Last week I was looking at the forum wondering how on earth I had managed to look
over the Faking it: Women, Academia, and Impostor Syndrome thread and I feel the
same way about this thread. That being said, I am about to have a leave a wall of
text in my wake.
@
say what : In order to achieve the curls that you want you need to stop straightening
your hair entirely. When I was younger I straightened my hair a whole lot. I turned 15,
made new friends, and they were obsessed with straightening my hair. It was so thick
and pretty when straight they loved it. Before this period in my life I took awful care of
my hair. I would wear it up in a bun every single day because I was not feminine. I didn’t
wear make up, any of that jazz. After experiencing what straightening my hair could do
for my looks and knowing that straight hair was in fashion, my mom bought us a hair
straightener. I straightened my hair nearly every day from that point on until my senior
year of high school.
At that point I was taking a lot of AP classes and was involved in a few extracurricular
activities and also had friends. I simply did not want to wake up at 3:00AM in order to
straighten my hair and do my homework before school. Straightening my hair was taken
off my morning menu as schoolwork was/is the more important thing to focus on.
When I stopped straightening my hair and started wearing it curly, my hair looked bad.
You could tell it had had a lot of heat damage and that caused my curls to be really flat
as well as frizzy. Do not take this personally, but this seems to be what you are currently
experiencing. Your hair does not look terrible by any means, but it also hasn’t reached
its full potential. About a month after I stopped straightening my hair and started wearing
it naturally, I noticed much improvement. When I first started wearing it curly I would put
some garnier fructis curl shit in it. Eventually, I stopped doing that as well.
Now what I do to take care of my hair and what works best for my texture (I have very
fine, silky hairs) is washing my hair with shampoo two to three times a week and using
conditioner every other time I wash my hair. For shampoo I am currently finishing up a
bottle of pantene that I will not be repurchasing. I like the formula, I like the scent, it
does not dry my hair out but it does have a lot of sulfates in it. Like, I am pretty sure
the first three ingredients are all sulfates which is a shame because otherwise I am a big
fan. The conditioner I am using is the organix keratin oil conditioner. It smells like amber
which is my favourite sexy scent of all time. I prefer to use the loreal eversleek conditioner
in the small, round, gold container. It is amazing. It is so thick and works so well. I only
put conditioner on the very ends of my hair and work it slowly upward. I do not put conditioner
into my roots.
I only comb my hair in the shower. I use a wide toothed comb while rinsing out the conditioner
for a number of reasons:
- Brushing my hair when dry causes my hair to break a lot.
- I really think combing the conditioner out of your hair helps to get rid of dandruff. I tell
people this all the time; if they have dandruff to comb their hair in the shower. It is so
good for your scalp.
The only product I use in my hair outside of shampoo/conditioner is coconut oil. Every once in
awhile when it has been four days between washes I will mist room temperature coconut oil
into my hair and smooth it down to help with fly-aways. My hair does not frizz that much. I
credit this to not brushing my hair and rarely wearing my hair up.
When taking your hair down from your pony tail or up-do you need to be conscious of how
you are removing the band. It is best to slowly unwrap it rather than to yank it out of your
hair. Yanking it will obviously cause breakage.
I have four styles that I wear my hair:
- Side-parted and down; no explanation needed.
- A high messy pony tail with lots of volume. I am a big fan of bumps on the crown of my
head when I have my hair in a pony tail. It adds the illusion of more volume and creates
a beautiful texture. In order to achieve this I pull my hair up without smoothing the hair
and secure it with an elastic. I will then grab my hair in a couple of places on my crown
and gently pull the hair forward toward my forehead. This will loosen the pony tail. After
you gently pull the hair forward, grab a small couple of chunks of hair at the top of the
pony tail and pull them tight, like you are tightening the pony tail. This will cause the bits
that you loosened to turn into small, attractive bumps and you have your messy, chic pony tail.
- Start with hair down and parted to the side. Grab a chunk of hair on the side that has the most
hair on it and gently pin the chunk to the side of your head just above and a little behind the
ear. This is my favourite way to wear my hair. It is still down but stays out of my face! Use
bobby-pins.
- A messy bun. This is real hard for me to do simply because I like my buns up real high and with
my hair being so thick and heavy it often pulls the bun down. I don’t know how to make this work,
it just happens sometimes. Basically just make high pony tail messy buns until you think it looks
right to you. I generally try four times and if it isn’t working that day I move on.
Because I wash my hair so rarely and am pretty active I accumulate a lot of sweat in my hair between
washes sometimes. Nine times out of ten I shower at night. That being the case; on the day when I am
going to wash my hair and it is early in the morning and I have just gotten home from the gym and it is
still damp with sweat I will braid my hair. I generally do a three strand braid, fishtail, or a five strand
braid.
@
BrightWhiteHeart : I rarely wear foundation and just bought the real techniques stippling brush a few
months ago. I have not gotten to use it a lot because of how rarely I wear foundation, but from what
I have used of it I really like it! I did use an actually foundation brush a couple of times and the coverage
was just too much.
Often times people use foundation to create a layer on their face. That is incorrect. Foundation is not
meant to cover up your face, it is made to be placed on some parts of your face in order to even out
the colour of your skin tone. A stippling brush is ideal for this because it uses such little amounts of the
product and creates an even and soft look. When I use a stippling brush to put on foundation, my face
looks good. It does not look like I have a shit ton of flesh coloured goopy stuff on my face. I like that.
That is what I aim for: natural. Also, when you use too much foundation it will settle into the fine lines
and wrinkles of your face and that is not a good look.
Sigma brushes became popular when people realized that they were cheaper dupes for mac brushes. The
price for sigma brushes have risen over time, may as well get mac brushes now.
If you are experiencing a lot of fallout with your brush, it is probably not the brush that is causing the
fallout but the eyeshadow. What eyeshadow are you using? Are you tapping off the excess product before
you apply it to your lid and slowly building up the colour rather than just slathering a bunch on at once?
My brush collection is eclectic. I have some real hair brushes, some synthetic, etc… I am not picky about
what the brush is made out of. I care about how it feels and if it sheds. My least favourite brushes ever
are the Clinique eye contour brushes. They are so rough! I cannot believe they were made to be on your
eyelid! It seriously hurts my eyes when my other brushes are dirty and I am forced to use the Clinique ones
I have. 10/10 would not recommend.
I clean my brushes as often as I need to with baby shampoo. I do not wear makeup every day.
I wear makeup maybe three times a week at the most and foundation I wear maybe once every
two months.
@
TheDaringHatTrick I think eyebrow stencils work best if you have light coloured brows OR if you
are planning on using some form of dipbrow* otherwise they just look unnatural and I am not a
fan of unnatural looking eyebrows.
*Obviously if you’re using dipbrow and you have really dark hair and are using a stencil you are
not going for a natural looking eyebrow.
@
say what The end of the eyeshadow brush you have a question about is used for a couple of
things: highlighting along your brow bone/inner corner; applying a small amount of shadow to the
outer v of the eyelid; applying colour to your crease when you need control and want to build
up product. It can also be used to smudge some colour along
the lower lash-line.
For eyeliner I use clinique’s gel liners and an elf eyeliner brush that I bought for less than a
dollar and is my total favourite (very unexpected). I also have a couple of Clinique stick liners
that I use for tightlining/waterlining. I am totally lusting after the Eye of Horus pencil eyeliner
though, which is only sold in Australia ): ): ): For liquid liner I use wet’n’wilds liquid liner. It
works really well for me. I have used the Line Stilleto by…. Covergirl (?) and I liked it. I
recently bought an eyeliner pen by wet’n’wild in the shade brown and I am really enjoying it.
I want to get the milani limited edition galaxy eyeliners, but we will see how well I do at finding
them. I keep forgetting I want them when I am actually out. I have two rimmel eyeliners.
One in nude and one in white. I only use these for tightlining, using them on the top of the
eyelid is horrible and it causes a lot of pulling and does not come out in a straight line and
there are all these jagged bits. I will sometimes put the white on top but then cover it with
a black eyeshadow kind of as an eyeliner base.
I am also lusting after the benefit push up liner which I plan on buying myself when one
of my eyeliners runs out.
Also, in regards to your question about BB creams and powders. You should not use powder
on top of your BB cream. Powder is used to matify foundation as well as to set it. BB cream
is absorbed into the skin (it is usually just a tinted moisturizer…) much more easily and
less is applied so you do not have to powder it.
To tightline your top lid (applying the eyeliner to the underside of the top lid rather than
above the lashes) slightly close your eye and look down and you should be able to run
the eyeliner pencil along the ledge of your top eyelid without poking yourself in the eye
or having to pull the lid out, drying out your eyes, and making them water.
@
SpecialEdition I spend the bulk of my money on expensive eyeshadow palettes, good
brushes and moisturizer. I got a free full sized bottle of chanel moisturizer and it is the
best moisturizer I have ever used. I recently learned the retail value of it is 125 USD
without tax. I still have my free bottle and am dreading the day when/if I decide to repurchase.
I do not care what products you are using, if your applicators suck, you will not get the best results.
Eyeshadows last a long time so it makes sense to me to spend more money on a good
quality product that will work well, has good pigmentation and will last you quite some time.
While I do not wear makeup every day one thing I do every single day is take care of my skin.
In the morning I rinse my face with cool water, tone, moisturize my face and the FRONT AND
BACK of my neck, apply an eye cream, and lastly a sunscreen no matter what the weather
conditions are. If I am leaving my house I have to have sunscreen on! At night I remove
my makeup if I wore any use a cleanser to wash my face, tone, moisturize, use eye
serum and then I also lotion my body. I am currently using the Vaseline brand cocoa butter
deep conditioning body lotion with cocoa butter and vitamin E. I also use shaving cream
that has been infused with vitamin E. I notice a significant difference in my skin since I
started making it a point to moisturize daily. I was doing it twice daily at first but find
that once before bed is now good enough. Once a week I exfoliate my face using the
clarins orange exfoliating scrub. I love it. I also exfoliate my body when I shower using
exfoliation gloves to wash my body.
I stopped reading this thread at page 6 as my response was getting rather long in word. These are my thoughts thus far for you ladies.
