Life with Dylan

Category: Beautiful You Mondays

  • Beautyisms – an ideology

    Have you ever had an idea that rolls around in your head with all the other marbles, but somehow gets lost among the daily to-do lists?

    Well, I did – and last week that little marble finally made its way to the top of the to-do list. I’ve been so consumed with transforming this idea from a marble rolling around in my head to something actual, that I’ve been ignoring this blog a bit. So be forewarned, there will be a heap of blog posts coming soon. 🙂

    However, in the meantime, I would love for you to check out what my little marble turned into. Many of you know that I have a deep love for beauty, makeup, skincare, and anything remotely related. After ending Shel Cosmetics, I started writing beauty articles for OC Moms – eventually adding Beautiful You Mondays to this blog so that I could get my weekly beauty fix.

    Well, it just wasn’t enough.

    Beautyisms is my new blog that will be strictly beauty. Anything and everything you ever wanted to know about makeup, product reviews, skincare, and even some daily beauty deals.

    Life with Dylan will continue, but as a lifestyle blog.

    The beauty stuff will be over at Beautyisms. Check it out, with my soft-launch (as I still have work to do on the blog) and follow @beautyisms  – the ideology of beauty has just begun.

  • Beautiful You Mondays – Golden Globe Awards

    Award season has started and the internet is filled with who wore what and who had the best makeup. Twitter was crazy last night and the blogs were posting in real-time. Today the fashion sites and newspapers are posting pictures and opinions.

    Next week the magazine covers will be adorned with Golden Globe beauties, along with the famous best dressed and hit and miss lists.

    My favorite had to be Nicole Kidman. She looked amazing. Showing off her slender, yet hourglass frame in a Versace gown with just the right color of beading to compliment her hair color. Nicole’s makeup was just the right amount and her skin looked beautiful as always.

    While I love watching for the dresses, the hair, the makeup, the jewelry, and who showed up with who – I noticed something very different this year.

    The shine. The wrinkles. The heavy makeup on some. And the natural beauty on others.

    Funny, because most of the pictures I am seeing today don’t have these flaws. The talk of edited photos has been quite popular lately, including this “fake commercial” (made to look real) for Fotoshop by Adobe. This is just another example of how women can’t always believe what we see in the magazines or on the internet.

    I enjoyed seeing some of the older actresses actually look their age – Meryl Streep never tries to hide her age. While Jessica Lange looks like a plastic catastrophe. I love her as an actress, but I wish she would have not done so much to her face.

    The one woman who stood out for me, more than just her face, was Angelina Jolie. Aside from her thin frame and gorgeous dress, her face is what seemed to look different in every picture I saw. Definitely not the same face I saw on my television. In some pictures her skin looks very pale and white, almost like a geisha. In  others she looks tan and flawless. On the television she looks shiny (even oily) and sick with sunken eyes and dark circles covered by layers of makeup.

    Don’t get me wrong – I think Angelina is a beautiful woman and I believe what she does for children and the United Nations is wonderful. I just don’t like when women look up to these people and aspire to look like them when what we are seeing in the magazines is not always what we would see in real life.

  • Beautiful You Mondays – Makeup Brush Caddy

    I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for a new way to organize and make my life less chaotic. Spending over a decade of my life as a makeup artist, I have acquired quite a bit of makeup and makeup brushes. I clean things out on a regular basis, but I know there is always something new and better waiting to be discovered.

    Over the holiday I tried getting caught up on my magazines – I’m up to November now – just shows you how far behind I was. Anyway, I found this great DIY project for organizing your makeup brushes while reading In Style magazine. How cool is this? No more fumbling through the makeup bag or plastic cup looking for the brush you want. Why didn’t I think of this?

    I did a little searching and found an etsy store that has something very similar (wonder if they got the idea from the magazine) – Address the Mess sells these already made ($25) for those that aren’t so crafty or handy with a drill. I think this would make a great weekend project.

    Find a friend who has a drill and make a trip to the art store or Home Depot … before you know it, you will have all your makeup brushes standing at attention and ready to work their magic.

    How do you store your makeup brushes? Share your organizing ideas in the comments below.

  • Beautiful You Mondays – Sugar Scrub

    Beauty isn’t just what you put on your face. Beauty is much more than that and it starts with how you feel inside, how your whole body feels. Nothing makes the skin quite as soft as a sugar scrub. So this week I decided to share an article I wrote for OC Moms about how to make your own sugar body scrub.

    Not everyone can afford a day at the spa – and even the busiest of moms can whip up a batch of this in no time at all. Customize your sugar scrub anyway you like. Make some for yourself or give a few to your friends. (They make wonderful gifts)

    Whether you choose to revive your body and senses in the morning or relax and unwind at night, a sugar body scrub is the perfect way to kick start your Beautiful You Monday.

  • Beautiful You Mondays – Eye Cream Myth

    Welcome to the newest weekly post on my blog. I wanted to find a way to incorporate my background in skincare and cosmetics and decided to start a weekly post on Mondays. Named after the tag line from my previous company, Shel Cosmetics, Beautiful You Mondays will offer tips, product reviews and advice on how you can bring out the most beautiful you.

    Let’s talk about eye creams and the myths associated with them.

    Myth – Eye creams will fight bags and wrinkles under your eyes.

    I’m sorry to say, this is just not true. The bags that develop under your eyes are most likely caused by tissue damage and the breakdown of collagen deep under the layers of skin. No matter what an eye cream promises, the cream simply can’t penetrate that far beneath the surface.

    So what can eye creams do? Why should you even bother using an eye cream?

    Although the formulation of an eye cream is not much different than a moisturizer, there are some benefits to using an eye cream. Eye creams can target specific areas around the eye and help diminish fine lines and wrinkles. This is done by targeting the eye area with ingredients that will give extra nourishment to the thin layers of skin that surround the eye.

    Many eye creams have a silicone-like formulation and work best if absorbed into the skin rather than rubbed in as with a regular face moisturizer. When applying an eye cream, you should use your ring finger and dab around the eye area. Do not try to rub in the eye cream. Let the cream absorb into your skin – it usually takes only a few minutes. This also avoids unnecessary rubbing and tugging on the delicate skin around your eyes.

    Do you use an eye cream? What is your favorite eye cream and why?

    I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.