Recent Looks: Rediscovering My Collection

It's been a long time since I've posted any recent looks, but since I've had access to my makeup collection for the first time in months, I'm finally getting back into the swing of things of taking daily pictures of my makeup looks.

But before I get into my (many) recent looks, I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for the incredible support that I received on my last blog post where I discussed my former makeup addiction in relation to depression. I received an outpouring of messages thanking for me sharing my story, and someone even linked me to a Reddit thread about it (which was incredibly humbling). I'm just really happy that my story has been something positive for so many people, and I'm grateful for the community that we have formed here.

So, here are some recent looks.

Look 1: BH Cosmetics Zodiac

Lid: Aquarius shimmer

Crease: Aquarius matte

Outer corner: Pisces matte

Brow bone: Center highlight

Inner corner: Center highlight

I'm still really enjoying this palette, and I personally think it's one of the best BH Cosmetics palettes available. I enjoyed the color combination of this particular look, but it would also be really easy to achieve this look with other palettes or singles available. 

Look 2: Jaclyn Hill x Morphe

Lid: Meeks

Transition: Silk Creme and M.F.E.O

Crease: Pooter

Brow bone: Enlight 

If you're new here, this palette was given to me as a gift. I think it's a fine palette, but nothing incredible or worth all of the hype. It's got a ton of repeat shades, and I wish there were more pink matte shades instead of so many browns. The look I created is pretty basic and something I could get out of most palettes. 

Look 3: Tom Ford Nude Dip

Lid: Tom Ford Nude Dip 3

Transition: Viseart cool brown

Crease: ABH Moments 

Brow bone: Wet N Wild Brulee

I had to get my picture taken for work this day, and this was the look I chose for it. I love this quad. I think the shadows have something a little extra special about them in terms of shine, and I always love the end result. I don't think it's anywhere near worth the money, however. 

Look 4: Duped Desert Dusk and Duped Peachy Mattes

Lid: Viseart shimmery fuchsia 

Transition: Colourpop The News

Crease: Colourpop Making Moves

Outer Corner: Colourpop 143

Brow bone: Zoeva Bitter Start

Inner corner: Coloured Raine Crown

This is a look I have done a lot, and it's always going to be a favorite of mine. I have loved these two palettes for about a year now (maybe more), and I still love them. And I can guarantee I would not still be loving the originals from Too Faced or Huda Beauty. I would have gotten bored with them or only liked a few shades, which is why I love my custom ones so much. 

Look 5: Duped Desert Dusk and Duped Peachy Matte

Lid: Ardency Inn Orchid

Transition: Makeup Geek Peach Smoothie

Crease: Colourpop Cannonball

Brow bone: Zoeva Bitter Start

Inner Corner: Too Faced Satin Sheets

See what I mean? I really love this general color combination. This look is slightly different in that I went for an orange crease instead of a peach/pink, but it's pretty similar. 

Look 6: Sephora Editorial Pro

Lid: Myiesha

Crease: Eliza D

Brow bone: Porcelain

This is another favorite look that I've done before, and I loved it again. I've always felt torn with this palette in that I love half of it and hate the other half. I don't think I can depot it without breaking the shadows, but if I could, that's what I would do. 

Look 7: Laura Mercier African Violet and Melt Rust Stack

Lid: LM African Violet

Transition: Melt Antique

Crease: Melt Rubbish

Brow bone: Melt Classic

This was a look that weirdly popped into my head as I went to sleep the night before I wore it. African Violet was the only shadow I wore for months as I interviewed for various jobs, and I'll probably hit the pan shortly. I've always paired it with cooler purple mattes, and I just wanted to see what it would look like paired with mustard. And I loved the end result! 

Look 8: Silver and berry

Lid: Shimmery silver

Crease: Shimmery berry

Brow bone: Matte white

In one of my last posts, I discussed that I am no longer supporting Kat Von D Beauty due to the dangerous, ignorant, and false propaganda she has spread about vaccinations. As such, I will no longer show or actively promote any of the products from her brand that I already own, and I am still undecided on what I will do with those products—use them since I already bought them, or get rid of them. For now, I am continuing to use and assess how I feel. (Also, I WILL continue to write anti-haul posts on her future releases.)

For this look, I used a shimmery taupe/silver and paired it with a shimmery berry, and I love how it turned out. This is a look that I've done before, and it always makes me feel glamorous. There are many comparable shadows available that can make the same look. 

Look 9: Colourpop Glass Bull

Lid: Glass Bull

I've written an entire post on the best way that I've personally found to wear Glass Bull, which is to use it like an eye gloss. Glass Bull started as a shadow I didn't understand and hated, and it has turned into one of my absolute favorites. It makes such an easy, pretty eye look. 

Look 10: Huda Beauty Coral Obsessions 

Lid: 9

Transition: 8

Crease: 2

Above transition: 7

Brow bone: Wet N Wild Brulee

Inner corner: Urban Decay Roadstripe

Lower lash line: 9 and 2

The next two palettes are ones that I received as gifts several months ago. This is the first palette from Huda Beauty that I've tried, and I like it just fine. I love the color I used on my lid, which is the bottom right shade, but other than that, I already have this palette within the Colourpop Yes, Please! palette. 

Look 10: Pat McGrath Labs Mothership IV and Bobbi Brown Camel

Lid: Pat McGrath Labs Lapis Luxury

Transition: Bareminerals Velet Pecan

Crease: Bobbi Brown Camel

Brow bone: Wet N Wild Brulee

Inner corner: Illamasqua Cascade

And then there's the other new palette, which is from Pat McGrath. I now own two Pat McGrath palettes, and the other is one of the smaller palettes. (When everyone knows you've been "obsessed" with makeup/using it as a coping mechanism for years, they tend to only give you makeup for holidays and special occasions.) To be honest, I haven't tried every shade in this palette, but I have to say that everything about this palette feels much more luxurious than any makeup item I've ever owned. The packaging makes brands like Tom Ford look cheap, not to mention the likes of Natasha Denona. I liked this palette so much that I went to look at the other Motherships palettes in person, but I've got to say, they just don't seem to be as nice as this one. The smaller one I have is also not as nice as this one. 

I absolutely loved this look and this teal shade, but it did transfer into my crease by the end of the day.   

Look 11: Pat McGrath Labs Mothership IV and Duped Peachy Mattes

Lid: Pat McGrath Inferno

Transition: Colourpop The News

Crease: Colourpop Making Moves

Brow bone: Zoeva Bitter Start

I did a post a while back on the most unique single eyeshadows in my collection. Pat McGrath Inferno is clearly in a palette, but this is probably the most beautiful eyeshadow I have ever seen. The pictures don't do it justice. It's like a copper, but also a peach, and also a taupe. It's simply gorgeous. 

Look 12: Cool Mattes

Lid: Juvia's Place Zola

Transition: pink matte

Crease: Colourpop Silver Lining

Brow bone: Wet N Wild Brulee

Lower lash line: Makeup Geek Caitlin Rose 

This is another of my custom palettes, but it no longer looks like this. I have taken out some of the shadows in the bottom row and replaced them with some singles from an indie brand. I'll have to take an updated photo soon. This is a look I've done before and one that I really love. 

Look 13: Cool Mattes

Lid: MAC Satin Taupe

Transition: Viseart cool brown

Crease: ABH Moments

Brow bone: Wet N Wild Brulee

This is probably my lease favorite look of the bunch. I used to really love MAC Satin Taupe, but it just feels really dull (not shiny) compared to other taupes in my collection. 

Look 14: MAC Rosé 

Lid: MAC Rosé pigment

Transition: Makeup Geek Peach Smoothie

Crease: Colourpop Cannonball

Outer corner: Colourpop 143

Brow bone: Zoeva Bitter Start

I love this pigment, and I love this look. I've done it before, and it's a look that I will continue to do because I love it so much. 

Look 15: Reimagined ABH Modern Renaissance

Lid: ABH Macaroon

Transition: Makeup Geek Cupcake

Crease: Natasha Denona Nina's Orchid

Brow bone: Viseart white

Inner corner: Makeup Geek Phantom 

This is also a look that I really love. My reimagined Modern Renaissance palette is also one of my favorites, and I particularly love this color combination. 

As a sign off, I just wanted to say thank you again to everyone who reached out or who read my last post. I also want to say thank you to those of you who have asked for my weekly looks posts to return. I'll have to gradually get back into the swing of things with blogging, but I really appreciate everyone who has been supportive of the break I needed to take. 

I'll have more looks soon!

Instagram: @antihaulblog

Where I've Been: Makeup Addiction + Depression

Upfront, I would like to say that I'm not typically a fan of "Life Update" or "Where Have I Been?" posts and/or videos, but I felt this one was necessary for me because I would like to talk about this blog and my former makeup addiction in relation to depression.

To sum up where I've been (if you don't feel like reading through the entire post): I've been in California, and I've been happy.

If you've been a longtime reader of my blog, you'll know that I lived in New York City for the past several years and that I absolutely hated it there. In total, I spent five years there, and while a few wonderful things happened to me, it was also the absolute worst time of my life, and those are five years that I won't ever get back.

I suffered daily in New York. I don't say that to be dramatic. Those closest to me were concerned for my wellbeing and saw my physical and mental health decline. It's a city that not only didn't work for me, but was toxic to me. Everything about life there was counterintuitive to how I wanted to live my life.

I lived in a tiny Manhattan apartment, the streets outside smelled constantly of hot garbage and bodily fluids, people pushed me daily on the streets and in the subway, it was crowded, dark (even on "sunny" days, the sun was blocked by the buildings), sticky and disgusting in the summers, and cold and truly unlivable in the winters.

You also had to work so hard to live so badly.

The reasons I stayed were:

1. When I first moved there, it cost so much just to live that I couldn't save for a move
2. I was later accepted to grad school at my dream program, which happened to be in NYC
3. I am in a long-term relationship, and he didn't want to leave NYC

In order to survive, I turned to buying makeup. And when that got out of control, I created this blog.

2017 was one of the worst years I've had. I underwent two major and life-changing surgeries, and I found myself in a soulless job where I was expected to give every piece of myself and where I didn't matter as a human. Unfortunately, that was my experience with every position I had in NYC. Toward the end of the year I was battered, and around the holidays I made the incredibly hard decision to leave, knowing that my boyfriend was not coming with me. 

At the beginning of this year, I went home. I hadn't been home for any significant period of time in seven years, and it ended up being one of the most healing experiences of my life. I didn't wear any makeup for the duration of that time. All of it was packed away, living somewhere between home and NYC. And I just did not care. I didn't need it anymore because the pressures of daily life that had been causing me so much pain for so long were all of a sudden gone.

I stopped blogging and stopped watching makeup videos or reading anything about makeup online. Instead, I watched people make art or talk about pet care, and I really got into some true crime podcasts. I spent my "winter" going for walks in the sunshine and swimming in a heated pool. It was everything that I needed.

A few months later, I landed a dream job in California. I moved again, and I floated for about a month between a friend's house, an Airbnb, and a hotel before I found my new place. I've been settling in, going to work that I love (which is a wholly new experience for me), and have been social in a way that I haven't been in about six years.

In short, I've been having a great time.

As I've been unpacking and been getting more things back from NYC, I've been utterly disgusted with the amount of makeup that I own.

When I first came to California, I only took some of my custom palettes, which are also my favorites.

Duped Too Faced Peachy Mattes:

Duped/expanded Huda Beauty Desert Dusk

Reimagined ABH Modern Renaissance:

Custom cool tones:

In the time of only using these palettes (when I had not been wearing any makeup at all for the previous four or so months), it felt like I had every color imaginable. So when I got back the rest of my collection, I felt completely overwhelmed. And this is a collection that I curated and decluttered on a regular basis. 

And that was the moment when everything kind of clicked with me. That the makeup addiction—and even writing this blog about makeup—were ways of coping with my environmental depression. When I was in grad school, I remember telling my dad that I thought I had a problem with shopping and specifically buying makeup. He asked me why I was buying so much, and I told him that some days I won and some days I lost, and on the days I lost, I would buy makeup. And he told me that all of this was just temporary. And that if I needed to buy makeup in order to make it through the day, then I needed to buy makeup. 

My dad wasn't telling me, "Go, be reckless! Nothing has consequences!" Rather, he knew the severity of how much NYC was attacking me and how little I felt I could do about it, and he didn't want me to slip into a worse place. But with that, he and I both knew I would eventually have to deal with the outcome of that time, which is what I did with my blog and am now doing in a healthy life. 

I haven't bought a new piece of makeup in several months. I have been—literally—rediscovering what I already owned, and it truly feels like I own a Sephora that is at my disposal. And that's so funny to me because when I left NYC, I felt like I had reached a "manageable" makeup collection—that now feels like all the makeup in Sephora. 

I think there are underlying causes to everyone's shopping or makeup addiction, and mine was 100% environmental depression from a location that fundamentally attacked my wellbeing and a feeling that, for many reasons, I couldn't leave. 

I remember watching Ingrid Nilsen's coming out video years ago, and she explained that, at a certain point, she took over what she called the construction of her own prison. And in the more than six months that I've been away from NYC, I can really see that I, too, took over the construction of my prison. I wanted to leave NYC from almost the moment that I got there, and certainly within the first year. I was ready to turn in my resignation at work and move away the day I found out I was accepted into grad school—with a full scholarship. And I was ready to leave the second after my graduation until my boyfriend told me he wasn't ready yet and didn't know when he was going to be. So, I stayed. 

In the last year and a half that I was in New York, especially, was when I took over the construction of my own prison. And that was also when I started this blog. 

The blog has been incredibly healthy for me. Not only did it give me something to look forward to and get me through the day while simultaneously curbing a really unhealthy shopping addiction, it also became a vehicle that inspired other people. I can't tell you how many times people have written to me telling me that I've saved them hundreds of dollars or that they look at their collection completely differently, or even that they want to depot their shadows so they feel less attached to packaging and can create their own dupe palettes. That has been so humbling and thrilling for me. 

And it is because of this, exactly, that I feel guilty about the break I have taken. I don't need to talk myself out of buying makeup anymore, but there are other people who would like that little extra push and validation that they don't, in fact, need to buy the new ABH Norvina palette (and you don't, by the way). At the same time, when I've thought about writing a blog post, I imagine that tiny Manhattan apartment, those cold and gray winter days, and that feeling that I was never going to escape it. And instead of writing one, I've been going for a drive or seeing a friend or visiting Target. 

To give you a general sense of what I'm talking about, this was one of the last photos I took in NYC:

And this is the first I took in California: 

The first picture is definitely "I'm going to stay inside forever and write a blog post" weather, and the second is "I'm never going back inside again." 

With all of that said, I'm not going to abandon this blog, and now that I'm a bit more settled and getting into a routine, I imagine that regular posts will gradually return. I still love wearing makeup, but I just don't feel the need to check out whatever is new, and I certainly don't care about what's limited edition. But I'll ease myself back into it in a way that feels manageable to me. 

Finally, I just wanted to say that I've shared my story a few times with people I've encountered, and several women have broken down into tears. They said that they, too, were experiencing "something similar," and they were really inspired by my "bravery" to leave the situation I was in. Truthfully, I don't feel all that brave. If I was brave, I would have left NYC a long time ago. I wouldn't have stayed and made myself unhealthy simply because I was afraid of having a hard conversation with my boyfriend, knowing what his feelings would be. In the end, my leaving was the best thing that could have happened for us, and we are working on closing the distance gap that we currently have. 

I don't typically share too many personal details, but I wanted to share this specific story because I would have really benefitted from knowing anyone else experienced something similar. Seasonal depression is real, as is environmental depression. You're not "strange" because you feel that wherever you live is killing you. You're not "dramatic." There's not something wrong with you. And the best part is, despite however impossible it might feel, you can do something about it.