Hey PV girls! We hope you’re all keeping safe during this enhanced community quarantine. Just a friendly reminder to eat healthily, take care of your mental health, wash your hands, and #StayHome. If you need to shop for essential skincare and beauty needs during this ECQ, here’s a list of beauty stores that are still open online and delivering.

While I often shop for makeup at Sephora, I admittedly tend to skip over their in-house brand as they’ve always looked plain next to the other brands that they carry. Recently though, I’ve noticed that the Sephora Collection has been upping their game with new skincare releases that feature trendy ingredients housed in chic, minimalist packaging. If you’ve been curious to try their new line of cleansers, here are my thoughts after testing these products for two weeks.

Are you one for New Year’s resolutions? Some people may be naysayers but I personally believe in the power of a new year for sparking change! Sure, you’ll need to follow through for the next 11 months to achieve success but getting started is almost always the hardest part. If one of your resolutions this year is to achieve your best skin yet this 2020, here are four things you can do to reach that goal.

I had one of the worst breakouts of my life three years ago. There I was, trying out some high-end, cult favorite skincare and fully expecting to look like Kendall Jenner after 30 days. To my heartbreak, my skin broke out in clumps of tiny, angry, itchy bumps instead! After a few months and trying some similar products, I realized that what I had at the time was actually fungal acne.

Are you a skincare junkie? How many skincare products do you currently have in your stash? I recently took stock of mine and found that I currently have 20 in rotation. It’s a lot more than I’d like, but in my defense, it took some trial and error for me to find the ones I like best. I’m finishing these purchases, then plan to edit down to only keeping my HGs! My downsized shelf will be composed of just 10 key pieces; that may still seem like a lot for some but it’s the routine that works for my oily-acne prone skin type.

I have a confession to make: last year, I started teaching myself to buy less makeup. I unfollowed a lot of cosmetic brands on social media, and stopped consuming makeup content from videos to blogs, and even newsletters. When I see a sale, I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and walk away. I still love makeup and that’s not gonna change, but I needed to stop an unhealthy shopping addiction that had me buying waaaay more than I need. What snapped me back to reality was seeing a drawer full of expired makeup that I hadn’t even used more than thrice. So this 2020, my New Year resolution is to stay committed to #ProjectPan and doing a low buy!

It took me years before I learned how to care for my oily skin. As a teen, I thought that frequently washing my face and using astringents would do the trick of banishing the grease. 15-year-old me had a lot of misconceptions about skin care, and I’m so glad that the internet and sites like Project Vanity made learning about proper skin care much easier! Of course, there’s a lot of misinformation online, too, so it’s important to be careful about which sources to trust and avoid the pitfalls of shady skincare hacks.

A micro-tip brow pencil has always been my weapon of choice when it comes to doing my kilay. It’s easier to draw fine, hair-like strokes with a slim tip so I’m able to achieve the naturally #blessed brow look - just the way I like it! 

A good micro-tip pencil to me should meet these three criteria:

Skin care diet, skip-care, the anti-10 step skin care routine - these beauty buzz words basically all mean the same thing. They’re all about going back to the basics and downsizing your skin care regimen and not compromising the image of minimizing pores. I enjoyed the 10 step skin care routine for a good while but I’ll be the first to admit that I found the rules of layering a bit tedious. Do I really need to spend an hour to slap products on my face, or can I do it under 15 minutes and make time for other things that I enjoy?

For many of us, growing up in the Philippines meant growing up believing that white skin is better. If you have fair skin, you were considered maganda, artistahin, and kutis-mayaman. If you were darker-skinned though, what a shame! You would probably told that it’s a pity you were born kayumanggi, and given a number of suggestions on how to whiten skin.   

Confession: During the height of the liquid lipsticks craze, I owned over 50 tubes of liquid lipsticks from more than 15 different brands. I was obsessed with the matte liquid lip, until tints and velvets later came into the picture. These days, I reserve wearing liquid lipsticks for special events. While they are generally more dependable and longer wearing, they also often have the most drying formulas.

The Colourette Velvetints were a hit for me when they first launched in 2018. There were three well-curated shades in a multipurpose formula that’s pigmented, comfortable, blendable, and affordable at P299 - I still have Birthday Cake on regular rotation! Colourette recently added nine more shades to the line with an improved formula and relaunched packaging so I was really excited to try these. Now at P349 each for 3.5ml of product (they used to be 3g), is it worth getting your hands on the new #VeryVelvet Velvetints? 

Tolerated, but not accepted. While this year’s #PrideMarch was more successful than ever, the Philippines as a country has a long way to go before truly becoming a safe space for the LGBTQI community. Just recently, there was news about a trans woman who experienced discrimination in a Quezon City mall. Gretchen Custodio Diez just wanted to use the female restroom, but was humiliated and arrested. 

When I first started buying my own makeup, I bought some of my very first lipsticks from Maybelline. I have been a fan of their Creamy Matte line for years now, and still reach for Maybelline faves like Clay Crush, Nude Nuance, and Touch of Spice despite owning over a hundred lipsticks! And it’s not hard to understand why.

My oily skin has always plagued my makeup game. Creasing bases, transferring foundations, fading colors, the general icky oil pool – I could go on and on why I’d prefer to be dry-skinned if I could choose my skin type! One particular drawback that I hate about being oily is (accidentally) smudging my mascaras. The point of having curled and coated lashes is to make my eyes look more awake, but panda eyes from my oily lids causing my mascara to smudge make me look like I put on dark circles. No thanks!  

We’re down to the last days of the summer! Have you squeezed in a beach trip to your schedule yet? Make sure that you’re keeping yourself protected from the sun by packing your summer skincare essentials, and update your makeup kit with beach-ready products to keep you looking good in vacation photos! If you’re looking for brows that can survive water activities and excessive sweating, I tested six brow products that claim to be long-wearing and waterproof so you don’t have to!

11 years strong - what a crazy feat! Whenever I think about how far Project Vanity has come, my heart swells with pride and joy. I’ve been a PV reader since 2012 and a writer since 2016. I’ve seen firsthand how much the content has evolved and how big the community has grown. I feel very grateful that I found this space that Liz built on the internet many moons ago. Project Vanity to me has always been a fun, safe space to celebrate beauty with smart and passionate women.

I sometimes tend to forget that Avon is not a local brand. Witnessing the strong foothold that Avon has had on our market growing up, I’m convinced that at least 90% of Filipinas have tried an Avon product at least once in their life. While I’ve never been particularly drawn to their makeup, I have heard good things about the Mark. by Avon line. Supposedly the edgier and trendier sister to the True Color brand, Mark. offers playful, creative products at the affordable price point that Avon is known for.  

At the start of every new year, we look forward to seeing what trends will become popular. Glossy lips? Baby bangs? More foodmetics? All sorts of makeup in Living Coral? Trends come and go and only time will tell which ones would come to define the year ahead. What we know for sure is that we’re saying goodbye to 2018 and its beauty hypes that were just not worth it.