The Makeup Monologues

I never ended up posting a July Favourites, even though there were some standout products in that month. I figured I'd just combine the two months of July and August into a Summer Favourites type of post! We're going to start off with eyeshadow palettes. I've got one for each month! July's standout palette was the e.l.f. 'mad for matte' palette, and August's was easily the Anastasia Modern Renaissance palette. The Modern Renaissance palette was one I wanted from the moment I saw it. It's got a ton of unique shades that are still very wearable. The pigmentation of these shadows is insane- I actually tend to spend a lot of time building my crease up because I prefer to use a lighter hand with pigmented shadows. They have a lot of kickup, very similar to the LORAC formula, but that's something I don't mind at all. All of the shadows work very well with one another, and I love that the mattes are all pigmented and soft enough to be used as ...

It seems that whenever I go on vacation, it's to spend a couple of days in Toronto. Truth be told, that's all I can afford at the moment- but you can bet that I'm gonna shop while I'm there! Sometime at the end of July, a good friend of mine from uni asked if I wanted to spend two days in The Big Smoke and check out some stuff he had free passes for (museums and the like- he works for Tourism Ontario in the Niagara region). We ended up doing a bunch of things I'd never been to before- mainly the ROM, the Bata Shoe Museum, the St. Lawrence Market, and a couple of bars in the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood.  And of course, I dragged him into every makeup store we passed. Once my mom, sister and I drove down, we decided to park at Yorkdale and take the subway downtown from there (I was carrying everything for the trip in my backpack and large purse. I did my best not to look suspicious, believe me!) We split up so my mom could go to the archives (she's a geneal...