No Make Up Week

As someone who very much believes in giving the world the best Rosie possible, I usually wear makeup. I feel more comfortable and confident when I'm wearing it, and for these reasons I'm far more outgoing and happy. Even though I tell myself I wear it for positive reasons, it's been over two years since I spent any meaningful amounts of time around my peers without my face painted.

I don't wear much, just some concealer, eyeliner and mascara, but every morning, I carefully paint it on. I can tell myself that it's self expression all I want, it doesn't change the fact that it has become a borderline addiction.

When I found out about No Make Up Week, I was both excited and fearful. I was excited because I know it will be an amazing experiment, and I'm sure I will feel differently about makeup after, but afraid because I honestly don't know if I can do it. I'm so used to painting over the little imperfections that it will be very strange to show my self to the world.

Do you wear make up? Will you try No Make Up Week?

Love,
Rosie

Mad As A Hatter Makeup

Today is the last day in my Alice in Wonderland week, and I did a sort of interpretation of the Mad Hatter's makeup.

This is what you will need:

lime green eyeshadow

bright purple eyeshadow

black liquid eyeliner 

black mascara

whatever foundation/concealer you usually wear+the lip gloss/lip stick of your choice 

When I thought about the Mad Hatter and his eyes, it wasn't the crazy make up that I really remembered, it was the bright green eyes. Since I don't have any lime green contacts, and I doubt many of you have easy access to them, I decided to cover the lid with green eyeshadow instead, so it flashes a bit when you blink. Here's how to get the look:

1. Apply whatever makeup you are going to put on your skin. This is the step where I put on concealer. I also put on a bit of barely tinted lip gloss at this point.

2. Use a sponge applicator to pat the lime green shadow all the way up to the crease of your eyelid, but not into it. Make sure you get a nice intense colour.

3. Use a small angle brush (I used my MAC #266) to apply a fairly heavy line of purple into the crease. Using the same brush, apply a line of purple to the bottom lash line, getting a bit thicker at the outside corner.

4. Use a sponge to pat the purple eyeshadow up in the outer corner in the eye.

5. Apply a thin line of black liquid eyeliner to your upper lash line. I used the liquid liner for my waterline, because it gives a crisper, darker line. You could use an ordinary pencil liner for the waterline though.

6. Finish off the look with your mascara of choice. (I'm wearing Maybelline's Lash Stiletto (for length) and CoverGirl's Lash Blast (for volume).) 

What do you think? Would you consider wearing makeup like this for an "ordinary" day?

Love, Rosie

Product Review: Green Beaver Lip Shimmer in Bordeaux

 I decided to rearrange the schedule for this weeks post a bit, it just ended up being that the post scheduled today wasn't really ready enough to be published. Instead, I'm reviewing Green Beaver Lip Shimmer in Bordeaux.

To start, these are my lips without anything on them:

And now, my lips with several very carefully applied coat of the lip shimmer:

Now, on to the review;

Colour: I like the colour. It's not the very dark red that the packaging and product led me to believe it would be, but it's a nice colour. I was hoping it would give me gorgeous dark lips like the White Queen:

Even if it didn't give me the colour I wanted, it was still a lovely colour.

Quality: This stuff is AMAZING. I like it just as much as the Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer I have been using for over a year. It is moisturizing and healing and protecting and all sorts of lovely things. That being said, my lips are in very good condition to start, so there wasn't much to be done.

Packaging: This is where everything falls apart. Honestly, my Burt's Bees Lip Shimmers come in bright yellow packaging, this stuff is lime green. They are fun, but it must be possible to get all natural,  good quality lip shimmers in understated packaging. My big problem with the packaging though is that the thing to make the stick of lip shimmer come up farther doesn't work. Sorry about how vague it is, but what I'm trying to say is that once I wore it down to the plastic, I can't make it come up any farther. I don't know if mine is faulty or they are all like this, but I'm pretty mad. I would wear this stuff everyday, but I can't get any out!

Over all, the actual product is amazing, but the packaging is a bit annoying. I will definitely be buying it again though.

Thoughts? Requests?

Love, Rosie

PS: Ages and ages ago, I wrote a guest post on the blog at ChapOAir, a site that helps you find Cheap Flights. If you want to listen (err... read me) ramble on backpacking stylishly, please check it out.

Mega Volume: life and mascara

Life in Rosieland has been pretty much insane lately, I've been so busy with theatre that I've barely been able to keep up with my homework, and forget about actually having interest. The result of all this is that I pretty much haven't had time to blog over the past week, and next week will be worse. It's not that I want to push TtW to the side, it's just that real* people and real commitments have to come first sometimes.

In other news, I bought Covergirl's LashBlast mega volume mascara in black brown today, and I love it. My only problem is that it's a lot closer to black than brown, but that's fine. Ok, I have a second problem, but it's not with the product. I don't really like the package. It's big and chunky and bright orange. I much prefer Maybelline's Lash Stiletto for packaging, but the actual mascara isn't as nice, in my opinion.

Thoughts? Requests?

Love, Rosie

*Not that you all aren't real, it's just that I have sort of two lives: my online life, and my "real"life, with people I have met in person.

Multi-Coloured Black Hair

After my henna-indigo dye experiment, my mummy surprised me with some semi-permanent, sort of natural, black hair dye. A family friend came over to help me put it in, and by friday my hair was black.

I absolutely adore it! This may sound sort of strange, but I sort of feel that I was meant to have black hair. I love my natural colour, but I think that if hair colour were based on personality, I would have glittering black hair with strands of all sorts of colours mixed in. At a glance it would be black, but when you really looked, it would be made up of every colour in the rainbow.

What colour would your hair be if it were based on personality? Do you like your natural colour?

Love, Rosie

PS: If you read my other blog, Exposure Extraordinaire, you probably already saw this photo, but I haven't taken more yet.

New Hair!

Some of you asked for pictures of my new hair. Well, here is my hair:

If you wanted pictures where you could see it in relation to my face, you are out of luck for the moment because I seem to be developing a cold and I don't want anyone thinking I am a clown. Strangely, I am wearing what I refer to as my clown pants today, but that's fairly irrelevant.

Thoughts? Requests?

Love, Rosie

Opps: Accidents with Dye

I had a really great post planned for today. I was going to unveil my new hair. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed some tweets about buying supplies and panicked tweets about coverage. I had decided that today was the day, I was going to dye my hair black. Armed with plastic gloves, a shower cap and a package of henna-indigo hair dye from my local health food store, I set about the process.

This is where our valiant hero (me) encounters an obstacle. You see, applying green goop that smells like freshly cut hay and has the consistency of a cream soup to one's own head is difficult. Trying to do so without coating the house in the fore mentioned goop leads to holding ones hair upside down over the bath tub.

Which is how the hair directly next to my face and the very bottom layer on the back of my head came to be several shades darker, with a slight green tint, while the top back of my head is still light brownish.

According to my mother, who came home after all this, it isn't terrible, and I have to agree. My father didn't even notice until my sister informed him that "Rosie had dyed her hair a ghastly colour." She can be excused because she's little though, and he was wearing fogged up glasses.

Sorry about the text heavy, some what dreary post, I was going to post pictures, but the flash makes my hair look bright blue and it's too dark to use natural/normal indoor light.

Love, Rosie

Product Review: Maybelline's Mineral Power Concealer

After a concealer disaster on Tuesday, I immediately went out and bought a new one, better suited to my skin tone. Ok, so I didn't have time till Thursday evening, but immediately sounds way better than two days later.

ANYWAYS, after hemming and hawing for a good ten minutes, I decided on Maybelline's Mineral Power Concealer in fair (0-1). It claims to have "Healthy perfecting coverage" and "creamy texture" that's "never cakey or heavy".

I wore it today, and as some one who has tried many different concealers, I can confidently say that for me, this is the best one I have used. It lasted all day with only very minimal touch ups, it blended amazingly with my skin tone, it wasn't too heavy and I barely noticed.

I'm not going to go so far as to say I have found the Holy Grail of concealers, because I don't believe their is one*, but I may have found a concealer I will stick with for a while.

Thoughts? Requests?

Love, Rosie

* Since everyone's skin is different, there can be no concealer that will be perfect for everyone.

PS: Virtual cookies if you go check out Exposure Extraordinaire, my new photography blog!

Over worked and over tired

I learned something today. It wasn't about la Théorème des Facteurs (math class), about the weather (science class), about women in WW2 (history), about short stories (French), or about cameras (tech).

Today, I discovered, that it is in fact very, very important to take the little stickers on concealer packages that tell you if it is for warm or cool skin seriously. As I happened to glance in the mirror in the school bathroom today, I noticed that my new concealer looked terrible. Sleepy eyes and warm lighting in my bedroom had let me leave the house with make up that wouldn't blend nicely with my skin tone!

Moral of the story: Read the label.

Thoughts? Requests?

Love, Rosie

(Sorry if that made no sense. I am in the stage between normal and adrenaline, I call it over tired and over worked.)

Beauty Trends for 2010 (I hope)

This post was planned for yesterday, the second, but just before I could start writing, the power flickered and we had to unplug the airport, so no Internet. Consequentially, the yesterday referred to in the text is actually January 1.

Yesterday evening, I sent out a tweet asking for post ideas. Hanako66 suggested trend predictions for 2010. I had already written and published a post, but I loved the idea. I spent a good part of today trolling Style.com, looking at pictures from the Spring/Summer ’10 collections, more specifically, looking at the beauty section. After much thought, I chose three looks I would love to see become more wide spread.

Chanel:

I love the simple, natural looking makeup and hair, paired with glitzy hairpieces and jewelry. The natural look appeared in several shows, but I found that Chanel pulled it off the best. All the others looked like they were trying a bit too hard, and they ended up looking like caricatures, in my opinion.

Christian Dior:

I also adored the vintage inspired lips and hair, combined with bright eyeshadow and dramatic lashes that we saw at Christian Dior. At first I was on the hedge about it, I found it a bit much, but it’s really growing on me.

Versace:

The carefree rocker chic look used by Versace is another favourite of mine, the bold eyes and dewy lips are simply amazing, in my opinion. I may be crazy, but I feel that these looks capture the devil-may-care attitude that is so often portrayed in pop culture (and that I secretly want to find).

What is your favourite makeup style for 2010? What do you think will become the most widespread?

Thoughts? Requests?

Love, Rosie

(All photos courtesy of Style.com)