Throwback Thursday: My Makeup Evolution

Alright, so this post has potential to be a dangerous one...because I'm going to be discussing my makeup evolution, from 8th grade when I first started wearing makeup, to now, and how my skills and techniques have grown over the years.

Lemme give you a fair warning: I was a dopey kid. Like seriously. Really freaking dopey.

We'll start out when I was in 8th grade. It was when I was still really trying to find myself. All the way through 6th grade, I was a total tomboy, and I went to a tiny private school. 7th grade was the first time I went to a large public school, and 8th grade was when I finally started wearing makeup. I started wearing makeup because I was coming out of the 2006 emo phase. Luckily, mine wasn't too bad, but I did attempt to rock black eyeliner and some curtainy side bangs...

When I first started wearing makeup, my routine was very, very simple. I would smudge my CoverGirl Perfect Point Plus on my lower lashline, throw on a coat or two of the Maybelline Great Lash Mascara (because let's be real...who didn't own this mascara at one point in time?), and buff the Physician's Formula Talc-Free Mineral Powder all over my face. To this day, I continue to ask myself why in the world I ever thought this was a good look.

After this, I went into high school. My freshman year, I had a really solid group of friends and it was definitely one of my better years in high school. My makeup situation got a bit better, but this was also when I discovered liquid liner...and the struggle that comes with it.

Whenever I see these photos, I'm still shocked at just how thin I was. At this time, I was medically underweight, although I ate plenty of junk and did very little physical activity aside from walking. This was the year that I started out wearing the L'Oreal HiP Color Chrome Eyeliner in black on my upper lash line, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to prevent it from transferring onto my brow bone throughout the day. I then switched from the L'Oreal liner to the Wet n Wild H2O Proof Liquid Liner, which I still swear by today. I also graduated from wearing a mineral powder to wearing a liquid foundation, which was the Almay Truly Lasting Color foundation. I think I continued wearing the Maybelline Great Lash Mascara through this year as well.

Then my sophomore year happened. I actually choose not to remember much from my sophomore year, simply because it wasn't a very good year. I struggled a lot with my confidence this year, and it was a big year of firsts. This was the year I had my first major breakup, as well as my first year in drama and colorguard -- I even got asked to prom that year.

Someone should have taken my tweezers away from me. This year, an upperclassman in drama introduced me to the Maybelline Ultra Liner Liquid Liner. This was a really great product that I ended up using for years after that, and this was also the first year I attempted a winged liner, for prom. I have no idea what brand of eyeshadow I used for my look that night, and probably for good reason. I don't know why anyone let me leave the house looking like this. Thanks, mom.

My junior year was a bit of a golden age for me. I had solid friends, I had found my place in my drama department, I was captain of my colorguard, and I was starting to really learn how to do my makeup. At this point, the eyebrows continued getting thinner, and kind of started to look a lot like commas.

Look at that improvement! This was the year that my boyfriend at the time bought me the Coastal Scents 88 Palette, and I really started to play with color. I continued using the Almay Truly Lasting Color foundation and the Maybelline Ultra Liner Liquid Liner, but switched up my mascara to the L'Oreal Voluminous Carbon Black Mascara. I also discovered the L'Oreal HiP Color Chrome Eyeliner in "Silver Lightning," which I wore on my lower waterline to brighten up my eyes, and the Wet n Wild Color Icon Blusher in "Mellow Wine."

From here, I'm gonna skip over my senior year, because I was incredibly lazy that year. I basically stopped wearing makeup altogether, aside from blush to make me look more awake. I had major senioritis. We're gonna skip right on over to when I was in beauty school!

This was when my makeup hoarding began to get a little bit intense, and I got really good at winged liner. Honestly, I can't even tell you what products I was using the most of at the time because I was constantly switching back and forth between products. I can definitely say, though, that I improved a LOT over the years, and I had drama and colorguard to really thank for that, since I had to do makeup that was consistently out of my comfort zone in order to perform.

And now we've reached today, in which photos of me today are all over this blog already. My skills in makeup have improved immensely sine I was 13, and the magic of puberty and braces seriously did me well.

I hope you found this post as fun as I did! Trust me, as I was going through my external hard drive, looking for pictures to post, there were so many cringeworthy photos I chose not to use. I was laughing so hard while looking through all of those photos!

Do you have any embarrassing photos from when you were young? Any makeup faux pas you're willing to share? If you're brave enough, feel free to post them in the comments below!

- D.

Throwback Thursday + My Psoriasis Story

This is going to be a very long-winded post, as well as a post I've debated on typing for a very long time. But about a week ago, Andrew and I signed up for the Team NPF Walk in Orange County this June, and I decided it was time to talk about my battle with psoriasis. I'll also be included a few throwback photos during the time periods of my life that I'll be talking about to avoid such a huge wall of pictureless text!

If you don't know what psoriasis is, it's an autoimmune disorder that causes flaky, raised, red and silver patches on the skin. MayoClinic defines psoriasis as "a common skin condition that changes the life cycle of skin cells. Psoriasis causes cells to build up rapidly on the surface of the skin. The extra skin cells form thick, silvery scales and itchy, dry, red patches that are sometimes painful.
Psoriasis is a persistent, long-lasting (chronic) disease. There may be times when your psoriasis symptoms get better alternating with times your psoriasis worsens."

The general consensus of psoriasis is that it is caused when your T cells (a type of white blood cell) begin to attack healthy tissue, as if they've mistaken the healthy tissue for damaged tissue. If you've ever seen or heard the musical RENT, you'll probably have noticed they talk about T cells a lot (more specifically, in the song "Life Support"). That is because, people with AIDS have depleted T cells, which is why it is so dangerous for them to get sick. A bit of a tangent, but it's kind of just an example of why T cells are so important. Yes, it sucks that my T cells have begun attacking my healthy tissue, but a person needs them to survive. 

Anyway, when my T cells attack healthy tissue, my immune system responds as it normally would by swelling in the affected area. Because the T cells are attacking the healthy tissue, the healthy skin cells, T cells, and other white blood cells begin to reproduce rapidly, which creates the patches of skin, or "plaques," that you typically see on a person with psoriasis. Essentially, my skin cells turn over too quickly and it causes a back up that results in skin plaques in the affected area. I know, it's a little hard to understand and explain, but I really think that MayoClinic has done an amazing job of explaining it. 

Oh yeah, and not only does psoriasis have a physical effect on the body, but also a psychological. In fact, people with psoriasis are twice as likely to develop depression than those without.

So when I was young, maybe around 6 or 7 I had my very first outbreak of psoriasis. Of course, at the time, we didn't know it was psoriasis. It developed all over my scalp, and was incredibly itchy and irritated. It bled a lot, and because I was so young, I really struggled to understand that I shouldn't be scratching and picking at it. My mom applied a steroid cream to the plaques and after a few months of topical treatment, they healed up.

Here's a photo of me around the age it happened. Yep, that's me in the cow costume, getting ready for my school's Christmas play.

I thought that would be the last of it, but when I was 17, I developed plaques on my scalp again, this time around my hairline. I figured it was just dry skin, or eczema, so I applied lotion to it consistently and hoped it would go away. When it didn't, I thought maybe it was ringworm or something. Gross, yeah, but I couldn't think of what else it would be. My mom, who's a nurse, brought me an antifungal cream from the pharmacy and I used that for about a month. Absolutely nothing happened. I kind of just shrugged it off and started using the same steroid cream I used when I was a kid, and again, it went away. 

Fast forward just a couple of months, to when I was in beauty school. when suddenly, I noticed it coming back. This time, I also began to see it on the inner elbow area, behind my ears, as well as around the bikini line. Finally, I decided to do some extensive research, and found photos of psoriasis online. It looked exactly like the condition I had. I figured I would just keep using the steroid cream and be really careful about the products I used, and hopefully it would get better. I think the worst part, though, was that my friends in school were too scared to touch my hair because they "didn't want to hurt me" even when I said they wouldn't.

Here's a couple of pictures of me with some of my best friends during the early development of my psoriasis (featuring Ciarlene with her long hair, my sassy face, and the best hair of my life):

In the above photo, you can actually kind of see a weird random patch of skin in my bangs that embarrassingly enough almost looks like a bald spot. That was actually a cowlick caused by my psoriasis that I had never had until around that time! Seriously though, my hair looked so good during this time of my life.

Anyways! I left beauty school in August of that year, and finally, after months of dealing with the itchy scales on my skin, I decided to go to the doctor and get something done about it. It was also around this time that I met Andrew (cue photo from early in our relationship). At this point, my doctor prescribed me a topical oil. It worked alright at first, but I noticed after about a month or two of using it, it stopped being effective. So I went back to the doctor, and she recommended me to a dermatologist.

When I went to the dermatologist and told him I believed it was plaque psoriasis, he took one look at it and said "Yep, that's exactly what it looks like." He took a sample of it (gross) and prescribed me some other kind of topical medicine. Like the oil that my doctor prescribed, it worked for a little while, and then stopped after a month or two. That's when I decided to take things into my own hands and start looking for some homeopathic remedies. From hemp seed oil, to apple cider vinegar, to just a whole lot of itching and crying, I tried pretty much every remedy I could find on the internet. Hemp seed oil worked really well to soften my skin, which made it less irritated and swollen, but it didn't help entirely. However, I found that that was probably better than any of the medicine I was prescribed by doctors.

While I was living at home, I did oil treatments on the affected areas usually once a week or so. It worked, and, while tedious, it helped the symptoms. Then, just a few months ago, I got my wisdom teeth removed. I was hopped up on all kinds of pain medication (some of which resulted in some really great selfies), as well as some kind of antibiotic. During the time that I took the antibiotics, I noticed my psoriasis almost completely disappearing. I really wanted to believe that maybe this bout of fighting was over, but then, after doing some research, I found that antibiotics can either hurt or help psoriasis. In my case, it turned out that it helped, since it calmed the swelling. While scientifically, we're not really sure why antibiotics help psoriasis, I found that it did help a lot. For the week I was taking the antibiotics anyway. Once I was off the medication, it came back. I went back to hemp seed oil treatments and lots of Eucerin and Aquaphor. 

Now, a few months later, I'm living in North Carolina, where the winter is cold and the summer is humid. But something else I found here is much, much softer water. Apparently, back home in San Diego, we have some of the hardest water in the country. Here in North Carolina, we have some of the softest water in the country. After about two weeks of being here, I noticed a change in my psoriasis. It was less itchy, less red and swollen. Generally it was a lot calmer. Turns out, a study was done in the UK showed that 91% of subjects who used soft water found their skin to be less itchy. Less itchy = less irritation = less swelling, for the most part.

That brings me to now. My skin is much happier, but my condition is not gone by any means. I recently met a friend in my school who has psoriasis as well, and we have found a bit of a confidence in each other. I'm much more open about my condition now, and it actually really comforts me to be able to educate the people around me on my condition.

That's why I'm doing the Team NPF Walk in June, and I really need you guys to help support me. The walk that I am doing is not only a walk to raise awareness for people living with psoriatic disease, but to raise money for cure research, and to help those living with psoriatic disease get the health services they need. 

I don't by any means want to seem like I'm advertising for myself to seem like I'm this sad pitiful person who has some awful disease and I need help. I am posting my story here to create awareness, and to help others understand how autoimmune disorders can really affect a person's quality of life. 

If at all possible, it would mean so much to me if you could donate to my team, and if not, please share this post to spread awareness! 100% of the money donated goes to the National Psoriasis Foundation, and any little bit helps. 

I'll end this with one of my favorite poems about psoriasis that I found on Tumblr about a year ago.

I am glad that  there is someone in the world who doesn’t grimace at my dead skin on their black sheets. I am reptilian in nature, forever slithering in the cracks and crevices of things long forgotten in vain hopes to find beauty among the ruins. Besides, the best love is always a little venomous, anyways. - cat-called.tumblr.com

 

- D. 

Quick Graduation Ceremony Tips + Throwback Thursday

In my experience, graduation day can be a totally nerve-wracking experience! My biggest concern on graduation day was "Don't fall don't fall don't fall." And looking back, there were definitely some things that I wish I could go back and re-do. So I decided to make a quick list for you to help make you less worried about your big day!

Beauty-Related Tips

• If your ceremony is outdoors, make sure to apply plenty of sunscreen! For both my middle school promotion and my high school graduation, I got majorly sunburned. A lot less so at my high school graduation, but either way, I definitely suffered some sun damage from sitting out on the field. For my post about different types of sunscreen, click here.
• Wear a great long-wearing foundation. Nothing is worse than finding your family and getting ready to take pictures and realizing your foundation is melting off! Definitely invest in a good primer or setting spray, if you haven't already, to help prevent any meltdowns. 
• Bobby pin your cap to your head, especially if you will be outside or if it doesn't quite fit right. On my graduation day, I didn't pin my cap down, and it was windy, so I constantly was playing with it to keep it from flying off! A great way to make the bobby pins unnoticeable is to spray paint them the same color as your cap. No one will even know they're there!
• Wear a lip balm that has SPF. I promise you that nothing is worse than sunburned lips. Just do it.
• If you think you might cry, or the weather may be hot, make sure to wear waterproof eye makeup. Smeared eye makeup never looks good in pictures!

Fashion-Related Tips

• If your graduation is out on grass, avoid wearing pumps. If you want to wear heels, go for a wedge instead. If you have a pair of pumps that you really love, you can always purchase some heel caps, which can help prevent you from sinking into the grass and ruining your shoes. 
• Wear shoes that are comfortable to walk in. If you aren't comfortable in your shoes, you may trip!
• If you're wearing a white gown like I had to, try to avoid wearing a bright outfit underneath. It will show through the gown, and look rather tacky. 
• Avoid wearing dresses that are longer than your gown. Typically, it just doesn't look good, and unless you're super comfortable in maxi dresses, they can be a cause for a great big tripping disaster.

Etc, etc, etc.

• Drink water. If your school is anything like my high school was, I wasn't allowed to take anything with me onto that field! Especially because, for me, my graduation was outdoors here in sunny California, I got really dehydrated while sitting out waiting for my name to be called. Just make sure to run to the restroom before it's too late!
• If you are allowed, wear sunglasses. The year I graduated, my high school instated this really stupid rule that we weren't allowed to wear sunglasses during the ceremony. Honestly, we should have been allowed to, because I felt like I was really straining my eyes through the whole ceremony. Protect your eyes and they will thank you later.
• Walk tall. This is your day -- you've earned it! Don't be afraid to wear all the things you earned while you were in high school. For me, it was my colorguard and theatre medals, and my Thespian stole and pins. It isn't cocky or conceited to show everyone what you've accomplished. That's what this whole day is for!
• Make sure to tell your family to arrive early. Unless you are graduating from a very small school, the parking lot will fill up fast.

I thought this would be the perfect time for a fun throwback to my high school graduation!

Me with two of my best friends from high school, right before our graduation rehearsal.
I didn't wear any of my medals that day, but I did rock my Thespian stole! 

Alana was squeezing the heck out of me because she was so proud! We've been friends since way back when.

Huge congratulations for all of you who are graduating, whether it be from high school or college, or anywhere in between. It's your big day, enjoy it, and good luck! ♥

- d.