Month: January 2014

First FOTD of 2014: Eye of Newt & the Storm

LOL, what a dumb title. Happy 2014, friends! 🙂 Here’s the first full face of makeup I wore this year. Full-ish, I should say. Since one of my beauty resolutions is to do a modified Project Pan, I picked out the things I wanted to/had to use up before I could buy another (if I want to replace that shit in the first place). Base: y.e.t. Cosmetics Fill It Up Primer, Benefit Hello Flawless Oxygen Wow Liquid Foundation (Cheers to Me… Champagne), Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder (Ethereal Light) Cheeks: Tarte Amazonian Clay 12-Hour Blush (Flush), MAC Mineralize Skinfinish (Lightscapage) Eyes: OCC Crème Colour Concentrate (Newt), MAC Prolongwear Paint Pot (Stormy Pink), Inglot Eyeshadow (125R, middle shade), MAC Eye Kohl (Prunella), Le Métier de Beauté Eye Brightening and Setting Powder (Refresh) to set shadows. I should note that Newt creased on my left eye, though I didn’t wear primer. Eyebrows: Inglot Brow Powder (569) Lips: MAC Lustre Lipstick (Jubilee) And that’s it! I’m trying to be more adventurous, too… In case you couldn’t tell. Hee! What …

Buxom Big and Healthy Lip Cream in White Russian*

Earlier this month, I got sent two items by My Socal Shoppe, and one of them was a deluxe sized mini of the Buxom Big and Healthy Lip Cream in White Russian. I already have another shade, Berry Blast, reviewed here, so I was quite familiar with the formula already. Thankfully, I’m a big fan of the formula. White Russian is actually more my speed when it comes to lip products. I find myself a bit mistrustful of bright pinks and violets, so this beautiful pale pink shade is actually kind of perfect and more Carina-friendly. It is sort of like a very milky pale pink—and is opaque for a gloss. (I guess that’s why they call it a cream.) I have pretty pigmented lips, so I had to make sure that I covered every inch of that lip edge so I don’t look like an inadvertent chola. I didn’t do a very good job, but you can see what I mean! I wouldn’t call it a liquid lipstick, so it’s definitely an opaque, milky …

Swatches: Sigma Créme de Couture Palette

Hey guys, just a quick swatch post of one of my Christmas gifts to my sister—the Sigma Crème de Couture Palette. I had such a strong urge to buy this for myself, but let’s face it. I’m not going to get a lot of mileage out of this one. It’s a beautiful collection of pastel-y matte eyeshadows heavily inspired by French macarons. There are sixteen shades in all—each corresponding to a macaron flavor. The packaging is quite nice; a slim cardboard box reminiscent of macaron and pastry boxes. Here are the shades from the first two rows: L-R, swatched on bare skin: Redberry Rose, Apricot Flower, Passion Fruit, Cherry Blossom, Meyer Lemon, Ginger Pumpkin, Café Au Lait, Blueberry Cream Here are the shades from the last two rows: L-R, swatched on bare skin: Violet Whip, Lavender Honey, Cassis, Elderberry, Crème de Menthe, Blue Chocolat, Almond Pear, Citron Pistachio Overall, it’s an alright palette, the biggest pro being that they have the weirdest colors ever that are still somewhat dainty, and they’re all matte. They’re not …

Beauty Goals and Resolutions for 2014

Hey everyone! I hope you’re all having a great year. 🙂 I have been pondering on creating a beauty resolutions list for a while now, but didn’t want to post anything on the 1st, just for the sake of posting on the first day of the year, so I took some time and wrote down some of the things I want to achieve this year, at least in the spectrum of beauty. I’ve made similar lists and goals for my reading, which you can read here, and for life in general, which you can find here. Similarly, I have a goal for beauty and makeup, since it comprised a big chunk of my life (and finances) last year. I went on a fairly long no buy (and proceeded to break it, lol) from May to December, but it still wasn’t enough. I think you really have to personally come to a point where you realize that enough is enough. Until that happens, no-buys won’t work out. In any case, here is what I came up …

Nosy Beauty Vol. 23: Delia

Hi everyone! Sorry for missing last week’s Nosy Beauty post. I didn’t even realize it was a Saturday until I was in the mountains and too late to even queue the post. New Resolution: Pay attention. HEH! Anyway, this week’s guest of honor ’round these parts is Delia, from Shimmery Black. She’s an amazing girl who comes up with some of the most stunning eye looks. She’s definitely one of my favorite beauty bloggers. • My name is Delia, I’m 18 and I’m currently a student (oh, the horror). I love nature, art and, besides blogging at Shimmery Black, I sometimes do photography. Regarding my beauty philosophy, I think make-up should be most importantly effective and not essentially obvious. For instance, a thin black line right at the base of the lashes is more flattering than painting your whole lid with liquid liner (which I’ve actually seen on some girls).

Happy Skin Eye Need a Miracle Concealer

So, I dragged my mom to a Happy Skin Counter and this is what she ended up getting. To be honest, I think she got the Eye Need a Miracle Concealer for me, since I wouldn’t shut up about it. I didn’t want to buy it just yet because it had an alarming amount of glitter in it, for something that’s supposed to conceal dark circles. Eye Need a Miracle only has one shade, Butter, and I’ve been told that it “adjusts” to any skin tone. I’m a big ol’ skeptic when it comes to these things because I can’t fathom how that works out, but it swatches fine on my medium skin color:

State of Skin: Skin Care Routine Update

Hey everyone! To start the year off (my Inglot post was scheduled prematurely, lol), I wanted to do a bit of a basics series. Let me begin with skin. 🙂 This is what my freshly-washed face looks like in the morning. I’ve had pretty good luck with skin and breakouts for the duration of my life—I’ve maybe had 10 really bad pimples in 25 years—aside from allergies, etc. When I started wearing makeup, I started getting problems. I didn’t use to wash my face; I only washed it when I remembered to. In the shower. So, adding gunk was particularly problematic. I had great luck with shu uemura’s cleansing oils (I used the yellow variant/balancing one), but it’s expensive + not cruelty-free, which is weird to say because I’m not sure if the ff. items are CF, but bear with me!