Colour Her

Chapter 3

3

Amber

Niche = Media about a specific area of interest. In vlogging this means the topic of most of your videos, for example, are they about videogames or beauty or crafting or do you do DIY videos. It’s like book genres, is the book a fantasy or a romance or a thriller. That’s the niche. My niche? Beauty and makeup vlogging which includes how-to guides on recreating a specific makeup look.

I like watching the comments come in on my Instragram post, sharing their own struggles to get their hands on some items and the lengths they’ve gone through to find what they want. A couple of people have contacted Curious Cosmetics themselves and were told that their stock is running really low. They have no idea when they’ll be getting new stock in, as the demand for the collection was much higher than expected. They’re apparently trying to negotiate with their suppliers to have them make a new batch as soon as possible, but they didn’t have a timeline for that yet.

Normally, I’m not part of the ‘first to have the full collection’ crowd, but I can’t seem to help myself this time. I want every piece of it, even if they’re something I wouldn’t normally wear, just because I want to have everything. Like, to collect, more than to use. It’s strange, but I’m way too excited about it.

The theme of the Rainbow Collection is l***q+ pride. Every part of the collection is based around a single l***q+ pride flag. Their first run of the collection is based around eight different flags. Starting with the six colour rainbow flag which consists of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple and branching out from there. Then every flag collection has an eyeshadow palette, a lipstick for each colour, a matching lip gloss and finally eyeliners and matching mascaras.

For the standard rainbow, I’ve been able to get my hands on the eyeshadow palette, the orange lipstick and the green and blue mascaras. Quite a scattered collection and it took me three stores to even get this much.

But the sub-collections are the ones I’m really looking forward to. They’ve got an asexual flag sub-collection, with the purple, white, grey/silver and black, and a pansexual pride sub-collection, in pink, yellow and blue. I have no idea how they’ve managed to make the pansexual pride colours look this good, but they actually really seem to work, what I could see in their pictures. There are a host of other pride flags too, and they all look just as good and just as impressive.

It’s a bold move for a brand new company, to so openly target a whole collection for l***q+ pride, but, at the same time, it makes such a statement about who they want to be as a company. It definitely shows what they stand for and it has made the collection a hot item, even just to collect. This could turn out really well for them, or really poorly, depending on if they manage to follow this up with even more flag sub-collections or if this is going to be one of those one-hit-wonder things. A flash and then they’re gone. I hope not, but you never know.

I run my fingers over the rainbow eyeshadow palette’s packaging. The rainbow on the outside is so bright that it almost looks like it’s shining from within. It makes the Curious Cosmetics matte black name really stand out. It’s stunning packaging design, very unique and easy to recognise.

A message pops up, pulling my attention. It’s from one of the other makeup vloggers, Isabelle. ‘The colours are so pretty. How’s the formula? It looks good, but if I can’t use it… It would be kind of pricey, especially to match everything, and then never use it.’

I nod, reaching for my keyboard. ‘Formula on the eyeshadow and the lipsticks are really good. Mascaras are fine and have very good colour payoff. Haven’t tried much else yet.’ Since I’ve not been able to get my hands on them…

I was surprised when I first tried the makeup out and everything seemed to work so well. I don’t know why, but when I originally saw the collection, I expected it to be this jokey or silly stunt, like the stuff you can get around Halloween, but I was pleasantly surprised when the quality was actually really good.

‘I may try to get some myself, then,’ Isabelle messages back. Isabelle is sweet, she was a vlogger who I used to look up to back when I started out, and by now, our channels are the same size, and she’s still just as kind to me.

‘Do try. They’re worth it.’ I smile, leaning back in my chair, looking around my room.

I need to pack my bag for tomorrow and prepare for bed, but I don’t really feel like it yet. The two sides of my life, my vlogging and my university degree, have started to feel so far apart that switching between the two has been getting harder and harder lately.

I’m studying maths at university. I like numbers and I enjoy the way that I can make numbers work for me. But it’s so far removed from what I do with my makeup channel. Some people find it hard to believe that I can do both, that I can be a maths-nerd and a makeup-queen, but I am, and have been combining both for years. But, in the last year, my studies and the channel have both become more demanding, and it’s nearing the point where I don’t know if I can do this much longer, give both the attention that they deserve.

Sighing, I get up, grabbing my notebooks and pens and putting them in my bag. I don’t have an early class, but I do have a few people that I meet up with every Monday morning to work on our assignments together. We all realised that studying on our own didn’t work so well, and Monday mornings in the university library are always nice and quiet. It’s a great way to stay on track and not work on my channel when I should be working on my classes, as I sometimes tend to do when I study at home.

I post a final update to my social media. ‘Off to bed. See you when the sun comes back up! Love you all!’

I immediately get sweet replies to it and like a couple of them before I turn my computer off. This weekend was pretty fun and productive. I got another video done for next week, and the one I posted yesterday about my current favourites went over really well.

Time for sleep and then for a new week to start…

I try not to breathe too harshly as I set my foundation with powder. I don’t want to get it all up in my nose and sneeze and get my mascara running.

When I go to university, I don’t wear a lot of makeup, but I always make sure to at least look put together, and that means making my skin look nice and smooth. I slide the blushes around in their basket. Today I’m going for a natural look for most of my face, so I need a blush that’s more on the softer side, to combine it with an understated highlight.

My eyeshadow look is the closest I’d come to a ‘minimal’ look. I start with a base of almost a pale golden-brown, then some dark brown on the outside of my eyes, an almost golden pop of colour in the middle and a lighter gold on the inner corner of my eye. It sounds like a lot of shimmering and shine, but the colours are all fairly muted, only the pop of gold in the middle of my eyelids really shines. The best is that this takes only a minute or two to put on, the eyeshadow part anyway.

I grab a lipstick that’s between a nude and a dark rose, it’s red, but not too bright. I’m not putting it on yet, because I still have to eat breakfast and I don’t want to have to put it on again later, or clean up any smears from my chin or something.

Checking the time, it’s almost seven thirty. I need to get a move on.

The bus from here to the city takes half an hour and only goes twice per hour. If I take the eight thirty, I’ll be at the main Groningen train station at nine, which is right on time for meeting the guys for the study session.

So, I have about forty-five minutes for breakfast and to get ready to leave. As I still need to make sure I have enough time to to walk to the bus stop.

I grab my bag, putting the lipstick in the front pocket, and finally turn the computer off. It feels like I’ve already got half my day behind me, even though I’ve only been up for an hour or so.

After I woke up, but before my shower, I checked the comments I’d got while I was asleep, liking them and replying to some of them. It always makes me smile when I get nice comments, and while it took me a while to really understand how to respond to the messages, I’ve gotten pretty good at it by now. Interactions, online or offline, aren’t my strong suit. It still scares me sometimes, that I’ll say the wrong thing, share too much, or too little. But that’s life…

Mum greets me with a smile as I walk into the kitchen. “Morning. Ready for a new week?”

I shrug, putting my bag down and going over to the cupboards. I grab a shaker and fill it with water. Then I measure out the shake powder and pour that in too. I start shaking as I walk around the kitchen, grabbing things to take with me for lunch and for snacks during the day.

“You’re meeting the guys?” Mum still tries to make conversation. She’s always more awake than me in the early morning and she hasn’t just spent forty-five minutes having small-talk with people online.

“Yeah.” I grab a lunch bar, chocolate flavour. “Some of us were not getting through the work from last Friday. It’s just…” I sigh. “Sometimes we need to put five heads together to understand a question instead of trying to figure it all out on our own.”

I sit down at the table, tapping on my tablet and making it come to life, navigating to my i********:. I check my social media throughout the day, since there is so much going on at all times, and I’ve got people from all over the world replying to what I post.

Scrolling through the stream, I see that Isabelle has also woken up, and she’s posted a picture of her look of the day. She’s wearing such a pretty purple eyeshadow, and it matches really well with the shirt she’s wearing. I smile, some people make everything they do look good.

I finish up the shake and cut the fruit and veggies into a size that’s easier to take with me.

I’ve got the study group in the morning and then I’ve got class in the afternoon, algebra. After I get back home, I’m hoping to write a couple of ideas and scripts for new videos for the coming weeks. See what I can come up with. I should probably do a video that uses the nail polishes I picked up this weekend. I think I can do something with the gold and the oranges and something in light brown or something. The girl in the store was right, they do combine really nicely.

I look down at my fingers, at how bare my nails are, but I can’t do anything about it right now as I don’t have the time to wait for it to dry anymore. I’m not going to put on new nail polish in a rush, that will have to wait until I get back home.

It’s always about waiting… Always waiting to get back home to work on my channel, or waiting for classes. So much waiting…