Beauty Regimen

I’ve decided to write on this topic after writing an extremely long comment on Thora’s blog.

First off, I hate the idea of beauty being a regimen, like a diet or exercise plan. That’s ridiculous. Makeup and such should be fun and refreshing, not a strict routine.

Most skin regimens will say “cleanse, tone, moisturize”. This turned out to be a load of blankety-blank for me. When I used all three of those products in the past, no matter the brand, my skin was dry, tight, flaky, and itchy, with patches of oiliness. Now, I use water to wash my face each night. That’s it. Once or twice a week, when I take a shower, I will use a scrub on my face, like the generic brand of that St. Ives Apricot scrub. After washing my face, whether with water or the scrub, I do not dry it off. I rub in a teeny, tiny bit (like a lump the size of my pinky fingernail) of shea butter or coconut oil. Leaving the water on my face makes the butter/oil easier to spread. This is my moisturizer. Now my skin is fairly well-balanced, and I hardly ever get zits, though I have been lucky in that for most of my life. My main problem was the dryness. The theory of using water is that your skin actually has the ability to take care of itself, like any animal’s skin. All these products are just ways for people to make money. Now, that said, some people just like using products. I, however, like the simplicity of just water.

For my hair, I have this new routine, as opposed to my old one. It is not as “natural” but is a little easier and smells better. I just plain got bored with the other routine, though I certainly might go back to it someday; it worked perfectly well. In my new routine I end up contradicting my old one, which makes my life exciting and interesting. hehehe

So, nowadays, I squeeze some cheap shampoo into an empty shampoo bottle. Then I use the empty bottle to suck up some water. Now I have water and shampoo in it. I shake it up until it is all foamy. Then I squirt it into my hair, all over my scalp. Every once in a while I shake it up again. This is just to make it easier to get shampoo everywhere, without having to use tons of it. I follow this with a cheap conditioner. I also braid it almost every night.

Makeup. Here I will kind of copy what I wrote on Thora’s blog.

I like to play with makeup. It is fun to make yourself look a little different. But normally I do not wear it. I would say on average I wear makeup one day per week. Sometimes I go through phases when I wear it every day, or never. I have a basic set that I wear. Samuel can’t tell whether I’m wearing it or not. That is the trick of wearing makeup daily, I think. To look like it’s all natural, but at the same time, knowing that you like the way you look and spent a bit of time on it.

I wear: mineral makeup powder, lip and cheek stain, and mascara.
1. Mineral makeup, instead of wet foundation or pressed powder. I can’t stand foundation. It feels so yucky and it looks like paint. I use Physician’s Formula mineral makeup powder (just a drugstore brand, nothing special). It is a powder that, after a few minutes, will not look powdery or leave dust on places. “Mineral” means that it is made up of special minerals that supposedly won’t be bad for your skin. Talc, which most powders were made of in the past, is bad supposedly, so this makeup is “talc-free”. This stuff takes literally seconds to apply, with a little brush that it comes with. Some brands of mineral makeup call for blending more than one color of powder, and so they take a while to apply. This is all one color and it works for me. It gives you a bit of coverage without looking like, well, foundation, or mask-like. Also, it doesn’t cake up in the creases on your face as the day goes by.

2. Lip stain, as opposed to any of the other various sticky nasty lip color products. This stuff is completely liquid. It is a dye for your lips, or cheeks, to give them a natural-looking (non-sticky or glossy, or powdery for cheeks) rosy color. It dries very quickly. The kind I have tastes bitter at first (it is made with rosewater too, so kind of tastes like that) but the taste goes away soon. I love this stuff. It makes your lips feel a bit dry at first, but chapstick soon corrects the problem. I use Benetint, from the company Benefit. It is quite expensive up front -some $20 for a little bottle- but I bought my bottle about 3-4 years ago, and with some periods of daily use, I still have 1/3 bottle left. I have heard that Maybelline has a limited-time product available now in drugstores, called “just bitten” or something like that. It’s probably cheaper, but supposedly will not be available soon. I have never been lucky enough to find lip stain at a drugstore. I have since noticed that sephora.com carries several different brands of lip stain, including Benetint. Some are cheaper, but it might be just because it’s a smaller amount. If you wanted to try a small amount, you might want to get one of these. Benefit also makes a lighter color, called Posietint. Some people like this color better, especially for cheeks. But in the end, all of these and more are available at Sephora, so you might just want to go there.

3. Mascara. I use that stuff in the pink/lime green bottle because it’s cheap and works well for me. Some people have complained about flaking, though. I think it is Maybelline. I don’t put much on, because it looks yucky when it clumps.

If it is a fancy occasion I might throw in a little eyeshadow and eyeliner, which I did for my wedding, for example. Eyeliner is tricky to make it look natural, though, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. I think the trick is to get the pencil kind, and smudge it with a Q-tip once it’s applied. I spent most of the period dating/being engaged to Samuel wearing eyeliner, and I’m pretty sure it was natural-looking because I know for a fact that he hates the look of eyeliner, yet he didn’t seem to notice.
Back to hair again, here are the hairstyles I most often do, complete with links, some more helpful than others:

-hair down and natural

-Nautilus bun

- French braid

-Heidi braids

-Eowyn style

-Braid Flip (but I don’t “flip” mine because it is not long enough. I just let the braid hang down my back)

There you have it, folks!