Monday, June 20, 2011

Hobby Time!: Make-up edition

LinkI love make-up. I don't own a lot or even use very much, but seeing new colour palettes, formulations, textures, products and ad campaigns really appeals to my artsy-fartsy sensibilities.

Here's a visual inventory of all my colour cosmetics!



Temptalia is my favourite make-up blog. Christine is always great about showing previews of new collections and reviews and swatches tons of cosmetics each week. Recently she asked her readers two questions: "Have you ever gone on a no-buy?" (moratorium on purchasing beauty products) and "Do you organize your makeup products by brand or product?" I suppose my answer would be that I organize my make-up by drawing them in my sketchbook and painting them with watercolours!

Whenever I complete an illustration assignment I always get this urge to treat myself. I decided that by documenting what I already have, I could assuage these cravings. And it's worked, at least for now! I'm not sure I'll go on a formal no-buy, but I am content to draw and paint the stuff I want instead of purchasing it. Case in point:

Urban Decay's Naked palette is legendary for being hard to find at Sephora. Whenever I visit a Sephora location I look for it and I've never, ever seen it in stock. Which is probably a good thing because it's not cheap. When you price out how much each individual colour would be if you bought it separately it's a steal, but it's still $48 USD. Temptalia gave it a rare A+ rating which made me want it even more. But sketching it somehow made me want it less -- I feel like after I've studied a product and painted my little illustration of it, I somehow own it already. Doing the visual inventory of the eyeshadows I already have made me realize I already have some similar colours.

One year my sister was going to get me a make-up palette for xmas, so I started doing a ton of research. I read reviews on MakeupAlley to see how highly rated the individual components were. I went to Sephora to see the products in person. I sketched them, and here were four of the contenders:


In the end I settled on Urban Decay's Urban Arsenal, which was similar to the one pictured here (Urban Survival Set) and I'm still very pleased with my choice. Here's the winner!


I've started to share more of my hobbies and personal work on my blog, I hope people find it interesting -- I'd love to hear from you!

**EDIT:
I forgot to mention! In the first two pics of the post I actually swatched my make-up on the pages :P. For the powdery products I dabbed a tiny bit of white craft glue (dries clear) onto the paper then blotted a fully-loaded eyeshadow brush onto the glue. There was glitter, shimmer, and pigment all over my dining table. The brush wasn't harmed during the production of the swatches as the glue grabbed the pigment first. And the glue is somewhat water-soluble.

I was actually daydreaming that a simple field kit could be constructed with a glue stick, eyeshadow brush, and notepad. Don't know how much sales associates would appreciate that, but it'd be a fun way to take a swatch of colour home to compare it to the rest of your collection!

19 comments:

Pao Tovar said...

This is sooo cool! congratulations!!

Pao Tovar said...

What you do is really cool! totally awesome !

Miss Celofán said...

OMG I've just fallen in love with your illustrations and with your makeup collection!

Anonymous said...

This is so lovely. Greetings from a german girl, who is in Helsinki at the moment. I adore your sketches and the idea!

Julia Minamata said...

Thanks so much! I'm glad to share it and Christine at Temptalia's been kind enough to show it to her readers who obviously love make-up as much as I do :D

Julia Minamata said...

Just edited the post to include a bit at the end about how I got the powdery cosmetics to swatch on my sketchbook paper -- Would it be horrible to actually swatch something into a sketchbook in a store under the disapproving eyes of a sales associate? :P

Angela said...

What an amazing idea! I just might have to try this myself ;D
btw I really don't think associates would mind if you swatched something into your sketchbook.. they watch people swatch things on their arms and hands all the time!

Ilja said...

Oh wow this is so cool! you've really inspired me... I'm going to try do the same thing over here ^_^

Julia Minamata said...

I definitely recommend trying it! Not only is it fun to take stock of your make-up collection, it really has tempered my desire to add to it.

Although unfortunately my energies have been diverted to trying all sorts of different fragrances. I practically live on Fragrantica.com now :P.

Fragrances are fun because whenever I'm in a mall I can wander into a Sephora or a Shoppers Drug Mart or even a Bath & Bodyworks or Body Shop and spritz to my heart's content! And then when I get home I look up the fragrances and see if I can tease apart the individual notes.

Hanne said...

I love this! I'm going to show them on my blog :) With your link off course! I hope that's okay. Love from Belgium, Hanne

My Linh said...

Such lovely sketches. Very inspiring. :)

Dhini said...

Wow awesome. I saw your art at Ilja`s site (Beautypolish.nl)
I would love to try this myself :D

Julia Minamata said...

Definitely give it a try! It's a great way to see what your make-up collection has and it's a lot of fun :). It's even something artsy to pin up or frame somewhere!

Taken a step further, it would also be fun to do "look charts" like MAC does for different make-up looks on their site, except with your own make-up! It'd be a nice way of documenting when a combination really worked.

Christine Rojas-Laviña said...

I love it! :)

Julia Minamata said...

Thanks, Christine! I'm thinking of doing a perfume version next, although not spraying on the page because that could get really smelly fast :P. The bottles are so pretty!

makeupmag said...

I thought I'd left a comment here earlier but it must've disappeared thanks to me writing on the phone! I love the illustrations - it's interesting seeing makeup presented in a different yet relevant art form. That picture of the UD Naked palette is so cute! I'd love to see you do one of the 120 shadow palettes. ;)

Julia Minamata said...

Glad that you like it! Soon Sephora and other places will be coming out with special holiday kits for xmas so I'm sure I'll be making some new make-up sketches for my wish list!

Lisa said...

I absolutely love the idea, and it looks amazing!
I'm definitely gonna try it too, thanks so much for sharing :D

Julia Minamata said...

Thanks, Lisa! Doing these sketches and reading http://www.temptalia.com/ have really helped me to consider what I have in my collection before I make a purchase. Temptalia will list possible dupes for make-up and it's even better if you compare it yourself!

I bought the UD Naked 1 palette but ended up returning it when I decided I already had colours that were fairly similar. Here's my comparison: http://juliaminamata.blogspot.ca/2011/07/urban-decay-naked-palette-vs-my.html.