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Anyhow.
I started wearing makeup in 9th grade, much to Mama Boops' horror. A friend took me to the drugstore and helped me pick out liquid foundation and green eyeshadow(!). I'd put it on at school. I later added bright blue eyeshadow to my repertoire. And rouge (yes, I'm so old that I remember everyone calling it rouge instead of blush). One of my horrifying memories is of Mama Boops repeatedly slobbering on her hand and wiping my jawline to erase the dreaded 'line'. Ew. Saliva has that smell, you know? Ew. (And yes, she referred to me as a clown more than once. Junior high - good times. In fairness, once she realized I was committed to makeup she took me to a few makeup counters for lessons/makeovers. I usually ended those sessions looking like a prostitute but loved the idea of makeup as transformative magic which now makes me think of Cinderella and bs fairy tales about needing to be beautiful to get your Prince Charming - fight the patriarchy - but when it's all said and done if makeup makes you feel more confident then by all means go for it, girl! Or boy. No judgement.)
Thanks to that healthy dose of negative reinforcement I'm obsessed with getting makeup done right and yet I never feel like I do. You could have knocked me over with a feather when Mama Boops recently said 'your makeup always looks nice'. Twilight Zone, indeed.
And don't get me wrong - I'm not one of those people who posts tutorials online. I don't think I'll ever feel so confident in my routines to do that. And I don't spend hours in front of the makeup mirror. Depending on the occasion, I can be showered, made up, dressed and out the door in 30 minutes and not look like a crack addict. I'm a real person, dammit.
It's taken me decades to find products I like. And there are several to which I'm insanely loyal. It's taken a lot of experimenting (read: disasters) from different sources to get here. So here's what I do with my eyes:
Let's start with those eyelashes. They're 100% natural, all mine. Don't be jealous - those lashes come part and parcel with all sorts of thick, long, dark hair in places you DON'T want thick, long, dark hair to be in. I started electrolysis on my upper lip in high school (bleaching every week was scarring the sides of my mouth). Once the hormones really started raging I needed it for those five really awful hairs that sprouted on my chin (yes, I'm sexy). It wasn't until I was in my 40s that I got brave enough to do laser treatments (yup - 25+ years of electrolysis and plucking and bleaching and I STILL needed laser treatment). It took over a year but I no longer resemble a walrus in my natural state. And while the Kardashians make me cringe, once I read that they lasered their hairlines I opened the laser floodgates and no longer have sideburns or guy arms. (I've mentioned in a previous post that I had cancer a few years back. You've never meet a person more eager to have chemo. ALL the hair fell out - my brows and lashes thinned but otherwise I was like a hairless mole rat. My nose hairs fell out! I didn't have to shave my legs or underarms for a year! I didn't need a bikini wax to wear a swimsuit in public! And my facial hair and arm hair was gone too. It. Was. Awesome. Yes friends, there are silver linings everywhere.)
Back to my eyelashes. They've always been awesome. I've never had to curl them which is good because eyelash curlers scare the 💩out of me. I remember being in kindergarten at Disney Land, and Snow White told me my eyelashes were beautiful. Being the socially-awkward child I still am, I told her that her eyelashes were beautiful too.
I love mascara. But I always had raccoon eyes. I always blamed my eyeliner pencils until someone (can't remember who but it was some dude at a department store cosmetic counter) suggested it might be the mascara. Hmmm. So I tried waterproof mascaras. They helped but not completely. Then, just about three or four years ago, I was reading a Buzzfeed article on makeup and they were talking about OILY EYELIDS. Mind blown. Yes I have oily skin but I never considered that would include eyelids. Hunh.
So this Buzzfeed article recommended a Korean brand called Missha (or as I like to call it, Miss Ha). I don't know what it is about Korean beauty products but dang that country knows its 💩 when it comes to beauty. (Sidebar: once upon a time a friend and I spent a buttload of money [we're talking over $500] at the Kevyn Aucoin counter at Neiman Marcus - which is a whole separate blog topic - and the sales associate was so awesome she gave us this massive box of samples. One thing in there was an AmorePacific moisturizer which I swear you could tell an immediate difference. Alas it's $450 a bottle and no there's no decimal point there and no I don't spend that kind of money on moisturizers no matter how freaking magic they are.) Not only did I find this brand on Amazon, but there was a Miss Ha store in driving distance. Well, talk about an instant cure. I will never, ever, EVER use another mascara.
And here's a technique I swear by that I picked up from a beauty magazine back in college. Yes, wiggle the wand at the base of your lashes and pull up slowly. But here's the kicker: do that again ON THE OTHER SIDE OF YOUR LASHES. So you're getting the top and bottom of the lashes! And if I use powder eyeshadow I'm always getting powder on the top of my lashes so when I do this trick that boo-boo is erased. So yeah, I do the bottom of the lash, then the top, and then the bottom again because when I do the top it kind of pushes the lash down when I want it up and you can't pay me enough money to use and eyelash curler.
I usually don't put mascara on the bottom lashes. Even though the Miss Ha mascara doesn't smear, I feel like a kewpie doll and that's not the look I'm going for.
So the lids. As a person with dark hair and fair skin I am cursed with looking like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, in my natural state. Like, turn off the lights and you can see my pale skin shining like a beacon. But flipped to a positive, this means I can get away with a lot of color. I've got a friend with olive colored skin and brown hair and she looks best 100% of the time with brown shadow on her lids. While it must be nice to always know what color your lids will be, I prefer having limitless options. My lids taste the rainbow.
And with oily lids I've always had a problem with creasing shadows. So I've become reliant on shadow primer, and Smashbox is my fave brand. Really really really life-changing.
Even more life-changing was discovering SeneGence. I've got an online friend whose makeup always ALWAYS looks awesome. And she's incredibly photogenic (yes I'm envious because no matter how little I weigh I take awful pictures). Turns out she sells this brand as a side gig, and while my primer + powder routine has been quite satisfactory for years I figured what the heck let me try their liquid shadows.
Oh. My. Gawd. This stuff is AWESOME. It. Doesn't. Move. She's posted a few tutorials on her Facebook page so I picked up on her technique and I'm thrilled with the results. Tip: do one eye, one color at a time, so you can blend - otherwise this stuff dries super fast and like I said - it doesn't budge. These links all go to her Facebook page (I hope that's cool Stacey!) so you can check out some of her videos. She's doing a Facebook party later this month and that might be a fun time to try something if you're so inclined. She's also amazeballs at helping select colors. (In these pix I'm wearing a cream color under the brow, a brick color on the lid, and a purple on the corner/in the crease but sometimes I use a dark blue.)
OMG nowhere near done - we still need to talk liner and brows!
Eyeliner. Love it, but for years the bane of my existence. I used to use pencils on the upper and lower lids, and as I've said a couple times now my lids are oily. That includes the lower lid. Ugh. So yeah I'd be a multi-colored raccoon between the pencil and the mascara. So I stopped doing color on my lower lid - nope, didn't solve the problem. The pencil and mascara on the upper lid got me every time. Dammit.
Enter Stila's Stay All Day liners. These have felt tips which make it easier to manipulate (but I'll still never master the wing in the way Adele does), they come in a bazillion colors (yay they came out with purple!), and they truly stay all day. I've got a cornucopia of colors and yes I use most of them but I could probably pare down to black and purple. And brown. And navy. But I also use grey and green (they have 3 shades of green!). And white is fun to use on the inner corners. Taste the rainbow, indeed!
Home stretch: my brows. Ugh. My brows.
I was born with a Bert-from-Sesame-Street level unibrow. Between that and the walrus upper lip action (and the arms and the legs) I was mocked mercilessly for years. So I have issues. Heck I have subscriptions on autorenew. I snuck into Mama Boops' beauty kit one day when I was 10 and used her tweezers to eliminate the unibrow. Did I mention I have sensitive skin? I had a red patch smack between my eyes for over an hour after that. Which is how Mama Boops found me. She applied an ice pack. This did not prevent her from maintaining the habit of slobbering on her hands after rubbing my jawline and smoothing my brows.
So in 6th grade I went from Bert brows to Groucho Marx brows. In 7th grade some guy called me Fonzie in the cafeteria (yes I remember his name, no I won't share it). He then sent his buddy to call me Fonzie (yes I remember his name, no I won't share it). I Spocked him and made his neck bleed (I had super long yet unpolished nails back then, and who knew my kindergarten crush on Mr Spock would pay out so well?). But so began my obsession with the eyebrow arch.
I fell victim to the over-plucking thing in college, and while most of my brows recovered the part over my inner eye corners never fully recovered. And the ends are on the thin side. (And they're still long af so I have to trim them weekly - brush up, and snip the ends that extend over the brow.)
Enter the eyebrow pencil. I've used them sparingly over the decades because, I'll say it again, I HAVE OILY LIDS. There's nothing worse than getting sweaty and seeing your brows melt (well, yeah, there's a lot of things worse than that but dramatic license and all). Or wiping your brow in the summer and having your brows smear from one temple to the other. Or taking off a pullover shirt and having your brows smear over your forehead. You get my drift.
Once again, enter Stila Stay All Day stuff. It comes in brow pens! And just like the eyeliners, the brow liners do not smear. Problem solved!!!! Mad props to the nail tech I've been going to for nearly 20 years who waxes my brows to perfection. If I ever become an international celebrity she will be part of my H&M team that travels the globe with me. Have I considered micro-blading? Yes, and as soon as I find a place and a person I think will do it right the first time for a reasonable price (I haven't even thought of beginning to research so I have no clue if it's $20, $200 or $2000) I'll give it a whirl. But with Stila it's not on the forefront of my mind.
(Sidebar: yes I've had Botox in the past. I love it. It's worth the price. When I become that international celebrity, I will be more frozen than Elsa or Nicole Kidman.)
My next Makeup post will be about lips!!!
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