Sally Beauty Supply haul + more Sally Girl swatches

Every month I do a haul at Sally Beauty Supply to stock up on whatever essentials I need - usually I walk out with a bottle of shampoo, some conditioner, sometimes some hair dye and/or nail polish. I dyed my hair dark brown last night -- the red had almost faded away completely and I had a light brassy brown going on. It wasn't bad, but like Madonna, I feel more grounded with dark hair.

There are three things I really like about Sally's: 1.) If you get the card, a lot of the stuff sells for cheaper than the listed price 2.) if you spend over $25 the previous month, you get a 15% off your entire purchase coupon and 3.) Sally Girl nail polishes, because they fucking rock. They're cheap to begin with (99 cents), cheaper with the Sally's card (89 cents) and even cheaper if you come in with a coupon like I do (~76 cents). I mean, seriously, what can you buy with 76 cents these days? Maybe a Snicker's bar from the vending machine...

But I digress. Anyway, this time I noticed that Sally's had some new additions to their Sally Girl line of polishes! The reason why I was so excited was because two of them were HOLOGRAPHIC! YES! I snatched both of those up with the quickness, and also picked up a nice vampy green shade as well. They had a few other colors (one is clear base with big silver foil pieces, another with gold foil pieces) but they didn't interest me much. The two holographic shades I picked up were prettier in the bottle than on the nail, since the holographic effect isn't as apparent, but they're still pretty cool looking. One is a medium strawberry pink, the other is a a pale beigey lilac shade - not too cool toned and very wearable. The third color I picked up is a dark blue-toned green with shimmer, kind of like the color of a male mallard duck's head. I don't have the pink one swatched, but here's pictures of the lilac and the green, with Beauty Secrets Top Coat on top:



I tried my best to show the holographic-ness of it, but it's very hard to capture with my camera. Sigh. This is under artificial light.



I think you can see some of the holographicness in this picture. Setting sunlight.

I really love the green shade - I haven't compared it to a Mazda Miata yet, but it's pretty close to their British Racing Green color. At first glance it looks a bit like Sally Hansen Emerald City, but I actually like this better - it's darker, and Emerald City is more gold-toned in comparison. Unfortunately, Sally Girl didn't see fit to give these guys names, but if you look on the rack where all the other Sally Girl polishes are, these are the ones with the NEW! stickers on 'em. Lasting power on this isn't great; I wore the pink shade for 2 days before I started getting tipwear, though no chips. Not too shabby, though, especially for 76 cents!

I also picked up a GIANT bottle of Beauty Secrets Quick Drying Topcoat. It was only $4.99 for a 2.5oz bottle (yes, 2.5 oz - that would be 5x the size of a standard bottle of nail polish) and it comes in a big round bottle the size of a small orange. The liquid inside is slightly blue-tinted, but completely clear on the nail. You know how when you use up half a bottle of polish, half the brush isn't even sitting in the polish and more and you have to rotate the bottle in order to get polish onto the brush? I really hate that. Since my bottle of Seche Vite was at that stage, I bought it for the sole purpose of filling up my bottle. I mean, a quick drying top coat is a quick drying top coat, right? And this stuff DOES work very well - not quite as fast as Seche Vite, but it does indeed dry to the touch in 60 seconds, as promised. Time will tell about whether this is as good as Seche Vite when it comes to preventing chips and maintaining shine, but so far I find it to hold up just as well.

Squoval has been achieved!

So it took something like 3 weeks of growing out my nails and resisting the urge to clip them into a rounded shape before I could finally figure out how to properly shape my nails. I actually like 'em and will probably keep them this way for a while. Sorry for the crappy cellphone pic; my usual camera is out of batteries. This is 3 coats of China Glaze Atlantis, it's much more intense and sparkly in real life. Although I love the color, this polish chips super easily. It's been less than a day and already there's a few chips on my right hand. Oh well- nothing a quick touchup won't fix. The color is pretty sweet though, with a blue-toned shamrock green jelly base and silver and holo glitters. Very intense and eye catching.

I has a question

I thought this outfit was pretty cute, but Denis tells me it's godawful and completely ridiculous.

Your thoughts?

Also, what the hell kind of shoes do you wear with an outfit like that? I really need to work on my shoe collection - so far I have NOTHING that will go with these. I've been trying to dress more grown-up lately (meaning, less jeans and sweatpants) and my efforts are not being appreciated :(

(I do have a pair of vintage Frye's that come up to the bottom of my calves, but I suspect that just Doesn't Work.)

More on Illamasqua Rich Liquid Foundation

BREAKING NEWS: It has passed the Denis test. Never in the history of foundations, have I ever tried a foundation that's passed the Denis test. He didn't even notice I was wearing any - when I asked him his opinion, he fell back on his default position ("There's too much of it! Any foundation is too much!") but admitted that he couldn't see it at all.

It's been 7 hours since I first applied it - I haven't had any strange reactions to it; no change in color or oxidation, and it's lasted through one strenuous session of, ah... certain bedroom activities. I'm not any oilier than I normally am (could use a blot, but I'm okay without). Slight issues with transfer, since when I wiped my chin, I did see streaks of foundation on my napkin, but other than that, it's held up pretty admirably. It hasn't sunk into my pores or slid off my face or anything like that, and the feel is great! I don't even feel like I'm wearing foundation, honest.



In this picture, one side is wearing foundation, and the other isn't, just my usual moisturizer. The color match on RF215 is actually pretty much spot-on. I can't see a difference between the two sides - can you? Mostly I just wanted to show you that the concealing power of this is pretty darn good - on my left side (your right), the dark circles under my eyes are much less prominent, and this is with a very very very light application. I applied with my fingers and blended as best I could, and then buffed it into my face further with a MAC 187. It really does look and feel like natural skin.



Again, check out that color match. No line of demarcation on my jaw!

I also tried to do a look with the Urban Decay Book of Shadows Vol 2 palette that I got. The weather today was cloudy and stormy all day, so I couldn't get any sort of decent lighting, and the pictures ended up sucking pretty hard. The pictures I took above were with a light shining directly in my face - I'm not sure you're getting the full benefit of the pictures because the light probably washed me out a little.





Bleh. It looked much better in person.

In conclusion, I don't now how Illamasqua Rich Liquid Foundation would work as a daily foundation, but I could definitely see this as being the BEST EVER FOUNDATION for just about anything else. It photographs really well, and seriously, this is what I plan to have on my face when I get married. Seriously.

Illamasqua/MAC comparison swatches

You know what's great about living on the East Coast?

My Sephora order arrived today. Yes, seriously! And I had just ordered on Saturday too. That was super quick.

Okay, so I bought a bottle of the Illamasqua Rich Liquid Foundation, since it's been getting a lot of buzz lately for being long-lasting, amazingly easy to blend, and ultra-pigmented. Only problem is that since it's not carried at my local Sephora, I had to go by swatches online and just guess which color I was. For some reason, there hasn't been a whole lot of buzz with Illamasqua with the Asian beauty bloggers, just the Caucasian ladies, especially the ones in NY and Europe. That totally made it harder for me. But anyway...

I chose shade RF 215, since it seems to be Illamasqua's version of MAC's NC25-30: a very popular, warm light-medium skintone. Honestly, I wasn't sure if I should have gone for RF210 or 215 - 210 is described as being or "medium skins with neutral undertones" while 215 is "for medium skins with golden undertones." I've been told that Illamasqua's foundations are all very yellow-based, and I know that my skin has enough peachy/beige tones that I have to be careful about choosing foundations that aren't TOO yellow, like MAC NC30 Studio Stick. I don't own many foundations anymore, so in these pictures I compared it to MAC Studio Stick in NC27, Graftobian Glamour Greme in Buttermilk, and a MAC concealer palette. Here they are swatched on the underside of my arm:


(Click for bigger picture.)

It looks quite a bit darker than the Graftobian Buttermilk, which is what I normally wear in the dead of winter, at my palest. (The problem with Graftobian foundations that I've noticed - the initial swatch will match my skintone almost exactly, but when sheered and blended out, it somehow magically turns slightly paler.) It's closest to MAC NC27 and NW25, and looking at my arm, it's definitely NOT as yellow-toned as most MAC NC shades. I always thought NC27 was a bit of an anomaly - it has peachy tones to it that make it blend well into skin, while NC30 was practically mustard yellow on me. Since my arm isn't the same color as my face, I also decided to swatch them on my face. They were first swatched heavily, and then the top of the striped was blended out. Look here:


(Click for bigger picture.)

Again, you can tell that the Illamasqua is darker, but the undertones aren't too drastically pink-toned. And you can hardly even tell the difference between the three shades when it's blended out!

I haven't actually worn it on my face yet - and so it hasn't passed the Denis test* - but I will certainly try it out and update further when I do. The blendability of this foundation is incredible though - it simply glides over the skin. Pigmentation is good, though not ultra-high or incredible like Kevin Aucoin's Sensual Skin Enhancer. Could definitely be used as or in place of concealer though. I'd rank this as being above both MAC Studio Fix Fluid and Make Up For Ever's Mat Velvet + in terms of pigmentation, though it's much much much easier to blend into the skin than either of those. A tiny, tiny drop of this stuff goes a long way.

I'll have to give this an actual thorough testing for longevity, transferability and color match before I can pronounce a real verdict, but so far, it seems quite promising.

*For those of you who don't know, Denis, my boyfriend, HATES it when I wear foundation. I don't care how much time I spent applying it, carefully buffing it in with a MAC 187 and a damp sponge, he always knows when I have it on. If he asks "What is that crap on your face?", then I know I've been busted. The only product that has ever passed the Denis test is Laura Mercier Tinted Moisturizer, which, being a tinted moisturizer, is hardly a substitute for real foundation.

I wasn't gonna, but I did anyway.

Sephora's annual friends and family sale...

I was going to sit it out this year, since I really think I have just about all the makeup that I could ever really use. For some strange reason though, I decided I really coveted the Urban Decay Book of Shadows 2 palette. Probably because I have and love the first one and I've got this nasty habit of collecting things. (But it's okay, because I stopped spending money on MAC and have decided that I'm solely an UD devotee when it comes to high end eyeshadows. That makes it okay, right?)

But then my brother wanted me to order a few things from Sephora for him, since my mom is going back next month - and he gave me his credit card, and told me to pick up a few things for myself, and so...

Urban Decay Book of Shadows Vol. II $48.00
Clinique Face Scrub - 3.4 oz (x2) $33.00
Illamasqua Rich Liquid Foundation - RF 215 $30.00
Giorgio Armani Emporio Armani Diamonds For Men - 2.5 oz $65.00
CHANEL PLATINUM ÉGOÏSTE - 3.4 oz $72.00
Anthony Logistics A Clean Start Kit ($56 Value) - A Clean Start Kit $40.00
Anthony Logistics Glycerin Cleansing Bar - 5.5 oz $8.50
Sample - Energizing Pomegranate Lip Protector SPF 15
Sample - Versace Bright Crystal Eau de Toilette - 0.05 oz
Sample - Robert Piguet Fracas Eau de Parfum - 0.027 oz

The total came out to $296.50. After discount plus applying the small remainder of a giftcard, it ended up as $244.71.

And then I did a 10% cashback through Bing. I'm getting to be a real fan of this ebates/Bing thing. Ebates is only offering 4% cashback right now, but 10% of almost $300 is a pretty decent sum.

Only the UD BoS II and Illamasqua foundation are for me -- the Clinique face scrubs are for Denis, and everything else is for my brother. I don't even know why I wanted the Illamasqua foundation since I don't like wearing any, but I figure I should have some foundation on hand for the rare occasion that I do. That, and I heard it's ultra-highly pigmented, so I was thinking of using it as tattoo cover up...

Fuck you, tiny hipsters.

It's ridiculously cold out here for this time of here - usually mid-October is pretty nice, low 70s and 60s. It usually doesn't get really cold until November, but the past few days have had me huddled up under 2 layers of comforters and wearing a sweater and sweatpants to bed. (Why yes, I do hate being cold.) That's why I decided I needed a new winter coat. I haven't bought one for a couple years, and the one I'd bought 4 years back off fifteendollarstore.com (for the regal sum of... $15) finally gave up the ghost last year with a big rip in the lining and all the stuffing coming out of it. Plus my cat peed on it. It really had to go.

So I looked on modcloth.com, and I found... this. The "Anastasia" coat, by Steve Madden, a full-length wool blend with faux fur trimming:


God. I loved it the minute I saw it. It had just been put up on the site that very day! I so, so, so coveted this coat. But it was $150, and I waffled on my decision for a few days. This morning I decided to go for it, mostly because my brother gave me his credit card number and his blessing. Except when I went to go put it in the cart...

*cue Psycho music*

THEY WERE SOLD OUT OF THE SMALL. Seriously, wtf? Sold out in TWO DAYS?! Goddamn tiny hipsters buying the coat that I wanted! This was almost as bad as that ebay auction for the vintage silk dress that I lost in the last 30 seconds. I was MAD!

However, it was good to know that this coat was made by Steve Madden. I mean, Steve Madden is a pretty mass-market brand, so I should be able to track down another one of these, right? And this time, I'd even be willing to shell out the $150 bucks. Unquestionably.

So after some strenuous googling, I found it again, to my great relief. This time, it was on Burlington Coat Factory.com. Not only that, but it came in both ivory AND black. Ooh, color choices. I like that.

... and the best part? It's only $90 on Burlington Coat Factory. Read that again. NINETY BUCKS. $60 CHEAPER THAN ON MODCLOTH.COM. That would be, oh, FORTY PERCENT CHEAPER.

Okay, so they were sold out of the black color in small... but I still snagged one in ivory. I have never ordered anything so fast in my life. I just got my order confirmation in my inbox, so it should be coming in the mail in about a week, at which point I can stop shivering under 3 layers of sweaters and sweatshirts.

In conclusion, Modcloth sucks and makes a killing off of selling ridiculously marked-up clothes to people who don't know how to google.