Two days later...

And I am still in love with my makeup from Friday. 

Products used:

–Makeup Forever HD foundation &  powder
–Nars Lovejoy blush
–Urban Decay Gilded bronzer
– Urban Decay Nevermind, Jagged, Penny Lane, and Anonymous eyeshadows
–MAC Saigon Summer with Revlon Lip Butter in Creamsicle

FOTD March 14

Products used:

• UD Primer Potion

• Sugarpill Lumi (lid)

• Sugarpill Paperdoll (crease)

• UD 24/7 gel eye liner in Zero

• Kat Von D Sin-Full Lash Mascara in Puro Amor

 

and on the 7th day, He said "Let there be Sugarpill"

So I ordered a buttload of Sugarpill eye shadow this week because well.  Why the hell not?  I have a problem and it may involve bright colors.  It came today!

Oooooh.  I got Chroma Lust loose shadows in: Lumi, Tiara, Magpie, Junebug, Royal Sugar, Decora, Magentrix, Birthday Girl, Paperdoll, Tipsy, Darling, and Starling and got pressed shadows in Velocity, Bullet Proof, Poison Plum and Acidberry.

I  have swatches!  All swatches were done on bare skin with no base.

Bulletproof is in the very back, Poison Plum is in the very front, mid-right is Velocity, and mid-left is Acidberry.

Aside from the fact you can totally see my watch was pushed way too far up on my arm for way too long, from left to right: Acidberry, Poison Plum, Velocity, and Bulletproof.  The first of each pair is wet and the second dry.  They are all matte and look amazing wet.  I am ambivalent on how they look dry on most of them, except I did not like Acidberry dry at all.

Royal Sugar (blue) and Lumi (white)

I did Royal Sugar (left to right) wet, dry, and wet with Lumi on top of it.  On the bottom, left to right, is Lumi wet and dry.  You can barely see the dry swatch, so don't go blind trying to see it.  It isn't the light either, it is very hard to see dry.  I really like the layering effect of Lumi, how it adds almost a frost to the Royal Sugar.

Right to left: Tiara, Magpie, & Junebug.

Right to left: Tiara, Magpie, and Junebug, the bottom row being done wet and the top dry.  The wet and dry of Magpie are similar but there is still more intense color in all three with it applied wet.  And even with the shadow (ugh, I tried so hard to get rid of that), the colors in this picture are pretty true-to-life.

SO. MUCH. PINK.  Left to right: Magentrix, Decora, and Birthday Girl.

Left to right, with the bottom layer applied wet and the top dry: Birthday Girl, Decora, and Magentrix.  To be brutally honest, when applied dry, all three looked pretty similar to the point I would have trouble picking them out of a line up.  When done wet, Birthday Girl is a pretty pale pink that is still bright enough for my love of ALL THINGS BRIGHT.  Decora is a coral pink and Magentrix a fuschia in the pot, but they looked rather similar wet except there was way more shimmer and glitz with Decora.

Left to right: Starling & Darling

Hey look, you can see a scar from a cigarette burn on my hand.  That's hot.  From left to right, bottom row applied wet and top dry: Starling, then Darling.  Starling is a teal color in the pot, but when applied it seemed more a very blue teal.  Darling is turoquoise in the pot, and wet is a teal like I expected to see with Starling, but when done dry, it is a very green turquoise, to the point I was like, uh, did I have green on my brush? (I did not.)

Left to right: Tipsy & Paperdoll

This looks similar to the picture of the pots I took when I got Absinthe and Weekender but IT'S NOT.  In the pot, Paperdoll is much lighter than Weekender and Tipsy is a lot less yellow than Absinthe.

There is that cigarette burn again.  Pesky little shit.  Paperdoll is a nice lavender that is very faded from what I would expect seeing it in the pot when applied dry, but gives a nice pop of light purple when applied wet.  Tipsy is a grassy green applied both wet and dry, just more bold when done wet.  When compared to Absinthe, Absinthe is more yellow and more of a lime color to me, where this seems more like a true green and did remind me of freshly-mowed grass.

Out of the pressed shadows, I would wear them wet or dry, except for Acidberry, which I would only wear wet because the color was not one that would look good on me at all when applied dry.  For the loose shadows, I would probably stick to wet application for all of them, or if applied dry, it would be for blending purposes over a wet application.  I am not disappointed in any of the shadows though, but let's be real.  Sugarpill never disappoints me.

I also have EYE GLITTERS!!! on the way from Lit Cosmetics and I am so excited to the point a coworker told me that I need makeup rehab.  I can't shut up about EYE GLITTERS!!! Can't wait can't wait can't wait.

Stay beautiful, party people.

 

Blue da ba dee ba ba

Products used:
• Urban Decay Echo Beach from lid to brow
• Urban Decay Cobalt in crease and on lower lash line
• Urban Decay Anonymous on brow bone, blended with Cobalt
• Makeup Forever Aqua Black Cream Liner
• Dior Extase mascara in 090

Mint chocolate chip ice cream? Yes please.

I was up at 2 am, eating my feelings in a bowl of mint cookie crumble ice cream and was inspired.

I announced that I would have one up before I realized how tired I was, so it isn't my best work, but I think I did a better job at explaining what I was doing while I was doing it.  I hope you guys like it!

Stay beautiful, party people.

Today, I choose fire.

Products used:
• Sugarpill loose shadow in Goldilux (lid, and lightly on brow bone)
• Sugarpill loose shadow in Asylum (crease)
• Sephora cream eyeliner
• Dior Extase mascara in 090

If I wear a summer eye, will summer come faster?

Products used:
• Too Faced Plumeria on lid
• Too Faced Cocoa Beach in crease
• Makeup Forever Aqua Black waterproof cream liner
• Sephora Full Action Extreme Effect mascara (black)

Yesterday's FOTD

Products used:
• Urban Decay Primer Potion in Original
• NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in Milk
• Sugarpill Dollipop on inner corner of lid
• Sugarpill Afterparty from outer corner of lid to center, blended into Dollipop
• Urban Decay After Market in crease
• Urban Decay Broken on brow bone
• Urban Decay Blitz on lower lash line
• Makeup Forever Aqua Black cream liner along top lash line
• Urban Decay 24/7 liner in Zero on waterline
• Benefit They're Real! Mascara

and at some point, He created fire.

Products used:

Eyes:

• Urban Decay Primer Potion in Original
• NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in Milk
• Sugarpill Tako
• Sugarpill Buttercupcake
• Sugarpill Flamepoint
• Makeup Forever Aqua Black cream eyeliner
• Smashbox Full Exposure mascara in Jet Black

Face:

• Dr. Jart+ Black Label BB Cream
• NARS blush in Deep Throat
• Too Faced Chocolate Soleil Matte Bronzing Powder
• Sephora Mattifying foundation (powder)
• NARS Light Reflecting Loose Setting Powder

Lips:

• Urban Decay Super Saturated High Gloss Lip Color in Glinda (a dupe for Naked)
• Buxom Big and Health Lip Polish in Sandy

The highlight of my day was Sugarpill Cosmetics retweeting my FOTD on twitter.  My day was pretty much downhill from there (at 630 pm, I went to go home from running errands after work to find out both of my headlights were out, some nice man at the auto parts store helped me and one still wouldn't work because a wire on one of the connectors needed to be fixed, then I go to start the car and the battery was dead; of note: it was 28 degrees.)  So makeup...definitely the highlight.

BUT.  I looked cute while doing it.

I think we can agree.

Stay beautiful, party people.

Addicted to Pretty? Addicted to NEON.

So today, this came in the mail:

Sugarpill Cosmetics, Sweetheart palette from the Addicted to Pretty collection

I first purchased from Sugarpill Cosmetics about six months ago when I was on the prowl for the perfect matte white shadow.  I had a lot of matte white shadows in cheapie palettes I had picked up along the way, but most of them had just led to a lot of frustration at the color not being buildable, the white not showing up, et cetera.  I blogged about MAC Gesso last year as my first entry EVAR, and while it is a matte white that I could make work, it still involved a lot of effort and energy and uh.  I am lazy a lot of days.  A friend suggested I try Sugarpill's Tako, because it got good reviews on YouTube and the makeup blog circuit.  So that I did. Tako is the essential matte white shadow, as far as I am concerned, so when Sugarpill had their birthday sale last week and all shadows were on sale, I was more than okay with the Sweetheart palette having that color, even though I have a single already.

I don't own any of the other colors in a single, so I was excited to see how pigmented they were.  (I am not kidding anyone, any makeup purchase turns me into the proverbial child on Christmas morning).  I swatched all four colors on the back of my hand.  I am very fair-skinned, so often a color will look SUPER BRIGHT in the pan, then I have to spend enough time building the color to match how I feel it it supposed to look that I can practically feel myself aging.  Which means wrinkles, which I don't want. That is one thing I really like about Sugarpill - what you see in the pan is pretty much what you get.  I did not put any primer on my hand before swatching (though I would never use it without primer on my eyes) and the colors are still bold and bright. 

As for the colors: Sugarpill's website calls Afterparty a "bright turquoise" but to me, turquoise is more of a bright teal, with more green than this color has.  This shadow reminds me of the Cerulean crayon in the box of 64 Crayola set (I am dating myself here).  Which was, COINCIDENTALLY, my favorite crayon color back in 1990.  It is more a bright neon blue than a turquoise, at least for me.  It is not a matte, it has what Sugarpill describes as a "semi-pearly sheen".

The site calls Dollipop "vibrant, matte, hot pink!"  And..yes.  That is exactly what it is.  It is the perfect hot pink matte eyeshadow.

They stick with "vibrant green with a slight pearly sheen" to describe Midori, which is vague.  It is a kelly green, and the slight pearly sheen part is spot on, because it is very slight, but enough that it isn't exactly a matte, but definitely has far less of a sheen than Afterparty.

I can't wait to use this palette, though I am a little late for Carnaval, I may use it for my first real tutorial, which is probably coming this weekend.  (Probably.  I have commitment issues.)

Stay beautiful, party people.

In which I am a smurfette

Products used:

• Urban Decay Primer Potion Original
• Urban Decay Foxy (cream/beige, lid)
• Sephora+Pantone Universe 17-6219 (green, lid)
• Urban Decay Cobalt (blue, crease)
• Urban Decay Venus (brow bone)
• Urban Decay Blitz (gold, lower lash line)
• Too Faced Perfect Eyes Waterproof liner in Perfect Black (smudged on upper lash line, water line)
• Smashbox Full Exposure mascara

I need to figure out how to get my living space set up so I can do video tutorials now that I figured out how to use iMovie, I KNOW.  I also used a sample of Urban Decay's Naked BB Cream and was not impressed, so I need to do an entry on BB cream and why Dr. Jart+ Black Label is my favorite, I KNOW.  FOTD posts get us through the hard times, YES?

Somewhat topical: I made a First World Problems meme that pretty much represents my entire life and I will share that with you now.

Don't pretend you don't understand.

 Stay beautiful, party people.

There is a champion inside all of us.

This is what my daily affirmation iPhone app told me this morning.  And yes, I have a daily affirmation iPhone app.  Don't hate, it gives you wrinkles.

Today, I decided to be a makeup champion.

I think I won.  Cutting the crease is so basic but really takes a meh eye look to GIIIIIRL WORK ITTTT in about ten seconds flat.  I prefer to be GIIIIIRL WORK IT to meh, so I go with it.

My eyes make me look like I am on drugs, and while I learned the price of heroin on the street today, I myself did not partake.

That photo is far blurry than I would like to be, but I did all of this using a Coastal Scents palette I inherited from a good friend (Erica, holla if you hear me, I love you boo).  The base was M.A.C Gesso over the NYX Milk primer pencil, but the effort I need to make Gesso work early in the morning is too much work, especially for a Friday, the day on which I go to work strictly on an appearance-only basis.  Anyway,  LOOK AT ALL THE COLORS:

Enter poorly taken picture of the palette.  For the price and the product being lower-middle-road, the shadows are nicely pigmented.  

I used a combination of the bottom magenta and purple to cut my crease with by wetting the brush, then brought it up some more blending in one of the more fuschia hues in, finishing off with more NYX Milk pencil with one of the very light cream colors pictured in the photo of the entire palette above.  I wish the white stood out more, but at 7 am, it is what it is (this is where I sound like my father, which I am sure he appreciates, especially in reference to makeup; I figure he has the television tastes of a 14 year old girl, why not add makeup into the mix?)

Next, I deferred to what I do best and did a cat eye with black eyeliner: I used liquid, keeping it away from the inner corners as much as possible because then it smudges in and I look a hot mess 2 hours into work.  My favorite liquid is made by Almay, and while I look down my nose at drug store makeup, I am not too proud to admit that.  I lined the lower lid with the magenta hue, then covered in the cream tone I used on my browbone and went over it with Urban Decay's El Dorado 24/7 Glide On eye pencil to dim the boldness of the look.  Mascara of your choice, I think I grabbed Kat Von D's Puro Amor which is not really a favorite, but it works and came inside a palette, and you're done.  (Well, done on the eyes, anyway.)

I call this my come-hither bedroom eyes look.  Or IMMA CUT YOU SON.  Could go either way, really.


MAKEUP CHAMPION Y/Y?

P.S. it has been so long since I have been in a mental headspace to keep up with this that it is time for ask for what you guys want to read/know about.  I can do FOTD forever but that gets boring.  I vaguely remember bronzer, pencil eyeliner and...? Drop me a suggestion in the comments, I would love to have the extra material to work with.

Stay beautiful, party people.

of mental struggles and how they lead to the perfect cut crease.

I have been anxiety's bitch for the last few months.  The idea of really DOING my makeup cripples me, along with thoughts like putting on my underwear or deciding what to have for dinner.

However, I managed this today:

Using mostly the Urban Decay Vice Palette, the outside of which I will not photograph because the second you take it out of the package it is fingerprint city (UD, WHY?).  I started with Echo Beach from lash to brow:

Then used Stila Smudge Pot in Cobalt to cut my crease (there are so many tutorials on cutting the crease, I will not be doing one):

Blended out with UD Chaos:

Then softened a little with Anonymous as a highlight on the browbone:

And a light dusting of Armor from lash to crease:

Finished with Makeup Forever liquid liner and BeneFit Bad Gal Lash:

And again:

in which our heroine returns from sabbatical

Maybe it was not so much a sabbatical, which makes it sound like I was making macaroni jewelry with impoverished Costa Rican toddlers or surveying the world from a mountain peak in Tibet, as my coming undone, like a slow motion dive through a glass window.

On the upside, it could always be worse.  It could be 200 years ago where the only possible outcome was ending up in an opium den smelling of sweat and desperation, but it is not, and for this, I am grateful.

On a somewhat happier note, my medication regimen has been stabilized and Sephora partnered with color industry leader (yeah, I didn't know color was an actual industry, either) Pantone, first sometime in late 2011 to bring us the, in my never humble, never sorry opinion, poorly thought out Color of the Year product line.  Tangerine Tango is a nice color, but orange eyeliner is not a trend because it looks horrible, not because it is groundbreaking.

Pantone started in the 1950s as a commercial printing company and by the early 1960s (the Wonder Years, if you will) Hofstra University graduate Lawrence Herbert has simplified the company's pigments and production of colored ink into a solitary color system.  The colored ink production side of the company was booming while the printing side had become a financial drain, so Herbert bought all of the technology from the company and renamed the entire gig Pantone.  They are most well known for the Pantone Matching System, which is a "proprietary color space" (when you figure out the actual meaning behind that phrase, holler at me, because I haven't a clue and haven't any real fucks to give, either).  The Pantone Matching System essentially standardizes colors and color production so that, theoretically, it can be ensured that color is uniform even though manufacturers may never have direct contact with each other.  Product-wise, they are most well known for the Pantone Guides, which come in booklets that you can fan out so they look a little something like this:

photo credit: 123rf.com Royalty Free Stock Photos

They bring back memories of spending approximately 57 percent of my childhood in paint stores, stealing as many color cards as we could just to get home and dump them on the floor and be yelled at for our privileged wastelessness.  Company profiles and childhood anecdotes aside, Pantone has made Sephora palettes something actually worth buying.

Sleek packaging makes you feel like Rodeo Drive and palm trees.  Or maybe the Amazon rainforest.  Or maybe a praying mantis.  We could do this all day.

Makeup brushes deserving of their own plastic covers for holidays and dinner parties.  That is why the photo is blurry, after all.  Emulating your New York Eye-talian grandmother since...forever.

It is like a Sherwin Williams color card display...for your face.  The 8 year old in me rejoices minus the parental reprimands.

They are highly pigmented and while the color payoff isn't as good as say, Urban Decay, I think the colors are much bolder than the normal UD selections, and I often have the problem with UD of what is in the pot never actually transferring to my face as the same color (while they are highly pigmented, even when applying UD eyeshadows wet, they always seem to appear much more muted on my face, though I am more than willing to admit it could be something I am doing wrong.)  These don't wear as long as UD, but I can't think of many occasions I need 24 hour eyeshadow for, anyway.  I have Sephora's Blockbuster palette from last year, and the shadow formulation seems to have been changed, or they are using an entirely different formulation for their Pantone Universe palettes in an attempt to step it up.  I'm not sure, exactly.

Brush set and shadow palette for 100 dollars, people.  That's all I'm saying.  

On that note, my not-so-gentle readers! What do you want me to write about? What makeup product has you completely stumped? What makeup blog entry do you want to see?  I tend to overwhelm myself with all the makeup talk and not know what to write about, so help a girl out.