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
Normally, I would have no business wearing a purple highlighter. I’ll leave that to the club kids who wanna channel their inner unicorn, because lilac highlights are kind of unicorn makeup, right?
Not as hardcore unicorn as rainbow stripe highlights on your cheeks, but still…majorly unicorn-y.
But BECCA Lilac Geode Shimmering Skin Perfector surprised me.
OK, first of all, and I’ll be the first person to admit this, but this swatch is totally lame.
I’m gonna put this out there and say that I think dandruff shampoo is easily top three least sexy beauty products. I mean, shiny patent-leather lipgloss or dandruff shampoo: which is a sexier conversation starter?
Dandruff happens, though, and I get it every once in a while, usually around this time of year and during winter. With the cooler weather, my scalp’s been going nuts. It’s flake city.
Enter today’s unsung hero, my old standby, Neutrogena T/Gel Shampoo Original Formula (there are a few different versions).
It’s the only dandruff shampoo that really works for me, and I know this because I ran out last month and decided to try some other dandruff shampoos, and nothing — NOTHING! — worked as well as T/Gel did for me.
What’s an unsung makeup hero? For me, it’s an oftentimes underrated makeup morsel, a permanent collection product that scoots under the radar screen of many makeup lovers but regularly rocks my world. The long-running Unsung Heroes series features some of my favorites.
This caramel-colored shampoo smells like Ricola Cough Drops. The scent is sort of clinical and medicinal, which some people might even call stinky, but I’ve grown to appreciate the scent over the 10+ years I’ve used it.
The active ingredient is coal tar, which is a byproduct of coal processing, and it stops dandruff by slowing the rate at which the skin cells on your scalp die and flake (you can read more about it here).
Active ingredients
Coal Tar 0.5% (2% Neutar® Solubilized Coal Tar Extract) (Anti-dandruff, Anti-seborrheic dermatitis, Anti-psoriasis)Inactive ingredients
Water, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Cocamide MEA, Laureth-4, Fragrance, Sodium Chloride, Polysorbate 20, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, DMDM Hydantoin, Citric Acid, Tetrasodium EDTA
Trying those other dandruff shampoos made me realize that there’s a lot out there that just doesn’t work for me. T/Gel works immediately — like, right after the first shampoo. My scalp feels clean, doesn’t itch, and the flakiness — which I was seeing mostly around my hairline right near my bangs — is completely gone. My roots don’t feel greasy or coated with product, either, which happened after I used the other anti-dandruff shampoos. After T/Gel, my scalp and hair feel really, really clean. AHHHHH!
Wha-wha!? Double take! I had to do a faux one when I saw NARS Double Take up close for the first time. It’s the new highlighter in the NARS Man Ray Holiday 2017 color collection.
I mean, look at the pan. There are lips on it…but it’s a cheek product? It’s a little confusing, but dang if it isn’t pretty, so I’m just going to let myself be confused and go with it, LOL! Heck, I still might even put it on my lips sometime to see what happens…
The limited edition warm golden formula feels super soft and dense — a little like the MAC In Extra Dimension powders, only finer and creamier. When I flick a brush across it, the powder particles cling to the bristles and don’t go flying everywhere.
Is it 1983? Am I in a Duran Duran video (OMG, I WISH!)? Fetishized and Intensely are totally worthy of stylish ’80s video dudes, which says a lot. Simon Le Bon would be raiding John Taylor’s makeup bag, and Simon would be all, “Hey, can I borrow your bright NARS blush?” And John would say, “The reddish coral one? Sure. You should try layering it with the tangerine one. Grab that too, and while you’re at it, could you please hand me my fuchsia lipstick?”
I gotta have blush that applies smoothly, and both of these totally do. They’re from the NARS Man Ray Holiday color collection, and they pack POW.
The really intense coral-red one that looks like a ruby red grapefruit is called Fetishized, and the bright matte tangerine one is Intensely. They look almost tropical, don’t they? Almost summery? — which is surprising for a holiday/winter look, but not surprising, at the same time, since the Man Ray color collection is all around bright, pigmented and joyful.
I love that the lips on these LE tubes of gloss from the new Man Ray for NARS Holiday 2017 collection look like regular ol’ lips. They’re even slightly asymmetrical, thank goodness! Because I gotta be honest, sometimes I need a break from the hyper-inflated Kylie-style lips everywhere.
The glosses are NARS Photogloss Lip Lacquers, a new limited edition formula, and — very importantly — they smell almost like vanilla cookies.
The thing about these glosses is that they’re SO pigmented. Like, you know how sometimes when you make tea and you put the tea bag in the hot water, but then you go do something else and forget about the tea, only to realize an hour later what you did, but you don’t want to waste it, so you drink it anyway even though it tastes crazy strong and intense?
That’s how these glosses look.
Uh…who is this Man Ray dude?
For their holiday collections, NARS usually pairs up with an artist and thematically incorporates the artist’s work into the release. This year, that artist is Man Ray.
No, we did not just teleport into an episode of Futurama. ?
Man Ray was an American visual artist known for his photography in the ’20s and ’30s, and he was a big time contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements. You’ve probably seen his work on your day-to-day travels. My favorite of his pieces is this picture here. It’s called Glass Tears. The first time I can remember seeing it was in a magazine when I was in high school, and it haunts me to this day.
I wonder if Man Ray liked purple, because the eye makeup in this color collection has purple, purple, purple!
Exciting stuff, if you ask me.
I’m into purple on my lids and lash lines, especially purples with bronze and gold, and there’s lots of that happening here. If you’re a NARS Cordura fan or a NARS Mekong or MAC Sketch or Shale fan, you’ll probably be feeling the duos and liners.
Before we jump into the eye makeup, let me back up a little first. The Man Ray for NARS Holiday collection launches this Friday, October 6th at NARS Boutiques and the NARS website, and it’s set up the same way that NARS has been doing their holiday collections for the past few years, with a color collection, which is like your traditional makeup LE collection with eye, lip and cheek products, and then there’s also a “gifting” collection with kits and sets.
The color collection contains 11 pieces and includes glosses, eyeshadow duos, a highlighter and liners, and there’s LOTS of purple, bronze and gold on parade, to which I have to say “YAAAAS!” 🙂
There are two $36 eyeshadow duos, each with a pan of wonderfully wearable, joyful, GORGEOUS purple shadow. The wearable aspect is a bit of a departure for NARS Holiday eye shadows, as 2015’s Steven Klein and 2016’s Sarah Moon seemed more serious, heavy, and…challenging to me. Like, am I really gonna wear a single pan of frosty white shadow on a Tuesday afternoon? Probably not.
These two new duos may not be as edgy as the NARS shadows from recent holiday collections, but I’m fine with that. I’ll take easy-to-wear stuff any day of the week.
The first duo, Montparnasse, pairs a satiny, reddish bronzed purple with a frosty, cool yellow gold. The second one, Debauched, partners a rich, deep golden plum with a smoky blackened purple containing red micro glitter.
Tom Ford’s gorgeous gunmetal Caviar cream shadow is many things: enduring, easy to blend, and it’s basically everything you ever wanted for the easiest smoky eye ever (just add black liner and mascara), but none of those are why it holds a special place in my heart.
It’s special to me because it’s what I was wearing when Connor said the word “eye” for the first time.
Backstory: she already knows some of the words for body parts, so if I say “Show mommy your ears,” she’ll point to her ears. She just hasn’t said many of the words yet, but last week when I was wearing Caviar on my lids with a Cargo black pencil on my lash lines (my eyes were a little dramatic that day, which is how I roll on a Friday afternoon!), I was changing her diaper and talking to her when Connor pointed up at me and emphatically said, “Eye! Eye! Eye!”
Uh… She was pointing at my makeup! I was almost ready to ask Tom to be her godfather, haha!
In the wise words of the Mean Girls movie, “On Wednesdays we wear pink,” and whoops! — sometimes purple, thanks to this temporary hair color spray by IGK, Girls Club ($19), which looks more like purple in my hair.
I like it, though. It smells like too-sweet bubblegum, and I have to use about half a can before the color really comes through, but I still think it’s fun, especially on mornings when the thought of covering my salt-and-pepper roots with regular ol’ root spray (I use the one by Rita Hazan) is just waaaaaay too depressing.
Even though I have to use a lot, so it’s not something I’ll do every day (because it’s $19), I think it’s better than most of the temporary hair color sprays I’ve used. It doesn’t make my hair feel crunchy (YAY!), and it’s easy to wash out.
OH, EM GEE, change my world, why don’t you?! BECCA Pink Haze Soft Blurring Powder ($38) is a loose makeup setting powder with a sheer pearly pink tint, and it subtly brightens your face, but you can’t, like, really tell when you first put it on. It takes 10-15 minutes before it seems to settle on the skin. Then you can see the subtle soft pink pearl reflecting in the light.
