Makeup Your Mind

On a health kick, I thought I'd give a peek into the reality of the transformation process that an average girl might go through. This is a tricky subject because every girl has a totally unique process, and just like we need 40 pairs of shoes for 100 different reasons, I have 100 different routines for 40 different occasions. I probably never replicate the same exact process more than once, actually. However, this is a good average idea of a little more than "everyday" makeup and a little less than "all out" which, if you have an Instagram account, you know is ALL THE TIME for some girls. 

To be clear, I am by no means against makeup. Obviously. I have more cosmetic products than I have hairs on my head... and I have a LOT of hairs on my head.

Alls I'm sayin' is that there is a pretty big difference between dressing up, enhancing your features, or playing up a side of your personality which you want to accentuate, and straight up trying to trick people into thinking you're J.Lo. Just as there is a difference between "liars" and "actors", there is a difference between that process and this one. 

I know I have a lot of photos on Facebook, Instagram, and everyone else's tagged photos. In every single one, I look a little different. Sometimes people tell me, "WOW you look great!" and I have to wonder a little, "yeaaaaaah, well that angle looks awesome, but trust me.. this morning in my sweats when my front camera on my iPhone came on by accident... I kind of looked like John Goodman. Like I think we might be related." The other thing I get a lot is, "Your makeup looks really good today... what did you do?" So just to clear it up....and this took a lot of deep breathing exercises because I've spent most of my life trying to keep my "no makeup face" OFF of the internet... Here's a no frills 100% real "how to". The good, the bad, and the au natural. This isn't your grandma's blog.

(If you are getting that "oh no, this is a chick post" feeling in your gut... you're only half right. Feel free to skip around. I won't be mad.)

This is me.

This is also me.

 And here's how THAT happened.

1. A thin layer of primer allllll over the whole face.

2. Contouring and highlighting. This is how Kim Kardashian gets to look the way she does. You can seriously make it look like you just spent $50,000 on a Jennifer Aniston rhinoplasty with like 3 minutes of strategic highlighting. I do NOT do this everyday. This is more of a "going to a place where the lighting is low, and I can get away with it" kind of look. Example: A pub, a dinner in a low lit place, a stroll in a dark alleyway after the opera with your husband and small child named Bruce. You know, the usual. Obviously I used a much lighter color than my skin, and a small brush to highlight the places I want to draw attention to. In my case, I go where the light hits naturally and don't alter anything TOO too much because lets face it, I live on an island, and not in any place where the Viper Room is. Someday I want to just go out like this.

3. Blend blend blend. Just when you think you're going to look like a freak forever because you drew dark brown lines all over your damn face, it starts to come together. When you think  you're done... keep blending. Don't forget your neck or it will look like you had a botched head transplant. Which I'm sure will be a thing soon. 

4. Eyes. There are more colors on my eyelids and more time spent blending and drawing lines than it took me to do my whole face, and the area is much much smaller. It blows my mind sometimes how much effort we put into something that people aren't even going to see that much. You know what they say though, its the little things. I shade my eyes with a dark color on the outside (nothing crazy, I'm not Captain Jack Sparrow.) (Today.) and line with a liquid eyeliner. Remember to angle everything slightly UP or you'll look like you just heard a sad sad story. Or watched Bambi. I highlight under the outside of my brow, the inside corner of my eyelid, and put a small amount of something bright and shiny on the part of the lid directly over where my pupil is. Eyeliner takes practice. A good trick is to do mascara first and use the stiff lashes as a stable surface to follow with the brush.

5. I also use fiber lash extensions by Younique. I love them. You basically brush on the black mascara (which is a little sticky) first and then brush on black fibers which stick to your existing lashes and make them longer. Then another layer of liquid... The more times you do this, the longer they get. Its up to you to know when enough is enough. It can get really Halloweeny if you don't take a step back now and then to make sure it still looks natural-ish.

6. Lips. I use red when I want confidence or to make my teeth look whiter. Or both. Honestly they usually go hand in hand. A little contour under your lower lip, and a little highlight in the cupid's bow (the little v above your upper lips) make them look more pouty and you can even go as far as to blend a tiny bit of a lighter color from the center out if you want a full blown Angelina moment. I dust a little translucent powder over them to keep it from coming off on literally EVERYTHING.

This is what I used.
ALL of it.

The ballpark total of all of these things is damn near $200
I took a little longer than usual this go around because I was trying to document in really poor lighting... I also used a curling wand to touch up my hair which probably added another 20 minutes to the process. I'd say this took me the better part of an hour with all the documenting and blending and cleanup. 

 So by all means, get pretty. I love getting pretty. Its kind of like doing art. It can be really exciting to see all the different things you can be, and all the different people you can morph into. The bottom line here: You can makeup your face, you can makeup your mind, but you've gotta know that underneath every "perfect" Hollywood face, is a good block of time, probably hundreds of dollars, and you're also not allowed to MOVE lest you ruin your perfectly curled hair (it does NOT stay that way if it so much as catches a breeze) and when it all comes off, you better hope your friends and loved ones still like what they see underneath. Why do you think there's so much chatter about women getting nervous to be naked in front of people? Because they DON'T LOOK LIKE WHAT THEY ADVERTISED. All Spanx aside, we all have a little cellulite. My face isn't totally symmetrical, and one of my eyes does this funny droopy thing when I'm retaining water. By the time I'm 50 I'll probably BE John Goodman, but at least I'll know how to be my BEST John Goodman. Whatever, we clean up nice, right?

Stay classy, San Diego. Or...you know...wherever you are. Be it a Wal Mart bathroom or a penthouse suite.

What I use:

Foundations: Bare Minerals
Eye Primer: NYX
Curling Wand: Proliss
Fiber Lash Extensions: Younique
Eyeshadow Pallet: EyesLipsFace
Brushes: Bare Minerals and Sephora
Lipstick: Revlon "Wine With Everything"