Random Makeup Series: Textured Lips

A slightly better combination than my first post! In case you didn’t see, I recently made up a jar of words which I could use to create looks with when I had no inspiration, and this time I got ‘textured’ and ‘lips.’ Luckily for me, I got some gold leaf in the post this week, so I decided to use that with some glitter and little gems. Normally I’m not really a fan of gold leaf in makeup looks but I’d not tried using it before and this series is kind if about trying new things!

So I started with a green-teal eyeliner (Jungle by Rimmel) and used that to line the lips. Then I tapped a little of Fyrinnae’s Digital Faerie eyeshadow on top which looked gorgeous! I’m going to wear this combo soon for sure. I then added some little gemstones with eyelash glues, and I’ve seen a couple of looks where products like this were applied outside the lipline and I liked it, so I put most of them off my lips. I then mixed up a little of Darling Girls Golden Child glitter with a mixing medium and dabbed it on, adding some blue glitter with Collection 2000’s Glam Crystals in Le Freak. I liked the texture of the glitter – it went a little clumpy, but not in a bad way. It looked great!

After that, I simply tore off some gold leaf and stuck it on willy-nilly with some mixing medium. I have to say I don’t like the gold leaf effect much so I kind of stopped rather than trying to make it work. I do like how it looks with the blue tones though!

 

One more random combination bites the dust!

First Impressions: Bourjois Je T’aime Vintage/Little Round Pot Blusher in Rose d’Or

Apart from a recent ill-fated Healthy Mix purchase, my last Bourjois buy was way back in my first or second year of uni, when I like their clear blue minty gloss. For some reason a special offer piqued my interest recently and I picked up a few things, including this adorable looking little blush. It’s Bourjois’ 150th anniversary this year, and they’ve packaged three of their best-selling shades in adorable 1930’s style packaging. These colours are being referred to  as ‘Je T’aime Vintage Blushes’ but they’re same Little Round Pot ones as they normally have out.

I’m fascinated with history of makeup brands – cue nerdiness! - and the history of Bourjois is really interesting. Like most very old makeup brands, the creator Alexandre Napoleon Bourjois started out making stage makeup – day to day, normal people didn’t wear much or any makeup and it was mainly produced for actors. For a long time, if you wore rouge you were considered a whore! Blush, however, was one of the first products Bourjois made and it’s kind of cool that blushers are still such a key part of the brand today! I think some of the shades have been around for more than 100 years which to me is pretty darn cool.

Rather annoyingly the special packaging is just a sticker, which I think is a bit of a cop-out for your anniversary, Bourjois, but hey, that’s just me! It’s still adorable though and I will admit it’s what attracted me to product.

It comes with an adorable looking but useless brush – it’s very stiff, hard to hold and grabs way too much product. Only use if you want to look like an irritated, stripy clown. I don’t know why companies still do this.

I’ve not used these blushers for a long, long time – I remember my housemate used to have lots of them. They always gave her a lovely glow and never looked too much with her crazy hair colours, so I was expecting something sheer and pretty – your typical baked blusher, really. I don’t own NARS Orgasm but it this seems to be that type of shade – a bright pink with gold sheen. It’s actually pretty pigmented when you swipe it – more so than I was expecting.

On the skin, it’s just what I wanted. Subtle and pretty with a nice but not too disco-ball of a glow. It’s so small and compact it’s going straight into my everyday makeup bag – the brush, however, is going in the bin!

Sugarpill Sweetheart Palette: Initial Thoughts and Swatches

Writing anything about a Sugarpill palette is probably massively redundant, but I don’t care! I’ve wanted this palette for a long time and it’s the last one in my collection of those that are currently available, so now I have all the current pressed shadows apart from Bulletproof. In general I’ve been super impressed with the Sugarpill pressed shadows and I know they wear, blend and photograph well, so I had high expectations for this palette from the get go.

 

L-R (top over bare skin, bottom over NYX Jumbo Eyeshadow Pencil in Milk: Dollipop, Afterparty, Midori, Tako.

Dollipop was the one shadow I was really excited about as I don’t have a good quality, pressed bright pink. I have plenty of pinks that are poor quality, badly textured and that stain skin and brushes so I really wanted this to be good. It’s smooth, pigmented and bright as balls, so, so far I’m really loving it.  It’s perhaps worth noting that Dollipop left a slight stain on my hand where I swatched it over Milk, which is odd as it didn’t stain my eye area. I will update if I find it stains my brushes.

Afterparty I’m less sold on to to be honest – just a personal preference as it’s not my favourite shade of blue. it has a slight shimmer and I’d prefer it to be matte. Performance wise it works wonderfully, though, and I think it’s a nice accompaniment to Midori.

Midori is simply beautiful! It’s not a complex colour at all but I can’t think of anything else I have like it and I have a lot of green shadows. I can see this one becoming a favourite. Like Afterparty, this has shimmer, but I like it much better with this shade.

Tako is the colour I was most intrigued about. Any makeup fan will know finding a pigmented matte white that isn't awfully chalky is practically an impossible ask! I wasn’t expecting too much of Tako but was going to be happy if it was better than MAC Gesso, which is awful. I’m happy to report it’s much better! It’s not super pigmented – you won’t get it to show up stark white without a base at all – but the texture is smooth and it’s buildable, so I’m more than happy.

This is a very quick look I did with all the colours. I don’t know why I keep doing bottom-lashline heavy looks at the moment, I *know* they don’t suit me and I just wish that they did, basically. Anyway, these worked just as well as all my other Sugarpill colours. They just seem to be consistently good (with the exception of Poison Plum which I find difficult to work with) all round – they blend well, they’re pigmented and not patchy, they don’t seem to change colour on bare skin too much like some mattes can and there isn’t too much fallout. I like!

Like the other palettes, I think the colours are a great combination. The blue and the green compliment each other nicely, and the pink and blue mix together well to create a nice deep purple shade. The white is generally useful and it’s actually a bonus that it’s not ridiculously pigmented as you can use it to blend out edges without having too white a highlight.

Basically if you don’t like Sugarpill, I have only this to say:

Random Makeup Series: Ombré Cheeks

At the weekend I mad two jars full of random words- one all to do with makeup, colour, texture and shapes, and the other with eyes, lips, brows, face and cheeks. The idea is that I pull one from the jar describing areas of the face and one or more from the other jar and I have to do a look based on those things whether I like it or not!

 

For my first draw, I got ‘ombré’ and ‘cheeks.’ FML!

I only did one cheek because I was lazy, and should really have done both. I didn’t like this at all! My thought process – if you can call it that! – behind this was the beautiful shape exposing the models freckles from one of the Illamasqua ImPerfection collection images which I was really taken with when I saw it. I really liked the idea of showing of the shape of the cheek in a graphic sort of way. Anyway. It came out like a candy corn and it looks stoopid, but the idea of the lucky dip is to try new things!

Excuse the drag queen lips, by the way. I’m practising bits and bobs of drag makeup at the moment so they sort of just happened. You know how it is :P

If you want to make your own jar, the words I used were:

 

scruffy glossy textured
metallic powdery striped stippled
colour block ombré applique
messy graphic monochrome
cross-hatching caked-on dotty
girly punk bold messy
glitter icy jagged

Let me know if you give this a try, or if you don’t trust yourself not to keep on drawing until you get an idea you like, I’ll do one for you!

Le Maquillage Concealer Petite Palettes

Hello lovelies! I posted these concealer palettes in my March Favourites and a couple of you asked me to review them a little more in depth. I bought these for my kit and everyone I’ve used them on has been really intrigued! I first saw Sam from Pixiwoo use one of these palettes in her videos ages and ages ago, and re-discovered them on a trip to PAM London, which is just around the corner from me.

The palettes are made by  LeMaq (also referred to as Le Maquillage Professionelle or Maq Pro) a French makeup company who, from what I can tell by their (French) website and other stockists of their products, custom-fill palettes for various stores, schools and professional use. For example, The Neat Kit and Love Makeup also carry these palettes, but they look to have different colours in. I could be wrong but I will correct this post if find out!

PAM carries three of the concealer palettes, Light Tone, Medium Tone, and Dark Tone,the latter of which I don’t have yet but will be adding to my collection soon – I’ll update with swatches as and when. As you can probably tell, this is going to be a pretty positive review!

Here’s a photo of one sat on my phone so you can gauge the size of them.  As you can see, they’re really dinky, but quite deep. Each palette contains 30ml of product so you’re actually getting tons for the size. That was the main appeal to me, that they were so compact!

Light Tone Palette

Top Row: 124, 131, 14, 91, C1
Bottom Row: 153, CR,170, 111, 52

 

Medium Tone Palette

Top Row: TL2, 90, 143, 95, C1
Bottom Row: 141, 52, 1989, 128, 97

Just as a side note, I have no idea whatsoever what these numbers/colours refer to, but they’re on the packaging, so they’re in the review!

These are oil based cream makeup. If you’ve got any experience using stage/screen makeup, you’ll be used to this sort of texture. They’re not as heavy as something like Kryolan Supracolors or other greasepaints, and they feel a little smoother to work with but they’ve a similar sort of texture.  As you can probably tell from the colours, these particular palettes are meant for concealing and correcting. For example, the Light palette has a green tone for correcting redness, and a pinkish colour for neutralizing foundations/concealers that are too yellow. Both palettes come with peach and yellow colours, useful for correcting/brightening dark circles under the eyes (I wish the Medium palette came with a different tone of yellow to the Light palette, but hey ho! I would like a brighter, more true orange as well, but I believe there is one in the ‘dark’ palette) and an almost white shade too, which is generally useful. 

There are enough colours to make these palettes really multifunctional – the red tone would also make a nice cheek or lip colour, and some of the peachier shades could function as a blush colour, or as a base on the lids to neutralize veins on before applying eye shadow. The fact these are obviously based around skin-tone colours means there are plenty of contouring shades as well. However, you can get different palettes with a larger variety of colours in them – there are lip colour versions, and this bad boy which has everything!

 

These are much more geared toward professional than every day use. Some people will love this type of makeup, and it won’t be for some other people or their skin type at all. Personally I don’t have a problem using this type of makeup on my skin, but I wouldn’t recommend them for wearing all day everyday and would only really use them on clients and models for a short amount of time. Performance wise though, they apply smoothly, are blendable, don’t separate on the skin and while they need to be set (like all types of cream/wax/oil based makeup) once you’ve done so, they’ll stick around. As they’re wax based, they are water resistant as well which is handy. A little goes a long way and gives good coverage - while I probably wouldn’t  use them as foundation, you certainly could without worrying about totally emptying one section of the palette!

While I’ve yet to fully explore all the possibilities of these palettes, I’ve been using them for correcting and concealing, and I’ve also use them to tone down pigmented lips…

and to highlight  and contour…

Overall they’re a fab little addition to my kit and I’m very grateful to have them! The palettes retail for £24.50 and are available from PAM London, my amazing local professional store.

LOTD with Barry M and OCC

I’ve not really used any loose pigments for quite a while, so I pulled out a couple of my favourite Barry M shades this weekend and had a play. I wanted something neutral with a little pop of interest, so I used my favourite gold pigment by OCC.

 

Eyes: Barry M Dazzle Dusts in 39 Tan (all over) and 102 Burgundy Noir (to define.) OCC Color Concentrate pigment in
Lips: Revlon Red Lacquer, blotted
Cheeks: Inglot AMC Cream Blush in 91, Boots No 7 Vital Enlightening Highlighter

Simple, neutral and yet I like the fun eyeliner. Barry M is another of those brands that people think only carry mad colours – not true! They have some lovely neutrals and work-safe colours as well. Similarly, with OCC people are all about the lip tars, lip tars, lip tars when they have some really fantastic loose pigments that I think get overlooked. Triptych looks MUCH brighter in real life than it does in this LOTD – check it out if you can!

Simple Brights FOTD with Sugarpill, MUA and Revlon

I hadn’t worn anything bright for a while, but I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to do anything complicated or that would involve using a ton of brushes. Having seen a lovely look where JazzieBabyCakes used Sugarpill Royal Sugar as a liner, I knew I wanted to try it.

Eyes: MUA Undress Me Too (lid, crease, lower lashline). MAC Gesso, highlight. Sugarpill Royal Sugar (mixed with Inglot Duraline), liner.
Face: Stila Custom Color Blush in Self Adjusting Coral, Boots No 7 Vital Enlightening Highlighter. Dr Jarts BB Cream, nameless theatrical setting powder, Le Maq Pro Concealer Palette in Light (to contour/highlight), Collection2000 Lasting Perfection Concealer in  01 Light.
Lips: Revlon Fire and Ice

Lo and behold, some photos for my blog where I don’t look like a troll! Hooray! I really, really like this look. I was going to pair the eye look with a neutral lip, but I’ve just bought Fire and Ice and am still head over heels in love with it, so on it went and I really like the result!

 

What’s your favourite pigment to wear as eyeliner?