Sue D. from Livingston, NJ wrote in to ask, “What are your favorite beauty products?”
What a fun question! I love cosmetics but my very favorite and must-have beauty products are mascara, something to fill in my eyebrows and lip gloss. For me, these three products are an integral part of my beauty regimen. I can put them on and look finished without looking made up. But don’t take away my eye liner, concealer, blush or eyeshadow. I love those too! I wear foundation in the winter, bronzer in the summer and, of course, the game plan changes for a night out.
While there are days when I wake up in the morning, shower, brush my teeth and hair and race out the door sans makeup, they are few and far between. I love makeup, always have. My makeup philosophy is that cosmetics should enhance your features, not hide them. I don’t have that deft a hand to be able to carve out cheekbones, shadow a sagging jawline, or paint on a fuller mouth without looking clownish and well, made up. I want people to look at me, not my makeup. I am always surprised when a friend says, “Your eyes look amazing today,” because I don’t think I could repeat tomorrow what I might have done on my eyes today.
Believe me, I’ve tried over the years to learn how to shadow and highlight my features, following makeup artists’ diagrams or those I’d find in beauty books. I always feel as if I’m wearing a mask of color and it doesn’t suit me. It would surprise no one who knows me that I have a closetful of beauty and hair products. I’m loyal to some but I like to try new things all the time. I play, judiciously, with color on my eyelids, but stick mostly to browns, golds and grayed greens (as an accent only – and usually to line the outside half of my lower lid) that I feel compliment my very dark brown eyes. On most days I prefer a slick of lip gloss and leave the lipstick at home. But there are days when I want to rock the boldest red lip – and so I do.
What are your favorite beauty products? Let me know in the comment section below.
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I am a Beauty Junkie- but 99.9% only with Bare Escentuals – it makes me look like me, but better!. I have had the opportunity to have”make-unders” by several of National Artists from Bare Escentuals and not only loved the looks they created but they also teach as they are applying the minerals. I must get you to go to an event and have Renee Lynn, Jo, Alex or the latest addition to the team Tony Lo {recently added from Chanel} do a look on you!
Debra – I’m in! I’m a beauty junkie too – but my loyalty wavers. I’d love a “make-under” by a Bare Escentuals makeup artist. Let me know when and I am there.
So can I ask what your favourite mascara, something to fill your eyebrows in and lip gloss are? Brand and colour? I’m always really interester in peoples brow routine as everyone does it so differently!
Hey Gemma – Nice to hear from you again. Hm, that’s a difficult question to answer. As a beauty writer, I’m always testing new products and have a new favorite every week. I sometimes use three different mascara products at once and currently love Maybelline’s Volum’ Express The Colossal in washable black. My current lip gloss – well, there are two that I carry in my handbag at all times, regardless of what lipstick or gloss I may put on at home. They are a Chanel Glossimer in a shade that was a special edition so I’m going to have to choose another shade when my current one runs out. But – to it, I add some pink glitter. I dip the Chanel brush into the glitter and push it back in the tube several times until I achieve the desired glitteriness. I wear this alone or over any other shade of lipstick. My other go to gloss is not quite a gloss; not quite a lipstick. It’s Clinique’s Almost Lipstick in Black Honey. And I have many tubes of this shade so that I can keep one in my different handbags. Don’t ever want to be without it. And, as you know, Clinique just introduced several (I think 7) new shades of Almost Lipstick, which I haven’t yet tried. Eyebrows – ah, a sore point for me since I have very, very sparse ones. I have tried many products to fill in my brows and find Smashbox Brow Tech in Taupe to look the most natural. They used to make it with two sections, the powdery color plus the wax. They discontinued that a long time ago (boo!) and now include two sections of color and one of wax which, imo, makes it more difficult to fill in so that it looks natural and not painted on. (I guess it’s like drawing a red line on paper and then going over it in exactly the same way in blue. I think for someone who actually has eyebrows this wouldn’t be as challenging as it is for browless me.) I also love Smashbox’s tapered eyebrow brush. It’s the perfect shape and stiffness for painting on a natural brow. One of the very first things I do in the morning is put on my brows. Here’s a post I wrote that tells about my adventure with QVC when I was chosen to be in a Vogue ad and had to appear sans makeup, which would have been fine except that for me that meant sans eyebrows. It was difficult to have my photo taken without them: http://EverBeautiful.com/?p=3929. Thanks for writing. And tell me, what are your favorite beauty products – and where do you get them in England? (When I was there, I filled in what I forgot to pack with products from Boots, as I’d told you.) So nice to hear from you again! Fondly, Melody