Depending on how you look at it, the VintageGent-ette prefers old classic favorites or gets into a rut when it comes to cosmetics.

“I had an incident as a teenager. I somehow thought that my complexion and hair color mimicked the jet haired porcelain combination of Liz Taylor, but I was a little off. I blame the Clarion computer for allowing me to ’self assess’ my hair and skin color. The truth is, I wanted purple lipstick.

After that major fashion incident, not realized until photos were taken with me made up like this, I was afraid to try color again, hence the five years of milking a tube of Raisin colored lipstick from the makeup counter at Penneys. It was a sort of ‘just darker than my natural lip color’ color that you would think I didn’t have any lipstick on. After I milked that tube for five years, they discontinued it, and I went through a red lipstick/black eyeliner Hollywood starlet phase. But then again, you have to have the ‘right red.’

Now, I am hesitant to try new colors of lipstick and eyeshadow because of the money you have to sink into it. If I change my look, I am $40 in the hole once you add the lip pencils, eye pencils and then I might not even like it. Of course, that’s only at the drug store. At the makeup counter, that could be $200 so I better darn well like it. I don’t mind spending money if I like it…but how will I know? The store lighting is so different.”

BH cosmetics has full palates of 120 and 88 eyeshadow colors, plus a lip color collection as well. For under $30, all sorts of looks can be experimented with to settle on a signature color or to change looks from day to night to costume ball. The lip palates are under $20.00, incidentally. They are highly pigmented, so a little goes a very long way.  This also works well if you happen to work in the theater and need to help costume actors.  Of course, use a disposable applicators after each dunk in the makeup, or if its a long run, you may want to consider getting a palette for each of the female or principals or magical characters, such as fairies and woodsprites and alien beings regardless of gender that may need their share of blue and green eyeshadow to bring out their gills.

Sometimes, the best costumes I have ever worn came out of last minute procrastination. When I was a kid, I found an old box, a few magic markers and I went as a Rubik’s Cube. We had a parade through the different classrooms of the school, and I couldn’t make it between the rows of desks. Poor planning on my part, I know. In the years since, I thought that the last minute route was the way to go based on my prior success, but found that the creativity well often was dry now and again and I went to the store to look for the one or two elements of a costume I couldn’t find around the house and was sorely out of luck. I mean, you can’t exactly make a deerstalker’s hat with your limited 4th grader skills in a way that people could tell what it was.

In truth, I didn’t wear a Sherlock Holmes hat.  That was just an example of something not easily made.  After milking the Rubik’s Cube costume a few years, I used it as the basis of going as a dining room table complete with place setting.

I found that if you are totally desperate and can’t possibly milk the same costume again for a third year in a row, Halloween Adventure still has some last minute Halloween emergency shipping options, where you can still order up until a few days before depending on what state you are in.  I will warn you though.  This is the last call. If you order today with ground shipping, you’ll get it the 28th. You can shell out more for faster shipping if you want. Don’t wait until the day before Halloween because it is just not going to happen for you. In otherwords, drop what you are doing right now and get on the stick!