A Tale of Two, If Not Sometimes Three, Mascaras

While MKHo may not be a beauty blogger, I am a little bit of one myself. Therefore, please enjoy a completely overlong post about one of my all-time favorite beauty products, mascara! Wee!

The other day, I was celebrating the fact that it was like 7p.m. on a Tuesday or something equally as irrelevant, and I impulsively decided I REALLY DESERVED to buy myself something. (Un-)fortunately I work about 30 seconds from a Sephora.

Due to the fact that, like a magpie, I am attracted to any and all forms of shiny packaging, I swooped down on Urban Decay's Big Fatty Mascara:

($19, Urban Decay)

The wand is basically the size of a fucking toilet bowl brush. Unfortunately, this mascara completely sucks. Nothing showed up at all. I even thought I'd perhaps gotten a faulty, dried-up one. I read a review somewhere that said this mascara is good for "the natural look," and I can only imagine that refers to the look of WEARING NO MASCARA AT ALL. I took advantage of Sephora's open-arms exchange policy -- you can return anything if you're not completely satisfied, which I wasn't. So I did!

In its stead, I got Diorshow:

($24, Dior, Macys)

Ah, the redoubted Diorshow. I was sooooo ready to believe the hype. And the first few tests, it was okay (maybe I just REALLY wanted to believe) -- it definitely lengthens -- but after a few repeated uses, BOOOO Dior! WTF? J'clump!!! Definitely a lot of thick coverage, but zero separation -- it did that thing where it made major clumps at the center of my lashes and then made them look stringy-string-McStrung-out at the tips. Boo for reals.

Oh, and before I forget:
+ Free shipping over $25 at Sephora with promo code B388C2, through April 30.
+ Also, did you know you can return any and all beauty products to CVS if you're not feelin' it? It's true!

Anyway, back to the mascara:
... So, just yesterday, my sister came to visit. Every time we see each other after having not seen each other for months, we first act a'fool about how much we wuv each other. Then, we go into giddy-overdrive mode over mascara. She reminded me how much she loves CoverGirl's Lash Blash (the one that looks like a small orange sex toy), and I was so glad she did:

($6.79, CoverGirl, CVS)

Huge, right? But even more importantly, hugely effective. It's perfect on its own (after a few coats of course -- please stop kidding yourself if you think any one mascara can do it all in just one coat. Do you give your walls JUST ONE coat of paint? No. Unless you're a crappy slacker.) or as a base -- I'd also completely forgotten my own trick -- find a great separating mascara, use it as a base to hit as many individual hairs as possible that the slightly clumpier mascaras can't deal with, and then layer with a bolder mascara over that. Yeah, it's a little extra time, but so is dealing with those crappy lash brushes which never really end up working.

But, you don't have to take my word for it -- some Lash Blash reviews:
+ Makeup Alley
+ Makeup Moxie
+ Makeup Minute
+ The Makeup Girl <---- impressive before and after photo!

I also remembered how much I like MAC's Zoom Lash mascara: ($11, MAC)

A VERY thick (think mud) mascara. For $11, t'aint (hee) bad, but I don't advise it on its own -- instead, use it as a top coat over a solid separating mascara like Maybelline's Define-A-Lash, which is the Bentley Continental GT of separating but the mid-to-late '80s LeBaron of volumizing:



PS: Non-sequitur, yes, and I know I'm like the 23rd person to tell you this today, but Muxtape is awesome.
MU

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Hair Miracle! Cristophe Beverly Hills "Purely Natural" Conditioner

($7.99, Cristophe Beverly Hills, CVS)

The other week, I was sent Cristophe Beverly Hills' new "Purely Natural" conditioner and, admittedly, thought little of it. But, since my hair is long, dry, curly, thick, often unruly and usually frizzy (lucky me!), I go through about a bottle of conditioner a week. I ran out of whatever else I'd been using (the fact that I can't even remember what it was should highlight my indifference), and I figured I might as well give it a shot.

Sweet sassy molassey! This stuff is a mini hair miracle! It's tamed my not-so-"fierce" frizziness and added a lovely layer of shine without the gunky greasiness, AND it's kept my scalp from doing undesirable things.

It has a nice light fragrance (I detect a hint of what smells like anise), and it's got no parabens (yay!), and apparently that's very good because they're apparently bad. What it does contain: alcohol (boo!), but it also clearly contains magic! Oh yeah, and here's more magic: it's only $7.99 (at CVS). I've spent far more on far lesser products, so I'll definitely be dropping that when I run out -- which will surely be soon.

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