Purple FOTD with MAC

I did not leave the house and did absolutely nothing this day except my makeup and finally reading Death Note (which, hello, worst ending ever amirite), so naturally, enormous lashes happened. Let us examine further:

Eyes: MAC Paint Points in Dangerous Cuvee and Blackground, Very Violet Eyeshadow. Nude shadow on browbone from MUA palette. Brows Rimmel Hazel and touch of dark brown from MUA palette. Lashes Eyelash Laboratory (cheap but super awesome Korean lashes)
Lips: MAC Up The Amp, with a touch of Pink Noveau in the centre, Creamsheen Glass in No Apologies.
Cheeks: MAC Autoerotique


Ugh, I looooved this look! Dangerous Cuvee is a new baby for me, and I have to say, I love it. I’m never really that drawn to MAC Paintpots for some reason, but this one screamed my name and I just had to have it – it’s a deeper silver with subtle green and pink shimmer in it that just elevates it slightly. Ooh, it’s lovely, and juuuust about work safe! What’s been on your peepers lately?

Thanks for looking at my mug!

Illamasqua Intense Lipglosses

Illamasqua are well known for their bold campaigns and fearless colour choices in their products and in my opinion, nothing embodies that view of the brand more than their Intense Lipglosses. I own eight of these beauties and I thought I would share just how gorgeous they are!

L-R: Boost, Touch, Shoot, Wanderlust, Violate, Galactic.

 

 

 

This is Shoot – isn’t she gorgeous? This is a newer addition to my little collection and I bought her for shoots, so I haven’t really worn her yet. She’s almost totally opaque, but due to the unusual colour I would recommend wearing a green eyeliner on the lips so if the colour moves around, you won’t see any pink underneath from your natural lip (which can really ruin the look of a green shade!)

 

This is Touch, from the 2014 I’m The One collection for Valentines Day. Not as unique as some of the Intense Lipglosses but certainly gorgeous! This has a lovely shimmer to it.

 

This is Boost – applied alone, and over a deep brown liner. Don’t you just love a duochrome? People went nuts for Boost when it was released and for good reason – it’s beautiful! This is fairly sheer for an Intense Lipgloss which tend to be thicker, but I suppose the effect is quite intense! I love the versatility of this shade.

 

 

 

Next up is Violate, one of my favourite Illamasqua products ever. I think this shade is really glamorous, and layered over a red is actually beautifully wearable. This isn’t fully opaque but you can get away with wearing it on your own.

 

 

From the Creator collection, this is Wanderlust. I LOVE this shade – if you like the brown shades of the 90’s revival that’s been going on in the makeup world, this is a really nice, different addition to that sort of trend. I can’t wait to use this shade on a model with deeper skin. And on a model with pale, pale skin. I just love it!

 

 

This is Galactic – very cool, but very strange! It doesn’t seem to have a base colour and seems to be made up of silver particles - if you click to see a bigger picture, you can see what I mean. This means it's hard to get a crisp line, but it's worth the work.

 

 

This is, Absorb. Alone, it’s.. well, on me it’s quite frankly nasty and a little um, biological, but it’s a great mixing shade, so I’ve kept it hanging around! Again, pigmented and glossy.

I *think* this may be Frenzy, but the label has worn off of this one so I’m not too sure. Sorry! However, I wanted to include it to show you again how lovely and pigmented these glosses are.

So there you are, thems my babies! The Intense Lipglosses do vary – some are sheerer than others, some have more of a creme finish for example – but on they whole they tend to be very pigmented, slightly thicker lipglosses that are nonetheless comfortable to wear and with fairly decent staying power. Out of these, Boost is probably the one I have to reapply most often. At £14.50, they’re certainly not the cheapest lipglosses on the market but if you want an unusual colour, I really don’t think you’ll find better quality. The only negative thing about these is that since they changed the packaging, sometimes the brushes in them are splayed which is very frustrating. However, because of the pigmentation of these glosses, you may wish to apply them with your favourite lip brush anyway.

Facade, Gender, Stranger and Absorb are next on my list. Do you have any of this range?

LOTD with Melt Spacecake and MAC Glitter and Ice Cool Palette

All in all, this look is not as nice as I wanted it to be as I was trying some new products and totally buggered it up, but I really wanted to show off this rather gorgeous lipstick!

 

 

 

Eyes: Shadows are all MAC Glitter and Ice cool palette, Morgana Cryptoria Silver Holo Glitter on the lid
Cheeks: Too Faced Chocolate…something, I don’t fucking know
Lips: Melt Cosmetics Spacecake

 

 

I participated in a Halloween makeup swap, and my swap partner Channy sent me some wonderful items, including the glitter and eyeshadows seen here. I mean seriously, a MAC palette from the Glitter and Ice collection? This is a bloody gorgeous palette, and you can still pick it up on eBay and so on for not-too-silly prices - the purple and blue shades are just gorgeous. Thank you Channy! She also sent me some really nice Australian items that I'll be talking about soon.

 The reason I buggered this look up is that I was doing an intricate swoopy cut-crease sort of thing, and then I tried to adhere the glitter she sent me using Lit Clearly Liquid base…. I’d not use it before and it messed up all my liner and all my crease work. It’s an amazing adhesive (I'll be reviewing it soon) but I really needed to learn how to use it before attempting something so fancy with it! So please excuse the dissapointing eye makeup, heehee!

 

 

But let’s talk about that lipstick. GREY LIPSTICK, SCHWEEDHEART. I’d seen a lot of love for Melt on Instagram and on a total whim picked up a couple of shades, including this lovely, Spacecake. If you want I’ll do a review on the two shades I picked, but for now, bask in it’s matte grey creme glory.

 

 

What do you think of grey lipstick? Yea? Nay? Really nay?

Double Whammy: Lip Art with Sugarpill and Illamasqua

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 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.)



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

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:

 

 

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: 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.

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.

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

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….

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?

Sugarpill Chromalust swatches, looks and review

Recently I got my first ever Sugarpill eyeshadows! I’d been wanting to try them for some time but the jars are enormous! While I don’t think $12 for that much eyeshadow is expensive, I’d just never use them and it would be a massive waste. So when a Facebook group I’m a member of did a group buy where you split the shadows into 1/4 jars, I grabbed a few to try. How could I not?!

 

 

L-R: Lumi, Darling, Tiara, Goldilux, Tipsy, Decora, Royal Sugar

 

 

Decora on the lid, with Tipsy in the crease and on the lower lashline, Lumi as an inner corner highlight. I’m wearing Decora over Pixie Epoxy and it foiled and looked much more metallic than I was expecting. Tipsy is used over P.E on the lower lashline but over nothing but UDPP on the crease – it blends out pretty nicely without losing all of it’s sparkle.

 

Lumi all over the lid. While Lumi is the sheerest of these shades and probably made to be a highlight/layering colour, it’s still gorgeous enough to be the main event on the eye. I really like this one and if I ever purchased a full jar, this would be it.

 

 

Goldilux all over the lid. This shit looks like liquid gold. It’s amazeballs. I did find it to have a lot of fallout – it’s a *very* fine shadow and a sticky base is an absolute must – but it’s super cool! It’s… it’s just SO gold.

 

Darling all over the lid with Tipsy in the inner corner. Darling is a really beautiful colour! Again it’s a very fine shadow, and I did find it stained my lids a little.  I’ve worn it alone on the lid a few times since I’ve got it because I *love* how it looks with my hair colour. Super pretty.

 

Tiara all over the lid with Royal Sugar in the crease and on the lashlines. Tiara is much more sparkly than this in real life, and although it doesn’t have that oomph that Goldilux has – it’s not as bright - it’s very pretty. I was expecting tons of fallout with this one but it was actually fine.

Royal Sugar all over the lid. (This later turned into this). I’d heard a lot of negative things about how hard Royal Sugar is to work with –  that’s it’s patchy and the fallout is awful – but I didn’t have a problem with it. It worked fine over Pixie Epoxy and the fallout wasn’t any worse than a normal dark loose shadow. I’m not a blue eyeshadow person but this one is pretty awesome.

 

Overall, I really like these shadows. I don’t think they’re the be all and end all that some seem to think they are, but they’re certainly bright and pretty. Because Sugarpill are an ‘indie’ company, I think a lot people want to see a little more uniqueness from the shades (Off the top of my head, there’s certainly alternative to Lumi from Kryolan, and Goldilux and Hi-Fi On Tour are exactly the same). I don’t necessarily see it as a negative that they’re not all super unique– I know where to go for unique colours and from a professional standpoint at least I can see the need for bold colours such as these (an MUA might not always want or need ‘unique’ colours, for example.) To sum up, while I really like these and I’m glad I finally got them in my grubby paws, I don’t love them more than anything else, if you know what I mean. In my opinion, they’re kind of on par with Barry M eyeshadows – not the most unique, but good value ( Great, in fact. Just to compare, Barry M is about £4.50 for 3.5g and with the current conversion Sugarpill are about £7.60 for 12g)  and very pretty! I’m looking forward to trying their pressed shadows next.

Tape Manicure Fails

I’ve been playing with tape manicures this week, and let’s just say I’ve not got it down yet!

 

This is Zoya Robyn and L.A Colours Live layered with… ugh, a sheer green from Kiko. While I like the idea of this, I don’t think I should have used one of the foil-y, micro-glitter polishes as the lines haven’t come out so crisp. I also think I should have made the spikes larger.

Sorry for the terrible picture quality here. This Barry M Purple on the top layer and the same Kiko polish as a base. This looks awful on camera but nicer in real life, I promise. I’m not happy with it at all, though – the purple polish was very thing and I think it snuck under the tape a little, especially where I crossed it. I’m going to try with a nice opaque creme polish next time and perhaps switch up my tape – I’ve been using masking tape and I think I might need to try scotch tape.

 

 

Have you tried layering tape for manicures? Any tips for me? Pleeeease?!

Disney Collaboration with Fierce Nerditude: Wall-E

Vijaya is giving me some awesome characters! This week I got Wall-e, the cutest robot ever, and I gave her King Louie, the orang-utan from The Jungle Book. I'm so happy I got Wall-e, I love how expressive the animators made him considering he only really has 'eyes,' and they're in a fixed shape. 

Eyes: Lid, matte yellom from Sleek Circus. Crease, lower lashline, Fyrinnae STFU. Blended above crease, light brown from MUA Pretty Pastels. Highlight, matte cream from W&W Lush palette. Liner, Barry M Silver Black mixed with Inglot Duraline. Waterline, Urban Decay 24/7 liner in Zero.
Cheeks: Beauty UK Baked Blush in Peaches and Cream
Lips: Fyrinnae Lip Lustre in Romantique.

It was hard to choose colours for this look, as sometimes he's all rusty and neglected and then he gets a clean up later. I decided to go for a a bit of both. I really wanted to make a big deal of having bolts along the lashline, but it's really hard to do detail on foiled eyeshadow!


Thanks for reading, now go check out the King of the Swingers!