Aside from my Beauty Dare (20 Days of Lipstick), June was a pretty lazy makeup month, partly because I was more antisocial than usual. Here are a few of the beauty bits I enjoyed a lot the past month, though.

I kept switching it up in the eye makeup department, but a quad that I went back to a lot is THREE’s Star Guitar. I also practically used a MAC Paint Pot called Groundwork on my lids as a primer when I became too dark to use Painterly.

I’m still loving my NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer. I have the shade Ginger and was convinced that I maybe should have gotten Custard instead but that turned out to be too light for me. For my quick face base, I was using the Le Métier de Beauté Peau Vierge Anti-Aging Pressed Powder in Shade 2 a lot last month, though towards the end, I began using my liquid foundations and bases more.

My go-to cheek has definitely been the Illamasqua Cream Blusher in Dixie. I used to apply this with a stippling brush but I’ve been using my fingers lately. I dab it on to apply and blend, and it is just the perfect summer color and formula. So freaking fuss-free, it’s not even funny.

Two LUSH new buys and new favorites have been the LUSH Tea Tree Water, which I have mentioned in a recent skin care post—I believe I called it magical—and the LUSH Cynthia Sylvia Stout Beer Shampoo. This smells like heaven. It doesn’t look like I’ve used a lot but it’s because I have way shorter hair and I don’t really shampoo it everyday.

So those are my favorites! 🙂 Please do share some of yours. And now, on to the goals. I feel a little loser-y actually making beauty goals, but I figured I’d revisit a post I wrote at the beginning of the year… in which I have, in fact, already written some goals for 2014.

Ahem. So, here’s a summary of what I wrote, and a mid-year recap. Feel free to skip this onto the actual JULY GOALS part:

• Project Pan: Going pretty well… I actually did hit pan a few days ago! I don’t think this is working out for me, designating which products to work on (which explains the demise of my Project Make-a-Dent), so I’m scrapping this.
• Makeup Inventory: Fell by the wayside, then I got pretty spendy recently.
• Spend Sheet: A thing I started doing, then didn’t do, but will pick up again in July.
• Focus on health and skin care: OK with skin care, will have to kickstart health aspect… though I have been drinking more water and cutting back on meal portions.
• Be more adventurous! This was about eye makeup! I think I’m getting there.
• Purge, purge, purge: Had a blog sale, will hold one again in August
• Unsubscribe from Devil Emails: Doing OK so far.
• Continue my CF journey: Doing OK so far. I haven’t bought a non-CF item, though I’ve reviewed items sent to me that are not confirmed as cruelty-free.
• Explore independent and local cosmetic brands: Kind of, but not really so much now. I love indie cosmetics but I find that I don’t reach for a lot of the loose shadows as much, so I have to use these up or actually use them before I get back on this exploration train.
• Press pigments and depot bulky cosmetics: I did this a few times, but I realized that I am not good at pressing stuff, so that stopped happening. I did end up getting those individual/detachable MUJI pillcases for my depotted lipsticks to live in.
• Have fun and don’t sweat it — at the end of the day, it’s just makeup, ya goof!: I ended up overthinking this makeup thing, lol. Don’t worry, I’m OK now.

I also had a goals list after I got engulfed in my consumerist guilt. Predictably, I failed most of them. LOL. I think these are manageable:

Actual July Beauty Goals

• Wear lip liner long enough to tell if it makes a difference or not.
• Use up as much lip gloss as you can without looking like you ate porkchops.
• Do another makeup purge for August Blog Sale + give away everything that doesn’t sell. Not to you, lol, that would be weird.
• Makeup Spend Sheet. For shame and posterity. Just kidding! For responsible financial uh… monitoring.
• Make more videos!
• Clean your brushes regularly. You filthy animal!
• Streamline nail polish stash. Get rid of colors you don’t like wearing. Change your nail color at least 3 times this month.
• Change up your eye look. Use up indie samples.

And that’s that! Not terribly exciting, I know. I think bite-sized monthly goals are great for keeping track of my larger year goal, though, so there’s that. What do you want to happen in your beauty life this month?

I really feel like a dork, having to do this, but I really would be such a floaty makeup monster otherwise.

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