confessions of an unapologetic makeup junkie

this is the start of many (i hope) dates with the same cutie. ive just met a cute boy and we'd be having le highly anticipated first date in approximately 14 hours. i know. must get le beauty sleep soon! :D and i must stop talking about him. he's more established in the blog scene and all that. :D

i did some practice makeup for it and this is my tentative FOLD (face of le date!) :D it is very muted, as i wanna keep it simple and clean on the first date. i wanna make him think i don't need makeup to be beautiful (although i used a TON of products). my aunt would always say it is harder to achieve simplicity than flambouyance and i have to agree with her! this look was hella hard to do. it's name "no make up look" is quite deceiving.
i did the flick tho.. what do you think? should i ditch the flick in my lash line?
oh, and i did an uber defined MLBB cuz guys hate made up lips.. i feel tho that my lips are uber made up. what do you think?

should i tone down the nude? HELP!!

note: still using isight with very bad lighting!

this is my own rendition of My Lips But Better (MLBB) using several gawang pinoy products. the only non-local lip product here are blistex and lust lipglass.
but the main focus here are lipsticks. (L-R) i used Fashion21's gentle peach, EverBilena's skin, and EverBilena's mauvey. all of these are matte lipstick's so i had to use a gloss on top of it.

gentle peach - peachy nude lips

skin - perfect MLBB

mauvey - pinky nude lips

first, this is my uber pigmented lips when bare:prior to the application of each lipstick, i moisturized my lips with a blistex balm

the first product imma focus on is gentle peach. as you can see above, my lips are very pigmented so i had to "erase" my lips first before applying gentle peach. after applying gentle peach, i added a clear lip gloss. this is what it looks like:
skin - the next lipstick is skin from EB. this is how it looks like alone:now that i am looking at it, methinks i shouldve erased my lips too before application! :D
this is how it looks with lust lipglass
look's soo much better innit?

mauvey - now this one was recommended by another girltalker, sis twiist.

this is how it looks like alone: and this is how it looks like with ellana mineral's first kiss lipglass

the verdict: i love, love, love skin most as it does not change my lipcolor at all! it is my HG MLBB along with lust lipglass!

excuse the low resolution of the pics, i was using my laptop's isight for this cuz i left my cam's tripod at home. imma repost this next week with better quality pics. :D

since SM Manila was on a 3-day sale for araw ng Maynila, i excitedly went there yesterday only to be sorely disappointed as most makeup lines, especially the ones i wanted stuff from was not on sale. :( i ended up getting fewer things than i'd have wanted.

1. fanny serrano concealer stick - sand
2. EverBilena matte lipstick - mauvey
3. EverBilena matte lipstick - skin
4. nichido eyelash defining mascara - black
5. nichido GNO eye pencil - bronze
6. nichido GNO eye pencil - smoke green
7. nichido GNO eye pencil - thin mints
8. Fashion21 eyeliner - white
9. 4u2 E/S palette

i recently bought fanny serrano's silky coral blush which have been causing wildfires @ the girltalk forums.
when i first saw the fs blush, i had doubts. it looked too pale to be a good orgasm dupe. but once i swatched it. the similarity blew my mind away. of course it is not an exact match but the difference is just minimal. nars' orgasm has a bit more gold flecks when swatched but once blended, you can't tell the difference at all. i kid you not.

and before both colors could show up in my hand and in my camera, i had to make three swipes from each, so the color is really intense. i find it really hard swatching blushes cuz they're not supposed to intensify in color when applied right? the theory "a little goes a long way" is very much true here. so colorwise, it seems like it's a deadlock. or if you like it more shimmery, go for the nars' one. less shimmery, FS is for you.. but then again, as i said, once blended it really is the same.
here without flash.
when it comes to staying power, again, it is a deadlock. both stayed on for 2-3 hours before i had to reapply (it's lucky they showed up on me at all.) maybe even four hours, but i like a good color on my cheeks so i reapply sooner than i have to. i dont wait for the color to disappear totally. in terms of staying power, i think i have my TFS span primer to thank for that.

packaging, of course the matte rubber of nars win as opposed to FS' plastic case. the brush that came with FS is not completely useless too so i guess that's a point for FS.

price:
Nars = 1350 vs. Fanny Serrano = 350. there appears to be a clear winner, right?

i know it's a lot but it's my first time hauling philippine-made makeup products and for everything i got.. it's not too expensive! :D

1. nichido - sunset glow
2. nichido - south beach
3. nichido - cinnamon glaze
4. everbilena - pro lipliner
5. everbilena - shy - cheek blush
6. fanny serrano - cake foundation - mocha
7. fanny serrano - concealer stick - chestnut
8. fanny serrano - concealer stick - walnut
9. fanny serrano - powder blush - silky coral
10. fashion21 - lipstick - wild cherry
11. fashion21 - lipstick - gentle peach
12. fashion21 - candyglaze - flamingo
13. fanny serrano - eyelash curler
14. san-san glossy lips - lip gloss
15. careline - loose shadow - mestiza white
16. careline - loose shadow - vanilla white
17. careline - loose shadow duo - poison ivy
18. careline - loose shadow duo - mineraluz

i honestly can't pick a favorite cuz i love them all

as you've read in my makeup backstory, most of my makeup knowledge comes from youtube tutorials. my only problem with that is most of them are based abroad. climate and skintone differences are two very important differences I, as a Filipina in the Philippines have with them. what works and may be good for them may not work for me.

first, they have four seasons there while we, as a tropical country only have two. the hot and the hotter season. kidding aside, though, i live in a country with very humid weather. although it may be a welcome change from somebody who lives in, say, alaska, it nevertheless have some downsides, especially when it comes to makeup. a very good example would be air brush makeup. while airbrushed finish looks really gorgeous it is not advisable here for it will just melt and slide off.

next, skintone, although MAC has a wide variety of foundation shades to choose from, i feel like it still does not cater to filipinas. we have a very interesting genealogy. our ancestors range from the malays, to the chinese, to the spanish, and even some japanese and american. portuguese even for some (ehem, ehem albeit very diluted.. around .0000000000000000001%). with that mix, i find it better to get makeup, or foundation shades at least, from a company that caters to filipinas. it makes soo much more sense to me.

another factor is the availability of products. with globalization and all that good stuff, we still have a wide array of products not found in the philippine market. a very good example would be the famed urban decay primer potion. although some online shops carry them, it still is not widely available, which i don't like. i still find it oppressive that there is no sephora store available here. although a very reliable source has told me that soon enough there will be.. it's already in the works. until that time though multiply sellers are cashing in.

i also live by the theory "made by filipinos for filipinos" and with that, i am a very strong advocate of gawang pinoy, yes, even to *egad* filipino makeup. you'd be surprised at how many treasures Nichido, Fanny Serrano/fashion21, EverBilena/Careline, Fmaxx, Glish/patrick rosas hide, only waiting to be discovered.

of course i would still buy foreign brands like mac, ysl, mufe, TBS, TFS and all that good stuff, but rest assured that all products posted here is widely available in the philippine market. :D

this for now is my makeup philosophy.

i first found love in makeup when i was about three or four and i would steal my mom's red, red lipstick and grey eyeshadows, as it was a fad then. i think i even steal her makeup more than i do her shoes. :D she would always be sooo freaking mad at me but come next day, she would find her brand new lipstick ruined again. if i couldnt steal hers, i would steal my aunts. i remember having a penchant for signature makeup even then, as i used to steal (and ruined) my aunt's clinique makeup set. then when i was 5, we were at toys R us in hongkong (my second visit of many) when i cried rivers inside the store as they would not allow me to get the kiddie makeup set i soo wanted. the label said ages 8 and up you see. so when i finally turned 8, i again asked for it and they bought it for me. i was over the moon with glee! it was not some little e/s trio or quad you see. it has all colors imaginable (around 40 eye shadows, 10 blush ons, 10 lip glosses and 2 tubes of lipstick). it was nothing fancy tho.. it was just some colored powders kids could play with. i remember harassing all my aunt's legal aids and messengers in her hk based law firm for a makeover. since i was the boss' only niece then, they had to indulge me. that was when i first realized i wanted to be a makeup artist.

as i grew up, i became passionate about other things such as literature, boys, and swimming, but my love for makeup stayed. by the time puberty hit full blast, i was too scared to wear eye shadows for fear of looking like a clown but lip glosses and blushes were always a staple. i was always called by my private catholic school's guidance officer for putting makeup on as it was against the student code, as well as heeled black shoes. but come next day, i still have my heeled black shoes and blush on and it was guidance officer time again. my collection was growing fast then as i would always steal from my mom and aunt's vanity cases, plus the ones they would hand down to me. my lunch money would also be spent on drugstore makeup. it didn't help that we had a beauty store right outside our house.

when college came i had snotty classmates who looked down on drugstore brand and sheer peer pressure made me switch from drugstore to branded makeup. that's when i started hauling The Body Shop. some clinique, mac, estee lauder, and lancome to name a few too but these were all gifts from my aunts.

when i started lawschool, it became a totally different story though. my face broke out real bad i had to stop wearing makeup. i guess the stress of lawschool plus the lack of my therapy (putting makeup on is my therapy) aggravated my break outs even more. fast forward to january of 2008 i had a personal crisis which left me empty handed. no boy, no friends, noone. it was makeup who saved my life. it made me happy. it was also the time i discovered mineral make up. my break outs were still there and i figured it was because of my conventional makeup. so i did the unspeakable. i threw out all conventional makeup. seriously. i threw out around 3 huge supermarket bags of conventional makeup. i know. a total waste of money. most of them were barely untouched but i thought it was all expired cuz most were past the 2year mark. how ignorant i was then! i became soo obsessed with makeup that i even started thinking of shifting careers, from lawschool, to makeup artist. good thing my aunt talked me out of it. well not really. we had a deal. i finish lawschool, pass the bar, and she will fund my passion for makeup artistry.

and at least i have my mineral makeup with me, and that at least made me happy. it was only january of 2009 when i started revisiting conventional makeup stores. i would often go to high-end brands thinking they were safer than drugstore brands. still i had break outs. but it was a helluva lot tamer than it used to be. i also bought bobbi brown's book, but i dont have it with me right now so i can't tell you which one.

around march of 2009, i discovered youtube tutorials and it was very helpful to me. i again started branching out, getting stuff from coastal scents as well for practice purposes. my only problem with youtube tutorials is that most of these gurus are based abroad. climate and skintone differences are really something that bothers me. one thing that works for them may not work for us. but more on that in my next post.

june of 2009, i started my BeloMed sessions, and although i still have a few pimple marks and scars, i am proud to say that i am break out free, save for the occational visits in that time of the month. june 2009 is also a monumental time in my makeup life, as i discovered girltalk with all the tips and tricks. so i apologize if most of what's written here is on girltalk as well, but that's one of my sources. so far this is my makeup backstory. join me as i discover amazing finds here in the little country i like to call my Philippines.