Ten Holy Grail Beauty Products

Nicole did a post a while ago of the ten products she can't live without. (Click the link to read hers!) While I am SO LATE to the party, I decided I would do the same thing. I made this decision this morning when I was doing my makeup and looked down to see that my makeup was perfectly arranged for an Instagram picture. Who am I to turn down the perfect opportunity for Instagram?

So here they are, my ten holy grail beauty products:

1. Tarte Amazonian Clay 12-Hour Blush. This is not a lie, it really is a 12-hour blush. It does not rub off, wipe off, or wear off, even with incredibly oily skin. The color payout is fantastic. The blushes last forever. I've had the shade Fearless for over a year, and recently I bought a second, Blushing Bride, just to have a different shade. I would have every color of these, because they're just that great. Did I mention I pitched* my other blushes after one week of using this? Because I did.

2. Naked Basics Palette. I have the first one, but I also love the colors in the second one. I think when I replace mine (I've hit pan on two colors and almost on a third), I'll try the second one. I am big into using neutral brown shadows, and let's face it, that's what the Naked Basics palette contain. The color payout is (again) fantastic--noticing a theme?--and the shadows aren't too powdery to work with easily.

3. Tarte Amazonian Clay Full Coverage Foundation.** This lasts all day, matches my INCREDIBLY pale skin, doesn't break me out, and covers imperfections beautifully. This is the summer-Laura shade (Light Sand); I learned this winter that I'll need to go a bit lighter in January.

4. Maybelline Eye Studio Color Tattoo in Bad to the Bronze. This is a new purchase for me, but I've worn it every day since I bought it. It's absolutely fantastic, never budges, and I love using it with the darker shades in my Naked Basics palette. I need a dozen other colors.

5. Lavanilla. I'm listing the whole brand even though that's cheating. I use their deodorant, their body butter, their sunscreen, their perfume...I love the whole brand. I'm not allergic to anything they make. The vanilla fragrance isn't overly juvenile or sweet. It's more of a grown-up vanilla scent, and I would marry the brand and have its babies if that were physically possible. Sadly, it's not.

6. LUSH Sympathy for the Skin. This lotion is fantastic. It makes your skin smell amazing and--you guessed it--it's safe for allergy-sufferer Laura to use. It is a great everyday body lotion. Love. Love. Love.

7. Kiehl's Midnight Recover Concentrate. This rescued my incredibly dehydrated skin this winter. Now that it's summer, I've needed it less. I love how it makes my skin feel, and it helps my skin bounce back from breakouts without weeks of hyperpigmentation. It's pricey, but one of the small bottles has lasted me since November--and I'm not even halfway through it.

8. LUSH Honey I Washed the Kids. The best smelling soap ever made. I am never without this.

9. LUSH Love Juicy Shampoo. This is incredibly clarifying and brilliant for someone living with fine hair and hard water. It gets all the product buildup out of my hair. I ALWAYS pair this with a conditioner, because you do want a conditioner with any shampoo that is this clarifying. Someone with less water problems might find this too much to use more than once a week, but it's wonderful for our water.

10. Kiehl's LIP BALM #1. This is the best lip balm ever made, hands down. THE BEST EVER. Throw away all other lip balms and buy this.

So there you go. My favorite products I'd take with me if the zombie apocalypse went down and I still wanted to look pretty. Even though I would look prettier than the zombies, even without any makeup on, so I don't know who I'd be trying to impress. But maybe I'd meet a nice zombie hunter, or be clinging to what little sense of normalcy I had left, or maybe the library would stay open during the zombie apocalypse, so I'd still have to go to work and look alive. No pun intended.

Needless to say, no one gave me free stuff or paid me to put any of these products on my list, I just really love them. Although I would not turn down free stuff, I am a librarian and we don't make the big bucks. Also I like free stuff. Who doesn't like free stuff?

I didn't list conditioner, mascara, concealer, or lip colors because I'm not monogamous with those. I try a different mascara every time I pick one up. I'm still trying to find the right concealer for my skin tone, and I really want a full-coverage one, which makes it even harder to find for me. I use lightweight conditioners, right now I'm using one in the Clear range, but I'm not 100% obsessed with it. I would try others. And I am a lipstick junkie, so I can't tell you, "This is my signature color!" because that changes every day. There are so many lip products in my purse at any given time, it's a bit embarrassing. Last count, there were 12.

* Not wanting to waste anything, I cleaned them with a bit of rubbing alcohol and handed them to Mum, who used them for a while until she tried my Tarte blush, pitched them and went to buy her own Tarte blush. We are a Tarte blush house now.

** Yes, this has SPF, but not the chemical I'm allergic to, so if you're sensitive to foundations with SPF for the same reason I am, you're safe.

My Skin Is a Liar, Or How One Random Article Saved Me Thousands of Dollars in Dermatologist Bills

Months ago, I read an article. I cannot find this article now because I lack foresight and failed to save it for later. This is because I never thought it would actually have any impact on my life. Oh, was I wrong.

The article was your average "dealing with acne" sort of thing. It talked about cleansers, using oil-free makeup, what sort of treatments you can buy over the counter, when to seek out the help of a dermatologist...mostly it just listed what options of treatment people use normally after reading their first article in a teen magazine about breakouts.

But then it mentioned something I can't remember any other skin care article ever telling me. I wish there had been some mention of this before, because it's a HUGE deal. Really.

I am paraphrasing here, but these are the essentials. Whoever wrote the article said, basically, that your skin can be oily because you have oily skin OR it can be oily because it's super-dry and starving for moisture, and using the toners and salicyclic acid treatments you buy over the counter only drys your skin out more, making it MORE oily and contributing to more breakouts. The author went on to advise using a moisturizer every day, and STOPPING the drying stuff, using a cream cleanser and not a traditional soap, never using toner, and not putting any kind of drying treatment on your skin. They said that a soap may not wash all the way off, so it was important to rinse like crazy, and if you have hard water, used distilled water or one of those pre-moistened wipes you can buy in the skincare aisle.

This was bizarre. It was clearly wrong, I thought. How could that work? I mean, you have to cut through the oil on your skin to get rid of it, right?

The author said our skin is meant to keep oil, because that's what keeps it moist. So, people with dry skin are wrong when we coat our faces with zit cream and hope for relief.

I did buy the pre-moistened wipes, though, and the difference was huge. Suddenly my breakouts were way less frequent. In fact, I risked it and bought a full-sized bottle of the Sensitive Skin moisturizer from Burt's Bees, which I liked when I tried the sample.

And do you know what? My skin got even better. It was less oily. I had even fewer breakouts. But then winter came, and the change seemed to reverse. So I took a risk and tried a heavy-duty moisturizer--Benefit's Total Moisture Facial Cream. I have their eye cream. The eye cream is great. I hoped Total Moisture would be that awesome.

It is even more awesome. My skin has not looked this good since I was in my first year of college. I don't know why no one ever mentioned this dry-skin stuff to me before. All I was ever told was that I had "combination" skin and it was a good idea to dry out the oily part and leave the rest of my face alone. What a lie. Apparently, this whole time, my skin has been begging me for a real moisturizer and it has responded with great joy.

I've been using it for a month. The difference is astounding. My skin is not only well behaved, it also just FEELS better. I wish I knew where I'd read that article, because the author deserves a statue, maybe even a shrine. He or she is the BEST. I wish I could send them flowers or my firstborn child.

So. Here is my recommendation. If you have consistently dry skin that isn't quenched by daily moisturizer, and you are ready for a change, try Benefit's Total Moisture cream. It has a light scent, but it isn't enough to hurt me, so no one else is likely to even notice a scent at all. It goes on slightly greasy, but it soaks into your skin after a few seconds. If it doesn't do this, you're using too much, so cut back on the amount you're using each application.

It is expensive. But it is worth it. I want to have the babies of this moisturizer and name them after the author of the skincare article. I'm considering getting a tattoo of the bottle. Don't you judge me. There are days I don't even think I need to wear foundation, and I haven't felt that way since I was a kid.

As I wrote this, I ran a search and noticed that quite a few other people have caught on to oily skin really being dry and dehydrated skin. Here's one such blog post.