Foxy Voxy's Academic Beauty Collective

First of all, I cannot believe how much I want the salad pictured to the left right now. I have just spent 20 minutes looking at pictures of salad online, and I have to say that I never thought that looking at pictures of salads would make me hungry. And yet. I think I might try to find myself a nice Greek orzo salad for lunch. (Also, the word “salad” looks weirder the more I type it.)

Anyway, I was looking for pictures to go with the idea of “excitement salad” because O! All sorts of exciting things are going on in Voxyville. I am in the middle of testing some new skincare products that I think are going to have great results and which I will certainly share with you; a new gadget is about to arrive at my house that I can’t wait to test-drive (IT IS FROM A SKINCARE COMPANY IN CASE YOU WERE THINKING SOMETHING ELSE); I have both drugstore and high-end products to review; and I’ve recovered from the spring semester enough that the fall cosmetic lines are actually starting to interest me. I’m also working on the spa post that Baz asked about, which is just feeding my spa craving, and I’m starting to think about packing makeup for travel, since I have some coming up in the next few months.

In other news, my Bobbi Brown lipshine remains lost. I am considering putting posters up in the neighborhood, or appearing on TV to make an emotional appeal to whatever agency is holding it hostage.

From the Annoying Department of Annoyances, I’m miffed that I cannot find the Milani summer limited edition Liquid Metal collection of nail polishes at any of my local CVS stores (they are supposed to be available exclusively through CVS through July). And when I say “any,” I mean the ten that I’ve tried. Ten stores! What gives? Anyone got ‘em?

And, to end this salad on a happy note, these are recently reviewed products that I’m still squeeing over every time I use them:

• the Beautyblender
• Too Faced Lip Insurance
• Tarte EmphasEYES brow pencil

Q of the Whatever (because let’s be honest, sometimes it’s a week, sometimes it’s a month; consistency was never my strong suit): I’ve been thinking about lippies a lot lately. I bought a beautiful Laura Mercier lipstick for spring in a vibrant pink color (Hydrangea; I’ll review as soon as I’ve taken a lip photo) and dang it, I seem to have a really hard time wearing it. I can’t help gravitating towards MLBB (My Lips But Better) shades. My lipstick range starts out with MLBB, extends about three shades darker and a few notches over towards coral, and includes a few outlying red data points. But I want to break out of my shell and rock this bright pink lipstick.

So the Q of the Whatever is this: are you a brave and experimental lipstick/gloss wearer, or do you find yourself constantly veering towards the same shades?

I might have to tone down the Hydrangea a bit with lip pencil, but I am determined to Make It Work in true Tim Gunn style.

Sales!

SkinStore is having another 20% off sale sitewide (with the usual few exclusions) through 7/6 with code SUM20.

Jurlique is having a F&F sale: 25% off through 6/27 with code SUMMER25.

Stila is offering the first in a series of travel palettes (each with four eyeshadows and a convertible color pan) for a mere $10, and you can get free shipping at Stila if you use the code REFILL.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/allthingschill/17590269/

I keep calling these Thursday threads “Open-Thread Thursdays,” and then they keep on not being open threads. So I suppose I should give them a new name. Since they’re the counterpart to “Monday Mix,” maybe I could call them “Thursday Tossup.” Unless you have a better suggestion. Tidbits? Tapas? Trivialities?

Anyway. Time for today’s shockingly cringeworthy news. From the UK Daily Mail:

Unemployed women given £1,000 makeovers to help them find a solvent husband

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 3:25 PM on 10th June 2010

Women on the dole are being offered a £1,150 fashion and beauty makeover and membership to a dating agency to help them find a wealthy husband.

<snip>

Under the scheme, the women will be given instructions on how to present themselves socially and offered a place on an exclusive matchmaking website called Mens & Relatie (People and Relationships).

They will have professional photographs of their new image to boost their dating profile.

The scheme is being offered by three councils in Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands.

They estimate that if 70 women find a solvent husband, the council can save £330,000 on welfare payments.

They also believe that finding love will help get the unemployed off state benefits by improving their confidence and ambitions.

So far, just one candidate has signed up for the voluntary scheme, which is aimed at women but open to men as well.

Managing director of dating website Mens & Relatie, Radboud Visser, said that people in relationships have ‘better health, more happiness, make more money and live longer lives’.

He told The Times that the councils would spend 650 euros registering an unemployed woman on their site – the average they pay them in jobseekers allowance each month.

Seriously, this is appalling. APPALLING. Women who lose their jobs are being given governmental financial assistance (to the tune of ~$1,700) not to find a new job or to learn professional skills, but to make ‘em purty so’s they can find a wealthy husband. Can you please tell me what century we’re living in?

Oh, and this apparently isn’t the first wacky idea they’ve had. The same article quoted above also tells us:

In 2008, jobless Dutch in Maastricht were given a 10-week course of ‘regression therapy’ at a cost of £720 in the hope that coming to terms with their past lives would help them find a job.

Right.

Sales!

Stila is having an F&F sale; 20% off through 6/14 (and free shipping with orders over $25) with code LOYALFAN.

Korres is also having an F&F sale; 25% off through 6/16 with code FRIENDSANDFAMILY. Free shipping over $35.

If your tastes run to things you can only get at department stores, Lord & Taylor is having 10% off through 6/13 with code FRIENDS. (It’s part of a larger sale; most other things are 25% off but beauty and fragrance are only 10%.) But if you lean towards department store glam, you’re probably better off waiting for Nordstrom’s upcoming anniversary sale, which will have lots of special exclusive sets and other things you might want to pick up.

Image via the NY Times online at http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/there-she-is-from-a-trailblazing-beauty-pageant/

So I had these drugstore.com dollars that were just sitting around, about to expire, and it would have been a waste not to use them, right? And once I was on the site, it would be a waste not to buy enough to get free shipping, right? Especially since most of what was already in my shopping cart was basic, staple stuff (contact lens solution, facial cleanser, etc.), not foolish cosmetic frippery. I was being a responsible shopper and minding my low-buy! So really, paying for shipping would have been absurd when for about the same price I could have thrown a little something else useful and practical in my cart and ended up with shipping for free. The bottom line stays the same, but I get more product for the money, right?

Right?

I knew you would agree with me. That’s why I love you.

So since we have all agreed that it was a good idea, we hardly even need to mention that the thing I threw into my shopping cart to tip it over the free shipping point was the Neutrogena Liquid Sunblock I mentioned I was lemming last week. We can just gloss right over that part. (Unless, that is, it turns out to be TEH AWESOME and I need to squee about it.)

And now, let me quickly distract you with…

Sales!

Late into my box: Rock & Republic is having a F&F sale — 30% off — but it ends today, 5/6. (Sorry, ladies; I only just got word of this one.) Code: FF30.

Gilt (like HauteLook) has DDF Skincare on sale today starting at noon Eastern time.

Speaking of HauteLook, they have POP Beauty starting today and Moy Skincare starting tomorrow 5/7.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/benleto/ / CC BY 2.0

<– The real question, of course, is: who on God’s green earth came up with a salad costume for a cat? Or, if it’s not a salad (and frankly I have my doubts), then what the heck is it?

Anyway, the photo is relevant because I have this exorbitantly expensive vet bill I’m going to have to pay, which has put a serious kink in the otherwise uninterrupted flow of discretionary income to Sephora. Oh, let’s be honest — it’s going to shut it down entirely for a period of time.

After the current sale, that is. (Ahem.)

Faced with this imminent low-buy, I stopped into Sephora today just to swatch some of the new colors of the much-anticipated and highly-lemminged MUFE HD blush, which have been available online for awhile but which have only come into stores in the last week or two. I am only going to buy one (see above, in re: low-buy), so I really wanted to make sure I knew what the colors were like. So I thought I would post my swatch photo for you just in case some of you are also considering them.

Those of you who are turned off by naughty product names are probably not going to like a few of the names of some of the shades in the collection. Below, from left to right, I swatched the five shades I thought would suit my skin best, and they are: #2-Caught in the Act, #5-Nip Slip, #6-Quickie, #8-PDA, and #14-Star Struck. These were photographed in natural light (outdoors, cloudy day, about 5 pm), and the colors in the photo are true to how they actually looked. If you look at the edges of some of the swatches you can see that it will be possible to apply it sheerly and blend it out to a natural blush, but it will take some practice. They are highly pigmented and they dry very quickly.

L-R: Caught in the Act, Nip Slip, Quickie, PDA, Star Struck

Caught in the Act is just a bit bright for me, and slightly too cool, and Quickie and PDA were a little heavy. It came down to Nip Slip and Star Struck for me, and I’m going to have to go with Nip Slip, which seems to be the most wearable shade. I’ll review it when I get it; I have a feeling there will be a learning curve for this product. If you order it, just so you know: the bottle is tiny. TINY. Probably slightly smaller than a lipstick. However, you use so little that it will last a long, long, long time. The blushes also have pretty good staying power, as I was unable to wash the swatches off my arm using regular soap. Eventually my cleanser took them off, but dang! they stuck around.

Sales!

The Urban Decay F&F sale is going on through 4/19: 30% off sitewide with code 1SFNF.

Today, Sephora VIBs get early access to the 15% off sale that starts for the regular BIs on Monday. Code: VIBMADNESS.

HauteLook has Pixi Beauty today starting at 11 am Eastern/8 am Pacific.

And by the way: I keep forgetting to mention these, but if you’re going to be shopping online, you will probably want to do it through sites like Ebates or Bing, which give you cash back. The amount varies from site to site and from time to time; right now, Ebates is offering 4% cash back at Sephora but Bing is offering 10%! (Disadvantage: it takes much longer to actually get your cash back from Bing than it does from Ebates, but it might be worth it.)

Photo: http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/06/22/funny-pictures-salads-no-go-to-vets/