Blog Origins, Doll Up Mari

Blog Origins

I started blogging late 2012 (October-ish) with my other blog called Teenage Creamery. The blog was a hodge podge of all the stuff I do, from food explorations to the crafts I did to the other beauty related stuff I got into. It was an okay blog, I guess, but I realized later on that it looked like a hot mess as there was too much stuff going on. I wanted to have a blog that focused on beauty and makeup, my long time love. This is why I started Marilene the Alkene (now Doll Up Mari) in April 2013, a blog devoted to my makeup and beauty explorations.

I just loved makeup so much that I wanted to take it to the next level, which is why I went on and attended professional makeup artist classes. I obtained a certificate in beauty and fashion makeup.

Initially, the stuff I put here on the blog were photos of the makeovers I’ve done in makeup school and at home (because we had to do extra makeup as homework) just so that the photos would be documented and I would have an online space for them. I later added in photos of myself with different makeup looks. And at the time I also had a few photo tutorials.

Since people would always ask me on what to do about this or that makeup dilemma, and that I enjoyed making a makeup tutorial back then for fun, I decided to make more tutorials on YouTube. I am constantly working to see what kinds of information do people want to know, and how can I better improve my videos for a better overall experience. Also, since part of my friends’ dilemmas were on what products and tools they should try, I added in makeup item reviews to the blog so that I could share information about the things I liked and what I could recommend to someone for a given occasion.

As time went by, even I myself had more questions about makeup. It used to be something I was so sure about, but then I realized that I was an Asian girl in the middle of an Asian country whose culture is so Americanized that its ways of makeup were also very Western. I learned along the way that when it comes to makeup, it’s about finding what suits you, what feels right, and finding your own balance of which influences to take in.

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On The Blog Names

My blog is now currently named Doll Up Mari, but it used to be named Marilene the Alkene. I renamed the blog December of 2013. This is why you will see the two names on my photo watermarks within the site.

On The Old Blog Name: Marilene the Alkene

I know it’s quite an unheard of term, that word ‘alkene’, especially to my readers who aren’t into chemistry. So basically, an alkene is an organic compound whose featuring characteristic is a double bond. Say wah???

So I’m going to make an analogy of these bonds with hugs. The closer you are to someone, the tighter you can hug them and the stronger your bond, and the farther you are to someone, the less likely that you would be able to embrace them as tightly, making a weaker bond. For chemical compounds, you can have a single bond, double bond, or triple bond, with the triple bond the shortest and strongest.

I thought of this name because for one, I was a chemistry major for quite a good amount of time. I didn’t want to forget the chemical-related side of me even if I’m now into the usage of makeup and not the creation of it.

Another reason is because basing from the analogy I gave on bonds, I’ve always wanted to be close to my readers, to have as little distance as possible, and to form strong bonds with my readers and fellow beauty bloggers. The internet is such a great resource and I’d love it if I could use it to reach out and communicate with people whom I otherwise wouldn’t meet had it not been for the internet’s invention.

I envisioned the blog to be casual, down to earth, and most importantly, engaging.

I want to make people believe that you need not be born pretty to feel beautiful and confident because makeup can do so much for you if you use it correctly.

As for why I did not choose to name my blog after a triple bond which I indicated as the strongest, it was simply just because alkene rhymed with my name Marilene well, unlike the word alkyne (the term for a chemical compound with a triple bond).

On the Current Blog Name: Doll Up Mari

My old blog name may have been cute and meaningful, but the problem with it was that it was too long and too hard to spell. As it is, there are already many people who cannot spell my name correctly. I have seen Marlin, Marlen, Marlene, and many other abhorrent misspellings of my name. This meant that people had a hard time to enter my blog whenever they were not in their own computers or when their computers had deleted the history or cookies pertaining to my blog (and that they had not followed me on social media yet). Moreover, the name itself being too long was difficult to remember. None of my friends could recite Marilene the Alkene, and even the word alkene posed problems as it was too scientific that it was hard to remember.

This is what led me to choose a domain that sounded cute but was easy to remember and easy to spell.

That’s basically the reason behind the current blog name. And that it sounds cute. And that I don’t really wear makeup and primp everyday that this blog has been the avenue where I doll myself up for, this is why this is the place where you doll up Mari.