Monday, May 2, 2011

Vintage Beauty, Rainbow Eyeshadow, and Herbal Eye Treatments

Our electricity is back!  Hurrah!  I'm so excited, I couldn't help but post twice in one day (lucky you)!  I've spent the time (re)reading Neil Gaiman's creepy short stories by candlelight, learning the hard way that car cell phone chargers will reduce your car's battery power to nothing (whoops...), discovering I'm really excellent at playing dominoes, and helping out a friend whose house was damaged.  In addition to all that, here are a few bits and pieces of what I've been up to, beauty-wise.


Vintage makeup talks with my grandmother
I stayed at my grandmother's house for the whole ordeal; she's excellent company, plus she has a gas powered water heater and therefore hot showers!  In one of her bathroom drawers, I was surprised to find this:


Can you tell what it is?  This is how mascara used to be applied, with a little brush like that!  The product came in a solid cake form like this one from Maybelline, and also in a tiny squeeze tube like eyelash glue or toothpaste.  My grandmother told me the squeeze tubes were awful, and the brush was also perfect for eyebrows.  Isn't this crazy?  I was amazed!


Eyeshadow experiments
A few weeks ago I found a "rainbow eye" tutorial and decided I needed to try it for myself.  I love playing with colored eyeshadow, even though I rarely wear it in public since it usually clashes with my beloved red lipstick!  In any case, I wanted a rainbow spectrum of crazy eyeshadows without committing to a full size product.


I also recently discovered Shiro cosmetics, an indie makeup company geared to girls with "geeky" interests, like video games and Internet culture.  When I saw ten eyeshadow samples for $9 in Shiro's Etsy shop, I ordered up a rainbow of shades to try, plus some really pretty shimmery shades.  Experimenting with them has been sooo fun.  Some are even lip safe, so I got to alarm my family with purple and orange lipsticks.  Shiro really deserves its own blog post, so I'll save swatches and more details for later!


Herbal eye treatments
I'll be honest: I don't really like spring.  At least not where I live.  The weather and temperatures are volatile and unpredictable, and everything starts to bloom.  It's pretty, but it also means allergies are in full swing.  It's hard to enjoy the beautiful trees through swollen eyes and migraines, you know?   

I've relied on Wei East's Intensive Herbal Eye Treatments for years to get me through!  I can't believe I've never mentioned them here before.


Two refreshing herbal eye pads come sealed up in a nice little packet that's perfect for travel.  You place them over your eyes for twenty minutes, and before you know it, your eyes are bright again and your migraine has diminished!  I swear, this is a miracle treatment.  It's also wonderful for tired eyes, or when you can't seem to fall asleep at night.  The pads are soaked with green tea, Tibetan chrysanthemum, and peppermint extracts that make for an amazing combination of soothing relief.

4 comments:

  1. I had no idea mascara used to be so OLD SCHOOL! Interesting.

    Shiro cosmetics is so cute! Those eyeshadows look so bright~ is the purple one really vivid?

    ReplyDelete
  2. YES! They are that bright, but you can also blend them out if you want a color that's more sheer. The purple is my favorite! I've used it the most. I'll post swatches and how it looks on my eyelids very very soon so you can see it proper!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love this post lady! And I, too, had no clue mascara was applied that way, back in the day. It's crazy to think of the advances we had since then. Super stoked to see your swatches of the shadows

    xo

    ReplyDelete
  4. I know! I wonder when mascara wands as we know them came out?

    ReplyDelete