Thursday, December 31, 2009

its 2010 - wash yo face!

my name is pamela and i am *terrible* about washing my face.

there. i said it.

in high school, my friends lamented about how i never cleaned off my makeup and still had flawless skin. in college, i landed many a nights in my bed and woke up with my face still relatively intact.

some days were rough, and i woke up looking like the joker. but hey, it was college.

so i started keeping facewipes next to my bed in hopes of encouraging myself to remove my makeup at night. i preferred the olay sensitive skin wipes but would use anything...target, cvs, whatever as long as it was cheap.

recently i've found my old staple, olay wipes, to be just a little to harsh for my skin. maybe its because i've actually started taking care of my skin!

we all know tonight is going to be one of those nights: no one is going to go home and carefully wash their faces and moisturize. its okay - this is a place to be honest.

so instead, i'm going to recommend to you my new best friends: almay's makeup remover wipes and almay oil free eye makeup remover pads.




i've had my fair share of dances with eye makeup removers and wipes and i have to say, these are the best (and most affordable!) that i've come by. don't get me wrong, i love korres' pomegrante wipes, but i don't love the smell so for half the price and no smell, almay can't be beat! the eye pads get at the toughest of creations (they removed my gaga face in one fell swoop!) and the wipes clean up strayed kohl and dried foundation.

i'm hibernating tonight, but believe me, these will be on my nightstand all weekend!

stay safe and have a happy new year!

Sunday, December 13, 2009

ms. behavin as a twilight vamp

first of all, sorry i've been so dark here recently! school + business things + finals + holidays have been a bit much to handle all at once, so something had to give :(

but the good news is that it ends tomorrow!

i think i might celebrate by spending my afternoon quietly in the dark and see new moon again...

when my girlfriends and i dutifully went on november 21, i figured it was the perfect opportunity to try out a sample of benefit's ms. behavin lipstick, which is the official lipcolor of all twilight vampires (applied more heavily to the ladies)



here's ms. behavin, worn randomly to school one day to test it out



i didn't love ms. behavin alone - it a silky finish, so without anything under it, it seemed to smear and be less than the creamy opaque i wanted it to be - so for our new moon adventure, i decided to create a rosalie look, centered around ms. behavin and golden eyes!



i kept my face simple with tarte dark circle defense, some light powder and tarte's cheek stain in brilliant from the three carats collection, described as a "shimmering champagne" for a dash of vampire sparkle.

for eyes, i tried to keep it neutral and shimmery but with added drama, just like rosalie!

i started with stila's kitten smudgepot all over and followed up with tarte's glistening powder in sugar daddy.

NOTE: i received a .07 oz sample of sugar daddy with my last tartepro order. from what i've gathered, sugar daddy was a body powder that was available in a much larger size, but it showed up at my door it and it was perfect for this look! any rose-goldy type powder will suffice!

i then tightlined the top of my lids with urban decay's ink for eyes in demolition (my *favorite* creamy brown liner, its gorgeous!) to keep the look defined but still soft. i filled in demolition on my bottom lashline with a pencil brush and applied urban decay's 24/7 pencil in stash to my waterline.

stash is a great muddy green/gold color and functions to make my hazel eyes look more amber. you could also substitute baked or el dorado pencils if you wanted a more obvious gold tone. i finished it all off with one coat of diorshow iconic mascara for length and one coat of diorshow blackout for drama.

for lips, i was desparate to mitigate the sheerness of ms. behavin because though i love the color, i just wanted more!

the perfect solution: MAC lip liner in vino. i first lined my lips precisely with vino and then filled in with the pencil and smudged it to stain my lips, applying ms. behavin with a flocked lipgloss brush for that just bitten smile!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

the law school manicure

so one of my favorite college luxuries were bi-monthly manis and pedis at the fabulous east bay nail spa in the beautiful charleston, south carolina.

with the dawning of my law school era, i neither have time nor money for regular manis and pedis :( cue my broken heart!

however, i believe i have discovered the perfect way to fake it on your own!

i like to call it: the law school manicure.

step 1: lush's lemony flutter cuticle butter. i try to apply this every other day to my cuticles and sometimes to the rest of my hands as well to fight back against my constant purell-ing.











step 2: orly's bonder basecoat. it's rubberized and i really have found that it holds polish on longer/prevents chipping. which is fabulous, because there is nothing i hate more than a chipped fingernail! i'd rater be polish-free!









step 3: a fabulous nail color! this week, i'm rocking china glaze's let's groove but i think i'm about to switch it up to OPI by sephora super-limited glam bronze, 212 sephora.
























students and recessionistas, rejoice!