Sali Hughes "Pretty Honest" book - review

For today's Mondays with MontyC, we're looking at... a book review, of all things!  Bear with me...

When it comes to cosmetics, be it skincare or makeup etc, there are a bewildering number of products available to us.  Just walk up and down the aisles of your local supermarket, pharmacy or department store and count how many brands you see.  And then count how many ranges there are in each brand.  And how many products in each range!  If you've reached a point where you're thinking it's time to up your skincare game, what do you do?  If you think it's high time you started a proper skincare routine, where do you even start?  Maybe it's cosmetic surgery you want to know about... or you've got adult acne... or you need a new foundation, the questions are endless...

Here at Make Up For Dolls, like a lot of other blogs, we try to help out with honest reviews of products we buy and put to the test.  These are not magazine "reviews" which are frequently just paid promotions.  Most blogs (I do say most!) are honest and try to give a genuinely balanced opinion of a particular product.  And one of the longest serving and most respected of us all, the journalist, broadcaster, Guardian columnist and all round Welsh legend that is Sali Hughes, has written a book called "Pretty Honest" to answer some more of these questions.

How I... store my pencil liners

Two posts from me in lieu of a blog swap (mea culpa, I simply had a manic month and I haven't had time to reach out to anyone, blogger or otherwise, to organise a swap).  Expect a lot more busy-ness over the summer months; it's Bridal Season and most of my spare time is spent in trials and weddings.

Lip Products and I: Conscious Uncoupling

Lip product storage

The time has come.  It can't be avoided it any longer.  I've had to bite the bullet.  Accept the inevitable.  Bow to the pressure.  I've got to stop buying lip products for a while.  Quite simply I'm rapidly running out of storage space for them! 

2013: The Year in Review

I started out this post thinking I'd do a recap of the products that I discovered this year and loved, then realised, nope, Make Up For Dolls has come a long way in the last year, and I wanted to do a recap, not in a boasty way, but just as a reminder of some of the highlights - things I got up to, things I posted about, stuff that was fun and different and interesting!

Of course the absolute crowning moment for me this year was the creation of my very own red lipstick, following on from a lot of researching and back-and-forth on the subject with the fabulous folks at Cosmetics a la Carte in London.  Read all about it here.  Go on.  I'm not remotely excited about this one, still, a year on :-)

As for the rest?  Well... read on!
 

How I... Store & transport my loose powders

This one is more about how I store and transport my powders around in my kit bag...

How I... store my nail varnishes

This is one of my favourite “how I” posts, because it really speaks to my inner OCD child: how I store my nail varnishes.

How I... store my cream products

As promised last week, this one is pretty short and sweet... a quick peek into my cream products and how I store them.

How I... store my foundations

Foundations are tricksy little feckers.  If your'e like me and have a lot of these, then you really need to use them up before they go off.  "Off" foundations can contribute to bad skin or spots.  Or "off" foundations may simply be inconsistent in terms of pigmentation, or they may have oxidised, or could oxidise on your face, when they didn't before.

I need to keep a reasonable range of foundations for my kit, on top of which I'm always trying out the latest and greatest foundation for myself, or for the blog.  So I use a very simple trick to extend their shelf life, as well as to keep them all in one place...

How I ... do my makeup

This one is more of a "where I" than a "how I" :-) but without getting hung up on a choice of interrogative pronoun, and in continuation of my "how I..." series, this one is a quick peek at my personal makeup station and features a mini-review of the Make Up For Ever desktop rolling makeup case.

How I... store my pigments

Messy things, pigments.  Seriously messy.  Especially when you buy an expensive, limited edition, hard-to-get, now discontinued, highly pigmented stupidly opaque crazily hot pink one.  And spill it all over your mother's brand new cream carpet.  Not that I *ever* did that, of course.  So how do I store 'em?

How I... store my brushes

Another (mainly) picture post - this time how I store my brushes (and a sneak peek at the brushes I use!)

How I... store my MAC palettes

I'm planning a series of posts, showing how I store makeup, tools, etc

Today's post is on my MAC palettes.

Blog Posts: What to write about

Snapshot of some of the stats Google Blogger provides for a particular period of time
(these are for this week)

I took a look at my viewer stats this morning to see if I could get some inspiration on what to write about today.  I have a few posts started, but nothing near completion (or even near where they should be for editing down).  So instead I took a trip down memory lane on my postings in the last fiften months.  It was an interesting trip and revealed to me what people read the most.

If you're a blogger, or an aspiring blogger, perhaps this might prove useful.  If you're a reader, then maybe you'll discover some posts you haven't seen before!

How I track my cosmetics (Filemaker Bento)

Bento

This one might seem like an odd post, but a question I'm frequently asked (along with "how do you store everything) is "how do you keep track of everything you have"?

Actually it's a good question.  With almost 3,000 individual pieces of makeup, it's too easy to buy something I already have.  A few years ago I got fed up of the purchasing-and-return cycle when I discovered the latest purchase was already "in stock" at home!  In Ireland this can be quite irritating as these duplicate items can not always be returned, from a hygiene perspective, many cosmetics counters are loath to take items back (which makes sense).

Miscellaneous Makeup Tips



Some tips on products, both in general and some more specific product/brand-based tips...

...in no particular order, but roughly added into sections.

These were just stream-of-conciousness tips; I may do another of these posts in the future as more tips occur to me!