My 2012 looks very pretty from this angle.
Fashion, New Products, color, favourite things, winter in Lust-Have
PLENTY OF people in the beauty world don't have forever beauty products. Why would we when a huge chunk of the job is trying everything out that comes to market?
Rarely have I bought something over and over again. If ever. Honestly, whether they'll tell you or not, the beauty folk often call in what they use or if they're so backlogged with reviewing stuff (ahem, my default state), then they beg off new products, already so mired in countless products they have to use.
Usually, I use whatever's on hand, whatever I am trialing that day/week/month. Maybe it's not like that in real life. I guess there's some sense of brand loyalty but it's hard to develop a taste for one thing when you've got 20 on the docket to try.
Here are a few from 2010 for which I'll be happy to plunk down cash when they run low or wear out.
I'm all over this brand like white on rice. In 2010, Glyolic Acid has changed my 30-something skin for the better. The range is described as Glycolic based Anti-Ageing. They should add acne-fighting and Rosacea-styming to that description too. Gorgeous stuff. The Essential Hydrating Cream, Liquid Gold Intensive Night Repair Serum and the Daily Essential Moisturiser all get my humble blogger stamp of approval. Particularly the first two... packed with Vitamin A, Vitamin E, Glycolic 14%, Niacinamide, Licorice Extract, Sodium Hyaluronate, Palmitoyl Tripeptide-5...
I rocked this shiz on the Vail ski slopes over the Christmas holiday in the brilliant berry Nocturnal. Why not? It was moisturising, stayed on, has rich pigment, the tube's refillable, it's got none of the nasties that are found in many lipsticks and, well, I was in the mood for a bit of glamour wherever I could find it as I didn't have the full ski bunny outfit. Instead, I wore my mother-in-law's 1970s ski pants that were almost a foot too short, a second-hand pastel camo coat from my sister and a helmet. If it can withstand the weather and wear of skiing and make anyone dressed as mad as I was feel glamorous, it's a keeper.
L'Occitane Peony Lip and Cheek Water
Has cut down my every day routine by a huge chunk of time. Swipe a bit onto my cheeks after I put on my RMS un-Cover Up in 22, once across the lips before blotting it with a finger, wiggle some mascara into my eyelashes or pile a bit of bright lipstick on the stain that's created a nice base and I'm good to go. It's super light, easy to blend before it sets (unlike many lip and cheek stains), has a natural, lovely peachy-pink colour and -- the real kicker -- makes me actually look like a refreshed, younger version of myself.
Just take the lid off and your entire house smells amazing. Light the sucker and it'll last for hours. Clean burning, long burn time, beautiful (and re-usable) glass containers with gorgeously heavy lids. I have two in a small one bedroom place and that's all I need. The scent is slightly musky but not overbearing. It smells expensive.
Oral-B Professional Care SmartSeries 5000 Electric Toothbrush
This one has taken some getting used to. As in, I can't mindlessly run it across my teeth for a few seconds before going to bed. You have to individually brush each tooth with the round, rotating brush head, like the dental hygenist does. The rubbery nubs and bristles are seriously whitening too and there's a timer so you know when you've done two minutes. My smiles loads brighter than it was before and my dentist is so much happier to see me than he was at the end of 2009.
[Can't find a pick of the brush online. Boo.]
I still have to cut knots out of my hair. True story. It gets so tangled and matted during the winter when I have a scarf or collar rubbing against it all day. Often times I would just tuck it under on itself and leave it, like a giant dreadlock, until warm days. Conditioner was no match for it and even my favourite brush -- the one I've had for EIGHT years, my Marilyn -- couldn't make any but a superficial difference. Enter the Babyliss brush... a combo of boar bristles and spikey plastic ones that massage my scalp and instantly fix my mop. I dragged it through my hair and had tamed the previously un-tamable mess in less than 30 seconds. My hard has been looking sleek since (also thanks in part to at Vidal Sassoon). I'm still trying to find a voltage converter to use my Root Boost, but I bet it would have made the 2010 list if I could've used it.
BENEFIT MASCARAS
All of them. They just dry up and flake way too quickly nowadays and they are a bastard to get off the lashes at night. How can something that feels so dry (and flake so much) when on my eyelashes, feel as sticky and sludgy as the inside of an old oil drum when I try to remove it? Did you re-formulate, Benefit, or have I just fallen victim to the lower standards of production endemic to cosmetic products made for the US market?
Fail.
NON-ORGANIC SHAMPOO
They'll give you mad suds but if you dye your hair ginger like me, those suds rinse away your expensive hair color in just a few washes, having a double whammy negative impact on both your wallet's girth and the water table. In fact, I'm just washing it less full stop, because it prolongs my hair colour, washes fewer chemicals down the drain and makes my limp mop easier to style.
PEDICURES AT ANY OLD SALON
In America, nail salons are everywhere, like banks in Paris and Tesco metro in the UK. And thusly manicures and pedicures come cheap, quick and regularly. They're almost a national right, like elastic-waist pants and an SUV.
There's a reason everyone gets them in the US.
But you know what? You get what you pay for.
In this instance? A mean case of toenail funk due to the unhygienic foot baths at one such run-of-the-mill nail farm. Not visible to the naked eye, rest assured that even the spiffiest of foot baths can harbour nasties.
It doesn't help matters that the same sodding salon that gifted me my fungal buddy also employed reusable and clearly already once reused tools on the sore-covered, scaly, purple-red-blue-green-yellow, puffy, oozing, cracked, bruised and more-words-than-I-have-in-my-vocabulary legs, feet and nails (thick, curdled yellow and far longer than the ends of her calloused toes) of a woman with a suspicious odor who came in and sat directly next to me. I actually got the dry heaves and started to feel faint when I accidentally looked down at her feet and calves.
Know what else?
I didn't see the technician sanitize the tools before or AFTER working on this woman. I pity the technician who took on the job without even donning a paper face mask, BUT I pity the next woman to occupy that seat and unwittingly befall the fung-tastic fate that awaits her while she quietly reads US Weekly and hands over a cool $25 for the pleasure.
You think it could never happen to you... until it does.
Since it's cheaper than a drink at Starbucks, it becomes a volume game. They take all comers and keep butts in the seats.
From now on, I just say no to casual pedicures and will be practicing safe pedicures from herein out.
BLUSH
If you have cheeks like mine, it's hard not to look clownish without an expert hand applying this stuff. And by cheeks like mine, I mean puffy. My husband once -- glowing as he thought he was paying me a compliment -- told me I looked like... I can barely say it... Rene. Zellweger.
Thems fightin' words.
At least he didn't say Bridget Jones.
LIQUID EYELINER
Until the morning I wake up without a hooded eyelid sagging over my right lash line, this stuff just has to go. It smears with every blink, making me look like I'm an extra from Leaving Las Vegas, or at least my right eye is.
ELNETT HAIRSPRAY
I've been faithful to Elnett for years because it holds everything in place so well but lets the hair move, helping women the world over avoiding helmet hair. But I just. can't. take. it. anymore.
The smell is nauseating.
I get queasy every time I spray it. And, like Charlie Brown's Pig Pen, a cloud of the granny-scented stuff follows you wherever you go, once applied, no matter how many hours have lapsed. Elevators are an asphyxiated disaster. Ever time I've gotten into a car with Elnett on my hair, I have to roll down the window and pop my head out, like a dog sniffing the air.
That's no way to live.
It's odorific and horribly so. Elnett, I love you but I'm leaving.
GUILT
Us ladies are always so sorry for everything or feeling bad about everything, particularly in America. If I see one more advertisement, food network show -- WHATEVER -- that says 'eat BLANK guilt free' I will bitch slap them with my cast iron frying pan.
Why, women?? WHY?
Why would you EVER feel guilty about eating a piece of bloody chocolate?
Eat it and enjoy it. Or you'll just keep eating more because you don't enjoy it, feel guilty and then comfort eat to stop that gnawing feeling. Detect a pattern here, Watson?
Stop feeling guilty about not going to the gym enough, holding onto those last ten pounds, wearing makeup that's a bit out of the ordinary, spending money on a facial. Seriously. Enough with the puritancial guilt-ridden existence.
It's. So. Bloody. Boring.
I've done away with said guilt over the past few years (not easy), really hitting my stride in 2010, and am happy to leave that burden in my dust.
If you really must live life always feeling so guilty about everything, at least do something to deserve the guilt for chrissake.
2010, beauty products, favourite things in Beauty Op-Ed 
