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I learned a number of things during the 30-Day Lipstick Adventure. One was understanding why a lot of female YouTubers have long hair. Because when you shoot out of sequence several weeks apart, having short hair makes it very obvious what you are doing. Especially if you get a haircut somewhere in the process.

So I made it part of the story.

Watch the 30-Day Lipstick Adventure and check out what else I learned, plus my magic hair:

The actual 30-More-like-60 Day Lipstick Adventure actually started in January. Because in the very depth of dark and cold, some sort of colour has to liven up the place. My friend and sister-in-law JJ and I are very good at enabling each other, so when the Boxing Day pillaging pilgrimage to Nyx Cosmetics was cancelled due to extreme cold, we took the project online. And there was that excellent sale which resulted in each of us acquiring a box of 30 Liquid Suede Cream mini lipsticks.

I did follow through on my commitment to show the world what I was doing, both going outside and posting on Instagram every time I tried a new colour. If you want to see the photos in situ (if you will), check out my The Seated View Instagram account. Which ended up traversing boundaries between two places on Instagram.

Forgive me for returning yet again to the Facebook block of my website. Because Facebook owns Instagram, I was increasingly silenced on The Seated View’s account. That’s why I didn’t arrange myself prettily for every photo. I was by then not allowed to write any text on my posts and ever had to tell the story only visually. Which ended up being a unique challenges that was a lot of fun. Towards the end of the project, I was locked out of the account and started my Lene AndersenTO account to wrap up the project and say something again on that platform.

Relatedly, I have something super exciting to tell you: my website has been cleared! Not only was it cleared on Facebook, but my Instagram account was also unlocked! This was all due to a conversation during my June #AskLene, leading to a substantial amount of my friends and readers having had it up to here and bombarding Facebook with demands that they clear me. You guys made all the difference and I am so grateful!

Back to the lipstick adventure. It was a blast. I loved finding out which colours worked for me and which didn’t, I love seeing other people’s reaction — especially the first day when a woman kept looking at me out the side of her eye, deeply disturbed by the bluish grey on my lips. Subsequently, that’s one of my favourite colours.

I learned a bunch of things about technique and tools, about trusting myself and not caring what other people think, and I found a way to play.

Another lesson is the discovery of how much I enjoy doing these videos. It’s a completely different way to tell a story and as I’m getting better at using Premiere Elements for editing, the fun is increasing as a learning curve levels out. I hope that means that I’ll be able to do more videos in the future, without taking months in between.

Which is a bit of the elephant in the room: how long it takes me to do one of these. It is still an add-on to everything else I do and will likely remain so, at least until I finish the next book.

Yes, it is in the works. More on that another day.

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Do you have any ideas for topics you’d like to see in video format? Leave them in the comments!