All posts tagged: harry potter week

5 Things Friday: Magical Products

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Since it’s Harry Potter Week here, I decided to pattern my 5 Things Friday on 5 “Magical” Products that I’ve encountered in my brief makeup life. I have skin care and seemingly boring-ish products here, but they’re the things that actually let makeup be exciting because they take care of the basics. Aesop Parsley Seed Cleansing Masque I rotate a lot of skin care products, but this one is a mainstay. This is a great wash-off clay-like mask that just jumpstarts your skin when it’s starting to seem a little weary and dull. I don’t always remember to use this (lazy), but when I do, I always wonder why I keep forgetting about it. Hourglass Veil Mineral Primer I bought this expensive bottle on a whim—serious liquid gold, folks. This just preps and primes my face for whatever else I put on it. I find that it just makes everything look better. This is what I suspect turned me into a primer nut, but even though I’ve met a lot of good ones after this …

Harry Potter Week: A Red for Every House

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Just a quick Harry Potter post today. I wasn’t going to put anything up because I’ve been trying (and clearly failing) to post less frequently. Anyway, it didn’t seem right to post so many non-Harry Potter things on my self-imposed Harry Potter Week, so I thought up a fun post! Harry Potter is known for Hogwarts and Hogwarts is known for its housing system. Basically, the school segregates you into “houses,” according to your basest of personalities and deep-seated traits. There are four houses and I’ve got four red lipsticks to match to them. Now, I’m not looking for trouble. Feel free to disagree with my designations. These are only four red lipsticks in the world of red lipsticks, and these selections are just based on my own opinion. Please feel free to chime in and declare a red lipstick your own pick for a Hogwarts house.

Harry Potter Week: Spellbound

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Okay, so for Harry Potter Week, I was thinking of things I could do instead of doing House- or Character-inspired looks, which I think tend to be more common when it comes to Harry Potter and beauty crossovers. I ended up thinking of making looks inspired by spells and charms! I picked 3 that have a distinct visual effect about them that are also widely used in in Rowling’s magical world, at least in Harry Potter’s timeline. Look 1: The Patronus Charm “This ancient and mysterious charm conjures a magical guardian, a projection of all your most positive feelings. The Patronus Charm is difficult, and many witches and wizards are unable to produce a full, corporeal Patronus, a guardian which generally takes the shape of the animal with whom they share the deepest affinity. You may suspect, but you will never truly know what form your Patronus will take until you succeed in conjuring it.”Miranda Goshawk

Made-Up History: The Unicorn in Captivity, ca. 1495-1505

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For Harry Potter week, I thought I’d do a Made-Up History of an actual work of art I glimpsed in The Half-Blood Prince. This is a tapestry called “The Unicorn in Captivity,” and is the seventh in a series called The Hunt of the Unicorn or Unicorn Tapestries. I’m not sure where I first found out about this work—probably in a documentary I saw about restoration—but it was a great Easter egg for me when I saw it in that Room of Requirement scene in HBP: The artist of this series of tapestries is unknown, though it is widely believed to have been commissioned by Anne of Brittany, who became Queen of France twice.

Harry Potter Week: Inspired by Literature

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Hey, everyone! It’s the first of September… which means that it’s time to go to Platform 9 3/4 for a new school year at Hogwarts. 🙂 For Softly Sometimes, I decided to do a Harry Potter Week, with a few magic-centric posts on beauty. For the first day, I thought I’d do an Inspired by Literature post, which I’ve only done once before. Inspired by Literature is a series taken from Jessica of Getting Cheeky, in which you basically take a piece of literature and try to interpret it in a makeup and beauty way. Jessica’s posts are quite thoughtful—mine are a bit literal, but I hope you enjoy these all the same. The books I’m using are the US editions, since they’re the ones I have! HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE feat. Le Métier de Beauté True Colour Eye Shadows in Goldstone and Midnight Sky, Tarte Amazonian Clay 12-Hour Blush in Exposed, NARS Pure Matte Lipstick in Mascate