Beauty Without Fuss

Popular Posts

Recent Posts

Friday 12 September 2014

Storage Week! How A Makeup Pro Does It ...

Our final post of the Storage Week! series (which is actually going to ending up lasting a fortnight, we're nice like that here at Get Lippie) shows you how a real, working, makeup artist stores their stuff.  we have to tell you, it's not what we expected.

Anyhoo, here's Luke with the lowdown:

As interested as I am in being very organised with stuff, and making products and makeup all nice and neat, what with me being you know, male, it is rather difficult for me to pop anything away neatly as I am ALWAYS having to dredge it out again. Also, storage space is more valuable than the last sheet of toilet roll at my house, and so I have to put stuff wherever there is an available orifice.

It is probably worth mentioning that I do tend to divide my products into two categories:  professional and personal.  Sometimes there is a blur between the two and this causes all sorts of confusion, which results often in a rather stressed out search for a particular item. In a very small nutshell (Ha ha! - Ed), this is how it goes.

The makeup that I use for work is itself between two categories.  Special F/X/Prosthetics/Film & TV, and everything else.  There are some pretty hefty chemicals in the former category, so it’s important that that is stored separately from the “normal” makeup. Everything else pretty much gets sorted thus...


This is my professional kit that I use all the time. No matter what the job is, I know that in here is everything I need to do a half decent makeup.  If I am ever unable to do something out of this bag, I need to hang up my brushes and find something else to do.  It is also handy for running out the door on those last minute bookings that happen from time to time. The excellent Charles Fox bucket bag is a bleeding life saver, and is so well used that it broke last week, but has done a good 3 years of being lugged. Ahhhh, if it could only talk.

Prior to ANY job there is still a certain amount of juggling that goes on.  I need to double check everything, and then edit accordingly. This is often the case when there is a particular season to be considering, or if there are male models involved, if some of the models are darker skinned etc...

That is where these come in handy.  I am only showing ONE of the seventeen of these boxes that I have for brevity (and also I haven’t the time to pull them all out from under the bed, out of the cupboard, the shed, and god knows where else).  But for each job, I will pull all of these out, have a look and replace certain items that are needed, or that I think I may be needed.  It is a long and often very frustratingly tiring process, but my human strength will only allow me to carry so much at any one time.



It is a huge box where each individual item has been lovingly placed into a freezer zip-lock bag and labelled.  The boxes are divided into Face, Eyes, Lips, body and Misc.  On each bag a big red or blue sharpie has on it what is in there. Foundations, Bronzers, Eye Shadows, Cream eye shadows etc...
They are then divided into Spring/Summer then Autumn/Winter.  No actual reason for this, other than I know roughly what sort of colours we’ll be dealing with here. Ie SS is lights, pink, corals, greens etc... and the AW is the darker side of the colour spectrum.

My personal stuff, which is largely skin care is also divided similarly.  However, the stuff that I use every day is spread on my bedside table, and on my chest of drawers in my bedroom. Again, please note the lack of ability to edit.



To save dragging out the boxes again, I have selected a few fragrances that I want to be wearing. This also tends to be seasonally dependant.


The bathroom is a similar sort of affair.  I want to be able to reach for stuff easily, so....


Send help.

This post: Storage Week! How A Makeup Pro Does It ... originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper
Share:

Wednesday 10 September 2014

Storage Week! Perfumes with Laurin ...


Storage week continues, and today we're highlighting Laurin's perfume collection.  Probably best you don't show this one to your maiden aunty, now we come to think of it ....


My beauty storage is what you might term "organised chaos". I know exactly where everything is, in my mind at least. In my current flat, I'm lucky enough to have my own bathroom (albeit in two halves) and I recently moved all my cosmetics from the bedroom to bathroom as I felt the lighting was better (on second thought, it isn't, but I'm moving again soon and I really can't be bothered to drag it all back). Storage is an unsophisticated combination of an over-the-door shoe organiser and a gift with purchase make-up bag. I felt pretty fancy when I picked up some brush canisters from Muji recently. There is also a wicker basket for palette storage. Like I said, FANCY.

 
At last count, I had about eighty bottles of perfume, which technically means I never need buy another bottle as long as I live. In reality, it means I never need buy another bottle this month. Probably. Unless I have some points on my Debenhams Beauty Club Card and there's a sale. I like seeing it all in one place, so I'm afraid I store it out of its boxes (but never in the bathroom, and never in direct sunlight). Currently it resides on the top of my wardrobe, and I am forever rearranging to make room for more. 


It's roughly organised by house, although I couldn't resist giving my two penis-shaped perfumes their own little corner. What do you mean, you don't own any penis perfumes?

Click to enlarge, but not if you're easily scared/shocked/aroused

This post: Storage Week! Perfumes with Laurin originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper
Share:

Monday 8 September 2014

Storage Week! Tindara

The increasingly mis-named Storage "Week" continues (sorry about that), and today we have Tindara showing you her drawers, Wednesday has Laurin showing us her ... er ... rather unorthodox perfume collection, and Friday will bring you Pro-Makeup Artist Luke showing us how we should really do it (or not ... you decide!).  Our editor, Louise, will be showing you hers next week, as she needs some time to tidy up.  Allegedly.

Anyhoo, over to Tindara:

Recently, I’ve been binge watching Orange is the New Black. It’s fantastically entertaining, really well written and also pretty funny with some proper great female characters. And another thing that I really love about it is that those women love their beauty and want to keep doing it despite their circumstances. All the way through, though, I couldn’t help wondering how the hell they stored their contraband stuff.



I love my storage paraphanalia, and tend to go as nuts in Muji as I do in a beauty hall. Their PP storage baskets are ideal for compartmentalising your haul. I also use their acrylic storage for lipsticks and glosses etc. I even recycle old Eucerin Hyaluron Filler Concentrate lids as liner/mascara pots, they’re clear plastic circular containers that would be good for brushes too, and since I use this product all the time, I assume I will always have lots. Recycling containers is useful, don’t spend money on new when that little rectangular thing that used to house cotton buds is exactly right for all your chunky lip pens.


As you can see my dressing table is pretty crowded. All my perfume, jewellery, daily skincare, current nail polishes and this week’s make-up are piled up on here. But believe it or not, it’s in some order. My fave things are my Muji clear jewellery box and the knock off Eames hang-it-all for my necklaces. Clearly, I need a larger dressing table; I’m working on it, but I’m also really fussy and am waiting for the perfect vintage piece to turn up. In the mean time, the drawers are pretty organised.


The first is blushers, lipsticks, eyeliners and mascaras.



The second is skincare and perfume samples, beauty tools, essential oils, glitters, eyeshadows, nail polishes and wraps.



The third drawer contains, glasses paraphanalia, hair accessories and brushes, and scarves.

I also have an excellent IKEA Lillangen tall slim bathroom cupboard in my hall with more Muji acrylic storage dividers inside for hair and body products, hair dryers and straightening/curling irons, brushes and rollers etc.  My husband gets a shelf here and a little more room in the small bathroom cabinet that has a few travel size toiletries, tweezers, wax strips, stuff I might need in the bathroom basically. Dunelm Mill do a great extendable bathroom caddy for shampoos and shower gels and we also have this in our bathroom. By my bed I have night creams oils and balms and a bag containing all my mani/pedi tools.



And that’s about it. My dream is a bathroom with amazing floor to ceiling storage built in. One day, grasshopper, one day. In the meantime I have a ‘mid century chest of drawers with mirror’ alert on ebay and a serious Muji habit.

This post: Storage Week - Tindara originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper
Share:

Tuesday 2 September 2014

Storage Week! Nails ...

We're a nosy bunch here at Get Lippie, so when we were mulling over makeup storage recently, our editor requested - nay, demanded - we all get out collections out for the lads, as it were.  So this week, sit back and enjoy perving over total strangers' makeup collections.  On the internet.

We're kicking the week off with Emily, our nail-obsessed newest addition to the team:



Disaster struck this week in the form of me returning to the gym for the first time in FOREVER and donning my boxing gloves again. Of course I had forgotten that long nails and boxing don't mix and an hour later I had broken pretty much every goddam nail, resulting in me having to cut them incredibly short.

I KNEW exercise was bad for you.

So, while my nails are pretty much out of action I thought I'd share my DIY nail storage solution with you. Now, my collection isn't HUGE (yet) but probably bigger than average and I got rather fed up with various boxes and bottles lying around my flat and never being able to find the colour I wanted. IKEA came to the rescue in the form of this set of storage drawers, which of course I painted in pretty pastels and embellished with pearls. Because, why not?


I have a drawer for everything: cotton wool and buds (the pointy ended ones which are great for tidying up), a multitude of files, clippers and such like and then one for nail stickers and embellishments. I used to travel to Japan for work a lot and always paid a visit to Tokyo Hands (AKA - the best shop in the world) to stock up on cute nail stickers...these doggy and rabbit ones are my favourites, I can't bring myself to actually use them.



The middle drawers house my nail art pens, brushes and larger sets (such as Ciate's awesome if short-lived Caviar and Velvet manicure sets) and then finally the bottom drawer houses all my polishes, in colour order, from reds through to glitters and top-coats. Geeky I know but it means I can find the colour I'm after pretty quickly!

So that's my DIY nail storage solution...though i'm pretty sure I'm going to need a bigger box sometime soon!  How do you store your nail goodies?

Emily

This post: Storage Week! Nails ... originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper Storage Week! Nails ...
Share:

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Monaco Beauty Trolley from Beauty-Boxes.com

  
This is the Monaco Beauty Trolley from beauty-boxes.com, and she's been on my beauty wishlist for longer than I care to remember, certainly since before I became a beauty blogger! Now I have one finally, and I'm wondering what took me so long ... Makeup storage has been a problem for me for a very long time, I've been collecting makeup for the best part of 20 years, after all!

The Monaco is a professional trolley, designed with hair stylists and makeup artists alike.  It consists of two parts, the lower, deep section, which you can set up as you like with the included dividers, and the top section, which is a more traditional kind of train case.  It comes complete with a spare lid so you can use the two sections individually:


I'm absolutely in love with this, I keep it in the living room next to my desk, and I keep the top filled with my foundation collection, and the bottom has all the stuff I haven't got around to reviewing yet ...


It's fairly hefty, reaching about 2 & 1/2 feet tall, and it weighs a good 20lbs empty, but it feels good and sturdy,  and as I won't be dragging it around airports and the like, the weight doesn't bother me too much.  It holds a fair amount too:


I like that the bottom section is deep so you can keep taller products in there, and that it comes complete with a tray for smaller items too.  You also get a carry-strap for carrying around the top section as a case if you so wanted.


It also comes a luggage handle, so you can pull it around with you.  There's a lot of good detailing:


I really wasn't expecting the snakeskin effect on the leather covering the case, so that came as a really nice surprise, it's lockable, and easy to take apart and put together, I really love it.  It'd make the perfect present for someone who is obsessed with makeup, and it makes a great talking point!

You can get this in black or baby-pink too, and it costs £127.45 from the Monaco Trolley page at beauty-boxes.com.  But, if your needs are lesser than mine (and they most likely are), then beauty-boxes.comhave a fantastic range of other storage products for your makeup, so you can't go wrong ...

The Fine Print: PR Sample.  I LOVE IT.
 
This post: Monaco Beauty Trolley from Beauty-Boxes.com originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper
Share:

Monday 20 August 2012

Storage - Muji 5 Drawer Boxes


My quest to contain and constrain my ever-growing makeup collection continues.  As well as The Cupboard, the train case and the helmer, and the lipstick corral, I recently acquired a couple of five-drawer units from Muji for my eyeshadow palettes, and some treasured singles.  Somehow I can't bear the idea of depotting, even though I know it makes sense!

 Anyhoo, the pic above is two five-drawer units, piled up into one big tower.

  
There are rubber feet on the bottom of each unit, which stops them slipping around when they're piled up on each other - I wasn't too sure about the wisdom of this initially, but I've not any issues, even though I'm fairly heavy-handed.

All that said, I'm a bit disappointed with these, as the drawers are very shallow.  Whilst an excellent size, there isn't a whole heap of depth to them, meaning I couldn't cram as much into the drawers as I might have liked to.  This, possibly, won't be a problem for people who have a "normal" makeup collection (i.e. one that isn't threatening to take over their entire home), but, I think I managed to get a fair bit into the drawers.  Would you like to see?  Stupid question, I know.  Here's some quite gratuitous pictures of makeup:


This is the drawer that impressed me most - I managed to get 14 Bourjois singles, in their notoriously bulky packaging, into one drawer!


Some old, OLD, favourites.


More old favourites, and some stuff I've not used yet ...


I love these teeny Stila palettes, the Balm palettes are always wonderful, and there's an Estee Lauder travel palette in there too.  Don't think I've shown you that one yet.


A cult favourite.  Can you believe I've only used the Naked palette once?  I'm not even sure why I bought it.  Blogger frenzy (a soon-to-be medically recognised condition), I suspect.


I like a bit of Dolce & Gabbana, can you tell?  That silver Laura Mercier eyeshadow is a new - and unexpected - favourite too.


I like the juxtaposition of Bobbi Brown and Victoria's Secret in this drawer.  Victoria's Secret makeup is surprisingly good.  I'm a bit of a fan.  It's a surprise to me too, don't worry.

 The Une eyeshadow palettes are a real treat.  And I adore the New CID palette an unhealthy amount.  God knows how much I'd like it if it wasn't a mixed lip and eye palette - they annoy the bejesus out of me.  Oh, and that pink Laura Mercier eyeshadow?  Very wearable.  I've been wearing that mixed with the silver one above a lot lately.  To the office.  I'm a rebel, what can I say?


And these are two jewels of my eye collection, a full Chantecaille palette, and a Prescriptives set that was a present from a good friend.  Man, I wish they hadn't closed Prescriptives!  I still miss it.

So there you have it.  Another addition to my makeup storage.  Pretty soon, the entire flat will be full of prettily stored makeup and no room to apply it ...

The Muji Acrylic Five Drawer box is £24.95 from muji.eu.  I ordered mine online and had it - full to bursting - on my desk two days later, very impressed!


The Fine Print: Purchase.  Products featured are a mixture of purchases, PR samples and gifts.  There was some serious dusting to be done before I took these pics, I tell you ...
 
This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.
Share:

Monday 25 June 2012

Lipstick Storage


I have a lot of lipstick, and I like to keep my regular favourites close to hand, so this Muji storage system is on my desk at all times, filled with a selection of favourites.  I tend to do my face and eye-makeup first, then pick whichever lipstick suits my fancy on a particular day, sometimes it's a bit hit and miss, but hey, you have to mix things up for yourself, don't you?  





There are a selection of colours, shades and textures, everything from clear balms, to full-on opaque RED lipsticks (of which there are more than a couple) and stains.  I never know what mood I'm going to be in from day-to-day, so I like to have a proper choice around.




How do you decide which lipstick you're going to wear every day?

This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.
Share:

Monday 21 May 2012

Makeup Storage

 People are always asking how I store my makeup, and, after spending a day piddling about with instagram a couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd share the pictures here too!  This is ... most ... (not all, sadly!) of my makeup collection, arranged in a Helmer from Ikea, and in the traincase I bought from Kryolan last year. There's also a sneaky peek at the bunch of palettes I keep in a Muji box at the bottom there too...


In the train case is the majority of the products I reach for on a daily basis, my makeup "bag", if you will, here's the products most in heavy rotation at the moment:



It's a melange of foundations, blushers, eyeshadows, mascaras and eyeliners.  No lip products to be seen!  I'm on a bit of a NARS kick at the moment, you might be able to tell ...


Into the Helmer proper, the first drawer is foundations, primers, powders and other base products:




The second drawer down is my eye drawer, shadows, liners, mascaras and primers:




Yeah, more NARS, I know ...


Third drawer down is LIPS:




You might have noticed there were no lip products in the train case, this is because what I like to do on a daily basis is just stick my hand in here and wear whatever my hand lands on.  A lip lucky dip, if you like...


Fourth drawer is, of course, cheeks (have you figured out the order I do my makeup in yet? You should have!) blushers, highlighters and contours galore ...




Just the odd one or two, you know.


And finally, the bottom two drawers contain nail varnish. Drawer five mainly houses my Chanel collection:


(And the Dior, the Deborah Lippman, the Rococo and the China Glaze collections)


Whilst drawer number six is:




OPI, Estee Lauder, (man I love those bottles!) and everything else ...


The rest of my makeup is in boxes around the flat (lots of boxes around the flat), and then there's The Cupboard.


One day, dear readers, I'll show you the cupboard, and you'll realise why it gives MrLippie nightmares ...

This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.
Share:
© Get Lippie | All rights reserved.
Blogger Template by pipdig