Also known as “the best dreams, ever.”
Just a lot of pretty lipsticks I wanted to photograph together. 🙂 Hope you’re having a great afternoon. Are you doing anything fun involving lipstick tonight?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
The Models Own Barely There Eyeshadow Palette Is a Perfect Way to Dip Your Toe Into the World of Neutral Shadows
This week in the comments on the Monday Poll, we were talking about advice we’d give to makeup newbies, and Kerrie cleverly mentioned a tip about how when you start your makeup journey, it makes a lot of sense to stock your makeup bag with things that aren’t too expensive. That way, you can afford to take the time to figure what kinds of things you like, and what kinds of products work well for you, without spending a ton of money up front.
So smart, right?
Along those lines, I feel like the $17.99 Barely There Eyeshadow Palette by Models Own is a perfect way to dip your toe into the wide, wild world of neutral shadows.
Models Own is a British brand now (as of recently) available at Ulta. They have a bunch of products for eyes, cheeks, lips and faces all in the Sonia Kashuk price range, so they aren’t as inexpensive as Wet ‘N’ Wild or ELF, but they aren’t as pricey as MAC or Estée Lauder either. Barely There is their take on the nude palette craze.
And guess what? It’s pretty darned good for $17.99! It has 10 powder shadows in it — five mattes and five shimmers — and the mattes, in particular, are the special sauces/keys.
Any time I start with an eyeshadow look that I intend to do with a few colors, I like to begin by deepening my crease with a matte golden brown or taupe-brown, because the cooler/neutral tones sort of simulate the effect of shadows being cast on the face, which I think makes your eyes look like they’re set deeper.
Barely There is perfect for that effect because it comes loaded with workhorse golden shades and taupe-browns, which makes it a rarity these days among the sea of nude palettes that skew warm with their orange browns and reddish browns.
Donna Karan Cashmere Mist Deodorant Is the Beyoncé of Antiperspirants
Is it weird to get excited about deodorant?
Wait — never mind. Ya know what? I don’t even care, because Donna Karan Cashmere Mist Deodorant is the Beyoncé of underarm products. A superstar among all the #basicb*tch options for your ‘pits.
It has notes of jasmine, orchid, lily and sandalwood, and I think it smells amazing. It’s like Donna Karan’s original Cashmere Mist fragrance but richer and deeper, and it can even pass for a unisex scent. I’ve read several great reviews from dudes who also wear it.
Even though it’s definitely a “present” scent, I don’t think it negatively interferes with perfumes when I wear them. Doesn’t seem to matter which fragrance families, either. I think it meshes with fruity florals, white florals, spicy scents, masculine fragrances… It doesn’t get in the way.
Funny thing is, though, as I get sweatier and sweatier… I mean, when I’m doing something active, not in general…
What I’m trying to say is that I think it smells better and better the more I perspire. Several times in HIIT class, people have tapped me on the shoulder after I’ve been sweating for 60 minutes like a mofo to ask, “What is that you’re wearing? You smell so good!” and I’m like, “Guess what, fools! It’s my deodorant, haha!”
Milk Makeup Eye Pigment Cream Eyeshadow Dries With a Quickness!
One might conclude that I’m smiling in this pic because…hello, pigment! Hello, glitter! Hello, shine!
So many fun things, right?
But I’m actually smiling here because when I snapped this pic, I was about to remove this eye makeup. Because, gosh…this Eye Pigment from Milk Makeup, which is available in 11 $24 shades in the permanent line, was so hard to work with!
What a bummer, because I thought it looked super cool when I swatched it.
The Eye Pigments are shimmery, concentrated cream eyeshadows that come in a tube, and when you squeeze a little on the back of your hand, then start working them around with a finger or a brush, they dry like BAM! Like, instantly. I’m serious. They’re dry in less than 10 seconds, so you have to move REALLY fast.
Now, I can put on my makeup fairly quickly most of the time, but these are ridiculous! I can’t work that fast. It’s almost impossible for me to blend the edges before they set.
You can see in the top pic that my shadow goes up higher on one lid than it does on the other, because I was trying to do both eyes at the same time…which was a bad idea in hindsight. The shadow dried too fast!
Models Own Sculpt & Glow Can Highlight My Cheekbones Any Time
I wonder what Models Own was aiming for when they designed these Sculpt & Glow Highlighting Powder pans…because sometimes when I look at them I see the cross section of a tree trunk’s rings. Or a bullseye. Or a nipple (says the woman who just KonMari’d her nursing bras to Goodwill!!!).
British makeup brand Models Own is available in the U.S. now at Ulta. They’re kind of a trendy line and have quite a few product types that are popular in makeup land right now, like a neutrals palette, matte liquid lipsticks and, yes, highlighters.
The Sculpt & Glow Highlighter Powder (looks like nipples in a pan) is available in two $11.99 shades, and theSculpt & Glow Highlighter Sticks are also available in two shades for $11.99 each.
I can totally get behind the Sculpt & Glow Highlighter Powders, which are like drugstore versions of the BECCA Shimmering Skin Perfectors. They’re aren’t exact dupes, though. The Models Own powders aren’t anywhere near as creamy as the BECCA Skin Perfectors. I remember reading somewhere that BECCA’s highlighters contain a lot of water, which is why they’re so soft, buttery (and fragile). The Models Own Sculpt & Glow Highlighter Powders definitely don’t feel as creamy, but they do feel as soft. They also have a similar opalescent finish that you can dial up or down, depending on your mood for pearl. I like them, love the price, and I’m sure they’d be great starter highlighters.
Dear Models Own Colour Chrome Eyeshadow Palette, Where Did Ya Go?
Clearly, “someone,” a.k.a. yours truly :), needs to do some deep breathing in child’s pose, because “someone” spent the last five minutes obsessing over the name of this British makeup brand: Models Own.
Models Own. Hmm…
What does it mean?? What does it stand for?? Do models own the company?? Is it a metaphorical reference to models figuratively owning the runway? Does it mean that you have to be a professional model to rock the brand’s products?? GOOD GRIEF, KAREN, CHILL.
Models Own hails from the UK but recently touched down on U.S. shores. They’re available exclusively at Ulta stores and online, with eye, face and lip products.
They’ve got some eye-catching colorful things, like the Colour Chrome Eyeshadow Palette (which we’ll get to in a sec), and some neutral items, that range from $7.99-$19.99 each, placing them in the higher-end drugstore price echelon, up there with Sonia Kashuk and Pixi.
The Models and I… Well, we’re off to a rocky start.
My makeup-loving heart wanted to adore the $19.99 Colour Chrome Eyeshadow Palette, because the cream shadows — oh, gosh — they feel fabulously dense and creamy like the MAC Paint Pots, which I love, but are thinner, which I normally take as a good thing, because it usually implies easy to blend and layer.
I always want to bring my Paint Pots with me wherever I go, but the clunky glass packaging discourages me. I had visions of gleefully scootin’ around town with this palette of 10 cream shadows and basically ruling the land. Since the creams feel similar to MAC’s, I’d hoped they would dry down completely, also like the Paint Pots, but alas… ‘Twas not meant to be. They don’t dry down at all.
These Too Faced Chocolate Brow-nie Cocoa Powder Brow Pencils Smell Just as Good as They Look
I hope you’ll be able to forgive Ryan Gosling after he announces in Us Weekly that he’s leaving his baby mama (a.k.a. Eva Mendes) for me, because after he gets a whiff of my eyebrows, he’s going to realize that he can’t live without K-Dawg. 🙂
Yes, girl, my eyebrows smell hella good right now! They smell like brownies fresh out the oven! And how could you not fall in love with someone whose brows smelled like brownies?
The Too Faced Chocolate Brow-nie Brow Pencil has been available for a while, but I’ve just tried it, and I tried it because, well…brownies.
It comes in four cocoa powder-infused shades — Taupe, Auburn, Soft Brown and Deep Brown (I wear Deep Brown) — and why Too Faced decided to go next level and give them a chocolatey brownie scent, I do not know… But it’s certainly a nice touch, since brows are usually the most boring part of makeup for me, and the scent gives them a little more pizzazz.
FYI, the fragrance isn’t overwhelming. It’s not like you’re sitting in a closet alone with 10,000 brownies (although I wouldn’t object to that). It’s very faint, and you can only really smell it when you get the pencil tip all up in your nostrils.
Missing in Action: Lost Lashes!
You know when you’re freaking out but trying not to freak out, but then trying not to freak out makes you freak out even more?
I’m doing that right now.
It’s because of these missing lashes! A big chunk of lashes are missing from my right eye.
My natural lashes aren’t “all that” to begin with, OK, and ever since I had Connor, they’ve gotten even thinner and shorter than they were before, to give you an idea of the baseline.
Basically, I’m not working with a lot in terms of lashes, which is why you’ll find random tubes of mascara everywhere in my house. EVERYWHERE.
So how did this happen? I don’t know. Last weekend I was curling my lashes, and after I finished my right eye I noticed that gap smack dab in the center of my upper lash line.
Nooooooooo! Dude. You don’t realize how important those center lashes are until they’re freaking gone!
I don’t know when it happened, but I’m guessing that it happened last week when I was wearing false lashes that I couldn’t wait to remove. They looked great in pics, but they were super long, so I could see them out of the corner of my eye, which was driving me nuts. So, instead of doing what I usually do, which is soak a cotton pad with waterproof eye makeup remover and hold it over the falsies until they gently slip off, I just ripped those bad boys off (perhaps a little too enthusiastically). In the process, I probably ripped out that chunk of lashes on the right side, too.
Hopefully this lash enhancing product I just started using called LASHFOOD (it’s at Sephora) helps them grow back.
