Friday Five - Sephora edition

            Happy Friday! It's going to be a busy weekend for me, as Mr. Lovey's good friend is in town, we're going to see Skyfall, and I have a number of blog and work projects to get done.  Like many beauties, I had a good dose of Sephora this past week. I've been drawing up my list for the Sephora V.I.B. sale, as well as flipping through the glossy pages of the Sephora Holiday 2012 catalog that made it into my mailbox this week. I haven't placed my Sephora V.I.B. order yet, as I tend to drag these things out til the last minute. I don't forsee any of my wishlist selling out too quickly, and even if it does, c'est la vie. I splurged on a fragrance and a few blushes during the Sephora Friends and Family sale last month, so I won't be picking any of those. Most likely I'll end up ordering NARS and nail polish. That's what has ended up happening for the past few V.I.B. sales and, well, I'm a creature of habit!

          I mentioned on Instagram that the strongly shadowed photographs in the Sephora Holiday 2012 catalog looked beauty blogger inspired (see above), and many of you agreed. This is a sentimental topic for me, as it brings back memories of a very personal journey in beauty blogging. Veteran bloggers may remember that not long ago, beauty blog photographs had quite a different look. The prevailing photography emulated the industry ad standards and advice focused around how to minimize shadows in your images. As a fledgling blogger, I did my best to adhere to the advice, but couldn't get it to work for me. Intense shadows have long been a part of my non-photographic artwork. In my youth, I excelled in black and white mediums including charcoal, conte, and ink. I had an enduring fascination with contrast, negative space and the interplay between saturated light and darkness. Inevitably, I started experimenting with photographic shadows. One fateful day I posted an extreme photograph (see here). It was my way of declaring to the world (in reality, just a handful of readers at the time) my rebellion against the status quo. It's been my mission since then to show that maximalist shadows are not the mark of an amateur, but something skillfully and purposefully done to add depth and dimension. Most importantly however, it replaces artificial ethereality with reality while maintaining the underlying beauty. Embracing this different look really helped my blog take off and has been a part of Cute and Mundane ever since. It's been beyond cool to see this trend catch on in the blogosphere and eventually find its way back into the pages of an industry mailer. If anything, I think this is encouragement for bloggers to keep innovating; even a small idea can one day change the look of a landscape.

            On that note, here are five beautiful blog posts that caught my eye this week:

1. Best Things in Beauty has swatches of Chantecailles Les Petales de Rose.
2. The new Laura Mercier Artist Eye palette is on Lil Lady's Life.
3. There's a cool Lancome Bi-Facil 'eye print' on Beauty Reductionista.
4. Makeup Magpie has a sparkling selection from Lancome Holiday 2012.
5. If you heart hot pink, check out Chanel Ultra Rose on Front Row Beauty.

         Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what plans you have in store for the weekend. What did you order from Sephora this week? Is there something in your basket that you're really excited about?

Love, Dovey.