Weekend Review: theBalm Schwing Eyeliner & Meet Matt(e) Hughes Lipstick

Over Mardi Gras weekend, theBalm had a sale, so I thought I would try out some of their products. I'd had some eyeshadow, lipstick, and eyeliner in my Amazon shopping cart for a while, so the sale at theBalm's web site made the purchase irresistible. I was going to get the same things from the sale, but the lipstick I wanted ("Committed") was sold out, as was the eyeshadow I wanted, but I did get their Schwing Eye Liner and Meet Matt(e) Hughes lipstick in a similar color, "Honest."

These purchases were delivered yesterday, so I thought I would give them a go this morning and see what I thought of them. My criteria for a good eye liner is as follows:

1. The applicator needs to be able to make a wing point that could draw blood
2. The liner itself needs to be thin enough to create said wing, but thick enough that it doesn't run into my eyes before it dries
3. Smooth to apply; no clumps
4. Dries quickly
5. Doesn't make my eye lids itch (I have this problem with a lot of liners) or swell up
6. Lasts all day

My criteria for a great lipstick are these:

1. Color looks great with my skin tone and makeup style
2. Lasts for at least a few hours
3. Doesn't get clumpy or make my lips dry or cracked

On the Schwing eye liner: I'm impressed. The applicator is small and sharp and lifts out a goodly amount of liner liquid, enough to make the whole wing and fill it in in one dip, which I like. It goes on smooth and does seem to dry quickly, as I didn't have to keep my lids low for too long while it dried. I've been wearing this application for about three hours now and I don't have any itchiness or swelling, which is a problem I have had in the past with some brands of eye liner.

As you can see, the Schwing eye liner delivered on making a sharp wing. My overall rating? A+! I love it so far! I will update if anything changes by the end of the day or after using it for a week, but the outlook on this one is BRIGHT!

On the Meet Matt(e) Hughes lip stick, the first impression I got from it was the scent of it. I had never really given a lot of thought to how a lipstick smelled, but this was really nice. It has the scent of Peppermint Patties with a strong chocolate overtone to a minty scent. My second impression of it was the color, which seemed really orange. I was a little afraid of how bright orange the color was, but I only applied it to my upper lip and then pursed to get it on my lower lip. After a soft blot with a tissue, I actually really liked the color, too.

I'm not usually one for a lipstick that is so matte as this one is, but I knew what was coming based on the name of the product. I actually like it a lot with my skin tone and coloring, and it seems like it will be good for understated looks. Plus, I've been wearing it for a few hours now, and it is still on, just like when I put it on, and I've eaten some crackers and cheese in the meantime. Makes me a happy glamper.

Overall rating on the Meet Matt(e) Hughes lipstick? A+! I'll definitely be buying the "Committed" color from Amazon next time I place an order.

Mid-Century Kitchen with Molly Starlite: Episode 5 - Birthday Cake Exfoliating Scrub!

As a teenager - or pretty much all through my life - I was never prone to acne or anything; I was really lucky. That is, until I quit smoking several years ago. Then, I got really bad cystic acne that took forever to heal. I needed to find something to exfoliate and moisturize my skin that wouldn't break me out worse.

After a lot of trial and error, I finally hit on this recipe while messing around in the kitchen one night:
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
2 teaspoons solidified coconut oil
Vanilla extract

The sugar and vanilla work together to make this totally natural and edible paste taste like birthday cake, and the sugar works as a mild exfoliant to get rid of dead skin cells and dirt while the coconut oil is soothing and moisturizing! And as a lip scrub, this tasty concoction works wonders. I just saved some glass jars from my eye cream and fill them with this scrub. You can put the jars in your purse to exfoliate and scrub your lips anywhere, or keep it at your vanity for a quick pick-me-up for your face.

Watch me make it here:

Colorpop Velvet Gloss Lipstick Review

I am a bit of a penny-pincher when it comes to just about everything; when it comes to beauty products, large sums of money are reserved for pretty dresses and eyelashes and eye wrinkle cream and not much else. When it comes to makeup, I tend to just stick to whatever I can get from drug stores on sale or whatever. I'm not too picky: Covergirl for foundation and powders, e.l.f. for most everything else. I did splurge recently and bought a really nice set of makeup brushes. Made my life so much easier.

So, I recently heard about Colorpop lipsticks and someone I know said that they were amazing, so I bought a set of six Velvet Gloss colors from Amazon to try out.

My first impression: the colors I would be getting weren't really represented well in the photos on the web site; the colors I got were pretty much nothing I would ever use. The nude looked promising, but it is too pale for my skin; I look like an alien. The only color that I ended up being even a little bit interested was the red. So I tried the red, and it is a little more orange than I would like, but it did go on pretty well, for all that it is applied with a lip gloss wand.

This stuff dries really, really fast. Like, the first coat was totally dry before I was even finished applying it. I expected that, and I also expected that it was going to be tough to get off, based on the Amazon reviews, so I expected that it would last all day without reapplying.

Not only did it not last all day, my lips felt super dry, and, within an hour, it was flaking off. Two hours in, and my lips looked pretty awful. Ultimately, I wasn't very happy with it, and I have already gone back to my Jordana lipsticks, which, properly applied, do last all day without flaking. To apply my lipsticks, I cover my lips with a light coating of foundation, pat it dry, dust with powder, and then just apply like you would any lipstick. Then, I blot, reapply, blot, reapply, sometimes layering different shades to get different effects. A couple times through, and the color is set and doesn't smudge or transfer or smear or anything. Not bad for $1 per tube.

We All Have Our Favorites...

As much as I have grown - fashion-wise - since embracing the pinup lifestyle, I am still drawn - as I think we all are, at times - to little black dresses. My 15-year-old self would be shocked - nay, stunned - to look into the closet of her future self and see pinks, yellows, greens, and blues; I wasn't goth, but my wardrobe as a teenager consisted primarily of black and, occasionally, red. Today, I am wearing one of my favorite dresses: the Pinup Girl Clothing Jenny dress in cherry border print. I really love this dress. The cut and color are so flattering; I feel like a princess every time I wear it.

I have a stupid-long torso. The waistline on most dresses hits me at least 4 to 5 inches above my bellybutton and my natural waist, so I have started buying clothes that are too big for me and then taking them in to fit my waist and rib cage circumference... and then they have the length in the waistband to hit me at my natural waist.

Such is the case with my cherries Jenny. I bought it as a 4X and then took it in 4.5 inches on each side and removed the boning so that it would lay flat under my bust, define my bustline, and have the extra three inches of length in the waist to reach my natural waistline. I have four other Jenny dresses - the orange border, and three of the four harlequin prints - and this cherry border fits the best of all of them. The red harlequin fits second best, mostly because it is a 3X I took in and de-boned it, as well. The others are all 2X, and are still a little big in the waist and sit a little too high.

Now, you might be asking how I can edit and modify dresses that cost what these do, and the answer is that I buy them used, or on clearance... at least the ones I have altered, anyway. The ones that I have paid full price for, new, from the pinupgirlclothing.com web site... I haven't altered those because the miser in me won't let me; guess I don't really trust my own sewing skills enough yet.

Taking these dresses in is actually fairly simple, even for the novice seamstress, like me. I think I may have used my sewing machine fewer than 25 times the whole time I've had it - six years or so. So, yeah, I don't sew much, but I still felt confident enough to tackle this project. All I did was put the dress on inside out and then put a pin at the point that would be narrowest and another pin at the top of the bust under the armpit where it would need to be to be fitted. Then, I took the dress off, and, still inside out, sewed a half moon shaped stitch from the waistline, in to the narrowest point, and then back out to the second pin in the underarm. Repeat for the other side, and you're done. Yes, there is a more complicated way of doing it that involves taking the lining apart and doing it the "right way," the way that a pro would do it. I am not a professional. I just left the extra fabric and ironed in flat toward the back of dress. I don't even notice it when it's on and nobody can see it.

The only issue that I have noticed with this method is that there ends up being a small "bunch" of fabric in the skirt area right below the stitch. No one has ever pointed it out to me, so I guess it's not noticeable except to me.

If you're even the slightest bit scared of doing this, I wouldn't recommend doing it. The thing I kept reminding myself was that I could undo it and get a pro to do it for me if it got too complicated or I got too frustrated. In the end, it was just a 15-minute procedure and I am thrilled with the results.

OTHER NEWS: I signed up for ispy. I have never been too big into makeup and will just use whatever I come across that I like... the only exception to this being in the case of foundation because my skin is pretty sensitive and will break out if I don't use Cover Girl foundation and powders. But beyond that, I am not too picky and I even like a lot of the Dollar Store brands like Jordana and Wet'n'Wild and e.l.f as well - if not better than - more expensive brands and products. (The main example of this is Wet'n'Wild's glitter lip gloss which is the bomb. Serious sparkle, not heavy, blendable to lipsticks... it's perfect and freaking hard to find.) But those are posts for another day.

Dressing The Part

It's not always feasible to dress in my fancy pinup clothes, but I try. I work from home, so, theoretically, I could work in my pajamas or yoga pants every day. I don't. Since I wanted to expand my business and have clients take me seriously, I made a pact with myself that, unless it was a major housecleaning day, a holiday or birthday baking day, or I was deathly ill, I would make an attempt to dress up.

It's tough to do without running water sometimes, but it's still so worthwhile to do. I always feel so much better about myself and my abilities when I take the time to put on something nice to wear, a little makeup, and do my hair. 

Oh... that "no running water" thing? Yeah, that's how we've been living for the last 3 and half years. My parents had a piece of undeveloped property that they said we could build on, so we did. There was an old, dilapidated house here that had to be torn down, but there was no power, no sewer, no phone, no Internet, and no water. My husband is a master auto body repairman and customizer, and he's used his talents and horse-trading abilities to get everything put in here... except water. Because we're trying to do this without debt - I have enough debt with my student loans - we have to save or get lucky to have the money to do it; the quotes we've gotten to have a well drilled out here are all around $20,000 US. The water table is 300 or so feet down, plus well casing, plus a pump, plus electrical, plus piping it to the house...  yeah, it's a pricey thing... so we're saving and hoping one of our car projects sells. In the meantime, we shower at my parents' place and haul in water to use in the house for all the household tasks, like toilet flushing, dish washing, etc. 

Because we're saving money for that, though, there isn't always money to spend on my pinup stuff, so I hoard coupons, stalk the swap and sell pages for clothes, and I buy cheaper stuff whenever possible. Most of my makeup was either on clearance or I bought it at the dollar store. I do my own hair - coloring, curling, cutting, etc - and I just don't do my nails... I keep them short because I play guitar and the strings mess up polish, anyway.

The one place that I don't go cheap is with faux eyelashes. Because they go near my eyes and because the cheap ones look fake and cheap, if I have extra money, I always buy my lashes from House of Lashes. I love their Noir Fairy and Smokey Muse lashes, and they're sturdy enough for repeated washings and uses. Yeah, if I am going to splurge, it's on eyelashes.

In order to make the pinup look work on a day-to-day basis, I have found ways of dressing down my dresses and skirts and blouses, mostly with colorful cardigans. I think it's still a little something of the designer in me or still a little girl playing dress up, but it is a whole lot of fun to mix and match stuff that maybe wasn't meant to go together. And it is possible to be a pinup without the clothes or makeup; like I've mentioned in another post, being a pinup is an attitude.