Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Happiness

 

One of my favourite paintings so far.

These will be up for sale in a while.

TA

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Friday, August 19, 2011

The Perfect Concealer

What do you do when you have somewhere special to go? The first thing you think of is to make yourself look nice. Whether it is your skin or eyes or face, there is always something that you want to make look nice, or nicer. The number one thing that I reach for is a Kajal…being an Indian that is only natural. But the second thing that I reach for if I need to wear makeup that day is a concealer. I recently spent time helping a friend buy a concealer for herself. She had followed the advice of a website and bought a concealer that was lighter than her skin tone. It looked horrid!

Most websites that handle this kind of topic is usually by white women for white women. No one else talks about this topic. And one of the most common things I spot on these sites is that they ask you to buy concealers that are lighten than your skin tone to cover up your dark circles. Here are pictures of what happens when darker women wear lighter coloured concealers. 

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In fact even when really fair women wear a concealer lighter than their skin, this happens.

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I say, never choose a lighter concealer, always wear the exact colour of your skin.

One of the basic things about skin colour is this. Your skin is never the same colour all the time.

Skin colour changes with the seasons, women are usually darker in summer and lightest at winter. And your colour changes accordingly in the middle. I have made a habit of owning three concealers. Simply because it really works for me best this way.

 

Now the left one is NW40 from MAC, it is my summer colour. The reason that it is dramatically darker is because i use it only for my dark circles. It has a slight orangish tint which the camera is refusing to pick up but i use that colour for my under eye circles. This brings me to my second point. The colour wheel theory is best for choosing concealers because it cancels things out.

For example

If you have bluish dark circles then the colour opposite to blue is orange.

Second, if you have a red pimple, the colour opposite red on the colour wheel is green, so a green concealer is best.

Now you can use an orange concealer directly but chances are that if you’re reading this post you’re probably not the type who wears makeup a lot already, so you might get scared at the thought of mixing orange into your skin. So the best thing for you would be to pick up a concealer that has an orange undertone. The same thing applies for the green concealer.

So my dark circles concealer is the darkest one above – NW40.

the second one, right in the middle, NC42, is my summer concealer. I use it in summer when my skin is at it’s natural darkest. and the third one, NC35 is my before winter colour, i use it when my skin is at it’s natural lightest before winter. I will be buying my third concealer later on (I currently use a L'Oreal concealer which isn’t easy to display here so I’ve stuck with my MAC).

As you can see, the concealers have a yellow tone to them, that’s because my skin has a yellow undertone, as most Indians’ skin tones do, and so I need to stick to warm tones. If i wear a cool toned concealer, i will look grey and washed out.

Now, if all this is going over your head, just remember these simple TIPS:

  • Always choose your concealer in the morning time. This was you aren’t too sleepy and the sunlight is at it’s natural brightest, but not harshest.
  • Apply the concealer tester to your Jaw line, not your hand. Most women make the mistake of trying out their concealers on their hands and then complain tat their makeup is making their face look too dark. I’ll show in pictures how concealers blend with skin better than with the hand.
  • After applying the concealer to your jaw line, get out into the sunlight and see how it looks. If it blends well, you have a winner.
  • Second, check it out under a fluorescent light. This is for clubbing or any events you go to, you don’t want it to look odd. The concealer should blend in both lights.
  • Last, but not the least, take a camera with flash with you and take a picture of yourself with the concealer on. If it stands out against your skin, chances are you have gotten the wrong colour.
  • when buying a special concealer (orange/green) make sure that you apply it in the exact area that you intend to use it. Some greens might be too light for Indian skin and will look psychotic against our skin tones. But you will most probably not have to search too much for oranges, MAC has an awesome one.
  • Learn your skin undertone before buying concealers or any makeup product. best way to check up, wake up in the morning(do not use the AC at night), go out in the sun and look at your skin. Or when you are really tired/sweaty and not wearing makeup, your true skin tone will show through. When I’m tired I look yellowish brown. When my sister is tired, she looks pinkinsh. My skin tone is warm while hers is cool.
  • Yellow tones concealers are always a good investment because the are best used for covering up serious dark spots.

The same tips apply for choosing foundations and powders except that orange and green don’t come into the equation here.

While this looks too light against my hand, it blends across my face perfectly. When picking a concealer or foundation, never try it against your hand. 

If your are concerned with hygiene, a place like MAC should always be clean, but other places, you might want to take some cotton swabs and tissues to clean the product before you apply it with the cotton bud.

I hope I was able to help anyone who needed help. Please do comment below and let me know.

TA

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Monday, August 8, 2011

Polo – The mint with the new flavours!

So I was browsing through Marie claire magazine last month and i came across this polo advert showing four new flavours designed by Wendell Rodricks. Now Wendell Rodricks is a designer, so when they say designed the new polo flavours i’m not sure if he actually designed the flavours of if he designed just the wrappers… whichever one it is, i have tasted all four and i am here to give you a review.

Now, to start with, i am not a polo fan. I don;t wat polo often and i only have it probably once in a couple of years if someone offers it to me. But then again i’m not a peppermint person. Which could explain my excitement when i saw the advert. So here are the four new flavours in no particular order

  • cocoa mocha
  • lime mojito
  • peach schnapps
  • watermelon sorbet

Cocoa Mocha:

The flavour is by far the best of all four. I have already finished one pack and am starting on the second one and it is only the third day since i bought it. The flavour of mint is very mild and the flavour of a mocha coffee is much more. It isn’t strong coffee, more like chocolate coffee which is what cocoa mocha is. The cover is very attractive and eyecatching but the thing is when one sees the cover, they imagine a fruity flavour, not chocolate. I personally would have loved a coffee coloured cover. But top marks for flavour. Again, if you see the pic below, you will see that it is white with just flecks of colour, that again breaks my heart because when you think coffee you expect the colour of coffee. It puts me off that it is still white.

Flavour : 5/5

Colour: 1/5

Cover design: 3/5

Lime Mojito:

The colour of this is much stronger than all four and so is the flavour. While is isn;t as pleasant as the cocoa mocha, the flavour is definitely pleasing and zingy. It tastes a little like those Italian lime sorbets that you get so often. Good thing is it isn’t that irritating lime taste that is available everywhere nowadays, cough cough mentos cough. The colour makes it all better. But the packaging sucks…. really sucks. It kills the purpose of new flavours. It looks like a child's strawberry flavoured chocolate, not like a zesty mint.  If Mr. Rodricks did design the cover, then zero points for him. He should stick to clothing.

Flavour: 5/5

Colour: 4/5

Cover design: 0/5

Peach Schnapps:

Peach Schnapps tastes pretty much exactly like Peach Schnapps.  Full marks on getting the flavour right. Sounds like a cocktail, tastes like a cocktail, looks like a mint. There is no mint  flavour whatsoever. But it is a very relaxing flavour. I could literally imagine myself chilling on the beach with a cocktail in my hand. But for the cover again, it looks like a banana flavour, not peachy at all. I was searching the shelves for peach thinking that this was banana and then it struck me that there was actually no banana flavour and thats when i found the damn thing. For the cover design i give it zero.

Flavour: 5/5

Colour: 1/5

Cover design: 0/5

Watermelon Sorbet:

This was an utter disappointment. I have never been a fan of the watermelon flavour to be fair but then again i do love watermelons. I wonder why the artificial flavour tastes like raw watermelons and not like actual watermelon sorbet. I’d advice you not to pick this up unless you love artificial watermelon flavours. But again, why the hell is the watermelon flavour orange in colour? It made me think that there was an orange flavour. Very disappointed with the cover designs.

Flavour: 2/5

Colour: 2/5

Cover design: 0/5

Overall, the flavours are amazing, the covers are utter bullshit but then since you’re going to throw the covers anyway, take pleasure in tearing them and tossing them in the dustbin. That's where they belong. When you hear that a designer, designed the cover of a new candy, you imagine that it would be amazing, not utter crap.

The cocoa mocha and the lime mojito, i hope, are permanent flavours and not limited editions. I love them too much to have them taken away from me. The other two i could stand losing. I do wish that polo had made the mints have actual colour. atleast the cocoa one. I mean wouldn’t you want to pop a dark brown coloured polo into your mouth?

TA

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Red Buddha

 

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A red Buddha….  

TA

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