Stila Color Wheel: Lavender Look (dry brush)

I'm continuing to experiment with my Stila Color Wheel and loving all the combinations!  Today, I tried out the Lavender Look.  The three colors used are White, Lavender, and Eggplant.  These colors are located at 8:00 on the color wheel:

The Lookbook specified to use a wet brush when picking up the shadows.  The look is very bold and dramatic, which I feel is more of a night time look.  I just wanted a simple day time look, so I used a dry brush instead of a wet brush.  Here is what the Lavender Look looks like when used with a WET brush:

When I dry brushed the shadow, the results were more of a soft smoky grey eye that was perfect for day time wear.  As you can see, the difference between using a wet brush and a dry brush is huge:

 Average White Girl recipe for the Stila Color Wheel Lavender Look:

1. Prime eyes with Urban Decay Primer Potion.
2. Apply White from lash line to brow bone.
3. Apply Lavender to lid and blend up into crease
4. Apply Eggplant along lash line and blend into crease up toward brow bone.
5. Apply Eggplant along the lower lash line about 2/3 the way from the outside corner to the inside corner of the eye.
6. Apply Lavender around the inside corner of the eye and along the lower lash line to blend into the Eggplant.
7. Apply Benefit High Brow just under brow arch and blend.
8. In this example, I used Maybelline Eye Studio Lasting Drama Gel Eyeliner in Blackest Black to line my lids.  Using this product will be a topic of a future post.  I absolutely LOVE this product.  It requires practice and a steady hand, but I love the results I get from it more than any other pencil eyeliner or felt tip pen liner out there.  I DID NOT use the brush that came with the product.  I used the Sephora angled liner brush #15, which works like a charm.  
9. Curl lashes and apply a generous coat of your favorite black mascara to upper and lower lashes.

This is a nice way to show off the winged liner I like to create with the gel liner.  The shadows are pigmented enough to provide a nice soft smoke day time look, yet light enough to really showcase that perfect winged liner.

I'll do the wet brush Lavender Look in a future post to showcase a great night time look.  Until then, I hope you all enjoy this fun look!

Stila Colorwheel: Rose look

I recently purchased the Stila Color Wheel, and I absolutely LOVE it!

It was offered as a limited edition eyeshadow palette for Holiday 2010.  It's an awesome buy, because you get 37 shadows plus a 16-page step-by-step Lookbook to show you how to create endless awe-inspiring combinations for both day and night.  The color wheel was offered for about $38, but I lucked out and got it on sale at Sephora for about $27.  I really like Stila cosmetics.  I've always been impressed with the high pigmentation of their shadows.


I tried out one of the color combinations in the Lookbook called the rose look.  Here's what it looks like in the Lookbook:

Colors used are the three at the 10:00 mark on the color wheel:  Pale Pink, Dusty Rose, and Aubergine.


This is a nice neutral, daytime look.  I put my own spin on the look by making it a little more edgy:

 Average White Girl recipe for the Stila Color Wheel rose look:

1. Prime eyes with Urban Decay Primer Potion.
2. Apply Pale Pink from lash line to brow bone.
3. Apply Dusty Rose to lid and blend up into crease
4. Apply Aubergine along lash line and blend into crease up toward brow bone.
5. Apply Aubergine along the lower lash line about 2/3 the way from the outside corner to the inside corner of the eye.
6. Apply Pale Pink around the inside corner of the eye and along the lower lash line to blend into the Aubergine.
7. Apply Benefit High Brow just under brow arch and blend.
8. Use Lorac Front of the Line PRO in black to line above lash line.  I like to create a small wing on the outside corners of my eyes for my daytime look.
9. Apply Palladio Glitter Eye pencil in Black Sparkle over the Lorac liner to add an extra touch of glamour and sparkle.
10. Curl lashes and apply a generous coat of your favorite black mascara to upper and lower lashes.

This look was simple to create, and it's a nice way to showcase manicured brows, long thick lashes, and the vintage pin-up feel the winged liner creates.  I hope you enjoy my take on the Stila Color Wheel rose look!  

Rosacea Regimen: Philosophy Purity wash and Mario Badescu Control Cream

So if you read my first post, you already know I have rosacea.  For anyone who isn't familiar, rosacea is a disorder of the skin prominent in light-skinned people of Irish-Celtic and Western European origin.  It is characterized by sudden dilation of capillaries along with heat (flushing), redness, and sometimes pustules and papules.  Due to the flushing of the facial skin, the sebaceous glands are stimulated and follicles irritated which causes red papules and pustules on the chin, cheek, and nose areas.  Trigger factors include anything from exercise, hot or spicy foods and beverages, alcohol consumption, skin care products, sun exposure, extreme warms or cold temperatures, to emotional stress.  This sudden flushing of blood to the face triggers a release of a biochemical in the skin called VFG, or Vascular Growth Factor which triggers the growth of new blood vessels, especially in the skin.  This further increases the chance of flushing making this skin disorder self-perpetuating. 


I don't know if it was coincidental timing for me, but my rosacea was triggered after I gave birth to my first child.  It probably had something to do with the extreme levels of hormones after pregnancy.  So I've been struggling with it for nearly 7 years now.  It started out as mild redness on my cheeks.  Then I started getting the bumps below the skin, which make my skin look rough and uneven.  It has evolved into pustules all over my cheeks and around my nostrils.  It's hard to treat, because I feel like I need to wash my face a lot to get rid of the pustules and oiliness.  But then my skin gets dried out, and the sebaceous glands produce even more oil to try to protect my enraged skin.  I have a very oily T zone while my cheeks and nostril areas are dry and flaky.  My face is actually hot to the touch, and the skin has become thick and bumpy.

I tried the pulsed dye laser treatment (PDL), as my dermatologist said this would be the only effective way to get relief from the condition.  This after I tried the usual course of antibiotics, pills, and creams with none of them helping at all.  The PDL treatment cost $1300 to do my entire face.  I was expecting to go in and get one treatment and have it be all better.  But I had to go back every month for the PDL for a little over a year before it was entirely gone.  It was explained to me that the laser cauterizes the small blood vessels under the skin that grew as a result of the VFG release.  The treatment itself was pretty horrible.  I had to wear special goggles, since the laser is so bright.  Since it's a pulse, it does a spot, stops, does a spot, stops, etc.  Every time it pulsed, it felt like someone was snapping me on the face with a rubber band as hard as possible.  It was almost impossible not to flinch while he worked the delicate area just below my eye skin.  The PDL caused bruising and swelling for a couple days afterwards.  It sort of looked like I got the crap beat out of me, which was even more embarrassing than the rosacea.  Finally, the redness was gone, along with most of the pustules.  But 18 months later, it's back and worse than ever.  It's frustrating.  I'm not sure what triggers it, because the list of triggers seems to be just about anything and everything.  I rarely drink alcohol, because that is probably my worst trigger.  That and spicy food and hot beverages.  And when I exercise and start sweating, guess what?  Flare up.

So a friend told me about a product made by Mario Badescu called Control Cream.  It's especially for the treatment of rosacea, and it contains Peru Balsam, which is a soothing botanical ingredient.  Ulta carries the entire line of Mario Badescu products, and I had heard great things about their acne line, so I figured I'd give it a try.

When I went to Ulta, I didn't wear makeup so the skin care lady could see what I'm dealing with.  She asked what I was washing with.  When I told her the orange Neutrogena salicylic acid wash, she about had a heart attack.  She said that stuff is way too drying for rosacea and suggested I try the Philosophy Purity daily cleanser.  It's made with all natural ingredients, plus it's made right here in Phoenix.

The MB Control Cream is $30 for a one ounce jar.  The Philosophy Purity wash is $20 for an 8 ounce bottle.  A little goes a long way with both of these items.

Here is the scary/brave part for me:  pictures of my skin with no makeup on.  I'm doing this to show you the severity of what I'm going through and to also see day by day progress with this skincare regimen.

These two pictures are each cheek before trying the MB and Philosophy products:

Day 1 of using the new products.  Sorry about the different lighting.  You can't really tell a difference.  I've learned to take pictures in the same spot at the same time of day to be able to adequately compare:

Day 2:  slightly less redness and congestion.  I've noticed the pustules aren't as numerous.

It's been about a week now that I've been using the Control Cream:

So far, the results are exceeding my expectations.  To see visible results on only the second day of treatment is great!  I'll keep posting pictures as the days go by.  I'm hopeful that these products are going to work.  I don't expect perfection, but I'll just be happy to have some relief from the embarrassing redness and pustules.

In a future post, I'll discuss my foundation/concealer routine that works best for me for maximum redness coverage.

Beauty Rhetoric

This is my first post.  Of my first blog.  I have so many other things on my plate right now.  Why do I want to do a blog?  Well, my first rule is that I'm not going to stress about doing the blog, because then it becomes a task, and tasks make me procrastinate and become complicated.  So I'll do this when I feel like it.  I'm going to stick to beauty as the main topic.  I like wearing makeup.  I like experimenting with colors and products.  I'm just an average white girl living the dream.  I watch a lot of makeup tutorial videos on YouTube.  Most of the girls who do these  have lots of practice and experience, because they're trained, professional cosmetologists.  I am not a professional cosmetologist.  But I think I do a pretty decent job at my makeup.  So I want to show you from an average white girl perspective how to do different types of eyes, lips, etc. based on what I learn from these videos.  In other words, I'll show you how easy...or hard....great....or horrible makeup can look when done by an everyday person.  I'm going to break down the beauty rhetoric.


The "white girl" thing is not racist, so stop.  I am an average white girl.  My ancestry is primarily from Celtic origins.  Thus, my skin is very fair.  Actually, I have severe rosacea.  It's so bad that if I go out without makeup, people look at me like they're wondering what happened to my face.  It's really embarrassing, and I hate it.  I tried the $1000+ laser treatment, but that only provided relief for about 18 months.  I'm willing to try anything to get it better, so I'll discuss regimens on what I've tried so you don't have to waste money on stuff that doesn't work. 


Anyhow, back to average white girl.  So yeah, I'm a white girl.  And I think I'm pretty average.  I live a middle class, suburban, white girl life.  I go to Target.  I eat baby carrots.  I watch Tosh.0.  I have two awesome kids and a great husband.  I'm a stay-at-home mom.  I bake cookies.  I do laundry.  I clean toilets.  I vacuum a lot.  I scoop kitty litter.  I take the trash out every Sunday night.  Pretty average.


I like to experiment with my hair.  I've been doing this since the 6th grade when Mr. Scherer, my 6th grade home room teacher, challenged me to cut my hair that had grown down to the middle of my back.  He said he'd buy me a can of Coke.  I was a nothing back then.  Okay, so I was the smartest girl in my class every year.  And the tallest.  But aside from that, I was nothing.  Nobody knew who I was.  Nobody cared who I was.  Something about that day when Mr. Scherer challenged me to cut my hair lit something within me.  It was a reason to change myself and be who I wanted to be, not so much the person that society wanted me to be.  So I cut it short.  I remember people in class staring at me, because they couldn't believe I had done it.  He gave me that can of Coke.  In 1984, short hair on girls was strange and different.  I started associating myself with the whole new-wave music scene.  I started wearing strange clothes (by Indiana standards).  I realized people began to notice me.  I began to be made fun of.  A lot.  But who cares, because people knew who I was.  I was something other than tallest and smartest.  I was weirdest.  And I liked it.


I also like making my own jewelry and hair accessories.  I like making stuff for my friends to wear.  So you may see some of that on here as well.  One of these days, I'll sell my own jewelry on Etsy.  But one thing at a time.


So this is my little intro for my blog.  I'm technically challenged, so I don't know how to make it look pretty or create my own banner or anything like that.  I think it looks okay the way it is for now.  


My first few posts will be about a beauty regimen I'm doing right now for my rosacea.  I have a before picture of my skin, then I'll post pics of my skin daily as it responds to the products.  No makeup or anything.  I'm brave.  I'm average.  I'm hitting the publish button with some mild trepidation.  Here we go.