I don’t just write a blog, I read blogs all day long. Well not all day, but there are certain ones I read A LOT. I have learned more about beauty and food and DIY stuff from blogs than I ever would have otherwise, and that’s why the internet is the cats pajamas, it is also filled with photos of cats in pajamas which is both fabulous and distracting. OK Focus, moving on . . .

The only problem I see is that there are certain things you can’t really learn from a beauty blog, because you’re only getting one persons perspective. So today I wanted to share with you two of my favorite online beauty resources that you might not know about!

Foundation Colors:

So many times I see girls asking bloggers (including myself from time to time) what shade of foundation they should get. While I completely understand your frustration in trying to find your shade (and wrote a post to try to help you figure it out) it is nearly impossible for someone to help you without seeing your skin tone in person and next to the available shades to compare. The easy answer is to go to the store and try them all on. But not everyone lives near a store that sells the foundation they want to try, and online is their only choice. In these instances things can get pretty tricky.

What you may not know is there is a very cool site called Findation.com which can at least help you make a very educated guess as to what color you need to get. Basically you can put in what shades match you in foundations that you already have, and it will tell you approximately what will match you properly in the foundation you’re looking for. How does it do this? well in their own words:

“How does matching work?

Findation uses data from over 659,000 foundation users worldwide and a sophisticated proprietary algorithm to match shades between brands.”

Pretty cool huh? And you know what? It’s pretty darn accurate as long as the foundations you use a reference are good matches for you. Not only did I use this site to decide what shade to buy in a foundation I could only find online, but I also tested it out by putting in my shades for a bunch of foundations and looking up other foundations that I already know my shade in (crafty crafty) and it was prettttty accurate. So if you’re stumped and can’t get to a store to see your foundation in person give it a go, I think this might really help. But still make sure they have a good return policy just in case. Really that goes for ANY online purchase though.

The only problem I have run into is that they don’t have EVERY foundation on earth listed, so you might put all your info in and still not find your answer. But I think they are adding to it all the time, so hopefully eventually they will eventually close all the gaps!

Product Reviews:

The second issue I run into is product reviews. I do reviews from time to time, mostly when I find a product and I fall in love with it and want to tell the world, sometimes when I’m surprised that something let me down. I also enjoy reading other people’s reviews and recommendations on their blogs because they’re detailed and have pretty photos that give a good idea of what to expect from a product. So overall they are really helpful.

But the thing all of my reviews (and other bloggers reviews respectively) have in common is I can only speak from my own perspective! So while someone else might love a product (or hate it) for the same reasons as I do, there may be someone else looking for a completely different quality in it, or with a completely different set of beauty needs, and for them my review doesn’t do jack.

That is why I love Makeup Alley. Basically it’s an enormous review forum, so you can go on, search for the product you want to learn about and quickly find TONS of reviews on it from a bunch of perspectives, from different types of people from all walks of life all over the world. The odds of you finding someone who’s review makes sense to your personal makeup needs is much higher that way, and they’re all in one place so you don’t need to scour the internet in search of help.

Personally I like to use it in tandem with blog reviews. So for example if something sounds great on a blog I’ll look it up on makeup alley and see if there is anything about it I might love, or not love which that particular blogger didn’t touch on in their review! Super useful.

So those are my personal favorite online beauty resources, hopefully you find them helpful. Do you have any sites that you use to help you with makeup? Let me know!