Bare Minerals No More

When it comes to hair and makeup and perfume and clothes, I'm a loyal creature.

For example, I started wearing Tommy Girl in high school.  To this day, I still wear it.  Should I be embarassed by that admission?  Well, I'm not.

I've had all of 3 hairstylists in my life and all the changes in stylists were changes of necessity.  My high school hair stylist.  Even when  moved to Austin, the first 2 years or so down there I would only get my hair cut when I returned to Rockwall and Terri.  My friend Leslie converted me to her Austin hairstylist 3 years in.  He's probably the best person who has ever touched my hair.  When I moved back to Dallas, I couldn't very well justify commuting to Austin for haircuts, so I had to find a new hairstylists.  There I am on number 3.

About 6 or 7 years ago, a coworker introduced me to Bare Minerals.  Yes, that make up line that pops up on late night TV infomercials alongside Proactive.  I had been a Clinique girl my entire life before then, but this coworker of mine always had a fantastic face on.  I tried it and loved it.  So much so, that I converted many a friend to Bare Minerals.  They'd ask what I was wearing, I'd take them to Ulta to buy their own started pack and bam, they were sold, too.  It got so ridiculous, that at one point, the Ulta manager saw me come in with yet another friend and offered me a job, on the spot.  If we're gonna be honest about it, it wasn't me.  The product was so good, it sold itself.  I remember a high school/college/kickball friend (Hi Christa!) telling me a fellow kickballer had described me as that girl "who always had perfect makeup on." (Hi Melinda! If you read this, that is).  That wasn't cause I obsessively checked my makeup all day.  That was Bare Minerals.

In the past year or so, I've started to notice the coverage has changed.  It begin to feel like I needed to apply more and more powder to get the coverage I was accustom to.  By the end of the day, it felt like all the coverage was gone.  I have (and have always had) dark undereye circles.  The summer bisque powder concealer worked wonders when I first tried it, but it begin to feel like it wasn't working so well recently.  What's worse, I noticed that in pictures, light raccoon eyes would appear where I'd applied the undereye makeup.  Like in this pic:

 I thought maybe I was just over applying and this is how my makeup actually looked in real life (eep!), but after asking a few friends for honest feedback about it, it seemed that wasn't the case.  That's just how the makeup photoed.  What in the world had happened to my perfect makeup line?!

They sold out, that's what.  I googled a couple of combinations of Bare Minerals + Changed or Bare Minerals + Bad Coverage, etc to see if anyone knew anything about why this change seemed to be happening.  Nothing really popped.  Except for this article about Bare Minerals/Bare Escentuals selling to Shiseido in 2010. The timing makes sense and if the commenter on the article is to be believed, they've changed their magic recipe.  For shame!

So I'm on the makeup hunt.  And I'm not very good at change.  In the meantime, I've switched to Revlon's Photo Ready Foundation that my cousin, Mary Claire, recommended on her blog a few months back.  I'm using the under eye concealer from the same line.  It's okay, but I suspect I need better coverage than that.  I've heard good things about Benefit's under eye concealer, so perhaps I'll start there.  And in the meantime, I'll be taking suggestions for concealer or foundation.  Wish me luck (or send me your suggestions)!