Don’t Be a Makeup Chicken

So we already covered what you might want to spend the big bucks on next up let’s talk about getting awesome stuff on the cheap.

I know that a lot of us are working looks that don’t require a lot of stuff. That is awesome. I on the other hand (after years of rocking strictly cat eye liner and lip color) have discovered a lust for color.

Not only color but lots of different colors. Somewhere around my 30th birthday I blew up with color.

I also love experimenting.

My philosophy and how I do it are as follows.

I am not afraid to try something cheap. This is paramount. If I see something at the drug store or where ever that looks like it might be pretty and I have five or ten dollars I will try it. And the thing to remember when you’re experimenting is that stuff does not have to look the way it looks on the package.  And sometimes you just have to play with something before you figure it out.

Next- teach yourself to apply loose eye shadow. There are mega butt tons of awesome tutorials on youtube and this rule applies to my next rule.

Get to know your small companies.

YES.

My personal love affair with loose shadows started with randomly stumbling on Fyrinnae a long while back. Not only are they super nice people (no really they are awesome folks HI GUYS!) but, they make excellent affordable cosmetics. I’ve long said that hand crafted things make me feel fancy and Fyrinnae was my first dalliance with this kind of fancy. And most importantly they offer samples. Most pigment/loose shadow samples from the companies I shop with are plenty to use for quite awhile. And remember you don’t have to buy the bigger more expensive product, if you’re like me unless you are butt over tea kettle in love with a color you want more.

The next thing to really get me is Mac pigments. Mac Cosmetics are awesome but, pricy. I joined some Mac Cosmetics communities on LJ and have a nice little collection of sample sized (1/4 tablespoon or so) pigments that have lasted me a long time. If you’re not on LJ I also suggest a company called The Body Needs. I have ordered from them several times and always been satisfied. Mac fabulous on a Wet N Wild budget.

I am also butt over tea kettle for Aromaleigh. Also the owner is good people. So many beautiful colors to choose from and there are always extra samples. I really love their products a lot.

And next up, my homegirl’s company Detrivore Cosmetics. I know the owner and lemme just say she is pretty awesome and if you recall I debuted her line right here at The Cheekan. For another peek have a looksy at this look (this is over at flickr.) Her colors are hand crafted as well and just freaking gorgeous. I thought I’d misplaced this color and I don’t have another green quite like that. I adore her stuff.

Now you have some places to shop around let’s talk about other ways to save.

Let’s say I am here in the Pacific Northwest but, I have my eye on some awesome stuff across the pond. Like Barry M (I LOVE their stuff too.) I might find a make up loving friend to split an order with. Matter of fact, no matter where you are, splitting an order with a friend is a damn fine idea.

You can work out shipping etc between the two of you, or more. Say you, your sister, your friend, her girlfriend all want some Mac stuff. Maybe you live near a Mac store. Make up a list, work out sales tax and have everyone paypal the buyer the loot, then the buyer ships everything off and voila. Or you get say a couple of full pigments and split them.

Learn to love the samples people is my point here. I have a metric butt ton of them. And with the fairly long lifespan of loose shadows you can play with color on the cheap for months.

What I do is save up 15-25$ once in awhile and just go nuts. There is nothing quite so lovely as knowing I only spent say 18$ and getting a package with a bunch of sparklies for my face.

So go forth and get some samples my darlings. And I expect a full report when you come back.

Next time, I’m going to talk about looking for awesome make up at cosmetics outlets, Big Lots etc. Stay tuned and fabulous.

Also for a look at all my make up pics to date see here.  I’m also still trying to work out the whole video making thing, for some reason I have no savant and I’m all idiot with it so if I can figure it out my mug in motion will be all yours.

Hi my name is Shannon and I am a broke ass chick.

My budget for fabulosity is tight so I have mastered the fine art of being fabulous on a tight ass budget.

My friends, I am going to share with you how it is that I have crap loads of make up and yet don’t really spend a lot of money. Today in the first of a series I’ll talk about the stuff I do spend the big dollars on.

When you’re getting into or are into make up but don’t have a lot of money to spend it’s important (at least in my not expert opinion) to decide what items are super important to you.

For me my main serious business items are foundation, face primers and powders.

In my stash the most expensive items and the things I am most choosy about are those. I had a disasterous heart breaking affair with Mac Cosmetics Studio fix fluid that resulted in my skin going what can be deemed total insane bitchcakes.

The above is why I have no recent full face make up shots for the most part. It’s been about three months and my skin is just recovering.

Anyway, foundation is very important to me. I like buildable coverage that is not easily defeated by my immensly oily skin. I use Bare Minerals foundation in what used to be called Warm Deep. I never (or rarely)pay retail for it and here’s how.

Prior to picking out your foundation of choice head to your local Sephora, department store etc where there are make up counters and ask to be color matched. Ask the make up artists any questions you have, get a sample if you can and make note of your shade. I will also do this for face powders and primers.

Next fire up your mad Ebay skills. When buying make up on Ebay yes, sometimes there are frauds but I personally haven’t bought fraudulant or otherwise bunk products. Look for items that are listed as being sealed.

Other ways to save. Join whatever company’s mailing list and keep track of things like free shipping codes, anniversay sales, birthday discounts etc. I like to time my big purchases so that when these things happen BAM I get my fancy stuff.

Also when you find sellers you like on Ebay get their announcements. I think I may have mentioned this before but it never hurts to start a relationship with a reputable seller. It never hurts to say, hey I see you sell a lot of X product if you get some in X shade I really want some. People want to sell you things so there is the chance you will get what you want.

Next tip, seriously do these things. Join Make up Alley, then join LJ and then join some make up communities. There are lots of people who sell make up and if you has paypal you can has sparkly bits for your face.

Once you join Make up Alley you can earn good feedback and away you go.

My other tip is to save. Completely obvious of course but it works. I like to price out expensive things I want or need and even just saving the change from your coffee or making coffee instead of buying it a few times a week.

That’s it for today Cheekans. My next installment I’m going to talk about sampling, small companies, and the wonders of splitting the cost of items with a homie. Also since my skin has recovered I will take some nekkid skin pics and talk about how I work with my super oily, sensitive, prone to scarring face.

Until then.

Hrmn, I’m not sure how I feel about this. It’s Metro Chic (a fabulous drab from Sephora by OPI) with Liquid Vinyl from Orly.

It’s good to try new things. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t - but you won’t ever know unless you, you know, TRY. *grin* Nail polish remover is a beautiful tool.

Zomg, it’s like Zoya saw me procrastinating, saw me sighing with half-relief that the end-date for the original polish exchange had ended! Because they have extended it.

If you didn’t catch it the first time around, Zoya nail polish has an exchange program - for every bottle of old, crusty, unloved polish that you send them they will send you a beautiful new lovely bottle of Zoya polish for free.

Well, they say free - but there is still a processing fee, which is $3 per bottle. Still, for Zoya, that’s a good deal. Which is why my little cache of unfortunate shades is going to wind up being packed off to them good and proper.

Just as soon as I finalize what shades to trade for….

Check out the Zoya Polish Exchange - and tell me what colors you’re swapping for. I could use the ideas. *grin*

So, I read about this manicure on my friend Phyrra’s blog Decorative Diva. She linked to Nail Juice’s tutorial, which I followed.

This is one of my favorite parts of how blogs work. Spread the love, and the nail polish. At least in this instance.

It didn’t take long. I used China Glaze’s Bermuda Breakaway (that color is getting a lot of screen time in my world right now) for the tips and Sinful Color’s Daddy’s Girl (a sheer but buildable purple microglitter) for the layering of color.

It’s far from perfect, obviously. But that’s okay because this is the first time I’ve tried this. It looks totally passable in person - in fact, this might be one of those things that you just cannot capture adequately in a photograph.

Maybe I need a paler sheer….

So, I’ve been seeing a lot of half-moon manicures all over the nail polish blogs that I love. So I just had to try it for myself. I stopped at the office supply store on my way home for supplies (you’ll see where this comes in) and set to it. If you’re wanting to try this, set aside a couple of hours. Now that I’ve got the routine down, I should be able to do it faster but there’s no cheating drying time - and that’s a crucial element of this manicure.

You’ll need to start with your regular routine. I use a hydrator from SEPHORA by OPI and Seche Clear as a base coat.

And make sure you have some of these:

I applied a single, even coat of China Glaze Bermuda Breakaway, a nice dark blue creme.

And then I let it dry. And let it dry. And let it dry. Make sure your polish is really, really, really dry.

Take a reinforcement and cut it in half. And stick one half of it to your nail, where the half-moon should be. Make sure there are no bubbles. This is why it’s so important for your base color to be dry dry dry - if it isn’t, it’ll pull up with the sticker.

Now, polish it! I’m using Bahamian Escape, a light creme blue - this is opaque in one coat which is kind of important.

Now, patience. I’m bad at patience. So bad. But I’m trying to learn.

Continue to stick half stickers of reinforcements on your nails.

When the half-moon is dry, peel off the sticker. This is what you get:

Add a shiny top coat and you are SET. I used Seche Vite:

Now, you can see that some of my edges are… less than crisp. See my lack of patience, as mentioned above!

I’m having a hard time photographing this stuff but I kind of love it in person.

My right hand is MUCH neater because I waited for the polish to dry. See, patience is super important. Now I need to go clean up my edges!

Okay rant time.

As we have seen with photographic evidence I am a Black woman. I am a milk chocolatey shaded Black woman.

I am really annoyed today. I am annoyed because I have a love of supporting small business and whatnot but you know what, fuck you small mineral make up companies. Fuck you right in the ear.

I am saying that because I have been on the hunt for new things to try and 95% of the sites and shops I come across make products that are only appropriate for people up to a tan person and screw the rest of us.

And it’s always the same excuses. I have spent time (not recently because I don’t feel like it) emailing makers of fine sparkly bits asking why don’t they have foundations, primers, powders etc appropriate for brown people. The usual excuse is well I’m white so… Or the I don’t know anyone to help test.

I call double bullshit and shenanigans.

I would imagine if you are making make up than you probably understand that you could in all likelyhood purchase some foundations etc that are made for brown skin and figure out your own color combos.

Now my ire on this issue is not reserved for the little guys. But the big ones too and for them I’m naming names.

I have been wearing make up for a long time and once I had internet access about ten years ago I started writing letters to companies like Maybelline, Almay, etc. How was it that the cheap brand CoverGirl I’m looking at you, had figured out that women of color wanted access to decent cosmetics but the rest seem to not even think about it.

Not once did I get an answer from any of them. Just put on mailing lists and sent coupons I couldn’t use.

It’s frustrating and it makes me angry because I feel forgotten. I feel left out and there is no reason for it.

There is no reason I should have to search high and low to just find a product that’s darker than tan nevermind finding something quality. There is no reason that every drug store in my immediate neighborhood (there are five of them) carries every shade of products up until you get to the brown ones.

I can understand that huge corporations probably don’t care. They’ve done the market research and they probably just don’t care.

But the little companies stick in my craw because as we all know, once word gets out that so and so makes some awesome products people will flock there. I know that I personally have turned on other women of color to cosmetics that are affordable and beautiful.

It’s 2009 I think at this point in the game more people would be looking at these things and saying, hrm we are leaving out a potetentially huge and profitable market. In terms of that, do you then just say oh well I don’t know brown people/understand brown colors/am not brown myself and let it go?

I’m only going to say this once.

Grow some balls.

Okay now I’m done ranting under the jump I have some new reviews of stuff, things that make me feel fabulous.

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Man, the past several months have been a whirlwind. How is it already March? But rather than just making excuses, I come with an offering. A video.

We’ve always wanted to do videos at Makeup Chicken. In fact, I think it’s the primary thing we wanted to do here, back in the early days when JT and I were joking about writing a makeup blog.

This is not a tutorial. It’s more of a trial run. I’m not even wearing makeup! It’s also ridiculous and abundantly clear that I need better lighting! But it’s what I’ve got. I’m sorry we’ve all been gone so long.

So I am an obsessed..er avid youtube make up video fan and I was inspired to try out one of xSparkage’s (AKA Leesha) looks. She has done some awesome themed looks and I decided to try out her Hulk inspired look today.

See her version here.

And here’s a preview with my eye closed.

More under the jump.
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I hope everyone has had a lot of fun celebrating whichever winter holiday they prefer - or none at all! We do a secular Christmas around here - all of the twinkle lights without any of the religious overtones.

Gift cards seemed to be a big gift this holiday season. I’m not usually a fan because, hey, it sometimes seems like cheating. But sometimes it’s dead on - for example, my husband got me a MAC gift card. All of the giftiness of makeup without any of the “will she like this product?” angst!

So, now I’m left trying to figure out what I want to get - what would YOU get with a $75 MAC gift card? Would you take the opportunity to splurge on something from the skin care line? Would you stock up on a ton of new eyeshadows or lipsticks? Would you hold on to it until a collection came out that you knew you couldn’t resist so you could get more from it without feeling guilty?

The Dame Edna collection hits today and, I admit, I’m feeling pretty tempted by the lip stuff….