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Thursday 31 January 2013

New Vlog: Illamasqua Favourites

The new Illamasqua collection launches today and I'm eyeing a fair few things from the line! The lovely green lipgloss in Shoot has got 'cult classic' written all over it and everyone is going nuts over the 'mini egg' polishes already - it's really hard to get indie polishes in the UK so unusual glitter finishes are pretty rare over here.
 


In light of the launch, I decided to film my favourite Illamasqua products. OK, it's mostly lip stuff, but what did you expect? My earrings which are rather rude and childish are by Gogo Philips at Topshop, FYI.

What are your Illamasqua favourites? Anything to recommend me that I can add to my horrendously long list?

Tuesday 29 January 2013

My Top Five Favourite MAC Blushes

I do love me a MAC blush, I won’t lie! They don’t get as much love from me personally as they should, as they’re all kit blushes - I have four full palettes now and they’re hugely useful to me. These are my personal favourites that I like using on myself, though.

favourite mac blushers 2


Favourite Mac Blushers

L-R:

MAC Harmony (Matte)

Everyone loves MAC Harmony – it’s a lovely contouring colour for paler skins, and it’s a pretty subtle contour on me which I really like. It does lean a little warm, but not too warm and I just find it really versatile. A MAC classic.


MAC Modern Mandarin (Satin)

From last years Tres Cheek collection, this is a beautiful bright, orange based blush. It’s got a lovely satin sheen that makes it much less scary on the cheeks. It’s just really brightening and pretty! I thought it was LE, but as of writing it’s still available on the website.

MAC Buff (Matte)

Oh Buff, how I love thee! It’s a beautifully natural colour on my cheeks when blended out. The website describes it as a “soft muted pinkish-peach,” but I see a little more brown in it. Either way, it’s a very natural, effortless and subtle colour and I use it a lot – it pretty much goes with every look.


MAC Mocha (Matte)

Ok, so Buff and Mocha look pretty similar here, but on the cheek they look much more different. MAC describes Mocha as a “soft plum-pink” and there’s certainly much more pink here than in Buff, and so does give a little more rosiness on the cheek. Again, really really easy colour to wear.


MAC Peaches (Sheertone)

I wouldn’t be being true to myself if I didn’t have a peach blusher in my MAC favourites as I have four or five in different finishes. Peaches is, as the name suggests, a straight up peach colour. I love, love, love a peach blush on my skin and this applies subtly, beautifully and really lifts my complexion. If I had to keep one MAC blush I’d be tempted by Peaches!



As you can see, I kind of prefer their more natural and neutral colours! What are your favourites MAC Blushes?

Sunday 27 January 2013

I’MPerfection: Illamasqua Inspired Dotted Liner

 

As per usual, I’ve found myself enchanted by the latest Illamasqua campaign,  and like everyone who has seen it, the spotted liner look really caught my attention and seemed really easy to do! I had to give it a try…

imperfection 5
imperfection 3
imperfection 4
i'mperfection
imperfection 6
imperfection 7
Imperfection 8

Eyes: Inner corner, MAC Da Bling. Liner colour, MAC Creme De Violet. Lid colour, highlight shade from MUA Pro Brow Palette. Brow Highligh, MAC Gesso. Liner, Collection200024/7 Extreme Liner. Spots on liner, Kryolan Aqua Colors.
Cheeks: Illamasqua Lover, Illamasqua Melt (lipstick, as a cheek highlight)
Lips: Illamasqua Test, Illamasqua Torture
Dark Lips: See this week’s Lip Maths!


I love, love, love how this came out! It looks like fluttery feathers. Ideally I would have used falsies, but I’ve only got ones with really thick lashbands at the moment. I didn’t want to take up too much room on the lid and for this to look like an eyeshadow and not an eyeliner look so I left it without. I don’t have many Illamasqua eye products, so I thought I’d better do Illamasqua cheeks and lips seeing as I pinched their idea! I used Illamasqua Melt lipstick as a cheek highlight and I really liked the glow it gave!I didn’t want to take this look off!

Are you excited for new Illamasqua goodies? I’m eyeing the fantastic looking blush brush!

Saturday 26 January 2013

Juxt Because: LOTD with MAC, Sleek and Illamasqua

A fairly simple, soft look for you guys today! I wore this yesterday to run some errands and go see a couple of people for drinks and then a dinner. I hadn’t done a MAC-heavy look for a long time, and Rachael had sent me some MAC stuff that day (thank you, Fairy Mac Mother!) so it felt right!

Juxt Because
Just Because 2
Juxt because 3
Juxt Because 4

Eyes: Lid, MAC Juxt. Crease, MAC Harmony. Inner corner highlight, MAC Whisper of Gilt. Brow Highlight, MAC Gesso. Liner, Sleek Eau La La Liner in Cocoa, chocolate brown from Sleek Storm palette. Waterline, UNE Skin Glow Pencil in G02.
Cheeks: MAC Harmony, a touch of MAC Mocha and a touch of MAC Whisper of Gilt.
Face: Revlon Colorstay in Ivory, Illamasqua Cream Pigment in Emerge, Illamasqua Loose Powder in P010
Lips: Illamasqua Sheer Lipgloss in Provoke.


I’m trying as hard as I can to use up Gesso as I think it’s a really nasty shadow – I don’t understand why people rave about it. I think I might just give up and Back 2 Mac it anyway. Seeing as I threw together this look pretty quickly, I kind of love how it came out, althought I wouldn’t use Gesso again for sure. I really, really love Illamasqua Provoke – it’s just a sheer caramel gloss, but for some reason I’m really attracted to the neutrals Illamasqua make!

Thursday 24 January 2013

Mini French Pharmacie Haul–Micellar Solutions Galore!

I’m sure everyone has heard of the wonders of French pharmacie skincare brands, but if you haven’t, they’re famous among makeup artists and beauty lovers for being really effective, relatively cheap and having really large, comprehensive ranges. You can get a lot of the more famous brands like Embryolisse, La Roche Posay and Vichy much more easily in the UK now than you could a few years or even a year ago, but on my ski trip a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t resist popping into the chemist on the resort…
 
french pharmacie


Wow… that is a LOT of skincare! This is less than half the stuff they had! I had to snap up a couple of items even though I thought the prices were probably inflated due to being on the resort. Sadly they didn’t have Bioderma, which is still an absolute pain in the arse to get hold of in the UK, but here’s what I did get:
 
French Pharmacie Haul

La Roche Posay Hydraphase Intense UV SPF 20:
I wanted the SPF 30 version as more sun protection is always better, but they didn’t have it so I went for the 20, which is a whole lot better than nothing, hey? The website says :
“Hyaluronic Acid Fragments ensure epidermal cohesion to infuse and lock water in for ultra long-lasting hydration. Adapted to sensitive skin.
The filtering system helps protect skin against damages caused by daily exposure to UVA & UVB rays. Normal to combination sensitive and dehydrated skin.”
DOESN’T THIS SOUND PERFECT?! I’m sadly not super impressed with it so far though, but my skin is beyond dehydrated after a week on the slopes ( the combination of sun, cold and wind is always a recipe for a dry, flaky nose ) and then a further week of cold and snow at home. It’s in pretty awful shape. So I’m going to stick with it and hope that it works put for me. I hope so as I’ve liked other LRP moisturisers I’ve tried a lot. When the weather sorts itself out, this might be a nice moisturizer for me for spring. I think this was around 20 euro and it’s available to order online in the UK.

La Roche Posay Solution Micellare:
Yay, micellare solutions! As they didn’t have Bioderma, I picked this one up. LRP say:
“Micelles - micro-encapsulate dirt on skin's surface and lift it up without rubbing, thereby maintaining skin's physiological balance. Optimal safety on sensitive skin with Poloxamer, a cleansing ingredient so mild it is used in contact lens solutions. Effective to remove impurities while respecting skin's natural balance. Cleanses, tones and calms skin, while respecting its physiological balance.”
This was about thirteen or fourteen euro for 400ml, which is quite expensive. However, I do really like it. It has a slight sweet scent whereas Bioderma has no scent. Bioderma makes shorter work of my mascara and things like gel liners, but it’s a very minor performance issue and there’s not much difference between the two at all really, so I’m glad I picked this up if only satisfy my curiosity as to whether all micellar solutions were the same!


Uriage L’eau Demaquillante:

This isn’t a brand I’ve heard of bofore, and they didn’t seem to have as large a range as the rest of the brands in store. I picked up this as it’s another micellare solution and they didn’t have another LRP one. I wanted to stock up as opposed to paying tons of shipping costs and working out where had the best deal for bloody Bioderma. Uriage say:
Quick and effective, Cleansing Water, Micellar Solution, cleanses and removes make-up in a single step with no need to rinse. It preserves the hydration and purifies the epidermis.
The skin is clear, soft and radiant.

Yep, the above is pretty true. In fact, if you're not au fait with what micellar solutions are, that pretty much sums it up. They're water-like cleansers/makeup removers in one. I think I favour it slightly over the LRP version. But it STINKS! It’s got a strong herbal/medicinal smell to it. The ingredients list pomegranate extract which… I guess is where the scent comes from? It almost smells like the tannic taste you get from fruit seeds, so perhaps that's what it is? Who knows! It’s not exactly unpleasant but it’s strong and not a scent I was expecting at all!  This was about 10 euro for 200ml.


Do you use any French or foreign skincare brands? Do you have any recommendations for my poor dry skin from foreign ranges?




Tuesday 22 January 2013

My New DIY Lip Palettes!

I’ve wanted new lipstick palette for my kit for ages – this is what I was using before and while they were really compact, handy, and cheap at about £4, the lids have all snapped off and they were an absolute pain in the arse to refill! I really wanted a Japonesque palette but they’re quite expensive, retailing at pro stores for about £30. Sadly I’m not more of a hobbyist MUA than a professional one and when I do get paid for my work, the money goes on replacement disposables and foundations, so a pricey lip palette wasn’t high on my agenda so soon after Christmas! I’ve seen lots of people use various things from old shadow palettes to acrylic Muji organisers to jelly bean containers, but the pans looked too deep, or the lids weren’t attached, or any number of silly things that meant they weren’t quite right for me.

After a LOT of searching, thinking, umming and aaahing, I finally purchased two full lipstick palettes from eBay:

 


I bought them from this seller for £6.15 each with free shipping, so cheap as chips! I have the 66 lip palette and the 120 eyeshadow palette from eBay, and the 120 in particular is very well used and I’ve never had any problems with the packaging and the hinges and so on and I imagined this would be the same style of packaging, and therefore pretty durable. My plan was, of course, to take out the lipstick in the pans and refill them with my own.

When they arrived, they were MUCH bigger than I anticipated, which is my own fault for not looking at the dimensions on the listing! Each pan is very shallow and somewhat larger than a 50p and the palettes themselves, when next to each other, take up about the same surface area as the 120 palettes. Oh well! The packaging did seem very sturdy on inspectionand the fact that I could take the trays out and swap them between the palettes made the size seem a little less annoying as I wouldn’t necessarily have to take both every time. Plus they’re still very flat. light, and an easy shape to transport so not too much of an issue. Plus, I’d bought them already, so I decided to plough ahead.

Before I started cleaning, curiosity got the better of me and I had to have a quick swatch:

crappy palette

Unlike the 66 palette widely available on eBay, which I would recommend, this was utter shit. There were only two colours out of the whole palette that I liked, a red that came off as a lovely “just eaten an ice lolly” glaze and a bronzed colour which would look lovely on darker skin tones. The rest were total horsecrap– poorly pigmented, lots of duplicates, sheer and yet with a horrible sticky texture. A shame as they look amazing in the pan and at first glance it looked like there were a few MAC dupes hiding in there - until I started to swatch. So in case you were wondering if this would be fun just for experimenting, or something, no. 

On to the cleaning. This was a fucking nightmare. It was a nightmare. Luckily after trying to scrape out the first pan, I realised that the slots in the palette had a small hole in the bottom so you can push a pin through and pop the pan out – there is a small glue, but it’s not strong at all so no melting or struggling to prise them out– which made the process much less of a ball ache. The sticky texture of the products just made this really hard…

FUUU

 

… and cleaning them both out took me two evenings! I scraped the majority out with a spoon, then went round the bump in the middle and the edges with cotton buds, THEN I washed them all in soap and water, left them to dry and THEN I had to sanitize them afterwards. I won’t lie, it wasn’t fun at all. If you are going to do this, don’t wear gloves  because they’ll get gunked up too quickly and it’s easier just wipe to your hands off each time and accept potential staining. And of course, obviously do it with an apron on and in an area you can wipe down/cover.

Anyway, once everything was finally all clean, I started to fill my palettes. I’d already made charts in my makeup notebook regarding what I wanted so this part was really quick! I switched up a couple of colours while I was actually filling and saw them together but I’m glad I planned the colours out roughly as it made it much quicker. I used this method from Makeup Geek to melt the colours, dead easy:

DIY: Lipstick Palette



Keep a bottle of spray alcohol handy to clean the spoon and knife in between lipsticks, and bear in mind while you’re going that some lipstick will expand in the pan once you’ve poured them. It’s really hard to gauge how much to use, so I’d say use a small slice and add more if needed rather than use too much and waste it, although this means you might not get as smooth looking a pan.

As for labelling, I simply wrote on the back with permanent marker as if I do clean out and change the lipstick in that pan, then I can just use alcohol to take the writing off:

empty pan

full pan

You can see here how big the pans are! I didn’t use enough for this one and you can see it looks a bit lumpy where I had to use a little extra, but I don’t care about that.


Anyway, here’s what I finally ended up with! I used a pretty wide variety of brands as you can see:

Neutrals:

neturals

Top Row L-R: MAC Film Noir, Silk Naturals Nectar, MAC Viva Glam V, Illamasqua Test, GOSH Darling
Bottom Row L-R: NYX B52, Rimmel Vintage Pink, Rimmel Airy Fairy, Kiko 8, Viva Glam Gaga 2

I tried to keep my neutrals palette with not too many pinks or peaches and when I want pinkier nudes I can mix with my pink palette. As with all four palettes, I also tried to use as few shimmery products as I could, as you can always add that later on or mix some in.


pinks and purples

Top Row L-R: MAC Rebel, Sleek Mystic, Covergirl Divine, MUA Shade 3, Milani Rose Hip
Bottom Row L-R: MAC Impassioned, MAC Viva Glam Nikki, NYX Narcissus, MAC Viva Glam Gaga I, Natural Collection Apple Blossom

I probably didn’t need Mystic and Divine, but oh well. They’re less similar than appears here, and shade 3 is also much more muted and raspberry-like. Sorry I used this palette before taking a photo – I used some of the pinks on ReeRee Rockette.


red and orange
Top Row L-R: Barry M 52/Peach, Illamasqua Perilous, Wet N Wild 24 Carrot Gold, Wet N Wild Purty Persimmon, existing colour from the palette.
Bottom Row L-R: Urban Decay Gravity, MAC Russian Red, Rockalily Mae Hem, MUA Shade 13, Covergirl Fame.

You can see the WnW shades, which I used instead of the very, very similar MAC colours I have, have gone really bubbly! Very strange! I kept the existing red from the palette, which I actually liked, but I’m sure it’ll get replaced soon. I tried to keep a mix of blue and orange based colours, plus a deep berry red and a pinky red.

unfinished
Top Row L-R: Rimmel Kiss Me, Sleek Amethyst, Illamasqua Kontrol, Milani Black Cherry, NYX Penelope.
Bottom Row: Lime Crime Mint to Be/Illamasqua Apocalips, empty, empty, empty, existing shade from the palette.

As you can see, this is my ‘leftover’ palette with shades I didn’t really find fit in anywhere. I had to have a black, for example! The blue/green pan was a filling experiment that failed – you can’t do half-and-half without getting hot lipstick everywhere!

 

Well, this was certainly a chore but I’m really pleased with what I have and it’s much, much better than what I was using before. I’m so pleased all the pans pop out so I can mix and match and then I don’t need to take the two palettes with me if I don’t want to. The best part is that it cost me just £12 for portable, light palettes that I can customise easily. Hooray!

Have you ever made a lip palette?

Saturday 19 January 2013

Double Whammy: Lip Art with Sugarpill and Illamasqua


lip art

A cold grey weekend calls for fun, bright makeup! I had a couple of lip art idea I wanted to play with today and chose to use Sugarpill and Illamasqua as they never fail to make me happy and they both make such lovely vibrant products.

 

Illamasqua Lip Art
Illamasqua Purple Lip Art
Illamasqua Lipsticks in Welt and Kontrol, Illamasqua Liquid Metal in Electrum

I wrote about this effect recently for Hi! Magazine but I haven’t actually used it in a while – its so, so easy to do! Just apply your lip colour as normal, pucker your lips really tightly and then dab a metallic cream or lipstick over the top. It looks great over really matte lipsticks and that helps the metallic product to stay. This actually lasted fairly well on me and I think if I had sealed it I could have gone out wearing it for sure! And don’t Welt and Kontrol look amazing together? (Yessss. I know I smudged my concealer in the corner of the lip. Doan curr.)

royal galaxy 2
royal galaxy
Sugarpill Royal Sugar, Darling, Decora. Illamsqua Intense Lipgloss in Galaxy, Inglot Sleeks (clear gloss)

This didn’t do quite so well as the other one. I still like the overall effect, but it was a bit of a nightmare. I really wanted to pair the rich blue of Royal Sugar with the silver gloss, but using dry eye product around the lips didn’t quite work – it was really hard to not move my mouth and crack the line and still get the rest of the products on my lips! I mixed Royal Sugar with a mixing medium and I think something more fluid and less dry like a gel liner would have served me better here. It was also hard to get a fine line with Galaxy as it’s basically made of small microglitters and it’s quite a thick formula. Theeeeeeen I had trouble with my clear gloss – I used my favourite Sleeks gloss from Inglot as it’s so shiny and wonderful, but it seeped into the dryness of the blue liner right away and looks nasty – luckily that doesn’t really show here! And theeeennn I has trouble tapping the loose shadows on to my top lip, which I had to re-do because I made a mess. Anyway, if you don’t look very closely I still think it’s kind of cool!

If you’re an Illamasqua noob, I’d check out their sale now! They’ve got great stuff starting from a measly £5 including lots of their lovely polishes!

Shall I do more lip art? :D

Friday 18 January 2013

Aqua Splash LOTD with Inglot Shadows

This is a look that I really shouldn’t like – my blending is pretty terrible and the false eyelashes I used were just awful, but I really like it anyway! Having spent a week wearing just mascara and a hint of eyeliner, this felt really glam. I also like using colours not so far from my eye colour, too.

Aqua Splash 5
Aqua Splash 2
Aqua Splash 4

Inglot  DS 478, Matte 385, Matte 333, Maybelline Gel Liner, Collection2000 Extreme 24/7 Liner, Collection2000 Glam Crystals in Le Freak.

Sometimes it’s good to enjoy a look without being really critical of yourself. I think a lot of beauty bloggers do that too often and we get caught up in the idea that a look has to be total perfection. Well, screw that!

Monday 14 January 2013

Experimenting: The Scott Barnes Technique

Experimenting The Scott Barnes Technique
My New Years resolution this year is to really knuckle down with studying makeup. When you’re in fulltime work and can’t afford to go to college, self-teaching is really your only option! So to kick start, I bought a ton of makeup books I’d been lusting after with my Christmas money to go with some that I was very kindly gifted!
One of the books I was really surprised by was “AboutFace: Celebrity Makeup Techniques” by Scott Barnes. I didn’t know much about him, but the gorgeous photo of J-Lo, for whom Scott famously works for a lot, sucked me in. I was really surprised with the book and the  approaches that he uses. Firstly, Scott explains  that he thinks in terms of light and the way the light hits the face, as opposed to purely the facial structure. This helps him achieve a really glowing, contoured look. Sounds good, right? You might be more familiar with his technique than you thought…

Yikes! I’m sure you’re all familiar with this photo and the methods that Kim K uses. Well, Scott Barnes is her makeup artist! He contours and highlights the skin with foundations/correctors before buffing everything in with a foundation that matches your skin tone. It sounds and looks bonkers, but like it or not, you can’t deny it’s a transformation and a half!
scott barnes
Here’s a snap from the book – you can see it’s a method he employs on everyone, not just celebrities. I was dubious – in the book, you can see in the final photos the models are wearing a lot of makeup – a lot! Some shots almost look like theatrical makeup as opposed to glamour or beauty makeup. I did find this strange, as much of the books is laid out like a makeover book with before and after shots and interviews with the people in the photos – to me, a makeover generally suggest something practical that the person can take away with them and use in real life! Nevertheless, the book is crammed with lots of different types of tips and tricks and surely someone held in such high regard can’t be wrong? I have  used darker foundation to contour my cheekbones many a time, so I decided to give it a go and try the technique – with a slightly lighter hand!
My tool of choice was this concealer palette which you can get from Coastal Scents, eBay, etc., for an absolute steal. I’ve use some of the colours before for contouring and it’s actually a handy little palette. For reference, I used the yellow corrector with the top colour on the far right hand column. While probably a tad warm for concealing, I wanted a palette at my reach so I could switch colours if necessary. Although both colours were matte, and Scott constantly talks about the “glow,” he rarely mentions any illuminating products, so I decided to go with the palette.

Naked Face
For starts, here’s my naked face. Just moisturiser, nothing else. Forgive my slightly grubby looking left eye, I had a liner mishap which stained horribly! You can see here I don’t have bad cheekbones at all, but a little more definition always looks good.
So let’s get started. Adding a dark colour to my the sides and tip of my nose, jawline, underneath my cheekbones and forehead. In with the yellow concealer under my eyes….

Contouring Your Face
…and down my nose, the tops of my cheeks, browbones, chin, and down my nose. Not quite as bad as Kim K? Oh, fine, it looks bonkers. I followed the photos in the book where he applies the lighter shades in a less angular/stripy way that on the photo of Kim.

Starting to Blend
Now I’ve taken my regular foundation on a buffing brush and really working it all in… work, work, work. You can see my hairline is looking a bit iffy still. If I look worried, it’s because I’m really rather worried. I feel like I have a metric fuckton of slap on.
powder puff
Despite buffing for about ten years, my powder puff after setting the makeup attests to the fact that I do indeed have a metric fuckton of slap on. Well, we’re done…

Naked Faceblended contouring
Blended Contour

Here it is, all blended out and powdered with no blush, lip or eye makeup. It looked much more dramatic in real life, but not quite in the realms of Drag Queen or indeed Kim K. My skin certainly looks MUCH nicer in the after shot, doesn’t it? I particularly like how my nose looks, as this is an area I never really contour at all, although I don’t think I’ll bring the dark foundation up so high next time. I was careful not to use too much product during the process, as I didn’t want to make a huge awful mess. I found it tricky and I still feel like I was wearing so much, so I dread to think how much product some of the people in his shots have on their face!
My main problem with the technique was under the eyes. My skin is a little crêpey there, and too much product never looks good on me in that area. So, I just use the yellow corrector in the hope that that blended out with my foundation would be enough. Compared to the rest of my face, I think my dark circles look horrendous! I’ll certainly have to play with which stage to use which product in that area – I’ll try using my under-eye concealer to blend out the yellow-toned corrector, or try my usual peach corrector instead of the yellow. I’m very, very keen to avoid the horrible reverse-racoon look you see on some celebrities and that does feature a little in Scott’s book. Hey, to each their own, and I won’t moan about how it looks unnatural while I’m wearing so much makeup myself, but still, it’s not for me.

Finished Contoured Look
finished look with scott barnes contouring
Finished look

Eyes: Inglot shadows, Benefit Eyeliner in Steel, Collection 24/7 Extreme Liner in Black.
Cheeks: Mac Buff, Boots No 7 Vital Illuminating Highlighter
Lips: LA Colours Lip Liner in Natural, Maybelline Mauve Diamonds

Here’s my full face, just because! I couldn’t face a smoky or colourful eye after all that, especially just to sit around the house in PJs! I suppose the real question is… would I wear this technique again? I definitely would, but it is a LOT of makeup for a normal day, and as you can see, I  felt the need for a little bit of blush and a touch of powder highlighter as it still looked as if I was lacking something and I needed a bit of colour. For a night out on the tiles, or on one of my models, though, sure, I’d do this again! It’s certainly very glam and I did catch myself looking in the mirror quite a lot! So for a fancy do, absolutely. For nipping down the shop or..well, most things, probably not! It’s a very effective and surprisingly easy technique, and I’d recommend it if you have trouble contouring with powder as it does seem more intuitive, but I don’t think it’s practical for most women everyday. I went through a LOT of Bioderma that night..

grosssss
Bleh!
Well, while it’s not for everyone, it’s certainly a fab book and well worth a read if you’re interested in makeup artistry. Would you try this technique?

AboutFace: Celebrity Makeup Techniques is available on Amazon, where you can read the introduction, for roughly £10.

Sunday 13 January 2013

Step by Step: Wet N Wild “Shimmer The Night Away” Look

Christmas and New Years are long gone, my annual ski trip has just ended and the rest of January is looking miserably dull and grey, grey, grey. So I have a cute, shimmery tutorial for you, hurrah! All shadows are from the super cute “Shimmer The Night Away” 8 pan palette from Wet N’ Wild (thanks Wendy!) Here’s the look we’re going for:

 

Wet N Wild Where's The Party

 

1

1: Apply your primer. Brush the white ‘browbone’ colour all over your lid and inner corner, and then work the silver “eyelid” shade in your crease with a fluffy brush, starting from the outside in, taking care not to go below the crease.


2

2: Using a small brush, take the silver along your lower waterline, making it a little thicker on the outside corner. Then take the pinky-purple “eyelid” shade on one side of a small, c-shaped brush and sweep it about a third of the way across the outside of your lid.


3

4: Add more of the pink-purple to build up the intensity, and when that’s done, take the black “definer” shade on the left hand side and define your crease line and lower lashline.


4

5: Take a blue pencil eyeliner and line your upper lashline, then go over it with the blue “definer” shade.


5

5: Make a wing with black eyeliner as usual, and link it up to the blue liner. Add liner on the waterline, if you like, and blend out any harsh edges with your face powder or a matte skin tone shade. Then do your brows and mascara/lashes, et voila! You're done….

Wet N Wild Where's The Party Tutorial
Wet N Wild Where's the Party 2
Wet N Wild Where's The Party Look

Pink Nouveau and Gosh Light N Shine 5

The lips are MAC Pink Nouveau (thanks Rachael!) with my old favourite, GOSH Light N Shine no 5 gloss. I fancied something really girly to go with the eyes.

 

I love wearing makeup that my blogger friends have sent to me, it make me think of them whenever I look in the mirror!

Are you brightening up January by wearing bright or funky makeup?