And Speaking Of A Smoky Eye

(Above, a photo of my Melt Cosmetics unboxing)

Although I had similar colors, I caved and bought the Melt Cosmetics Dark Matter stack during a 30% off flash sale.  I had agonized over which stack to buy and decided this one would be the most practical.  Buyer’s remorse immediately set in because I’ve got a ton of eye shadows, the only neutrals I ever wear on my eyes are almost whitish cream and black, and I basically only wanted them because they were the Great Unknown and I can’t stand for there to be beauty products I haven’t at least touched with my own hands.

All I can say now is:  what took me so long to buy these?

Like all the beauty bloggers and Instagrammers say, “They are huge!”  It is true, you get a LOT of shadow for the money, but that’s really only the smallest part of what makes them remarkable.  The color payoff is up there with all my heavy hitters:  Inglot, Sugarpill, MUFE.  More than that, though, and what made me buy the other stack on Black Friday (even though I have full dupes of every color in it) was the texture.

THE TEXTURE.

If the airbrushed edges of a perfectly blended makeup have eluded you, or have only been yours after several minutes of blending with three different brushes, you need these shadows.  I’ve never had anything in my entire makeup wearing or professional MUA life that blends like these.  The fine milling makes them blend like a gorgeous, blurry dream.  And, unlike my poor Sauce Box Black Widow (oh, how it could have been a contender), there is no dark, speckled fall out on my cheeks some two hours after the shadow has been on.  It blends in but it stays put.

I’ve already done photo shoots with these as well as my own personal band shows.  Three hours of sweating in my eyes and they still look great.

Their shimmery counter parts, the Lovesick stack, have not arrived at my home yet, but I can tell you truly and honestly that you need this Dark Matter stack in your life.

$48, www.meltcosmetics.com

Over 35 Does Not Mean “I Give Up”

I just saw an article on a popular magazine’s website full of before/afters on changing one’s hairstyle to “look younger.” I’m not linking you to it because all the “afters” were awful! They were plain, frumpy, homogenized, and sexless. Why must women’s beauty media do this to other women? Why must women be encouraged to cast off their vibrancy once they hit 35, even within the same five pages wherein they purport to do the opposite? No…just NO. You are allowed to have full, bouncy hair if you want it, just like you are allowed to wear a smoky eye. We are adults. We can eat cake for breakfast and we can wear burgundy lips if we want to.