Tag Archives: The Who

Happy birthday, David Bowie

8 Jan

Just over two weeks ago, I flew out of Glasgow, this dear green place.  After what felt like one million hours in transit, I arrived in Adelaide and spent the festive season eating real fruit and vegetables (none of your painted rocks that you call ‘avocado’, ‘cherry’ and ‘mango’, Scotland), marvelling at the healthy and attractive Australians just wandering about the place all tall and tanned, and running around like a blue-arsed fly trying to catch up with every single person that I have ever met.

It was a pretty big two weeks, flogstars.  I arrived back in Glasgow less than 24 hours ago.  What would be hilarious, is if I tried RIGHT NOW to write a post that made sense.

It’s been an impressively productive 24 hours, mind you – I’ve done a load of washing, had my tranny-nails removed and replaced with a dark shimmery purple Shellac job…

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real reason I didn’t flog while away – I couldn’t type

…attended to some overdue facial threading (everything really DOES grow faster in the warm weather), been to the supermarket twice, went for a hour-long walk, done a shift at the Qwik-E-Mart, and slept for 10 hours uninterrupted.  I’ve also already made serious inroads into plans for my next holiday.

Australia feels like a distant dream already.  Luckily I took a billion pictures so I know it did actually happen.

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so trusting!

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So, January…  2014!  This bleakest of months, where we are encouraged to take a good, hard, critical look at our lives, dwell on our various failures and inadequacies, and make vague/unrealistic resolutions to BE MORE BETTER.  I’ve been asked a few times what my new year’s resolutions are, but as I’ve never really been into deadlines, I haven’t come up with any yet.

Also, why mess with perfection?  I’m still basking in the glory of successfully adhering to last year’s, which were “spend more time and money on makeup”, “buy (minimum) 1 x CD per payday” and “take every possible opportunity to see a live band.”

I slipped up on that last one when I didn’t go see The Who, but as I am so good at buying 79p classic rock albums second hand on Amazon, this wasn’t such a huge problem.  Sometimes – if seeing The Who involves spending money you don’t have – you have to let it slide, flip through your millions of CDs, and listen at home instead.  Ah, home.  Where Keith Moon is still alive, beer doesn’t cost £6/pint, and there’s no queue for the toilet.  Rock n’ roll.

There are important life-improvement lessons for all of us in that anecdote, flogstars.  Know what you want!  Be specific!  Be realistic!  Cultivate and nurture interests that make you happy!  Be #YOLO, but not so YOLO that you can’t pay the rent!  Be prepared!  I’ve got it all SO figured out.  Have a read of this Vice article about how to be less broke in 2014 – while I suspect that the guy who wrote it probably wouldn’t like me much, he does make some constructive points.

Despite being on an extremely winning life formula, I can admit that I need to be better at keeping in touch with friends and family back in the land of Oz.  I have no intention of swearing less, drinking less, eating less, playing with my smartphone less, or partaking in any of the other most popular ways to be miserable, so “install Skype” it is.Here’s Har Mar Superstar, that’s right, TWO songs in one flog post.  Lose control with me.

See you on the other side of jetlag, lovers!  xX

gel eyeliner product review

29 Nov

oh hey.  Just thought I’d do a sneaky cheeky product review, since I never normally do them, and hey – maybe some people actually arrive at imogenmaxwell.com looking for ACTUAL INFORMATION about makeup.

Not just thousands upon thousands of photos taken in the mirror during class? Just maybe.

SEE?  It's not just me.

SEE? It’s not just me.

Anyway, so here we have Barry M Waterproof Gel Eyeliner (colour: No. 1, £5.49), and Superdrug’s own-brand MUA (MakeUp Academy) Gel Eyeliner (colour: Underground, £3).

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As you can see, the packaging is exactly the same for both.  They both have little brushes in the lids which is nifty.  We don’t really use liquid liners at college because there’s no sensible way to hygienically apply them (double-dipping is, like, the hugest no-no) but with gel liners, you can just scoop out what you need onto the back of your hand and then apply it to Chloe’s face with your lovely clean brush.

Gel liner is good for pretty much all the same things liquid liner is good for.  But it’s easier to use, wobbles and mistakes don’t show up quite so much, you don’t need to be quite so precise.  It usually dries quite quickly.  You can get a few different effects depending on how you put it on/what brushes you use.

Use it to create a catseye 60s flick.  Sometimes, when I have lots of time on my hands, I do me a nice big Winehouse flick starting first with pencil, then gel liner over the top, then liquid eyeliner over the top of that to give it that real crisp outline.

I still prefer pencil on my waterline though; gel can be a little flaky.

If you want to get that nice dramatic Avril Lavigne panda-eye, put it all over your lid and blend it all about.  Go for it but move quickly with a fluffy brush to soften the edges.  It’ll then act as a black primer basically, and you can put more black powder eyeshadow over the top to set it and darken it up even more if you like.

The Barry M wins the race between these two; it’s blacker, and it’s permanent.  Whenever I use it at college, I can scrub as much as I like but that shit stays on the back of my hand for about 36 hours.

Which makes an excellent conversation starter; “what’s that black crap on your hand?” and then I get to talk about my journey to becoming a makeup artist, starting about 15 years ago, right through to the present day.

Happy lining, flogstars!  Xx

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