Tag Archives: makeup

Jan3

Makeup & Skin Care Obsessions

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Makeup & Skin Care Obsessions

So earlier today I wrote about my latest fashion obsessions and I didn’t even dabble in the new makeup and skin care that I’ve been using that I’m absolutely in love with. So let’s discuss!

Revlon Matte Balm: I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this little miracle worker before, but because it’s a miracle worker, it must be mentioned again!! This product is the most fantastic thing that has ever happened to my undying love of red lipstick. Before I found this balm, I would apply Covergirl’s lipstick and blow dry it like crazy, because I loves me a matte pout. All of this blow drying and blotting left my lips incredibly dry and flaky. Revlon’s balm goes on perfectly matte and doesn’t budge from your lips at all, so no lip liner is needed and most importantly: NO BLOW DRYING!!! This product has literally saved my lips from a very dry destiny and I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you’re not a fan of a matte lip, fear not! Revlon also makes these balms in glossy! I wear shade number 240 “Striking” and paid roughly seven dollars for my matte balm. Revlon products can be found at your local drug store, Target, Walmart, or where ever else makeup is carried!

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Covergirl Full Lash Bloom Mascara: I really like this stuff! I’ve wanted to try it since I saw the darling commercials with the beautiful Katy Perry advertising the product. Luckily, I was in need of new mascara anyways, so I figured I’d give it a try. This mascara separates and defines my lashes like no other. Best of all it goes on so lightly, so you don’t have to worry about sticky, clumpy lashes. I use this mascara as a base coat before I apply my heavy duty mascaras. I’m a big fan of extremely black and bold lashes so I use Rimmel’s Scandal Eyes mascara and Covergirl’s Flamed Out mascara combined to achieve this look. If you’re looking for a mascara that gives you rich color, I wouldn’t recommend the Full Lash Bloom. However, if you’re in need of a mascara to give you perfectly separated lashes before you break out the big guns, than I say grab some of this stuff in it’s cute pink container at once!

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Regis Designline Hair Oil: Ohhhhhh yes. This stuff is magic in a lovely lavender bottle. My hair has the tendency to get pretty dried out from how often I color and straighten it. I refuse to let my hair be seen if it’s anything but bright bright red and pin straight. Because it gets so dry, when I straighten my hair in the morning it will frizz out towards the bottom and refuse to lay flat. This oil has been the answer to my “fix my frizzy hair” prayers. Literally two drops is all you need for your hair to turn sleek and silky. The great thing about this product is that it doesn’t leave my hair greasy at all. I wash my hair every two weeks, and my hair isn’t insanely oily, greasy, or weighed down by the product by the time I wash my hair. I apply this product after I towel dry my hair as well for a nice deep conditioned feel. Another plus for this hair oil is that it smells like marshmallows! My sister purchased this item at the Best Cuts where we get our hair done, so I’m sure you can find it at any Famous Hair, Fantastic Sam’s, or Best Cuts salon near you!

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Biore Deep Pore Cleanser & Scrub: If there’s one thing I love, it’s squeaky clean pores. I use both of these products every morning and my skin has never looked better. The best part about the cleanser is that it’s made with charcoal so it draws out any grime like a magnet. I’ve never gotten a pimple in my life, honest to god truth, so hopefully these products will keep it that way! However, I get very annoying blackheads on my nostrils, particularly around my four nose piercings. Both the cleanser and the scrub are able to eliminate these blackheads completely without irritating my piercings. Your skin will feel so refreshed when you use these products too, because you get an icy cool sensation when you’re rubbing it in and washing it off. It definitely helps me wake up in the morning! I spent about fifteen dollars for both of these items and they were worth every penny. Biore products can be found at your local drug store, Target, or Walmart.

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Contact Solution & Witch Hazel: This recommendation goes out to my pierced readers of lifewithlilred. When I got my septum pierced about a month ago, my sister happened to ask me if I needed cleaning solution in front of my piercer. He then asked me if I wore contacts, which I do. He told me that contact solution, or any saline solution really can be used to clean piercings. So for the next week or so I washed my new piercing with my contact solution and it healed absolutely beautifully – better than any of my previous thirty piercings. Another product I like to use to keep my piercings nice and clean is witch hazel. It’s a natural astringent, so I feel one hundred percent comfortable using it to clean my four nostril piercings and my septum every morning and night. I used to get unsightly annoying bumps on my nostril piercings before, but since I started my witch hazel regime, those are a thing of the past!

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So there you have it, my newest makeup and skin care obsessions. I blog pretty frequently about beauty products, so definitely skim through my page for more of the products that I can’t life without! What’s one of your favorite makeup items? Do you have any beauty tips or secrets that you swear by? I’d love to hear all about it, so leave me a comment and let’s chat! Have a great night! -Sarah

Sep27

Lil Red Shopping Tips! Part 2!

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Lil Red Shopping Tips! Part 2!

My favorite place to buy my makeup and skin care is The Body Shop, hands down. My mom got me hooked on their products years ago, and then working there as an assistant manager deepened my love for their products even more. Everything that The Body Shop stands for as a company are things that I feel very passionately about, so it makes me feel good every time I shop with them. TBS lives on five principle values:

  • Against animal testing
  • Support community fair trade
  • Activate self esteem
  • Defend human rights
  • Protect the planet

At least one of these values are represented in everything sold at TBS. All of the products no matter what are non animal tested, which is SO very important to me. I refuse to buy anything with even a question of whether animals were tested on or not. The fact that I don’t have to play guessing games with my makeup and skincare is extremely relieving and refreshing. A lot of the ingredients used in each product typically comes from different third world countries, so we can help them promote their economy and provide better lives for the workers and their families. I like to think of everything I buy from TBS as a donation to a family in need, because all of these products are helping feed them or put a roof over their heads.

Now let’s talk about the best times to shop at TBS as far as deals go and some products! Honestly it’s a lot easier to shop online. The online promotions are usually way better than the ones run in store. Now a lot of people complain that The Body Shop is “too expensive”. But I’m here to tell you, that when shopped right – the prices are beyond reasonable. The best times to shop online are when the 40 or 50% off store wide sale is running. Whenever I get an email letting me know about this promo, I usually always stock up on all of my beauty must haves. And I’ll keep it real with you guys: I would NEVER buy these products if I didn’t know how to shop the deals, but when these promotions are running, you’re getting great quality product for the price of your drug store brand items. The best time to shop in store is without a doubt Black Friday and the week or so following it. The store always runs a 3 for $30 promotion, which is a great time to stock up on your more pricey items. Some of the heavy duty skin care at TBS ranges from about $30 to $36 dollars. If you stock up on these items during the 3 for $30 you’re essentially getting buy one get two free or even better if you buy the $36 dollar skin care! To add to the Black Friday fun, TBS always sells a super fun grab bag filled with awesome goodies. The bag is usually filled with at least $100 dollars worth of product, but they sell it for $25. You can’t beat that! One final great deal at TBS is their Love Your Body card. The LYB card sells for $10 dollars to get you started, but really it pays for itself because you get a $10 gift on your birthday. With the LYB card you save 10% with every purchase you make. For every $20 dollars you spend you earn a “point”. Rack up four points and you get a $15 dollar gift, and once you get eight points you get a $25 dollar gift and your card renews itself for free for another year. The best time to use these points is the month of your birthday. Then you can combine each gift for fifty dollars towards your purchase! Awesome!

If you read through my post about my makeup and skin care must haves, you’ll see that a vast majority of what I wrote about was from TBS. But allow me to dabble in talking about their product a little bit more. The Body Shop literally has everything. Ranging from skin care, makeup, hair care, product for men, lotions, perfumes, shower gels, gift sets, and home care such as candles, oil burners, and reed diffusers. TBS is widely known for their body butter. Each butter is made with a base of either cocoa or shea butter for heavy moisturizing. The butter comes in many different yummy scents as well, from strawberry and the fan favorite satsuma, to olive, chocolate, and the traditional cocoa butter. Their home care is just lovely too. The oil burners make great gifts. I got a lot of my friends the burner and different scented oils for the holiday last year and they all loved it. Whenever a friend of mine has a birthday, I usually make them a cute little TBS gift bag. Their lotions and shower gels are the perfect “pamper yourself” gift. A lot of my friends now shop at TBS because of how much they loved the products from their gift.

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Make sure all of you guys check out my post about my makeup and skin care must haves so you can read in depth about my favorite TBS products. Do I have any Body Shop shoppers on here? What’s your favorite product? What’s your favorite body butter or perfume scent? Comment back and let’s chat! -Sarah

Sep24

The Strain – part two!

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The Strain – part two!

It’s no secret to my followers on here that I’m a bit of a TV show fanatic. My recent obsession has been The Strain, on FX. I deeply enjoyed reading the trilogy penned by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo Del Toro, and the show has been smooth sailing up until the MAJOR makeup disappointment this week. Any of you who watch the show will hopefully know I’m referring to the SHAMEFUL display of makeup on The Master, as seen below:

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LORD HAVE MERCY ON ME!!!!! I could have done a better makeup job than that!!!!!!!!!! If any of you have read the trilogy, you’ll know that The Master sounds absolutely horrifying. His looks can only be described as a nightmare come to life. Very often in the book his face is masked by a cloak, which can be seen in my featured image, but when his face is shown, the characters are known to stop in their tracks and stare into his eyes….essentially staring into death. The books leave the descriptions of his appearance fairly vague, because he can jump from one host body to the next at will. The unknown is what makes him so scary. At this point in the television series his host body is a seven foot tall giant man, Sardu. Unfortunately, this disgraceful excuse for makeup read more like a muppet than the staggering appearance of a real life giant. The major problem with these prosthetics is that they literally can’t move. If you watch The Master talk during the show, his mouth only opens and closes, forming no syllables. Which brings me to another problem. WHY IS THE MASTER TALKING?!!?!!!!! In the books, he communicates with his vampire followers and humans alike via telepathy. If they stayed true to this, maybe the makeup wouldn’t have been half as shitty, because we wouldn’t have to see it in action. Just kidding…it would still suck. A quick fix to this makeup malfunction would have just been to keep The Master cloaked. Why display a poor makeup to millions of viewers when leaving our dark lord covered would have given a much more ominous presence? I try to look at the pictures of The Master and make excuses for it, but there’s really no saving this look. That nose. Those ears. Those eyes that practically show the actors actual skin beneath the eyeball. and worst of all THAT MOUTH THAT DOESN’T WORK!!!! I was SO pleased with the television efforts for The Stain until now. What a major buzzkill. I so desperately wanted pure fear when The Master was revealed. I wanted to feel like I was staring into the face of the monster in my closet, under my bed, in the scary furnace room in my basement. But I ended up staring at a poorly applied pull over mask. My suggestions to the current makeup artists on the show: Go to the nearest Halloween store and purchase a mask from there, because it’s sure as hell going to look better than your so called creation! #disappointed #bitter -#Sarah!

Sep16

Makeup, skin care, and everything in between

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Hello! In case you guys can’t tell by my pictures, I LOVE makeup! Anything in the beauty department is a friend of mine! So I thought it would be fun to put together some Pic Stitches and show you guys my beauty favorites, from hair care, skin care, to fragrance!

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Pic Stitch 1:
Top left: Rimmel London scandal eyes mascara. OBSESSED. If applied well, it almost looks like you have fake lashes on. Rich black color and a big hourglass shaped brush for huge stand out lashes. Each of these mascaras are roughly six dollars and can be found at any drug store.
Top middle: One of my favorite makeup products. The Body Shop blusher beads are gorgeous. They leave the perfect dust of shimmer to complete your look. It’s about eighteen dollars, however one case will last you for years.
Top right: Dove dry shampoo. Total life saver. I avoid washing my hair to keep my bright red hair fresh and vibrant, so this keeps my hair nice and clean in between washes. It’s only about four dollars and you can’t beat that! I also love the Paul Mitchell smoothing serum. It smells fantastic, like kiwi strawberry AND it gives your hair a radiant healthy shine to boot! It defeats any type of frizz or flyaway too for pin straight hair. It runs at about eighteen dollars and can be found at any hair salon.
Middle left: Revlon matte balm. Lovely. So lovely. It’s a great compromise when you don’t feel like wearing lipstick, and it goes on PERFECTLY matte so that means no blow drying or blotting! I wear color 240 Striking Spectaculaire and it runs around seven dollars. Where would I be without my Eos balm? In a world of chapped lips, that’s where! These balms leave my lips nice and plump and perfectly moisturized. These balms run around three dollars and both products can be found at any drug store.
Middle: My love. My life. My hair dye. Vidal Sassoon Runway Red is TO DIE FOR. It gives me the EXACT SAME color I was paying a lot of money to get at a salon. And for eight dollars a box, you’d be crazy not to do it at home. Rich red color. Vibrant and bright. What more can you ask for?
Middle right: My forever go to eyeliner. The Body Shops’ metallic eye defined in color number 13 Burnished Amber will change your life. The color brings out gorgeous hues in hazel eyes and will brighten any look. Fabulous for day or night wear. These liners run at eleven dollars each, and come in a bunch of other pretty colors too!
Bottom left: My skin care regime. Garnier has wonderful scrubs and cleansers for any type of skin. The smoothing cream cleanser is nice and gentle and will leave your skin feeling so hydrated. The balancing exfoliater is great too to make your skin feel bright and rejuvenated. It has hints of grapefruit in it for a nice zesty burst of fragrance and cleansing power. Both of these run around six dollars each and can be found at any drug store.
Bottom middle: My other skin care regime, which I apply after I wash and scrub my face. These products are all from The Body Shop. The Vitamin C Skin Boost ($27) is one of my favorites. It hydrates and brightens, plus leaves a smooth matte finish. The Nutriganics smoothing eye cream ($22) eliminates fine lines and reduces dark circles immensely. A great products to use to keep your eyes looking youthful! Vitamin E moisturizer ($14) SO NICE. Light and non greasy. A perfect every day cream.
Bottom right: Victoria’s Secret enchanted apple body spray ($14). My absolute FAVORITE fragrance. I love anything apple scented and this is so crisp and refreshing. It’s shockingly long lasting too, an all over spritz will keep you smelling sweet all day! A weird beauty secret but I adore the TN Dickinsons witch hazel which runs at about five dollars per bottle. It’s great for cleaning facial piercings. (I have four nose piercings – two on each nostril). This products eliminates blackheads and grime around my piercings.

Pic Stitch 2:
Top left: John Frieda radiant red shampoo and conditioner (about five dollars each) An absolute necessity for any red head. Not only does it protect your color but it leaves your hair SUPER moisturized. I don’t shampoo my hair very often though, I find that only conditioning my hair keeps my color lasting longer. And of course, I only wash my hair with FREEZING cold water!
Top middle: Covergirl eyeliner (about six dollars, I wear color number 410 Blackfire). This liner goes on so silky and smooth. The black is so rich and dramatic. One of my makeup necessities. I also love the Covergirl brow pencils (about four dollars, I wear color number 510 Soft Brown). I’ve recently grown very fond of the bold eye brow, and these pencils help give you the perfect shape and color. I wear a shade slightly darker than my natural brow color to give it a dramatic look.
Top right: LIPSTICK LOVE LOVE LOVE! I would be NOWHERE and my look would be NOTHING without the Covergirl lipstick and liner, both number 305 Hot Passion (about seven dollars each). What I love SO much about this brand is that they have the matching lipstick and liner for the perfect pout. I always blow dry my lipstick for a rich matte finish. Do yourselves a favor and purchase this lipstick/liner duo. You won’t regret it!
Bottom left: The Body Shop warming mineral mask (about fourteen dollars). This mask is delightful. It’s infused with ginger so it smells great too. Once applied the mask warms up and completely blasts out your pores, leaving your skin looking good as new. I like to use this mask about once a week to give my skin a nice refresher.
Bottom right: My blush! I use all three of these every day for my own unique, customized color. The Maybeline dream bouncy blush is so fun! The cream blush goes on so smooth and the color is so sweet. I wear color number 05 Fresh Pink. This blush runs at about six dollars and can be found at any drug store. I also adore my blush from The Body Shop ($12 each). The pigments in these blushes are so rich and they’re not too powdery either. I wear both 01 Macaroon and 04 Marshmallow. Once I mix all three of these blushes together I get a lovely bright pink shade with a tiny hint of orange. So pretty!

Well guys, there you have it! I hope you found some fun beauty inspirations and enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it! Comment me for any questions! -Sarah