Stray thoughts, opinions, and other odds and ends.
This is one of the songs I’ve been listening to constantly for the past week. The band is Dreamside, a goth/electronica band from the Netherlands. I found it because this song featured Rogue, the lead singer from Cruxshadows. This video is on YouTube a couple of times…this is the highest-quality version I’ve found.
This morning on Twitter, Sarah of Glossicious asked: “Monthly favorites video or Eid look tutorial ? help me decide”. I told her I’d do a monthly favorites post if she would. I didn’t register the “video” portion of the request…er. Bad week, the brain’s still about half a lap behind. But - on to the favorites post!
Two months in a row I get to participate in Beauty Blogs' Backstage!! (Whenever there are an odd number of participants, I am the Person Without Partner...it does mean that I'm always free if someone has to be angeled that month because their partner has to drop out; but it leaves me feeling like I'm sitting on the sides watching everyone else have fun :D ) This month, I interviewed Yinka of Vexinthecity, an enthusiastic beauty and fashion blogger from the UK who's been shortlisted as a finalist for the 2010 Black Weblog Awards. I've followed Yinka's blog for about a year off and on, and was glad when she signed up for Beauty Blogs' Backstage...and doubly glad when I randomly set up the partners for August and ended up with her name!
I run Beauty Blogs' Backstage, a once-a-month interview network for beauty bloggers. Last month I didn't get to participate, because there were an odd number of registrants (I generally hang back to "angel" anyone who may need it.) 
This month...well, this month, someone else's assigned partner wasn't able to interview them, so I get to participate! :D Helen, one of the two creative people behind Just Nice Things, has a fierce passion for nail varnish and for all things make-up related. She's also been busy this summer with not only her own wedding, but planning events for others' weddings as well!
Rather than list off every single product I use every single day, I’m going to list off my “everyday-use” stuff here. I’m also going to review the products, and will include dates (so that if I suddenly switch foundation shades, or the cleanser I use, you’ll still know what looks used which products.) This will also prevent me from inadvertently stuffing up mentions of this or that product if I think a product’s, “okay”, but not fantastic enough to provide quite that much publicity. (Case in point: my current everyday-use mascara, which is good…but I get tubes of it in just about every kit I buy from the company. If I were paying for just the mascara, I’d use something else; but since I essentially get these tubes already at a fraction of their cost, I might as well use them. Right? Right.) These are my “used daily unless otherwise indicated” products.
I’ve had some requests to see pictures of my hoard - which I’ve kind of put off, seeing that it’s been in a state of transition for the past eight months. Usually, I keep my shadows grouped by color, then arranged chromatically (because yes, Virginia, I’m just that OCD.)
Each of the boxes I keep my colors in is just over 14.5” wide by 14” tall by just over 2” deep. Five of the interior columns are 2” wide, and can be subdivided. The sixth column has two “shelves” - structural supports for the box, plus indentations for the latches that hold the lid closed - and that column is 3.5” at its widest point, and 3” wide at its narrowest points (the aforementioned latch-indentations, and the carrying handle.) The columns are deep enough to hold a 10-gram jar quite comfortably - there’s just over a 1/2-inch’s worth of movement-space both front-to-back, and side to side. The left five columns will hold 17 10-gram jars if no subdividers are used. The sixth column’s topmost chambers can hold two columns of four 10-gram jars, while the central chamber holds seven jars plus three more “laying on their sides” (which I don’t like doing for general storage because it allows for spillage, but which has been kind of necessary for this project when I’ve been moving the “used” jars to secondary bins.)
These are made by ArtBin, and I haven’t been able to find them online anywhere - just at my local Storables store, which doesn’t list these items on their site, either. These containers are kept over with the scrapbooking/beading/craft/office/art supply containers in my store, and they cost $14.95. They let me store my jars securely and with minimal chance of spillage, but I can still see all of my colors. So many other storage solutions that people have used have involved storing their jars of loose-powder eyeshadow on their sides, or turned upside down to allow the colors to be quickly visible. I was so happy when I found these!! They won’t stand up all on their own, you have to lean them against a wall; but they do stay upright better than most. I currently have thirteen of these bins.
They’re a more than acceptable stopgap measure until I win the lottery and can have my inset cabinets, with movable shelves and oak doors, to be built into the wall of my vanity area :D Seriously: the storage is inelegant, but it all stores neatly, lets me see everything quickly, and keeps things from spilling.
I keep trying to grow my nails out - just a little bit, maybe 1/4 inch beyond the quick. You’d think I was asking for superlong nails like Helen, or even like Leanne. No, I just want a little bit of nail that won’t split, shred, or tear if I look at it sideways. I have lots of nail polish, and Konad plates, and I’d like to start playing. But it seems like when I’m ready to try a design I’ve seen elsewhere, or even try one of my new shades…at least two of my nails break almost down to the nub.
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they were conspiring against me.
So I’m sure everyone’s heard by now, Aromaleigh is closing. I wish the owner well, in a general wish-other-humans-well kind of way. I wasn’t a fan of the owner nearly as much as I was a fan of the products…and while I’d bought most of the eyeshadows from her that I wanted, for my sake I do mourn the loss of the blushes, the lip products, and the color correctors. I mourn the loss of the whole line on behalf of all the people who had only just discovered Aromaleigh, or who had put off ordering because it was going to “be around forever”. I never had problems with the products, the very few times I had problems with an order the issues were swiftly and smoothly corrected, and the one time I emailed about the sudden change to the customer rewards program I received a fairly gracious response. I was less a fan of some of the ways the owner conducted certain aspects of the business, the way a small percentage of her remarks seemed to be more something you’d share with your friends and compatriots (or possibly the audience of a “Real Housewives of…” series) than with the internet at large…especially when you’ve got a higher-than-average public profile. But even quite a few people who stopped buying from Aromaleigh because they didn’t care for the owner’s comportment, have said that Aromaleigh did have quality products. And so now everyone’s lost that particular resource. That is my primary cause of upset: knowing that not only will I have to resume the search for good color correctors, but that all those women who only started enjoying the products are now losing access to those products. Whether one loathed the owner’s behavior, didn’t really care about it (or didn’t pay attention to it), or were a diehard Aromaleigh evangelist, the loss of such a varied and good-quality product line is a very unhappy event. (I’ve been seeing the word “Aromabot” pop up around the web, used by some anti-AL people to refer to the most vocal defenders of the company/the owner. It makes me giggle, hear Nancy Sinatra, and envision an army of women wearing rich vivid eyeshadows and bullet-throwing bustiers. I want weaponized lingerie!! But anyhoo, on to the somewhat sane content.)
With this in mind, I’d like to offer some advice. Because a blog is also big ol’ soapbox, and if you can’t drive your Miata with the top down and the wind blowing through your hair, what’s the use of having a head?
There comes a time in the life of every hobby or obsession when the thrill just isn’t what it used to be.
Customer service is like teaching: it’s a necessary job, it’s an underappreciated job, and it takes lots of patience, humor, and tact. When you work in customer service, you generally only get to deal with people when things go wrong. They’re mildly perturbed, or cranky, or annoyed, or vituperatively pissed. You will rarely deal with completely happy people when you work in customer service.
eyeshadow, discontinued, Bare Escentuals, shimmer, The SheSpace, red, limited edition, brown, Aromaleigh, cool, purple, blue, warm, sparkle, green, orange, sheen, yellow, matte, one year eyecolor challenge, pearl, neutral, eyeliner, lip color, grey, blush, Everyday Minerals, Simply Naturals, kit, Meow Cosmetics, neutral-warm, Pure Luxe Cosmetics, duochrome, iridescent, white, black, face color, MAC Cosmetics, sheer, metallic, cream shadow, Sephora, brushes, warm-neutral, TKB Trading, collection, neutral-cool, blacklight reactive, Make Up For Ever, cool-warm, holiday 2009, Cover Girl, Benefit Cosmetics, theme:qualities, Lady Burd, nail color, cool-neutral, warm-cool, highlighter, interference...
Sparklecrack Central is an individual's site. The author holds stock in no makeup companies, is officially affiliated with no forums or communities, and receives no renumeration for posts made here. Posts on this site are not commercial endorsements, but enthusiasm and a tiny bit of OCD. Product information contained on these pages is non-authoritative and provided for informational purposes only. All makeup company names, kit names, and color names are trademarks of their respective owners. All original site content, including photos, is free for non-commercial re-use with attribution. Because if you don't share, you stagnate. And stagnant and sparkle just don't go together.
