Saturday, September 27, 2008

get this: wet n wild ultimate expressions (paradise cove)

i know what you're thinking...it's not mac. but it ROCKS! the big fall trends seem to be purples, plums, and browns, and this palette has it all. i use the heck out of the browns in the middle, the light purple on the left, and the brown in the top right corner. here is a better pic...and because i am not a thief, i found it at shimmer kisser by way of makeupalley. (not the lipstick and the mascara, obvi.) i use this thing all the time...not bad for about $5. btw, shimmer kisser has a few looks using this palette, and a much better camera than me.

is it that serious?

i've gotten a plethora of comments on my hair in the past few days, most of them on thursday in the span of about an hour. first i saw my friend's roomie - maybe i should point out that this is a girl whose hair i have admired since first year...and she was in awe of my hair. as in she was touching it, asking me how i get it to "do that", and sighing because she wants to go natural, or something like that. wow, what a feeling. second, my TA said something in class related to the fact that when my doctor sent in an email last week to get my absences excused, she knew it was me because she couldn't look at my hair the class period i was out. i got another comment later in the day...and rats, i forgot what it was about. today i was at a community service event in richmond and a friend of mine asked me why i was natural. i mean, just out of the clear blue sky, like she had been thinking about it all morning. once i explained it, we got into a LONG discussion about hair. i've known for a while that she does her own hair, and two of her roomies run a pseudo-beauty shop out of their apartment, and while her hair doesn't necessarily look damaged, talking with her made me realize that maybe i'm not looking at the bigger picture.

our conversation mainly revolved around her 4th roomie, who is natural (and coincidentally, a friend of mine on fotki). she spent a long time ragging her hair, saying things like "why do you have all that hair and not do anything with it", "she always gets long straight tracks although she could just do that to her own hair...so she must not really want to be natural", "i don't understand why she washes her hair every day cause that can't be healthy", and a lot of other things that made me go...uhhhhh....and after a while, i started feeling like captain-save-a-head when i was forced to interject with my opinion. what's worse is the other girl at the table with us is actually going natural (which i didn't know), and she had questions she wanted to ask me, but couldn't because of motormouth making her feel uncomfortable. girl b (just seems like a good thing to call her) has kinky twists, and i was able to ascertain that she wants to BC in december, her mom has been natural for 2 years, and she is scared but excited to do it. she was subsequently discouraged from going for a long transition by girl a since "it's bad to have two textures", and of course since i had a 12-month transition i let her know what the deal was. i guess all-in-all it wasn't anything i've never heard before, so perhaps it's who it was coming from...i just thought she knew better than to say some of the things she was saying. oh, and of course when she mentioned her roommate "has so much expensive hair sh*t cause she goes on these natural hair chat sites"...yeah she was talking about LHCF...i almost lost it. luckily i realized it wasn't really a big deal, and i simply said i look on the internet for help as well, not to mention i have more hair products than the ethnic aisle at wal-mart. then i laughed it off.

wanna know the icing on the cake? "i want to go natural, but..." i won't even bore you with the rest. just know that it's along the lines of my-hair-won't-grow. ohhhh how the tables have turned.

let's lighten the mood with a FOTD pic or two. believe it or not, that's the same eye in two different lightings. in real life, it's a purple smoky eye i copied from DRBrooklyn's creamsheen haul vid. excuse my crappy camera till i get a new one for my bday by using your imagination.

face: select cover-up concealer; SFF; true romantic blush; MSF in light flush
eye: wet n wild paradise cove palette (see next entry) - light purple on inner half, brown on outer half and brows, light tan highlight; brown HiP cream liner; too faced lash injection mascara
lips: NYC ultra moist lip wear in petal; ulta super shiny lipgloss in goddess

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

back to business!

i guess there's really no way to do it but to jump back into it...i'm back!

i had all these really great blog ideas over the past month but the inconsistent internet access made it kinda hard to put em into words...but no worries, everything is great now. i'm starting to reach my goals: my skin has cleared up dramatically (now it's all about tackling battle scars), my hair is just about SL unstretched, and i am still thinking i can make APL by my birthday! (well...if not...oh well!) i feel great, despite the fact that my sickle cell reared its ugly head last week and i was out of commission for a whole 5 days. friends (and a new godson - welcome, jordan!) do a world of wonders.

but that's not what you wanna hear...you wanna talk hair, makeup, skin care, fashion. i've officially become a mac-head after staying on youtube with the limited 'net access i have...it's all due to fafinettex3 and the beautiful DRBrooklyn730 - these girls always give me great ideas and product suggestions! my current mac stash is pretty small, but ever since i discovered there is a cosmetics company outlet (CCO) in the prime outlets at williamsburg it is a W-R-A-P on that. it accumulated pretty quickly, and my intent is to review it all:
  • mac studio fix fluid, NC42
  • mac select cover-up concealer, NC42
  • mac beauty powder blush, true romantic
  • mac beauty powder blush, feeling
  • mac mineralize skin finish, light flush
  • mac 187 brush
  • mac fix+
  • mac paint pot in rubenesque
no eyeshadows yet, but only because a) i want to use up what i have first and b) i have an addiction to HiP shadow duos. i haven't even opened the gunmetal one i bought last month, and HiP is BOGO at CVS this week, so i anticipate adding some more of these bad boys to my collection. another discovery: the creme liners are superb, especially since i bought an art store brush and ditched that crappy thing they call a brush that came with them. oh yeah...guess i'll be doing an entry on my brush collection too, if for no other reason than to plug my 187, the brush of all brushes. i'm so excited about this thing and i've had it about 2 or 3 weeks now...yes it's that serious. (in the meantime, here's a hint: get it from the CCO! it's so much cheaper!) i am in a state of makeup bliss, and i hope i can get the hang of this pic thing and post some EOTDs or FOTDs. i was especially pleased with the one from today - err, yesterday - so if i can get better pics i'll put those up to. now i'm off to check for blog and YT updates....i mean, go to bed so i can wake up early and study.