Cruelty - Free Beauty : Newest Favorites!

Hi guys! Long time, no talk! My love of trying new makeup products has grown so much in the last few months and I'm having so much fun with it. I've been really exploring the animal cruelty - free world and have discovered a few new (to me) brands. These are my favorite new products:

Milani Easy-Brow Pencil : Shade 03 Natural Taupe
I went back and forth between this shade and 02 Dark Brown but decided to give the taupe a try since I had recently read that you should buy your eyebrow products in a color a shade lighter than your natural brow color. Plus, my hair recently went to an even lighter shade of bleach blonde and I wanted something a little less dramatic. This pencil  has been great! It is a twist up pencil, so there is no sharpening necessary and it has a spoolie brush on the other end for super quick blending and brushing. It's available for $5.49 on the Milani website, but I found mine at CVS. (I think I payed a little over $7.00 for mine in store.)

e.l.f Studio High Definition Powder : Translucent
I'm a huge fan of e.l.f. products, especially anything from their Studio collection and this did not disappoint. I had been on the hunt for a good loose powder to set my makeup and heard rave reviews about this one "blurring" imperfections. I'm not sure that it blurred as much as I was expecting, but it definitely adds a softening effect. There is also a corrective yellow shade as well as a shimmer version available on the e.l.f. site and all shades are $6.00. I bought mine at Target (I've also seen it at Walmart) for the same price.

NYX Powder Blush : Pinched
I have never been impressed with blushes. I found that even though I have pale skin, they never showed up the way I wanted them to. Then I found the Wet 'n Wild Color Icon blushes, which showed up great but were so highly pigmented I found them difficult to apply. I had heard that this particular shade in the NYX Powder Blush line was comparable to the highly praised NARS Orgasm, so I gave it a go. It is gorgeous! It's a very pretty coral pink shade with some warm shimmer to it. It goes for $5.00 on the NYX website, but it's currently sold out. I found mine on Amazon.com for around the same price.

NYX Round Lipstick : Chic Red
I am a red lipstick collector. I gravitate toward them and I can't help myself. Even so, I was convinced that I didn't own the perfect shade of red worked well with both my pale complexion and my not always blindingly white smile. Chic Red is all of that for me. I was pleasantly surprised that it is also long lasting even though it's not advertised to be a long wear formula. Available for a crazy $4.00 on the NYX website (along with another 123 extremely tempting shades). I grabbed mine on Amazon.com for a bit more.

Real Techniques Makeup Brushes : Expert Face Brush
I have been hearing rave reviews about the Real Techniques brushes and always assumed they would be pricey - good thing I finally looked into them! This particular brush sells for $9.00 on the Real Techniques site and has quickly surpassed every other brush I own. I have been applying my foundation and blending in my concealer with the Expert Face Brush and am noticing that I'm using so much less product than I did with a sponge. The bristles are stiff enough to blend the product in but soft enough to be comfortable on skin. I will definitely be buying more of these brushes - I'm itching to order the whole Core Collection. I found mine on Amazon.com for a similar price as the website.

While, I've got you here :  I found a fantastic article on animal testing. What exactly it means, why it even exists, and what to look for in a product to ensure that your money isn't being used to pay for these tests to be done. Check out The Truth About Cruelty Free Beauty - Part One : What Is Animal Testing? And don't worry, the article is truthful and informative without being too graphic.

Obsession : Hair

I've got to get something off my chest. I don't understand why most women are so attached to their hair. Crying when three inches are trimmed off, hissy fits when the tone doesn't come out "right", needing it long to feel like a "woman". I'm not one to understand this phenomenon. I've never been attached to my hair. It grows out of my head. I cut it off and more grows in its place. I bleach it until it falls out (well, I used to do that - my stylist has, thankfully, taken over the bleaching), perfect a shade of blonde and then have red put over it, spend months growing out my bangs and then get them again, get bored and put purple in it... It's just hair!

And yeah, I've had a couple experiences where I panicked about my drastic hair change. Once right after high school when I got my first pixie/faux hawk and I got a lot of rude comments about it, and more recently when I bleached my whole head and people could not let it go. But now I see that the only reason I freaked was because all the negative (and sometimes even positive) attention was making me self conscious. I love change. Change makes me happy. Every time I feel like my life is boring or out of control, I change my hair. It helps! I am in control of it! And, quite frankly, I rock a lot of hair colors and styles.

“A woman who cuts her hair, is about to change her life.” - from the movie Coco Before Chanel

In honor of this venting and realization, I went through Facebook and made a collage of a bunch of hair styles I've had over the past few years. It's odd to see them all together like this. Unfortunately, I was late to the Facebook/photograph yourself all the time train and don't have any pictures of my high school Manic Panic days, but I think you get the idea.

What's your favorite hair style you've ever had? Have you ever craved a drastic change?