Thursday, April 13, 2023

Glitter Eyeshadow that's Clean!

 It's been a year since GXVE Beauty by Gwen Stefani came out, and since I became an Ambassador for the brand.  I am continually impressed by the products that they create, how they are clean, vegan, cruelty-free, and long lasting, bold and beautiful.  

As for the original launch, the brand came out with lipsticks which are very pretty, in both matte and shiny.  The matte ones "Original Me," include Original Recipe (red), Tragic Me (pink), 80's Me (purple) and Old School Me (berry).  The shiny ones "Anaheim Shine" include Original Recipe, Rosewood St (berry), Loara (orange red), Stomp Box (pink/mauve) and Screen My Phone Calls (lighter pink).

For the face, All Time Prime is your go-to face primer oil.  It can be used on hair too, and it is amazing.  

Double Dippin' is a great lip balm and lip color remover combination.  It can be used alone or as a lip color remover for the long wear colors.

Some of the newer products include new shades of the 24 hour gel eyeliner, Line It Up (the only clean one that can make that claim), there's a green, violet, dark blue, grey, bronze, brown and black with sparkles in addition to the already awesome black Spiderwebs and Bathwater cobalt sparkly blue.

 Recent shade extensions of the liquid, long-lasting lipstick "I'm Still Here" in nude tone shades are some of my favorite things.  Cowgirl (my favorite), Flannel, Tomboy and Camo, are pinky nudes, Space Buns is an orange red, Fishnets is a berry red, Tartan is a deep wine, Original Recipe is a true red.  

Xtra Sauce is a liquid vinyl super long wear lipstick currently only in a red (original recipe) color, which is amazing for performing for many hours.  It's kiss proof, drink proof and perfect all day and night.

Can't Stop Staring is the new clean mascara and it's my favorite mascara of all time.  It lengthens and looks as pretty as falsies without the hassle.  The brush is awesome too because you can get the little hairs that are easy to miss with most brushes.

The lip glosses (Bubble Pop Electric) are a huge hit and people love them.  They come in various shades of pink and a couple darker shades.  Sweet Tooth is a nude, Dolled Up and Candy are pink, Electric Pansy is darker pink and All My Love is a warm berry.

New eyeshadow "paints" just came out, which are liquid mousse to creme eyeshadows in sparkly and matte colors ("Paint it Up"), "Eye See in Sparkle," a truly clean loose powder glitter eyeshadow in 3 colors (gold, rose gold and silver), which are gorgeous and perfect for bellydancers.  Two are currently featured in discounted 4 product sets which are on sale for $50 through the end of April.

The sets are really an amazing deal, they all come with a makeup bag and through 4/30 you also get a free shiny lipstick, Loara (free with a $35 purchase).   The four sets to choose from include: A Pop of Red which has Anaheim Line (lip liner) in Scarlet Red, Original Me in Original Recipe lipstick (matte), Eye See in Color eyeshadow quad in Rich Girl, and Line It Up (eyeliner) Spiderwebs

A Pop of Pink includes Original Me in 80's Me (matte) lipstick, Candy (Bubble Pop Electric lipgloss), Line It Up Spiderwebs and Eye See in Color eyeshadow Quad in Just a Girl.

A Natural Touch set includes Eye See in Sparkle (glitter eyeshadow) Glimmer, Anaheim Line in Harbor Blvd (lip liner), I'm Still Here in Camp and Line it Up in Spiderwebs.

Lastly, the A Touch of Shimmer set includes Eye See in Sparkle in shade Twinkle, Eye See in Color eyeshadow quad in Simple Kind of Life (matte neutrals), Anaheim Shine in Stomp Box (shiny lipstick), and Pout To Get Real in shade Do Whatever (over lining lip liner).

All of this makeup is exceptional.  I wear it all every day, but also for performances.

Shop my link to get your own GXVE makeup.  New customers can save 15% by using code Ambassador.


Thursday, February 16, 2023

Back to Basics

 My in person classes have been going a couple of months now, and it's nice to be feeling somewhat "normal" again, although things have changed since pre-pandemic.  I'm teaching during the week at night, which seems to be the more popular time for people to join in, versus my Saturday morning classes.  I've had to go back to basics in person because the dancers who have signed up are a mix of very new, and some experience. 

My student troupe will be performing this weekend at our third in person event, post-pandemic (is it over?).  It's at an outdoor festival, where there will be carnival rides, vendors and entertainment.

The first event we returned to was our previous favorite local event hanging at the hangar, a quarterly dance show in our area.  It was way more crowded than we anticipated, and we did have a case of jitters coming back in person.  Our rehearsal went better than our performance but I did get to do a solo and that sort of redeemed me, at least.  Happily, people were interested at the event in signing up for my classes although nothing actually came of that.

The second in person event we did was a restaurant show and a lot of technical problems happened, making it an "OK" event, but not really great.  The crowd was a tough one, because they were so annoyed about all the tech issues.  We did win them over by the end of our set. 

The festival performance was great.  We did 5 songs, including finger cymbals, fan veils, swords and two dance routines without props.