Month: October 2018

A Lip Product Challenge

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So, despite the fact that when I began wearing makeup earlier this year I had never really explored lip products in any depth at all, I managed to purchase and fully use one bullet lipstick.

Now, I think that’s a pretty big accomplishment. At the same time, I realize that part of my ability to do so is because I didn’t start out with many lip products. But now that I’ve been messing around with makeup for so many months, I’ve acquired quite a few new lip products through various subscription boxes and purchases. In no way is it a lot of lip products but it’s enough to want to be able to explore all those colors and not specifically pan another lipstick right now.

I’ve been enjoying watching “Lipstick Roulette” videos on youtube, where the host will pick a few colors out of her extensive lipstick stash, use them for two weeks, and then decide if she wants to keep that item or get rid of that item.

I do not have such an extensive collection that I could do such a challenge. I only have 22 items and most of them are small sample sizes. So, I asked Miss Butterfly if she’d like to choose 5 items for me to concentrate on for 2 weeks at a time. She was THRILLED. Absolutely thrilled. She spent a lot of time considering which 5 she would choose. She wanted to make a nice mix of colors and types of lipsticks. I was quite surprised at just how into this task she got.

So, I took a photo.

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From left to right (swatches) Oryza Beauty color Opus, Mac matte color russian red, Tarte Tarteist lip paint in exposed, Ofra liquid lip in verona, and smashbox liquid lipstick (color unknown, unfortunately.)

So, these are the 5 colors I’ll be spending the next two weeks using. After that, I’ll have her choose another 5. She’s chosen two of my favorites already, I love the smashbox and ofra formula. I am trying the oryza for the first time today and I have to admit, I am not in love with the deep color. The formula is quite nice though.

Unlike the lipstick roulette videos, I also won’t be removing items from my collection. I don’t have enough lipsticks to do so and it would have to be pretty awful for me to decide to do that. I don’t think I have much that I think is particularly awful. But, if I do find something that’s awful, I’ll be sure to add it to one of these posts in the upcoming series.

Rolling 10 Pan Update 2

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Rolling project 10 pan update coming your way. It’s been another month and I’ve been able to work very hard and finishing a number of items. Not only that, but I’ve been working consistently on so many of these now that this month looks great for using things up, and next month looks great as well! Here’s the list of 10 from last month:

  1.  Foundations
    1. Urban Decay All Nighter
  2. Concealers
    1. Maybelline age rewind
  3. Bronzer/Contour
    1. Wet n Wild contour palette (Doubles as powder, so I won’t choose a powder this round)
  4. Lipstick
    1. Maybelline nude matte lipstick
  5. Perfume
    1. Gucci Eau de parfum II (Get halfway through this product)
  6.  Haircare
    1. Deva Curl Shampoo
  7. Cleanser
    1. Trader Joe’s
  8. Miscellaneous items
    1. Becca Undereye Primer
  9. Body Care
    1. Mary Kay Satin Hands

Urban Decay All Nighter-I began mixing this with It cosmetics cc cream matte formula. This helped the color work better for me and helped the longevity of the formula. I took a hiatus from project pan during my conference to wear other foundations, but once the conference was over I decided to quit mixing and go back to hardcore panning. I took photos over the weekend for this post, and at the time it was still going strong even though I could no longer see where the airless pump was on the container. I am proud to report that as of this morning it’s no longer pumping a steady stream of product so I am calling it done.

Maybelline age rewind concealer-I love this concealer though it sometimes feels like the coverage is awfully light when paired with UD all nighter foundation. It does make my undereye area look good though, so it’s no trouble to keep using it. Miss Butterfly also uses this one, and it’s certainly one we’ll be repurchasing once this one is finished. However, I’ve got a Bare Minerals concealer that will make an appearance in this project pan before I move on to another one of these age rewind ones.

Wet n wild contour palette-The powder is already gone, can you believe it? I worked hard at eliminating that powder from the pan this month. I believe I’ll be done with the contour shade next month.

Maybelline Nude matte lipstick-I wanted to pan a bullet lipstick, and now I have. I am not replacing this category at this time. I want to just generally use a bunch of different lipsticks before I get into panning another lipstick item. Maybe I’ll even make a series on it for the blog.

Perfume-I am so annoyed about this perfume, it doesn’t have the staying power I remember and I wonder if that’s just because it’s older. I should be taking it to work with me and reapplying to get maximum use since it doesn’t stick with me, but then I’d give up the opportunity to have it used by Miss Butterfly. The saddest part, I have another one as a back up in my collection. Do Not Buy Back Ups! This is my warning. Maybe I’ll bring the back up to work.

Deva Curl shampoo-I’ve got another month of use out of this product I suspect, so I’ll just try to keep after it and really get it finished this month. Then I may use that category for something new entirely.

Trader Joe’s cleanser-DONE! I am so glad I panned this item. In the end, it worked fine. I’d put it away because it felt like it was drying my face, but when I felt that way I wasn’t using moisturizer or any other face products, so my skin was quite dehydrated. It works just fine now and I am so pleased I didn’t toss it. I plan to reuse the bottle with the pump for a cleanser I own in a problematic bottle. But, it’s not a cleanser I plan to pan right away, so I am giving up this category for the next month.

Becca undereye primer-I really love this product and I may repurchase at some point. Steady progress is being made. I’d say that the packaging is a little annoying at this point, it is hard to get the product out of the corners. But, there’s so much product still in the corners! I’ve got another undereye item to try after this is done so I won’t repurchase right away, but despite its pricey nature I really love this one.

Mary Kay Satin Hands-I have been working on this one and actually used up the associated but not pictured hand cream. No matter, we can always use a different hand cream. I suspect we’ll use up the hand softener next, but I’ve got a backup solution for that as well. These count as two, which is why my list only has 9 items in a 10 pan project.

New items-I am adding in my lovely frankenhighliter that I made from the Clinique palette and another sample item as well as the one base shadow I’ve been working on from that now tossed palette. I am also adding the Hourglass vanish stick foundation-I have this in a shade that does not work for me. I should have returned it, but I didn’t until after it was so late I’d be embarrassed to do so. My plan with this is to use it on the redness on my face and then cover it with a better foundation match. This is what I did during the conference and it worked very well. It’ll probably take me ages to finish it this way, but I do want to get use out of it. For this, I used the cap to indicate how much of the stick I have when entirely rolled up. I took this measurement from the absolute highest point on the base container. The white line on the cap is the measurement.

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New list:

  1.  Foundations
    1. Hourglass vanish stick
  2. Concealers
    1. Maybelline age rewind
  3. Bronzer/Contour
    1. Wet n Wild contour palette
  4. Highlighter
    1. Frankenhighlighter
  5. Perfume
    1. Gucci Eau de parfum II (Get halfway through this product)
  6.  Haircare
    1. Deva Curl Shampoo
  7. Eyeshadow
    1. One pan of clinique eyeshadow.
  8. Miscellaneous items
    1. Becca Undereye Primer
  9. Body Care
    1. Mary Kay Satin Hands

So, this month I believe that I’ll finish the concealer, the contour, the shampoo, and perhaps one of the satin hands items. I’ll be able to easily roll in another concealer, contour, and hair product. I am less sure what to sub in for the body care item. Hopefully, in the upcoming month, that item will reveal itself to me.

Another Little Project

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Before I began Miss Butterfly’s sweater, I cast on a Ziggity Zaggity scarf using handspun yarn. I thought it was a cute little pattern, but at this point I am fearful the thing is totally going to curl. That being said, it’s still a fun little knit with increases and decreases and as usual, the handspun is really satisfying to work with.

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I do hope a good blocking will really help it not to roll. I also hope it will open it up quite well, at this point it is going to be a pretty short scarf unless it increases significantly.

Here’s a funny thing that happened on Friday. Miss Butterfly’s father was working on demoing a home in our neighborhood. He contacted me about a piece of furniture that looked pretty nice but was just going in the dumpster. I don’t think I ever quite said “I’ll take it.” But eventually, I got a message from him saying “I am dropping this off at your house.” I think he just could not bear to see a nice piece of furniture just get trashed so he decided to make it my problem. I spent the remainder of Friday at work wondering what shape it would be in. But, once home, I was soooo tired. I took a nap, Mr. Ink had to wake me up an hour later to get the dogs walked before it got dark. Then I didn’t feel too well so I went to bed early too and slept a really long time.

The next day I went out and wiped it down with a towel just to see what I was working with. It looked in pretty decent shape! We need to fix a piece on the mirror and one drawer pull is missing, but it’s good enough to use. So, I spent Sunday washing it really well where we could then see it shine. Here’s what it looked like with a wash.

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The mirror is already inside as it’s going to take some TLC from Mr. Ink. I need to figure out how to remove the little labels on the drawers. It would benefit from a full refinish but that’s not in my wheelhouse at the moment. The aesthetic of this piece does not fit our home at all, but it makes a lovely little vanity and Miss Butterfly and I had a great time moving our makeup set up into the drawers Sunday afternoon. We are looking forward to the moment when it has a mirror!

That’s about it for here, more makeup posts coming up in the next few posts as it’s the end of the month and time for that!

 

Sweater Knitting

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Miss Butterfly recently began raiding my stash of handknit sweaters in order to increase the amount of clothing she wears. She has found a few she wears regularly but then requested I make her something. Since it’s been years since she’s really been excited to wear something I’ve knit, I obliged.

She chose an aqua colored yarn from my stash and since I’d been itching to knit I See Spring, I chose that to knit for her.

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I knit the body of the sweater until I had only 3 balls of yarn left. Then I decided I’d better knock out the sleeves, which is my least favorite part anyway, so that I’d know how much yarn I had left for the body. I also already finished the neckline just so that I didn’t forget I’d need yarn for that at the very end of the project.

So, all things considered, this project is moving right along! And I am super excited to get this particular yarn stash entry moved out of my stash. I’ve never loved this yarn so it’s great that Miss Butterfly chose it. It’s too “flat” for my taste. Flat colorwise. I hope to continue to make good progress on this, it would be great to have another sweater finished this year!

 

Just in time for the holiday

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Remember this?

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I am sure you do if you are following along because I really did go on about how much I disliked this palette. One weekend this month Miss Butterfly and I decided to mess around with it. We decided to save her eyebrow shades and I decided to save the one in the top right corner as a shade to set my lids after priming them. It’s not very pigmented so I can totally get away with it. We depotted those two shades. Then I decided to make a frankenhighlighter using the first two top shades starting on the left. I’d been messing around with both of them as a highlighter and they both worked, but not the best. I thought that I, personally, could do better.

So, I depotted both of those shades, removed them from their pan, crushed them up, added some loose highlighter I’d gotten as a sample from an indie company, mixed it all up, and then pressed it in 3 little pans from the palette. That turned out to be a lovely highlighter just as I had imagined.

Then Miss Butterfly wanted to mess around with the palette, and she took every single remaining shade, depotted them, and mixed them up to see what would happen. She then repressed those into 2 remaining pans as she liked the color. I suspect those won’t stick around in stash for long, but they can be there while she experiments with them.

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So, from left to right, three pans of highlighter I made, 2 pans of the cool toned brown Miss Butterfly made, the setting shade that I saved and the two colors Miss Butterfly mixes to fill in her brows. As you can see, I lost a chunk of the lightest color in the depotting, but Miss Butterfly says she doesn’t care.

It was quite a month for repressing actually. I also had to work with my wet n wild contour palette that I am trying to pan. I’d gotten to a point where the light powder was very hard to use and the dark powder ended up completely moving in the pan.

So, I decided to break up both of them and repress them in the middle of the pan.

This had some unexpected results, like the orange that helps turn the lighter powder a yellow tone coming through, as well as a pinky tone coming through in the darker powder. However, when applied these have the same result as they did prior to repressing. They look a little funny but they perform just fine.

So, in makeup, it’s been kind of a fun month. While I am still working on panning some items I don’t love, it was also fun to get to a point with some items that I had to really work at getting the most use out of them. I could have tossed both of these palettes at this point for being difficult to use, but the online beauty advice has been helpful for learning how to get the absolute most out of what I have purchased. So, even an eyeshadow palette that I actively hate can be divided up and repurposed to something that is useful and even something I like. I may not be using ALL of it, but I am using a fair bit more than I expected when I decided to let that palette leave my stash.

 

Bad Photos

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I have tended to be quite busy in the evenings and not overly motivated to get decent photos even though I AM motivated to get a little blogging done.

So yesterday at lunchtime I took a very poor photo of a new project. Here it is:

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This is the silken diamonds scarf, and it’s out of handspun. I am keeping this one at work and getting a couple of repeats done during lunchtime. For the record, the associated handspun yarn looks like this:

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So obviously it’s MUCH prettier in person. Plus, those diamonds will open up nicely once the scarf is washed and blocked. But we aren’t quite there yet.

I had made this goal of trying to knit 40 items this year. My current count is 24 so it isn’t exactly looking good unless I start knitting a whole bunch of hats, and that’s highly unlikely.

While technically it’s only October still, I am starting to think about stash busting goals for 2019. My current goal has been to knit double the amount that I spin, and I am fairly on track for making that happen. (Knit 10 miles, spin 7 at the moment, plenty of time to catch that knitting total up.)

I currently have 123 stash entries on Ravelry at the moment for yarn. This is handspun and commercial yarn, and includes Miss Marja handspun that is in my stash as well. I feel certain that there may be a few yarns wandering around in there that are not accounted for as well. But, I think what I’d like to try to do next year is get my stash entries under 100 and keep them there. This would require taking new inventory to make sure I’ve accounted for everything and then really getting creative with trying to use up what I have. Sort of a “project pan” for yarn. Since over the last few years I’ve gone from containing my yarn in two cabinets down to one cabinet, I know I’ve made a great amount of progress overall along these lines but I would like to continue that. The recent major clean out of my craft room stash was also quite motivating, and the ensuing to be used fiber and yarn did not tip me over into needing an additional cabinet to hold everything. While the craft room clean out isn’t entirely complete at this time, it’s so much closer to being done than it had been, and even if I managed to finish it, it would not interfere with my ability to use only one cabinet for my entire stash.

So there you have it, I am already thinking toward the end of the year and to next year goals. This works well for me really because I can now start to preemptively work toward that goal, making sure that all stash yarn is accounted for on Ravelry and so on.

And that’s it from here!

Creek Stomping

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We took time out yesterday to spend some time out of the house on a most glorious fall day. It was much needed time, I was less exhausted having caught up on a lot of sleep and I was very much ready to spend some time out of doors with my family. We took the dogs, Miss Butterfly, and her friend out to a state park to do a little walking.

With the girls in tow, it turned into a creek stomping trip for them. They quickly got rid of their shoes and got right into the water, following the water rather than the trail.

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They are hard to see here, but it’s hard to take a picture of them down in a gully while I am standing at the top of the gully on a trail!

Soon enough, Lizzie had to join them, barreling down the side of the gully like the dynamic adventure dog she is and splashing right into the creek.

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She’s not a dog who likes swimming, but walking through the water is completely her thing. Here are a few more of her wandering through the water.

She was nice and wet and muddy with leaves stuck all over her underside and hind legs once she was done. I am pretty sure she called it a successful day. She’s such an amazing dog. Many times I’d look at what she was trying to accomplish, the two rocks she was trying to jump between, or the side of the hill she really should be unable to climb, and watch with my mouth hanging open as she did exactly what I was sure she couldn’t do. This is exactly my reaction each time we take her on a trip like this. She’s really the best dog ever. Persistent, adventurous, athletic, and extremely good at endurance. She may not be the fastest dog, but that’s because she’s busy thinking things through and processing her next move.

Rose had a great time too, though each new situation worries her a bit. The trains going by on a nearby railroad worried her, and while she desperately wanted to join Lizzie in the creek stomping, every time she’d try she’d get in the water she would freak out, jump and splash, then run out of the water a little terrified and back onto the trail. No matter, she’s young and she has all the time in the world to continue to work on her concern about the world around her. She’s gotten so much better in just the short time we’ve had her.

She really seemed to be having a most excellent time even with her concerns.

You may already know my love for spiders, and Miss Butterfly found me a particularly spectacular one!

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If anyone is able to identify this one, I’d greatly appreciate it! It was large and fascinating!

Once we were done at the park, the dogs, who were trying riding in the very back of the vehicle this time around, were good and exhausted.

Miss Lizzie sunned herself, probably chilly after her water adventure. And Rose thought a nap would be entirely appropriate.

We had a dog training class with Rose that same evening, so after we got home we got a few things done around the house, fed Lizzie, then took Rose to the dog park and then to training. She was so exhausted at training that she was perfectly lovely and mostly stayed laying down while the teacher was instructing.

This was most definitely one of those days I needed, a truly great one. I would do it all over again today if I could!

 

Blogging Again

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It’s been a particularly long “recovery” after this particular conference. I blame the fact that far more equipment was needed this year than in past years as well as the fact that I am 12 years older than I was when I first started this, and I am pretty sure that counts for some exhaustion. There have been heating pads for my back and sore feet and so many extra naps in the two days off that I’ve had since the conference ended. Thankfully I had the dogs to keep me company, they did a lot of napping too.

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There’s also been knitting. Well, I did some knitting at the conference. Though far less than typical since more equipment meant a lot more set up and break down. Most notably, I almost brought my down the road and back again shawl to completion. On the final day, I could have finished it but had forgotten my pattern so I wasn’t sure what the final few rows should be. I finished it up when I got home.

It’s very pretty but I don’t intend to knit this one again. It’s not my cup of tea.

I’ve started a bunch more things since. 2 scarves and a sweater for Miss Butterfly. Actually, I started 3 but one of them ended up looking like this:

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Yep, one of my knitting projects finally fell prey to a young dog who loves to shred. Mr. Ink was outside “for only 10 minutes” while this happened. You should have seen the ball of yarn! And I lost the needles too. But I was able to salvage the yarn with careful unknotting and hand winding. Obviously, the start of the project was not salvageable. The reality is, that sweet dog is so smart that she knows what she wants and she will absolutely wait until her humans are not looking to go after it. Which means she’s not trustworthy at all “for only 10 minutes.” But, under my watchful eye, she’s not destructive at all anymore.

That’s about it for here, we’ve got a day packed full even though it’s a Sunday, but I am hoping the work week evenings will show me a little bit of downtime this week. And at least there shouldn’t be overtime! (Though I worked overtime on Friday again, completely unexpectedly.)

I’ve got a few new knitting projects to show off so there should be blog posts, and I am already working on one makeup related blog post as well. So, I am hoping I am back in a bit of a routine now. A normal routine. Which will be extremely welcome at this point.

 

2 days, 2 FOs part 2

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And here’s the next one!

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I finished the Leftie shawlette yesterday. I used a silk single as the main color and then the leaves are 6 different colors of koigu kpppm leftover from my legends of the fall sweater. This was a fantastic knit! Truly! I would absolutely knit this again. I loved adding the little pops of color and was eager to knit those rows every time. I still have a fair amount of kpppm left, so it could happen that I knit another. But not yet, I am already on to other projects. Plus there’s that pesky down the road and back again shawl to finish up.

In dog news, here’s a cute photo:

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Mr. Ink had been sort of bummed that Rose didn’t seem to take to him as fast as she did to us. I had to remind him that it took Lizzie 4 months to really settle in with him. And Rose is far more nervous a dog than Lizzie. I’ve been noticing changes lately, Rose being likely to sit at the door waiting for him to arrive home, or likely to go up to him for some kisses, but this week he got an all out greeting when he arrived home. Full on hound dog snuffles with excessive tail wagging and even a nose nibble, one of her highest forms of affection. The next day he got exactly the same, plus a paw to the face, her other highest form of affection, so I think it only took Rose a month and a half to settle in with him. Now she’s truly found her place in the family.

That’s it from here! Conference starts tonight and hopefully at the end of it I’ll have something new to show off. Plus, I am hoping to be back to my regularly scheduled more often than just on the weekends posting schedule.

2 Days, 2 FOs part 1

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Last weekend I finished, washed, and blocked a shawlette. It rained all week, often pouring, and I had no opportunity to get a photograph. Instead, I knit. And that means I have another FO as well.

I’ll show off last week’s FO today and tomorrow I’ll post this week’s FO.

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This is the sweet anemone shawl and I knit it out of a handspun yarn I had in stash. This handspun I made from some loop! cloud, it’s a 2 ply and it’s very soft. Softly spun and softly plied. It has a bit of sparkle.

The little floral motif around the edges of this shawl were very easy to work and very easy to remember to work, and that made this a really fantastic knit for this week while I stressed about the upcoming conference.

The conference begins tomorrow evening and while I am looking forward to it, I am mostly looking forward to it being OVER. This year instead of 30 poster stands I needed 70 which meant two trips to an art supply store to purchase additional poster stands, a big order to the print shop for additional 4 feet by 5 feet poster boards, and 3 full car loads to the conference site with the associated loading up, and unloading once I got there. It also meant that one car load had to stay in my car overnight Thursday night rendering one car completely useless to us.

Once I get to the site on Sunday evening and after the registration desk is set up and ready to go, I get the great pleasure of setting up all 70 poster stands and boards which means I am likely to be a hot sweaty mess that evening. Poster session is Monday, so then I get to break them all back down and on Tuesday load them all back in my car and make the 3 trips to distribute them where they need to go. It’s going to be a very long day. For the record, this is typically a one car load job.

We have presentations scheduled straight through lunchtime on Monday and then I get to load up and head straight to a dentist appointment that I for some odd reason decided to schedule directly after the conference. Probably just to get it out of the way.

Thankfully after all that I have a day off. Which I definitely think I’ll need and deserve!

Pan That Palette Reboot

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So, after my pan that palette tantrum of last week, I let Miss Butterfly know that I had no intention of continuing to pan a palette I actively hate. Her response was “I was waiting for you to come to that conclusion!” So, she’s going to keep working on her brow shade and I am going to keep working on the shade I use to set my eyelid primer, and once she’s done with the brow shade we are tossing the thing. I’ve been considering doing something like making a frankenshadow or frankenhighlight out of some of the shades, but I’ve never tried such a thing so I am not sure if I’ll be inspired about that or not. We’ll see. Might be fun to try with Miss Butterfly.

After I informed Miss Butterfly of my decision, I spent some time evaluating what palette I could pan. The reality is the decision wasn’t that hard. Right after I got that awful clinique palette I got the Tarte Be a Mermaid and Make Waves palette. Now, this palette was soundly ridiculed for being ridiculous, but the reality is that the shades are lovely and super easy to wear. I will also say that pretty much every warm toned shadow palette that came after this one looked very similar. Warm reds/oranges with pops of blue.

As for me, I’ve adored this palette so much. So much that I actually put it away because I feared using it too fast. Now I’ve decided that is ridiculous, and I’d like to pan the palette.

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It’s kinda shiny and hard to get a photo of, but here it is. As you can easily see I’ve already hit major pan on sandbar. The only mattes in this palette are sandbar, shipwreck, and shore thing. Many of the other shimmers have a pretty good dip going on them. I absolutely love every single shade in here, and so I want to pan the entire thing except perhaps the turquoise and teal. We’ll see about those. It’s inevitable that I’ll need to use other matte shadows at some point to supplement the shimmers in this palette, but I’ve got mattes that even mimic the ones in this palette so that shouldn’t be difficult.

This will be a long-term project and my hope is to do midmonth check-ins since so much of what I write about that is makeup related happens at the end/beginning of the month. I also want to allow this to be slow going, as I don’t want to burn out on the project immediately. This can be a year-long endeavor, I love the palette and I want to truly enjoy it when I am using it. Also, I won’t be trying to make these shades double as something beyond eyeshadow. This is not an attempt to use it up as fast as possible in any way possible. It’s simply to get maximum use out of a palette in my stash that I absolutely adore in every way.

And with that said, it’s time to go do my makeup and I’ll be using this palette immediately. 🙂

A New Start

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I finished a shawl, I knit it rather fast as it was quite mindless. However, I got too busy to get it washed, blocked, and photographed by today.

So instead I’ll show you what I started this week. I’ve been meaning to knit this Leftie shawl for a while now. But, when I finished up that sweater that required 6 different colors of Koigu KPPPM, that seemed the perfect opportunity to set aside the leftovers for something like this.

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I have paired the koigu scraps with some debbie bliss silk singles I had in stash. It’s looking great! there are a lot of ends to weave in, which I intend to start on shortly.

What else is up? Well, you know me. Hanging with my dogs is my relaxation right now, during a very busy work time. Only about a week and a half until I’ll be back to normal, but until then, I spend lots of time with the doggos.

On Wednesday it got quite hot, in the 90s. And it wasn’t raining for the first time in about 10 days. The forecast was that the temps would drop and it would rain for another 10 days. So, we took the dogs to the dog park. It was an interesting trip for many reasons. Including the type of dogs that don’t play well with others and start fights instead, and their owners who insist that their aggressive dogs get to stay. Thankfully our dogs stayed safe. Rose spent her time instigating other dogs to run through the mud pit she just loves. That’s the photo above, though by the time she was done she was black with mud and soaking wet. So, we had to give her an emergency bath. And the back seat of my vehicle is still covered in mud. But, I am awfully thankful for those leather seats right now! When we chose them, we didn’t have dogs. They’ve come in handy over and over.

So, we went from 90F to 40F in the span of 24 hours, which was really quite ridiculous.

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Now, these two keep cuddling up near each other any chance they get. Which is fine by me.

A New Product

/ shellssells / 1 Comment

It’s been about 8 or 9 months now since I’ve been more seriously doing my makeup on the regular. When I began, my skin was in really bad shape, and because of this, I thought I had really dry skin. As I began to work on my skincare routine, it became clear that my skin was on the normal to oily side, it was just really difficult to tell that under the years of damage and lack of care I’d put it through.

The first serious foundation I’d chosen was the Urban Decay All-Nighter foundation. This was NOT a good choice for me. Not colorwise, I didn’t receive any assistance when choosing a color because I didn’t want to ask for help. Not skin wise, as my skin was pretty dehydrated at the time, and UD All Nighter is not at all good for dry skin. To be fair, as my skin repaired this foundation began to work better for me. We came to an understanding really. But it’s never going to be my favorite and I can’t wait to be done with it.

After that, I got smart and first asked for help choosing a new foundation. I ended up with Hourglass Skin Tint in color Sand. This was a great product to use while my skin was getting back into a decent place, as it does provide extra moisture. It looks fantastic too!

Then I decided to try wet n wild photofocus foundation, which worked beautifully and I really like still! And you can’t beat the price point.

But for some reason, I wasn’t done there! I decided I wanted to try the hourglass stick foundation and without any research whatsoever I ordered it in the same color I had my skin tint in, which was not at all equivalent. Another poor foundation choice. The second bad choice was not returning it immediately. I still have it, and I’ll probably try to pan that once the UD allnighter is gone.

Then I, having just finished up some mary kay mineral powder foundation, decided I was into mineral powder foundations and got Miss Butterfly and I some bare minerals foundation. It works well and I have no problem with using it. But that’s a lot of foundation.

That’s when I got smart and said “no more foundations!” even though there are tons I would like to try. No more foundations until I use up the UD.

I was in sephora yesterday, I’d gone for some moroccan oil texture spray. They didn’t carry it, which was disappointing. And I had a gift certificate I wanted to spend. But rather than spend it online, I ended up wandering near the It cosmetics display and picking up their cc cream in matte finish. This one has really intrigued me since it came out and I really wanted to give it a try. UD should be finished up this month I think, and I like the idea of having a foundation with a good spf in it. Plus, the original cc creams get such nice reviews that it was exciting to me to be following along with makeup when a new formula came out and really want to try it!

So that’s what I spent my gift certificate on. And this morning I gave it a try. (This is how people end up with tons of foundation and filming declutters, right? It’s because there are so many choices!!!)

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I put this on at 5:30 a.m. At the time of this photo, it’s 10 a.m. That’s 4.5 hours of wear already. I’ve paired it with wet n wild contour and hourglass blush/bronzer/highlight and ambient finishing powder. I used becca first light primer under the foundation.

I have believe I have achieved a skin like look. So far I really like this one! Feels great on the skin, looks nice for a good long time, plays well with my other favorite products, is matte but not “suck the life out of my skin” matte. Great coverage while still looking pretty natural. I’ve heard that some people struggle with breakouts from the sunscreen, so I will keep an eye out for that.

The other interesting thing about this was that it really felt like it would stay where it was without setting powder. I am going to give that a try pretty soon.

In any case, it may have taken a number of months and many trials and errors, but I am really starting to figure out what I like to use for various products. I think this may be why I am backing off my subscription boxes as well. I already quit sephora play. I’ve got ipsy through April next year and then I am ready to quit that one too or transfer it to Miss Butterfly perhaps.

At the moment I am thinking I’ll keep Boxy Charm though, it really is a good one! But I may start to feel differently next year and be ready to take a break.

 

Project Polish Update 1

/ shellssells / 1 Comment

2 months ago Miss Butterfly and I began a project polish. I only just realized that it’s been two months since an update, but I also think that’s ok as I wanted to be able to show actual progress when I did manage an update.

Here’s where we started:

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Some things have changed. First of all, we got rid of the PS red and the PS white, their formula was terrible and Miss Butterfly agreed that these must go. We also tossed the coral LA Colors. Miss Butterfly hated the color, Mr. Ink hated the color on me, and the formula was old and rather thick. We rolled in two colors that Miss Butterfly acquired over the summer and then immediately destashed those as well.

Now, the other problem I had in photographing progress was that initially I completely forgot to mark a start. Honestly, most of them had barely been touched anyhow, so the start is at the top. But, now you’ll begin to see a mark where we were last month and a further mark for this month.

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The two colors on the left, barely visible, are the ones we destashed.

The topcoat in a tiny bottle got a ton of use over the past few months. It’s at a point where it’s difficult to get product out of, and we are only using it on our toenails now. We’ll let it go shortly.

Next is a sally hansen color called game of chromes. I love this color mostly because it sticks to my nails all week. It’s pretty too! We’ve made some progress and the way we use it we’ll continue to make progress.

There’s a sally hansen top coat and as you can see, I’ve gotten pretty far on that as well. We are nearing a point where it’ll be complicated to get the product out of the bottle.

Next is OPI base coat, as you can see we’ve been working on that too.

Next to that is an almost red opi mini bottle. This is a really cute color, looks great on the nails, and we both love it. We wore it a bit, there’s a white line marking where we are now.

The blue sally hansen is one Miss Butterfly uses regularly. You’ll see a white line where we started and then a black line where we are now.

The white shimmer is gap I think, and I did wear it once, but not much progress.

Next to that is another opi mini bottle, this got a TON of use. Probably because hot pinks are genuinely one of my favorite nail colors. The white line indicates where we are now, we began with a full bottle.

And behind that is a sally hansen pinky nude color that Miss Butterfly uses regularly. I like it too! It’s a very wearable, very professional looking polish. A little progress was made.

Right now I haven’t even had time to do my nails or toenails, so for the first time in 2 months, I am going bare nailed! I can’t believe how well I’ve done keeping my nails painted and looking nice. It’s really cut back on how rough I am on my nails and surrounding skin as well.

Hopefully, I’ll get back to it soon, but there hasn’t been a lot of time to do nails lately. I would like to continue making progress though!

September Empties

/ shellssells / 1 Comment

I ended up with quite a few empties again this month. And really, that again has much to do with so many small items from subscription bags. However, I did decide that I am way too overloaded with these types of items and canceled one of my subscriptions. I may have another go at it in the future but at this time I want to get a handle on the tiny items I have and then some use out of my full-size items before I head back to that particular box.

Still, subscriptions have been a lot of fun, like opening a present each month. Plus, I’ve learned a ton about various products and what I do want to purchase as well as so many I have no interest in.

Here’s the empties:

img_7342Left to right as usual.

I purchased some Garnier micellar water for Miss Butterfly to try, and she finished it off this month. She immediately begged me to purchase a large bottle, so I did. I guess she liked it. It’s a would repurchase situation!

Above that are wander beauty eye masks. I have two more packages to use, but I didn’t love these and would not repurchase.

I went through another container of Almay eye makeup remover, these are the waterproof remover kind. I love these and they’ll likely show up in my empties pretty regularly.

Below that is a sample size of Lush Big Shampoo. I enjoyed it but probably wouldn’t purchase it. I might sample it again if they ask if I’d like samples.

There’s a container of IGK dry shampoo. This was not loved by anyone in our home. I don’t like dry shampoo anyhow, but Miss Butterfly hated it and refused to use it. So I used it from time to time. She hated the scent and didn’t think it worked well. I think it worked fine and the scent didn’t bother me, but I don’t like dry shampoo.

Below that is Farmacy Honey Drop moisturizer, and boy did I love this one! I loved the smell of it, I loved how lightweight it was, and I would absolutely repurchase except that I’ve got moisturizers for days and less expensive options at that. I was extremely happy to work through that sample though, and it took a surprisingly long amount of time.

Next is Morrocan Oil dry texture spray. I truly believe this was the product that had Miss Butterfly’s hair looking so great for her homecoming dance. And those curls stayed all next day. I couldn’t believe it! But, to be honest, I’d also been using this sample quite a bit for a little extra lift and texture at the roots on day two or three hair that I was just going to pin up anyhow, and I really loved it as well. This is a 100% will repurchase product, and I am so excited to have it around to use in a larger can.

Under that is a sample of Bad Gal Bang mascara which I believe I’ve talked about before. I love it as a lower lash mascara, it doesn’t do a thing for my upper lashes. And I won’t repurchase but I sure wouldn’t be sad to receive another sample someday.

Then there’s the Deva Curl styling cream. I am not trying to get my hair to curl anymore, but it’s a nice product to add to my hair to get it sleek and smooth and lacking in frizz. I do like this product, and I am glad I do since I also have a full size that needs to be finished up. That may get added to a project pan at some point. I will not repurchase after I finish the full-size item though.

There’s a Mary Kay satin lips lip balm in there that I’d been trying to pan for 3 months. I finished the partnering lip mask last month. I gave up on this product though. It never really did anything but make my lips slippery, and now it smells terrible so I think it has officially turned. It’s 2 years old, so not that surprising.

Below that is a sample of makeup forever HD foundation. It was a bit on the dark side for me so I worked hard to use it up while I had a tan this summer. I actually pulled the top off this and scraped it out with a spatula because I liked it so much. I would absolutely explore this particular item once I’ve gone through some of the current foundation stash. Only after getting a proper color match of course.

Next to that is another project I thoroughly enjoyed, it’s the First Aid Beauty coconut water cream. I would repurchase this once I wander through my current moisturizer stash. It’s lightweight, it sinks into the skin super fast, it smells pleasant but not overwhelming, it’s exactly what I want in a daytime moisturizer. I was sad to finish this sample size, and as you can see I wanted to grab every last bit since I cut the tube.

The jontebleu eyeliner I received in a subscription box and it’s absolutely terrible. I can’t get it on my eyes at all without hurting myself. The pigment isn’t there and it’s not creamy either. It’s getting tossed and I hope I never see another jontebleu product in a subscription box.

There’s a Tony Moly The Black Tea serum. I liked this well enough but am not entirely sure what it did for my face so I wouldn’t repurchase.

And FINALLY, the last product I finished this month was mac prep and prime skin base visage. I liked it well enough, it added a bit of a glow, and I wasn’t thrilled with the silicones. I was perfectly happy to use it up, but wouldn’t really feel a need to purchase.

I thought this was a pretty good empties month overall, I felt like there were more products than usual that I really enjoyed and wished I could purchase. I suppose that might be why I quit one of my subscription boxes, in hopes that I’d work my way through enough product to use something I did really love rather than constantly try new things. I am already wondering what empties I’ll manage to work through next month!

 

Pan That Palette update 1

/ shellssells / 1 Comment

Revised: I wrote this post on Saturday and scheduled it for this week. After thinking it over for a couple of days, this is not just update number one, but the finale on this project. I hate this palette. I hate how it looks and how it goes on my eyes. I am trying so hard to make it look decent but it doesn’t. I am not going to continue trying to pan this palette, I’ll just allow Miss Butterfly to use up as much as she can out of it and we’ll call it good. Life is too short to wear makeup you actively hate! I’ll choose another palette to pan that I really enjoy and post about it soon. Back to the originally scheduled post:

I started a pan that palette project at the end of August in an attempt to get some use out of the Clinique palette I purchased at the beginning of the year. And spoiler alert, hate.

Here’s where we started:

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Here’s where we are now:

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Turns out this is pretty decent progress. There are some shades I haven’t worked on at all, I’ve concentrated mostly on the grey matte shade and the blue below it, or the burgundy below and to the left of it for eyeshadows. I generally pair those with some sort of a shimmer from a different palette, or a stila shimmer and glow on the lid.

The two lightest shades on the far left I have been using as highlighter and inner corner/browbone highlight. I am not a huge fan of that because both are technically too light for my skin. But, I admit I’ve been doing it anyhow on days I am using other project pan items.

I’ve been using the various dark browns as eyebrow filler, and that seems to be going ok. It doesn’t make fast progress, but it’s being used and that makes me feel good.

Miss Butterfly uses two of the shades mixed for her eyebrow colors, and those are the two shades where pan has been hit. These have seen some pretty quick progress, and I expect they’ll continue.

And finally, I figured out that the top right shade is fairly lacking in pigment so I am finding that it makes a decent primer base. I expect to be working on that one heavily in the upcoming month as well.

Perhaps I’ll experiment a bit more and see if I can find any more uses for these colors. If not, no matter. I’ll keep working on this for now and see where we end up at the end of the year. At that point, I’ve decided that I’ll have gotten appropriate use out of this palette and will switch it out with a palette I like a lot better.

Update 1 a success, even though it’s a tough success to show!

The New Start

/ shellssells / 3 Comments

It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to knit next after I finished the cowl last week. The cowl was such a quick knit and I knew I wasn’t going to choose something that worked up fast for the next project. I wanted to choose carefully as I knew I’d have a long overtime week and need something really truly mindless.

I ended up getting that in the sweet anemone shawlette.

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It’s mostly garter stitch with some yarn over patterning on the edges. It’s easy to memorize and great to mindlessly work on. I choose handspun for it so I could also enjoy the color changes. The handspun is a 2 ply out of loop cloud fiber.

I am really enjoying this project even though I was slow to get started! I am still working on my down the road and back again shawl which resides at work. I am on the back again part, more than halfway through. But, since I haven’t been able to take lunch breaks recently either, it’s a bit stalled out. To be honest, it’s not my favorite knit so I didn’t bring it home to work on either. I’ll stick with the simplicity of garter stitch.