Manolo for the Beauty

Oh, how I resisted jumping on the NARS blush bandwagon.  I mean, everybody was doing it and I didn’t buy one just to be ornery.

Instead of proudly standing against the crowd, I found out I was just plain stupid.

Seriously the best blush I’ve ever used.

The color is described on Sephora as a “peachy pink” sans shimmer, which is what I was looking for.  On the website, the color swatch looks more intense than the uber famous Orgasm, which is also what I was looking for.  My medium, olive-y skin takes color well and light blushes look silly on me.

So with trepidation I ordered Amour, and wore it for the first time to a party and could not believe how wonderful it looked.  It was natural-looking but gave me a perfect glow.  It is also eminently buildable, for as dramatic a look as you want.

It wore very well throughout the night with zero touchups, but I also attribute that to my great powder and the fact that it was cold.

I would totally recommend this blush to pretty much anyone.

As I continue the inexorable aging process, I have come to find that matte lipsticks are the enemy.  The older I get, the chalkier they look against my skin, and that is a look that does me absolutely no favors.

Enter Dior Addict.

I recently purchased this product in Diorkiss, which is billed as a “sheer dark pink.”

Why yes, yes it was.

But what I like most about this lipstick is its reflective properties.  I adore the shimmer this product imparts, and nary a fleck of sparkle anywhere.

To me, this is the major drawback with the flecked lipsticks, wherein the flecks tend to migrate after a while.  Like, to right on my chin.  I love the way they look, but not necessarily after eating a sandwich.  Maybe it’s just me?

Which brings me back to Diorkiss.  This particular lipstick shade has no flecks, the shine is all from whatever secret (and with my luck, probably toxic) material they put into it.

But I love it still.

Due to its light nature, this product can and will wear off sooner than a matte lipstick.

It’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make.

And here to start your holiday weekend off right, I’ve got my pick of the top ten guyliner videos ever made.

Now, just because some dude WORE eyeliner does not qualify him to be on this list.  If that was my main criteria, then every hair band from the 80′s would make an appearance.

No, the song and the videos have to have that something special according to Glinda.

Feel free to disagree with me.

But I’m totally right.

In no particular order:

I thought I’d start it off with a bit of a bang.  I present to you the special brand of crazy that is Ozzy Osborne performing with Black Sabbath.

No list like this would be complete without a Mr. David Bowie.  I know this isn’t his first video with makeup by any means, but I think it’s probably the most entertaining/headscratching one. Oh, and embedding is disabled on Space Oddity, so there’s that.

Again, not a correct list without KISS.  Not necessarily a huge fan of theirs, but I do like this song.  I’m going to try and ignore the chest hair.

Ask not how the members of Culture Club know how to fly a plane and just enjoy.  They look like they are having a lot of fun.

I dare you to think of The Cure without seeing Robert Smith and his guyliner.

To see the rest, click through!

(more…)

I was on the lookout for a daily treatment that would help even out my skin tone and possibly quicken some skin cell turnover.   I decided that ultimately I wasn’t totally happy with the Boots I had been using, and sometimes I like to change it up for no good reason.

So I found myself purchasing the  Bare Escentuals Skin Rev-er Upper, (Which is a pain to type, by the way. Also, each time I have typed it out, I spelled it Sin Rev-er Upper so maybe there’s something wrong with me) and have been very happy with the results.  Since I use Bare Minerals as my foundation, I figured it was worth attempting, as this product is also meant to act as a sort of primer for the powder.

I’ve used it for about three weeks now, and have noticed a bunch of wonderful things.  My pores are a bit less noticeable, I have fewer breakouts and anything that happens to crop up is gone the next day, and my skin tone is more even. It is light, non-oily, and even seems to control my shiny tendencies, perfect for the upcoming hot months.

I have absolutely no drawbacks to to discuss about this product.

Add the fact that this item is not a bank-breaker, and I think I’ve found The One.

I bought a lipstick that cost $46.00 freaking dollars.

And I didn’t regret the purchase for even one nanosecond.

And that’s really all you need to know, isn’t it?

Some of you may have noticed an option in this weeks Beauty Poll that addressed the blue nail polish the model was wearing, rather than the orange makeup trend.

Every time I look at this site, my eyes actually gloss right over that orange eyeshadow and go directly to the nails. 

I became, uh, a little obessessed about it.

I thought it would be the perfect color for my little tootsies as Easter is just around the corner.

Luckily for me, the credits on the photo are rather large, and I was easily able to tell the color was from my fave nail polish company, OPI.

And yee-haw, after searching for a while, I finally found the color!   I was almost ready to peg the color as “Breathe Life” after seeing it on the OPI website, but thanks to the numerous nail polish review sites, I was able to see that Breathe Life has a shimmer, whereas this one is totally flat.

It is called “I Vant to be A-Lone Star” and it is part of the Texas collection.  In my completely unprofessional opinion, I think this color would look lovely on almost any skin tone.

Me vant!

What can I say, I’m a bar-soap in the shower kind of gal.

Even with all the bajillions of liquid soap options out there for me, I prefer a to use a bar, period.  Based on the bar soap to liquid soap ratio I see on store shelves, I’m a dying breed.

Up until very recently, I’ve used whatever bar soap they carried at Costco, mostly some version of Dove.

But unlike years past, my skin would be dry and flaky (oh the joys of getting older) and I just didn’t feel totally clean.  I always felt like there was some sort of residue on me, and don’t tell me to use the liquid soaps, because those are even worse.

Enter Dr. Bronner’s.

This soap, it changed my life.

Full disclosure, I am an unpaid products tester for a PR firm that deals with all-natural products.  Well, I get paid in products, but not cash.  One day I was sent a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Castile Soap in its liquid form.  I used it because even though I dislike liquid soap, the agreement was that I try it out and rate it.  And try it out, I did.

Religious and other rantings on the label aside, I am inloooove. 

You are skeptical.  I can sense it.  In love with a soap, eh Glinda?

I have never used a liquid soap that smelled so wonderful and produced so much lather.  Nor made me feel almost obscenely clean.  And despite my recent Dove habit, I’ve used some pretty expensive soaps in my time. Warning, though, if you use the Peppermint on your private areas, it will make them tingle.  And not necessarily in a good way.  Not in an “oh-god-shoot-me-now” way but more like a “damn-I-need-to-rinse-this-stuff-off-ASAP” kind of way.  Once it is off,  though, its off and there are no ill after-effects.

So after trying the liquid, I found out the soap also comes in bars. The heavens opened up and the angels trumpeted and smiled indulgently as me as I eagerly bought the almond version.   I adore almond scent and nobody makes anything with an almond scent any more.  At least, not that I can easily find.

The aromatherapy aspect is reduced with the bar soap, but it is every bit as effective. You can use it to shave, and I assure you it is just as good if not better than using a product like Skintimates or something similar.  You can use it on your face in a pinch as well, although I wouldn’t personally recommend it for every day.  It comes in many scents, including lavender and citrus and one especially for babies, which I am so totally going to buy for my toddler once I use up the California Baby stuff I’m currently on. Oh yeah, and you can wash your floors and veggies with it too. 

Now, let me get a little TMI with you.  If you don’t want to read anything vaguely TMI, skip the next sentence or two.  I have always been self-conscious about my lady-bits and any smells that emanate from that area.   It seemed that no matter how much I cleansed, some kind of smell would eventually arrive.  Can I tell you that this soap has stopped that IN ITS TRACKS.  My lady garden now smells like NOTHING.  It is amazing.  I cannot promise that it will do for you what it did for me, but I swear I will never stop using this soap. 

And my veggies have never smelled better, either.

I take this makeup so much for granted that it took me this long to post about it. 

I have used foundation for forever, since as a teen I was acne-prone.  Actually, since I played sports it was probably a bad idea to wear foundation while playing/practicing, but it was one of those escalating situations where the more I wore, the more I needed to wear it to cover everything up. 

Yeah, I never said I was a particularly bright teenager.

If only the Bare Escentuals line had been around back then!

I love everything about this stuff.  I love how it blends flawlessly, how effortlessly matte it makes my skin look, its staying power, the SPF, the fact that under my eyes I no longer look like this. Or possibly worse, this, from overcompensation.

I can’t tell you how frustrating it was to find liquid foundation and undereye concealer that matched perfectly. The only one that came close was Prescriptives Custom Blend Foundation, but it was pricey and once I tried the mineral makeup, I never bought it again.  I’ve been wearing Bare Escentuals now for about five years, and you will have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands before I stop using it.  This is despite the fact that now that I am getting older, all the advice tells me I should be switching to a liquid foundation.  Bah! Never again, says crone-Glinda!

I find that people come in basically two camps about Bare Escentuals. 

Either they love it passionately, or they hate it with the fire of a thousand suns.

Are you a convert?

My love for lipstick is well known, but in the past, I have tended to avoid lip gloss at all cost.  My thoughts on gloss are that it usually feels sticky and it goes away much too fast to make it worth buying over lipstick.

Well, Guerlain’s KissKiss Gloss has sort of changed that.  There was a Guerlain makeup artist at Sephora the day I went, and he convinced me to give the Gloss a try after I proclaimed my adoration for their MaxiShine  lipstick.  I even allowed him to apply it to my lips, which took a lot for me because I can get a little germphobic.

To my great surprise, he wasn’t lying when he said that it would not feel sticky.  I felt not one iota of stickiness and it imparted a beautiful, iridescent sheen to my previously applied Dior lipstick.  It made me want to buy it, and like the woman with a makeup obsession I am, I did.  I purchased #868, which is Opal Pearl and described as a shimmering opalescent pink.

Looking back, is $30 too pricey for a lip gloss? Probably.  Even though it’s the best lip gloss I’ve ever had the pleasure of owning, it’s still a lip gloss and it does wear off faster than any lipstick.

But I tell myself that since it was off a gift card, I wasn’t really wasting my own money.   

Right?

Uhhh, please tell me that rationalization isn’t a sign of addiction.

*Just so you know, all things I review on Things I Love were bought with my own funds.  If I were to receive a product for review, I would make it a point to let you know that I did not purchase it myself.

One of the things I hate most about my oily skin is that makeup tends to, ahem, slide a bit by the end of the day.  What started out perfect in the morning looks streaky by midday and might as well not even be there by evening.

Hourglass Veil Mineral Primer to the rescue.

I had doubts about this product, to be sure.  I had doubts that it was better than Make Up For Ever’s primer, which is mighty popular.

But I’m going to say that despite the high price tag, it is worth it.  And better than MUFE.  Because if I total up the amount of product I put on my face that has pulled a vanishing act by the time lunch hits, then it’s worth it to spend some money on making sure all of it stays there.  And a little goes a long way.

It goes on like buttah, and your skin feels lovely and silky.  It helps to control shine, and even has an SPF 15 built in.  If you are someone who likes to still look like you have makeup on at the end of the day without reapplying, this product is for you.