✨immaterial girls✨

because while makeup and gender presentation are immaterial (adj, def. "of no importance") sometimes people want to wear makeup to look immaterial (adj, def. "ethereal; spiritual rather than physical")!

[immaterialgirls]

Many of my generation grew up with Pride and Prejudice, but the only romance film my mother introduced me to was A Room With A View.  She said I would love it and that I was just like Lucy Honeychurch.  I am still not certain that’s a compliment, but I did love it and I still do.

I took quite a few liberties with this makeup look.  I detect a faint, very pale bronzer on Miss Honeychurch during a few of her scenes, but her blush - a coral shade, I think - tends to be centered on the apples of her cheeks.  I lack a pale bronzer so I just wore a warm nude color in a bronzer placement and a berry color on the apples of my cheeks.  I think she has a ‘transition-shade’ brown eyeshadow on, but in some of her early scenes in Florence she seems to have a pale shimmer on the lids.  I don’t think mine turned out as subtle, but that’s mostly the mascara’s fault. I did not realize it would be so intense.

I also think she’s wearing full foundation and powder and some rather intense light concealer, but I only did a little concealer around the shadowy areas on my face and on some spots on my forehead.

RMS Un-cover-up in 33.5 YSL Touche Éclat Radiant Concealer in 3 Kimiko brow pencil in Black Tea Lancome Définicils mascara Ilia multi-stick in Dreamer and A Fine Romance NARS lipstick in Rosecliff NARS eyeshadow duo in Portobello RMS eye polish in Lunar Frédéric Malle En Passant perfume. The website’s description is perfect for this film: “In the spring, when women slip on their cotton dresses and warm their skin in the sun, a soft breeze, full with the scent of budding lilacs, sweeps across the countryside. A breath of cucumber absolute in a streamlined lilac accord gives the perfume an airy freshness, while the scent of a woman’s skin is bound up in wheat, cedar and white musk.”

[immaterialgirls]

FARSÁLI Liquid Glass Radiance Serum

Farsáli seems to have been made with social media in mind.  Their facial oils are famously flecked with glitter and gold, their recent primer promised skintune in a bottle, and their recently made permanent “make-skin” serum Liquid Glass claims to give you the Korean beauty trend “glass skin” without having to do the famous ten-step routine.

The only real method to achieving flawless skin is flawless skincare - removing all your makeup every night, moisturizing regardless of your skin type, daily SPF, a diet low in excess sugars and whatever other problem foods make you break out, and, in my case, retinol specifically, and there’s no makeup, “hybrid” or otherwise, that can actually give you perfect skin.  Moreover, there’s no legitimate reason to have flawless skin, except that we live in a society, and we’re expected to, especially if we are, or are perceived as, women.  

But all I want out of life is to look like a Lord of the Rings elf, so when this winked at me from the Sephora website, I tucked it into my shopping cart during the biannual Beauty Insider sale as the one “fun” thing I allotted myself, given that I otherwise use that sale to repurchase necessities.

This isn’t the most fabulous ingredients list, especially if you usually shop at Credo, but it isn’t terrible, either.

Water / Aqua / Eau, Isopentyldiol, Butylene Glycol, Dimethyl Isosorbide, PPG-24-Glycereth-24, PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Polyester-5, Sodium Hyaluronate, Glycerin, Citrullus Lanatus (Watermelon) Fruit Extract, Pyrus Malus (Apple) Fruit Extract, Lens Esculenta (Lentil) Fruit Extract, Sodium PCA, Sodium Lactate, Xylitylglucoside, Anhydroxylitol, Xylitol, Vanilla Planifolia Fruit Water, Citrus Aurantium Dulcis (Orange) Oil, Ammonium Acryloyldimethyltaurate/Carboxyethyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, Disodium EDTA, Ethylhexylglycerin, Hydroxyacetophenone, Phenoxyethanol, Sodium Hydroxide, Synthetic Fluorphlogopite, [+/- Tin Oxide (CI 77861), Titanium Dioxide (CI 77891), Mica (CI 77019), Iron Oxides (CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499)]

I want to clear up some confusion - I saw a few people reviewing this product say that citrus oil is phototoxic (meaning it causes a reaction on your skin when exposed to the sun), but sweet orange oil is not.  Some citrus oils are, but not all of them! 

Farsáli describes the “two key ingredients” of this serum as being the known moisturizer hyaluronic acid and something they call AquaCell, “a natural complex that combines watermelon rind extract, lentil fruit extract and apple extract to give you long-lasting hydration and plump skin.”

This product goes on with a pleasant fruity fragrance, I assume from those ingredients since thankfully fragrance is not listed, that goes a bit plasticky as you pat it in.

Liquid Glass comes with a dropper applicator and is a dense, dove-grey, rosy silver, but pats out to have no discernible glitters, just perfection.  I anticipated a face oil texture that would leave my skin dewy, and I was concerned about how this would wear beneath foundation - if my skin would grow unsustainably oily throughout the day.  But as a matter of fact, in spite of the glassy look it gives me, it actually dries down to a nondrying matte finish.  

For the last week, I’ve been wearing just this with concealer (in the picture I am only wearing this and a sheer lipstick so my lips aren’t ashy!) and absolutely loving it. It hasn’t broken me out or given me any blackheads.  I think this has achieved holy grail status.

[immaterialgirls]

Poésie Midwinter Feast Collection 🌊❄️

Poésie is coming to quite impress me as a perfume company, and even if her scents were not invariably unique and complex, I would be won over by the lovely subject matter by which creator Joelle Nealy is inspired.  This collection was inspired by the Vikings and Norse mythology - more than a slight interest of mine, and I couldn’t wait to take a journey through her fragrances.  Unfortunately, I forgot to post this during the period in which it was new and relevant!  Enjoy these slightly-belated Vikings, and my sincere apologies.

A Day & A Night: sweet amber, white amber, natural fossilized amber oil, sensual musk, vanilla, dark spices & resins A darkly golden amber-vanilla.  As much as I love vanilla, I am a bit pickier about the nature of the vanillas I wear, and golden and rich is not the kind I prefer, but for someone else, I am sure this would be heaven in a bottle.

Beloved: sugared plums, sumptuous brown sugar cake dusted with cinnamon sugar, a hint of woodsmoke and labdanum What starts out as a candied plum scent fades into a brown sugar cake with candied fruit accents. I got a bit of smokiness, but never any cinnamon.

Forest Cat: fuzzy paws tinged with earth, night forest, grey fur musk, milky breath I get an impression of snowy earth and chilly forest air (but no pine or ozone, so I’m not sure why that impression is quite so strong) an an accompaniment to a strong cream note.  This scent is pretty and innocent, and I currently have a pair of kittens living in my house who do smell a bit creamy, where I would argue adult cats certainly do not, so this is the smell of the idea of kittens frolicking in the snow.

Idunn’s Apples: golden apples, caramelized hazelnuts, sweet cedarwood, hazy oud, creamy musk If you love sophisticated gourmand, this is something you simply must try. A genuine tart-sweet apple note and a caramel note are quickly enveloped in and grounded by nutty wood and musk notes, giving it a sultry edge.

Mead of Poets: honeyed mead, a historical medley of intoxicating herbs and spices, red musk, the blood of the wise If anyone has ever had mead before: it literally smells like this.  Honeyed as all hell and very strong, with loads of spices (including cinnamon, I believe, as this stung where I applied it, but quickly faded).  

Mischief Maker: black coffee clouded with sweet cream then drizzled with caramel, naked salt-tinged skin Here we had an unfortunate accident of skin chemistry: on me, this scent was ALL sea salt and black coffee - almost scorched black coffee, then mellowed into a bracing black coffee with some caramel. However, on the hat I was wearing shortly after putting it on, it transformed into the fluffiest caramel macchiato scent you ever smelled.  The sweet cream note on my hat and coat collar were, in fact, so strong that when I put them on again after work, I could not tell what it was they smelled like, nor how they had come to smell like it!  I wondered if that pretty, dreamy smell was coming from somewhere else.  Oh, Loki, you have pranked me once again.  Fortunately, I was never one to want to smell like coffee scents anyway.

Northmen: weathered leather, turbulent seawater, woodsmoke, oakwood, birch tar, a blood-stained shield The leather note from Poésie is much stronger on me than BPAL’s leather note is, but soon the leather becomes, like the woodsmoke and birch tar, a supporting note adding texture to the dark blue ocean scent that dominates this blend.  It was a deep blue aquatic note with a few nearly floral characteristics, and I found it very pleasant to wear, if not “me”.

Shield-Maiden: pink rose, peony, sharpened metal, crisp air, deep pine woods and frozen earth I am IN LOVE with Shield-Maiden!  This is the winter floral of my dreams, and I must get a bottle of it soon. The full lush florals of the peony and tender rose balance perfectly against a backdrop of a perfect winter scene.  It really does smell like frozen earth and crisp air, with a faint, almost spicy touch of pine. 

Thought & Memory: fresh herbal lavender spiked with anise & cardamom, deep vetiver, galbanum, leather, balsamic woods Very dry and herbal, with a strong lavender and vetiver right off the top; it reminded me of Possets’ Harold and Edith, but darker, deeper, and also more powdery.  I did not enjoy wearing this blend, but I could tell it was a very good one that many others would like; it smells like a pre-20th century perfume, to my nose.

[immaterialgirls]

❄️ Winter is possibly my favorite season, and yet how little do I get to enjoy its enchantment and its majesty, now that I live in town and from the snow-covered hills of my childhood - and given that every single winter, my skin turns into an aging library book.  It is very hard to feel like an enchanted winter woodland elf when your skin feels like it shares the texture of the surrounding trees.

The topic of full winter hydration is bigger than lip scrubs, and yet here we are. I have tried three lip scrubs and they are all fairly different formulas and textures, so let’s get into it!

I bought French Girl Lip Polish when it was sold at Credo and I wanted to hit the free shipping minimum; at that point i made my own lip scrub every morning out of almond oil and sugar, and had seen this bottle on a lot of Polyvore sets, so I figured I might as well try a new lip scrub.  This has a loose, but not liquid texture and has little round-feeling granules, so it’s not a harsh scrub.  It’s very minty and decently effective - certainly thicker and more effective than anything i was using myself.  The product size is generous, at 15 dollars for one ounce. But the sugar dissolves fairly quickly, so it isn’t my favorite.

Bite Beauty Agave Sugar Lip Scrub came in a holiday giftset I was anxious to try, with minis of this and two of their Agave balms, which I really like.  This has a vanilla-ish scent I’m not fond of (solely because I don’t like food-scented lip products; I imagine for most people this is a firm plus) and a very liquid texture.  When you’re done scrubbing you’re meant to wet your finger and rub it over the scrub, whereupon it transforms into a milky lather and washes right off.  It’s very strange, but as a scrub, for me merely decent.  I find this one somewhat more drying than reviews on it claim it is, and I don’t feel that it actually does much to remove dead skin from my extremely chapped lips.  This is .26 ounces for 18 dollars.

My most recent addition is Herbivore Botanicals’ Coco Rose Lip Polish.  Like everything I’ve tried from Herbivore, I adore it - and like the rest of their Coco Rose line, it has a very faint rosy-coconut scent that makes me feel like a princess.  This is the hardest to use in the winter because the oils solidify a bit, but this is fully packed with fine sugar granules and exfoliates very well while also leaving behind a halo of moisture, making it the one I reach for most.  I really want to try the accompanying balm.  This one is .17 ounces for 18 dollars, which bites, but I’m not going through it that quickly, and I adore it, so I will live.

Unfortunately, it must be said that when my lips are very chapped and peeling, as they have been lately (in part because I’ve been sick), none of these products fully removes all of my awful mummified skin, even if i follow them up with a damp toothbrush.  But the Herbivore scrub is my favorite; the sugar takes the longest to dissolve, so it exfoliates more effectively, and the blend of oils makes it moisturizing on the lips after the sugar has been dabbed off.  Its smell adds a final beautifying touch to an otherwise already great product.

There are other fairly well-known lip scrubs, such as the ones from Lush (I got my mom one for Christmas!), Cocovit and Kari Gran, but I’m satisfied enough with the Herbivore that I can’t imagine I’d buy another one unless it was even fancier somehow.

[immaterialgirls]

🏰 The Winter 2017 issue of Faerie Magazine arrived at my doorstep a couple of days ago, but I’ve only just peeked into it today.   The theme was the Mediaeval era, which I adored as I was growing up as a child, but fell out of love with - or out of touch with my love for - somewhere along the way.  

I enjoyed this issue as a whole more than I’ve enjoyed an issue from this magazine in a long time (there’s even an article in it about the mediaeval garden at the Cloisters in NYC!), but felt especially inspired by a short article by Rona Berg about mediaeval beautifying practices, and wanted to talk about the things in my life that put me a bit in touch with that old love for this historical period.

Roses everything In the article, Berg discusses the immense popularity of roses as a healing balm and a fragrance, and it’s certainly true that roses are, in addition to being a love I associate with most anything, an incredibly appropriate mediaeval scent.  In addition to rose-scented perfume, many skincare brands have rose-themed lines.  There are a number of rosewater toners and facial mists, but the Fresh deep hydration rosewater toner, and Rose face mask, are both full of real rose petals, for an extra luxurious, yet rustic feeling.

The Cloisters in NYC If you are ever in NYC and have the opportunity to visit, the Cloisters is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted solely to the Mediaeval era: they have tombs, glass windows, real castle architecture, the most beautiful garden, and of course, the Unicorn Tapestries, and in the springtime the scent of hyacinths wafts through the hallways as you near the garden.  This is really one of my favorite places in the world to be.

Ornate jewelry I don’t find the “clunky jewelry” trend flattering, but it’s hard to resist the details of a really beautiful piece of jewelry.  I can’t wear rings at work, but I wish I could wear them more often. My two favorite rings, and two of my favorite pieces of jewelry, are a silver-colored rose ring, and a silver-colored ring with a large yellow-orange gemstone - this is one of my favorite color combinations for jewelry, since I prefer silver over gold, and it’s impossible to find warm-colored stones that are set in something silver-colored.

Ornate packaging Rituel de Fille’s little magic-looking bottles of eye soot are for those moments when you want a fantasy version of the mediaeval era, to feel a bit like a witch in a painting.

Mementos from loved ones In keeping with several themes here, beloved friend and fellow mod Jamie sent me a little sachet of rose petals from her very beautiful (and fragrant, at the time - the scent is gone now, but the whole box she sent them in smelled like roses!) rosebush over the summer.  I cherish the gift as well as the memory, and recall it every time I look on the sachet, which I keep on my (crowded) dresser.

Skincare rituals Like the pairing of a rosewater toner and mask, the pairing of a good lip scrub with a thick lip balm is a beauty ritual that makes me indulge in a fantasy of feeling like a princess (instead of a modern day feudal peasant, as capitalism often makes me feel).  I love the brand Herbivore Botanicals and really want to get my hands on their lip conditioner, now that I’ve tried their lip scrub, a tiny little bottle of coconut-rose scented scrubby sugar granules.  (I know that you can make lip scrubs, and I’ve done so in the past, but I’ve found expensive purchased ones are truly better than my own homemade scrubs, so whatever.)  Until I commit to the Herbivore coco rose lip balm, though, I’m still in love with Osmia Organics lip repair with myrrh and honey. Doesn’t really smell like those things, but is so comfortable on the lips. 

Perfume Perfume can put me in mind of all and any things, and the mediaeval era was full of scents. To paraphrase Rona Berg, when she thinks about this period and place in history, smells are one of the first things that the imagination conjures.  For me, roses, herbs, resins, gardens and forests are the primary scents of my fantasy memory.  Some of the perfumes I’ve tried that have instantly put me in mind of the mediaeval era are: Sarawen Elf Princess (rose, lavender, sandalwood, lily and herbs): This truly is like the scent of a mediaeval garden, and one of the only scents with sandalwood in it that my skin can appreciate.  I wore this one to the Cloisters in March, where it was most fitting, so now I have an atmospheric memory with which to associate it! BPAL Elizabeth of Bohemia (the perfect rose oudh): This is an Elizabethan poem, but you will pry this scent from my cold, dead, rose and oudh scented fingers.  This is one of my favorite perfumes of literally all time.  I buy a lot of perfume every year, and have loads of infatuations, but this blend - which applies seamlessly to a mediaeval mindset and feels best in velvets and big rings - is a one true love. BPAL Parlement of Foules (white roses and resins, including frankincense): This Lupercalia (Valentine’s Day) limited edition scent, which has shown up a few years now, is meant to evoke “mediaeval romance and courtly love”, and for me, it very much does.  Wearing this one, I want to be lost in an labyrinthine garden in early springtime, when it has very recently rained.  The past feels very close to the present when I’m wearing it. CutieMonster Upon a Dream (lavender and roses, milk and honey): As sweet and dreamy as the animated film on which it’s based, I enjoy wearing this gentle and unobtrusive scent on days when I want to feel dreamy and uncomplicated. BPAL Bewitched (blackberry, sage, green tea, wild berries and musk):  Faintly witchy, extremely wearable, evocative of sweet berries and dried herbs and tea - a scent for beautiful peasant maids on the edge of a forest, mediaeval without limiting the archetype of elegance to princesses. BPAL Othello (Arabian musk, two roses, and spices): Another technically-Elizabethan contender, this is a surprising scent for Othello.  This is the sweet charm and warmth that won Desdemona’s heart, not the cold rage that stopped it. Alkemia Midnight Garden (tuberose, honeysuckle, gardenia and lily): As gorgeous and fresh a white floral as this is, I love to wear this one to bed and fantasize about what palace I am falling asleep in.  A versatile evocative blend that does not always involve a mediaeval castle in my mind, but works for it perfectly. BPAL Morgause (night-blooming flowers, violet, purple fruits and mediaeval incense): Sweet incense burning amidst the ancient tomes of a witch’s library, with a delicate window open, outside of which is... you guessed it! A mediaeval garden!  BPAL Bess (rosemary, orange blossom, five roses, grape, lemon peel and mint): And yes, another Elizabethan scent, but that note list. I get all of them on my skin, and the way they balance each other out is just beautiful.  Sweet fruity grape is balanced by mint and lemon on one end, the nearly spicy unmistakeable note of rosemary, and a hint of beautiful flowers. 

And everything else I’ve left out.... How can I do a mediaeval post and leave out Lipstick Queen’s Medieval lipstick?  It’s simple: I’ve, sadly, lost my tube. It was battered and squished and in general a mess, but I loved it, and now it is gone.  However, any fine wash of red pigment will do to look pinched in a pinch!  I would also be remiss to leave out the beautiful music of Hildegard von Bingen, who was an idol to me as a child and teenager, the much more recent music of the Mediaeval Baebes or Katharine Blake’s other, much more gothic project, Miranda Sex Garden, or any of the iterations of Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris I am wholly in love with.  I recommend both beautiful musicals highly - the Cocciante musical is, like the novel, especially concerned with dating the story to that particular vibrant, crumbling, awe-inducing era in history, while the adaptation of the Disney film is much closer to a character study of its intensely sympathetic cast of characters, and they are both two of my favorite things.  Last but not least: it is the perfect time of year for drinking mulled wine, which never fails to taste, or feel, especially when heated, like something out of a previous century.

[immaterialgirls]

It was a strange figure -- like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin...

“Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Scrooge.

“I am!”

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.

`”Who, and what are you?” Scrooge demanded.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

~*🔥🔥🔥*~

How to look like a spirit composed of magic candlelight when you are not, in fact, a spirit composed of magic candelight:

Atop my ordinary base (in this instance, RMS Uncover-Up, which didn’t really hide my recent acne scarring but oh well) and while wearing my ordinary mascara (DHC Pro Perfect), I brushed foundation into my brows and then patted on lots of yellow and white matte eyeshadow from the Meet Matt(e) Nude palette from theBalm, then ran through it some flecks of RMS eye polish in Lunar, a creamy white-gold.

Lunar’s golden undertones come out more strongly when it’s photographed besides a bright white shadow, but it’s a pretty creamy color altogether.  I used a thick layer of this as an eyeliner, a bit on my lower lashline in the very center, and as an inner corner and browbone highlight, then wet a liner brush and added another layer on top of that of the much darker, bronzier gold, Interstellar, a Moondust shadow from Urban Decay, as well as adding some flecks of that to my brows and browbone.  Lastly, with even fewer flecks, I added some of UD’s Cosmic, a silvery-white.  

In Dickens’ tale, the spirit has “the tendered bloom” upon its cheeks.  I replicated that look with LBCC Historical’s Jane Bennet tint, which is not dissimilar from Benetint.  Applying this on the cheeks with a damp sponge seems to result in a more even flush.  I added a bit of a peachy nude lipstick - Dior’s Greige - to make my lips look less chapped (one day i’m going to buy Ilia’s lip conditioner in Nobody’s Baby to replace this!) and enthusiastically highlighted.

The main portion of highlighter, on my cheekbones, a bit on the apples of the cheeks, my nose and my cupid’s bow, was in a Vapour lip and cheek color called Aura, which is a really, really pale pink with just a faint bit of a white-gold sheen to it.  As a blush, this is much too light for me - I suspect it would be pale even on Jamie - but as a highlighter, I adore it.  I still haven’t bought a full size of it, so it isn’t pictured, but I’ve worn it before and so there’s probably a picture on the blog already.  Also, I love the effect of building highlighter, so I applied a bit of Lunar just on the tops of the cheeks, and then dusted a leetle bit of Cosmic’s glitter on top of that.  Now I too ~sparkle and glitter~ like a Christmas ghost.

As for a candle-flame head and a white tunic and an ever-changing body with sometimes as many as 20 legs at a time, that stuff isn’t happening. I don’t even have a white wig!  As a look, though, I think this is just otherworldly enough to convey sparkleghost, which pleases me.

[immaterialgirls]

Poésie Thornfield Collection

Poésie is a lovely indie parfumerie with a lot of themed collections and a special knack for gourmand scents, although those are not my favorite.  They released a collection (not limited edition, to my knowledge) inspired by Jane Eyre recently; previous collections have included a Twin Peaks set, a few of which I have tried, and one for famous women of history.  They’ve only just come out with a Viking-themed collection for the early winter season, and I am keen to try it soon. But for now, Jane Eyres, while it is still November (to my mind, one of the Jane Eyriest months of them all).

They have free shipping on the website, everything can be tried in a sample set and two different sizes, and they ship very quickly. There is really no way to go wrong with this brand. 

Opening Chapter: a generous cup of steaming Darjeeling tea, a rainy day, a pile of old books all your own This scent sits somewhere between vanilla and mildew. Perhaps the mildew note would not appear on someone else, but unfortunately for me, I couldn’t shake the impression.

Tiny Phantom: innocent pink roses, marshmallow buttercream, pale white musk, antique mahogany Pretty much a dead ringer for Possets’ Isabella, a confection of sophisticated pink roses, silver musk and ripples and ripples of marshmallow.  This is ridiculously sweet on me, but I know for many out there, that’d be a good thing.

Thornfield: burned wood and lingering smoke, new Vanille accord (a sweet, non-foody vanilla), the barest hint of pumpkin pie spices I could not stand this one. It was the only one I had a truly negative reaction to, as something between the spices and the burned scent brought turkey to my mind and stayed there.

Bewitched: the ingredients for a love spell -  yellow apple, clove, apricot, black pepper, vetiver, anise, cauldron smoke Clove-heavy at first, then it dies down into a witchy golden liquid in a potion bottle, veiled in smoke.  The fruit notes are probably what make it seem so golden and light, but it isn’t a fruity scent on me.

Sir: a masterful blend of fine cognac and tobacco, leather riding boots and a worn leather saddle, hay from the stables, warm skin An autumn-appropriate hay scent with a touch of spice, probably how the leather reads to me.  This is certainly a touch ‘masculine’, but I really enjoyed it; I love hay notes.

Strange Unearthly Thing: moss and ivy entwined, an overturned log studded with tiny mushrooms, one ripe peach, a circle of fairy flowers, white amber In the bottle, this smells like enchanted rainwater, but on my skin, sadly it becomes a men’s body wash sort of aquatic.  I don’t dislike aquatics, and i love moss, but I hate soap.  I really wanted a moss-and-peach fairy scent, but this wasn’t the one.

Marble Kiss: gorse blossom, pink marshmallow, sweet sandalwood incense, a wedding coronet of orange blossom, white iris, and rose de mai This smelled powdery in the bottle, and I wasn’t at all expecting to like it - gorse is supposed to smell like coconut, sandalwood and powdery notes like iris often amp on me, and marshmallow notes, while pretty, can easily overpower a scent.  In fact, this was my favorite of the collection, and I immediately planned on buying a bottle (and in fact, I did).   Marble Kiss goes on full coconut-gorse and florals, with the powdery iris and sweet orange blossom managing to keep the sandalwood from amping, and the coconut keeping the iris and orange blossom from being cloying and baby powder-ish.  But a bit into the weartime, the roses start to appear and the whole scent diffuses so that none of the notes are easy to pick out, and the beautiful rose and orange blossom floral notes come to the fore.

No Bird: blossoming heather, windswept moors, dried leaves eddied by a zephyr This truly smells like being outside in the autumn wind; there’s a bit of a stone note amongst that heather and leaves scent that recalls walking outside.  It’s unusual and I’ve never smelled anything like it.  I ended up buying a bottle of this.

Myself Invisible: stacked books, spilled ink, black tea, shy violets hiding deep in the forest A musky and dark violet and a bit of book-and-ink notes, reminding me a tad of BPAL’s The Manuscript from their Crimson Peak collection.  This was an incense-y sort of violet, and never once reminded me of candy.

Full size bottles from Poésie are tiny rollerballs, and one rollerball retails for 16 USD; however, one of the bottles (neither of the ones pictured) was leaking when it came in the mail, so I don’t know if I’d feel safe traveling with one in my purse.  I’ve found I really enjoy the rollerball application; it doesn’t stress me out, for one thing, but it applies the perfect amount of oil very evenly anywhere you like it, and I sort of wish more brands I love had rollerball options.

[immaterialgirls]

LitttleBits on Etsy is a company devoted to making historical cosmetics and skincare according to original recipes, selecting high-quality natural ingredients (no lead or anything like that, of course) so you can well and truly look like an historical beauty - and Jamie sent me a bunch of their stuff to try for my birthday! I don’t have to say how excited I was.

She sent me two full-size liquid lip and cheek tints, one solid one, a face powder, and three samples including two more tints and a perfume.

The website recommends applying liquid tints with a sponge or a finger.  I tried to use a lip brush, but my results were less pigmented than using my fingertip, so reluctantly, I did just that. I dearly wish these were packaged with a brush or as a rollerball, because application is an enormous inconvenience, especially for someone who does her makeup at 4 am on her bed.  Because the sample vials come with a little probiscis thing, they’re much easier to use.  

I also found that they had an unpleasant red wine or vinegar sort of smell, mostly Elizabeth, and excepting Bloom of Roses, which smells like roses and is in most ways a good dupe for Benetint, but is one of the products that contains carmine, a pigment made from a ground-up beetle, making it neither vegan nor cruelty-free.  All of them lose their fragrance upon application.

It was difficult to get a good picture of how this product performed on my face, but you can tell my cheeks and lips look flushed and pink. On my cheeks I wore Jane Bennet, which showed up as a very pretty, vibrant pink in spite of being easily the lightest and least buildable color in the arm swatch; on my lips, I had a harder time getting Jane to make an appearance, and supplemented her with some Bloom of Roses.

This product takes a moment to dry down, and for a while after stays tacky, almost like a film on the cheek.  Eventually, it becomes as dry and watercolor-pretty as any other liquid stain.  That said, it was difficult to apply this in a way that did not make it patchy, which is more noticeable in person than in the pictures.  I especially struggled to prevent it from collecting on the drier center of my bottom lip, even though I exfoliate my lips daily.  

The solid rouge had the most disappointing color payoff for me, being neither pigmented nor a very flattering color, and the strongest and most lingering scent, one of cocoa butter.  To many people, this would not at all be a challenge, but I don’t personally like scented products unless they smell like flowers.  As a balm, however, this has the most moisturizing performance of anything I’ve ever tried, and would be excellent in the winter.

The Lily & Lilac toilet water had a very faint, green scent that was somewhat lilyish, but doesn’t last much, and I have to press my nose to my wrist to detect it.  However, it is worth noting that it comes in a 4 ounce bottle for ten dollars, and at that size and price, is probably intended to be very liberally splashed on, and not dabbed in a tiny amount like I did.  It is very pretty, and I am curious how it works on clothes and bedsheets, as it is advertised as also being for linens.

The powder is easily my favorite product.  I applied it over RMS Uncover Up and to my surprise it didn’t go on whitish or cakey, but instantly brought my skin to a demi-matte finish.  It’s not drying, doesn’t emphasize lines or anything. It has a bit of a gritty consistency, but it buffs away smoothly.  

However, the packaging is awful.  The lid isn’t particularly secure, and there is no sifter, so i spill some every single time I use it.  It’s a generous amount of product, so that isn’t too much of a waste, but I hate that this is even a problem, and it puts a damper on my otherwise limitless enthusiasm for such a perfect face powder.

Overall thoughts: I am a little too dark complexioned for some of the lighter colors, but the darker ones are excellent - the Liquid Rouge is the kind of deep wine stain I’ve been looking for. I’ve been looking for a natural alternative to Benetint and this is the closest match I’ve come across, though it seems to lack Benetint’s staining power (not a surprise) and doesn’t last through eating, which would not be a problem if it weren’t a pain to apply.  Which leads to the biggest con:

These are great products that are seriously hampered in their effectiveness by their poor packaging.  I’m sure they are inexpensive in part because of that, but I would happily pay at least five dollars more per product to get jars with brushes attached to the lids or rollerballs, or like, a sifter and a screw-on lid for the powders.  Something that needs to be touched up in particular needs to be easier to apply on the go, instead of already hard to apply at home.  

I love the watercolor look of a stain and I am eternally complaining that liquid stains are hard to come by in colors I like; I love historical makeup recipes.  I recommend this brand to anyone who shares my feelings, but I warn you ahead of time, application takes a bit of a learning curve.  In the meantime, I’ll be on the lookout for something I can transfer product into to maximize their usefulness.

[immaterialgirls]

Sixteen92 Fall Collection 2017

Chapter I: Dr. Van Helsing: Hellfire, black leather, dark chocolate, sweet smoke, cold whiskey, wild musk and a charred wooden stake. Surprisingly tame. This scent might belong to an adventurer, but it smells like the comforting scents of the hearth.  Leather never smells very strong on me, and chocolate tends to, but in this one I get a lot of leather and smoke with a subtle, bittersweet chocolate background.   Chapter II: Lucy Westenra: Brugmansia flower, night-blooming Cereus, oud, guaiacwood, honey, fennel, stone This is the scent of thick, dark golden wildflower honey.  The really expensive honey that comes in a glass jar, not the sweeter kind that comes in a plastic bear.  Perhaps the other notes ground this scent and prevent it from being one-dimensional and sickly-sweet, but the only other note I really detect is the distinct cereus.  I’m debating a full bottle of this. If the florals came out a bit more, it would be an easy choice, but as it is, the honey still amps on me.

Chapter III: Mina Harker: Cold jasmine tea, ripe plum, black violets, pale skin musk

If I buy any of them, it will be this one, which is beautiful.  I struggle to find jasmine notes in oil-based brands that do smell like jasmine on me, and while this does not, it has a strong Oriental Floral quality that isn’t overpowering.  It smells like orchid to me.  Neither violet nor plum amp (unusual) and the ‘cold tea’ and pale musks dominate while remaining delicate.  I hope I can find time in between my Yuletide shopping to pick this up.

Chapter IV: Vlad Dracul: Carpathian fir needle, red cedar, black amber, black patchouli, scorched earth, opium, blood musk.

Anyone who wants to smell like a rich, Transylvanian evergreen forest with a witchy undercurrent of herbs and tart berries needs this scent.  I know the berry note i detect is probably a mixture of opium and blood musk, but I can’t shake the association.  This would make a gorgeous room scent during the winter.   

Chapter V: The Weird Sisters: Iris root, carnation, helichrysum, styrax, ruby-red lips, silk gowns, bone-white sandalwood (premium)

‘Silk gowns’ apparently means lots and lots of vanilla. I get a blend of iris and sandalwood underneath it, but it is dominantly vanilla. For a vanilla-loving gothic heroine who wants to walk among the moonbeams and convince people that she might be no more than a passing vision, this would be perfect.  I found it too similar to Poesie’s Marble Kiss (review forthcoming) to be much moved by it, but I do love a good vanilla perfume.

Sixteen92′s fall collection is limited edition and I’m not sure when it comes down.  That said, they tend to rerelease the collection of the previous year, so next year you might have another chance at this one if you don’t get to it now.  Full bottles and sample sets of five all come in at 20 USD, and you can buy samples separately or create your own sample set that includes seasonal collections if you only want to try a couple at a time.

There’s a Halloween collection this year based on famous scary movies, but I didn’t purchase that one.

[immaterialgirls]

Attempting to be Snow White - a girl who spent all of her puberty getting her beauty sleep - on almost no sleep at all!  Yeah, a really good idea.

My face is so puffy and swollen today.  But my makeup has been really lovely lately! I am trying a number of new products out since I discovered you can get samples of so many lovely things from The Detox Market (4 good-sized samples for 10 dollars with shipping in the US).  I’ve probably put down like, 50 dollars on samples in the last two weeks.  There were a lot of green beauty products I wanted to try that I couldn’t swatch even if I could walk into a Sephora, and this was a brilliant alternative.  I’ve mostly been trying face and skincare products, but I hope to go back for more color cosmetics eventually.  They offer samples from so many good brands I already love or want to try: Rituel de Fille, Ilia, RMS, Vapour, Ecobrow, w3ll people, Indie Lee, Briogeo, Rahua, and Kjaer Weis all spring immediately to mind.  Being able to test colors and formulas when you have an unusual skin color or sensitive skin is such a big deal.  So I might have gone overboard in my excitement to get so many multi-use samples of things I can’t even afford to get right now, but who can blame me?

Face:  Vapour Stratus Instant Skin Perfector in the shade 902, used as primer Ilia Vivid Foundation in Santorini, applied with the Sephora Pro Collection Flawless Airbrush #56 w3ll people Bio-Correct Multi-Action concealer in the shade Light (undereyes only) w3ll people Realist face powder The Body Shop lip & cheek stain in Red Pomegranate Vapour Stratus Soft Focus Instant Skin Perfector in the shade 902, used as highlighter

Eyes:  Ecobrow in ‘Liz’ on my brows RMS beauty Contour Bronze as a crease shade RMS beauty eye polish in Myth on my lid DHC pro perfect double protection mascara Bite beauty multistick in Anise applied to the inner corner of my eyelid NARS eye pencil in Vogue Rose on the lower lashline primed/set with the same w3ll people realist powder

Lips: same Body Shop lip and cheek tint Lipstick Queen lipstick in Medieval

[christinedaae]

for anyone who, like me, has been searching in vain for a replacement for Tarte’s discontinued Dollface Cheek Stain (yes, I know they make a powder blush Dollface, I haven’t tried it because I like stains the most!), this post is for you! 

I ordered this set mainly because I am continually on the lookout for something that might replace my beloved Dollface, and I haven’t tried either of these newer Benefit stain colors yet and thought they might be similar. As you can see, they aren’t, really! Which is okay, I’ll probably still use them, but the search continues. Lollitint is a little too candy-pink, and Posietint is a little brighter/more saturated. (Also you’ll see that one patch of Lollitint is darker, that’s because it stains REALLY quickly, you have to work really fast with it!) I added in swatches of Dandelion and Benetint as well, because they’re my other favorite blushes.

The second picture is an attempt to get a picture of Dollface without the sheen, which makes it look much lighter. I don’t know why they discontinued Dollface when they revamped their cheek stains, but it’s really beautiful color, and I’ll probably always be on the lookout for a dupe! 

(sighs longingly while looking off into the distance)

1. Benefit Lollitint 2. Benefit Benetint 3. Benefit Posietint  4. Benefit Dandelion Powder 5. Tarte’s Dollface Cheek Stain (discontinued)

[immaterialgirls]

HEY YOU GUYS  DO YOU REMEMBER ME!

OR THIS POST

hello there from the slowly-unfreezing north! during the dark months, I found a pretty good dupe for my beloved Dollface cheek stain! I’ve provided some new swatches above. :D

The big difference between the Ilia Multi-Stick in Tenderly and the Tarte Dollface cheek stain is opacity and finish. Dollface is slightly sheerer than Tenderly, and Dollface has a dewy finish due to the slight shimmer/sheen (as well as the formula of the product - the Tarte stain has more “slip” to it). Other than that, they are pretty similar and read very similarly on the face especially!

as a bit of a warning, though, if you are used to the size of the old Tarte cheek stains, or even the new ones, the Ilia multi-sticks are much smaller - I meant to take pictures of them next to each other but I’d say they’re about 3/4ths the size of the Tarte cheek stains.

hopefully this is helpful to someone else out there, too!

[immaterialgirls]

INT. GLOSSIER SHOWROOM You go into a little building with an enclosed space and some very stylish women chatting in front of an elevator, while a girl in glossier pink with surreal-looking skin and makeup tells you if you're here for Glossier, just take the elevator up to the penthouse. Inside the elevator one of the buttons has a glossier sticker on it. There's six other women. You're all going straight up.  A couple of girls - olive skin, red lipstick, holding some fancy black cardboard coffee cups from a tea café you've never even heard of, pass their drinks back and forth while one of them complains hers is too bitter now.  Her friend asks if she wants hers.  She finally decides to keep her own. Her friend jokes now, "Good!" The glossier showroom is bigger than you'd think, very minimalist, with little glossier displays in glass cases like a museum, but all around the room including in the center are big square columns.  It smells amazing, like the deepest rose. (Eventually, you discover the source of the smell - a Byredo candle called "Burning Roses". You rethink your opinion of expensive candles, because the candle is barely melted and the whole room is full of the smell.)  The room is full of pretty people putting on makeup.  Most of them look like Glossier customers, but there's a fair few people here too who just look normal.  A stylish girl with lipstick but not wearing anything to cover her bad skin, who still looks amazing, sticks in your memory, as well as an androgynous person in full on paint with foundation a little paler than their own fair skin and bright red blush and lips who affectedly dabs at a lipstick they've rubbed on the back of their hand. The glossier girls stand out in their blush pink jumpsuits.  Some of them are visibly wearing mascara, which can't be from glossier, but otherwise they're all visibly wearing only products Glossier makes, unless they somehow needed higher coverage foundation or concealer, which you can't imagine.  The glossier makeup look is really incredible in person; skin and brows look like normal skin and brows as depicted by a painter and both the new blushes and the line of lipsticks (and the tinted balms, as one girl tells a customer who asked her that she's wearing the cherry balm dot com) all look like a watercolor tint on the face. Even though people there are talking about glossier, telling their friends they dragged to the showroom (like you did) what products they personally use, there's enough non-glossier there for it to be a relief; you and your friend aren't the only people in liquid eyeliner, and one of the customers tells a salesgirl about the bite beauty stick she has in her person, after asking if the cloud paint blushes are multi-use (they aren't).  (You really want to chime in with your opinion, but you still feel out of place - less stylish and more artificially made-up than all of the people in this room, even though you can see people who are drastically more or drastically less made up and stylish than the average glossier model.) The salesgirls are inhumanly beautiful even though they are so approachable it seems statistically impossible.  They offer advice on various products and tell you you can try them on.  You dab on a bit of concealer, swatch all but one of the lipsticks, try out the haloscope you don’t own (a beautiful, summery dark gold), copying what you see the salesgirls doing and wiping off the end of a lipstick before and after trying it on your own lips.   Crush on the hand: a peachy nude that would be chalky on you but is still darker than you thought.   Like on the hand: pale pink, like on the lips: like the natural look of your chapped lips, but in a slightly more flattering pink color.  Jam on the hand: deep berry, super flattering to certain pale people you know would probably like it; Crush on the hand is actually a gorgeous raspberry red.  Leo is the last one you try; a coppery brown with no red to it, you're skeptical about wearing it, but you put it on and it's very flattering.  The lipsticks really do look matte in spite of being sheer.  Unfortunately, you discover after you get lunch a little while later that they don't survive any eating, and have no moisturizing properties, so you have to consider whether or not they'd be worth it. But still, they are kind of unique. You came here for cloud paint, though.  After looking around the rest of the room - trying the new priming moisturizer on the back of your hand (it feels like a dream, you are absolutely going to buy it someday), checking to see if they reformulated the skin tint colors (they didn't; you can still repurchase medium when it runs out), and trying on the concealer in the color that was sold out at the time (it seems so much less greasy in person!), you finally make it over to cloud paint.  You dab a bit of one of the testers (there are four of every color at every station) on one of the plastic applicators and try them all on on the back of your hand.  Dusk: a brown with almost no rose hue to it, that looks so amazing on everyone else (a girl carefully applies it in dots up the hollows of her cheeks, then blends it before adding another color in a blush placement); beam, a bright, almost fluorescent peach; puff, a similar powder pink that, on Megan, is the exact color she naturally flushes as in the color; and haze, an amazing juicy berry color you want a lot more than you expected to.  You try on the colors you came for and they brighten your entire face, although you are deeply suspicious that the lighting in this room might be better than any lighting you've ever walked into in your whole life (the lighting in everywhere else in NYC is terrible, so this is probably true).   There's an interesting way to make purchases here: salesgirls have little pink and pale-pink pads with everything they sell listed, and you have to tell them what you want.  They mark it off, give you your sheet, and send you over to stand in line.  You get twice as much as you planned to: the two blushes you came in for, plus another boy brow, this time in Clear, and another concealer, this time in Medium.  You get a plastic bag that has in it a chic pink bag with your items, a folded up glossier poster, and your stickers of course, as well as your original order form.  At the checkout you finally work up the courage to say what you've wanted to say since you walked in: "You look really pretty, by the way-" It can't be news to any of the girls who work here (and Megan suggests later that they must have a pretty narrow standard for hiring, having to only pick girls who look good in those coveralls - and that makeup, you realize silently) - but she seems earnestly surprised and flattered. The Glossier spell doesn't break when you leave the enchanted-smelling room with its enchanted nymph workers in pink jumpsuits and the company of excruciatingly pretty people.  Maybe the spell doesn't even break when you finally get back to the apartment you're staying in with its harsh normal lighting that tells you this concealer makes your skin look both greasy and flaky and the color is still too light - or when the blush isn't instantly prettifying - or when the clear color gives your brows excellent hold and shape but naturally doesn't tint or thicken your brows where they're actually rather sparse.  The brand is strong with this one.  I've never so much felt like if i bought a company's products, I could achieve both a certain look and a certain atmosphere, even when I have been myself highly critical of the way the company advertises that message.

[immaterialgirls]

As if you didn't know, Glossier is the well-loved brainchild of the makeup-loving crew of Into the Gloss, the kind of beauty publication I'd love to love if they didn't make me outrageously uncomfortable.   Even though Into the Gloss is run by people who seem to have had the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth since the day they were born - at least, no one bats an eyelash at interviewing people who talk about the 50 dollar lipstick they fell in love with at age 16, surely not a universal experience - Glossier is an actually fairly affordable brand for a lot of people and their branding hits all the right notes.  I was seduced by their trademark powder pink, their vibrant, natural-makeup, multicolored models, the accessibility of their website, and finally, the quality of the products I put on my face.  But as time has gone on my opinion of the brand has shifted a little bit, and I want to evaluate it as honestly as I can, so I've been putting this off for a really long time because there are so many products I had yet to try. I'll start from the top with this one. Priming Moisturizer, $25 Of the initial range of products, back when Phase 1 consisted of this, the skin tint, the face mist and balm dot com, this was the only truly necessary one, and is certainly the product that earned them their landslide victory over the hearts and wallets of their consumer base.   Glossier's packaging is pink little bags! They send you stickers with every purchase!  All the same, it was this liquid-y, face soothing, super hydrating tube of joy that made everyone hype the brand.  Even in the dead of winter when this isn't quite doing it for me, all i need to do is add a few more steps to my face routine, which I'd surely be doing anyway, to get the hydration I need.  I just find this sits well on the skin, absorbs to a nice velvet finish, and does, probably, prime my skin nicely for makeup.  It certainly makes it go on smoothly and evenly, and doesn't leave my skin feeling like it needs more moisture. Skin Tint, $26 Is this a very thin liquid that offers essentially zero coverage? Yes. Do they claim it has diamond powder in it without acknowledging that while a real thing, diamond powder does not come from diamonds? Oh yes.  But somehow, Skin Tint really is slightly blurring, redness-reducing, color-evening in a way that imperceptibly makes your skin look better, and if your skin is relatively okay, this + concealer is actually very wearable.  I'm almost out of this bottle and I've been debating whether or not to repurchase it, because when they updated the shade range, it looks like they lightened the shade Medium to me (which is what I use). But the color is so sheer I can't see how it would actually make any difference.  On very lazy days I tend to use a few drops of this as a base and then apply RMS Un Cover-Up over the top of it because it blends out more easily and I don't have to apply it everywhere. Soothing Face Mist, $18 I never paid money for this one; I got it when they did a giveaway thing where if enough people used your recommendation link to sign up, you'd get free stuff, and 20 kind friends of mine used my recommendation link so I got this and the coconut balm.  Well!  This is the best rosewater spray on the market, and easily one of the least expensive.  (The Mario Badescu is cheaper, but uses dog rose, and my skin reacts badly to it. Everything else seems to be more expensive.)  I've tried other face mists since I ran out of this one, but absolutely nothing compares in terms of rose scent or hydration benefits.  I wore this constantly.  In the morning, in the evening, before makeup, after makeup - there's no way you can go wrong with it.  And then, of course, I emptied it.  It's taken me literally a year but I've repurchased it and guess what? I use it. All day. Every day.  A non-essential essential product that is, from my frustrated attempts to find it in another brand, best from Glossier. Balm dot Com, $12 Look, this is a thick balm that is mostly petroleum, though they advertise its castor oil and beeswax as being what makes it so grand.  But I admit this one is a little better than other thick petroleum-based balms I've tried, like the TokyoMilk one or the C.O. Bigelow and Smiths rose salves, which are thicker and much thinner, respectively.  I got the Coconut flavor in the aforementioned giveaway and it changed my opinion about coconut as a scent; it's buttery and rich, not fake in the slightest.  I use this after exfoliating my lips in the morning, and it's mostly sunk enough in by the time my makeup is done that I can put on lipstick over it and walk out the door, but I don't like it as a balm on un-exfoliated lips for the same reason I don't like any other petroleum-based lip balms.  When they updated this with more flavors, I got the Rose one as well (of course) and it's very pretty, but its pink tint is non-existent. Milky Jelly Cleanser, $18 This was... my first fumble with this brand.  At this point, Glossier's star was risen so high that I think they could have produced anything and gotten the same degree of praise, but I was out of my regular face cleanser and desperate to try this.  After all, everyone said it was absurdly hydrating and smelled of rosewater!  I would have trusted this brand with my life, but all they asked me to trust them with was skin.  I delivered myself into their hands. This cleanser is not very good. I am sure other people who love it are not lying, though some of them might smudging the truth a little.  The hype for Glossier is very real!  Milky Jelly is made with hyaluronic acid, which is meant to absorb moisture from the air into your skin, but often just absorbs it from your skin and brings it to the surface, leaving it momentarily very plump but drier after the hyaluronic acid is gone.  And i think that is the case with this one.  When it goes on (and the pump makes it very hard to control how much you use, so in spite of the low cost of this, I think if I used it regularly i'd go through it very quickly), it has a thick jelly texture and a natural rose scent that I loved, and it feels divine on the skin - but my skin felt dry when I rinsed it off!   That is a no-go for me in a face cleanser.  But I was desperate to make this work for me anyway.   Until I realized it was breaking me out.  Stopped using it, skin returned to normal.  Went back to it, happened again.  So it was clearly the cleanser. That's just my skin, however.  The real problem I have with this product is that it was advertised as a divine makeup-removal product, so you didn't have to remove your makeup and then wash your face.  In actuality, this wouldn't remove my makeup at all, even if I washed my face with it a second time.  I have a hard time believing that's just my skin somehow, so when I see people praising how this melts away every trace of your makeup and leaves your skin soft and moisturized, I have to admit, I'm a skeptic. Stretch Concealer, $18 First of all, I bought this in the shade Dark, which is... too dark.  Medium was out of stock, but I don't think I'm going to purchase Medium at any point in time so I can't compare them. I saw a lot of Glossier's go-to models and spokeswomen praising this for its sheerness and dewiness where a lot of concealers are bulletproof and cakey.   And... respectfully, I think most people don't want sheerness from their concealers, or they, at least, want buildability.  The finish of stretch isn't dewy; it's greasy.  It is wearable under powder, but it absolutely doesn't have a normal skin finish even on my skin which is normally oily-leaning.  I didn't hate Stretch Concealer when used as extra coverage foundation over my Skin Tint, but I found I still needed an additional concealer for the purpose of concealing blemishes. If you're a Glossier model you already don't have blemishes, do you now? But I am not a model of any kind and believe it or not, I require coverage from my concealers.  A personal preference, I know.  Stretch's oily base doesn't build when you try to add more, it just moves the product around.   To compare this to the RMS Un Cover Up that I strongly suspect it was inspired by, they aren't all that similar (although I do think Stretch would be a less frustrating product if it were, like Un Cover Up, marketed as a foundation and concealer; I wouldn't expect as high a coverage from it then). Stretch doesn't settle into the skin, but kind of sits on top of it a bit, has a dewy to greasy formula and finish, and isn't buildable.  Un Cover Up has a velvety to dewy formula, has to be worked into skin but then melds entirely with your skin and looks like your skin, and is buildable to a roughly medium finish (though I still need actual high coverage concealer on my spotty or my bad-feel days). Haloscope in Quartz, $22 This is one of my favorite and one of my least favorite products. Let me explain. At this point, I realized that Glossier was no longer what I had loved it for being.  They had released lipsticks and a brow product that, unlike the  moisturizer, were, in spite of their low prices, costlier price per ounce than other high-end brands - so though each tube cost less than other brands, you would get very little product.  I wanted to try these things and their formulas and promises sounded appealing, but I just couldn't justify spending the money.  I also was so unimpressed by the concealer and face wash not living up to both Glossier's promises and the army of yeswomen in its service who go on social media and talk up how they beat out everything else that when the same thing happened with Haloscope, I couldn't be excited.  How much respect could I have for a brand that sold its highlighter on the strength of its real crystal extract (it was in their ad copy and word for word praised by all the girls who reviewed it on youtube, so you can deduce they were told to mention that specifically) when it actually gets it glimmer from mica? That said, I did buy Quartz.  It's a solid shimmer stick in a plastic tube that adds a glimmery pigment that looks like light hitting your face but nicer.  I actually love the dewy core of this and wish they'd modify it into a lip balm because I'd use this as a lip balm if I could; I just hate frosty lips. At first Quartz did not impress me and I wished I had gotten Topaz, but it grew on me, and its neutral beiginess makes it wearable with every blush, eye and lip combo I own.  I still don't like its hugeness (I like to apply with a finger) or the packaging it comes in, which makes me cringe.  I still don't like how their ad copy and model army clearly suggest that the glow on your face is the result of crystals, when it's the result of mica.  I hate that Glossier literally calls this "the galaxy's first dew-effect highlighter", when RMS Beauty's living luminizer has literally been around longer, and other natural beauty brands have been making highlighters with the exact same ingredients, coconut and castor seed oils, for the exact same finish and formula for years.  Do I love this product? Yes. But what it reveals about Glossier's marketing is ugly. Vapour, RMS and Ilia all literally have comparable products, and they don't mislead their customers.  The one thing I will say about Glossier is that theirs costs less.   Moisturizing Moon Mask, $22 The masks actually came out in Glossier's second release, but it took me this long to get around to buying them.  When I got this, I was heavily unimpressed, contributing to an overall apathy towards the brand.  Its moisturizing powers are only so-so, and you have to apply a lot of product for it to look like it does in the cute pictures of models masking. (That's not a bad thing - you don't need that much product, after all - but it made me realize Glossier has been doing the misleading advertising thing for a very long time.)  I got the moisturizing mask because the "juice cleanse for your face" branding on the detoxifying mask is very ED-normalizing language (cleanses don't work, they are made up, your kidneys do all the cleansing you need) and makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I got this in the summer and it did absolutely nothing, but trying it now again in January it does a little, but not enough that I'd recommend it.  It also stings my face a little bit, which I'm pretty sure is just my skin. Limited Edition Haloscope in Moonstone, $22 I'm reviewing this separately because I was, like everyone else, swooning over the prospect of a bluish-opal highlighter in the same formula as Quartz and Topaz, and this is not the same formula as Quartz and Topaz. Those don't ever completely dry on the skin, but this is much oilier and has much less pigment, so while it is bluish and a tad opal-y, in order to build it up you also get a much tackier finish.  It feels like wearing a balm on your face, except not because I own Living Luminizer which is a balm and that's still more pigment in less product so it's never that sticky on the face.  I'm so relieved I didn't buy the Black Tie Set just to try this one.  I would have been so pissed. But it does remind me that I wish one of these brands I like would come out with a genuinely dewy blue-type color instead of lavender shades. I love RDF Ghost Light, but i'd love it even more if the blue duochrome showed up on me. Boy Brow, $16 Finally, ages later, I finally committed to this one, and I love it.  I'm so frustrated, because I have gone from loving Glossier to wishing I didn't love anything from them and didn't need to buy their stuff, but there's just no other brow product that has this texture, this hold, this longevity, this beauty on the brow.  One thing that surprises me is how genuinely black the shade Black is.  I love how it looks, but it's rather intense, and I suspect won't work as well on the days when i want to wear nothing on my eyelids, so I might need to get Brown at some point.  The only caveat I have to this is that, in spite of its low cost, you do genuinely get a small amount of product, and the tube is tiny.  You don't need much product to do your brows, of course, but I know I'll have to repurchase this often.  It's probably worth it, because I've never seen anything even approaching this product anywhere else. ---- So that's where I stand on this iconic brand: somewhere in the middle, easily swayed to either love it again or hate it depending on the product I'm using.  They are unquestionably dishonest, which is something I can't respect.  They're also one of the only brands out there with a serious commitment towards advertising to women of all skin colors, and demonstrating how every single product looks on every skin tone, which is rare enough that I feel some gratitude towards them regardless.  Their products lean towards people with dry skin, which I don't quite have, and almost a cult has grown up around them that makes it astonishingly difficult to find honest reviews.   There are still products I haven't tried.  While i know that Glossier can surprise me with quality products even after I've made up my mind, the Generation G lipsticks and Supers serums look to follow a pattern with which I am by now familiar.  The lipsticks claim to be the first ever lipstick to "look blotted without the blot", to be matte and sheer at the same time.  I'm already unimpressed.  It takes no time at all to apply a lipstick very lightly over a balm and blend it with your fingertips for a stained look, and I don't need a lipstick to do that without my fingertip, and from the swatch reviews on the website, it requires a lot of lipstick to get to that point, and there's not a lot of product in those little tubes.  (I still want a couple of the colors for the colors themselves, but I don't expect that I'll want to throw out all my other lip products after I get them.)   The Supers are even less impressive.  They are $28 for half an ounce when your usual serum is an ounce, making them $56 an ounce, very much the same as most high end serums. Glancing at Super Bounce, the top ingredients are water, glycerin, dimethicone - not unusual or particular.  By contrast, The Ordinary sells a comparable hyaluronic acid product at $6.80 an ounce.  In fact, doing my research, each Super has a primary product that you can get over at The Ordinary for like ten dollars an ounce.  Super Bounce is Hyaluronic Acid and B5, the same thing I just purchased from The Ordinary; Super Pure is Niacinamide and Zinc, which I also just purchased from The Ordinary. Super Glow, the most tempting serum, is Vitamin C and Magnesium, and The Ordinary has several options for you there. (The one I wanted was sold out, so I haven't gotten it yet. My own glowing skin potion is out of reach for now, but not forever.)  I'm not against spending 60 dollars an ounce on magic skin care, mind you.  I'm just doubtful that the Supers truly are more magical than anything else on the market, and much more tempted by The Ordinary, whose no-frills approach (sometimes so no-frills that my un-science-trained mind can't decipher everything they are saying) is a pleasant antidote to Glossier's model-testimony-backed hyperbole that covers up that it has only a very small number of products that are truly unique on the market. You should try: Priming Moisturizer is the only product I will die on a hill for.  Boy Brow is perfect for genuinely textured, pomaded brows, but if that's not your ideal brow, you can pass.  I do like the rose balm, but I'm sure other things are out there.  I do like the skin tint, which does somehow brighten my complexion and is unbeatably low-maintenance (something I truly rely on as i work at 5 am), but most people won't care for something that low in coverage.  I can't decide about Haloscope.  The shades look as advertised and I do love them, but they're not entirely incomparable to other brands I've tried.  That said, the Vapour and Ilia illuminators that look most similar cost over ten dollars more.  But those are truly all-natural brands, which Glossier is not.  I'm pretty sure that face mist owns my soul.  I missed it so badly when I didn't have it, and I am overjoyed to have it again.  If it isn't broken, don't fix it, etc. You should pass: unless what I would call its flaws sound like benefits to you, I can't think of anyone who actually needs the Stretch Concealer, and I had a very poor experience with Milky Jelly.  I can't truly say there is a product here you shouldn't buy, but I will say there's nothing here you should buy for the hype, because there are comparable products out there, you need only look. 

[immaterialgirls]

So this look is vaguely Arwen-inspired, because @forthegothicheroine sent me an elven crown from Ayalga on Etsy as a winter solstice/Chanukkah present and my mother and I marathonned LOTR this month, but it was also an excuse to do a look featuring new products of mine.

I’ve been getting into natural/organic cosmetics lately, and while I can’t see myself making a full switch, I tend to fantasize that this would be what I would wear if I were an elf.  Natural brands don’t tend to be long-wearing, precise or opaque, but they’re more comfortable on the skin and widely tend to be better for you, unless you’re sensitive to their ingredients. 

The base for this look consists of more products than it looks (especially since I didn’t achieve full coverage). RMS beauty Living Luminizer was used as a primer on the places my skin felt a little dry.  I seem to use this product as a multi-purpose salve more than I think it was meant to! RMS beauty’s un cover up foundation and concealer is a product I adore, but it tends to be low coverage, and my skin has been hating me recently, so I went back on the market for a higher-coverage foundation that would still be natural because I still want a product that feels comfortable after I’ve been wearing makeup for 15 hours.  Kjaer Weis is an expensive luxe brand with a very popular cream (but not liquid) foundation, so I gave that a shot and I’m a believer.  I apply this in the shade Illusion with a fingertip and then a damp sponge (I’ve been using the Real Techniques one; I am a beautyblender convert after trying a mini size from Sephora, but the Real Techniques one costs so much less).  Then I used RMS beauty’s un cover up in 22 on my under-eye area and 33 on blemishes that were leftover because I do think the Kjaer Weis cakes a little if you try to pile it on blemishes. 

Normally I set my makeup with RMS beauty’s un powder, but it’s a frustrating product to use and the finish of this foundation is much more matte, so I went back to my beloved Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder in Ethereal Light.  Not a natural brand, but this is what I meant when I said I wasn’t switching over.  I still felt a little dry so I sprayed on Glossier Soothing Face Mist.

I curled my eyelashes and then I started on the rest of my face.  Review is forthcoming on Glossier’s Boy Brow (I’m wearing Black) but the short and sweet is I adore its unique wax formula’s ability to style, darken, and hold my brows.  I’m also adoring the Bite Beauty Multi-Stick and ended up with four shades, but designs on more. My most recent one is Blondie, which is what the brand calls a “nude taupe”. I think anyone darker than me should pass this and either get Creme Caramel or Praline (corals and peaches) or Honeywheat or Anise (browns), but Blondie is just dark enough to add color and dimension to my cheeks without being noticeable. I used that on my cheeks and my crease, though it doesn’t work as well in the latter placement, I admit.  Next, on my eyelids and cheekbones, I used a sample of Vapour Organics Aura Multi-Use Classic Blush (a mouthful) in Tender, a “light peachy-pink”. I’m not seeing peach in this product, it’s merely not cool. This is such a light pink that it’s merely a glow - and as such has instantly become my new favorite highlighter. It has a shimmer to it that doesn’t register as shimmer, like products that are meant to be highlighters do, no matter how subtle they are. At the same time, it’s not matte, like Benefit’s Shy Beam was. This is how I hoped Shy Beam would look on me. It looks like the inside of a shell.  I think this would be even more beautiful and striking on anyone darker than I am, and anyone significantly lighter can probably start to use it as a blush as it’s intended.

After I applied my sample of Diorshow mascara (this is old and flaking u g h why me), I felt like my lashes looked a little thin and not fluffy and elfy, so I applied RMS beauty eye polish in Karma like a liquid liner. This doesn’t work as a liquid liner, I know; it fades throughout the day, and sometimes smudges because my eyelids are so hooded.  Don’t care, it looks really nice, it’s incredibly low-maintenance for an eyeliner and it’s not hard on my sensitive eyelids.

Lastly: lipstick! My favorite part of any look and meant to be the most pigmented part of this one since everything else is completely neutral, but this color is difficult to understand.  It’s another Vapour Organics product, their Siren lipstick in Madam, and it’s meant to be a “classic mauve”, but it feels neither especially mauve nor especially nude.  I read it was similar to Clinique’s Black Honey (the lipstick Liv Tyler is apparently actually wearing in LOTR) in its emollient texture and glossy finish, but its emollience and gloss wear off quickly, and its color seems to too. (Then again, most sheer lipsticks come off when you eat.)  In these pictures, I built it up very heavily, and i feel like if i used it a lot, I’d use up the tube quickly, because I prefer how it looks built up.  I’m sure it’s one of those products that stands out more on lighter skin, because my lips are already sort of that color anyway.

Here’s my color palette:

From top: Bite Beauty ‘Blondie’, Vapour Organics ‘Madam’, Vapour Organics ‘Tender’, and RMS beauty ‘Karma’.  Look at those neutrals doe.

I’m not in a position to buy every single natural beauty product I want right now, but color me intrigued. 

SOTD: BPAL’s “Elf”, fittingly enough, a mixture of forest scents, honey and musk with the occasional flirtation from violet and lily notes.

[immaterialgirls]

Gleðileg Jól! 🌲❄️

Some products to make you sparkle like the snow this winter:

Lush Cosmetics “First Snow”, a strongly-scented (not a plus for me, since I wear my own perfume) body glitter that can be applied lightly or heavily enough that it gains a silver, strobing effect

Urban Decay Moondust eyeshadows in general, but I have Cosmic, a white-silver with clear/silver sparkle (leans more silver than clear on me), and Interstellar, an antique gold with pink and bronzey glitters

RMS Beauty Living Luminizer, a highlighter with a coconut and castor seed oil base with silvery mica in it that leans a touch cool and bluish and is very subtle

RMS Beauty eye polish in “Lunar”, a creamy-white champagne that leans yellow-golden white on fairer skintones, and makes a fantastic highlighter (and is much stronger than the actual highlighter)

Cover FX Enhancer Drops in “Moonlight”, a silvery pink frost that is absolutely loaded with sparkles, meant to be mixed in with foundation or worn alone for a strong liquid highlight

Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder in “Ethereal Light” (which is now offered in a smaller size for 22 dollars, at least on Sephora’s website!), one of their many finishing powders meant to add a subtle luminescence to skin as though you are standing in really good lighting - the dimming, blurring, faded effect of moonlight, in this case. (not swatched because it’s so subtle!)

Josie Maran Surreal Skin Finishing Balm in “Etheric”, a silicon-based primer with skincare benefits and a touch of mica (not swatched because it’s really subtle, but moisturizes slightly and is lovely under makeup!)

----

You may have noticed that my posting was drastically reduced the last two months.  Apart from a lack of motivation, my phone plan has run out and I’m not renewing it, meaning I lack a method of getting pictures from the phone onto the internet.  I can’t afford a phone that has a comparable camera (let alone a better one), so I’m going to be looking into not getting a smartphone at all to save on expenses and maybe investing in a digital camera instead.  Sadly, this means an unhappy and involuntary hiatus on makeup posting from here on in, my dears. 

[immaterialgirls]

vitklädd med ljus i hår: a makeup look for st. lucia’s day

as you can tell, Teja and I have slowed down a bit in coming up with new posts lately - there’s such an abundance of ethereal and immaterial ideas for Halloween, and shortly thereafter the days start getting darker and shorter which makes it tough for us to get accurate pictures! however, today I have for you a look for December 13th, St. Lucia’s Day.  *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

I didn’t celebrate St. Lucia’s Day growing up; my ancestry is ill-defined but what I know if it isn’t Scandinavian, and there aren’t a ton of Scandinavian-descended people where I live, either. however, I’ve always been drawn to the holiday, as it encapsulates a lot of what I am drawn to spiritually, especially around the time of the winter solstice: particularly the idea of bringing light and warmth to the darkest, coldest days of the year. it’s both something I believe in and aspire to doing as a general principle, not just during this time of year, but always.

but you came here for makeup! ^^; for me, the colorscheme of St. Lucia’s day is the white of her gown, the red of her sash, and a pale, luminous white gold like the glow of the candles in Lucia’s hair. I tried to capture that in this look with red lips and cheeks, and gleaming white-gold on cheekbones and eyelids.

products used: base: MAC strobe cream, MUFE Mat Velvet foundation (not pictured because it’s old and gross), Kevyn Aucoin SSE cheeks: Josie Maran Lip & Cheek oil in Always Cherry, Colourpop highlighter in Stole the Show lips:  Josie Maran Lip & Cheek oil in Always Cherry & TonyMoly Tony Tint in #01 Cherry eyes: Colourpop Girly, Tarte Tartlette Power Player lightly in crease, Urban Decay Cosmic on inner corners (& cheekbones)

Glad Lucia, sweethearts! I hope the day brings you light and warmth and hopefully a delicious pastry or two.  *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

[immaterialgirls]

Rituel de Fille Rare Light Luminizers: Ghost Light, Phosphene, Anthelion

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

You know how i feel about Rituel de Fille. I have wanted them to do highlighters for a while, though I admit when they finally did, I was a bit disappointed in the outcome.  I sort of wanted some green and blue colors, not the usual pinks and golds most brands make.

As it turns out, these colors are somewhere in the middle between “subtle and natural” and “faintly unnatural”, which means that while they are not exactly the Moonchild palette, they don’t look just like the light striking your cheekbone, either.

Their formula is almost oily to the touch (not so much as the RMS beautiful living luminizer) but not in a gross way. It makes them as subtle as they are; though they can be built up easily, initial application is like adding a supernatural gloss to your face.  

They come in the same packaging as the RDF blushes and share their lavender scent.

Ghost Light: This opalescent shade illuminates with a cool-toned pale pink and a shift of violet-blue. In most lighting, this is a subtle lavender. It’s surprisingly nice on me in spite of my skin color being basically yellow.  Because it’s a blend of pink and blue tones, it has the potential to flatter all undertones.  It’s also not at all chalky, like I’ve experienced with every other cool-toned pink shimmer I’ve ever worn.  That itself impresses me a lot. I’ve worn this most days.  I’m sort of in love with it.

Phosphene: This radiant neutral imparts a soft, pale beige glow with a hint of peachy-blush shift. A cool pink frost that is also not chalky, this has the least subtle glimmer of them all.  It isn’t very peachy on me.  This color is the most neutral of all of them, and I think it would flatter anybody.

Anthelion: This striking gold shifts with a subtle red-orange highlight, glowing warm like a ray of sunlight. I had worried I should have gotten a full size of this instead of Ghost Light, but it’s not actually very gold to me at all!  It’s like a peachy color with red tinges.  Again, probably to be flattering to the broadest variety of skin colors. 

Usually in a highlighter range, the lightest color is meant to flatter lighter skin, and the darker colors are meant to flatter darker skin.  I didn’t get that impression from this line.  Their duochrome nature and the way they are like a pigment suspended in an oil indicates to me that they’d all flatter anybody, like the RMS living luminizer is just subtle shimmer in coconut oil and looks good on every skin color; but here, the subtle shimmers are a veil of ethereal color.