Fun with Mascara: Maybelline Great Lash Royal Blue

I wear foundation/concealer/brows (and to a lesser extent blush) because I think they make me look better, but eyeshadow/liner/lipstick because they're fun. I realized a few weeks ago that mascara, long part of the first group, comes in colors and could therefore become fun, too! So when I found a bunch of the Maybelline Great Lash colored mascaras from last summer at Grocery Outlet for $2.99 apiece, I picked up the blue and teal ones. I've only opened the blue, since I currently have 3 other mascaras in rotation (I don't know how that happened, either), and have been playing around with it. And guys, guess what? It's fun.

this is what fun looks like, y'all.

Manicure Monday

GUYS! I DID IT! I finally finished wearing every single one of my polishes. It would have happened sooner if I could have stopped myself from picking up new ones, but...whatever. New Year's resolution DEFEATED. Boom.

This is a pretty massive post, so I'm going to try and keep it short(ish) and sweet(ish). I got gradually less successful at being brief over time...

Sally Hansen Rosy Outlook with Wet N Wild Waves of Enchantment, taped

WoE is sheer, but it's really pretty layered over Rosy Outlook.

Here, Let Me Show You My Mascaras

There are so many things that can make a mascara go wrong. It can smudge. It can flake. It can itch, or smell, or clump, or loosen curl, or fade, or fill-in-the-blank-here. My lashes are naturally long, dark (slightly lighter at the tips), and plentiful, and they grow straight, so if I don't curl them, they bump against my glasses (even more of a problem when wearing mascara!). I therefore look for mascara that doesn't clump them together (an effect of many volumizing formulas) and does hold a curl.

Terminology clarification: when I say "mascara clumping", I mean that the mascara builds up on the lashes in little balls. When I say "lash clumping", I mean the mascara clumps individual lashes together, making them look like a single mondo lash.

Since mascara needs to be replaced at least every three months, I try to stick to drugstore options, but there are a couple of higher-end ones here. My absolute favorite HG love forever is Armani Eyes to Kill, but it's $30 a tube and in the 2 years since I first purchased it, I haven't been able to bring myself to fork over the cash again. Fortunately, Maybelline Full N Soft is almost as good and 1/5 the price! And several of these that I've tried lately are good, too. (Most of the pictures in this post are stolen from other posts on the blog, so if they look familiar, don't worry, you're not crazy. Or, well, you might be, and at the very least you certainly have an uncannily excellent visual memory, but it's probably not reason to get yourself checked out.) For all mascaras here, I have chosen the blackest option, since anything else just seems pointless.

For reference, bare, curled lashes:

you're gonna be seeing a lot of my right eye in this post.

Maybelline Full N Soft, one coat:

Manicure Monday

These reviews are all super wordy, so I'll skip the introduction.

Revlon Wintermint
This is one of the new scented polishes released by Revlon (they're permanent, no worries). I picked it up because I was just dying of curiosity as to whether it would be a dupe for my beloved Mermaid's Dream. It's not. In fact, I kind of hate Wintermint, even though they are really similar.

2 coats Wintermint on all except
pinky, which has 2 coats Mermaid's
Dream. All with 2 (or 3? damnit)
layers of top coat

Here's the deal: Wintermint's base is much thicker and more opaque than Mermaid's Dream, so it covers up the blue big glitters and gold little glitters in the base much more than in MD, and since there are less glitters to begin with in Wintermint, the end result is much more muted and less sparkletastic. And where MD dries uniformly bumpy, allowing all sorts of different layers of glitter to sparkle (and giving it a cool fish-scale effect, without the 3 coats of topcoat necessary to smooth it), Wintermint is lumpy and uneven from where the larger blue glitter pokes up.

Manicure Monday

Only two manis (though three polishes!) for your viewing pleasure this week.

Zoya Yummy and Maybelline Beaming Blue
Zoya's polish names are ostensibly all female names, but...Yummy? I certainly hope that's no one's name. I picked it up because I wanted something to layer under Beaming Blue, picked up a few weeks ago, and from the online swatches, it seemed the closest in base color out of Zoya's blues. Happily, it's perfect! Though it doesn't look as wonderful in pictures as in person.

Beaming Blue is much prettier and more
interesting than it looks here. Yummy is pretty
accurate, though!

I did two coats of Yummy on all my non-layered fingers, and 1 coat topped with 1 coat Beaming Blue on the others. It was very pretty! Beaming Blue has a beautiful lavender duochrome, though it still does not outshine Lavishly Lilac (and I of course neglected to photograph it...), and Yummy is interestingly pastel-bright. I see it being ideal in spring!

Manicure Monday

I've been having some digestive issues lately, which hasn't left me feeling particularly bloggy, but I have procured some new polishes––nothing quite like colorful sparkle fingertips to take away from stomach malaise, no? (Also, due to the discomfort and concomitant resurgence of CFS symptoms, I've been rather absent from the blogosphere, too, which I must apologize for! It's gotten to the point where I'm so far behind on commenting that the thought of trying to catch up gives me anxiety, so while I have been reading and loving y'all's posts, I may not ever write the comments to prove it. I'm sorry! Feel free to not comment on my posts for a few weeks...)

Nubar Iris Dust
This is actually about a year old, but I don't think I've ever shown it here. It's a super dramatic multichrome, shifting from a deep purple to a bright yellow. I wasn't able to capture all the shades, but the shots below capture how it looks most of the time.

It's a perfect fall polish, since it matches the glorious trees. It's very, very sheer, though, so I recommend layering it; I did two coats of Iris Dust over two coats of Wet N Wild Under Your Spell. I neglected to photograph it until a couple of days after applying, hence the tip wear, but I find the wear to be pretty typical. You can find it on eBay for ~$5, which is where I bought mine.

Nearly Perfect Lashes: Maybelline Full N Soft Very Black Review and Swatches

There are many things about my appearance that I might change, given the choice (not having to pluck my brows would be great, not to mention some way to fix my skin!), but my lashes are not one of them. They're long, dark, thick, and hardy. They are not, however, particularly curly, but I have my kickass lash curler for that. My goal when using mascara is to lengthen, separate, and darken yet further, since in the course of applying eyeshadow and face powder I inevitably end up with product on my lashes. There's a lot of things I don't want, including (but probably not limited to) crunchy lashes, clumps, sad spindly lashes, smudges, flakes, and jabby mascara wands; my goal is always my lashes but better, natural and believable. My absolute HG mascara is Armani Eyes to Kill, but at $30 a tube, it's not something I can repurchase lightly, so when it finally dried up on me I decided to start hunting for a cheaper alternative. I picked up Maybelline Full N Soft, as I remembered liking it when I used it several years ago, apparently forgetting about the 3 sample tubes of mascara I have waiting for me to try. Ah well, at least I used +Up rewards so it ended up being free...

Maybelline Color Tattoo in Barely Beige Review and Swatches

Part of Maybelline's LE Fashion Week collection were a few new shades of Color Tattoo cream eyeshadows, including a shimmery champagne. I don't find myself wearing the other Color Tattoo I have (Bad to the Bronze) all that often because it's a little dark and really only works if I wear it as a base to a smoky taupe eye, but I bought Barely Beige in the hopes that it could be a good eyeshadow base/quick and easy nude eye.

Maybelline Barely Beige Color Tattoo

30 Days Makeup Challenge: Day 7

For a summary of this series, see here!

What is your favorite eyeshadow color?
Well this is a no-brainer: TAUPE! I love how versatile and wide-ranging it is. Below are most of the taupes in my collection (all the ones that I wear or have recently acquired).

Left to right: Fyrinnae Arcane Magic Evocation, Fyrinnae Platinum, Fyrinnae Koala, L'Oreal Bronzed Taupe, Maybelline Bad to the Bronze, NYX Iced Mocha, theBalm Insane Jane

Platinum isn't really taupe at all, but let's just say I included it for comparison purposes, mk? Evocation and Koala are both the darkest and coolest, while Iced Mocha is the lightest and most gold and Bad to the Bronze the reddest. Bronzed Taupe is, in my opinion, the most versatile, flattering shade in my collection of taupes, and I love the texture, so if you don't have many taupes in your collection (and really, who ever has enough taupes?), I definitely recommend checking it out. I've got a couple of high end taupe shadows on my wish list (Le Métier de Beauté Corinthian and Chantecaille Sel), and I'm planning on picking up at least one of them when I'm in New York; I'd love to get both, but at $30 apiece, I really can't afford to!

Oh, taupe, you've ruined me for all other neutrals.

What's your favorite eyeshadow color? Do you share my fondness for taupe, or do you prefer brighter colors?

Maybelline Color Tattoo Cream Eyeshadow in Bad to the Bronze Review and Swatches

The new year is a wonderful time to be browsing drugstores, since all the new collections are being released and everything is pretty and new and exciting. This is my first year really paying attention to these things, and let me tell you: there is so much awesomeness. The Finger Paints flakies collection was my first acquisition, but other items on my ZOMG GIMME list are L'Oreal's Infallible Eyeshadow (which I finally got my greedy paws on and will be reviewing shortly!), Maybelline's Dream Bouncy Blushes (even though I don't like cream blushes, these are just so cute!), China Glaze's upcoming magnetic collection (AAAAH AFFORDABLE MAGNETIC POLISHES!!!), and today's topic, Maybelline Color Tattoo cream eyeshadow.

Maybelline Color Tattoo in Bad to the Bronze