a sharp, cool self-portrait isn’t always as easy as point and click, especially in bad lighting. You’d think it would be pretty simple, right? Just smile, point and click.
In a moving car with a camera phone? Uh, not exactly.
But we have tips! Here are some things you can do to take a fantastic selfie.
Before you actually take your selfie, hold your camera right out in front of your face, straight on, and snap a quick test shot of your hair and makeup.
I do this all the time, not just for selfies, but whenever I finish my makeup. Even better than a mirror, seeing a picture helps me tell if my brows, liner, blush and eyeshadow are even. A test shot can help you target areas that need fixing.
While you’re at it, glance at your clothes to make sure your bra straps aren’t peeking out or your collar’s wonky.
I remember reading an Us Weekly article at the salon a while back (my guilty pleasure!) about Tori Spelling’s husband posting a pic on Twitter with Tori’s naked breast in the background.
Not that you’re going to have boobs hanging out behind you in your selfie, but there’s a lesson here. Always check your background before you post pics.
Look for solid colors, like walls, to stand in front of, and de-clutter. Move laundry baskets and messy piles of books — anything you don’t want the world to see. For serious! I can’t tell you how many cute selfies I’ve seen with bras hanging in the background.
I try to find a nearby wall or textured curtains. Generally, the less cluttered your background, the better.
Do your iPhone pics always look blurry? It’s usually caused by camera shake, which happens when you tap the shutter button while the phone is moving. Even the slightest shake or wiggle can produce a blurry pic, especially in dim light.
Hold your phone as steady as possible. Here’s a trick I borrowed from sharp shooters…
Right before I press the shutter, I take a breathe, exhale and hold for a couple seconds. Very still. Then I tap the button.
A couple weeks ago Urban Decay started a revolution. They unleashed a new line of lipsticks unto the world and their permanent collection — the Revolution Lipsticks — and I kid you not, I’ve been wearing them almost every day since.
Renowned for their iconic palettes (hello, Naked!) and eyeshadow singles, UD decided to show some love to lips, and mine certainly love what they’ve done here. This new line of 22 lipsticks keeps the brand firmly near the front of the pack.
Costing $22 each but looking and feeling more extravagant than that, they seem like a bargain next to lippies from Tom Ford and Dolce & Gabbana.
With their concentrated pigments and creamy, smooth formula, even colors that can normally be tricky and uneven, like beiges and pale neutral pinks, apply without a hitch. A single swipe is all it takes.
I find myself having to reapply them after meals, but they easily handle tea. Between meals, I get at least 4-5 hours from them.
Thicker and creamier than Urban Decay’s old lipsticks — the ones with the swirls on the packaging and the silver dagger — they feel more significant (and better) on my lips, but aren’t what I’d call heavy. Not like a ton of product plastered on my pout. I think of them as lipsticks for lipsticks lovers, but if you gravitate toward featherweight glosses and lip colors that look barely there, these are probably not what you need.
Before I met El Hub and moved across the Golden Gate Bridge from the city to Marin County (oh, the things we do for love!), I called San Francisco’s Outer Richmond district my home.
I lived in an apartment at the corner of 36th and Geary, about five minutes from the often foggy beach. At night, the 38 Geary Bus would rumble past my window as low fog horns from the Bay lulled me to sleep.
I was in my 20s then, savoring life in the city right at the height of the dot-com boom. I loved the excitement and everything the city had to offer, but truth be told, the experience also kicked my @ss…in a good way though.
I learned a lot — about myself, about what I wanted out of life, what I didn’t want, and even after a decade removed from the city, I’m still awestruck every time I cross the Golden Gate and see the city skyline.
I love that town. 🙂
Needless to say, I’ve been hella freakin’ over the moon about the new OPI San Francisco collection.
And, yes, I said hella. Because that’s how we do it here, babe.
The 15-piece release, new for fall/winter 2013, feels authentic to me, like OPI did their research. It’s like they took postcards of some of the city’s most iconic places and spaces and poured them into the bottles.
May I be your tour guide? I’d love to show you around San Francisco by OPI 🙂
For starters, I think it’s fitting that OPI chose fall for a San Francisco collection, seeing as how it’s such a wonderful season around here. Generally sunnier, warmer and less crowded than summer (yup, it’s the micro-climates here). September through early- to mid-November is my favorite time of year in the city.
Very much like a song sung about SF, the collection embodies the urban aspects of SF — sure, it’s a city — but it also has some very beautiful parks and lush outdoor areas, like the greens of Golden Gate Park and Land’s End (could you imagine a shade of green inspired by the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill?? I die!).
Instead of going that route, though, OPI chose something more street chic, with nautical blues, sandy taupes, foggy grays, Golden Gate/Chinatown reds, burgundies and browns. It’s not urban in an industrial way. More like a hike up and down steep city streets surrounded by epic views and high-rise buildings.
The collection features 12 shades in OPI’s regular polish formula, encompassing a mix of creams and shimmers, as well as three textured Liquid Sand shades, and the entire color palette is meant to go with fall’s fashion trends, specifically looks with military details and winter whites.
For me, most of the polishes require two coats, although some of the more glittery shades, like Haven’t the Foggiest and Alcatraz…Rocks, work well with one. They all boast OPI’s signature bad-@ss brush, which is nice and full and wide and makes it very easy to cover an entire nail evenly in two or three swipes.
Hop aboard this cable car with me, and let’s take a look. 🙂
A-Piers To Be Tan is a creamy orange-brown. Call me cat lady, but it reminds of Tabs’ tum more than anything else. It’s one of my least favorite shades here, but I do like the way it contrasts with the rest of the colors in the collection.
You might be wondering, “So what the heck is this Monday Poll thing anyway?”
Well, it isn’t much of a poll. It’s more just a constantly evolving (devolving?), somewhat random list of questions I’ve been putting out to readers every Monday morning for the past four years. I’ve always enjoyed reading your answers in the comments, and I hope you enjoy reading mine.
Holy crap! That’s what happens when you don’t know what you want to be when you grow up. 🙂 Some of my favorite gigs were pet sitter/dog walker, foreign language lab assistant (I did this for three years in college and loved it) freelance writer and beauty blogger. Some of my least favorites were telemarketer (absolutely awful, but I learned how to handle myself on the phone), PR associate (the ink had barely dried on my business cards before I left this one) and ER intern (OMG, blood!).
I wonder if dogs would bark at me…
To complete the Monday Poll, just copy the following list, and paste it with your answers in the comments.
Le List
1. How many jobs have you had in your life?
2. How many letters are there in your full name?
3. What’s the first color that comes to mind?
4. If you could speak any language you don’t speak now, what would it be?
5. What’s one makeup-related thing you would like to learn?
6. Do you ever wear body glitter?
7. Where do you usually get your hair cut/styled?
8. Do you have a favorite drugstore makeup brand (for color products)?
9. Best shampoo under $10?
10. What’s the most important task on your to-do list today?
Last weekend wasn’t long enough, was it? I wish we could all meet up at the movies today.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
My employer’s latest obsession? A bib necklace by designer Pam Hiran from Anthropologie.
Tabs was thrilled to find it on sale for $39.95 (marked down from $58).
You know Tabs! He loves a good deal.
He generally prefers to wear jewelry in the nude with little else, but I like to wear this particular piece with a plain white t-shirt and skinny jeans. 🙂
Gotta love Anthropologie.
Yesterday was such a nice day out here that El Hub and I decided to drive down to the city for lunch. We hadn’t been to any of the touristy areas in a while, so we decided to brave the weekend crowds at Pier 39.
And it was hella crowded! Wall to wall people and traffic jams, but it was fun. The place is like a seafood-themed Disneyland without the rides. Just tons of tchotchke stores, magic shops, puppet shops, aloha shirt stores, crab shacks and a big carousel in the middle of it all.
When we got hungry, we stopped at the Crab House at Pier 39. Got an order of bruschetta, garlic fries and their specialty, “The World Famous Killer Crab.”
WOW! So unbelievably good I couldn’t stop giggling. Possibly one of the best meals of my entire life. The crab was bomb! Garlicky, with olive oil and a parsley seasoning. I’m drooling right now just thinking about it.
If you like crab and you’re ever out this way, you gotta go, but try to make a reservation beforehand. We didn’t and ended up having to wait a half hour or so.
And, um…brace yourself for somewhat brusque service. Our server was efficient and to the point, but he wasn’t exactly a master of small talk, if you catch my drift. The place was all about the crab. If you’re looking for an upscale experience in line with the price, since it’s not the cheapest joint in town, you should probably try elsewhere.
Highly recommended. I cannot wait to go back. When’s my next cheat meal!?
Dear Tabby is written by Tabs the Cat, commonly regarded as “the world’s first plus-size kitty supermodel.” Founded in mid 2012, it has quickly become the most widely syndicated cat advice column on earth — known for its fresh, feline perspective on lifestyle, fashion and style issues affecting cats and humans.
DEAR TABBY: While watching Animal Planet on the couch with my assistant last night, I caught a glimpse of what looked like a fluffy tail on the screen of her company-issued iPad.
My assistant, Pam, appearing to notice my sidelong glance, pivoted the screen away from me, at which point I feigned disinterest by intensely grooming my inner thigh (you know how it is).
When Pam got up from the couch to prepare my afternoon snackies, I swiped my paw across the iPad’s screen, entered the code to unlock it and saw what she’d been reading — a dog adoption site for our town’s local shelter.
Quite frankly, Tabby, I was shocked and dismayed. Despite being a shelter kitty myself, I very clearly told Pam when I hired her that I required her undivided attention. I specifically told her that I needed an assistant who could commit to one cat.
This is difficult because Pam has been an exceptional assistant, and I’ve been very happy with our arrangement. When I confronted her about it, she laughed and handed me a treat.
A treat!
Tabby, I’m trying to be reasonable here, but every time I think of Pam considering other employers, I fly into a jealous rage. Am I overreacting?
— Diva in Detroit
DEAR DIVA: I understand your concern. I enforce a similar arrangement with my assistant.
But consider this: has Pam always tended to your needs? Has she gone above and beyond the call of duty? If so, then perhaps she was merely web surfing.
Haven’t you ever looked at things you didn’t intend to bring home? Window shopping? I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent browsing the Chanel website, filling my cart with Chanel-branded cat towers and toys, knowing full well that I wouldn’t be making a purchase that day.
I monitor my assistant’s Internet usage and have caught her looking at cat adoption sites several times. When it happens, I climb upon her chest, rev up the purr machine, and show her who’s boss.
Now, I can’t speak for Pam, but you may want to postpone taking any disciplinary action, for now. Refrain from making a knee-jerk decision. Be vigilant, but I would bet a bag of Feline Greenies that you’re going to be just fine.
DEAR TABBY: I am an 8-year-old cat considering a mid-life career change.
I’ve worked security all my life, but now I’m thinking of chasing my dreams of becoming America’s Next Top Kitty Model.
I’m not afraid of crowds and enjoy performing. What do you think? Should I go for it, considering my advanced years?
— Senior Superstar in San Diego
DEAR SENIOR SUPERSTAR: Bravo! I applaud your courage and sense of adventure. I think it’s a great idea. I suggest attending casting calls in your area to test the waters.
While the mature kitty modeling market is a narrow niche, it’s quite possible to have a successful career. If you don’t try, you’ll never know. I wish you luck!
DEAR TABBY: My assistant, George, has absolutely no regard for my privacy. He feels the need to share my every activity with all of our acquaintances and business associates, including the members of his book club and his many Facebook friends.
George even posts pictures of me on his website, and some are rather embarrassing (like when I’m grooming or taking a nap). Sometimes he even tweets!
Whenever I try to talk to him about it, he calls me silly.
I do think that I require more privacy than other cats, but I don’t think it’s right to tell everyone on the planet when I have tummy troubles! What can I do, Tabby? How do I make this stop?
— Private in Petaluma
DEAR PRIVATE: Your assistant may be posting these pictures of you because he’s proud.
I find that’s often the case, but you still have the right to live a life outside the limelight.
To convey this to George, you could try making yourself less available. Hide in closets, boxes and under the bed. I must tell you, though, that hiding can lead to a lonely life. I know many cats who would love to be so adored and revered by their assistants.
DEAR TABBY: When did cat-kind suddenly decide that lion cuts were “stylish”?
I can understand shaving off patches of fur for medical purposes, but to walk around with everything just hanging out like that, except for tiny tufts of fur on your head, your paws and the tip of your tail, seems wrong and ridiculous to me. Please tell the cats of the world to stop shaving their fur!
— Perturbed in Portland
DEAR PERTURBED: I fancy myself a fashion-forward feline, and I can see why you find this upsetting. Lion cuts can look a little questionable on some cats.
However, sometimes it works! Cats blessed with plush, fluffy coats may as well work it, right?
DEAR TABBY: I met a cat recently — a cute enough fellow — but the thing is, I really like his tum. Like, really, REALLY like it for some reason.
It just hangs so perfectly, and the way it swings back and forth when he walks or runs…
Anyway, I love how fluffy it is and the shape and everything.
Ironically, I’ve never actually paid much attention to tums before. Just his. So does this count as a fetish? Am I weird?
— Tum Obsessed in Topeka
DEAR TUM OBSESSED: No, I don’t think you’re weird. Now, if tums were the only thing you ever liked about cats, then you might have a belly fetish, but this just sounds like a crush. I wouldn’t go ordering that gimp costume from Amazon just yet. 🙂
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addicts,
Karen and Tabs
