Where to shop for makeup?

It's been too hot lately to want to do up my face if I don't have a gig, so I figured that this week I'd talk about where I shop for makeup. Consider it a bit of a continuation of yesterday's theme on dressing like a pro. Once you've got great clothes for your body, you need good makeup for your face.

Ulta was the first place that I started buying makeup. I like that it's like a department store for cosmetics and hair, that there's one in the mall I frequent most often (in fact, when I first started buying makeup there was a Borders bookstore next door, which meant I spent a lot of lazy Saturday afternoons shopping for books and makeup), and that they carry upscale brands and drugstore brands. They also frequently have sales and coupons. Unfortunately, those coupons are rarely good on "prestige" brands like Urban Decay (my addiction).

Sephora is my current favorite. It's across town, which saves me from making too many visits, and they don't carry drugstore brands, so I usually spend more money there. I tend to get great service at my local Sephora and I like that they'll put pretty much anything on my face, and that if I don't like it when I get it home, I can return it. They seem to rotate things pretty often, which means there's always something new and exciting, but also that sometimes they just stop carrying stuff that you like. They do coupons and sales less often than Ulta, but their sales are less restrictive.

The MAC Counter. I haven't let myself go into an actual MAC store, but the counter at Dillards is pretty nice. Because MAC is a little more expensive and it's not really a browsing sort of place, I usually only go when I need something specific. That said, my favorite gel liner and dark neutral eyeshadow are from MAC, and I always get great service. I like that if I just want one thing, they find me that thing and don't try to sell me anything else.

Target. Yeah, I buy stuff at Target, because sometimes you just want a Blast Flipstick (hehehehe) or some e.l.f. lashes or some Sally Hansen nail polish. Of course the problem with Target is that you can't try anything on, and there's no trained employees to advise you, so you just have to hope for the best. But they have a pretty big selection, they put stuff on sale, and it's convenient.

On-line. I don't buy on-line very often, mainly only if there's a sale or what I want is sold out locally. Occasionally I'll take a chance on some handmade stuff from Etsy. But in general I prefer to try my makeup on, and of course when it's 100+ degrees out, things would just melt and get gross.

Do you shop someplace that I didn't cover here? Tell me about it in the comments!

Dress For The Job You Want

They say dress for the job you want, not the job you have, so I dress like a faerie whenever I can.

I think one of the hardest parts of transitioning from amateur to pro is investing in good, professional costuming. Although it's more important to be a highly skilled dancer with great performance skills, audiences and clients are still going to expect you to look the part as well, and that means retiring your student recital clothes and dressing up a bit more.

It's especially hard for a Tribal Fusion dancer to know what to buy. The internet has plenty of advice for Egyptian-style dancers looking to start restaurant gigs -- buy a silver or gold bedlah and a couple different colored skirts, then as you make more money buy a second bedlah, now you have tons of mix and match options -- but Tribal costuming is a little less straight-forward. You have to find something that fits your style of dance, your personality, and your budget.

This costume by Anaya Tribal is a pretty good example of a good investment for a pro just starting out. I can wear the bra/belt set and skirt together, or I can pair the set with a green skirt or pants, put them over a 25 yard skirt to go old school, wear them with a bustle for steampunk, or throw on those wings and be a faerie. Likewise, since the skirt is a nice neutral brown, I could wear it with various green tops, or something in ivory or turquoise.

So here's my hard-earned tips, from one budding pro to those who come after me:

1. Quality over quantity. I have piles and piles of cheap bangles and huge earrings. If I had saved that money instead, I could invest in some gorgeous Taureg jewelry. Once you decide to go pro, stop buying the cheap stuff and set your dollars aside to buy something nice at the next festival.

2. But you don't have to buy the most expensive thing. One of the things that I wanted when I went to Tribal Fest was a spiky bracelet that actually fit. There were gorgeous antique real-silver ones for hundreds and hundreds of dollars... and a cheap white metal one that fit perfectly and was only $30something. Guess what? Most people in the audience won't know the difference. Someday when I'm a big shot I'll invest in the real thing, but this one will serve me well for now.

3. Before you buy something, think of what it will go with. Do you already have something at home that it will match? Does it fit in with the mental image of the next costume you want to make? It doesn't matter how awesome a pair of dance pants is if you have nothing to wear them with (I'm hoping this one will sink in for me eventually).

4. Make whatever you can. I already know how to make bras and belts and I'm learning to sew with an actual machine now, too. Doing your own sewing will save you some money and also allow you to have more customization in your look.

5. Look for luxurious and awesome materials. Velvet and lace are elegant. Metallics are hot right now. Vintage pieces and things that look vintage automatically make you look fancier. Put out the word that you want peoples' old costume jewelry. You'll got a lot of junk but also a lot of nifty stuff that can be repurposed. Necklaces can easily become belly-drapes. Brooches can be pinned onto a bra or belt. Cut things up for their beads. Speaking of cutting things up, you can cut up tacky old dresses and use the beaded fabric for decorating your bras. Go forth and hit the thrift stores.

6. Buy versatile basics. While we may not be able to fall back on a metallic bedleh and colorful chiffon skirts, we can buy good basics that can be accessorized for different looks. For instance, I bought a pair of velvet and lace pants in teal and emerald. Depending on how I accessorize them, they can either be plain ol' Tribal Fusion-y, faeriesque or mermaidish. A basic black skirt could go vampy, Victorian Goth, elegant and modern, or serve as the base for bright colors.

7. Get a second opinion. Sometimes it's good to consult with your teacher/mentor, or a dance friend, or a random person who's in the booth with you. They can give you an idea of how flattering, practical, or awesome something is before you buy.

8. Watch out for dated looks. Fringe belts and yarn dreads are mostly out. Almost no one performs in Melos and a crop-top anymore. Like all fashion, bellydance styles come and go, and while an audience of the General Public might not know the difference, the audience at a bellydance festival will.

Do you have any other tips you'd like to share for building a good Tribal Fusion wardrobe? Share it in the comments!

Three Eyeliner Pencils

 If you've ever wondered what I look like after dancing four numbers at Open Stage and then dancing to awesome live music on a night that happens to be over 100 degrees, well, here you go. I have got to remember to take my makeup pictures before my gigs. That look on my face says "What? Do I really have to take a picture before I wash my face and go to bed? And why did I take my false lashes off first?"

 Anyway, last night's look involved three different eyeliner pencils. I really like buying pencils, I think it's because they remind me so much of colored pencils and crayons. I loved to color when I was a kid! Plus eyeliner pencils are a really easy way to add a little more color to an eye look that's just not quite popping for you.

Here are the three pencils I used:
1. Sephora Flashy Liner Waterproof in Flashy Blue. I think they discontinued these so this review doesn't do you much good. Sorry!
2. Kat Von D Waterproof Autograph Pencil in Black Metal Love.
3. Sephora Nano in Pure White which is currently out of stock. I am just striking out today!

Haaaaaaaand swaaaaaaatch! The picture probably doesn't show it well but the Flashy Blue is nicely metallic. I like it a lot and wish I had more than two colors from this line (the other is a green, surprise I know) and the Black Metal Love has lots of silver glitter (which is why I bought it, because I have more plain black pencils than I can ever use, thanks for that UD). The white is a plain ol' white. My thoughts on each one:

1. This is a great accent color. Held up well under my eye all night. Most of it came off easily when I removed my makeup but there was one spot under each eye where I had some blue staining.

2. Applied really smoothly, held up well, came off easily at the end of the night. $10 is a bit much for such a small pencil but I might buy more colors especially if I have a coupon.

3. Nano liners are a good deal at $5. I tried this on my waterline to brighten my eyes and make them look larger. I think it helped? However, the white pencil picked up the black and blue liner really easily, so next time I should plan ahead and do the white first rather than making up my eye look as I went along. Did not actually look white in waterline, just brightened it, but since it looks white on my hand it will probably look white when used around the eye. Could make for fun accents.

Over all: I'm sorry if this shatters any of your images about bellydancers being glamorous, but I sweated a LOT last night and my eyeliner stayed in place. I wore these for about 6 hours, danced a whole lot, adjusted my fake lashes and my liner still looked fine. So any of these would be good buys for a dancer.

Why Open Stage?

I spent MINUTES working on this graphic, you bet I'm going to use it more than once!

Tomorrow is our monthly Open Stage at Sky Bar here in Tucson. Yep, we're having Open Stage even on 4th of July, because we like routine.

It's my opinion that every decent-sized dance community should have a regularly occurring open stage or hafla, whether it's monthly, every other month or quarterly. And let me tell you why: a dancer who has been bitten by the performance bug and has no appropriate performance outlets will start to make questionable decisions. We all know the logic: "I really need more practice performing so I'll go see if the manager at Chateau de Kebab will let me perform for free just for the experience" or "Sure I'll dance at your event, but since I'm just a student you only have to pay me $10."

The truth is, once a dancer has decided that she loves to perform, those once or twice a year student recitals don't cut it, especially for the dancer who wants to be a soloist but isn't given the opportunity to at recitals (because if everyone got to solo the recital would be 5 hours long!). If she hasn't been told about proper behavior and undercutting, she'll naturally start to have these thoughts (I know, because I did), and even if she has been told she might try to rationalize it by saying "Oh, it's OK because they don't normally have dancers so I'm not taking work from anyone..." etc etc etc.

Even if a dancer isn't directly taking work from someone, if she goes out performing on her own before she's ready, she can make a lot of mistake, get taken advantage of, and make the dance look bad. If the audience at Chateau de Kebab doesn't know that they're watching a student, they're going to think that they're watching a pro and they're not going to be impressed. They're not going to want to hire a bellydancer for their next big party.

Open stage and all-level haflas give those eager students an appropriate place to get their dance fix. And when the emcee says "Jill is a student who has been dancing for six months" and "Jane is a professional dancer with ten years of training" the audience can see the difference. They can see that Jill loves what she does but needs more work, and that Jane is a polished performer who would be ideal to dance at their company's New Year's Eve Soiree. Jill gets to dance, Jane gets to advertise, the audience gets to see what the city has to offer by way of dance (because in my perfect world, Open Stage spans the entire community, and tribal, Egyptian, and AmCab dancers perform, maybe with the occasional guest who does hula or tango or hip hop). Everybody wins at Open Stage!

I've been working out

This photo by Liora K makes me feel pretty awesome, because I think it's the first time I've ever been able to see my back and shoulder muscles. I wasn't even aware that they were visible until this shoot, because it's not like I can easily look at my own shoulders.

I'm feeling pretty buffed-out because I just finished a 30 day challenge where I built up to doing 250 squats and 100 push-ups. For the entire month of June I worked out 3 days on, 1 day off, no matter what else I had going on (except for one day when a gig ate my entire day and left no time or energy for workouts, so it ended up actually being a 31 day challenge).

I have mixed feelings about these 30 day challenges. On the one hand, I feel pretty proud of myself (and my husband too! He even kept it up when he went to NJ for a week) for accomplishing them, and I definitely see results in my back, shoulders and thighs. I have better range of motion in my push-ups now, too. On the other hand, I feel like my body probably would have been better served by doing a more varied work-out, and there were days when my thighs and hips were constantly sore and tired (I was very glad we didn't have dance class for the last 10 days of the month because I don't know if I could have handled both). Also, while my push-ups improved, my squats didn't get any better because I had to focus on increasing the quantity I did rather than the quality.

Going forward, I want to keep doing squats and push-ups, because they are good for me, but I want to do less of them and throw in some other things, like crunches or something, so more of my body gets a workout. My main worry is that without a 30 day challenge hanging over my head, I'll be more likely to not do my exercises when I'm too tired or it's too hot.

Oh, and speaking of too hot? It was 100 degrees or over every single day of June. I don't recommend choosing the hottest month of the year to start a new workout routine.

Why you should be wearing lip tar for your next performance

 

I've already talked a bit about Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Lip Tar because I used the green as an accent over other colors. I was so happy with it that I decided I should get a color that I could wear for all of my bellydance performances. I've used it two or three times now and I have to say I am really happy with it! I chose "Vintage" which is a nice wine red with a bit of purple/magenta undertone. The Sephora website calls it a Deep Burgundy and it looks that way in the tube but that's not how it wears.

 It comes in a cute little zipper pouch with a cute little brush for application. The cute little brush comes with a little plastic sleeve and you should not lose that, or you will end up with lip tar all over the inside of your cute little zipper pouch. Learn from my mistakes!

 

Here is a handswatch (Blogger has a case of the dumbs today and rotated the image. No wonder I am considering migrating to Wordpress). This was the tiniest dot on the brush. You can see how the color varies in intensity depending on how much you blend it out.

And here it is on my face! I made my lips WAY big because we were dancing on the big stage under bright lights. Oh, stage makeup, you make me look so.... different. Anyway. Nice intense color.

What I love about lip tar is that despite its name, it isn't sticky or goopy, so my hair doesn't get stuck in it. The color lasts forever and stays in place pretty well (sometimes I get a little transfer onto drinks, but not as much with an actual lipstick), but then when it's time to take it off... it comes right off! The instructions say to apply clear first, which I haven't done but I have found that putting down a lip primer first keeps it from leaving stains behind in any cracks in my lips, which makes for ease of removal.

I swear, this stuff is so magical I'd think it was made of pixie dust and unicorn tears, but the package insists that it is Vegan, Cruelty Free and Gluten Free (is gluten common in lip products? I really don't know). So it's a great product that you can feel great about using, and it comes in so many colors! No matter what your dance style, you can find the color you need, from a demure nude to a brilliant red to pure cyan blue and deep metallic black.

If my words aren't enough to convince you, I totally recommend going to Sephora to try some on. Wear it all day and decide for yourself! (Personally, I like to go to the store and put on Lovecraft because it's the sort of ridiculous sparkly pink I would never normally wear)

Follow Your Dreams Interview with... My Dad!

Let me tell you a little bit about my Dad, Rick Higginson. In addition to bearing half the responsibility for bringing me into this world, he's probably about 90% responsible for the fact that I'm a writer (my Mom was in charge of my schooling, but Dad eventually took over my vocabulary and creative writing assignments, and he surely gave me a genetic predisposition towards story telling). While I have put my fiction writing on the back burner to focus on my dream of being a professional dancer, my Dad has fully embraced his inner author and is self-publishing his Christian science fiction stories. It's not easy to be a niche author, so I'm very proud of him for writing the stories he wants to tell for the audience that wants to read them. If you'd like to learn more about him, visit his blog, Pod Tales and Ponderings.

By the way, I wanted to run this LAST week in honor of Father's Day, but I've been so caught up in troupe costume madness that I didn't e-mail him until that Saturday. So Happy Belated Father's Day, Dad! Thank you for taking the time to share your dream with my readers! And now, on with the interview!

Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your dream.

I'm Rick Higginson, and I'm pursuing my dream of being a writer.

 

When did you decide to follow your dream? What pushed you to do it? 

 

I've wanted to follow it since I was a teen, but I think what really shifted me from the "someday" mode to the "get with it" mode was the options that are now available to writers, that we did not have thirty years ago. The "push," if you will, was simply that drive that comes from the characters becoming real to me.

 

There's a lot of debate in the writing community about traditional publishing versus self-publishing versus ebooks. What made you choose self-publishing? 

 

One of the determining factors was that "Cardan's Pod" had first run as a serialized novel on Collector Times. As such, the only way I would ever get a traditional publisher to consider it, is if it were already selling enough copies to make good business sense to them to pick it up. Few traditional publishers will even consider something that has been "previously published," regardless of the previous format. Self-publishing allowed me to get the book finalized and into print, and to start building a readership.

You recently had a Kickstarter to fund the editing and printing of your second novel, Marta's Pod. Would you recommend crowd-sourcing to other aspiring authors?

 

It is definitely a viable option to cover the various expenses of taking a manuscript from the revision stage to the finalized, published product. The costs of the various steps needed can add up to quite a sum (editing alone for "Marta's Pod" is going to be about $950, and it is worth every penny), and many new authors just don't have the extra money lying around. Crowd-sourcing allows for family, friends, and even complete strangers, to partner with the author in getting the book into print.

What was the hardest part of following your dream?

 

Accepting that very few writers actually make a living at it. This is the kind of dream one must pursue out of love for the art, and not out of a promise of a lucrative career. Some writers make very good money, but like most arts, those that do are a very small minority.

When you told people about your dream, what sort of reaction did you get? Did that affect your decision to do it anyway?

 

The reaction when I was young was very much the above information. What really affected my decision to postpone pursuing the dream, was meeting author Richard Armour back in High School. He advised a group of us aspiring young writers to keep the day job, and write for the love of writing. He commented about how the pressures of the deadlines and the need for a paycheck can quickly destroy our love of the art, until it becomes just another job.

Was there a point where you wanted to just give up? If so, what inspired you to keep going?

 

There was a long stretch where I all but resigned myself to the idea that writing was just a pipe dream. I think what kept me going is the same thing that keeps many fiction writers going - my characters just wouldn't go away. I've heard some writers complain about "writer's block," but honestly, I think I have the opposite problem. I don't seem to be able to block my characters out.

You wrote one book when I was very young, and then started writing again when I was an adult. I don't remember you really writing during my childhood -- what inspired you to start writing again?

 

Actually, there were several times during those years when I made some false starts on several stories, and just never got very far with them. The original idea for "Cardan's Pod" actually dates back to about 1993, and it wasn't long after that I knew the basics of how the story would begin and how I wanted it to end, but there was just a gap there I couldn't quite fill. It wasn't until about 2004 that the "keystone" scene occurred to me, and then I couldn't write it fast enough. That was what it took to kickstart my writing again.

Your work has some religious themes to it and you were recently invited to participate on some panels at the upcoming Faith Writers conference in Portland Oregon. Would you like to tell my readers a bit about the conference?

 

Well, since this is my first time at the Conference, I only have a general idea what to expect. However, the Faithwriters Conferences are geared towards encouraging Christian writers, and offering them workshops on different aspects of both the art side and the business side of writing. Since, so far, I'm much better at writing books than I am at being a salesman, I'm looking forward to the workshops on marketing aspects.

Any parting words of advice for those who are hesitating to follow their dreams?

I love this quote from John Barrymore. "A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams." If we pursue our dreams, and they don't work out the way we'd hoped, then at least we gave it a shot. If we just assume it won't work out, though, we're going to reach the end of our lives steeped in regret and wondering, "what if?" We don't always have to abandon a steady job to pursue a dream. We may have to be creative to find ways to integrate our dreams into the everyday realities and responsibilities we live with, but life is too short to just accept defeat without ever facing the challenge.