Hairstyling Tip: the Wet Brush

Posted by Ethne~

Hey guys!  I have a quick hairstyling tip for you today.  

Whit (my sister) and I were out shopping the other day (at Target) and found a hairbrush called Wet Brush.  She said she'd heard about them and thought we ought to have them.  They advertise being able to brush through your hair, wet or dry, with many fewer painful snarls, and less breakage, I assume.  

I do a whole lot of hairstyles each day (at least 3), and the girls will whine to beat the band with each snarl.  I was totally on board with trying this new thing.

Well it works!  Brushes through wet hair like butter (I don't know how it works, as it looks just like any other brush - they said fancy pants bristles), and even in the girls' dry hair it seems to hurt them a lot less and take much less time to brush the snags out in the morning.

So that's today's tip.  Get one.  At less than $10 at Target, you can't go wrong.

A Betrothal!

Posted by Ethne~

Excitingly, we've had some really happy news in our family!

My sister, Whitney, is engaged to her boyfriend, Sam.  Our family likes him and is happy at this betrothal.  I am told his family are also quite pleased!

Sam has a young son who will be an instant cousin for KD and Easy Mac - all three of them are thrilled at this prospect!

A family affair is planned for this summer.

And yes, I was involved in ring selection.  I approve highly.

Cheers to happy new beginnings!

Whit and Kalina's* Tips: How to Apply Blush and Bronzer Like a Pro.

Posted by Ethne~

I was feeling bad that I hadn’t posted this bronzing tutorial earlier in the summer – seeing as I’ll turn into a near-albino in just a few months.  Case in point:

I try to do my best with blush to have some color, but let's face it, I look ill at Christmas-time.

But then I realized that, aside from our Northern readers, everyone south of here is still in perfectly nice weather and can bronze their faces up for quite some time.  And we have a good following in Austrialia and New Zealand (thanks Friends down there!), and you’re coming on your summertime, so it’s perfect for you!

So here you go, straight from the professional celebrity make-up artist, Kalina Fernandez*, herself – how to bronze your face.  (And application reminders from my sis, Whit.)

This is not the most glorious picture of Whit and me, but since I wear sunscreen everyday, you can compare to the picture above and see that I appear to have a tan due to the bronzer even though it's a fallacy.

Kalina F. and me after she did my make-up last year when I was Queen for a Day

First up, which bronzers to use.  You can pretty much pick your poison.  There are a lot of great ones out there.  Most come with some glimmer in them but I prefer the only one I’ve found with no shimmer in it, which is made by Too Faced (and has real chocolate powder in it and smells divine) called Milk Chocolate Soleil.  That’s their version for fairer skin tones.  They make one for darker/olive skin tones called Chocolate Soleil.  I like it because I use a blush with a little shimmer in it and that way my face doesn’t have one big case of shimmer-itis. 

Getting ready, I apply my eye cream, a light moisturizer and BB Cream, which I also prefer to be Too Faced’s Beauty Balm.  I’ve tried a ton of BB Creams and always come back to this one.  I believe Lori uses L’Oreal’s BB Cream, which is made by the house of Lancome, so if you want a Target/Walmart brand, we recommend that one.

This is me with only my eye and face moisturizers on.  A blank slate of paleness.  My lashes are so blonde it looks like there's nothing there.

Too Faced Beauty Balm applied.  Skin feels wonderful and is evened out.  Doesn't look too much different with my mediocre Rebel selfie photo skilz.  Sorry.  It's in focus at least.

After my BB Cream, I apply a light coat of powder.  I know you’re not supposed to do this until after your blush and bronzer, but I’ve found that powder applied after covers up or dims down what you’ve just tried to apply for color.  So I set my foundation with powder, then apply the bronzer and blush.  Your preference.

Next for the bronzer.  The ticket is it’s applied where the sun hits your face naturally.  That way you don’t look like Tan Mom, you look like you’re naturally sun-kissed with just a little healthy Vitamin D. It’s applied in a '3' and 'E' formation along your brow- and cheek-bones.

Could any words make this better?

Left Side - Starting on your forehead just above your eyebrow, sweep bronzer around your left eye, making the upper loop of the ‘E’ shape onto your cheek bone (not your under-eye and not the apple of your cheek, but the top of your cheek bone).  Now make a fishy face with your lips and sweep the lower loop of the ‘E’ into the crevice that your lips make in your cheeks underneath the apple of your cheek. [The nice thing about having the bronzer in that crevice is it provides just a slight contour on your face which can create a slimming effect – bonus!]  I always blush a teeny bit of bronzer on my chin and nose, and then blend the lines above my eyebrows were the ‘E’ and ‘3’ start so they’re not too harsh – but just a little on these.

Start up here and sweep around the curve of your eye (not too close cuz you don't want powder in your eye)

This is the bottom part of the upper half of the '3' and 'E' curve

Now sweep from below your eye in a curve to below your cheek bone.  Make a fishy-face if it helps you determine the proper place for this shading - put the bronzing powder in the crevice the fishy-face makes.

Right Side – Repeat these exact same steps except you are making the numeral ‘3’ instead.

Lastly, your blush is applied like a Nike swoosh symbol.  Smile at the mirror and starting on the apple of your cheek, brush in the swoosh shape in-between the lines that you made on the lower loops of the ‘E’ and ‘3’.  See how you’re filling in that gap with color now?

Start right there on the apple of your cheek and make your Nike swoosh toward your ear.

Done. 

Looking a little more alive.  Now for the eyes.

Lastly I do my eyes.  Kalina said she does eyes first so if she messes up eyes or the powder from eyeshadow falls onto the cheeks, it doesn’t mess up the blush.  Totally makes sense.  If I’m doing a more thorough eye look, I follow her directions.  On a regular day, though, I use easy cream eyeshadows which don’t drop powder, so out of habit I do my eyes last.

Finished, one angle. (Need something on lips besides chapstick.)

Finished, different angle. (Definitely need color on that smooch.)

That’s it, my friends.  I just took pictures of the bronzer and blush application, but you have my whole routine.  You’re welcome.

*Note: Kalina didn't participate in this blog post, but she did teach me the '3' and 'E' technique when she did my make-up after I told her I didn't use bronzer because I was afraid of looking ridiculous.

Whit's Tips: Cheap and Perfect French Manicure!

Posted by Ethne~

I always keep polish on my nails.  I just think it looks nice.  For how many zillion times I look down at my hands over the course of a day, I may as well appreciate what I see.

For a while I went to a salon to get French manicure gel polish put on.  The cost every 2-3 weeks started to add up, though, so I decided to go back to my own perfectly-acceptable polishing skills with the gallons of high quality polish I already own.  The caveat: I do not have mad skilz at doing my own French manicures.  So much so that I don’t even attempt it.

Till now.

For my birthday, Whit got me a kit of Elegant Touch French manicure tips.  These little geniuses look like press-on nails, but it is really just a press-on strip of white polish that is perfectly fitted to your nails, and comes in about 14 different sizes to fit just about everyone’s digits.

You select the tips to match each nail on your hand.

Trim and file your nails to a short squarish shape.  Buff your nail surface to remove any yellowing that may have occurred from any color polish you had on before.

Apply the included glue to the white tip, as directed, and immediately press the tip onto your nail, as directed.  Then clip the plastic part off, again as directed.  I’m not sure how it works, but when you clip the plastic off with the nail clipper, the white tip stays on just right, except the little center nub of the white, which you file down.

As instructed, file the white to match your natural nail.  If you do not do this (as I learned the hard way) the white will break off.  If you do file to match, it will last for well over a week.

Now paint one coat of the included base polish and two coats of the included top coat.  It says you can also paint a light pink polish in there too, but I don’t care for that look as much as the natural look, so I didn’t do that.

I did have to do a little maintenance the first time I wore this.  The sides wanted to come up a little from wear, so I added a little more glue and more top coat, and got a few more days out of the manicure.

The whole process took me about 30 minutes, plus drying time, which I’m liberal about from bad experiences in the past.

Friends, this kit cost about $15 and you should get 3 manicures out of it.  Even I can do that math - $5 per manicure, which is about a 5^th of the cost, minimum, of a basic French manicure at a nail salon.  And the last time I got a basic French manicure (polish only) at a nail salon, it literally lasted 2 days.  True story.  And when I got the gel manicures, those lasted for 3 weeks between fills, but you could see grow-out, and the tips were hand-painted on, so they were not as straight and perfect as these tips are, and much thicker; not to mention those manicures cost $40 each time.  If you calculate it out, this manicure, with a little maintenance, lasted me a week and a half.  That means for $10, I could do 3 weeks worth of French manicure.

Awesome!

Patriotic Fingernail Painting!

Posted by Ethne~

It is a long-running tradition for us to paint flags on our toenails for the 4^th of July.  We do it on our nails too, on occasion.  I haven’t done that for a while…

…Since I had this complete *bleep* of a boss when I worked at Mt. Rushmore in college.  He didn’t like us to wear nail polish as park rangers, which I thought was a little dumb, but I respected his wishes.  But over the 4^th of July, I didn’t have to work, so I painted mini little flags on my fingernails the day before I had the 4^th of July weekend off.  I had so many compliments from visitors!  They told me they thought it was so patriotic to see the flags on a park ranger – pretty much the opposite effect that my boss intended.  On the actual 4^th of July, Mt. Rushmore does this amazing fireworks display over the faces, the likes of which most of us have never seen in our lives, and we had a zillion visitors.  I volunteered to come work the event to help with the extra people.  I ended up standing next to my boss; he saw my nails and yelled (not exaggerating) at me in front of visitors for painting them.  I was just volunteering!  Well, we know who’s the more patriotic American, don’t we?!

Anyway, KD and Easy Mac love having their nails painted and Whitney and I are happy to oblige. 

We used to use toothpicks to apply the colors in the tiny detail, but that was kind of a pain, and did not always end up with smooth lines.  Now we can buy polishes that have thin detailing brushes for decorating.  MUCH more convenient!

Whit detailing the stars (yes, it's a reverse-color flag)

The night before the 4^th, I painted the girls’ toenails.  They came out very well.  It’s always hard for the girls to hold still though.  I swear they run everywhere they go.  We had a few smudges.

Whit and I decided we wanted to do more decorative 4^th of July theme on our own toenails, so I scoured Pinterest and found a few examples here at the I'm Simply Me blog.  DECISION DONE!

Of course there was the traditional flag on our toenails.  Mine looks regular since I painted my nails red the night before.  Whit painted her nails blue so I had to paint her flag opposite colors!!

Whit's opposite flag; heart on the middle toe

My flag is the right colors; my other toenails are so short that Whit just alternated gold and silver glitter polish

Then there were stars and polka dots and stripes.  Whit did a firework on one of the girls’ nails, though Thrifty Nana didn’t think it looked like a firework.

Teensy thumbnail flag

Firework

Our favorite was Whit’s left big toenail, which was inspired from Pinterest.  It had two thick horizontal stripes and then a red heart on one corner.  I was skeptical that I would be able to paint the teeny red heart, so I practiced on one of Whit’s little toes, and as it turns out, I could do it.  Not as well as the one on Pinterest, but not too badly!

The nail-painting sweat shop on my deck - it was literally 90 degrees at 10 a.m.

ADORABLE!

So not only will this hopefully inspire you to paint your nails in fun ways – and trust me, you can paint them for all seasons – but it also qualifies for the Pinterest Challenge on one of Lori’s and my fave blogs Younghouselove!!  See everyone's Summer Pinterest Challenge projects on their post today: Paint Party!

Happy painting!

Adventures in Sunless Tanning #3

Posted by Ethne~

One of our Beauty Parlor treatments this 4th of July was an application of golden glow via Too Faced's liquid bronzer called Royal Oil.  It is awesome.  Check out the link to their site here to read a little more about it. 

Naturally, Whit and I have scary white legs again this year.  My arms aren't too bad because I've been out in the yard, but my legs are terrifying as ever.  See?  Something needed to be done stat.  Being Too Faced junkies these days, we thought we'd try it out.  I have no problem using sunless tanning products rather than actually suntanning, especially now that the laugh lines in my face are starting to show.  Ugh.  So Royal Oil is up to bat.

Our legs are so white they hurt the eyes!

Royal Oil smells tropical, like coconut and pineapple, but isn't too strong to overwhelm your perfume.  It contains extract from the mangosteen fruit.  I am not really familiar with the mangosteen, but it is super rich and moisturizing.

Remember my sunless tanning adventures last year?  Oy.  The first is the sunless tanning spray where I followed the directions and got super streaky because I didn't rub it in? {Check the Glamour tab for the links to those posts!}  Benefit - once you rub it in the tan will stay for about 2 days.  It's also relatively inexpensive, at least the Neutrogena brand I used, plus coupon.

This is my golden glow last 4th of July

The other tan option I tried last year was on the 4th of July - Whit applied bronzing lotion onto me.  Once we got it rubbed in, I looked great.  Super tan.  But that was once. we. got. it. rubbed. in.  It took forever to massage into my skin and make even.  I may as well have used the spray tan and waited for it to turn my skin color.

The beauty of Royal Oil is that it rubs in super easily with the texture that is slightly thicker than baby oil.  It comes out of the bottle looking darker than you want, but evens out really nicely, and if you want to go a little darker, just rub in a little more.  Your legs will be shimmery and moisturized.  You don't need to use any other lotion beforehand.

We gave it a few minutes and then went on about our days.  The Royal Oil did not come off on our clothes.  After an afternoon of sweating in the 100 degree sun, I did have some beading of sweat in my cleavage where I applied Royal Oil.  I did not want to get the bronze color on my white shirt and bra (my third change of clothes in the day), so I wiped it off, but my clothes stayed fine.  Cool, huh?

I feel like we achieved a full golden glow, besides the 100 degree heat.

I am super pleased.  At $35, I wouldn't wear this bronzer every day.  It would be more for weekends, parties, going out, Girls Trip (1 week away!!!), but it is so worth it.  You use so little in one application - it's an oil, so it spreads out generously - that one bottle will last the whole summer.   

As with any tan, Friends, just don't go too dark or you'll turn into Tan Mom and have to wear mini white hair bows.

Uff-da!

Shaun keeps asking what I'm laughing at

4th of July Beauty Marathon!

Posted by Ethne~

Oh my gosh!  The Fourth of July is here!  Happy Birthday America!  It could be that I’m really patriotic, or it could be that I love summer, or it could be that I totally love the smell of fireworks, but I’m pretty sure that Independence Day is my favorite holiday ever!

4th of July Parade in our big city suburb yesterday

We have an extra special reason to celebrate this year.  My bff Dot and her hubby FD welcomed their new little princess EMD, on July 2^nd.  I am so thrilled!  They were shocked to bits that she came out a girl, but I really wasn’t at all.  I kinda had a hunch this one would be a girl.  Big brother MD doesn’t know what has hit him yet.  Shaun rolled his eyes at my enthusiasm at the hospital today as I was extolling my plans to shower baby E in pink and frills as soon as I knew what size to get her.

We just put the girls to bed and Whit is here having a sleepover, getting ready for our 24-hour Beauty Parlor 4^th of July Marathon!  That’s right!  We will be testing out:

~Too Faced Royal Oil for luxuriously bronzing our legs

~Fireworks painted fingernails

~Too Faced Natural at Night make-up tutorial including Milk Chocolate Soleil Bronzer

Big Georgia Hair goes with this look perhaps?  Don't be offended - it's a compliment.

~Individual false lash application

~Review of the brand-new Too Faced Lash Injection Mascara reformulation 

~Since it is predicted to be 106º by 1:00 p.m. tomorrow, we will try out Urban Decay’s De Slick Oil Control Makeup Setting-Spray.

Ok, I better get off this blog so we can get to our Beauty Parlor.  And yes, that’s what we’ve called it since we were kids.  “Hey, Eth, wanna play Beauty Parlor?”  “Sure, Whit!”

Stay Safe and Have Fun, Friends!!