I’ve been thinking about getting a tattoo.  In some discreet spot, probably a place that nobody would see unless they shared a locker room (or a bedroom) with me.  Why have I been thinking this?   I have no idea.

There are problems.  First off, I have no existing tattoos, and the reason is: even when I was twenty and had a buzz cut and a pierced nose, I couldn’t imagine affixing any permanent image to my body.  I mean, in twenty years, would I really want that tattoo of a skull, or Jiminy Cricket, on my shoulder?   Probably not.

Second is the cliché aspect – how about a heart?  Scattering of stars?  Yin-yang?  A unicorn?  Puh-leaze.   I could argue that, at my age, even considering a tattoo is a cliché.  I might as well cut to the chase and have the word “cliché” tattooed on my wrist instead, in some small, illegible font.

Then there’s the double standard – my own very mixed messages.  I tell my teenaged daughters (the 15-year-old has friends with tats): if you get a tattoo your legs will fall off.  The other variation of this message is: DON’T GET A TATTOO.  NOBODY WILL EVER HIRE YOU.  Or, sometimes I say:  YOU GET A TATTOO AND I WILL (MESS) YOU UP, DO YOU HEAR ME?!  Subtle stuff like that.

And yet, I’ve caught occasional glimpses of a few young women around here who are, it appears, slowly working on full sleeves – which I think are gorgeous.  Now there’s a double standard.  What is wrong with me?   Part of the problem, of course, is a double standard.  I used to work at an ultra-male, financial-services place that was extremely conservative.  And I worked with some bodybuilder-guys who were getting seriously large tattoos, and the only reason I knew that was: we went to the same gym.  They wore jackets and ties at work.  With women it’s not so easy to hide.  And hard as it is for my daughters to believe, there are people (men?) of a certain age who will look at a visible tattoo on a woman and think something like, trollop.  There’s a reason those lower-back tattoos are called tramp stamps, as much as I dislike the term.

A tattoo should mean something, maybe, but what?  A milestone, a celebration, a reminder?  Typing the words meaningful tattoo makes me smirk.  Maybe that’s my problem right there.  A perfume bottle would look boring.   I LUV SERGE 4EVAH done with swirls and that big gothik-gangsta lettering seems … like overkill?  Yeah, I thought so too.

The problem with hindsight is it’s so backward-looking.  We’re (always?) at that age, that dangerous age, where the grass is definitely greener somewhere else, maybe five years ago and to the left.  I was apparently already too old for a tattoo when I was in college, and I haven’t gotten any younger.  And still.  And yet.

All you young whippersnappers out there, you sweet young things in your twenties, I want to say to you:  Go Ahead.  Do It Now. Go on and shave your head/move to Bali/change your name if that’s what you feel like.  But that’s easy for me to say and it’s hardly fair or applicable, is it?  Our lives are different.  I was so busy trying to grab onto what I thought was adulthood in my early twenties, I wonder if I missed some of that foolishness.  Or maybe I didn’t.  Maybe there’s still time to be foolish, who can say?  Although I’m drawing the line at the unicorn.

It’s snowing hard while I type this and I’m feeling crabby and housebound, so let’s do a makeup post and cheer me up.  I have info and some questions sprinkled throughout.

1) Eyes. As some of you know, I cut my long hair recently – here’s a photo my daughter took, I’m wearing the lippie/gloss combo below in #3.  Something about that change has allowed me to feel comfortable wearing more makeup – specifically, strong lips and eyes at the same time.  I’ve always followed the rule of one or the other (in terms of intensity) – strong lips, neutral eyes, or vice versa.   Now, though, I’m working a smoky or multi-colored eye with bright lips and feeling like it looks fresh.  What say you?  BTW when I say “neutral” I don’t mean no eye makeup.  At bare minimum I fill in my sparse brows, and put a Bobbi Brown cream shadow on my lids (applied with a brush) that renders my rabbit-pink eyelids a more aesthetically pleasing neutral color while skipping eye-primer.  I use Suede or Slate, which is slightly grayer.  Suede looks like hell in the pot, a warm, nasty yellow-brown, but both of these are a hint of soft, shadowy color on my lids.  If I have another 30 seconds I do a Bobbi Brown gel liner along the top lashes, which stays until you remove it – I have plum, dark blue and slightly shimmery dark brown.  I’ve experimented a little with other brands, but I think the BB has the nicest texture and the most longevity.

2) Related to the eyes – I’ve been experimenting with lining the inside of my lower lids, which looks great and I’ve never done before.  I know, I know – we’re not supposed to do that with eye pencils because it’s dangerous unsanitary my arm will fall off – oh, wait, that’s my perfume that’s going to cause my arm to fall off.  Somebody call IFRA!

Anyhow, I’ve been using a Laura Mercier in a dark purplish-black and the effect is gorgeous but it doesn’t stay.  I have to check my eyes while I’m out to make sure it hasn’t smeared or run into the inside corner (ew), and it’s not like I’m using a ton of product.  I’m trying to find a balance … what do I need?  A harder pencil?  Will that run less?  Should I get something labeled kohl?  Recommendations?

Makeup tip from Gina, a professional makeup artist and occasional commenter – I have greenish/hazel eyes.  While I use brown or gray shadows for smoky eyes and to create some depth (I have deep set eyes, and a little round) she suggested trying a darkish purple (think eggplant.)   I have a Cle de Peau shadow that is a very dark plum-purple, almost black, not quite matte, which I’d been using with a damp brush as a liner.  As a shadow, placed on the outside half of my lid near the corner to give depth and lift, it’s a great color with greenish eyes and does not register as “purple.”  Sorry, I can’t find the name, but I’m sure most makeup lines would have a similar color.

3) Lips! I’ve fallen in love with the NARS lip lacquer gloss pot in Hot Wired – a bright, slightly blue pink that is thick and stays on, the swatch here looks like the true color on my screen.  It’s great over bare lips (this stuff is thick) but I’ve been experimenting with layering it over lippies, trying to up the intensity.  BTW this is only for you who like a cool-toned pink, if you’re a warm red you might as well skip ahead.  Anyhow, my regular pink lippies are nice underneath but don’t provide the pop I’m looking for, my pink lippie choices tend to be not so intense.  Much as I love NARS Funny Face, that’s almost too much, and it’s very dry on me.  So eventually I tried a red lippie I blogged on before – Dior’s Rouge Dior in Red Premiere, which is a bluish red.  I tend to wear it dabbed lightly on my lips for a pop of color rather than as a full-on lipstick, because it’s very emollient and tends to travel, unlike, say, MAC Russian Red.  So.  Dabbing that on my lips gives a strong pink base that isn’t too dry.  With an application of Hot Wired on top – shaZAM!!!!!  It’s an amazing combo, that’s what I’m wearing in the photo.  It’s not so neon-bright that I feel uncomfortable, but certainly brighter and glossier fuchsia than anything else I own. Anyone who’s got the Hot Wired and a blue-red lippie, you might want to give it a whirl.

4) Nails. Having whined in March’s Maxims about my difficulty getting a decent professional manicure (I know, I know!  The horror!) I stumbled across a woman at a local salon who gave such a great mani I drove back out there to get her name.  She gave me the oval tip I asked for, not the squoval or the Carmela Soprano, and she didn’t hack them off.  Also, maybe my nails are snaggier than usual, but I almost always have to point out some rough edge they missed that needs to be re-filed before the polish.  She did it perfectly the first time.  My mani, which takes a lot of abuse in this kid-centric household, lasted a full week.  I do wonder whether it’s just a really long-lasting polish (Sephora OPI in Run With It, a lovely, subtle dove-gray with a very slight shimmer that works better on cool skin tones.)  But this gal took the polish brush and ran it along the edge of my nail tips as she painted, which I certainly can’t do.  I’m guessing that helped.

Question: I’ve been sticking to my grayish neutrals and ugly greiges like Metro Chic on my long nails.  How do you all feel about darker/brighter/classic red on longer nails? “Long” being a quarter-inch of tip, nothing too freaky.   Are long, bright nails too garish or young-looking?

An observation: having seen a number of older, well-dressed women wearing very dark polish (like navy) on short nails this winter … wow.  I work a navy or a purple or a dark green and I think it looks pretty, but on a woman in her 70s it’s fantastic.  It’s chic in a way that I can only aspire to.

Throwing this open to any makeup items, discoveries, opinions, layering ideas, product raves, or anything else you’d like to discuss.

photo: Diva took it with her fancy new camera she saved up and bought herself.  BTW that white stuff on me is snow.

My teenage daughters do all sorts of nail art with pens and fine-tipped brushes.  I think it’s great, but I am a little long in the tooth for that sort of thing.  However, when I saw Louise recently, she’d done a nail-art trick that is so easy and so lovely – and grown-up appropriate – that I can’t resist blogging on it.  Louise had done the tips of her nails, where the white in your French mani would go, with a very light touch of pale gold glitter over a vampy crème polish — more at the tips, fading down to no-glitter by halfway down the nail.  It ended up looking like a Japanese abstract on lacquerware, or a tiny detail from one of those stunning Whistler Japonesque works.

She forwarded the details, and I am using the image here with permission from the Polish Hoarder, which is also where the instructions come from.  As you can see in the photo and directions, this is a variation where you start the glitter from the bottom, the base of the nail, but the concept is the same:

“I painted my nails light blue and let it dry completely (overnight).

Then, with the glitter, I put a small drop on the inside of my nail, removed the excess from my brush, and spread the glitter out lightly across my nail.

I repeated that 4 times for each nail but with each time you do it, you spread the glitter less. You want the majority of the glitter to be on the inside of the nail.

I suppose it depends on how much glitter is in your polish. I wanted to keep the tips un-glittered so I was careful not to get too much glitter on my nail at once. Less is better because you can build it slowly.”

* * *

I was so taken with Louise’s nails that, armed with the info above, I tried it (also at the tips) with a small silver glitter (China Glaze Tinsel) over the pale pearlized-pink mani I was already sporting, and got subtle but smashing results.**  My only suggestions/clarifications — I’d do one nail at a time, I don’t know your climate, but I worry about the glitter setting up too much and not spreading properly if you let it sit on your nail for long.  Also: you definitely want to clean the glitter off the brush before you start using it to spread what’s on your nail, otherwise you’re adding to what’s already there.

The first time I did it my nails weren’t uniformly perfect like this photo, but they still looked great – both my girls commented on it.  Instead of doing a small dot of glitter at the tip, I painted the tip with a narrow horizontal streak of glitter – like a sloppy French mani – and dragged it down with the cleaned-off brush.   As Polish Hoarder notes (she did 4x for each nail) it’s easy to add more, but it’s hard to add less!  I just did 1x per nail and then added more to the ones that looked a little sparse in comparison.

If you are like me, I don’t change my polish until it starts to look tired – usually micro-chips at the tips.  The silver glitter gave my mani a whole new look and bought me an extra four days of wear.  If I’d slapped some Seche Vite on top it’d probably have lasted even longer.

In terms of color combos, two basic strategies: the more subtle pale (gold or silver) glitter on a light base, and the more striking pale glitter on a dark base (vampy, dark blue, green, etc).  Personally I feel that the results are more elegant if the base is a crème.  If your base is light-colored the glitter polish needs to be suspended in a CLEAR base – I made that mistake, testing things, with a blue microglitter that was in a pale clear-bluish base, and it looked terrible.   Obviously you could do a dark or colored glitter or what have you, but if you’re concerned about the propriety of the bling, probably gold or silver microglitter on a crème base is the way to go.

I am going to add a link here to a gorgeous, much trendier look:  a dark-colored nail on MUA with two different colors of glitter on top, pulled down the nail like this – the perfect party nail – but I don’t know if the link works if you’re not a MUA member, apologies in advance.

I know some people are doing this/spreading the glitter with Orly Smudge Fixer.  I haven’t used that, and would be curious to hear from anyone who has in terms of advantages (the disadvantage I thought of is, you’d have to clean the brush carefully, right?  That’s the nice thing about using the glitter brush itself.)  Also, anyone who has winning glitters, or color combos, or questions, please chime in!

**For whatever reason, my natural nails are long just now – nothing that would raise an eyebrow on a nail polish blog, but of a length that would pass as a set of acrylics.  I used CG Tinsel at the tips of my existing base coat of CG Tantalize Me – an opalescent pink with a slight blue tinge that I have a soft spot for because it’s a dupe of a L’Oreal polish called something like Pink Pearl that I wore the heck out of in high school.

Compound

by Loren Eiseley

Plant quiet like a seed within your heart
And let it grow and split that organ through.
Let the fierce root rive all such walls apart,
Let the dark flourish, let your words be few.
Out of the earth and dreaming in the sun
Though the years burgeon, it is well to know,
After the lightning and the wolves that run
In the tense mind, the quietude of snow.
Thirst, if you thirst, for all the elder things--
Lie with the worm against the forest's root.
Eat of the granite, plumb the deeper springs,
Burn with the acrid and the bitter soot
Packed in the puff ball. In that leathern cover
Taste the last taste: compound of life and lover.