Of Music and Beautiful People

I have always loved to watch musicians perform their music. And here I’m not talking about jumping and panting pop divas and their crazy shows, I’m talking about people who create and feel every note, or every written word. I talk about the people who create what they like, and not what supposedly will sell and rotate on radio and TV.

I love to watch those musicians play, and singers sing. Somehow no matter what they look like, they end up beautiful, attractive, magnetic. All the energy, passion, emotions captivate me to the extent that I can get high. on music. It is magic, it is true beauty.

 

One of the beautiful people

Spoiled Bite Me Review

I have posted a couple of swatches of Spoiled before here ( http://elizzabethby.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/spoiled-nail-polish-review/ ), and here is another shade called Bite Me. It’s a nice dark burgundy color, almost black.

I still have a bit of mixed feelings about these polishes. Wile I really love the superb staying power- they somehow survive all my cleaning, washing, and using my nails as various tools. Seriously remarkable, I kid you not. And while their extremely slow drying can be overcome with speed dry topcoat (both Seche Vite and Sally Hansen do great), there is a very big annoying problem. That problem is the brush. It is very big, fully, and not always neatly shaped, which makes it very difficult to cover the nails evenly, and even more so to get closer to cuticles for perfect manicure. Hence, very big gaps between my cuticles and colored part, and nail polish here and there on the skin, and I can’t stand when that happens. Sure, I could just use another, smaller, brush, but it seems like too much trouble.

Really good polish for $1.99, really bad brush. Dear Wet’n'Wild, fix the brush, will ya?

Universe in Ice

On a cold January day I came across this beautiful Universe created by nature. Air bubbles froze on their way up, drops never managed to part from the grip of frost.

My Silent Love and Inspiration

This post will be dedicated to my most silent friend that always amazes and inspires me. A little over two years ago I was visiting my grandparents, and took a piece of a plant I’ve always liked to make a whole new plant for my home. I got home, put the stick in the water, it didn’t do anything for weeks, I wasn’t even sure it was alive, but decided to stick it in some dirt. That was sometime in December 2011. And again the stick didn’t do anything whatsoever, just stood there. Couple of months later my parents started making fun of me watering “the dead stick”, and at that point I started having doubts the stick had any life in it too, but kept giving it water like it was a normal plant. That must have looked quite weird now that I think of it.

One day in late April 2011 I was doing my normal watering and noticed something was different. There was a tiny, barely noticeable, green leaf on my stick! I can’t even tell you how excited I was. Small things can make one happy indeed. It was, and still is, a miracle for me. This little one had been gathering strength for almost half a year to produce it’s first leaf! In the two years it has moved to a bigger pot, and is ready for another bigger pot. Now is trying to cling to everything on it’s way, makes me think it’s alive with all the crawling it can do.

Every time I see my plant I think of how important it is to have faith, how nothing in impossible, how miracles can happen on any day of our lives. And of course, being persistent is something I see in the little one every day- it is really good at getting places and grabbing things. I still have to learn some things from it.

Here is the story in photographs:

Favorite Mascara. L’Oreal Voluminous in Carbon Black.

There are so many mascaras out there these days, so many ads in magazines and on TV selling “spectacular lashes”. And with all the variety come many disappointments and less cash. I don’t have much loyalty as a consumer of beauty products, I’ve tried lots of mascaras – really cheap, and really expensive, and haven’t found anything better than L’Oreal Voluminous. At the 6-7$ price tag, you can get the lashes of your dreams: full, long, and soft. This one is worth every penny!

It comes in several varieties, offering slightly different shades, brushes and formulas. My favorite one is L’Oreal Voluminous Carbon Black, and I like the one with the curved bush too. By now I have actually combined them- I use well washed and dried curved brush with Carbon Black mascara.

This mascara doesn’t smudge or flake throughout long workdays and party nights, and it is fairly easy to remove. Open tube will last you a couple of months without changes in quality, which is pretty good.

For best results I zig-zag the brush at the base of lashes, run the brush through lashes, and then add more coats for more drama without waiting for mascara to dry. Never felt the need for additional brushing, separation or curling. And the intense color is a huge bonus for me.

Here is what my lashes look like with this mascara. The photos aren’t great, but show the lashes well enough.

 

  and my lashes without any mascara- quite plain 

Mascara with curved brush replacement

Revlon Top Speed in Jelly. Swatch+ review.

I haven’t doen any girly posts in a while, so here’s one. I have recently bought several shades of Revlon nail polishes, and today I’ll show one of them.

Top Speed does dry fast, and there are some amazing shades to choose from. Unfortunately staying powers of enamels are not as impressive. I always use Orly’s rubberized base coat, Seche Vite top coat, and seal all exposed sides of the nail with nail polish and topcoat. That typically helps the polish to last longer, but in case with Top Speed, after about 24 hours it started wearing off, and was chipping off by the end of day 2/3.

Anyway, here’s shade number one- “Jelly”. Amazingly pretty color.

West Side Story

Another shot looking West from the Empire State Building. Penn Station, 1 Penn Plaza, Hudson.