Today as I was getting ready I noticed something in my everyday makeup bag that I hadn't seen in a while. Because I am a performer, I have two places where I keep my makeup: my small, everyday bag and a large case for special occasion cosmetics and stage makeup. What I noticed was some Almay Smart Shade spf15 foundation that had made its way from the case to the bag.
Foundation that I like rarely gets stashed in the case in the first place. Usually, it gets there because I bought it, hated it, decided it might not suck under layers of stage makeup, and tossed it in the case. In other words, once its been in the case I should know better than to put it on before I take my daughter to preschool.
In this particular instance I let curiosity rule over judgment. I thought, "Hey, it's summer, this stuff is light, smart, and spf, and even though I haven't seen it in a while it can't be that old..."
Yeah.... oops.
I was at least bright enough to do what my esthetician mother taught me and check the label on the makeup for its expiration period. Makeup expirations are different from food expirations. You have to know when you opened it, and they give you a time, (6 months, 12, etc) from the time you open a product until it expires. These expirations are quite useless if you have no idea when you first opened something, and I had no clue. I didn't even remember owning it. But the label said it expired 24 months from opening. Seemed long enough.... So......
I squeezed some onto my fingertips. It came out white with grey flecks. Sure, it looked weird, but I wrote that off to the whole smart shade concept and slathered the stuff onto my face. All the while I was musing, "If this works, I'll have something to wear at recital this coming weekend that I may not hate..."
As the stuff "smartly" chose a shade for me, it went with a nice, summer ethnic. It would have been lovely if I wasn't naturally the same shade as toothpaste. I tried rubbing it down my neck and further into my hairline for "blend" but let's face it, it was hopeless.
Deflated, I grabbed my face wash, St. Ives Naturally Clear Apricot Cleanser. I am being specific about product names because, naturally, when a chemical reaction is discovered by scientists, what do we learn if they don't record their findings? As I went to work scrubbing the cleanser on my face and neck I was horrified to discover that the combination of the two products (one of which was most likely expired) was forming a thick, tacky, paste all over my flesh. The more cleanser I used, the worse it got. The paste could hardly be scraped away with fingernails and of course, it was in my hair and down my neck.
Finally, I grabbed a good old fashioned bar of soap, and with some effort freed myself from the wrath of a substance I am now naming ACAS15 (Apricot Cleanser plus Almay Smart Shade spf15.)
Scientific community at large: you are welcome.
Foundation that I like rarely gets stashed in the case in the first place. Usually, it gets there because I bought it, hated it, decided it might not suck under layers of stage makeup, and tossed it in the case. In other words, once its been in the case I should know better than to put it on before I take my daughter to preschool.
In this particular instance I let curiosity rule over judgment. I thought, "Hey, it's summer, this stuff is light, smart, and spf, and even though I haven't seen it in a while it can't be that old..."
Yeah.... oops.
I was at least bright enough to do what my esthetician mother taught me and check the label on the makeup for its expiration period. Makeup expirations are different from food expirations. You have to know when you opened it, and they give you a time, (6 months, 12, etc) from the time you open a product until it expires. These expirations are quite useless if you have no idea when you first opened something, and I had no clue. I didn't even remember owning it. But the label said it expired 24 months from opening. Seemed long enough.... So......
I squeezed some onto my fingertips. It came out white with grey flecks. Sure, it looked weird, but I wrote that off to the whole smart shade concept and slathered the stuff onto my face. All the while I was musing, "If this works, I'll have something to wear at recital this coming weekend that I may not hate..."
As the stuff "smartly" chose a shade for me, it went with a nice, summer ethnic. It would have been lovely if I wasn't naturally the same shade as toothpaste. I tried rubbing it down my neck and further into my hairline for "blend" but let's face it, it was hopeless.
Deflated, I grabbed my face wash, St. Ives Naturally Clear Apricot Cleanser. I am being specific about product names because, naturally, when a chemical reaction is discovered by scientists, what do we learn if they don't record their findings? As I went to work scrubbing the cleanser on my face and neck I was horrified to discover that the combination of the two products (one of which was most likely expired) was forming a thick, tacky, paste all over my flesh. The more cleanser I used, the worse it got. The paste could hardly be scraped away with fingernails and of course, it was in my hair and down my neck.
Finally, I grabbed a good old fashioned bar of soap, and with some effort freed myself from the wrath of a substance I am now naming ACAS15 (Apricot Cleanser plus Almay Smart Shade spf15.)
Scientific community at large: you are welcome.
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